John Corcoran 7:04
Yeah, so what point was the the burnout? Because I know you were speaking heavily city, just city 200 or so speeches talks per year. When did that happen?
Iman Aghay 7:15
Yeah, so actually, as part of that, when I found my purpose, I realized that I want to inspire people to build a business that served a life purpose. And I started coaching group of people, and then that turned into a bigger group and bigger group. And by one time, at one point, we were like doing four events a year. And that was going really well. I’m making a lot of difference in people’s lives. And next year with plans to expand the business and we started expanding it to different cities. And I totally forgot that you need to have something called the lifestyle plan. And by that time, I had never heard of a lifestyle plan. And probably most of the people on your show have never heard of life, sod land. And so so I started traveling, and I was doing things I was passionate about, except that I wasn’t building the business build my based on my life is our plan. And within a few months, I found myself doing about 200 live events a year, doing things I was passionate about, but doing it too much. So I always call that killing yourself with passion. And that’s what I was doing. I was doing 200 of live events. And one day, I was in Toronto standing on the stage right before starting a two day seminar. It was 8am Toronto time, which is 5pm my body time I live in on the west coast. And at that point, I realized that I knew that pan and there was this box up and in front of me. For 10 minutes, I froze on the stage not realizing that that’s a box off hand that I need. And I felt Okay, I’m about to do a two day band. But sober and housing can’t even understand there’s a box up handout I need. And that was the time that I actually realized that I got to build my business based on life. So I also want so I chose my soul that day, I actually decided to stop all of my live events. And I saw all my live events, replan My life is I asked myself, why do I how do you want to live, create a life of solid plan and then created the creator the step by step action plan and the business model that could actually serve their life is SoundCloud and relaunched my business. And over time we started doing events again. But then now doing day events in a format that students are my life is solid still, I can do whatever I want to do. And
I can live a life with no regrets in a way.
John Corcoran 9:43
That’s great. And you know, you’ve got a fairly large team now you said you have 41 team members just for one of the businesses? How do you prevent the same types of problems from happening? How do you prevent the burnout from happening? How do you prevent me making mistakes that you had before?
Iman Aghay 10:04
Yeah, absolutely. So um, so first of all, as I said, like, I have something called the lifestyle plan, which is actually every 17 weeks, I worked for 14 weeks and take three weeks off. And and if you do that three times a year, that gives you 51 weeks, and the year is 52 weeks. So the last one, I take four weeks off. So that gives me about 10 weeks of vacation every year and kind of at times when I will get stressed. Like my not telling you, they don’t get the stress, I don’t tell you that I don’t work myself sometimes to exhaustion, but also at some point, they are also the things that I love and enjoy a nice exciting. And what I do though, is I realized that I’m doing these in the sprints, and then after the screen to actually go on rest. And I enjoy life and all of it actually right now, one of the things I really like to do is create creating cases that is like real life cases, that is for my students to show them exactly how they can do things. And one of the cases those I’m doing right now is I’m building I’m building a six figure business in 47 days.
And kind of
now this is while I’m running to other seven figure businesses and and i also I kind of get an update on it like a nightly updates to my students, I like exactly what it is I did every day. And one of the things I’ve actually shared with them in those updates that how, although I’m running to seven figure business, I’m building one six figure business absolutely from scratch with no investment, I still take the time to go on a date with my wife, I still took the time, like two days ago, I was in LA and I actually drove all the way up to to visit my sister and see my niece and spend like half a day with them. And couple of weeks ago, I was like kind of being like completely log off and like unplugged from like everything else. Just kind of spent three days with my friends family, and then came back and, you know, it’s like, I tried to keep the balance. And this is all while I’m on like a kind of a healthy eating plan and exercise and walk at least 10,000 steps every day. So it’s kind of like, you kind of build the muscles, but but you have to kind of be aware of them and know what muscles you want to be out and kind of you build the muscles over time you improve you grow, and at times you fail. But what matters is that you actually not forget that that’s totally okay to fail. And you can actually just kind of get up tomorrow and just continue doing it and, and not give up all entirely. You know, as part of that exhaustion part that we were talking in 2015, I was 280 pounds, and beginning of 2015. And because I was so stressed, I was always Solar Warden was constantly eating hotel rooms and rest right? Then I took about seven months to lose 80 pounds, and I went to 200 pounds. But then over the next two, three years, I gained about 69 pounds of that 80 pounds back. And everybody was like oh man, you know, like you’re gaining weight, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, You know what, that’s sort of normal, like I have fought for most of my life, I haven’t built the muscles on how to actually keep my weight down. And now I built a muscle and learning how to actually control it. And you know, this is part of the process. And so I learned how to actually do that on a regular basis. And kind of right now I can actually speak to my eyes and ears and you know, like lost 35 pounds since the beginning of the year. But what I’m saying is that sometimes you sometimes you do something, you have the instant success, but then you actually go back and really look at your failure. But then what matters is that you you keep true to that goal. And you keep trying to get your goal regardless of what that looks like right now today like, and that’s the same thing with business business, sometimes your large business you go successful, then you become a successful. And then as long as you don’t give up as long as you keep trying, and you find ways that you can make it work. And everybody that person is kind of has worked on some so some people, physically some people emotional some people buy, what matters is that you just keep working on them.
