Unlocking Success: Insights on Business, Self-Awareness, and Intuition with Brad Smith

Tim Melanson: ​ [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the work at home rockstar podcast. Very excited for today’s guest. This sounds like a really interesting interview. We are talking to the owner and founder of stellar insights, Inc. And what he does is he listens, he asks questions and he guides his clients to the next epiphany that they need.

So I’m excited to hear more about that. But first we’re talking with Brad Smith. Hey, Brad, you ready to rock?

Brad Smith: Absolutely.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. We always start off here in a good note. So tell me a story of success in your business that we can all be inspired by.

Brad Smith: I had a client about 10 years ago. I’ve been in business for 28, but 10 years ago. Um, and when I started with him, which was probably February, the year before, they’d done 13. 8 million dollars, 13. 7 million, somewhere in that range. By 16 point, excuse me. So it went [00:01:00] from three, 3. 5, if I misspoke, to 6. 7. The next year we had him at, um, 9. 8 million, somewhere in that range. And the following year, the last year I worked with him, he was at, um, 12. 9 million. The year after that, with all the things we’d done, and we’d restructured literally the whole company, Um, he went from 12. 9 to 13. 2, but he multiplied his profit by.

a factor of five. Five. I made the man a million.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s amazing. Yeah. Sometimes it’s not just the revenue, right? It’s the profit that matters.

Brad Smith: Yes. And I watch both.

Tim Melanson: Then you watch both. Awesome. So now along with the good note though, so not everything goes as planned. There’s some things that might, you know, not necessarily work to the exact [00:02:00] plan that you had and those mistakes are okay. I mean, they, you know, usually lead to something better, but I’m wondering, can you share with us, with us something, something, you know, a bad note that happened in your business that we can learn from or how you recovered from it?

Brad Smith: Easy. Okay. First off, I look at failures as the whole process. When we learn how to walk, we fall down a lot before we actually get good at it?

Okay. So mistakes are that way. I’ve gone through a period. Of about five years recently, and I’ve only put the pieces together literally in the last two months.

Five years I’ve been looking for new ways to get clients because email, or me at least, has essentially died as a way to get new clients. And so What I’ve been doing is struggling like I have, you know, lots of stories in that, but essentially I’ve had so income here requirements here, and [00:03:00] I’ve been in that level for about 5 years.

Okay, um, move cities. I went to Las Vegas, live there for 2 and a half years. For a client fired in three months in and then because of the pandemic and a couple other things and my income I couldn’t get home back to portland. Um stayed there had fun there And then figured my way. So finally finally i’m going to drag in a couple extra things here in the last six months I put together, I found, um, an assistant, a marketing assistant over in the Philippines, who I talk to every morning at 6.

30 my time. Um, and she, uh, she does my, my potential client research and my outreach. Then I have another woman that I hired about two months ago, who in the Philippines also, [00:04:00] who does my cold calling. I’m, I’m a good salesperson, or at least I thought I was. Right. And, um, so I’ve learned how to taught her how to, um, do the outreach and she’s brilliant at it.

So that’s that put that together. So delegation is important. And the way I do it with my clients, one of the very, very first conversations I have with a client is, what are you doing that you have no business doing that you can hire for a lot less money than your time is worth. Right. Right? We do what I call the plate exercise.

We list out the time, we list out the duties, and then we go down through and start building out a delegation list. What do they need to do? And then, we match that to cash flow. You can’t outgrow your cash flow, ever.

Tim Melanson: What do you think tends to be, like, is there sort of like a pattern to that question? Like, is [00:05:00] there something that usually comes up that people should be delegating first?

Brad Smith: Well, administrative stuff, bookkeeping, that sort of thing, those are the first?

things. It depends on what you’re good at. If you really get it, let’s put it this way. I’m an extrovert, and I’m gregarious, so I’m good at outreach. But, um, people that are introverted may not have that same set of skills. I’m analytical, but I’m also really deeply emotional.

I’ve learned through my life to master that. So, I tell people I’m bordering on ancient, but not quite there yet.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, and it tends to be that there are, you know, really those two different sides of the spectrum and entrepreneurs can fall on either one. Either you can be, you know, more of the salesy type person or more the behind the scenes type person, but both of those can be successful in business, right? As a, as an owner.

Brad Smith: It takes certain sets of skills in [00:06:00] a business to make it work. You have to have sales, you have to have marketing. If you don’t have sales, then you’re dead, right? You have no business. So growing up, I watched my dad, we moved from Evansville, Indiana to Corvallis, Oregon to Oregon, essentially. And I watched my dad start or be involved in the details of the front end of 34 companies.

