Adam Kitchen:

And we're live—second episode of Creator Journeys. I'm absolutely delighted to be joining Phil Graham today. Phil is one of the leaders in the fitness industry worldwide, and he was also one of the pioneers of the one-to-many business model and a way to scale your wealth.

Phil, welcome to the show, man! Long time, no see.

Phil Graham:

Adam, thank you so much for having me on. I know how much time and effort these shows take to put on, and I'm ready to bring the fire today and educate and inspire as many as possible. So, I'm all yours.

Adam Kitchen:

Well, listen. There's a lot of people who are going to get a huge amount of value from the lessons you teach today. But I want to start right at the beginning, where I know a lot of people will be at the beginning of their journeys, whether it's in entrepreneurship or just branching out from employment—starting as consultants, freelancers, or in your case, right, as a physical trainer.

Phil Graham:

Yeah.

Adam Kitchen:

What was the life moment for you that made you realize—and you've talked about building wealth—that you had to transition from this one-to-one form of operation to one-to-many?

Phil Graham:

Yeah, so I began to realize that the current model that I had built for myself wasn't sustainable. And that's the most important word you've got to ask yourself in life and in business, particularly in nutrition as well when it comes to fat loss. And you know my background with nutrition and all that kind of stuff, bodybuilding, and same for yourself—I know you train as well. If you can't sustain it, you're never going to be able to essentially reap the benefits from it.

So, I remember dealing with all these one-on-one client communications, check-ins, doing all the advertising, doing all the sales processes, sales calls, doing all the administration. And I said, this is very reliant upon me, and I am a single point of failure. I actually can't be effective. I can't do the thing that I'm good at, and I'm beginning to resent the very thing that I thought was going to give me freedom. The more I go into this or the more I grow—and that was a really clear intention of mine—I wanted to grow it, I wanted to have a bigger impact. But I realized the more I grew it, the more pain I was growing into.

And I also realized that it wasn't fair on clients because my mood would be good one day, it would be fatigued the next day, and then I would be spread thin. So, what I needed to look at was a handful of things. Number one was the model—the model in terms of how I presented and provided value. And I needed to lock on to the fact—what matters more? Does a client want to be my friend, or does a client want a result? And that's the biggest fear that people have when it comes to moving from one-to-one to one-to-many. They think that, oh, I'm disconnecting myself from the client; the client isn't going to like this, and as a result, they're going to end up resenting me and churning or asking for a refund or whatever. But the real truth of the matter is the client is coming to you to buy into a result, to solve a problem.

So, your role as an entrepreneur is to build a value system that has inputs and outputs. The input is a client problem, and the output is a solution or a new identity. So, you need to look at, one, looking at the model in terms of how you deliver your coaching or your consulting or whatever it is. Two, you need to be mindful of the tech and systems that are involved in there. So, what are the first tech pieces and system pieces that you can put in there to automate the mundane stuff that you don't want to do, to systemize it, to give you better visibility, better optics, better speed, that removes the manual labor that you can then utilize elsewhere. And three, what is the team that you need to build in order to pull you out of the weeds?

So those are the three things: model, systems, and then team. You could call all of that infrastructure—the infrastructure of how you shape and build a course or program. And understand the core thing that a client comes to you for is results. So, how do you manufacture and build infrastructure that gets a result without you? The number one question you should be asking as an entrepreneur is, how can I get faster results and better results for my clients by doing less work? And that will go contrary to what a lot of people think—that hard work is important for success and whatever—but it's actually not. It's actually working smart.

So, how can I preserve my energy to focus on the three things that a founder and CEO should be focusing on: the vision of the company, how can we be the most relevant in the marketplace; the people, i.e., my team—you build the team, and the team builds the business; and most importantly, my cash—how can I ensure that my cash and my profitability are at the best possible sweet spot? And that requires you to be working on the business, not in the business all the time. And in order to do that, you have to work on those areas.

So, for me, it was when I was realizing that I was burnt out, that I couldn't grow or expand into this. And the question is really simple—if you want to determine whether or not you can grow: if I was to give you another 20 clients right now, what would be the first thing that would break? And for most people, the answer is you, me. And you know, if you look at the paradox of wanting to grow but realizing that with every new client that you take on, there's hassle, there's stress—then how on earth can you grow? So, it creates a subconscious resistance to marketing and messaging; it creates a subconscious resistance to selling people in. I always used to say to people when they have a coaching or consulting company, if you're hoping and dreaming and secretly waiting for clients to either cancel their calls with you or cancel their sales calls with you, then you're basically repelling money. You're leaving money on the table. So, you need to look at building those components in a way that allows you to do that and deliver value at scale.

