Read The Transcript

Connect with Mike
https://localgrowth.com/
https://healthydads.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeruman/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

Audio digitally transcribed by Descript

[00:00:00] Introduction: Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

[00:00:10] Russ Johns: Oh man. Oh man. #PirateBroadcast, another episode. I cannot believe it's the end of August. What happened, Mike? What happened?

[00:00:21] Mike Ruman: You see what happened is time flies when you're having fun.

[00:00:24] Russ Johns: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Welcome pirates. We're here on the #PirateBroadcast™ and we're going to talk a little bit about how time flies, a little bit about burnout and what we can do about it today. Mike is a friend, someone I care about, someone that I look up to and consider a mentor and an #inspiration every single day, so I hope you join us on this conversation because it's going to be good one. Mike, how you doing?

[00:00:53] Mike Ruman: I'm doing good Russ. I was zooming my camera out. Hey, you'll like this. I live in Colorado, I just went on a run. When I first got out on the trail, there was a half eaten rabbit. Then about a mile into my run, I found a bag of weed. So I took a picture of both and I put those on my Instagram. I said, this is about as Colorado as it comes.

[00:01:14] Russ Johns: That is true Colorado scenery.

[00:01:17] Mike Ruman: Yeah. Yeah. That was good. I didn't smoke it.

[00:01:20] Russ Johns: Yeah. Yeah. If the coyotes had gotten that, the other half of the rabbit would be gone.

[00:01:26] Mike Ruman: Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was a coyote or a bobcat. Bobcat. We live in the foothills here in Colorado Springs and it's not uncommon to see like a deer leg.

[00:01:35] Russ Johns: The wildlife out there. Yeah. So Mike, you have a number of things going on and we've been connected, I don't know, for six years. I don't know. It's been awhile, hasn't it? Been a long time.

[00:01:47] Mike Ruman: Yeah, it's been six years. Six years.

[00:01:49] Russ Johns: Yeah. Wow. And the reason we first got together as we were talking about membership sites, and we were talking about how to grow membership sites and do some things. It's evolved over the years and we've done different things, going back and forth and Tom, somebody else that we both work with and connect with. And the reality is that we're in this season. There's a lot of opportunity out there. There's a lot of things going on and I want to talk a little bit about your journey because one of the things that you have really excelled at is being able to identify some of these opportunities and you've actually grown local growth. One of the things that a lot of business owners struggle with is getting visibility. When you do a search on HVAC company or a plumber or something like that, you notice a little stack of companies that are at the top, they rank at the top. And one of the things that you can do to rank at the top, it takes a little bit of work and effort. So maybe you could walk us through that process in local growth and and what business owners can expect when they attempt to get free advertising, essentially what it is.

[00:02:59] Mike Ruman: Yeah, I think, we've been living in the local SEO, local growth space for years. And the biggest thing is it's not complicated. Like I love the quote, great marketing helps bad products fail faster. So one, you've got to start with, you got to kick butt. Like you have to have a great product. You have to serve your clients. If someone comes to me who needs leads and I have a two-star review and you go through it. Bad review that review. Like you meet them, they're you get it. I can't help you. I guess we're gonna elevate your bad reviews. So one, does have a kick-butt product, serve, over-deliver and then major the major. And then one of the things I always tell clients, I use from Arrested Development, they would talk about there's always money in the banana stand.. I'm not sure if you're that Arrested Development fan, but like GMB is your banana stand. Like Google my business, like nail that make sure your profile is filled out, track it, post, posting events, posting posts. That's just free traffic out there. But then teach. So 90% of Google searches are questions looking for answers, answer those questions. One of the tools that we use is KW. It stands for keyword finder, go on there, filter on your city, type in a keyword and it'll tell you, you get three searches per day for free on KW finder. It'll tell you what people in your town are searching for, answer those questions. So if you're a bike store and people are looking for how to get fitted for a bike, put together a two minute YouTube video with your bike shop. Hey, here's how to get fitted for a bike and just walk them through that process. Answer that question, build that authority. And then they're going to come your way. And Marcus Sheridan has a great book. It's called, They Ask You Answer because Marcus, he's a sales guru now, but he was a pool salesman and he just started doing that. People had questions on pools and so he just started putting content out there. And now I think he's at HubSpot. He's the sales lion. And, but it's just, it's simple. Don't overthink it. People have problems. This is where StoryBrand comes in. People have problems, solve those problems. Be the guide. You can see my little board back there, be the guide, help them be the hero, the whole StoryBrand concept. But yeah, just what are their problems? What are they searching for? And be that solution.

