We invited the lifestyle entrepreneur, best-selling author, and radio show host Mitche Graf to join us on the MillionaireByMorning podcast. It was a fun yet informative interview where Mr. Graf talked about his journey and business approach and shared valuable tips for aspiring entrepreneurs out there.
Rashad Thirlkill
Serial entrepreneur journey, the overview of time management, branding, salesmanship, everything that entrepreneurship has to offer. Not only that, when I saw the word barbecue.
Mitche Graf
Yeah. Now that part right there. We can use some of that as well. I like doing during the day what I like to do. I love barbecuing. So, I figured out a way to make part of my living with making barbecue things. I got a radio show. It’s called the Barbecue Radio Show. But yes, we can talk about that. Whatever you want to talk about, I’m pretty fair game.
Rashad Thirlkill
I think that’s awesome, man, because I definitely want to get into that whole aspect of you. I’m going to do what I love to do for money. All right.
Millionaire by Morning podcast listeners out there, I have a special guest for you today. He is a dedicated Daddy of three. He currently owns four companies, has two nationally syndicated radio shows, has written ten books, loves to play in his garden, and barbecue.
It is my pleasure to introduce Mitch Graff, who’s only had one job in the last 35 years, which was President for an affiliate of the world champion, San Francisco Giants baseball team.
Welcome to the show, Mitch!
Mitche Graf
Rashad. It’s an honor to be here. And just a quick story about the one job I’ve had. For 35 years, I’ve been what I call a lifestyle entrepreneur. And I was that before it was a thing, way before Tim Ferris wrote the book about the four-hour workweek. I was kind of living that lifestyle, but I got bored with everything I was doing.
I think back in 2019, I think I had three or four companies at the time, plenty to do. Not to mention I have three young children. But I was bored with what I was doing. So, I sat down with my wife and said, hey, I’m going to transfer everything over to you. I’m going to promote some people in our circles, and I’m going to go see if I can get this job being a President of a class A affiliate of a Major League baseball team.
She just kind of shook her head whenever I say, Honey, I got an idea. She just does this to me because she knows I’m going to be doing something a little bit crazy. So, I called the guy and I said, hey, I think you need a businessman to come in and run the organization. He says, no, I need a baseball guy. I said, well, I’ve been a baseball fan since I was a little kid. I’m a Los Angeles Dodger fan, actually.
He said, no, we need a guy that understands baseball. And I said, do some research on me. Google me. Whatever you got to do, you’ll call me back. Let’s at least get together and chat.
Long story short, over the next couple of weeks, we talked, we interviewed, we had coffee together, and I took the job. For a year, before Kobi shut us down, I was the President of, it’s called the Salem Kaiser Volcanoes, a Class A affiliate over here in Salem, Oregon.
Rashad, it was the best experience I’ve ever had in my life as far as working, because I got to hang out with my favorite sport, baseball. I had about 110-120 employees, which wax an easy thing for me. But it was the best experience I can ever imagine.
Covid shut us down. I came back home to home school my kids and to take care of my businesses, which were shut down. And the team never opened up again because Minor League baseball was contracted by about 40 teams. If you’re a baseball fan, about 25% of all the Minor League affiliates in the United States just went away because Major League baseball said we don’t need that many teams.
So, my team that I was a President of, was contracted. It was perfect timing for me. I came back to what I was doing, and I got my boredom out of my system. Yeah!
Rashad Thirlkill
Covid caused a lot of boredom.
Mitche Graf
It did, and caused a lot of us to pivot as well.
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah, definitely. And create, to be able to create and think in different ways. So, what was the job description? What were some of the things that you did with the team?
Mitche Graf
Everything, from hiring, recruiting, to training. We did an organizational rebrand. One of the things that I had identified is that the brand was broken. I think a lot of businesses that have been around more than a handful of years, they don’t know if their brand is broken because they forget to work on their business. Because we’re working in our business, we forget the little things.
So, I just noticed being a fan that things were just old and stale. It’s like they didn’t care anymore. So, I reintegrated the employees. First thing I did is pretty much fire everybody and say, you know what, if you want to come back to work, I would love to have you, but we got to interview. I want to make sure that you’re not the reason I had to give up my great lifestyle to come and fix the problem that you created.
So, we interviewed everybody and hired a number of them back. A lot of them we did not hire back. But to me, it was all about that customer experience, that customer service. I call it six-star experience. I want us to go above and beyond, regardless of the industry that you’re in. If you can do that, magic things start to happen in your organization.
Branding, marketing, I was the one doing all the Chambers and the Rotary Clubs and going around doing speeches at the high school and just having a great time. But then I came home at night, and I still had my radio shows to do. I still had my books to write. I still had my three kids to raise. Nothing changed from that.
I just had to actually work some hours. And I’m not a guy that works 80 hours a week. I never have been. Maybe I was in my 20s, but I’ve never been that guy. I really believe that the guys that get it, the ones that climb that ladder, are the ones that understand the 5% of their activities each day brings in 95% of the results.
