Shakin' Hands
Welcome to 'Shakin' Hands,' the podcast where entrepreneurship meets fascinating stories from the most intriguing minds today. From proven business practices to groundbreaking ideas that challenge the status quo, Shakin' Hands' is not just about the handshake that seals a deal but about the shared experiences and values that unite us all. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or someone who loves a good story about overcoming odds, Shakin' Hands' promises to deliver compelling content that shakes up the conventional and celebrates the extraordinary.
Tune in to Shakin' Hands' where leaders, thinkers, and doers come to share, inspire, and, most importantly, connect. Let's shake hands with the world, one story at a time.
Host: Jack Moran
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Shakin' Hands
Ep. 67 | The Cost of Neglecting Yourself - Craig Stahlecker
In this episode of Shakin’ Hands, Jack Moran sits down with Craig Stahlecker, a former finance professional who transformed his life and career by launching OptiMale, a coaching platform for men focused on naturally optimizing testosterone and reclaiming their health. Craig shares how burnout and neglecting his own well-being catalyzed a major personal shift, leading him to explore health and high-performance routines. The conversation explores the intersection of entrepreneurship, physical health, masculine identity, and the importance of building a mission driven community. Jack and Craig also dive into the systems Craig uses to coach clients, the lifestyle changes required for lasting health, and how accountability is key to sustainable success. This episode is a masterclass in turning personal adversity into purpose and thriving through radical self-ownership.
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Host: Jack Moran
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Welcome to Shakin’ Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack Moran and this is Shakin’ Hands. If you're looking for business mentorship, I have a place where you can get feedback on your unique personal development and business growth challenges. Over the last year, I've brought together a group of impact driven thought leaders where we meet every single day to discuss psychology, communication, mindset, and business case studies. We have people who have made millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, Harvard MBAs and new entrepreneurs like you and I. Entrepreneurship can be lonely. So if you're looking for a support system, please follow the link in the description below for some more information. Thank you. Only that kid would be doing only fans management at 16. That's wild. I got to meet up with him in person. He's a good kid. He's a little hustler. And my right eye level is. I see him just, like, putting on his friends and stuff, too, which I always think is cool. Yeah, yeah, trying to help them out. What do you been up to? Trying to stay healthy, working on the business. Do a little socializing outside of that. But, life's good, man. In Charleston, for the most part. Went down to First Island last weekend, but what was that about? Hanging out with my girlfriend there. Her family's got a place there that we stayed. So what's the business? What do you got going with her right now? Yeah, mainly online fitness coaching. And I do some in-person, in Charleston, of course. So in person is more. So just the training side, like strength training itself. And then the online is more of her, more holistic, like training, nutrition, recovery, anything that falls under those I'll help people out with. Yeah, I think the last time we talked, when we met at the at the Merchant, you were just getting that started. Yeah. So what's that journey been like, getting, this business started from zero. Yeah. A lot of lessons learned. I think I had very vast ambitions, like, I wanted to do everything. Whereas I'm learning more and more. Just focusing on a certain, you know, character profile, solve those problems and continue to help you know, with a specific niche has been helpful for me. So for me, helping businessmen, I tend to preach natural methods. So I'm not telling them to go shoot up some testosterone and get on some gear or anything like that. I prefer like natural stuff. I don't take any supplements, just whole foods as much as I can. Something that is sustainable. And before I think I was looking more at holistic like self-actualization, like, let me help them with this, that and the other. Like finances, like, your mental health, like all of that. But to me, it's like those things aren't going to raise or get to a level that you'll be fulfilled with if your fitness isn't there as a solid foundation. So I'm focusing on the fitness, for now. So you just niche it down. Yeah. Yeah. So I got quarries and they it was like, you can do anything, but you can't do everything. Spot on, spot on, man. Yeah, 100%. That's something I keep. Keep, like, learning about. Like you can do, like you said. All right. What was it? I think it's like you can do anything, but you can't do everything. So in terms of, you know, take what it is that you want to do, and you can do that to the best of your ability. You can achieve greatness, but you can't do all of these things at the highest level. If you really want to, you know, succeed in these