So 34 startups, and in that process, every one of those stories would come through the house. Who you pick as your partners, if you’re going to have partners, is critical. Very, very important. Never have a business where you’re 50 50. I don’t care if it’s 51 49 or whatever. Never have a 50 50. Because I’ve got a client who’s in that right now, and he’s been trying to figure out how to get out of that for the last six years.

So,

Tim Melanson: That’s been the bad note of several other podcast actually is that exact thing that you just said to 50 50. It’s a [00:07:00] recipe for disaster, right?

Brad Smith: Nope, it’s a disaster. Yep.

Tim Melanson: I mean, it makes sense because I mean, people change over time. I mean, you, you might have some visions that slightly change and now who, who, who gets to lead the way. Right.

Brad Smith: Everyone has their own sets of skills and capabilities. Um, what is it? Rocket Fuel, the book, Rocket Fuel. There’s a test that goes with it. Are you really good at inventing and creating and imagining? Or are you really good at operations? It’s a rare, rare human that can do both well. It’s Rocket Fuel.

Tim Melanson: Well, you probably wouldn’t have the time to do both anyway. Right. I mean, especially when your business starts to scale and starts to grow. Right.

Brad Smith: You can’t scale a business and do operations a lot. You have to be back. So the whole point is you’re constantly delegating until you do nothing in the business except overview and vision for the [00:08:00] future.

Tim Melanson: Now I found when you’re working from home, especially like I, You know, it can be a challenge to find a really good productive space to be productive in in your home What you know, what are your thoughts on that? Like how does your jam room work?

Brad Smith: I, I need my physical space. So, um, living with my girlfriend, she has her office way up in the other story. And mine’s here. Uh, mine’s like, what is this? 10 by 10, if you would, and it’s just my office and I have to have that. I can close the doors it, you know, my noise gets, you know, more sequestered here so it doesn’t bother other people in the house.

Um, so, everyone. I’m going to add a piece. Everyone headspace. Right? Your headspace is the most important thing you have. Everyone else, [00:09:00] every one of us, all 8 billion of us on this planet, all humans, live in their own bubble. And what’s going to help you be productive in your bubble is important for you to know.

So self awareness, self building who you are, that’s important.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I I find that uh Self awareness is a Tricky one, isn’t it? And and I mean, it’s I I think the best I you know, uh example I had of that is just you know We all have this blind spot whether we like it or not that we can’t see So You know, maybe it helps to have somebody to cover that blind spot. Is that what you found?

Brad Smith: Um. There’s a, there’s a thing called the Johari window, J O H R I, I believe, um, and there’s the part of that, so it’s quadrants, what you know and what everybody else knows, right, [00:10:00] and what, the known, the unknown. So, there’s the part where you know the same as like the public part, right, who I am with everybody else, right.

And everybody else knows that too. It’s out in the open, right? Then there’s the part that everybody knows that you don’t know. That’s, that’s a blind spot, if you would. It’s not a total blind spot, but it’s, it’s, and that’s where other people, that’s why we invented more than one human in the world, right?

So that we get to share what we know with each other. Right? The people that love and care about you, right? And there’s no one where everybody hates you, right? There’s people in your life that are dear to you. Have conversation with them. I have a process that I take with my clients, take them through. I have them, I send them a values list.

It’s like five columns for a whole sheet. And they mark off the ones that are important. And the ones they want to grow in. And I have them give that to their partner. www. larryweaver. [00:11:00] com Whatever, right? And then go down that for themselves, and then they come back together. I had a client when I first started doing this.

He was an attorney. He came back to me after he’d done this and then shared it with his wife. He said, I’m scared because my wife and I share no values. I said, Sit down, talk through it, and find ones that you can share, and work together. You have to have things you share, right? So, blind spots, that’s what every human being is for, to share with you.

That’s the point of a coach. They’ll be honest with you, and they’ll guide you to what you can’t see. So there’s the part you know, there’s the part that you know that nobody else knows. I call that private information, not secret. Learn more at www. coyote. com Private, right? It’s a choice. Then there’s the part that everybody else knows that you don’t know, right?

That’s your blind spot. And then there’s the part that nobody else knows and you don’t [00:12:00] know. That’s the unknown. And my whole goal in my life, and that’s part of why I named it Stellar Insight, um, is because there’s things about the universe that we don’t know that We are destined to learn. That’s the whole point of this Earth.