[00:05:26] Russ Johns: I love that. I love that. And I want to give a shout out to a couple of people. We've got some folks in the room. Martin, how you doing today? Elize is in the house. Thank you so much for being here from South Africa. Russ Hedge. Good morning, Russ in, from Oregon. I hope everything's well in your neck of the woods. Martin says, hi, Mike.

[00:05:49] Mike Ruman: What's up, Martin?

[00:05:50] Russ Johns: Hey, Martin. Explain the half eaten part. Talking about the weed. Yeah. Rob runs the Drunken Grape out of Toronto, out of Canada. So neck of the woods. Great marketing helps bad products fail faster. Fantastic. Nick Gemmell Nick, Brother Nick. What's going on, man? We got the great white north in the room today. Thank you so much for being here, Nick. I want to catch up with you. It's time we connected again, Nancy Thomas. I'll be sending you some information later. And thank you so much for joining us. Martin says, be the solution. That's awesome. And Foley Hart, Foley. I hope you're well, I hope things are going well for you. Nick says, yeah, let's do it. Foley says, miss you, Russ. Great to see you both. Thank you so much. Howard Kaufman in the room. Thanks for the point on answering a question. Yes, absolutely. Answer ask questions. Mike is an amazing resource. He's giving out a lot of information. He's helping a lot of people he's answering the questions. He eats his own dog food. So Mike, so keep it simple, solve problems, answer questions. We don't get any more complicated than that.

[00:07:13] Mike Ruman: Yeah, go to the data like that KW finder, like there's gold in there. If you just spend a little bit of time learning the tool, it's pretty simple, but yeah, that's why I love local growth. It's not complicated. We're not building algorithms where, HVAC company, this person needs their furnace service. They're going to go to Google, try and find the HVAC repair, be that solution, help them out. YouTube is the number two search engine behind Google. So that's where video is huge. And we're not talking like camera crews, we're talking like your iPhone and showing people how to change out their air filter.

[00:07:47] Russ Johns: Yeah. It's super simple. And I'm a huge fan of video. I could jump on a video call anytime. And a lot of people are, they're talking about zoom fatigue these days. You have to be cautious, but if you're showing and illustrating a solution to a problem, most people, they'll find you. That's the whole thing is putting stuff out there. You gotta be putting stuff out there, folks, you just gotta show up and do the work. It's the routine that I like to express. So Mike, one of the things that I think I'd like to roll into, you've got local growth going on, it's growing. And then you got some other projects that I want to talk about. What are some other projects that you have going on these days?

[00:08:32] Mike Ruman: Yeah, so the big one is, in the backstory of this is I jumped my corporate job seven years ago to start my own company. At the time we had five kids and stay at home wife and I had a really good job, good benefits, but I wanted to start my own company. And hustle, figured it out, figured out how to make money. About year three, I was burnt out. I was stressed out. I was overweight. I wasn't a good dad. I was short fused and something had to change. I was like, man business we're doing great. We've got great clients. We're making money, but like physically, mentally, spiritually I was a mess. And so I like to do big things. And so I'm like, I need to get healthy and I'm a big MMA fan, mixed martial arts. And so I'm like what if I got healthy physically and did an MMA fight. And then documented the journey. That's another story for another day, but through that journey of getting healthy, I realized when I got physically healthy, mental clarity came. I slept better. I was a better husband, a better father. And so out of that, and people saw man, you lost all this weight. Like what happened? So I talked about my fight journey, but then also I talked about how I leveled up all these areas of my life. And so out of that came this idea of healthydads.com and so healthy dads.com. It's a community of dads who want to be better. It's morphed, so I think we're... it's been like the side hustle for about three years now. But it's to the point where we know what this thing is, it's a community of dads who want to be better. And we have these six apps, it's faith, family, fitness, food, finances, and things. And so we come alongside dads and we're all busy. But every month we do a challenge. We have a no complaining challenge. We'll do like a a walk challenge or maybe we'll read a book together. I'm a selfish person at the core and so I wanted to build something for me, but also something that I can invite others into. And, the big thing is accountability. And so just having a group of guys who... I want all walks of life. Like I'm a Christian, but it's for non-Christians. I'm an America, but it's worldwide. We're talking to people in Australia, Africa. But I want to be the community of dads who just want to level up their life. Cause it's hard.

