Forged In Fire
Hosted by Nate Pharmer-Eden and Cole Farrell, Forged In Fire is where real entrepreneurship meets raw, unfiltered stories. This isn’t your typical business podcast—we skip the fluff and dive straight into the heat of what it really takes to build, run, and grow a business. From late-night doubts to game-changing wins, we explore the trials, setbacks, and breakthroughs that entrepreneurs experience at every stage of their journey.
Whether you’re a seasoned business owner navigating new challenges or someone with a burning desire to launch your first venture, this podcast offers powerful insights and practical lessons for everyone. No sugarcoating—just honest conversations about what it takes to forge success through the fire.
Get ready to be inspired, learn from real-world struggles, and gain the tools you need to make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality. This is your front-row seat to the highs, lows, and everything in between. Are you ready to step into the fire? 🔥
Forged In Fire
Episode 44: The Art of Adding Value — Building Mountains of Success One Grain at a Time with Etinosa Agbonlahor
Pricing your products or services is perhaps one of the most emotionally charged decisions entrepreneurs face. In this deeply insightful conversation with Etiosa, CEO of Decision Alpha, we uncover the psychological underpinnings of pricing strategy and how behavioral economics can transform business monetization.
When asked what emotions come up around pricing, business owners typically respond with words like "dread," "anxiety," and "fear." Most admit they're "guesstimating" or "undercharging." This widespread uncertainty highlights the critical need for a science-based approach to pricing. Etiosa's firm helps businesses not only determine optimal price points but also craft compelling narratives that make those prices resonate with potential customers.
Beyond pricing psychology, our conversation explores the fundamental building blocks of entrepreneurial success. Etiosa shares her journey from corporate finance to founding Decision Alpha, emphasizing the power of process goals over outcome goals. Rather than fixating on revenue targets, she tracks activities within her control—how many speaking engagements she secures, how many pricing audits she conducts, how many coffee meetings she arranges with potential clients. This process-oriented approach reduces anxiety while building consistent habits that drive success.
Perhaps most refreshingly, Etiosa champions high-touch business development strategies in an era obsessed with automation and scaling. Her success comes through genuine human connection—coffee dates, one-on-ones, speaking engagements, and offering free pricing audits. These approaches may not scale efficiently, but they build trust no automated outreach can match. "You can't make up care," she notes. "There's just no way to hack that."
Whether you're looking to optimize your business pricing, struggling with entrepreneurial mindset challenges, or preparing to leave your corporate job, this episode delivers actionable insights and psychological frameworks to help you build with intention and confidence. As Etiosa reminds us, success is built grain by grain—seemingly boring consistency that eventually becomes a mountain of achievement.
Forget what you've heard. Forged in Fire is where real entrepreneurs come to share the untold truths of success the late nights, the crushing setbacks, the moments that change everything. No fluff, just fire, ready to step into the heat and unlock what it really takes to build a business. This is where legends are made.
Speaker 2:Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of Forged in Fire. I'm your co-host, nate Farmradin. Allow me to introduce my counterpart, cole. How we doing brother Come on stage.
Speaker 3:Nate, what's going on, man? How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing good, man, but it's one of these interesting kind of situations. First and foremost, still, everything is on fire. I know we've got a few comments about how we're always talking about things on fire. That's still happening. However, it's one of these weird things where, when a program or a software updates its UI, it seems to always happen that I get access to it before all the bugs and kinks are out. I don't know what the heck is going on, man. How are you doing, though?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm good. I mean, I don't know, things are cruising along. Is it hot where you're at Nate? Is it snowing 10 feet or is it decent there?
Speaker 2:It's okay. It's humid and it's buggy and muggy out and I think there's going to be rain coming, but it's better than like the 95 we had like for the last two weeks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I'm with you here. Super shitty, but it is what it is. I guess midsummer right? Well, hey, look that stuff aside, UI being a disaster, weather sucking. We have an awesome podcast, we have an awesome guest. I'm super excited for this. So before we get into that, guys, we have one single ask that we do every single time. It would mean the world to us, and that is just please leave us a review. And this one thing is what helps us grow. This is what helps us get more people on here. This is what helps us get better and better guests that you want to hear from. So if you can just do us that one thing and leave a review of anything good, bad, ugly, we don't care it would mean a lot.
