Joe Sanok 00:00:00 Hey there, practice of the practice community. Are you ready to take your private practice to the next level? Then mark your calendars for September 16th through 19th, 2024, because Level Up week is back and bigger than ever. Insert rocket emoji here. Join us for four days of live webinars, interactive panels, and exclusive resources tailored just for counselors, therapists and private practice owners. Whether you’re looking to fill your caseload, hire your first clinician or scale your group practice. We’ve got you covered. This is your chance to level up while others give up. Don’t miss out on this game changing event. Register now at practice of the practice. Com forward slash level up and get ready to transform your practice. Remember September 16th through 19th level up week your ticket to practice success. Register today and let’s level up together. Practice of the practice. Com forward slash. Level up. This is the practice of the practice podcast with Joe Santos. Session number 1053. I’m Joe Cenac, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. Joe Sanok 00:01:22 I am so excited to hang out with you today. And also if you want to hang out live online, September 16th to 19th, we are doing Level Up Week. That’s where we are going to have 16 live webinars helping you to grow your thriving practice, but to make sure that it is something you absolutely love. So we’re going to be having some panels. We’re going to have some experts coming in all sorts of different things going on that week. So make sure you’re hanging out with us so that you can get to the next level. Whether you are just starting a solo practice, whether you are maybe stepping into group practice, adding your first clinician, or maybe you already have a mega group practice, we’ve got something for you that week, so make sure you register over at practice of the practice.com/level up that is right around the corner about a month away. Well I am so excited today to have Brandon Epstein with me. Brandon is a world class mental performance coach with over 15 years of experience coaching professional athletes, entrepreneurs, and executives. Joe Sanok 00:02:18 He founded the Jump Rope Dudes Initiative, an online fitness community with over a million members, and is the author of Programmed to Fail How to Break Through Your Mental Blocks and Achieve Greatness. He lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his wife and two daughters, Brandon. Welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. Let’s go. Brandon Epstein 00:02:38 Joe. Ready to bring the heat today? How bout your eyes? Yeah. Give them some gold. I’m ready for it, man. Joe Sanok 00:02:44 Well, let’s just start with your dad of two daughters. How old are your daughters? Brandon Epstein 00:02:48 They’re one and three. So I’m manning. Joe Sanok 00:02:52 One and three. You are in the busy years, minor nine and 13. So a little bit ahead of you, in regards to their ages. But daughters are the best, I love it. Brandon Epstein 00:03:03 Yeah. It’s incredible. I’m in the the season of. Just keep them alive, right? Yes. Because they don’t really make good rational decisions at one and three. So it’s a challenge, right? Because I think a lot of our work is, hey, how can you be present and live in a state of peace and not anxiety and stress? And when you have other people’s lives, you’re responsible for that could do things that are potentially dangerous. Brandon Epstein 00:03:31 fear is innate in that experience. So I think it’s an interesting like give and take were, you know, I feel it come up in my body. I’m like, okay, let’s deal with this situation and then come back to my center again. Joe Sanok 00:03:45 Yeah I, I don’t remember if somebody said it to me or if I just saw it, but it just the idea that kids are constantly moving away from you, you know, the first they’re, they’re safest when they’re in utero and then it’s like, you know, they slowly learn to walk and then they just are moving along like, my nine and, 13 year olds, just went to summer camp at the time of this recording. It’s kind of early summer. and it was my nine year old’s first time at camp, and so she was very clingy and very like, like, I’m scared. I’m nervous. But then she met a camp counselor and, like, was kind of, like a little bit better with it. But my 13 year old ran off with her luggage and I’m like, no goodbye. Joe Sanok 00:04:22 And she just turned and said, bye, dad. And like, no hug, no kiss. Like, just like she’s off and running. And that’s like, that’s normal for a 13 year old. But it just it’s it’s this new phase of friends being kind of the main thing right now. And, it’s just an interesting, interesting shift. Brandon Epstein 00:04:38 Yeah. It’s always a good teacher for us as parents. Joe Sanok 00:04:41 So. So you wrote this book, Programmed to Fail. I want to start there. so before we dive into, like, what it’s about, why did you decide to write it? Like, how long did it take to have the ideas? What was that process of writing a book like for you? Brandon Epstein 00:04:57 Yeah, it took me really about a year from start to finish. And this book is something that I probably had in me to some degree for years. But I’ll be honest, I was waiting to get to a level of credibility where I’d have the stories to tell with my avatar, the clients that I wanted to work with before I wrote the book. Brandon Epstein 00:05:21 And so, you know, if