[00:11:04] Russ Johns: Yeah, it is hard.

[00:11:05] Mike Ruman: Business owners and you see the people online who are like, oh, crushing it, hustle. And the big quote I like is they're selling the dream, but living the nightmare. And even before this show, I mentioned in these last few weeks have been just hard. Work's been busy, it's been stressful and I'm like, man, something's gotta change for me. And so I think just being honest about we all need help. And so I want healthy dads to be my place to go and get people poured into, but also pour into others as well. The cool thing is we're launched, we've been working on this membership sites for probably six months now and tomorrow actually exclusive here in the #PirateBroadcast, healthy dads.com/founders. We're opening this up tomorrow, but if someone goes to that page today, they can join healthydads.com, but it's our founders special. So it's the lowest price it's ever going to be. Everything is guaranteed, but I'd love any dads out there who just are done. They're done living the rat race, trying to be someone that they're not. And then, too, I spent 10 years in publishing and a lot of the books for dads were bought by women. And there's women listening to the show that you're like, hey, my husband could use this, feel free to send them over to healthy dads.com/founders, have them check it out. I priced it so it's stupid low. Local growth, that's what pays the bills for me. Healthy dads we want to just pour into dads. We have so much, so many cool things coming for dads, but we have courses, we have challenges, we have a book club, we have a podcast launching, and then we're just going to journey together through that.

[00:12:42] Russ Johns: I love that. I love that. And, I have to tell you that Mike, I really admire the fact that you're sharing. Cause we've talked about this privately and I know that there's so many things, there are so many details in building a business and building even websites and membership sites and SEO and all of the things that go into it, there's a lot of details. It's not difficult, but there are still a lot of details that have to be taken care of. And there's something about doing something for yourself, and I don't know that I would call it selfish as much as self-preservation. You have to take the oxygen mask yourself in order to be able to care for other people. And sometimes we drain ourselves and , the energy is low. And so we have to take breaks. We have to recharge, we have to refresh and take care of things. Martin says thanks for being so open and courageous with us, Mike Ruman, appreciate learning from your journey. Absolutely. Absolutely. Nancy says isn't that enlightening? Absolutely. Enlightening. Rob says, love the toys in the backdrop, Mike. Love what you 're doing on the journey. It's really cool because we have this essence of an idea that we have to do everything and the reality is we don't have to do everything alone. Would you agree?

[00:14:07] Mike Ruman: Yeah. That's one of the most pivotal things from my own journey was joining the mastermind with you. Six years ago, we hopped in this mastermind and we've been through a lot just personal lives, business lives and without, without having that group we met every week, I'm in a new mastermind where I'm actually in two different masterminds where we meet every week and it's like, hey things aren't as amazing as they look, Hey, here's my struggle. And just having people who can pour into you as well, and oh, hey, yeah, I've been through that. Don't step there. Cause I think, healthy dads, like it's pretty much all my fails. I've had so many fails as a father and so even just... can I give you one of my favorite fails? So my kids were like, 6, 4, 4 and 4. We have three kids the same age. We adopted. I wanted to teach them that gambling doesn't pay and so I took them to the store and I had $20. I said, hey guys, we can spend this $20 each, get five bucks to go buy whatever you want, candy, donuts or you could take that $20 and go buy. And they're like, let's buy lottery tickets. I'm like sweet. They're going to see they could have had all this candy, but instead they go buy lottery tickets and get nothing. So we buy $20 of lottery tickets and then we scratch them all off. And I swear, we won $100 and my kids thought it was like the coolest thing ever how they're like, dad, we got to buy more lottery tickets. I'm like...

[00:15:39] Russ Johns: You just raised three gamblers.

[00:15:42] Mike Ruman: Yeah. And they were so young. And it was like, yeah, it was a big dad fail, we laugh about it now, but just stuff like that man, let's enjoy life. Life is short. I feel like I just graduated college. I'm 43 years old and it's holy smokes, what happened these last 20 years? And so the healthy dads and we want to slow down. Actually, I own slowdads.com. The idea was like, I wanted to start a challenge for dads just to go slow. And everything's go fast, hustle. That's not healthy. You're going to burn out. Like I have an accounting degree, so I watched the data. If you go into the search engines, you'll see like depression, anxiety, suicide, like all these like heavy terms are on the rise. This life of go fast is not...