Speaker 2:So, without further ado, sit back, relax, dude. It's going to be a hell of a ride. Now, before we bring up Etiosa, who is amazing she's CEO of Decision Alpha does a ton of amazing work. I'm looking forward to hearing from her. But congratulations in order for you, cole. I'm so sorry that I spaced on this here for but a. Congratulations in order for you, cole. I'm so sorry that I spaced on this one. Happy birthday, happy belated birthday, number one. Number two in seven days is absurd, bro. So two closes. I don't know if you want to tell us a little bit about it man.
Speaker 3:But that's all. Thanks so much you appreciate. It was kind of a whirlwind so I'll make it real fast cuz I want to get in our guest stuff. But uh, we had a deal that is down the street from a lot of my other portfolio and one of my buddies actually was buying it and I just was like, hey, man, what's it going to take to buy that off of you before you even get started on it? Because he was closing it the day that he called me. It was tell me about it. And he was like, hey, here's the number, and if you hit the number, just take it.
Speaker 3:I don't know, the next day, or maybe the day before, we sent out a shit ton of mailers and so we got a mailer from a market that I've been trying to enter and they said, hey, we got this house, we want to sell fast. You interested? And I was like yep. So I went up there I think it was the next day and made up an offer. We shook on it and we closed two weeks later and, anyways, closing space within like literally seven days. So it was exciting, it was a whirlwind and now we're just in reno mode and it's cool, super excited, so appreciate that Appreciate the congrats.
Speaker 2:Of course, dude, that is awesome. But okay, enough from us, enough from us, all right. So, etios, I hope you are ready. You are coming on stage. How are we doing my sister? Good to see you.
Speaker 4:Good to see you both. I'm doing very well. Thank you for having me on today.
Speaker 2:Of course, and I've got to say of your podcasts before it made you coming out of the show. So hats off to you. I appreciate that, thank you, but tell us a little bit about yourself. What got you here? What brought you here? Fill us in.
Speaker 4:Yep, so I am the CEO of Decision Alpha. We are a behavioral economics firm. We help business owners price their products and services with confidence, using the insights that we have from the psychology behind how people make financial decisions. So I have spent a long part of my career in the finance world and then finally kind of exited the finance world to build Distribution Alpha. In addition to that, I invest in real estate as well, so I know a little bit about the ups and downs and the multiple closings are in a short space of time. But yeah, that is largely what we do and why I'm here.
Speaker 3:I love that. So give us some more, give us some more meat on it. And what I mean by that is what exactly do you do at Decision Alpha? You give us like a very high level overview, but if somebody's listening, they've never heard you, they've no idea, kind of the little things. What is that? And then second part of that question what do?
Speaker 4:you focus on in the real estate world, what's like your bread and butter, yep. So with Decision Alpha, what we do is assuming you're a founder, a business owner, you've got a great product you've been putting out there for a while and you're a little bit worried about am I undercharging? You're looking at your numbers, a little bit worried about am I undercharging? You're looking at your numbers and they feel a little bit like they could be better. You're feeling that pressure. We come in and we help you.
Speaker 4:A change the narrative around how you present your price to people. We want to make sure that when you put your price in front of people, it resonates with them. And B we also do the research around are you charging the right thing? Are you undercharging? Could you be charging either higher? Could it be better positioned? Do you need new tiers, etc.
Speaker 4:So we focus on really what we say pricing and monetization, making sure the pricing makes sense and then the overall business financial health is sound as well. So that's kind of what we play with. Where we hang out, we tend to work with everything from sort of people who have achieved product market fits in the startup world straight through to service-oriented businesses like lawyers who want to move away from charging by the hour. Cfos who want to move away from you know charging by case. We tend to look at those unique service-based businesses and help them with how can you price better and how can you make sure that, when you do price and when you do charge, you're saying that and you're stating it with confidence because you're sure about the quality of putting it in front of people. So that's it on the decision offer side. Does that resonate Any questions about that? Did that give you more meat?
Speaker 2:Oh, we are definitely going to have way more questions, but please carry on.