you have a lot of practitioners that are listening to this, you may be able to relate to it. It’s like my goal has always been to work with professional athletes. And so I wanted to have those case studies in my book, but I didn’t take a traditional path to get into the field that I’m in now. So I just had to grind and hustle and just really be very creative to get into the inner circles, to be able to help professional athletes with their mental game. And so it took me many years, took me about, you know, 12, 13 years of hustling to be able to break into that. And so I released a book about 8 or 9 months ago. And so it really took up until a year before that, you know, a couple of years ago to where I really started to get the caliber of clients that I wanted to put those case studies in the book to give more credibility to the techniques that I knew were working for myself and other clients. Brandon Epstein 00:06:15 But I wanted those kind of all star, case studies for people to be like, okay, I believe you because these people achieve these things at a very high level using your techniques. Does that make sense? Joe Sanok 00:06:28 Yeah, absolutely. What are what are some of the case studies that really stood out to you that you were excited to write about in the book? Brandon Epstein 00:06:34 Yeah, I mean, they’re mostly in professional sports and in business. And so just talking about some of the rewiring I’ve done for business owners, one in particular, you know, he was very good operator in his business, and he was hard wired to get his sense of self esteem and belief in himself from being more of an operator. And when he came to me for coaching, we really question a lot of those beliefs he had about himself. And that identity was being held by those beliefs. And as we got him to a place where his beliefs aligned him with more of his inspiration, instead of just what felt like obligation, he was able to really get into a whole new arm of his business. Brandon Epstein 00:07:13 And that generated $8 million in business for him. And this never would have been possible before because he just didn’t believe he could delve into those different areas of interest that were outside of the old identity he was living in. So what case studies like that for me are really cool because a lot of people are capable of so much, but their beliefs, their programs, are keeping them locked in this small way of thinking where they don’t even see the possibilities because their beliefs are blocking them. So that was a really cool one. One of the big stories I tell is I have a client. If anyone’s seen the movie Creed, you know, Creed the boxer. he’s living a real life Creed story. And so that’s like a big apex in the story of my book is my journey with him and coaching him to getting his first secondary world title, because this guy at a Hall of Fame father and as a boxer, and so nobody wanted him to box and everyone just told him, hey, like basically you’re not shit, you’re never going to be like your dad. Brandon Epstein 00:08:18 And he was just browbeaten from a very early age. And so he had to come to this sport all on his own and figure it out on his own. And he had so many self-limiting beliefs that he was holding to where he would get into opportunities for big fights. It would be like, okay, if you win this fight, then you’re going to get a championship fight. And he would completely implode. He would show up as a shell of himself. And so in the story, I talk about how when we started working together, we really rebuilt him from the ground up. We pulled out all those self-limiting beliefs that he had about what he deserved, who he was and his identity and built him up into. Really having the mind of a champion. And in that journey, he was able to go. And he’s been undefeated actually, since we’ve worked together. And he’s got the biggest fight of his career coming up. on July 6th, he’s a co-main event with Masvidal and, Diaz. And so I know this is going to be probably six weeks after this fight. Brandon Epstein 00:09:16 This podcast will most likely be released. So we can go back and see how he did in that, but he’s fighting a two time world champion, and for me, that was an incredibly fulfilling story and journey to go on with him because he had all the physical potential. He just was not bringing it into the biggest moments of his life. And that’s really where I can shine, is like taking someone who has the capacity for greatness, but they just keep getting in their own way, and I help rewire them so they can have the success that they really are capable of. Joe Sanok 00:09:46 what would you say are some of the building blocks that you’ve you’ve noticed in writing this book, in regards to how we think about failure, how we think about overcoming failure. Goal setting, achieving that greatness. Like, are there set building blocks that would say everybody should master or is it more case specific? Brandon Epstein 00:10:05 Oh, there’s definitely a set building blocks. I mean, and I think they’re very in alignment with any spiritual path, any path towards awakening. Brandon Epstein 00:10:13 The first step is, of course, awareness. And so what I have all my clients do when they first start working with me is just set alarms on their phone to go off every three hours just to ask them, how does it feel to be me right now? Because especially high achieving men, they’re mostly operating in