So that we can learn how to be amazing. And I think we can be.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah. I’m quite spiritual. And I mean, as I get older, it gets even more because, you know, I guess, I guess there’s, there’s just so much that happens. I mean, we talk about, uh, instinct and gut feelings a lot on this podcast and you just, you can’t really. Explain that. But you know, when we talk about the good note, the bad note, especially the bad note, almost everybody says I had, I just had a gut feeling that it was a bad idea and I didn’t listen to it.

And then this happened, right? Or on the good note, I just had a gut. I just felt like the tingles and I just, [00:13:00] I went this in this direction. You can’t explain that,

Brad Smith: Oh, I can.

Tim Melanson: it’s big.

Brad Smith: I literally can explain it.

Tim Melanson: Explain it.

Brad Smith: I’m a 29 year meditator. And I’ve been studying, literally since I was 18. So, a good 60 years. I’ve been studying how we are who we are. Right? And meditation allows you to be still and still be active. Okay? The whole point of meditation is eventually, so there’s being present and being not present.

Right? So we’ve all. had moments where we realized we weren’t paying attention and we brought ourselves back to present. Okay? Presence, if you would. And meditation is the exercise of that will of being present. Okay? Okay? And you learn how to regulate that. Okay.

I have on my, literally on my desk, this [00:14:00] book here by a practitioner I visited recently.

Okay? Neuro, Neurofeedback. Okay? And I, then I have another one. have not read this yet, but I’ve been through a bunches of it.

Tim Melanson: Altered traits.

Brad Smith: Altered traits.

science reveals how meditation changes your mind, brain, and body.

Tim Melanson: Cool.

Brad Smith: It does. Okay. What happens? I use a ME two. Two MES methods. One is transcendental meditation. I start that when I hit consciousness in the morning, and then the other one is.

Uh, from Synchronicity. org, um, it’s, um, biofeed, it’s a binaural beat. So you put one beat in here, one sound in here, and your brain tunes across it. So what happens over time with meditation, and this accelerates that, is it, It builds neural pathways [00:15:00] across the brain. And so when you can build neural pathways across the brain, you find that you’re not working.

So there’s five brainwave levels, and I finally understand the fifth one, beta, Beta is where we do our analytical thinking. Alpha is where we do our, our kind of imagination work, right? You’re washing dishes, you’re in alpha. Driving down the road, you know, can’t remember where you were, you’re in alpha, right?

Theta is the bottom or the top part of a sleep, 90 minute sleep cycle. You go in, you go out, you’re in theta. Delta is the bottom 30 minutes of a 90 minute sleep cycle. It’s the lowest, slowest brainwave we have. And when you learn how to meditate, I can literally, because I’ve been doing it a long time, shift my consciousness through the different brainwave levels and still be active and conscious. Okay, the fifth one, I [00:16:00] just finally understood literally this month, uh, is Gamma, and Gamma is, uh, you can look up YouTubes on it, um, Gamma is where the whole brain is synchronized all at once. whole brain synchronization. Now, when you have that, they have what they call, um, Olympic meditators that have med Get this.

Do the math. 62, 000 hours, uh, in a lifetime of meditation. Do the math. Right? That’s a decade, or more, of 8 hours a day, 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day of meditation. That’s intense. These people, they shift their consciousness, and their whole brain goes to gamble. Boom. Just like that. What I have found, is that when I, and I started this, I was doing some practices, I was an analytical chemist before I did, uh, [00:17:00] coaching.

And that meant that I would take a problem on, I’d have to put a formula to it, so I was a formulation chemist, analytical chemist. I was standing in the middle of my lab one day, and I’d been about nine months into this process, and I realized I felt that I could hold six times as much information in my mind and correlate it and feel the correlation as I was thinking about it. Here’s an example. I moved into a house that had been my second ex wife’s. office and I had to rebuild it so we could sell it. And the bathroom in the front end of the house was six feet, no, seven feet by eight feet. And it was off from level two and a half inches from level one direction and five eighths inches the other direction.

And I’ve, I woke up day after day after trying to figure out what, how the heck I was going to solve that problem. And I realized that I [00:18:00] had this kinesthetic. So the feel of it a kinesthetic three dimensional modeling ability inside that space in my mind, that I could lay out the whole bathroom, figure out that the middle of the sill, thank god the door sill was at the high point, and I could use a straight edge, you know how hard a straight board is to get?

Anyway, and use that, swing it across, And make it level to that point across the whole room and then rebuild the joists and rebuild the floor and then titled it right. So, um, but that three dimensional modeling thing never went away. I had the ability to do that with businesses. I had it to be able to do it with human beings.