Speaker 4:Yes, and then on the real estate side, I do multi-families and then single-family homes buy and hold long-term, kind of, you know, safe, nice and steady investing, and I also have actually a real estate podcast connected with that.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I love it, I love it, I love it. This is amazing. Okay, so back it up just a tad bit for me. Okay, so back it up just a tad bit for me. So on the decision alpha side, I love the me being a social worker outside of being in real estate as well. I love the helping aspect. I love being able to sort of think outside of the box and the giving back. But what kind of triggered you to want to start that and what was it like trying?
Speaker 4:to get it from ground zero to where you are today. The trigger for starting that was, as I was thinking through, because I worked in corporate finance. I still am a behavioral economist. I had done that in massive multi-million, multi-trillion dollar organizations actually for a long time. And as I thought about building my own thing, because that felt like the next logical step in my career, it was like all right, I don't want to climb the ladder all the way to the top. There's going to be a place where entrepreneurship just makes sense and that's going to be the right next step for me. And as I started to get towards that space, I started to do a lot of research, because I'm a researcher. So I like to talk to a lot of people around. What's working for you? People who own consultancies, people who you know had their own businesses and had been successful or had their businesses and failed at it just kind of like getting the give me the real tea right. And as I would talk to people around, you know what to do. And behavioral economics whenever I mentioned behavioral economics, people are like yeah, whatever. Whenever I mentioned pricing, people are like yep, have no idea what we're doing, so worried.
Speaker 4:I did a presentation a couple of weeks ago to women in tech and entrepreneurship. So these are women leaders who run their own businesses or are really high up in tech organizations, and I asked them what do you think about when it comes to pricing? How do you feel? And I got back words like dread anxiety, fear, we're guesstimating, we're scared, we're undercharging. So pricing is a very charged subject because nobody wants to get it wrong. Right, because you know what it feels like to have something that you know is of high quality. But you're very worried about what if no one else sees the quality that I'm putting in front of them. What if I raise my prices and everybody just leaves and this business I've built with my hard work, just like you know, crumbles to the ground? How do I support my family if that happens? Right, it's very emotionally charged and all of the fear and anxiety we have ends up being reflected in our prices.
Speaker 4:Now, my expertise is in helping people make financial decisions, is in understanding the psychology behind that. I understand why $9.99 looks very different and feels way cheaper than $9, right. I understand how numbers work in our brains, right, and so I'm able to bring that expertise and say, okay, let's talk through this pricing thing. Let's help you understand. Let me help you understand. How do you charge? What do you charge? How do you build a narrative that you're confident about? And then you can put that in front of people and, because now you've brought the psychology into it, people also understand what you're saying right, and they can resonate and go okay, I understand why I want to work with Cole's team or with Nate's team, and I think they're worth it that's awesome and just to confirm so, with decision Alpha, you started that company, right yep so, as you started that, as you were building the the subject side aside, what was it like doing that?
Speaker 3:and like, what were things that you ran into that a lot of other people run into? And I asked that because, um, everybody and a lot of people we listen to this has different businesses. Obviously, most people you know in real estate and that applies, but a lot of people listening are in these different businesses, but they keep hitting these same struggles. So what are things that you went through, um, or are going through that are like barriers? You're like, oh, if you're starting your own business, expect to hit this, and maybe here's how I solved it, something like that.
Speaker 4:Yep Are going through, so not went through very much, still going through it. First one is it's so important to make sure that you refine your ICP right, like your ideal customer profile who actually are you speaking to? When we started out, we thought because a lot of the research I had done was with people who either owned on firms or were startups doing really interesting things I was really excited about. So I, our icp, was it's going to be startups who are somewhere between early stage to growth stage and really went aggressively after that and within a few like weeks and months of this, it all right, can't be early stage startups for X, y, z reasons. We've got to pivot. So doing that research to understand who actually is my core target and being able to speak to them in a way that resonates. So it's not just here's everything we have and how much money I can make you. No, it's. Let's talk about confidence, let's talk about the fears, let's talk about what actually you care about.