this logical field of thinking, and they’re not really connected to their feeling. But the feeling, of course, is driving a lot of their behavior, right? Whether they’re overreacting or whether they have a lack of motivation like that feeling is driving it. So it’s very important for them to come to awareness around how does it feel to be me right now? Because beneath the feeling we can get to what belief or program is actually creating the feeling because we all know it’s not the information outside of us that makes us feel good or bad in the present moment. It is the belief that’s filtering that information that gives it actual meaning creates our perception. So I would say the first step for anyone is just start by being aware. Brandon Epstein 00:11:11 And that alarm exercise is really good for that. And if you want I can kind of lay out kind of all the steps that are in my book, because the first half of my book is, it’s a story, and the second half of the book is a playbook where someone could run the same playbook that I’m working with my clients on so I can lay that out, or you can ask me any questions from that first step. Joe Sanok 00:11:29 Yeah. I would love to jump into some of the playbook. like, what’s it look like when you do, the coaching with people and. Yeah, let’s walk through that. Brandon Epstein 00:11:39 Sure. So like I said, a lot of people struggle to even be aware of how it feels to be them. So once we have established that, we can see how their focus is contributing to the feelings they’re experiencing, and I tell them what you focus on is what you get. When you focus on what you want. You get more of what you want. When you focus on what you don’t want, you’re surely going to get more of what you don’t want. Brandon Epstein 00:11:58 And so we take the next step of setting alarms and noticing, okay, how do I feel? And what was I focused on right before that feeling emerged? And if you’re to do that over extended period of time, what you notice is all the ways that you make yourself feel good or bad, depending on your focus. It’s how are you focusing on things? Because two people can see the same information, right? Two people can look at, you know, let’s say a presidential candidate. One person feels like love and excite, and the other person feels like anger and disgust. Same person, same information. They’re just internalizing and focusing on in a different way. So I think it’s good to be aware of how your focus drives your feelings. And this is a really important step to just detox your life, because you may also notice that when I focus on being in certain environments or participating in different activities, I feel good or bad. And so you can feed your life with more of the focus that’s going to make you feel good, and you can start to remove some of the people, places, environments that make you feel bad. Brandon Epstein 00:13:03 And I think this is still a part of that awakening process of just being aware of how I make things, make you feel good or bad, and how you make yourself feel good or bad. So once you get to that awareness of knowing your feelings, knowing how your focus is contributing to those feelings, you’ve cleaned up some of your actions and you’ve put yourself in a situation to thrive a little bit more. I think it’s really important to get clear on, okay, what do you want to create from here? And you could just take a baseline for your entire life, look at the different buckets of your life. And if you want to add more, you can. But I usually break it down into generally speaking, how does it feel to be you 1 to 10? You call it a bucket for mental health. Mental wellbeing. How does it feel to be you in general? physical health 1 to 10 satisfaction with your career, not including the money. Just what you do every day for your work. Brandon Epstein 00:13:54 Satisfaction with it. Finances. So satisfaction with your finances. Relationships which I break into a few different buckets. I break it into your tribes. The people who care about you. Not just for what you can do for them, but for who you are. The bucket for your romantic relationship and your bucket for your work relationships. So giving a score for all these 1 to 10. You’ll very clearly get an idea of where you’re weak. And I tell you, most people want to work in the areas of their life that they’re already successful in. So someone comes to me for coaching and they might be like, oh, you know, I really need to bring my business to the next level. And then we do this baseline testing and we find out that, you know, their romantic relationships are two out of ten. And it becomes glaringly obvious that this feeling of there’s something missing or not enoughness or dis ease that you feel in your body is stemming from this misalignment in this area of your romantic relationship. Brandon Epstein 00:14:49 It doesn’t matter how much money you make, how much more you achieve in your career, you’re never going to fill that hole. So it makes more sense to go there. So once we get that baseline, we can start to identify, okay, what are the things necessary for me to begin to move these scores up and get them closer to where I want them to be? And that’s where like the deeper programming work is done. So my book is called Programmed to Fail, because if you look at an area of your life for your week, you’ll see how you’ve been programmed to fail, right? If you struggle with money or making