The Pareto principle, you know that 80-20? 80% of the results come from 20% of your efforts. I think it really is 95-5. So, each person that owns a business or wants to own a business or maybe just an employee, if you can figure out the 5% of the daily activities that you do that moves the needle on your business and then figure out ways to do just that and get rid of the 95%.
You can delegate it. You can automate systems. Sometimes you just need to eliminate. Nobody needs to spend three or four or 5 hours a day on social media. It ain’t necessary, I’m telling you right now. But a lot of people, me included, there are times I go down the rabbit hole of YouTube. You watch one video because you want to, and then before you know it’s, an hour later, it’s like, God, I just watched nine videos wasting my time.
You can’t get that time back. Right? So, anyway, I can ramble forever, Rashad. I’ll take a breath and let you ask me something.
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah, I’m definitely okay with that.
Mitche Graf
I get excited, man. I get excited.
Rashad Thirlkill
A lot of what I like to do is speak with entrepreneurs because there are people out there that are still learning. And time is of the essence. People are taught to work hard and work diligently. But like you say, its sometimes based on that 5% more so than you’re just working 80 hours a week and 10-12 hours. Waking up at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning, staying up to 12:00 at night.
That is what most of society has grown to understand, that that’s what they need to do to be successful.
Mitche Graf
You’re right. And the gurus are out there telling you that if you want to build the beast, whatever your beast is, whether it’s a physical product company, brick and mortar, or digital product on the Internet, you have to be willing to sacrifice everything in order to build that beast.
As a lifestyle entrepreneur, I have for 25 years taught that it’s not necessary to do that. Number one, you need to control that time. I mean, having time-freedom, that’s one of the best things about being an entrepreneur is you get to control how you spend your time.
Doesn’t mean you get to waste it on more things. It just means that you should have more laser focus on the things that you do need to do to bring you the value of your business.
I’ll give you an example. Professional photographers. I was in that industry for about 15-20 years, and I still am. I still do a lot of teaching at conventions and a lot of coaching and mentoring. But one of the things that they have to do, let’s say they shoot a wedding on Saturday. On Sunday, they spend all day retouching the files, color correcting, taking blemishes out of the face, blending the skin tones so that the images are beautiful.
If you were to ask a professional photographer, how much would you pay somebody to come into your studio to do your digital workflow? They’d say $15 an hour, maybe $20 an hour. depends on where you are in the country. Then you twist the question around, would you be willing to work for $15 an hour?
Then they go, heck no. I’m a professional photographer. I’m certified and a member of PPA. Like, well, wait, if you’re doing your own digital workflow, you’re working for $15 an hour.
So there are AHA moments. I mean, that’s just photography. But there are examples of that in every industry. So, figure out what it is that you’re doing that is 15, $20 an hour work. That’s important stuff. That’s what makes the train go forward. You got to have that.
But it doesn’t have to be you. It should not be you. You got the $15 an hour work. You got the management level, which is $50 an hour work. The millionaire mindset is that I’ve got to be doing $500 an hour of work. What does that entail? Then do that. And only do that.
Then hire people around you and say, I can’t afford it. Well, you can afford not to do it. You have to figure out a way to slough off some of these daily things that you do, that aren’t bringing you the biggest bang for your time.
Rashad Thirlkill
Definitely. I learned that the hard way.
Mitche Graf
We all do, right? We get knocked down so many times, and then as long as you get up that one extra time, life is good.
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah. You listen to the right podcast and you got to take that advice. So, that’s the wonderful thing. I’m glad podcasts are growing and even the YouTube channels and stuff.
Mitche Graf
Sure. Absolutely.
Rashad Thirlkill
So can you take us back to the time that you figured out, I’m going to be on? I’m pretty sure it started with sales. I’m going to be a sales entrepreneur. When did you realize that?
Mitche Graf
A couple of stories come to mind. First one, I was in third or fourth grade. And at that point, you probably sold lemonade, too, right? Everyone sells lemonade out in front of their house. If you’re in a neighborhood.
Most kids, back in my day, this is in the 70s, they’re selling for a quarter of glass, right? Well, I sold my lemonade for $0.50, but I gave you a free cookie. And I had a table out there with a couple of chairs that you can sit down. I was going to show you this radio.
This is the actual radio. If you’re watching it, you can see it if you’re listening to it, it’s the most hideous green color. It’s round the volume, and the dial controls for the station are like the eyes. It doesn’t work anymore. But I used to turn this on Dodger games and set it out there on the table.
So, people would come, give me twice as much money for a glass of lemonade. I gave a free cookie that my mom had baked. She just did a toll house recipe off the back of the chocolate chips. And it was an experience, and I didn’t understand it at the time, but I was always busier.