Speaker 4:So just making sure, like I, was talking to the right ICP and using language that would resonate with them and you know, something that, aligned with my own values as well has been the largest thing. And then, of course, tied to that is then, what is the activity that helps you get that message in front of the right audience, right? Who is the right audience? Now? What do I do to get in front of them? And the thing that I've realized what has worked for me is doing things that don't scale, which means coffee dates, one-on-ones, lots of speaking engagements, getting in front of people and just interacting face-to-face so people see it's me. I know what I'm talking about. My team knows what we're talking about. It is not challenging in the background. You know using words like fluff and sharp, right? So that has really helped us.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I love this so much. And pause, rewind, play this back. I am notorious for saying this to everybody, but the stuff that Ethiel was just talking about. It resonates so hard and it hits deeply. One of the biggest key takeaways that I hope that you guys, as listeners, are going to understand is she was like, yeah, we did this, we thought we had it, and no, we're still going through it and we had to freaking pivot because shit was not working out. So hats off to you to understand that.
Speaker 2:So talk to me a little bit about what it was like in the very beginning stages and trying to get people to connect with you to understand that you knew what you were talking about. So it's one of those kinds of situations to say, okay, I'm leaving the W-2. I know that I have the right amount of knowledge and I know that I can work with you as somebody that is a client of mine to help you get better. But how were you able to make that connection? To say, okay, I can now trust you to take me and my business to where we need to go number one. And then number two, you're using the term we and a team. Talk to me a little about what the team looks like as well.
Speaker 4:Yep, so I'll start with the latter question. So the team is I've got a team of behavioral economists who are all trained in either very specifically in pricing or trained very specifically in how do people make financial decisions, how do we model choice et cetera, and so the team kind of looks like I have kind of heavy academic team and they can help with doing the actual heavy lifting around the research, around what to price and how to frame it. So that's kind of the team structure. And then, in terms of your earlier question, can you reframe the earlier question?
Speaker 2:Can you reframe the earlier question? Yeah, definitely. So, leaving the W-2 and then going out starting the company. What was it like? Trying to get people to trust you, because one of the things that we like to use here is having folks that we're working with get to know, like and trust us, rather than through social media, rather than through the one-on-ones that you talked about. But what was that like? Because for me and I can compare it to Capital Raise talked about. But what was that like? Because for me and I can compare it to capital raise that shit was hard, trying to just be able to sit down with somebody and have them talk to you and say, yeah, I didn't heard it. You're trying to put me through the ringer, I'm out. I don't know if I ever want to give you my business. So tell me a little bit about what I was like for you and how you found success.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Go-Giver if you've read that book and the Go-Giver is all about how do you add value first, and so that has to look like doing speaking engagements I would do. I'll go to like a group and talk to them about their pricing for free and help them kind of you know, understand, hey, you should be looking at your pricing. Here's what it looks like, here's what the opportunity is, et cetera. But also every Monday, the entire Monday, I'm on back-to-back calls where I have free 15-minute pricing audits. So anybody can bring their pricing to me and we'll have a conversation and we'll add value within those 15 minutes.
Speaker 4:And that is a way of people understanding right off the bat. Okay, they know what they're talking about, she knows what she's talking about. How do I go deeper in with you? So that has been those two areas of getting in front of people and speaking. But then also offering the free 15-minute pricing audits is a way of allowing people to understand, a building that trust of okay, I see what she's talking about, I understand what she's talking about, and then also allowing that kind of connection to be developed, because in a business like ours it might not be like you know, tomorrow they're going to hire me because they spoke with me.
Speaker 4:You know, yesterday or the day before it could be, I had and this actually happened I had a conversation where I had a free 15-minute pricing audit with somebody who was early stage. So you know I had started to pivot away from that ICP but by early stage we had a conversation, added value followed up with her. It was really useful to her apparently because then she talked about me to somebody who's massive in the startup world, who then did a blog post, a LinkedIn thing, just kind of went really double down on endorsing Through that I have had people who have come with me and worked with me because they said, oh, that person endorsed you and I want to learn more about you.
Speaker 4:I had another conversation this morning where somebody said, oh, I was in a group of um, a group of founders, and your name came up. Um related to pricing. So I wanted to reach out to you, so understanding that the seeds you saw in terms of just giving and adding value to people, they'll grow trees, like down the road. Some of these things always just pop up and somebody's like I heard about you somehow, I don't know how, but you know I'll take it I love that.
Speaker 3:That's so powerful and it just shows kind of like networking, like you said. And what I think so powerful about that and what I want to highlight is that you said it might not be from where you think it's going to come from and it's like a lot of times, like I always relate to like the meetups with the real estate stuff, but it's you meet somebody, like you said, it might not be that call that you have, that the 15 minute call. It might not be that person that you talk to, but it's the next person or the next person, the next person. That all got started because that first conversation I absolutely love that.