money, or if you struggle with romantic relationships or physical health, whatever it may be, your peace of mind, depression, anxiety, anything like that. It’s because you have subconscious beliefs that are causing you to act out in a way that’s misaligned with the outcome that you want. A lot of people think it’s just about motivation or pure willpower. It’s really not your your motivation. Brandon Epstein 00:15:41 Willpower is just a bubbling up of what you’ve been programmed to do at the subconscious level. And so auditing all those beliefs and uncovering the ones that are not working for you, releasing them and then reprogramming them. Literally just making it the opposite of belief and then integrating those. And once you do that, you’re going to have the inspiration to know what actions need to be taken to get to those outcomes you want. And even more importantly, once you come into that alignment at the subconscious level, you’ll have already won the game of life, which is you’ll feel present. You’ll feel peaceful. You’ll feel free of fear. And from that place, I believe that’s where the most inspired action comes from. And you’re no longer operating from this place of fear and obligation, but rather you’re operating from a place of inspiration, joy, peace, and presence. So that’s a process. Of course, most of the magic is the energy work that I do in the one on one container with the client at the programming level, but that’s it right there. Brandon Epstein 00:16:40 I laid it out. Joe Sanok 00:16:49 It’s never too early to start thinking about tax season. That’s why I’ve partnered with my friends over at Hurd. Hurd serves as the financial back office built specifically for therapists in private practice. They’re an all in one financial solution that combines software with human support to handle bookkeeping, taxes, payroll, and more. Regardless of whether you’re a seasoned clinician or in your first year of your practice, herd will identify growth areas and streamline best financial practices for your business. When you sign up with heard. You’ll connect your bank accounts so your transactions will be automatically pulled in and categorized. My favorite thing about heard is their allocation guide, which helps you decide how much to pay yourself each month and how much to set aside for taxes. You’ll also receive financial insights such as profit and loss statements and monthly reports. You can say goodbye to poring over spreadsheets and guessing your tax deductions or quarterly payments. Focus on your clients and heard will take care of the rest. Sign up for a free consultation today at join heard. Joe Sanok 00:18:00 Com forward slash Joe and get one month free with promo code Joe. Again that’s join heard.com/joe. Now, when when you’re talking about helping someone identify and reframe their beliefs so you are primary audience is therapist and private practice. So counselors, MFT, psychologists, people like that imagine they’re sitting across from a client and they the client recognizes that they have a belief that’s not serving them in some way so that they’re they’re willing, they’re open. We’re not talking about a therapist trying to change someone’s beliefs, but, you know, they come in and they have, you know, a belief that maybe for you, as a typical belief that someone comes in with that they realize isn’t serving them. How would you advise that therapist to think through or walk through some steps to challenge those beliefs to? And you know what research you know has helped inform this? Like what kind of actions have informed it? What what would that therapist do to to help kind of walk through belief change? If that client is saying this belief isn’t serving me any longer? Brandon Epstein 00:19:09 Yeah. Brandon Epstein 00:19:10 Well, I’ll say this to start. the practitioner needs to have already cleaned up their own inner planet to do this work. Well, because they’ll have a hard time identifying whether it’s their belief that it has an issue or it’s their client. So the first step is they have to do this work on themselves. They have to clean up their inner planet. They need to be able to arrive into the container with the client completely present, without any thought, just pure being. And that takes a lot of work. And I think that most practitioners have not done that work. So if you haven’t cleaned up your own inner planet, that’s a first step, because when you have, it allows you to be the vessel to be able to mirror back to your client what they need to hear to do this work. And so as you’re hearing when I talk about words like energy and clearing out your vessel, I’m talking about your energetic body. So this isn’t mental work. There’s nothing mental that goes on here. Brandon Epstein 00:20:02 There’s no thinking involved. Right? Because we know the conscious mind is very limited in its processing power. It’s a very limited computer, you know, somewhere between 8 and 40. bits of information per second can be processed versus we know that the subconscious can process millions. So that’s why we work at the subconscious level because it’s connected to the body. So we don’t need the mind. There’s no thinking. There’s no mental process going on here. It’s a feeling process. So how do we find that we have the client first find the thing that they want, the thing that they’re not feeling good about, and their eyes are closed. You relax them and then you have