So when I look at a human being, I feel their whole character, literally feel it. And I can help them feel the [00:19:00] things that they need in order to get that. I had a client when I first started with him. And he’s a different story, but, um, I asked him why does he want to do his business and he said to make money.

I said, garbage. It’s only a tool. What do you want the money for? And he said, this, this, this, and this. It took me two years to break him out of that idea. It’s like, it’s not just about money. Yeah, making money is good. It’s important. But it’s only a tool. It is an expression, if you would. It’s a symptom of how Well, you run your life in your business.

Think about that. It’s a symptom of how well you are aware of yourself, how well you are aware of the situation you’re in, in your business, and how aware you are of the world and the market you’re serving. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: Well, let’s get into that then. Let’s talk a little bit about cash flow and making sure that you’re making more money than you’re spending. [00:20:00] Cause it seems to me that that’s a, that’s an issue with, um, maybe, maybe even less with business owners, I think then with the average person, but, uh, maybe not. I don’t know.

What do you

Brad Smith: I don’t know. Okay, so, went through the separation with my first wife. That was hard, but I moved out. I figured I could be a better parent outside the house than I could inside me. So, took care of my kids, took care of the bills. Um, and when I, and I was working a, you know, an income job, right? I’m not working for myself yet.

And I had a buck and a half every two weeks. I had to track my money very, very tight. So I had enough for a gallon of milk every two weeks, right? Fortunately, I’d moved in with my folks for a while. So I could, I had a way to feed myself, but I had a buck and a half. It’s like, if you’re that tight up against the wall, you have to [00:21:00] track everything. So you can’t go over.

I look at it this way. Integrity is the governing value for who I am, and my ability to write a check and pay for something has to be the truth. Can’t be a bad check. So given that integrity and honesty is important to me, I use that as my gauge to find out whether I’m overdrawn or not, whether I’m going to.

So I don’t write a check. Or make a commitment without knowing that I’ve got 100 percent already in place. Watch your cash flow, right? So I have this big spreadsheet. I started out before spreadsheets were available, right? And did it on paper. But build it out. Every one of us has bills that are coming in.

You know when they’re due. And you know when your money is coming in. [00:22:00] And if you live inside your means. You can make it work.

Tim Melanson: I’m a spreadsheet person too. I, and I track everything and I track it almost every day. But, um, I’m wondering, do you think that that’s something that everybody has the ability to do? Or are there some people that are just more numbers people?

Brad Smith: I’m a numbers person, but I’m also an emotional person, so you can do both, okay? You can do both. Look at it this way. How many of you learned how to learn how to walk? All of us, right? How many of us, most of us, Learn how to speak, right? So if you learn how to do those core things, how many of you that are listening to you don’t know the alphabet?

Go learn it, right? If you know the alphabet, I remember learning the alphabet, right? So, all of that is something, and all it is is repetition. It takes [00:23:00] 72 repetitions by a child to memorize permanently a single letter of the alphabet. You don’t have to work that hard at addition and subtraction, multiplication and division.

Those are the easy things, right? I have a client that I’m working through that, and she’s in her 50s, God bless her, right? But she’s getting it, I’m dogged. I will stand by someone until they can.

Tim Melanson: I agree with you, Brad. I think, I think everybody has the ability to do it. And really the ones who can’t or can’t, I guess, won’t think that there’s probably some, some, some bad programming there that maybe holds them back. But, uh, you know, I I’m with you. I think everybody should learn their own budget rather than, uh, you know, having.

I don’t know. That’s sort of like, Oh, it comes in, it goes, it goes, whatever, because that’s when things get messy.

Brad Smith: what’s the difference between an adult and a child? [00:24:00]

Tim Melanson: Uh, age.

Brad Smith: Nope. Responsibility. An adult is responsible and aware and commits to being responsible. A child is not. So maturity is the difference between being able to run your life, and this is hard, folks. It’s like, run your life well or not. Everything that comes to me as a failure, all the things I’m not good at, I either learn my way through or I don’t.

I have a story. This is not short. This will be quick, but it drags us into a bunch of stuff. When I was 18, fall term, freshman year at Oregon State, and in chemical engineering, I developed an ulcerated colon. And the doctor said to me when I got to him in December, three sentences that one of this is okay.

We learned three ways, whispers, messages, and brick walls. This was one of my brick walls. Okay. The [00:25:00] doctor said to me, gee, Brad, if you’d have waited six weeks to come see me, you would have bled to death. Literally. I didn’t know it was that bad. Okay. So brick wall. He had my attention. Right? Then he said, you’ll never eat strawberries, corn, or lettuce, or anything with roughage ever again in your life.