Speaker 3:So I want to dial back a little bit to you mentioned like your ICP and kind of going into that. So can we go a little deeper? Meaning, if somebody says, okay, here's like, here's my avatar, here's my ICP, how do they do a little more research on finding their wants, the things that they need? Um, how do they narrow that down? Or maybe, how do they know if they have the wrong person in mind?
Speaker 4:two ways. The first one is I actually was just re-listening to frank kern. He's a big person in the network marketing space. I don't know if that space actually still exists. This is from like way back when.
Speaker 4:But frank Kern did this amazing talk on YouTube where he encourages people to really understand who is your client, who's your customer, who are you going after? And it's not in the marketing sense of demographics and whatever it is. When do we kind of wake up in the morning, rise out of bed? What do they do? Who's their family? Are they married? What do they care about? What are they scared of? What are they moving towards? Right, really diving deep into understanding who that person is and not just an avatar. Who is this person on a function, on a resonant level? Because what resonates with you is what's going to resonate with them when you talk about building trust. The reason I like to do it one-on-one is because you can look into my eyes and hear my voice and go, oh, she's a real person and she cares. And you can't make up care. There's just no way to hack that. I care about you without seeing that right on my face. So Frank Kern's talk really helpful for drilling down into who is your ICP and what do they care about? Right, who actually are they as a person, not as an avatar, a persona. You know. An ICP, not as an avatar, a persona. An ICP whoever as a person, first one. Second one is you can't build in a silo, and it's really interesting because would-be entrepreneurs we're all.
Speaker 4:It's hard to talk to people. That's the truth, right? Somebody that never met you, you've never seen them before. It's like why should they talk to me? Why would I want to waste their time? That's your ego talking and it's not your ego talking out of arrogance, your ego talking out of fear and talking you out of doing the work. Right. The work is get on the phone, talk to a person and say this is what we do, this is how we can help you. Does it resonate, right?
Speaker 4:The way I knew those early stage founders were not my SAP was that I offered a free something with, like a group of founders I had, like nestled myself into, offered a free kind of event, had the people come to the event, asked them questions, interacted with them, got the signal. This is not going to be a great fit for me. I love what they do. They're amazing. I love just the creativity and the vision, but actually they cannot afford me. That's the truth. Okay, let's move on. So you're not going to get signal without actually talking to people and you're not going to be able to convince people to work with you without actually talking to who they are in the core. You need to do the work on both of those fronts.
Speaker 2:So many gems just dropped. Oh, my gosh, my head is spinning. Oh, I love it, I love it, I love it Again. Pause if you want to play it back. So talk to me a little bit about what it looks like on a day-to-day. What kind of KPIs do you set, what kind of goals do you have for yourself? And what does it look like? Because I mean, you mentioned earlier on, when we were doing the discussion, and you were like, yeah, no, we're still in it right now, we're still trying to figure things out. So what's it going to look like moving forward and how are you tracking that?
Speaker 4:So decision alpha was still in year one. We're very much like in the baby steps of like building this, and so our KPIs right now is actually have it on my desk. It's relationships and visibility. That is what I care the most about. People must know us, people must trust us, like us, know what we do. That's the KPI for now. Moving into act two, which is then we're going to like the monetization and the building of the actual business the KPIs are going to look like.
Speaker 4:I'm very much a fan of process goals, not outcome goals, meaning how many people did you talk to? If you're a wholesaler, for example, the process goal is how many calls did I do today? Did I hit my 100 calls today or did I not? The outcome goal would be how many houses did I sell? I'm a big fan of process goals. I track the activity that I do. How many pricing audits did I do? How many people did I speak to? I have speaking goals every single month. How many groups did I get in front of? How many coffees did I have with business leaders who are local to my market, right? So my goals are very much around the things that I can control and then the outcome is going to come off of the back of that right.
Speaker 4:The way it ends up working is that because, as I clarify, what is the relationship between the activities that I do and the if I do five speaking, if I do five speaking engagements, out of all of that I'm going to reach at least 100 people.