[00:16:26] Russ Johns: it's not the end goal that we really want.

[00:16:30] Mike Ruman: Yeah. It's not success. Maybe for you, it might work, but like the faster I go, the more burnout I get and that's not a healthy place to be. And so even strategically building the healthydads.com membership, like it's not a lot of work. Even like the book club, like I'm going to do book summaries, like chapter summaries, but we want to be better without, oh my gosh, I have all this... I have 4 middle school kids. When I come home and it's oh, I got all this homework. That's not what we're doing for healthy dads. Like we want to pour into you. We want to laugh. We want to learn facts, tell stories, sell. And so just getting people on the podcast that just tell us your story, and I know Russ you've been through just tons. We have mutual friends who've been through some stuff, even some people going through some stuff right now, but know how can we learn from each other and just be better together.

[00:17:18] Russ Johns: And I think for me right now in my life, giving back is so important and that's part of what I want to do with, that's part of the impact that the #PirateBroadcast™ does and helping people actually achieve an idea and the thought and plant the seed that we can be a little more resilient. We can be a little bit considerate of other people around us, we can be supportive. We can have a little kindness, sympathy, empathy, and understanding. So it's really important for us to do that. I want to give a shout out. Mary Fain, good morning folks. Outsource sooner, she says. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's really important. And Nancy Thomas says, men helping men is more impactful. Keep up the great work. And I agree with Nancy, Mike, keep up the great work, because like I said, at the beginning, you have been an #inspiration because I've watched you go from working to figure it out, doing some things. It's like going in and MMA fighting and getting healthy and all of these adventures you've gone through. It's really, we've all gone through a lot together. And to have you here today and talk about this as is really important to me. So thank you so much for being here.

[00:18:34] Mike Ruman: Yeah. Mary said outsource sooner. I hundred percent agree. One book I love is it's called Who Not How, that's been a game changer for me because I think it's I got to learn everything. I'm going to start a podcast. I got learn how to do editing and how to do intro. No, you don't. Who Not How it's find someone who knows that and then bring them in. What is your super power? Like with video, if you did all your video editing, if you did all the scheduling, you probably wouldn't do a video. It's man, there's so much work, but you have a producer who does all that. And I think that allows you to live in your I forget what book it is, but like your zone of genius and like you can do your thing and then your producer can do her thing. But I love what Mary said there.

[00:19:12] Russ Johns: What did she say?

[00:19:14] Mike Ruman: She just said outsource sooner.

[00:19:15] Russ Johns: Yeah. Outsource sooner. Absolutely. I think, like you said there's a lot of details to go into some of these things and Rob Thomas is doing some great work. He's doing some work in the wine industry and we were talking about this on the show the other day. He's done The Drunken Grape. He's been in video and he understands some of the video production. And that's why I love live video is because I don't have to edit it. I don't have to try to polish anything for YouTube or putting on anything else. And it's just, it's a conversation and it's real. If I mess up and sometimes I get reminded by Tracie, shout out to Tracie, the producer. Thank you, Tracie for all you do. She's been with me for over a year and she guides me when I start to ramble and get off track and ask long extended questions. It's like just ask one question at a time and that's the kind of help we need, healthy dads is something that you can actually use to level set, get a baseline, understanding what else is going on around you. So thanks for putting that together. So who is it for besides dads? Like myself, I'm a dad, but I'm not I'm not raising children, so define what means to be a healthy dad.

[00:20:32] Mike Ruman: So Russ you'll never not be a dad. I will never not be a dad. Like once a dad, you're always a dad, even with adult children. It's for any guy who just wants to be better. Like we're going to have a dating challenge in there. You don't have to be married. It's for dads who are married, it's for single dads, it's guys who want to be a dad, but I wanted to build the community I wanted to be a part of. And so it's real, it's raw. It's simple. It's not over complicated, but yeah it's really, we're gonna do these challenges together. I'm sure you've seen Parks and Rec the treat yourself. We have a treat yourself challenge where it's dad, get a hundred bucks out of the ATM and treat yourself or whatever that is, what does that one thing you want to buy that you don't need. And so we're going to be sprinkling challenges throughout the year. My wife's a health coach, certified health coach. And so we do have a green smoothie challenge. But they're green smoothies that taste good. I got hooked on Kambucha, which it's an acquired taste. But, yeah, it's it's for any guy out there who just wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves, but also like when I was fighting there was this really cool idea. It was plus one, zero, minus one. And the whole idea is like, when you're sparring, you should always spar with someone a little bit better than you, someone at your level, but also someone a little bit below you because that's how we learn. So with business owners find some people who are in the same stage as you to journey together, find some mentors who've been there, but then also mentor somebody who's who's just going to jump. Hey, here's what I did. Don't do that. I learned hard lessons, but yeah, I love that. Plus one, zero, minus one.