I had people coming to my house for lemonade and not the others. It just kind of planted in my head early, that okay. If you add value to people’s life, not necessarily discounting. Being the cheap guy is never the path you want to take, because then it’s a price war and it’s a fight to the bottom. You don’t want to be that guy.
So, if you want to make a living and you want to be a lifestyle business person, you have to look at adding value to your customers’ life. Whether you have a customer, a guest, a client, whatever you call people that give you money in exchange for a product or service, how can I add value to their life?
Figure that out and the world is yours. It’s one step along the way that you have to tackle.
That was one story. The other one was I was in my mid-20s, late 20s. I wanted to go fishing. And I lived in North Idaho, and there’s a lake called Hayden Lake. And it’s like a Wednesday afternoon.
I think at the time, I had a drive-through espresso chain, and I had a Cribbage board manufacturing company, but I wanted to go fishing. And I went to several different places around town that should have carried worms. Nobody carried worms. So I started to get annoyed.
The guy that sold all the worms, his name is Mr. Bate. So I found his phone number. He lived about an hour away. That’s where his business was. And I called and I said, hey, I’m just a customer in North Idaho outside of Quarter Lane. Where can I buy your worms? And he really kind of pushed me the wrong way. It’s like, well, we’re only there every two weeks, and if there isn’t any, then you’re just going to have to go dig them in your yards. He told me, go dig them in your yard.
Well, that got me a little irritated. So, I went back to my office. I found a place to buy worms by the thousand. Instead of a twelve-pack, I found a bigger container that did 18. They were called jumbo pack, not because the worms are bigger, but because the container was bigger.
We did a color label. I bought some refrigeration and got some space. Fast forward six months. I had over 700 accounts in North Idaho, Eastern Washington, Western Montana. And I got a call from Mr. Bate. Hey, you can’t do this. It’s like, well, yeah, I can and I did, but I don’t want to be in the worm business. I don’t want to sell nightcrawlers. I’ll sell you the business. And he hung the phone up.
Couple of months later and I gave him a quote, I think, a quote of $25,000. And we make money hand over fist. $25,000. I don’t want this business. I’ll give you all the customers. I’ll give you the logo, give you the name if you want it. And he hung up on me. About two months later, he called back and the price was now higher because we were making bank by this time. He wrote me a nice big check. And I was out of the worm business eight months from start to end. At that time, we were doing about $20,000 a month in worms. Go figure that out.
So, it just showed me that the good basic principles, I don’t care sales, marketing, pricing, branding, whatever. The basic tentacles of business can be applied to any industry. Doesn’t matter what you do. If you understand those basics, that’s going to pave your path for success.
And you can’t skip the steps. If you don’t understand branding, you’re not going to be able to attain the highest level of success, whatever it is that you’re doing. If you don’t understand how to sell, you’re not going to attain the highest level. And if you don’t like to sell, that’s not a problem. Learn how to do it. And there’s great resources or find someone that can. Right?
Because you can’t be all things. You got to know what you do. Well, do that and hire people around you that are smarter than you and then let them do their job.
Rashad Thirlkill
Oh, man. First of all, that’s a great start to business. And secondly, that’s a great story because you’re right, man. Once you have a system in place, it’s pretty much automated and you can change from business to business.
I do a lot of different things, man. And I don’t know if I get bored, quitting. My wife say, I have ADD. I don’t know, but I do a lot of different things. And when people looking at it and say, man, you switched off from this to that.
In actuality, it’s the same system. I just move to another product. So, it’s very easy. And once you get that into place, especially with digital marketing, now, that really automates the process
Mitche Graf
When automation is big. And there’s a point that too much automation is a bad thing. And where it’s become bad is customer service. During COVID, everything got drawn back online. And so that personal interaction that you have with a lot of customers kind of went away. Well, now it’s back.
One of my companies is a catering company. In 2020, we were voted the Pacific Northwest Cater of the year. We can serve up to 1,200 people. It’s a pretty successful business, but we went down to almost nothing.
Rashad Thirlkill
Customer service!
Mitche Graf
Customer service. So, now you go to the gas station, you go to Safeway, you go to Albertson’s, and they don’t say, how are you, sir? It’s would you like paper, plastic. And that’s the first thing out of their mouth before they make eye contact, before they smile. Of course, with the masks, it just covered up.
So, people thought, okay, I don’t have to smile now. Well, you can see a smile through the eyes. You can hear a smile if you’re smiling, you can hear the change in tone and intonation. But so many of the big companies have not given that frontline employee the tools they need to understand that whoever’s in front of you, that’s the most important person in your world, that’s the most important person in the universe right this second. Whoever’s there in front of you.
You got 19 people in line? That’s okay. The person in front of you, make them feel special, make them feel that gold. And I feel that it’s kind of dropped out in all the small and medium-sized businesses. There are some guys that get it, but a lot of the people I deal with on a regular basis, whether it be restaurants or retail stores or you call in.