Speaker 4:Across those five, 20% are going to book pricing audits with me. Another X percent from those pricing audits are going to be a good fit for me to send them memos with hey, this is what I recommend and we can work together. A portion of those are going to be people I fit for me to send them memos with hey, this is what I recommend and we can work together. A portion of those are going to be people actually end up working with. My goals are top of funnel the process, the activities, the outcome is the outcome. But I know as I refine the goals and I go bigger on the activities, it's going to refine the bottom end, the end of funnel. So I always recommend people in terms of KPIs, you know, setting the process goals, setting goals around the work and what you can actually do, and less around the outcome, which is how much money do I make as a result of the activity.
Speaker 3:So well said. That is absolutely phenomenal, and I think if more people focused on that on a daily basis, they would have tremendously more success. I'm so glad you highlighted that. Absolutely incredible. I'm curious where do you see the next three and five years, Like, where do you see you? Where do you see your business? Where do you see everything? What's the goal? And you can extend that timeline as far as you want. What's it look like?
Speaker 4:Next three to five years, ideally, we have become a staple in the pricing community, right? A staple in sense of anyone in the if you're a lawyer, if you're a CFO, you're thinking about adding a new product, delivering a new service, building your law firm. People are going yeah, you need to talk to decision offer. We're just being you in the process of setting up a business. You should talk to the pricing people. No, you should go talk to them before you set up your LLC, right? So I want us to become a staple in that manner In the next five years.
Speaker 4:I see us actually between three to five years, actually also patenting our pricing tech. We're building pricing tech in the background where you can come in and just tell the program this is what we do. This is like who our competitors are. This is the conversations we've had with our customers and it will actually walk you step by step and help you actually build out your pricing by itself. So when you build that tech, when a patented tech, um, and so in the next kind of three to five years, I see us actually moving from being like a service-based organization to being a technology and being a tech firm, um, and having that kind of like ip that we can then kind of license out and then post that being able to like exit with that perspective of having become a tech firm. So that's kind of the journey early stages. Here we go awesome.
Speaker 3:Wait, give me some more. Um, I'm a big like numbers guy. Give me some revenue goals just that you want to shoot for. So like, is there like an exit price that you'd love to hope for? Or, sorry, love to hit? Or um, revenue goals you're trying to hit year over year or at five years. Add three years, just for fun.
Speaker 4:In terms of exit. I'd love to exit as a unicorn. Who wouldn't love to exit as a unicorn Like let's go. But you know, an eight-figure exit is not impossible. The joy of being in I'm in the Tampa Bay market a lot of times between Tampa and New York but the joy of being in this community is that I see people who have done eight-figure exits all the time and they just have one head and they put their pants on the same way I put it on, so I know it's possible.
Speaker 4:So, down the line. I think like kind of an eight-figure exit is what I'd be shooting for. In terms of revenue goals. I really stick to the process, just do the work and, like the press, the only to the revenue. So I don't actually set revenue goals.
Speaker 2:Sounds good, I love it. I love it Before we get into the next segment, because eventually we're going to ask you to give some advice. Or if you have any other final words, cool, we'll get there eventually. But what I want from you right now, because you are so knowledgeable, is if somebody was interested in starting a business, doesn't matter, you can fictitious scenario, you can come up with whatever. What are some of the steps that they should be looking for? What are some of the things that they need to do? And I mean outside of just saying, hey, call Decision Alpha, we'll take care of you. Like, what are some of the steps before somebody leaves that W-2 that you're like, hey, you.
Speaker 4:So this is somebody who already has a W-2 in corporate and they want to transition out to build their own business.
Speaker 2:Thousand percent, that works.
Speaker 4:Okay, first big thing to my mind is like make sure you have the savings for this, right, I left my corporate job. I have two years worth of savings and I was like that's two years worth of runway for me to build this thing properly and intentionally and not be freaking out about you know, I can say to you I have process goals, not revenue goals, because I don't need to eat from decision offer for a good long while and I can focus on hiring the right people and building the right kind of business with the right amount of record and paying them properly, et cetera, et cetera. Because, again, I'm not worried about making sure I eat, you know, in year one from decision offer. So it's not sexy, but like actually save your money. Right, like save your money, do whatever it is that you need to do to either be comfortable with I'm going to leave the Airbnb. You know the Airbnb founders. They would like max out credit cards and sleep on couches and do whatever it tells them to do until Airbnb became like a big deal. Either you're willing to go down that route, which I'm not. That doesn't work for me. I like a nice, comfortable lifestyle. So either you go the hardcore life, I'm not going to save a lot and I'm just going to like, wing it, or you save a lot of money and then you live on the money that you've saved, right? So first one is just, practically speaking, have the money to you want to do. Second of all, don't do anything until you've validated that there's a need for the business you want to build.