John Corcoran 14:19
Now I want to ask you about this. Taking three weeks off in 14 weeks, it seems like kind of different from what most people do, you know, the rhythms of other people. So if you’re just taking a three week block off in the middle of nowhere, you’ve got 40 people working for you and one business, people working for you and other businesses. How do you manage all that? And, you know, with people with business still continuing on? And? And also, you know, is that something? How do you manage the team to like to the team get the same amount of vacation? Or did they resent the boss? Because he’s taking all this time off?
Iman Aghay 14:58
Well, you know,
I think my team agrees that I work as hard as every single one of them. And and sometimes I work harder than them for many days. And there are times that actually my team comes back to me and says, you know, you really need to take some rest, you need to go on vacation. I’m like, Guys, don’t worry about the I’m good. I don’t think actually ever my team, at least as far as I know, you know, maybe maybe they do have that. But I don’t think actually, my team members think that they’re actually
kind of don’t work or don’t to do the things that I’m supposed to do.
John Corcoran 15:34
That’s a good message. So it’s so it’s, you know, the message to the team is Look, I’m working as hard as you are I’m just doing it at different times different pacing, you know, when I am working for that 14 week sprint, I’m, I’m working just as hard as you are. And on average, it balances out.
Iman Aghay 15:51
Yeah, exactly. And the other piece of that is that by going when you are like I have 4041 team members in one of the companies but that doesn’t mean that I’m managing them. So that’s also another piece that actually a lot of people kind of by default think that that is like because I have 41 team members that means that I’m managing them so the teams are divided into smaller groups and the smaller groups have their own managers have their own team leaders have the people that own their own projects. And and then I have my reps. We have something called Imani team and then we have something called success or the academy team or JB ICP more so Mr. steamers five people that are actually there with me on every company that I have, and and success for the academy team article award for Success Academy, our JV ICT Mr. were people who work for JV IC or, you know, inspirational speakers Institute’s team, are we on board for that Institute. So these, these group of people, like they have their own managers and stuff like that. Now I have my superstar like every single one of my teammates, they’re superstars. Like, every single one of the things and I think one of the things that I mastered, is hiring amazing team members. And Funny enough, we, you know, a lot of people say hire Fast Five, hire slow fire fast. And I don’t agree with that at all. Like, we hire slowly fire much, much, much slower. And And why is that? taking more time to see if you can rehabilitate someone? Well, I learned that because one time I made a mistake. And, and as soon as I made the mistake, I was thinking if I was my own employee, I would fire myself. And then I couldn’t because I was just stuck with me. And I when I didn’t, then I learned how to not to make that mistake again. So I never made that mistake again. And then that moment, I realized Holy crap, like, we are actually spending so much money on training our team with them making mistakes, and then when they make a mistake, we fire them. Instead of saying, okay, I just kind of hundred thousand dollars training you. So I’m not going to kind of lose that right? Few months later. Later, later. My JV manager made a mistake that costs us hundred thousand dollars in an hour. Like literally he cost us hundred thousand dollars in an hour. And he was very stressed. And I called him and he’s like, dude, I’m gonna quit. I’m like, why would you want to quit? And he’s like, because like, I screwed up so bad. This is awful. I’m like, I just spent $100,000 to train you. I’m not gonna let you go like, like, you literally cost me under $1,000 to learn how not to make that mistake. You’re never gonna make that mistake ever again. Your your job? Are you gonna make that mistake? Like No, never like, okay, that’s all I want to see matters. It’s just a $900,000 in training. Right? And, and like, that’s the part that people don’t understand that you, you we hire soft skills we hire, we hire people that are superstars at heart, we hire people that want to actually do their best. And, and we train them and, and, and we believe in them more than they ever believe in themselves. And, and they bring back amazing results for us, for our students for our team members. But that’s the part that’s like we hire soft skills. We never I never hire power, the skills because I can’t teach hard. As soon as I can get people involved our skills. I don’t care about our skills. We hire soft skills.