[00:22:14] Russ Johns: Mary says, I love this audience. Mary says, wait, you get off track Russ? Squirrel. Mike knows. Do I ever get off track. Mike? Rob says editing is a lot of work, sure, with the regard to video. You need to have or should have a videographer to tackle most things for you. Absolutely. And it's just something that we have do. It's a process, it's all a process. So Mike, what brings you joy in this whole process? Looking back at the last six years and growing this business, since you quit your corporate job, seven years ago. What has brought you the most joy in the process?

[00:23:01] Mike Ruman: I love helping people. I grew up in the Detroit area and like the blue collar, just get her done mentality, but like my dad's an HVAC technician. I think I have his DNA as far as just wired to it. And so that's why I love local businesses. Like I love the David versus Goliath, coming in there, fighting for them, helping them stay afloat. But I think just seeing success with a local business cause they're dying. COVID has taken out so many mom and pop shops with restrictions and just hey, it's not worth it. So they sell or they shut down. And so I like the challenge of coming in. The whole idea is you have to have a good product, but then, hey, we can help bring attention to that. But think helping people, that's what brings me joy. And I thought it was going to be the financial side of owning my own business. Like I can make as much as I want. I realized pretty quickly, the Notorious BIG, Mo money Mo problems like that is so true. I was racing with a friend of mine. He was trying to build a million dollar agency and so I thought, I'm gonna do that too. And then you realize man, that's not worth it. Like I'd much rather make much less and have freedom. So I think helping people, then freedom. So I don't work Fridays. That's my wife. That's our date day. Yeah, we just try to hit up a new coffee shop or taking dance lessons and, so just having that freedom to do whatever we want to, I still work hard through the week. I do work a little bit on Sundays. But having that freedom is greater than money is what I've learned, seven years into owning my own business. Like you can make as much as you want, but like at what cost and that freedom is, I think we all learn that during COVID too. Man, life is short. I lost my grandpa in December to COVID. It's man, life is so short, what was it worth? Was all that stuff worth it? And with the healthy dads, its own my own challenge to myself. Man, like you got this one life to live, live it. And then I'm trying to document that through this healthy dad's journey.

[00:24:59] Russ Johns: Mike, I know that we're over time, so I really want to thank you for all the things that you're doing for the community and for your self. You've got a lot going on and a lot of things that are taking place in your world and it's not always smooth sailing. So I just want to make sure that we put that out there. And if you are a healthy dad or looking to achieve healthiness in your journey as a dad, connect with Mike, give us the address again.

[00:25:30] Mike Ruman: Healthydads.com is the main website than healthy dads.com/founders, that opens up tomorrow. But if someone wants to join today, like you're in.

[00:25:41] Russ Johns: Thank you Mike, for being here. I appreciate it.

[00:25:42] Mike Ruman: Yeah. Thank you, Russ. I think just the community you've built up of pirates, it's been really cool just to see it come from an idea to congratulations on number 500 coming up. But yeah, thanks for all you do to make the world a better place.

[00:25:55] Russ Johns: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much and pirates, thank you so much for being here. All the #gratitude in the world, that if you're watching this in the future, If you think somebody would like or enjoy this conversation, please like, and and share it, comment, make all that algorithm stuff go crazy so we can actually grow and share this information with more people. #Makeitmatter because #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree and you #enjoytheday.

[00:26:22] Exit: Thank you for joining the #PirateBroadcast™. If you found this content valuable, please like, comment and share it across your social media channels. I would love the opportunity to help others grow in their business. The #PirateSyndicate™ is a platform where you show up, we produce the show. It's that easy. If you want to be seen, be heard and be talked about, join the #PirateSyndicate™ today.

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