endeavors, you only have 100% energy. So like a second you devote some energy to something else, like you're taking away from the main thing that's been like a major, probably the biggest, like Pandora's box that's opened up for me as far as like an advancement within my own journey is realizing that I was trying to increase the revenue for the company. And so I was looking at different like service offerings. And, you know, what we could do in developing different sales processes, starting from zero. But I had this realization. I just did an analysis of the company. And I said over the past five years, what have I made the most money from? Right. And I just eliminated everything else and just started doing more of that. And it was like instant like, yeah, instant impact on the company. Yeah. So, I found to like a lot of times people and I find myself doing this, but similar to what you were saying, trying to expand to so many different ways to monetize it or to go about, getting the results that you're after. And I think if you focus these actions, they're able to accelerate a lot faster than being in, you know, stage 1 or 2 on five projects. You can get to stage ten or, you know, elevate the level of your skills and your systems and that way you're moving with a lot less friction because you know what you're doing and you're focused on one problem at a time. You said that you define like a, more niche down avatar. What does that avatar look like now? So I would say, man, it can be a C-suite executive, a business owner entrepreneur, but it also includes people like salesmen, real estate agents, stuff like that. So to me, it's your go getters that are in business. You can be working 9 to 5 or have a flexible schedule, if you will. I mean, I can narrow down to my past self because that's a lot of why I feel like I went on this journey, which was somebody in finance. I was, you know, a head trader managing or helping to manage a lot of investments and stuff like that, working anywhere from 50 to 70 hours most weeks, like just kind of every day going at it. But I didn't feel like that contribution I was making, like I felt like I could be replaced there. And then, there wasn't much room for me to move up in the businesses that I was helping. So when I really focused on what was what I needed to improve, it was my fitness. And once I made those improvements myself, I, you know, got promoted. My investments did a whole lot better. I had so much more clarity. My social life improved, and those were the kind of priceless benefits that I wanted to share with others, not just manage managing their investments, but helping them to transform their lives. So that's part of my journey. And I can speak to people that were, you know, in business. To me, I was a finance guy, always into entrepreneurial things and interested in that. And so I think I can relate to them, speak their language and help them because I've been there myself. Why do you think that? Working or putting that focus on your fitness had that impact on the business? I think it comes down to your self-worth and the. Non tangible things like you can't put on your resume the word confident or the word, you know, driven, but you can show it in your actions. And to me, if you're looking in the mirror and you're not proud of who you are, you're not going to invest in yourself at a high level and you can't expect somebody else to do the same. You know, invest in you or your idea or in your support if you're not doing it yourself. So I think it comes down to that foundation of building up your character traits and learning through that process more about who you are and how you can help others. Or you typically is your your client profile someone off the couch? What do you mean by that? Like they're not active. Now they're entering into your program and they're starting to develop fitness habits. Or is it someone who's already, like, pretty active and then they're just like implementing different routines? It's a great question. A lot of times my in-person clients can be people off the couch, but typically my online stuff is like your former athletes that ended up getting a job, and now their main focus has been their career, and they put their fitness on the back burner, and they're not really happy with that. Or they're starting to see the drawbacks of just putting career or, certain relationships first without taking care of themselves in the best way so they can show up better in their work, in their relationships, etc.. How do you go from someone that's not active, that doesn't have the habit of exercising? Like, how do you start getting into that habit of implementing that within your routine? Because that's probably the most difficult thing to get over is, is like, yeah, in getting people to or implementing these into their routine to make the new habit. It's a great question. I would always say start small and change your environment because your environment is going to support you or pull you back to certain habits. Or are you on atomic habits with us? Did you do that book with us? No, but I have read it. Okay, I'm pretty sure. Or I'm pretty sure I wasn't on when you guys were going through it. Gotcha. Okay. I also have a framework that I like to use that could be helpful for that. And I paraphrase it as dealer. So it's decide, imagine, learn, execute, repeat. So