I did an instant chat, AT&T – my phone company for 20 years. I did an instant chat. Took 18 minutes for the person to come into the instant chat. Why was it called an instant chat?
In another company I called, they said, I’m sorry. Because of the high volume we’re experiencing, we cannot take your call. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you at our earliest convenience.
This is like a Fortune 500 company. I leave a message. Three days later, I still have not heard. And it was kind of an important thing I needed to know. I called back again, same thing. And I just gave up and I switched companies.
It’s happening all over the place. As owner, you really need to make sure that your customer experience, the systems that you have in place for customers is second to none.
Rashad Thirlkill
I think that’s what at this point separates. Yeah, definitely.
Mitche Graf
That’s a silver bullet. If you can have good customer service, you’re right.
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah. I’ve started asking, like when new employees go through training, do they even have a customer service module because it’s not existing for the most part?
Mitche Graf
Well, you go like Ritz Carlton, each employee and the frontline employees, the ones that make the least amount of money, they’re given the discretion to spend up to $2,000 a day to take care of the customer. Whether it be an issue, whether it be a negative or positive $2,000 to take care of a customer, give them a free night comp room, give them an upgrade, whatever it is, and then go tell the boss later.
Most small and medium-sized businesses, they say, well, let me check with the boss. Hold on, I’ll be right back. And they have to get permission.
There’s two things. Number one, it doesn’t build confidence in your staff because they feel that if they make the bad decision, they are going to get fired or reprimanded or whatever. Number two, it doesn’t take care of the customer quickly and efficiently right then and there.
Did you know that 92% of all emails that are sent to corporations are never even returned? 92%. Only 20% of customer service questions can be answered on the first call. So you have some kind of question answer. You call somebody, only one out of five times can that company and that person on the phone provide you with the information that you called for.
They have to transfer you. They got to send you a link to an article. All these automation things that supposedly is good for us, I think it’s bad. And I’m an old-fashioned guy. I just turned 60 and I got a 16, 14, and 7-year-old kid. So I waited a long time to settle down to have kids.
Well, it makes me a little more old school than I think a lot of guys. But there are some things about old school that we need to continue to make sure we implement with our businesses.
The new school is, oh, you got a laptop and you could be a digital guy and you have a course or whatever and you make a living. And they call themselves entrepreneurs.
No, you’re not an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur has failed time and time and time again. But you learn how to get up by the bootstraps and you live to fight another day. You can’t be a 19-year-old kid, making 100 grand a year on your computer and you don’t have any physical stock.
That’s awesome. And I applaud you, but you are not yet an entrepreneur. You are on the road to being an entrepreneur. But I really feel that failure is one of the best lessons. You probably hit 1000 failures. I got 1000 failures. That has just led me to my next success, whatever that is.
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah, I definitely agree with it. One of the old models fall off the horse to get back home.
Mitche Graf
Well, how old are you, Rashad?
Rashad Thirlkill
I am 43.
Mitche Graf
Okay. Well, you might be old enough. We used to call them service stations. You’d get in there, they’d say, how are you, sir? How are you, ma’am? They’d wash your windshield, check the tire pressure, they check your oil. And, oh, yeah, you bought gas at the same time. But that was almost like the afterthought you went there because of that experience.
When I was in high school, I used to go to this Chevron and they would run out to your car. Hello, how are you? And they bring you water. If you wanted water, a cup of coffee. You wanted coffee. To this day, I will use Chevron if I have a choice. If there’s a Chevron, close, that’s where I’m going, because they did their branding early on.
But now the employees don’t even say good morning. How can I help you? Hey, how are you, sir? Get your fill up? What kind of gas? Nothing like that anymore.
We live in Oregon. We’re one of two states where we can’t pump our own gas. We have to have someone pump it. So, us in New Jersey, if you want your gas, you got to pull up and wait for the attendant to come and take your credit card and ask you what kind of gas.
But that’s an opportunity for Chevron or Shell or whoever to make an impression. I call it drip marketing. Drip branding. Just drip, drip, drip.
Hello, sir, how are you doing today? Great, man. What kind of gas can I get you? Whatever they’re going to say, make a five-second connection with that person in front of you. And that transfers to any industry, right?
Rashad Thirlkill
It does. And the irony of that, I don’t know if it goes on as much in Oregon, but here, everywhere I go in Texas, we’re supposed to have some other hospitality, but that has went away. But whatever you do, wherever you go, whether it’s a gas station, if you go out to eat, if you get groceries, they all want a review. They all want you to put a review in about the company. But normally they don’t serve. It’s not good customer service.
So, I don’t know why they’re asking for a review.
Mitche Graf
I have a friend that works at Yelp. He’s one of the VPs, and I went to College with him. We don’t stay in a lot of touch, but I touched base on during Covid. He said there’s more one and two-star reviews now than ever before in the history of Yelp.