John Corcoran 19:30
Interesting. Let’s talk a little bit about a hard skill, which is online courses. Why online courses? Why are you so passionate about it? Why have you focused so much your business around it? And I have a feeling it relates to some of these other things around lifestyle that we’re talking about?
Iman Aghay 19:47
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So as I said, like I was doing 200 events a year, I was exhausted, I was tired, I was looking for a business model that can actually give me the lifestyle that I want. And what I learned was that the best business model that can give you the three type of freedom, which is financial location, and time freedom, is using online courses as the foundation of the marketing of your business. And that means that you use your online courses to attract highly qualified people to your business. Now, online courses are the foundation of everything else. Like, for example, you want to go on a stage you want to sell something, what do you want to sell, you can’t sell from the stage of 1200 people, like you want to one program, you can’t even sell a group coaching program to a stage of 200 people. Because if people are going to come in person, and how do you want to teach it, it just doesn’t work, right? The only thing that you can make sure to stem from the stage in front of 1200 people is an online course. So online courses, a foundation of everything else. And just kind of like that’s the most amazing piece of business that gives you constant income. So said it’s an automated stream of income, but also qualifies highly qualified people. You know, there are lots of people who are interested out there, but they don’t want to pay for you know, for the services that they need. And when you have an online course online course automatically qualifies people who are interested from people who actually want to invest that lower. And when they invest and learn now you have this group of people that you can actually take them to the next level, how many of them are willing to go to your higher end program through a 10,000 15,000 25,000 hundred thousand dollar mentorship programs. And, and two online courses that’s automatic, income generating lead qualifying machine that you produce in front of everything else.
John Corcoran 21:37
And let’s talk also about joint venture insiders circle JV. I see if I said it correctly. Yeah. Why, you know, we bought into that business had been around for a little while. Talk a little bit about for those who don’t know what it is they listened to some of my past episodes, they probably heard what a joint venture is, but explain what a joint venture is, and why it’s valid for business.
Iman Aghay 22:01
Yeah, absolutely. So joint ventures are when two business owners, so partners come together and one of them offers a service and the other one promotes it. That’s one of the type of the joint ventures You can also be like, okay, so joint ventures are divided to two groups, production partners and promotional partners. And that means that you can actually do production partnership with each other. So two people join forces and create one business together. Probably the same as you and Dr. Jeremy Weiss, that most of you had your genius, you actually came in actually got it together, and you’ll build rice 25. Right. So that’s kind of like your production partner, Steve, and probably you got into the business partnership side of that, because we are like what we are fully in on every side of that, right. The other time is a production partnership with a promotional partner, which actually means that somebody is producing, the other one is promoting. So I have an online course you have a main in this. And you look at my online course and you say man, you have a good course, I want to, I want to invite my tribe to actually come and invest on your course. And so that’s kind of another type of joint ventures. The second type is what most people know about and, and that’s like kind of getting people on on different people’s webinars doing talks on the other people’s stages. participating on the largest Product Launch Formula is sending people to each other’s TELUS summits and podcasts. And like all of those things that kind of one person is promoting the other person on the other person is selling their product. So that’s what’s kind of like a simplified version.
John Corcoran 23:35
Until the JV I see, I’ve looked at it before I’ve never been I’ve never actually been, but I know other people who’ve been and said that they enjoyed it. But what what do you do? You bring a bunch of people together and want to collaborate? Right? So what is it like?
Iman Aghay 23:48
So there are two things there their JV IC, which is the community called JV insider circle, which has a yearly membership, that people joined the JV insider circle, we have the dot directory and the Facebook group and monthly meetings that people can actually talk about their launches and everything else like that, and all of those pieces, and then we have the and then we have the JV x, which is the JV experience, which is a three day live event, which we do in California, and, or historically has been done in California. And, and then people would come in and like, kind of like people coming their network with each other, tell each other like what they do, whatever mailing list they have, and how they can actually promote each other and they walk away with getting joint ventures. So there are people that come in and walk away with 15 2025 joint ventures as a result of that three day event. And well, since I bought into the business a few months back, we are actually building new strategies into business. We’re expanding the community and JB ice already was one of the largest JV networks in the world. But then now we are actually taking all the way to the next level with after after I bought the business and want to even expand it further
John Corcoran 25:05
setting. Cool. What are you most excited about? Now, before we wrap things up?