you decide what you want. You imagine how great it's going to be to get that payoff. You learn what you need to do to take the next step, not go from 0 to 100, but take learn what you need for the next step. Execute. So you take that next step, and then you repeat so that after each step, you're continuing to make progress or recalibrating towards your, the thing that you are imagining with your action or, and executing with your actions and learning throughout the process. But I would say start small. Like to me, if somebody is really off the couch, they're out of shape. I'm starting with walking, starting with writing down what foods you eat and not even tracking much more than that. Like just go out, get a walk, drink some water, like starting with the bare minimum, or just very, very basic things and having them imagining what it is they want, why they want it, like like truly understanding their why and their reasoning behind this change and understanding the recognizing, I guess, the gap, and then trying to help them understand what the penalty of not taking action is because people can procrastinate and not take action, which is going to hurt them in the long run. So I think creating that urgency is part of it as well. What's something that you teach to your clients that you didn't learn from someone else you discovered on your own journey? Something that comes to mind is the Eisenhower Matrix. Are you familiar with? I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's basically there is urgency and there are there is importance and there are four quadrants. So the first one is the things that you're going to do right away. So it's basically like how to prioritize things. So you have urgency and you have importance. And if it's urgent and important that's something you should do right away. So to me that's going to be like you're taking care of your health when something there's like a health emergency, you're going to take care of that and then you have urgency. Or sorry. Yeah, it's urgent, but not important. So you're going to, you're going to schedule it and execute on it later. So it's like that's part of your plan that you're going to outline. What's an example of urgent but not important? To me it's like you have your exercise plan for next week or something like that. It's like something that you can schedule and not have to do. Gotcha. And then you have important but not urgent. So that's something you can delegate. So that's like for example, you can have somebody else making your meals or something like that. So I apply this a lot to business as well. And then you have you're not urgent and not important. And a lot of times people write down things that they feel they need to get done. But that's a certain point where you just, you know, cross it out and say, you don't even need to do that. You've been on the, stand up calls a lot recently. Have you been to learn anything on those or. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's helpful to go in depth on these topics and just hearing other perspectives and hearing how people apply different things to their business is always helpful for me. Talking a lot about conversations. I guess different words that I feel can help, whether that's in the sales process or if somebody comes to me with an issue, stuff like that. So it's like having them or words like induction, induction, kind of words and things like that are always helpful to review. What do you think the biggest thing that you've learned that you're utilizing now? I've been on the calls for a while, so that's a good question. To me, my biggest takeaway truly is just to be in groups that are trying to continue learning. Like, to me, the biggest takeaway isn't like this is one lesson that I apply every day. It's more so the habit of continuing to work on my personal development with others that are way ahead of me in business, or helping people in that environment. Are there any other communities in Charleston that use that? I'm actually big on the online communities, so I have like 4 or 5 that I tap into on a like at least twice a week. I would say, what are the, so one is for fitness coaches have one that's for online coaches, I have another that's more so just like an entrepreneur, I guess, like think tank, with some like younger guys, younger entrepreneurs. And then I have the dream Spear as well. And I have another one for content, like content. Creators. So tapping into those different niches, I guess you could say is, is pretty helpful. Yeah. I haven't found like I haven't started utilizing the like online communities yet and they're obviously like super powerful and a lot of people are doing them. Yeah. And it's like sick place to get advice. But is there like a thought threshold that you would say is like an ideal number of people, do they get too big or it's like not really impactful or because we're obviously trying to dial in hours, you know, and make it. Yeah. And it used to be the books, but then we realized, like, okay, if you have the book, we might be for months on a book. Right now, no one wants to join halfway through. And so that's why we started doing the questions. I mean, even like, to me, even if you have 100 people in the community and you're getting anywhere from 20 to 30 on a call, like, I'm not sure how many. Yeah. Like, to me, you can