Speaker 4:A lot of times we have like an idea. You know, I want to cure loneliness in society and it's a big, wonderful, amazing goal, but nobody's going to pay for it, right? So you need to make sure that there's a need that people are willing to pay for to be solved. And how do you do that? Go, need that people are willing to pay for to be solved. Then, how do you do that? Go, talk to people, right? I have this and it's not.
Speaker 4:There's a great book called the Mom Test and it teaches you how to have customer discovery conversations in a way that is not going to skew your responses. It's going to make sure that people are telling you the truth, right? So talk to lots of people to validate that your idea and to validate that your business is going to solve a need that they have. If I hadn't done that, I would be building a behavioral economics firm and trying to convince people that behavioral economics is the way forward and everyone would be like, what is behavioral economics? We don't care. I'd be facing a much more difficult battle than just being pricing and people go, yep, we get it, we need it, help us. So talk to people, validate that there is actually a need that your business is going to solve, and then kind of have our you know savings to help you go off of and leave off while you're building the business well said well said, nate.
Speaker 3:I think she's ready. What do do you think?
Speaker 2:I think so. I'm like mic drop moments, this entire thing, but hopefully you're ready. We got a surprise for you.
Speaker 3:I love it. All right. So here's what we're going to do. We ask the same six questions to every single guest and you can answer succinctly, you can answer at length, you can do whatever you want to do. Nate and I are going to do our absolute best to keep our mouths shut and not respond excitedly. We always fail, but we're going to see what happens. So here we go. Our first question is what separates top?
Speaker 4:performing entrepreneurs from the rest of the crowd. They understand that consistency and patience is the superpower, right? I always say it's grain of sand, grain of sand, grain of sand. And it's boring and it's annoying and you're like why do I have to carry this grain of sand? And then one day you step back and you built a mountain, but the way you got there was grain of sand, grain of sand, grain of sand, over and over again. So consistency and patience superpowers.
Speaker 2:Get my mic drop moment. I'm trying so hard, Cole. I'm trying, brother. Okay, next question.
Speaker 4:What is a daily habit that's contributed to your success? I write down what I'm going to do at the start of the. On Sundays I'll sit down and look at what's the week ahead and then I know what I'm going to do every day and I have a kind of a routine, so I never have an hour where I'm like what should I do? I kind of know what I'm supposed to be doing and how that's going to move the business or move my life forward. Be patient.
Speaker 4:Give yourself grace. Make sure to track progress consistently and look at not just what were the wins but also what was the progress and the effort that led to those wins. Because sometimes if you're a high performer, you're used to running. Especially if you're in corporate right, You're used to running, and running, and running and running, and it's very rare that you get the chance to step back and go. Oh, I did cover those miles. You're just so focused. There's a great book. It's called the Gap and the Gain.
Speaker 4:I think it's the same thing and they're all about like. Sometimes we're so focused on like the gap run that you know we've done a lot. So I would tell myself to like really go back and like build a proper routine for look at how far you've come and how much you've done and like.
Speaker 2:Let that motivate you to keep going. Speaking of gap and gain what is your favorite business book?
Speaker 4:Favorite business book. As you can tell, I read a lot, so that's difficult Favorite business book? I don't know. I'm going to give out. Maybe I'll give two out. I'm not saying that either, or it's like favorite.
Speaker 4:Alan Weiss has a great book around. I think it's Million Dollar Consultant or the Consultant Bible. Both are books that he's written. Both are really good, but he has a lot of great tips for how to build a proper consulting business and I followed some of his tips and tricks when I was building Decision Alpha. So, alan Weiss, great advice for building a consulting business. Yeah, let's say Alan Weiss. Let's leave it there, although the Gap and the Gain is also a really good book and worth reading as well. Let me add one more. So sorry, I'm going to add one more Gap Selling by Keenan, also very good if you're somebody who's not comfortable with selling. It's called Gap Selling and it really teaches you how to have a proper exploratory, like how to understand that you're not selling, you're providing value and you're solving a need for a person. So how do you make sure you establish that need before you start kind of pouring into them? So that's a good book too.