Iman Aghay 25:10
Well, just so particularly at this second that you are interviewing me, I am actually building your six figure business in 47 days as a case study. So and as part of my mandate for that is that I’m not allowed to spend more than $2,000 on that business from scratch. Like I have to bootstrap the whole thing. And just so happened that I didn’t spend a dime. Because we pre sold the course and the course like on day I think day 11 I crew sold the course. And we did like $10,000 in sales. And
John Corcoran 25:41
we had our mailing list. So you haven’t given that up?
Iman Aghay 25:44
No, no, no, no, that was not through my own mailing list. No, no, I actually did not mail a mailing list. So just kind of went through the, my personal, my personal Facebook. Not not about my business, Facebook and Instagram, but I was I just wanted to watch their Facebook profile.
John Corcoran 26:03
Okay,
Iman Aghay 26:04
yeah, I said, if you want to want to build a successful public speaking business, I’ll get access to my $2,000 course, as a gift, if you come in to finish it to the end comments below, I mean, and I got 130 people went and commented, I mean, I mean, I mean, I did a webinar for them. And they said that you can actually get the course entirely as a gift from if you commit to actually come to a three day live event. And 30 day live events $197 seed deposit, you put the seed deposit down, and you can show off my Dave and give you what your seed deposit back. So when that happened, we were still in the free trial of Click Funnels free trial of Active Campaign, he haven’t gone into past 14 days to even spend the first time I was planning to spend around $2,000. But then, but then that day for the people bought the bottle, I could see deposit down and then some people upgraded to VIP. And at that point, I hadn’t even looked at hotel room. Yeah. So when all that happened, and I booked a hotel room, but the hotel need is $500 down, but I already had like $1,000 in the bank account. So I actually put that money and paid $500 and, and and more and more people after that. But and then I yeah, and I started a group called international affairs, I was called international public speakers community. And I contacted a few people that I knew in different places. I said you want to be the organizer of international public speakers community, and they’re like, what is it? I told them? So you can make this much money and like, this is how it works? Are you in there? Like Yeah, and I said, Well, but you need to do an event next week if you’re in and they said, Well, can you support? And I’m like, Yeah, I can actually tell you what you need to talk talk about tell you how to do it. So we started 12 chapters in a day. And we
John Corcoran 27:54
go do an event in their local city, which helps the organization that you’ve that you. Okay,
Iman Aghay 28:01
yeah, exactly. So so far, like that was like, how many days ago that was like seven days ago. And so far we have done like four talks in different cities. And and then I think this week, we’re going to another five. And the next week, we have another three talks. And these are local events, I’m not doing them, they’re doing it and and then whatever they sell, they get 50% of it. And and then anyhow, we have other pieces on the model also. it’s it’s a it’s a case study, I’m actually reporting on it every single night to a small group of my students that how I’m building the entire business from scratch without spending a dime. And yeah, so So far, we have about $10,000 in cash in the bank account, nice work,
John Corcoran 28:43
you always hear successful entrepreneurs, and they get to a point they’ve got, you know, multi hundred million dollar businesses. And they they missed that small time they miss like, kind of the scrappy bootstrapping, beginner period, so I can see why you’re enjoying doing it. And I’ll be interested to hear how it goes when you’re at the end of the 47 or 50 days, and you wrap it up. So I wanna, I know, you have to go soon. So to wrap things up with the question I was asked, which is, let’s pretend we’re at an awards banquet, much like the Oscars, the Emmys, and you are receiving an award for lifetime achievement for everything that you’ve done. Up until this point, you’ve achieved a lot. Who do you think Who are the people you acknowledge, in addition to our family and friends? Who are the partners or the peers or the mentors, or the coaches that you would acknowledge in your remarks? Well,
Iman Aghay 29:32
you said, besides family or friends, but I gotta tell you, actually, I’m not gonna say beside them, I’m going to tell tell you exactly what’s going to be first first and foremost, I’m going to actually thank my wife and my mom. I have a very big reason for that is because both of them always believed in me far more than I ever believed in myself. When I was 14 years old, my mom turned back to me on set him on one day, you’re going to be the leader in any industry that you want. And I was 14, I had absolutely no idea what those words meant. And I look back at my life, and the we have a T shirt in my company called I’m a leader. Funny enough, I always wear that except today with like, no other. We always have a teacher that is like, under the heart of it says I’m a leader and everybody come to my environment. I always shout, I’m a leader, I’m a leader. I was just like, hottie my mom nil. And you know, and I