them find that emotion in their body. Usually it’s going to be in the upper stomach, lower stomach. Sometimes it could be in the chest or the throat, but it’s going to be one of the main energy centers in the body. So they’re going to find it somewhere in there, and it’s going to feel a sensation of just a heaviness. Brandon Epstein 00:20:58 It’s going to feel a strong emotion in one of those energy centers of the body as you bring it up. You know, fear usually lives like close to the solar plexus area and that upper stomach area. So a lot of people are dealing with issues of fear. So let’s take fear as an example. Let’s say, you know, a lot of my clients are high achievers. So it’s the fear of not doing enough. I’m not enough, I’m not doing enough. I haven’t done enough. Will I be able to do enough? When will I have done enough? All that lives in the upper stomach. So let’s just make this real actionable right here. If someone’s dealing with any of that feeling, they’ll find it in their upper stomach. And you sit into the feeling, the sensation in the upper stomach in real time, and you hold that space to them and you have them sit into the uncomfortable feeling of, yeah, I’m not enough. And then you ask him, well, what do you believe in to be true? that would make you feel like that right now? And they might tell you something like, well, I believe that I haven’t completed enough work to be enough, whatever it may be for them. Brandon Epstein 00:22:02 Right? And it may sound too simple, but this is really what it is because it doesn’t need to be some complex intellectual thing. If that’s the energy living in their body, we can have them sit into it and feel it in their body. Okay, accept it. Because what we can’t accept won’t change. Except that you haven’t done enough. You haven’t. And this is a way for the body to process, is we stop resisting it because what we resist persists. And the body just eventually, once you accept it, releases it and opens a spaciousness to where like that heaviness in that upper stomach, for example, kind of floats upwards and dissolves, and so the emotion goes away. And then they’re in the present, they’re in the void of the emptiness and the present moment. And then we choose a new belief, which is just going to be the opposite, because energy can’t be created nor destroyed. So we choose the opposite belief, which would be, I believe I’ve done more than enough in this area in my life, and it actually doesn’t matter rationally whether they’ve done more than enough or not, because the belief of I’ve done more than enough is going to be a self-fulfilling thing. Brandon Epstein 00:23:01 So either they are already doing more than enough and they just need to change the belief so they can actually, I feel that in their body and have peace with the work they’re already doing, or if they’re really being lazy and they’re not doing what they should be doing, this belief is going to inspire them into doing more than enough. So either way, it’s going to get the job done. And so what you do with that is you have to breathe through it. You say it out loud. You know, I have a number of energy techniques that I use specifically with my clients to get this into their body. A lot of practitioners are doing this type of work in many different ways. So whatever technique gets the job done, you know, you can use everything from neural linguistic programming to timeline therapy to hypnosis. There’s countless techniques to put this new belief into the body, but it’s a body thing and you have to reprogram it back in there. And once that’s been accepted into the body, I encourage the individual to take whatever new beliefs they have and integrate it through repetition. Brandon Epstein 00:23:59 So the subconscious is constantly learning through repetition, right? That’s how we learn any skill. We do it over and over again, and it becomes something that becomes natural to us. The first time you do something, it’s clunky. The more those synaptic connections are occurring, the more the myelin sheath is running a wrapping around that snap the connection, the faster your wiring and firing and the easier these things get. And so what I have to do is record all the beliefs with their own voice, and then listen to them every morning and every night before they go to sleep. And they’re waking up when they’re in that alpha, you know, more alpha brainwaves and what they usually have in their wakeful state, where they’re mostly in beta, so they can accept these new beliefs, listening to them and through repetition. the job’s going to be done. They’re going to be able to operate from a place of peace and presence. Joe Sanok 00:24:52 Well, I want to ask how do you incorporate this into your membership community. So you’ve got a membership community. Joe Sanok 00:24:57 Tell me about that and kind of how you built it. Brandon Epstein 00:25:00 Yeah. So you’re actually talking about my last company. so I don’t have a membership community now with what I do on this in this space. You know, part of my evolution was just understanding how much I love the one on one work. And I wrote the book so people have access to the same tools I give to my one on one clients. But really, I just love to work people with people one on one. So at this moment I don’t have any membership community but my previous company, which was kind of what I talked about. I wanted more credibility to like tell people, hey, I’m