And he paused, and let that sink in, and my brain said, fat chance, buddy. That’s not happening. Then he said, you have a psychosomatic disease. I knew what that meant. Your emotions affect the severity of your symptoms, and in that instant, in that instant, I made a 100 percent commitment to conquer the disease from the inside out.

I studied my emotions. I studied my body. yeah. I changed my diet for a while, right? And then I found out that Um, you know, all of those things happened, I tracked it, I got the bleeding stopped down to intermittent, like once a, [00:26:00] you know, two or three times a year. I got it down to that in about eight, nine months.

I got the pain, which was constant, down and diminished by about year four, okay? So constant feedback on that, right? And then 29 years later, I tracked back in my memory and mapped out all my memories of decisions. Who we are right now is a record of all the decisions we’ve made before we were conscious and after.

I found a memory that I had that was conscious. That I knew about. Went back in with hypnosis. I was about 11 months old, I think. I was, had the lid off the diaper pail. I was swirling the diapers because I just thought it was cool and it looked neat and there was clouds behind it. My poor mom freaked out, spanked me for the first time, I think, and, um, washed my hands and did all that.

But the [00:27:00] point is, I went back in with hypnosis. hypnosis and reworked that memory from an adult perspective instead of Uh, child, you know, 11 month old perspective, and I had gone from condition, unconditional love to conditional love at that moment at 11 months. And that was the core of my colitis. So what that taught me was, Tracking everything, being aware of myself first, and my emotions first, and then getting to the place where I knew my character consciously, because I rebuilt it from scratch. So, list out who you are, talk to the people that are close to you, find out who you are. what your bad traits are, right? And then learn from that.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Brad Smith: And then you are who you are for decisions that you’ve made. In my case, I [00:28:00] believe millennium, and you can rebuild it now. If no one in your family has ever been a millionaire before, decide you’re going to be a millionaire and you’re going to learn all the skills you need from your core out. And then start figuring out how to add zeros. That’s the whole point of the business, adding zeros, but also self restructuring. Let me put it this way. You can’t grow a company or a country beyond the limitations of the leader. So

Tim Melanson: Agreed.

Brad Smith: if you’re stuck in your business, look here first. And get input here first, and then, you know, if you want, call me.

Tim Melanson: Well, Hey, it’s time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting your business right now. Let’s get into this.

Brad Smith: Um, Well, I love helping people become millionaires. I love that. Right? I have [00:29:00] two clients I’m going to help be billionaires. It’s just the industry they’re in. and what they personally are capable of. Okay, that’s, I like that, that’s exciting to me. I have a class, it’s on my, um, called the Deep Intuition Masterclass.

I know the process, because I was a chemist, right? I know the process I went through to get where I am right now with my intuitive capabilities. Being able to look at someone, read their character, unless they’re actively lying, right? But read their character and know what they need to know in order to grow to what’s possible.

The epiphanies, if you would. Everyone has epiphanies they need, right? In order to get the extra zeros. Call me. I can work with that. So deep intuition is a class I want to teach, but I need people to show up and want that. There.

Tim Melanson: Well, what kind of person would get the [00:30:00] most out of it then?

Brad Smith: Human.

Tim Melanson: Anybody?

Brad Smith: It’s not cheap.

Tim Melanson: need to be in a certain spot?

Brad Smith: Um, I would say, So I’ve been told that, um, I’ve been told, I had a client, I was going to operate for a grand a month, because it’s good, deep information. And it’s about an 18 month process, right? He said, no, that is not enough to get corporations to pay for it. You have to charge two grand a month for it.

Show up. We’ll see what you can afford over a 18 month period to get something that’s tenuous at first, and then get to the place where when you look at a situation, imagine living in living in a room where you have access to all the epiphanies you need.

Tim Melanson: So how do we find out more then?

Brad Smith: Stellar Insight inc.com. Sign up for a half hour [00:31:00] conversation with me. Let’s see where it goes.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Is there any way that we can get to know more about you too?

Brad Smith: There’s a lot of information On the website. Um, when Tim gets this to me, we will have this up on the website. And, um, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. also.

Tim Melanson: On LinkedIn. Good. Right on. Brad, this has been a lot of fun. This has been eye opening. It’s very cool conversation. I loved it.

Brad Smith: We need have more people that are capable of the brilliance they’re capable of.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. Awesome. So thanks again for rocking out with me today, Brad. To the listeners, make sure you subscribe, rate, and comment. We’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar podcast.