Two reasons. One, people think their opinion matters because of social media. You can go out there and take a picture of someone arguing with a checker or a waiter and they think their opinion matters more than it really does. But when you post a one-star review, you potentially are ruining a business. I mean, you potentially are.
Maybe it was a bad day for an employee or maybe whatever happened on your meal or something bad happened, mistakes are made. And the guys that get the customer service, that Six Star that I was talking about earlier, the guys that get that figure out ways to not just meet expectations, but go above and beyond.
To me, the secret sauce is what do your customers expect? And what can I do above that that makes them go, wow, I wasn’t expecting that. I’ll go around town and if I get exceptional service, which I do quite often, I’ll say, thank you for the Six Star service. I really appreciate it.
They don’t ask what that is. It’s like, oh, wow. They know it means they went above and beyond. And I kind of like that. You can use it.
Rashad Thirlkill
Do you have any training for let’s just say, like sales training for companies? They hire someone to help you out with their sales. Do you offer any type of customer service training?
Mitche Graf
Yeah, we do workshops besides doing platform programs and things like that. I also do corporate training. I have a coaching and mentoring program that I’ve done for about 20 years. It’s called Power Team, and we will do anything that the client needs, whether it be in training, whether it be in the website, whether it be in branding, whatever it is. I call it the whole business, the whole enchilada A to Z.
But a lot of what I do is doing corporate training, I go in and do a team meeting in the morning and then do breakout sessions for the rest of the day where you get down to the nitty-gritty of giving your employees tools in customer service, in closing, in branding, whatever the need is.
But yeah, customer service, to me, is that’s the hot button these days, coming out of COVID, the guys that are left because there are less businesses in all categories, the guys that are left. You said it earlier. It’s the thing that makes a difference. It separates you from the rest of the pack. I call it the silver bullet. And more and more companies need to invest in that.
And I wish they did. But we’re too busy with customers. We don’t have time to work on our business because we’re working in our business. Right?
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah, man, you can definitely see it. Maybe it’s our age group or whatnot, but you can definitely see the difference between those days and nowadays.
Mitche Graf
The younger generation, my 16 or 14-year-old, I’ve resisted letting them do their devices whenever they want. They can play computer games, like on Sundays, but in the mornings, they’re kind of like me. I don’t let them get on their phones until they get on the bus.
No, you control that first section of the day. Do not react to the world. You set your mindset, you set your agenda. Without the outside world demanding things, whether it be an email or text or looking at the news, that stuff will be there. It’s not going anywhere. But that first section of the day, that’s yours. And you really have to control that.
That’s part of that mindset that you talk to, I’m sure, all your guests about is you have to start the day with expectations of what you’re going to accomplish. I call them perfect days.
People say, well, what’s the perfect day to you? And I know exactly what it is in my head. It’s hanging out with the people that I love, being the difference to my children and my wife, and moving the needle on my businesses. I have perfect days all the time because I set expectations. I have systems in place that allow me to accomplish them.
My to-do lists have only five or six items, no more than that. I used to do, like 20-30. And every day I was crossing out half of them and carrying the next day, well, that doesn’t do anything.
So, five items, get those done, be successful. Those five, that’s a feather in your cap, right? Check! If you want to add more things. You can. But start with five things on the to-do list and then make it your duty to accomplish each of those five every single day. And success leads to success.
Rashad Thirlkill
It’s all about compounding interest.
Mitche Graf
Yeah, you’re right.
Rashad Thirlkill
When my son gets home, I’m going to let him watch this. He’s 14 years old. I set him down this morning and I told him exactly everything you just said is what I told him this morning.
Mitche Graf
Yeah, but when it comes from us, it doesn’t have anything. When it comes from someone that lives more than 50 miles away, then you’re the expert, right?
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah, right. Exactly. And that’s crazy because I sat them down this morning and I said, Listen, man, you’ve been coming from your room, running downstairs, running straight to the bus, or I take you to school. And that’s how you’re going to operate your whole entire day, just on the run.
Mitche Graf
How old is he again?
Rashad Thirlkill
He’s 14۔
Mitche Graf
14! So, same as my son. Freshman in high school.
Rashad Thirlkill
He’ll be a freshman next year. Yeah, next year. Okay. So, yeah, I told him this morning, every morning you come down and just take 10-15 minutes. You can doodle on paper, you can think about what you’re going to do. But yeah, I totally agree, man.
Mitche Graf
I do a to-do list when I’m done working and I start early. I believe that you get up before dawn, I’m up for two or 3 hours getting my important work done when my mind is fresh. Good cup of coffee, and that’s when I do my writing. I do a lot of calls and interviews at that time of the day.
So, when my kids get up, my day is half done. And then by noon or one, my day is done, my workday is done. And I like that because the afternoons when the kids come home at 2:30 or three, I’m there for them. I can coach their teams.