going to help you with your life because I’ve achieved things in the real world. I’m not just, someone who’s talking about things in theory. So I built a fitness community to over a million members. Our videos have been viewed over 120 million times on YouTube. And there, we had a membership community where people could do the workouts, get accountability, work on their nutrition and things like that. Brandon Epstein 00:25:55 And so all of these tools that I’m using, I kind of use on myself to empower myself to build this company, to have success as an entrepreneur. And that story is also in the book. And that was part of my process of like building a seven plus figure business using these mental techniques and showing people how they have actionable, application. Joe Sanok 00:26:21 Now, I mean, the fitness space is a pretty competitive space. I’m wondering what did you do to stand out in that space? I know a lot of our listeners, you know, they’re in the mental health space. They have, you know, tremendous training in that area, maybe a particular area like trauma or recovery or whatever their, their specialty is, and they want to jump into doing online courses, online communities around a space that they already have expertise. having been successful in a really competitive space, what lessons have you learned from that that could apply to therapists? Brandon Epstein 00:26:53 Yeah, I mean, we really found a very unique niche because like you said, fitness is very competitive. Brandon Epstein 00:27:00 we were doing jump rope fitness so different way to jump ropes and doing 30 minute all bodyweight and jump rope workouts. So we were able to be successful because we own the SEO. So like the search engine optimization keywords for jump rope fitness because no one had done it before. And it’s funny because like, I’ve put out 100 plus meditations on YouTube and most of those have very few views. Just because it’s such a competitive space, it doesn’t matter how good my meditations are, there’s just so many meditations out there already that it’s hard to get any of that search engine optimization juice first. With the jump rope fitness, we were truly the first people to really do it in a serious way to answer all the questions around jump rope fitness. So I’d say if someone has a niche and they think they’re uniquely gifted in teaching in this nation, it’s starting to gain some momentum, and there’s people searching for it on the internet. Then really try to hammer that niche in YouTube and Google and social media everywhere you can, and try to be the person that is just completely saturated in that niche. Brandon Epstein 00:28:07 Because, you know, we got to a point at one time where you search jump rope on YouTube and, you know, maybe seven out of the first ten videos that would come up or all hours. And that was just from sheer volume, you know, putting out 1000 plus. Joe Sanok 00:28:22 I mean, I just want to like, pause and underline what you just said because I think that that that’s something that people feel like, oh, there’s all these influencers on Instagram or TikTok or wherever it is in a certain area. But the idea of really zooming in. I remember when I was first getting started, I read gorilla marketing and, Jay was talking about in the book how there used to just be kind of one size of tires, that there was no specialty tires. And then one tire company made their tires like a millimeter more rubber on it, and they were then the longest lasting tires. And then, like another tire company, put deeper treads in it. And they were the off road tires. Joe Sanok 00:29:03 And people just started to find like, where is there nobody that I can just right away from day one be number one. And so when when I was looking at doing consulting, it really was I want to learn, but also I want to stand out. And there were consultants that were helping private practitioners at that time, but there was nobody in the podcast space. So from day one, we were the number one podcast for counselors and private practice. And so even if there’s people that outrank us, then we’re the longest serving podcast. You know, we’ve been around the longest. And then, you know, kind of doubling down on that. And I’d love to hear how you guys kind of doubled down on that. It’s like, you know, my friend John Lee Dumas was talking about how if you can outpace your competition, that they just can’t keep up, like just do that, do the thing that’s working. And so, you know, we started adding a second episode a week, a third episode, and now I think we’re up to 5 or 6 a week. Joe Sanok 00:29:52 and just being able to just the thing that’s working for us, that’s podcasting, just double down on that. And the other things like, yeah, Instagram. There’s lots of people that have bigger followings than we have now. You know, YouTube, we post a lot of stuff on there. But that’s not our main thing. It’s the podcast. And so when you found that there were things that were working in the jump rope space, how did you double down on that? How did you build the infrastructure and operations? Like what did that look like? Brandon Epstein 00:30:17 Yeah, well it’s funny, speaking of doubling down. So initially it was me and my buddy started the company. He was one passionate about jump rope fitness, and I was passionate about all the meditation and mindfulness and mental performance stuff. And we actually started as Zen