Speaker 3:Awesome, awesome. What is your favorite part of owning or running your business?
Speaker 4:I like that. I can do every crazy thing I think about that's going to move this business forward. I love that. My job is just to wake up and go. Okay, how are we going to move the business forward? Should I start a podcast? What if I do videos on LinkedIn? What if I try and have coffee with every single member of every chamber all over town? Just like every crazy thing I think about? I love that. I can just do it and I'm not worried about it, because sometimes when you're in corporate, you kind of hold yourself back because you don't want to seem like you're doing beyond the team or like you're going. You're doing too much, at least for me. I was always cognizant of like. You know it'd be excellent to hear, but don't like, don't do the most. You know these people need to like you. You need to work with them. Where it's like every crazy thing I think about, I can try it, and if it fails, it failed, but if it worked, amazing.
Speaker 2:I love that so much. Okay, final question what is something new that you've implemented that's helped drive the success of your business?
Speaker 4:I think that something new I have implemented has been doubling down on the one-to-one, because when I first came in, you know everyone is big on like code, outreach and do this and do the one-to-many, all of those things. And actually I found recently that, like actually just having coffee with people and letting them know who you are and who I am and letting people have that face time with me, it's not something that scales, but it provides so much depth it's almost worth its weight in gold. So I'm allowing myself to do the thing that doesn't scale for the next while of the next kind of like act of decision. I find it's allowing myself to kind of go down and focus on really truly building those relationships as opposed to trying to like do the big one-to-many outreach that is awesome.
Speaker 3:There is so much good stuff that we talked about and I mean let's go through like just a couple of things. So oh wait, before I go um on my whole tangent here, what is the podcast? You said you run a podcast I do.
Speaker 4:It's called her first house, so it's, if you're, kind of similar to what you guys do, but for the real estate side. So if you're thinking about getting into real estate, I have amazing conversations with people across the gamut, from folks who are like just bought their first one to people who have 230 units. I have conversations with people across the gamut on what their journey was like lessons, failures, successes, all of that stuff.
Speaker 3:That is awesome. Okay, we'll be sure to link that. So it's so interesting. I mean hearing your story from where you started and then what your focus is. I love that we kind of talked about the ICP, your avatar, doing the research, figuring out what your audience is. And I love that we touched on networking, like real networking. We went into ego, we went into your process goals, not outcome goals. I love that we talked about runway setting up a runway for yourself so you feel safe and have some time, and kind of like you said, building a proof of concept and finding what people need and making sure your product works. And there's so much more we ran into. But, anyways, two final questions for you. One, do any final advice? And two, where can people find you?
Speaker 4:Final advice If you have a burning desire to do something, you owe it to yourself to try it right and try it as early as possible. Before you know, you've got lots and lots of obligations that stop you or make you more conservative. So final advice is you're not going to learn anything. I learned a lot more by doing decision offer than I did by thinking about doing it right. So just jump in, try it. If you fail, you learn some stuff. You can go back to your corporate job, you know. And if you succeed, you know. There's only. There's just so much. Upside to that, and in terms of where people can find me, you can find Decision Alpha at wwwdecisionalphaco is where you can find us. We've got the free pricing audits. We've got a pricing playbook to help you think about how to price your business, and that's free, and that's at playbookdecisionalphaco.
Speaker 2:Etiosa, this has been amazing. I appreciate the fact that you took time out of your day to come down, talk to our target avatars, talk to those that are out there listening, talk to us and letting us know a little bit about your business and decision to help. This is awesome. So, from our bottom of our hearts, our house is your house. You are always welcome here, so thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much for having me. I love the conversation of course.
Speaker 2:So if you are out there in your commute, on your daily commute driving around, get to your destination safely. Thank you all so much for tuning in to another episode of Forged in Fire and we're looking forward to seeing y'all on the next one.
Speaker 1:You guys, take care thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forged in Fire. If you enjoyed today's raw, unfiltered stories, don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review. Your feedback helps us bring more real-world insights to entrepreneurs like you. Be sure to join us next time for even more lessons, struggles and breakthroughs on the road to success. Keep forging ahead.