have a I would say like just a number that comes in my head is going to be 100 in a community, but you can have 20, 30 active members, like, no problem in my opinion. And then different topics and conversations are going to put more people into wanting to contribute to that or ask questions about it, I guess. What do you think are the like, how do you identify a good community and like what makes it a good community that's beneficial? Yeah, that's a good question. I would say it comes down to the engagement and contribution and advocacy of the members. So if people are engaging consistently, if they are, you know, depends how it's set up. I guess if they're engaged in gauging on the calls, if they're sharing, photos, text messages, etc. into the community, I think that's helpful. And then are these people collaborating or helping each other or meeting up outside of the community? I think that can be good, whether that's, you know, side conversation for calls online or in person. But I do think it comes down to that engagement. And if they're advocating for it and you're getting new members from the people that are sharing the service or promoting the service externally, I think that's to me, the advocacy part is probably towards the end of it or that, you know, your top 10% of the people are going to be pushing your, community itself. What, what's like the best model that you've seen, today like that you've been involved in, that you think is like a really good model? I'm kind of like, selfishly asking this because we're obviously trying to develop, develop, develop ours. Yeah. I think you are doing a great job with yours. I did notice there's, what is it like an affiliate link, which I think is a good idea as well for it. We got to get people engaging on the like, school more because, like, it's obviously very engaging in the calls. It is. It is. That's great. I would say as long as you're having recurring meetings and providing value and, you know, I think that there is a certain aspect of, competitiveness or challenges that people really get excited for, really. Like, a mentor of mine in the fitness space is running a $2,500 challenge for the best transformation over 60 days. And there's like few requirements to this. So you have to, you know, it's basically the the best amount of compliance when it comes to training, nutrition and sharing your work out into the community. So every day he has countless people sharing photos and, yeah, sharing photos of their workout and saying like what they did into the community. And it just builds and builds and builds and people are like motivated and contributing to that or sharing their part into it. And I think that's just really, really working well. And it's like a lot of these people are like, I'm going to win that thing because it's incentivizing them. And they are competitive people by nature. They're not just going to sit back on the sidelines and watch others, you know, achieve something that they could do. That's also helping them, you know, as they're contributing to this, community. They're also bettering themselves. So it's like a win win. I think that's one example I could speak on. How are you in this kind of a little bit off that track, but how are you with your fitness business? Obviously, like fitness is a pretty saturated market. How are you sourcing clients and like, you know, finding people to take your training? Yeah. And building that credibility that people want to utilize you. Right. So it's probably one of the most difficult parts of the business, I would imagine. Yeah. I mean, like, another, another mentor of mine talks about like the coaching part is the easy part. Like a lot of guys know how to work out this on the other. But the majority of it truly is like marketing and then sales. And then once they're in your system, nurturing that, coaching them, etc. but without the first two, you're not going to be coaching anybody, right? So to me it's content and then conversations. So my content needs to attract people, build authority. And then connecting my content and storytelling into conversations. So you want to target them in or you know, talk to my client avatar etc. online and then have these conversations. And if it's something that they're looking to do, then continue the conversation and go from there. Are you, getting most of your clients through social media? Yes. Wow. That's something I have not unlocked yet. Fair enough. I think you do a great job online. I know you have, like, multiple accounts for, like, Dream Spear. Shaking hands, which is cool. Dude, I was blown away by the. For even the first couple podcasts are like, yo, he's on to something there for his. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like hearing about your story. Having Jose on and some of the other guys early on. I think those are honestly still some of my favorite podcasts. So yeah, I've realized that it's like a super powerful networking tool to let you know if I want to get in contact with the person, or I want to meet someone. Like, what better way than to be like, hey, come on, to just talk about yourself the whole time. It is great. Yeah. You know, I love that. What do you think it's been like recently, the biggest that you've had. That's kind of perpetuated you forward in your journey. Like what are the biggest keys that you've unlocked recently? Yeah. So luckily I like as I was getting into the space, I, I didn't notice it right away, but I did notice it after the fact. I took your advice. When it comes to what is the advisor has rep model. So like where you help somebody get more business. Oh yeah. Commission. Yeah. So I did that in the fitness space and then I'm like, wow, I'm getting great mentoring from a guy that's now crushing it. Like I've helped him grow his business. And I've learned a lot along the way. And if I implement these same things to my niece instead of his, then I'm going to be successful. So I would say starting there to learn the skills while getting some cash flow was helpful, and then also learning from that mentor. And one in the past where you can create systems, I guess you've also mentioned this to me too, but like creating a manual like I have like, oh yeah, like in the Fit online fitness coaching space, there are different roles that you can add depending on what you want to focus on. So you can add an appointment center or a closer. And if you give them a manual or a script or something like that, then you can detach yourself from that part of the business, oversee it, make sure it's all going well, but you don't have to be manually focusing on that and spending your time on that. You can leverage that so you can spend your time on other things the second you document it. Oh, wasn't that was that you that hit me up about that video that I did that. Which one? I think I asked like what content I should make or something. You. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. How do you make like but you get your time back. That was me. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. So no that is like the biggest hack because the second that you document it, you literally never have to say it again. And it's like if there's something, if there's some question that is outside of that documentation that can't be answered within that documentation, then you just put it into the documentation. Yeah. You never have to answer it again. And the more that you can like start to define those answers, the less you have that that is how you get your time. Yeah, 100% man. And I'm not terrible about it honestly. Like like, once a year I'll go and do all the processes. But the people that like really document constantly, like they get so much more of their time back because it's just like your employee comes to you with a question. It's like, go to the fucking manual. Yeah, yeah, it's in there, I promise. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's, I mean, that's the key to getting your time back, right? Right. But, curious, have you been growing the team and, like, adding systems to what you have going on? I know you've been I know you showed up to the to the work site. Was it a week or two ago? Yeah. So, dude, I have not unlocked employees yet. It is like I've gone through a lot of employees. Yeah, but it is. What do you what are you learning along that way? Because I feel like that is something like, you know, I have some people that help me out, but it's like limited capacity, you know what I mean? And it's not like I'm going to hand over the business to them. Like, I have a lot I want to work on, focus on. Yeah. So there's a couple things. Number one is I used to think that I have an intuition for people, and I can tell if a person's going to be like, good or not. I have no fucking clue. Every person I think is going to be a homerun like, rarely becomes on, the number two. I think that we have a major cultural problem in the US. Like you notice that being in Panama or. Yes, but not just from Panama. Just like hiring employees, like, yeah, people in these interview processes, they're like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. I won't do this. I want really that. And I want at least $120,000 a year base salary. And I'm like feeling almost like entitled. Would you say? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. They people don't want to work and they want more money for it. Right. So it's like that's a little bit ridiculous. Yeah. And then you do get one of these people on, they have like all this leverage over you to once they're you've hired them. Yeah. It's like you have to tread on eggshells to get rid of them if they're not performing. So it's like like they have so many ways to have a recourse against you if you get rid of them, which is super scary. It's like, okay, this guy's not performing. And now he's like within my company. Like, how do I get rid of him? So that's an issue. But what I've realized is one, I get the best return on investment when I just freelance. So when I get people that just do things, specific tasks that are like, fuck, their business is performing that task, and then I just pay them for that task. Yeah, that exchange is a lot better than me having an employee that I'm defining their like job description and then giving them tasks, I get like way more tinkerers, which are people that are like spend a bunch of time, like doing things. But like, you don't really get that many deliverables from that time. Okay. Do you think that's based on the incentive of the. To me, I think of it as like a contract or like a 1099 that comes in to do some work and they're like, if I do a good job here, he's going to Ozark. He's going to bring me back and do