Dude. Fitness was the name of the company, and we were trying to offer these jump rope workouts with meditation and stuff at the end of them, and kind of giving people the mind body workout because that’s how it initially evolved. Brandon Epstein 00:30:46 We were living in Austin, Texas, and we are running these workouts for our friends and everyone loved them. They’re like, oh great, we get the best of both worlds. But once we brought this into YouTube, it just was falling flat. People just didn’t really want the other mindfulness mental stuff along with their workouts. They weren’t interested in that content. Again, it’s also very saturated. So a couple of years in, we saw that momentum just around the jump rope content and we completely rebranded. We change the brand from Xenu Fitness to jump rope dudes, and we’re like, all right, cool, we’re going all in here. And to be honest, for me, like that was kind of me saying like, listen, I’m going to help a lot of people, but I’m going to make my money here and I’m going to build a company that gives me credibility to go help other entrepreneurs be successful and say, hey, look, I’ve done it before. And so it became less of a passion project for me, and it became more of like, this is business, I need to get this done, and I’m going to do it in a way that helps people, makes the world a better place. Brandon Epstein 00:31:45 But this is going to be a season of my life. It’s not going to last forever. And so we reran it all in on jump rope fitness. Hit it hard. And not just anywhere like YouTube. YouTube. We saw the most traction. So really going in on that and just paying attention to what was already working, hammering it and being absolutely relentless like nobody was doing what we did. You know, we we burn the ships at the time like we were living down in South America for a few years and living off of very little and just pouring ourselves and our resources, our time, our energy just into this and saying, if this doesn’t work, we’re going to be in trouble because this is plan A, B, and C, and that’s what it required. And I think a lot of people are kind of one foot and one foot out. And they’re looking back like, well, we could go back to the boats. And so when you do that, the subconscious is going to see a way out. Brandon Epstein 00:32:39 It’s not going to deliver you every single possibility, an opportunity for you to come up with creatively, to find success. And I think that part of it, of making a plan A, B and C and goes so hard into that one niche and and saying it’s gotta work. I think that was a huge part of our success. Joe Sanok 00:32:58 Yeah. And I think early on I heard if you discover a unicorn, make other unicorns. And I had written this blog post, This was like year 1 or 2 of practice to practice, and it was all about how to name a counseling private practice. And I was looking at my Google Analytics and our main page was the most viewed page then like about us. And kind of the origin story was number two. And then this blog post about naming a practice was number three. And I’m like, what the heck is going on here? And I started to look and we were accidentally ranking number one for how to name a counseling practice. And so after that, I did podcasts on it. Joe Sanok 00:33:34 I did follow ups on it, that one that was ranking. I enhanced it and made it even better and had an opt in on an activity on how to name your private practice. And I think sometimes people are so in love with their art or their writing or being creative that the audience just doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. And sometimes it comes down to just doing the most simple, the most straightforward, like, what are people asking for? Where is it easiest right now? And then how do we do more of that? And then let the other things that maybe are the fluff either go or recognize that that’s really more of a hobby than actually building your business. Is that does that resonate with you or would you adjust anything that I just said? Brandon Epstein 00:34:13 No, I agree, I think there’s a high level of practicality that has to go into this, you know? It isn’t just, doing what feels good. And it is. There’s a large element of, yes, you want to be inspired when you do your work, but you also have to be analytical and understanding and seeing what’s working and doubling down on it and taking advantage of that, because it’s kind of like you have to give people what they think they want, to give them what they really need. Brandon Epstein 00:34:40 And so I think that comes down to just about everything you’re doing as a practitioner, how you’re talking about things like you may be like, oh, here’s this technique that I need to tell you about intellectually that’s going to really transform your life, but it may mean nothing to someone. You might just have to say, hey, I’m going to do this thing that makes you feel really good. And I’ll be like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, I’m into it. So I think it’s stepping back from your own, like myopic view of like your expertise and being like, okay, who am I trying to reach? And and how are they? How do they need to be spoken to? And you know, like I said, the example of like the CEO that I work with, that I work with, who came to me to want to grow his business, and I have to meet him there like, I’m going to help you make more money. But once he gets into the coaching