Up until this year, I coached my son’s basketball and baseball. I coached my daughter’s volleyball. Last season, I coached my seven-year-old’s soccer team because I want to be there. I want to be that present dad. And every day we have moments with our kids. You got a moment with your son, hopefully several during the day. But those moments are the legacy that we leave behind.
There’s no job more important than being a good parent to your kids. We are helping mold the future. So anything that we can give them to help them make better choices. And they’re not going to make good choices all the time, but you’ve got to let them make bad choices. That’s how they’re going to fail.
My daughter has taught me that lesson. My 16-year-old said, Dad! You can’t always email my teacher and bail me out each trimester. You can’t keep doing that. I was like, baby! But if you don’t, I don’t want you to set yourself up for failure when you’re trying to get into College. Dad, I’m going to learn a lesson, but I’ll learn it on my own. And this is the wisdom of a 16-year-old.
Like, okay, well, maybe I gave her a little bit of that common sense, right? But I’ve just learned to back off and support her however I can, whether it be inquisitor or something. But she kind of just wants to do it on her own.
Covid has not been kind to her. My 14-year-old excelled with 4.0s. He loved that online thing. But my other daughter used it as an opportunity to be on her computer all day long in a room behind the watchful eyes of mom and dad. And you got to trust 16 years old, almost 17, you have to give them trust, right? If they fall down, man, that’s a lesson.
It’s a good lesson for life.
Rashad Thirlkill
Life is the best teacher. Yeah, I was taught that. It’s the best teacher.
One of the pillars that I do cover is motivation. So, of course, other than the obvious, your children, what would you say motivates you to live this style? That’s probably the motivation to be able to live the lifestyle. But, yeah, could you go a little bit into that?
Mitche Graf
Motivation is a tough one. A lot of people got knocked down during Covid. They lost the oomph. They lost that willingness to get up and fight the battle every day because it was tough during Covid, and it’s still not over. I mean, it’s going to be several years before, especially hospitality, before we’re out of the doldrums and things are back to normal and they never will be back like they used to be because of all the downsizing in so many industries.
We have empty buildings all over the place. Retail really got hit hard, especially restaurants, and a lot of them have gone away. Now they’re going to be replaced with other restaurants, which is a good thing, but it takes a few years to get your mojo going. When you are in food service, you just can’t open up one day and have it all figured out. It’s not an easy industry to be in.
But what I do for motivation is I just envision time off. It might sound weird, but I love gardening. I love the barbecue. I love hanging out with my kids. Last weekend we took three days and went over to the coast of Oregon. We just rented a beach house and hung out there and went walking around. And I love that.
This summer I’m taking my kids to Alaska. We can go up there for about ten days. We’ll take our motorhome and go to Montana and Idaho and camp and fish and go tan. And that motivates me to want to get my work done. I call it the 24/7 mentality.
We all have a definition, right? 24 hours a day, seven days a week. My definition. This might sound strange, but I’ve been trying to live it for 25 years. 24 hours a week, seven months a year.
Am I successful all the time? No. There’s weeks that I work 40, 50, 60 hours. But there are also weeks that I work 12. That 24 hours week is the beacon, the shining beacon on the Hill. And so that’s what I strive to do.
How can I get my work done? I need to be efficient and delegate and automate, and all those things. How can I do it so that I only have to put in 24 hours a week doing that 5% of the stuff that moves the neo on my companies? This way I can have the rest of the time off to do the things that are important to me, whatever that means, right?
We each have a different list of things that we do when we’re not working. You don’t work for the sake of working, you work to get money. You trade your time for money. So, you can take that money and say, okay, I got to pay this and that and that. And I have money left over to go to Disneyland with my kids.
That’s your shiny beacon. Mine is just time off to do what I want. And being 60, I’m not going to have a lot of years of working. I don’t want to work much longer, but I love what I do and everything I do, every business I am involved in, my two radio shows that I have. I love it. It drives me. I get excited when I think about doing any of my work.
After I’m done talking to you, I have a company called Barbecue Nation. We manufacture spices and rubs and barbecue accessories. We’re in retail stores. We have a website that we do a very brisk business on. We’re getting ready for the national hardware show next week. So, I’m going to go check in with our Co-packer to make sure that the lids came in, make sure that the granulated garlic was there. We’re having some supply chain issues, but I love getting in there and solving the problems.
That’s what I’ll do right after I get done with you. It’s exciting to me. A lot of people go, oh, God, you got to deal with those problems like, yeah, but I like it because I’m a problem solver. That’s a lot of what entrepreneurs do. Right? We solve problems quickly and efficiently, and that’s how we pave that path to success.
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah. And become consultants, help other people solve problems. That’s right.
Mitche Graf
Right. Not everybody’s a problem solver, and that’s fine. Not everybody is meant to be the owner. You need to have a Secretary and a person that maintains. You need to have a person that’s in sales. Having all these people that have these different skill sets is important.
