His Successful Business Felt Like Chaos And How He Found Peace With Evans Putman

00:52 Introduction of Evans

I'm very excited to welcome Evans Putman as a guest today, today and next time. Actually, evans is the founder of podcast profit school and he's also the creator of the podcast ATM business model, infinite Impact Method and the Surfpreneur Blueprint. And get this. His trainings are licensed by and featured in ClickFunnels founder Russell Branson's high-ticket coaching programs. Evans is on a mission to help entrepreneurs like us to build purpose-driven, profitable businesses, create more time freedom and create infinite positive impact to change lives. We had such a rich conversation that I decided for the first time to make a two-part series out of this interview. Today you're gonna hear part one, but then make sure you're subscribed and follow the podcast so you don't miss out on part two that comes out next week.

So here, in part one, Evans talks about why he had to step away from a successful business, which he calls was chaos back then, to focus more on himself and to be a better father, husband and human, which he considers peace. He shares the steps he took to make this change happen, and the first step after starting his new life might surprise you, but he calls it very critical. In part two next week, evans will talk about how this new found peace brought even more success to him and his business, why to ask for help is important for your business, and when and how he gets ideas for his programs, like the podcast profit school. Also, what the biggest mistake podcasting entrepreneurs make when it comes to growing their audience. But, like I said first, we're listening to part one today, so without further ado, let's jump into this conversation with Evans Putman. Welcome, evans, I'm really excited to have you as a guest on my podcast. How are you today?

Evans Putman

I'm great, Conny, thank you for having me grateful for the opportunity to come on in and share and serve your audience.

Conny Graf

Yeah, well, I'm very excited for you to come and share. So first I always ask, because I have an international audience where in the world are you located for my people? And also tell us one thing about you that has nothing to do with what we're talking afterwards, like something surprising, or something maybe less surprising for the people who know you, but surprising for the listeners in context of what we're talking about afterwards.

Evans Putman

Okay, well, I'm in Charleston, south Carolina, down by the one of the older cities in the US, very beautiful place to live, near the ocean, lots of history, lots of great food, lots of museums, lots of art and, yeah, it's a beautiful place to live, beautiful place to visit. If anybody wants to come visit, they can always they'll know how to get in touch with me right reach out to me. I'll give you some restaurant restaurant recommendations or something.

Conny Graf

That's always good.

Evans Putman

And I guess you know this is sort of most people in the online space don't really know everything about my future, or my future or my future or my past?

Conny Graf

How much do you know about your future?

Evans Putman

I know. Right, let me tell you. I would say one thing that's interesting is that you know and this is like in the early 90s I before we had too much access to internet and you know all kind of knew basically anything and everything we wanted to know with the flip of a switch, I packed up everything I owned into my little car and left the east coast of the US and drove all the way across the country to go to live in Los Angeles, california, and I worked at a record company and actually had a hair down to my past, my shoulders, to the middle of my back, and worked with a rock and worked with a heavy metal band and worked in a record label called metal blade records in Ventura, california. So that was a fine period of my life.

That is that I look back on now and I reflect on some of the stuff that you, you know the courage to actually do. That reminds me of the entrepreneurial journey, for many of your listeners probably are people who are like, sort of like. They have this feeling, this calling to do something. It's like you know what. Just go for it. It didn't turn out the way I expected, but it turned out the way it was supposed to and I came back safe and sound. And then, you know, at some point I ended up like I think I left all my hair in California.

Conny Graf

I just wanted to say, for all the people that are only listening, he has a lot of hair right now, so you must have lost it somewhere in between. Yeah, yeah.

Evans Putman

At one point I decided it was better to just shave it off. And you know, then I got. I got used to the, to the way it looked and felt. So it's been like this for probably like 20 years now.

Conny Graf

Yeah, yeah, I love that story. It's a great story. I'm a bit adventurous too, so I think that's really like a nice adventure that maybe a lot of people wouldn't expect if they see you especially not the part with the long hair.

Evans Putman

But I like it.

Conny Graf

I love this question. When I figured out this to ask my guest this question, there's so many fun stories coming out or so many interesting things I discover about my guests, so yeah, it's not, it's not nice to talk about long hair and heavy metal or rock band.

Evans Putman

But I appreciate you asking me that question because a lot of times you're right, you don't get to share. You sort of get caught sharing the same stories over and over and so many podcasts that it's nice to go like on a little detour every now and then just to, because it was actually I'll share this kind and then we'll dive. I know you got questions for me, but it was on a podcast. When somebody asked me that kind of question that I remembered, I was like they asked me something around my entrepreneurial journey how did it start, you know? And I was like, oh my gosh, I've been doing this for like 20 plus years now, so it didn't even register at the time. But then it sort of took me backwards to this place where I remembered I forgot all about that. That was like part of my journey that I created.