Adam Kitchen:

I think you've articulated that beautifully, Phil. I want to touch on the second part of doing the work itself a little bit because I know at least for me and a lot of people on LinkedIn in this space, so much of your identity is intrinsically tied to the work that you do, so it's so difficult to let go of that because it's part of who you are. But as you said, that is a constraint that will stop you from growing your business. And I know for me at least, it got to a point where I was about to have a breakdown, but the opportunity of just bringing on the clients meant eventually I had to let go. But what if there's been no drop-off in the actual quality of the work? Because for me, I feel as though that is the biggest thing that stops people from scaling their companies in that sense.

Phil Graham: Yeah, so you first of all have to change your messaging from "I" to "we." "We" sounds more credible; "I" doesn't sound credible. If I'm in any way, shape, or form an entrepreneur or business savvy, and I see the words "I" or "I will"—a lot of one-to-one or "I will work with you personally," "I will mentor you," blah blah blah—there's no entrepreneur on the planet that doesn't want to scale or grow. And if I see somebody promoting a lot of one-to-one or "work with me personally," "work with me privately," I'm aware that I'm only going to be getting a fraction of them. So, I would far rather go into something that's got a team in there—a team of specialists, a team of experts in there to support the founder in the provision of value.

And you know, the provision of value exists in so many more different ways than just your voice. It exists in the relationships that you build; it exists in the way that your team interact and touch points with clients; it exists in the curriculum that you have around your coaching and the education and the outcomes that you have; it exists in the gamification that you have; it exists in the energy, the vibe, the expectations, the culture, and everything else that's inside your community.

So, messaging on the front end is very important. Messaging on the internal end is also important—like, hey, when you come in here, we've got specialists in X, Y, and Z; we've got a team for this; we've got a team for that. You've just gotta say it. A lot of people get caught up in their own head that, oh, people are going to be pissed off, whatever. What is your evidence for that? Why do you believe that? The only reason why you believe that is because you like the sound of your own voice, and you're not letting go of it. If you want to scale a company and you want to really help people, you've got to build a team. And you've got to take the money that you initially make, and you've got to hire the team, build the team, train the team, mentor the team. You should actually be training your team more than you train your clients. And ultimately, you know, be very, very clear on that customer journey.

So, what does that customer journey look like from the moment that they join? The onboarding is the most important part of any kind of educational program because it's when you set expectations, you pre-frame problems, you get them set up on the tools, and you give them an overview of the pipeline and journey—what to expect. And you know, if you can get a client a win inside the first 30 days to ROI on the program, you've got a client for multiple years.

So, I could talk about that forever in a day, but you know, throughout your curriculum or your coaching touchpoints—group coaching, the availability for one-on-one coaching is important, but you do have to have a team to do that; event and immersive experiences where you can bring people together, they can network, they can make friends, they can do all sorts of stuff is absolutely critical; and then as well, having gamification and levels is really, really important because if you don't have that, then people don't know where they are. And having some kind of blueprint as well, some kind of actual—how could I put it—roadmap to allow people to actually see where they are in the cycle of working with you is really, really, really important. You know, if you're at a particular level, what are the next steps to scale X, Y, and Z? All of that stuff. So, there are a lot of components there that I could talk about.

Adam Kitchen:

For sure. I mean, we could go into a rabbit hole for hours on those, definitely. But I want to move on to the next one, and we're going to talk a little bit about how you built your audience because you personally are operating in a very crowded space. It's a massive market, but you know every man and his dog is selling online coaching these days. But you've been able to stand out and build a massive business in that space and make a big impact. And I was watching one of your videos the other day on how a lot of people are scared to be their authentic selves, and as a result of that, they're commoditizing their work and competing in this race for the bottom on price. How do you think about structuring your content to lean into offense, and how can people just let go of that so they're able to make more of an impact?

Phil Graham:

The most important thing that you need to know about success is that your level of success is in direct correlation to how safe you make people feel. The way that you make people feel safe is by standing in your true authenticity and your true power and speaking your voice. That means bringing your own unique quirks, mannerisms, beliefs, opinions, stances—all to the table and communicating it in ways and means that feel comfortable and natural to you. A lot of people don't do that. A lot of people look at somebody else in the marketplace and go, "Well, they're doing this; I'm going to communicate in the same way." And you end up getting what's called a "mini-me." And when you get a mini-me, then what you do is you dilute your message, and you actually shrink your part, and you're not in authenticity. And when you're not authentic, then people don't feel safe.

So, if you look at all the people that you look up to, all of them have been authentically themselves. They've demonstrated it. They have had the courage to be authentically rebellious and step into their world. Now, there's a million and one ways to write content, and I'm not going to share the insights on that—I want to give the thinking behind it. But you have to look at it from the perspective of, am I being in my truth? Because it's actually your truth that's going to differentiate you. So, anytime that you're afraid to share something, anytime that you're afraid to put a message out there and worry about offending someone, it's actually your truth. So, you need to have a vision that is bigger than your current circumstances, your current reality, your current challenges, and your voice needs to feed into that vision and be aligned with that vision in order for you to really penetrate the marketplace.