You don’t have to be everything to all people. Identify what you like to do, not what you’re good at, because maybe what you’re good at and what you like to do are different things. It’s more important that today you do what you love doing, figuring out how to monetize that, and then get rid of the other stuff. It’s not that important. It really isn’t.
We might not be around in a day. We might not be around in a week. When I was 59, just a few weeks ago, I was bulletproof. I had a 29-year-old mind and a twelve-year-old body, but all of a sudden I turned 60. I was like, God, I know people that are 60 and they look old. So, I hope I don’t look old because I don’t feel old.
But it starts to make you realize that every single day when you have a moment with a kid, with the spouse, you and me are having a moment right now. You’ve got to maximize that moment. Because in a few minutes, that moment is over and you’re onto the next moment.
You got to make sure that you’re making a difference in the people’s lives that mean the most to you. That’s kind of what drives me. It’s a long answer to your question, but time off and my kids, that’s why I work.
Rashad Thirlkill
With that one answer, you actually spoke on another one of the pillars, which is monetization. And with that, the 24/7 rule. When you sit down and map out your plan, do you monetize or how do you monetize your goals?
Is it monthly? Biweekly? Yearly? How do you come up with that?
Mitche Graf
That’s a great question. Anything that I get involved with now, I have to look at what’s my time commitment? Because I really limited the amount of time I invest in my businesses, or speaking, or other people’s businesses. We turn down coaching clients sometimes because I don’t want to spend the time.
Summertime – I don’t take new clients because guess what? I’m taking a lot of time off most of the summer. I take off now because I have two different radio shows. So, I have to make sure that everything’s recorded in the Hopper before I take off for a month has to be done.
I have to do my writing and my research and everything way ahead of time, which is fine. I just schedule it into a calendar. It’s very simple. You write it down and it becomes a reality. If you don’t write your goals down, they’re not goals, it’s just conversation.
But the way that I monetize is in my mind initially. I’ll give you an example. Business Edge Radio. It was an idea I had about seven or eight years ago, just an idea. And every year on my New Year’s resolutions I’d carried over.
Finally, Covid comes along. It’s like, you know what? I have time now to dedicate to building out what I believe could be something that could be heard on radio stations across the United States. And as a podcast, it’s going to add value to people, not just business owners, but to anybody.
So, when I started out, it was a 1-hour show that was heard on a local radio station syndicated out across the country. We built it up to about 25 or 30 radio stations, and I think at the time we were getting maybe 30,000 downloads a month overall with all the episodes.
Well, then I got tired of doing the hour format. You got to get guests. Everything has to be scripted. You got to work on the clock. The first clock is nine minutes, and it’s a hard out at nine minutes because the radio stations have to play their ad. That’s how they make money. So, I came up with the Business Edge Minute, 60 seconds, heard Monday through Friday. So five episodes a week, fun, energetic, and things that you can put into action right away.
Here are three ways to maximize your commute to and from the office every single day. Or here are four ways to make sure you stay hydrated during the day, which is important for all of our minds, whether you’re an entrepreneur or not. Here are three ways to make sure you’re closing the proper way.
Just quick-hitting things. I actually have 52 seconds of content because the other 8 seconds is the guy saying, and now it’s Business Edge Minute. Here’s Mitche Graf!
And so that we’re here on like 120 radio stations now across the country all the way. We got a couple five or six down in Texas.
But that became Monetized in my brain about a minute after I had the idea to launch the podcast, because I can’t just spend that much time just because I like it. It had to have like an exit strategy. So, yeah, we get revenues. We have an affiliate guy that takes care of all that. And every single month, I get a check wired into my checking account for all the ads that are run to support it.
That’s kind of nice. The Barbecue Radio Show is another show that I do. It’s five minutes once a week. How easy is that? Right?
You do long format, which I applaud you because it takes a lot more time and a lot more planning. I get bored easily. Like I said earlier, I want to move on to the next challenge. So, five minutes once a week. Sometimes it’s interviews with top barbecuers. Other times, here are five tips on making sure your brisket is trimmed the right way.
Five minutes in and out. I’m quirky. There’s some humor in there. There’s some sound effect that makes it entertaining. And I think we’re on 15 or 20 radio stations, a couple in Dallas down in your neck of the woods. And it’s fun. It’s once a week.
I got an engineer that does a great job. There’s a national sales guy that’s getting us the affiliates. I just do what I do. I write the stuff, I record it, I send it up to Dropbox and I’m done. Everyone else does the rest of the work for me.
But it’s Monetized right from the beginning. I got a call from Traeger about two weeks ago. Traeger might want to sponsor the entire show. Well, if that happened, I mean, that’s my competition with Barbecue Nation because I have spices and rubs. But if they wrote me a check once a month, I’d be a happy camper or better, just buy the whole show, right?
Rashad Thirlkill
Yeah, right about it.
Mitche Graf
Right. So everything I do has a Monetization aspect of it. And it’s not always about making bank. Sometimes, just make it enough to pay for expenses.