Conny Graf

So it's nice to get different questions like that from time to time, and I actually don't look at it as taking a detour. I look at it as almost like setting the stage so that the people get a little bit of a glimpse of a different events than what we're talking afterwards. And that might even help sometimes the listeners to relate to what you're saying better or that they might be more interested to listening. It's not just some boring business podcast or something.

Evans Putman

Right.

Conny Graf

Yeah, that's my idea and besides, I just love to hear a different side of my guests too. But yeah, now I have lots of questions. I want to dive in, because you wrote to me and said that you have an awesome story how you left a successful business, which you called chaos, to focus more on yourself, which then you called peace, and to become a better father, husband and human, and I find that is very brave. But now, after hearing your story about going to Los Angeles, that's just like adventurous again. But so I know the story, why, but maybe you could give us for the listeners the reasons why you left a successful business to and you called it chaos. I would like to know.

Evans Putman

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know, it's funny is, I think, is the chaos is probably more of a creation of my own mind than what was actually happening, but so that that sort of preframes it. So now we'll dive into the story, right? But I was working at the time as I explained to you. It was sort of a new venture. I found myself in the podcast space, you know, by circumstance, life, right, it took me in that direction and I went from being having a partner who was you know, I was, he was my client and I was the person that was helping him with his marketing and his sales strategy to becoming a partner in the business and we became very successful with the podcast.

It was one of I would probably say one of the top two or three podcast in the world in its genre in the real estate space and we sold real estate sales training and the one thing I loved about it was it had an underlying mission. That was really my partner's vision, because he was the expert behind the microphone. I was sort of the guy behind the curtain pulling all the strings, turning it into a business, right, Turning it into an actual real business. It had a mission of really not just teaching people how to make money, but teaching them how to work less, create more freedom and be able to spend more time with their family. And I don't remember if it was you and I that had this discussion when it all of a sudden it hit me the irony behind it.

Conny Graf

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was our great dad, because that's that's where I'm thinking, that's where the chaos came from.

Evans Putman

Yes, I know right, and it's interesting because you actually and that was the beautiful thing about our pre-chat is you brought that up and I was like I never even saw that perspective before. But you know, the business was doing well, it was doing successful. We had grown a small team. I was pretty much like the chief marketing operator officer and the chief operating officer all in one, and while we were creating freedom for everybody else, I found myself working extra long hours, stressed all the time, not happy. Things were going great in the business. It was, you know, trajectory was sky high. We basically went from zero to half a million in the first 12 months and then it went beyond seven figures. So everything was going great in that side of things, but it was. It was like I was. I was probably working more than I ever worked before. It was like I couldn't. Your mind was just caught in the chaos of not being able to break free from work. Even when I was at home with my family, right, even when on the weekends with my wife and young daughter, is like I just couldn't get away from it. It constantly looking at your phone, constantly replying to messages, just, and when I look back at it. Now, it's not that it didn't have to be that way, but it was on. I was the one creating the chaos. I was the one stuck in this mode because you don't know what you don't know, you don't, I didn't, I didn't know how to do it differently at the time and so, yeah, so that was the chaos of it and it became. It got to a point where I just was. You know one.

There were two, two instances that happened. I think I shared with you the one. We went to a marketing conference and I was really surprised at this conference I'd never been to one before. There's like four, five thousand people there. I'm expecting all the people to get up on stage and talk about how much money they're making and how they like show pictures of their cars or whatever. Person after person that came up there. They talked about changing lives, creating impact. They would share stories of people in their community and how you know their stories of how they had had a total like life change for the better, and that was where I sort of had this little whisper in my ear that was like you know, this is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to be one of those people on the stage You're supposed to be creating more impact, and that was sort of the seed that was planted amidst all this chaos.

And when we got back, I couldn't quit thinking about that for one, and we had about six to eight months before I finally made a decision on that. But also it was at the point where everything was just so stressful and I just wasn't happy. I was gaining a lot of weight. I wasn't healthy mentally, spiritually, physically, you name it. You had an LY. I wasn't healthy in it right. So that's when I made the decision. I was like you know what? I got to do something about this, and I do feel called to create a bigger impact. I knew I'd created a system, the way we did, that would allow you to create a big audience to get your message and mission out there. And I knew I could take that and help other people do it. And I knew if I did that, then I was sort of fulfilling my purpose of going bigger than just that one, helping that one person get their mission out, and so that eventually I remember it.

I remember exactly when it was too, because it was right after the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, because Thanksgiving, I knew I'd reached out to my partner. I was like, can we meet when the holidays are over? And he was like, yes, so throughout all of I couldn't even really enjoy Thanksgiving because I was creating a conversation that was never going to happen in my mind between me and him the worst case scenario, that's all I could think of. And I kept running these scenarios in my mind and imagining it. You know, making this creation. That wasn't even. It never happened that way.