always wonder like, Is it that her belief in me like it was so ingrained that I can actually become a leader in the industry? Or is it that I became a leader because she believed in me, I am no idea. But anyhow, I always thank her because of the belief that she had in me and same with my wife. We almost became homeless at one point, and she stood by my side, and she’s like, Mom, we do whatever I can, whether whether we should to make it happen to bring your dream to reality, and we did, but but she’s with me every step of the way. And so I can 3d just go them aside and say, beside them, we’re going to thank you for the oils, because they were the two most important people that made a huge, massive difference in my life. And then next definitely is going to be my team, every single one of my team members, they go above and beyond and
actually funny enough, in our
interviews for hiring, we actually have one interview that the point of that interview is repelling people are actually getting that get on that interview to scare people. And I give them this ridiculous case studies like ridiculous stuff. And and then many people are just got up Nope, that’s not my job. That’s not what I’m gonna do. One person told me, tell me, you’re looking for a slave and like, don’t like never do that. That’s the way that the reality of my business is. And you know, if you if it doesn’t work for you, then don’t be just kind of like I’m telling you up front, right? Every single one of my team members went above and beyond many, many, many occasions. But there are some only theaters that work so hard that sometimes I tell them Can I actually get you to go on a rest right now. Because I like I feel uncomfortable that you are actually working at this time. So and, and because of them, our students are getting the results that they are getting on our our team is kind of like getting the results they’re getting. So those are two people. For sure. There are a few of my friends that stood by my side, one of them, his name is Roger killin. And he stood on the stage, the data that was on the hospital, he stood on the stage for three days. And when I couldn’t get to my own event, and he actually ran my event without knowing what he’s doing.
John Corcoran 32:42
called him the daily part of the company, or just, he just,
Iman Aghay 32:45
he just, he was a friend. And I called him the day before. And I said, Roger, I’m heading to the hospital, apparently, I’m adding to surgery room, and you are a few that are on my event. And he said, don’t worry about it, you just go and take her your health, I took care of everything else. And he got on the stage. And he emceed my event, we had other speakers and he ran David without even getting the chance to even talk to me about what the event is about. And the run a 250 people event. And, and, you know, there’s been so many different times that I call him and that I need advice or suggestions and stuff like that I’ve helped him a lot with his business as well. But that’s kind of like going above and beyond for another friend, right? You know, and I always say like, if you have a friend that you can, you can’t rely on your eyes closed. Definitely, definitely that’s the that’s the person you want to have around. I have way too many people around me that I can go on and on and on. Forever I do it. I do a nightly journaling, we call it daily success card, which we started writing eight lines of gratitude. And we have to write it in hi eight lines. And every single night, it’s very easy for me to write those eight lines, because there’s so many people that my life that I’m grateful for. I there are so many things that I’m grateful for in my life. That kind of that just kind of how it is. But I want to tell you something else, john, I know just kind of jumped into that one. But also one of the greatest ways of being successful is being grateful because our brain does understand the difference between being grateful and being successful. So when you are a grateful person, your brain automatically thinks you are a successful person. So it actually produces the chemicals that successful person’s brain produces. When you have those chemicals, you feel like a successful person and you feel like a successful person you think like the successful person, or you feel I think like a successful person, you act like a successful person. When you feel think and act like a successful person, you become a successful person. So I just want to put that out that if every single night of your life, right eight lines or whatever Brynn foot for for every single day. That’s one of the greatest barrio packs where we can grow successful person without doing anything else.
John Corcoran 35:06
That’s great advice. Yeah, I know I have in front of me, I have a piece of paper that I fill out every morning which has things I’m grateful for. I don’t always fill it out though. I need to always fill it out. So that’s good. Good reminder, Amman where can people learn more about you?
Iman Aghay 35:22
Well, I can be easily found on my website, Eamon our guide. com that’s Im a n a g h. a by.com. Or through success road academy.com or on any social media like but not me, but Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn. All of them but my name you mama guy. Great. Alright,
John Corcoran 35:45
perfect. I’m on. Thanks so much. It was a pleasure.
Iman Aghay 35:48
Thank you, brother for having me here.