My daughter and I wrote a book. This is a crazy story, but I’ve never written a children’s book. I’ve written nine business books, but my seven-year-old and I wrote this book. It’s called Snuggles, Kisses, and Hugs: Have a Party.
Well, she’s doing readings around town to local libraries and every day, Daddy, how much have we made today? Daddy, how much have we made today? So I’m teaching her at a very young age. Think about the money. You spent some time, but now it’s passive income, right?
The work is done. And every single month now she’s going to get 50% of all the money we make in royalties, she’s going to get it put into an account. That’s going to teach her the value of money.
Maybe she’ll come to me and say, hey, dad, can we write another book? Because I want to make more money, right?
Rashad Thirlkill
That’s awesome, man.
Mitche Graf
It was fun. I’ll probably never do it again. One-off. Just write a children’s book, say, I did it. And hopefully, in ten years it still makes you a little bit of money on the side. Because there are some children’s books; the guys are making millions of dollars a month with stuff they did ten years ago.
The work is done. You write it, you’re done.
Rashad Thirlkill
Wow. Well, I know you have to run off and get to the barbecue, man. And it made me kind of hungry. I want to put on a brisket or something.
Mitche Graf
Oh, there you go. There you go. I’ll send you some rub.
Rashad Thirlkill
There you go. Now can you tell us where to find you online?
Mitche Graf
Yeah. My main educational website is just Powermarketing101.com. If you go to Powermarketing101.com/freebook, I’ll give all your fans, listeners, and viewers a free copy of my book – High Voltage Branding: Go from Ordinary to Extraordinary.
It’s just basic personal branding. It’s branding for your business and its basic principles. This is only like 110 pages. It’s a very short read, but kind of wakens your mind up. Oh, I didn’t think about that. If it’s been more than five years since you’ve refreshed your logo, it’s time.
All the big boys do it. Mcdonald’s; if you see a logo from 20 years ago, it looks like it’s 20 years old. The logo of today, they make small minute changes to curves, maybe to colors, but it’s the same logo. It just feels modern.
Your logo, the graphic representation of your brand, needs to be refreshed at least every five years. Don’t change it altogether. You’ll never see Nike changing from the check mark to a circle. It’s always a swoosh, but you look back in the day when they first came out, it looks like it’s an old swoosh. The one today feels like it’s futuristic.
They pay people a lot of money, graphic designers, a lot of money to make sure they stay relevant. So, I recommend it to everybody. Take a look at your logo. Have other people give you feedback. If it’s been more than five years, just get it done.
Rashad Thirlkill
Awesome advice. And is that a PDF download?
Mitche Graf
Yeah, PDF, yeah. You can download it on your phone. Powermarketing101.com.
Rashad Thirlkill
When I promote this podcast, I’m going to definitely put that as a free download.
Mitche Graf
Absolutely. But it talks about coaching and mentoring. It has workshops that I do about me. It’s got a list of all the books. There’s a thing called Hotlist, Mitche’s Hotlist. It’s just reads that you can do not just about business but about mentality, mental approach, and motivation – just different kinds of things that motivated me every single day.
So, I share that hotlist with people but it’s on the powermarketing101.com website.
Rashad Thirlkill
Okay. All right. And what about your socials? Just your name?
Mitche Graf
I’m a guy that doesn’t do a lot of socials. Back when I used to travel 25, 30 weeks a year, I had like 45,000 fans on Facebook and I shut that account down because I had people showing up in my hotel room at 11:00 at night saying, hey!
I’m like a hermit when I’m not working. I do have a personal Facebook page, just Mitche Graf (facebook.com/mitchegraf) but it’s just a personal page. I do a lot of postings of motivational quotes and sayings, but it’s not a business thing at all.
I’m pretty close to the 5,000 now. You’ll find me there but I don’t spend any time. Social is important. It’s an important aspect but it’s important that you also understand that it’s just one aspect. It should not be everything that you do and it definitely shouldn’t be where you spend all your free time.
If you spend just an hour a day, that’s 365 hours a year. How many eight-hour days is that? That’s a lot. And that time isn’t a 25th hour. It didn’t magically appear. It had to come from somewhere. Something had to give.
Usually, it’s self-improvement, self-education, time with your kids, time with your spouse, or time with yourself. Just hanging out on the back deck with a cup of coffee or cold beer, looking at the birds in the tree grow. That’s important stuff.
Social media kind of sucks the life out of that. So, I just always tell people just watch it. track your time and try to back off. You really have to spend that much time and then figure out what you can do with all this free time, right? Invest it back in your business, invest in playing cribbage with your kids, or just have that cup of coffee by yourself on the back deck.
Rashad Thirlkill
That’s right, man. That’s very important time spent.
Well, thanks a lot for coming on the show.
Mitche Graf
It’s an honor. Absolutely honor.