more. Yes, yeah, for sure. It's like they have to perform to stick around because they don't have as much leverage because they're out of W2 and they can't be like, well, if you fire me, I'm just going to like do X, Y and Z. Yeah. So it's like that employee mindset versus that entrepreneur mindset. I'd rather hire the 1099 like kind of entrepreneur or contractor than the someone that has the employee mindset. But what I've also realized is I structure all my deals off performance. That's so first defining your metrics of how you like. They're called, obviously KPIs key performance, key performance indicators. So how do you indicate performance within the company. So it's like this person has made this many calls which I know if they make this many calls that that's going to lead to X amount of revenue. So that's a key performance indicator that I can say okay, 100 calls leads me to this amount of revenue. So I can reverse engineer that into like pay for them. So like per call you make you get X amount of money as opposed to per hour. Yeah. Which is like and that's going to yeah definitely slant. How many calls are. Yeah. It's a backwards incentive. So defining those KPIs if you can attach your pay structures to performance you get better outcomes. But what I've what's been difficult for me is okay I have that I have sales tied to that. But how do you how do you tie non revenue generating positions to performance like an. I thought about that myself. Like to me it's like I can pay an appointment setter based on commission or a close or based on commission. But if you're thinking of hiring an editor or or like another coach, something like that, then it's like those, like you said, aren't tied directly to revenue generating tasks, but they're huge for generate, you know, marketing or, client retention and stuff like that, but you're trying to tie it to some sort of revenue or sorry, some sort of performance metric I think is key. I think the answer to that, which I've realized is so important, is you have to, at some point within your business, perform every task, because if you don't understand what the input is into that task, you can't understand like, like how to set up that KPI. So that's where I get myself in trouble is when I hire someone to do something that I don't understand myself, then they're able to pull the wool over my eyes and say, this is an excuse, or it takes me longer to do this. Or if I like my installation process, for instance. Yeah, I did that for three years in the field. You know, when you tell me, oh, we're only able to install 200ft per week, I know. No, I know exactly how long it takes to do that. But if I had never done that, then they say, well, it's because of this and because of that and because of that, I have no ability to, I was like, course correct or. Yeah, spot the bullshit. Exactly. So I think that that's how you get yourself in trouble is when you don't understand each piece of that process. Now, you don't want to be a micromanager and be involved in every single component of your business. But I think at one point you need to get start to finish successfully. And that component of that business before you dedicate it. Yeah, yeah. That's fair. What do you think is the this may be my last question. What is the biggest thing? And I always ask everyone on this, the biggest thing that you know, now that you wish you knew when you first started out, building your company, It's a great question. And something that you typically not the there's the cliche ones that everyone knows, but something you think is like, it's something you've unlocked. I think that one of the best things you can do is gain outside perspectives, like I have. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm tapped in like 4 or 5 different groups on a weekly basis. So I'm getting feedback loops as opposed to me doing like a month end review. And I guess you can do this yourself, but I think it's helpful to have the discourse between somebody that's at a higher level than you, somebody that's at the same level than you, or even somebody that you're a mentor to. Even I would recommend all three. But having those conversations about your business in a way that you say, you know, basically talking about what you're working on. Because to me, I think entrepreneurship could be isolating in a sense where you're just running through the same thoughts or the same actions and you're not seeing a certain result. But if you have somebody that's been there or somebody that you're helping and you say it in a certain way and you're like, wait, I can implement this differently, I can, you know, they have a perspective that I don't have or they see something that I don't have. So I think it's like drawing in your ego and learning from others, even if you know they're new to something, you can always learn more. Really good advice if people are interested in your services or want to learn more about your journey, where can I find you? Yeah, man. I'm on Instagram and YouTube at grow with Craig, so we'll tag it underneath though. Awesome. And, I know you say it in your intro to the podcast and stuff, but make sure you guys check out the podcast. Check him out on Instagram. What's your skater tag? Jake Riley Marina and shaking hands. There it is. Oh yeah, very soft man. Appreciate you coming on. Likewise. Thanks. For.