container, we need to deal with his romantic relationship. Brandon Epstein 00:35:29 And it’s like, maybe I know that there’s parts of his life outside of, just his business and finances that need help. But if I were to try to meet him, they’re like, hey, I’m going to help your marriage. You’d be like, get away from me. Like, I don’t need help with that. So it’s constantly trying to appeal. Like the jump rope stuff. It was like weight loss, weight loss, weight loss, weight loss, weight loss, getting people through all those jump rope weight loss terms and types of videos. And then in the actual video, giving a very holistic game plan on how to manage your health through sleep and proper nutrition and eating real food and stress management, all those things. But we could only give them that if we package it up in a way that fits those, you know, very short term reflex, reactionary needs that the person feels like they need met right now. Joe Sanok 00:36:19 Now, before I get to my last question, I have one more question. Joe Sanok 00:36:22 So one thing that therapists often ask me is, how do you frame the difference between coaching and counseling. So tell me, when do you refer out for counseling? What are the kind of things that that you touch that you don’t touch? because I think some therapists, they’re like, oh, coaches like aren’t. You know, they’re not as trained as us or they’re not licensed like us. And and I think that for me personally, coaching has its place in counseling has its place. How do you think through coaching and counseling, either collaboratively or when you’ll refer out or recommend someone does counseling in addition to coaching? Brandon Epstein 00:36:57 Well, I just view myself as a problem solver. I don’t really refer out as much as if a client resonates within me. Like if they come to me and I feel like I can solve their problems, then I just do it immediately. But, I don’t necessarily refer out to anyone else. Like I just look, I guess I just live from, like, my experience, right? Like, I know other people who are incredible practitioners who can solve problems because that’s what we’re doing here, right? We’re all we’re just solving problems for people. Brandon Epstein 00:37:25 So I try to give them the right resource to solve their problem. but for the most part, I’m able to solve the problems for anyone who’s ready to have their problem solved. Joe Sanok 00:37:39 Brandon, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? Brandon Epstein 00:37:44 We’re not doing mental work. We’re doing spiritual work. And if you can make peace of that in your body, and you can bring that into the work that you do, you’re going to create so many more transformations with your clients because there’s a bigger game, and it’s not an intellectual one. There’s a harmony we need to create in our clients bodies, and that’s connecting to a higher power and aligning them with it. And how have you get there is fine. It’s just understanding that that’s really, truly what we’re doing. Joe Sanok 00:38:14 If people want to connect with you, if they want to hear more about your work, where should we send them? Brandon Epstein 00:38:19 I’m very active on Instagram. Brandon Epstein underscore. they can check out the book. Brandon Epstein 00:38:23 Program to fail is available on Amazon. Got the Kindle paperback, audiobook version. I read it myself. And then if they want to work with me as a client in my coaching practice, they can reach out at the Brandon epstein.com. Joe Sanok 00:38:39 Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. Brandon Epstein 00:38:42 Yes, thank you for having me, I appreciate you. Speaker 4 00:38:52 All right. So that there’s. Joe Sanok 00:38:55 So much we covered today. We covered membership communities. We covered mindsets. We covered thinking about how you’re failing and how you’re working with your clients. if you want more resources like this, we’re doing the show. I think we’re at like 5 or 6 times a week, so make sure you tune in. If you missed some of our series earlier this summer, we did our psychedelic assisted therapy series that was back in May. and so the episodes around like nine 6970 somewhere in there, where we interviewed all sorts of people from maps, different therapists that are using psychedelics in their in their therapy sessions. Joe Sanok 00:39:28 So go back and learn some of those best practices there. And then back in June, we did our series of movers and shakers, some awesome interviews there as well. also, we’ve got a lot coming up for you in the fall, so thank you so much for hanging out today. Also, it’s never too early to start thinking about tax season. that’s why I partnered with my friends over at Hurd. they serve as the financial back office that’s specifically built for therapists in private practice. Speaker 4 00:39:54 They’re going to. Joe Sanok 00:39:54 Take you through, you know, all the spreadsheets and taking the guesswork out of tax deductions and quarterly payments. It’s going to help you focus on your clients and how you can take care of the rest. If you want a free consultation with them, head on over to join. heard.com/joe again that’s join heard.com/joe. And you’re going to get one month for free with promo code Joe at checkout. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Joe Sanok 00:40:20 Special thanks to the band silence sexy for that intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.