But we met at a Starbucks in downtown Charleston and I remember like just being so nervous. Of course my ego is thinking, if I leave, the whole team is going to fall apart, the business is going to fall apart. None of that happened. They did great, but I remember. This is why I really and I still think of Pat as more than a business partner. He's more of a friend and a mentor. When I told him what I wanted to do, he just looked at me and he just said how can I help? And that was it.

Conny Graf

That is beautiful

Evans Putman

I know. Right, it blew me away because he was just showing up and shining doing the part of the podcasting. Right, he was the expert and I felt like if I left everything else it would pull the rug out from underneath it. But the beautiful thing was is I don't. When I look back on it, I wasn't giving myself enough credit. I created a system that it kept going.

We would meet from time to time over the next year and it was still just plugging away and in fact they had lost a few team members and he's like we're still doing great. And then he ended up selling the business later. So when I look back at it even though like to circle back to the chaos the chaos wasn't really happening anywhere, except for in my own imagined state. I was allowing it to happen in my world because the business itself was doing great and everything else was doing great.

Conny Graf

Do you think it was? Was your words? You said your ego thought that when you would be leaving would be crumbling or the others would leaving, maybe would be leaving. Maybe you worked so hard also because of that.

No, because you thought, if you would just let off a bit, then and I think this is very common in us, like business owners who are not the paycheck comes in every two weeks and we just know that we sometimes don't know when, when to stop pushing so hard, especially because in the beginning you have to push so hard. And then maybe we missed the point when we and I'm not saying coasting, because that's probably not healthy either, but to to maybe stop pushing so hard. And you said already you did put processes in place so that that it would work like on its own, almost, and you could leave. But then our ego comes into the way and says oh yeah, but no, no, no, it still needs me, it still needs the right hand that touches the processes. Maybe I don't want to put any words in your mouth, but I'm thinking this might be a reason why so many people end up in such an overwhelm or burnout, and I think you caught yourself before you ended up really deep down in in some burnout, right yeah.

Evans Putman

Yeah, I think I definitely know I did. And I think back to your point too, you know, because when we started, it was basically me doing. I built everything from the ground up on the back end, so I knew how everything worked and then, slowly, then I would bring on some team, we would hire a team member and they would do it. But my problem was and I look back, this I take full responsibility because we had an amazing team. We had people that could do great work, but I don't think I trusted them enough.

I didn't know how to manage a team. I'd never, I had never been in that position before. So but instead of figuring out the path forward now, I think I do a much better job where I'm just, like you know what this person is really good at, what they do. I need to just trust them and let them do it. But that was the thing too, is that, even though I'd built the systems, even though I'd hired the team, I wasn't separate from it. I didn't allow myself to allow others to just be successful without me having to feel like I needed to answer. It was very much a micromanagement type situation. But you know and I give myself grace now looking back at it, just because it was something that I'd never done before. I'd never really run a team like that before, so it was a little bit of a learning experience.

Conny Graf

Well, that's what they're saying, right, when you reflect on so-called mistakes, right, which yours wasn't a mistake, you were just like kind of burning yourself out. But when you look at, reflect on so-called mistakes, then it becomes experience and then you actually can turn it around and make something great out of it. And I don't think it helps anyways, to I call that mental clutter and emotional, which leads to emotional clutter. When we start beating ourselves up and hey, I'm the first one who's struggling with that sometimes, right, but when you're looking from the outside and you can see it in somebody, well, it doesn't help. Evans, if you would beat yourself up, it's good. You give yourself grace because you were very successful, you caught yourself and you learned out of it, right, and so that's life. If you wouldn't have done it that way, maybe you wouldn't be where you are. You are where you are because you figured it out.

So I find this is interesting. I think it's way more interesting if people have stories like this, that they learn something out of it, rather than oh yeah, everything went well and I was always looking after myself and after everybody else. Yeah, maybe then you just didn't put yourself into big enough challenges. Maybe, who knows, who knows?

Evans Putman

Yeah, well, I know 100% that I would not be, I would not have the growth that I've had since then if it wasn't for that and you know that was the peace part of it, right, that came after, like, I called the chaos aspect of it and then the peace part. So I know the second part of your original question.

Conny Graf

If you want me to, I'll share, like the next steps and what happened, because that would be my next question because you mentioned to me you said that peace brought actually then a lot of success in your own business and that you were willing to share with us the steps. So I would be interested, because it is a scary thing to leave something so successful behind. Most people would maybe just try to work less and stick there, and so these steps would be very helpful, probably for somebody who is in a similar situation like you are.