Adam Kitchen:

I think you've absolutely nailed that. I know from my personal experience as well—I have an email marketing agency as well as this company—and one of the pervasive narratives in the industry is that email should be 30 to 40% of your revenue. And the moment I started to speak out against that, after everyone saying the same thing for two years, our company started to gain massive traction, and people would reach out, and we'd win a lot of deals from that. So, I think you're right—as soon as you have the courage to just speak out on what's true to you, I think because people are so scared of being ostracized by society, it holds them back from doing that. But as a result, they're holding back the business. And business isn't for fickle people who want to obviously build momentum—you can't hide that because, like you said, you'll just fall into that sameness that everybody else is in.

Phil Graham:

You want to be speaking what everyone else is thinking. Exactly. So, what are your market thinking, and speak into that voice. And that would go contrary to what reads between the lines, etc. And it is generally the only way to get attention and to turn that attention into intention, whereby somebody wants to buy. And the goal of your marketing is to raise the amount of equity and trust in your market's mind, and you do that by being highly relevant towards their challenges, problems, and everything else. So, if you're not doing that, then you're leaving a lot of money on the table, and if you don't do it, somebody else will.

Adam Kitchen:

Absolutely. So, let's move on to how you're structuring that content. So, say, for example, in your head, you have your ICP, right? You know deeply what pains you're able to solve for them. Most people—or say, for example, in your industry—are just creating content around fitness. But I notice a lot of your content is actually lifestyle-related. It has several components, like the idealism of what someone would like to live their life like. How do you approach your content pillars? If you have any, is it just a case of you wake up on a weekly basis, you have an allocated amount of time, and just feel like creating something? Or do you have a split of, say, I'm going to create 33% fitness-related content, 33% aspirational lifestyle content, and then 33% around something else? How did you end up at the content pillars?

Phil Graham:

Our content revolves around a couple of key pieces. My content is designed to get rich, not famous. I'm talking to a very specific person at a very specific point in their life for a very specific problem. I'm not interested in amassing an enormous amount of followers and likes that ultimately can't buy anything from me. It doesn't do anything for me. I'm interested in talking to somebody that wants to live life on their own terms, and they define life on their own terms by the profit their business makes, the freedom that they have, and the impact in the lives that they change through the work that they decide to commit to.

And my content is broken down into a number of elements. The first one is, am I worth modeling? We all want to learn, and we all buy products from people that are living the life that we want to live. And I'm very open with how I live my life. I'm a no-nonsense, business problem-solving family guy that loves his free time, loves his food, loves his socializing, and loves rewarding himself. And I show that in a way that is a reflection of how I live, and I'm big into spending money on myself—my property, my house, my interests—but I'm at a point now where I can do that because I've built the business that's allowed me to do that. I want people to see me having a lifestyle, having freedom. I'm not big on locking myself in a room, working 24/7 in the dark, and drinking Monster. Nobody wants to live their life like that. The only people that want to live like that are people that are, one, trying to hide from the other problems that they have in their life; two, people that are going through a relationship breakup that don't want to face the reality of their relationship; or three, somebody that's in an aggressive scaling phase where all that matters is money, and they'll get to a point where they make all the money and realize that, hey, I don't want to be the richest man in the graveyard—I want to actually have a lifestyle. The only reason why we all created a business was to have freedom and to have options, and you're entitled to dictate whatever options you want based on your value system and how you look at the world.

So, I value travel, I value food, I value fishing, shooting, I value elements of fashion, I value cars, I value property. These are all things that revolve around what I spend my money on, what I think about, what I socialize, talk about the most. And I want that content to look and come across as aspirational. I don't have that; I want to lean in, and I want to work towards a life like that. It wasn't always that way. I never—only recently, probably in the last two years, I started sharing my car. I've had a Ferrari since the age of 30, and I was petrified to share it because I didn't want people knowing how much money I was making. I just wanted to be private, and I just didn't feel it looked right. But that was just insecurity on my part and worrying about somebody trying to copy me or trying to give somebody too much inspiration to try and go after me. That's going to happen anyway. It happens all the time. Most of the people that are in my space that are mentors—99.99999% of them are all ex-students of mine.

So, I changed my perspective on this when I had a bunch of people at my house that were relatively high status in my world and came to my house for the first time, and they saw everything. Long story short, three of them became clients. They said, "I want what you have." And it was at that moment I then clicked and said, I'm not showing enough of this stuff, and I need to start showing more of it. And I have to trust in my skills; I have to trust in my intentions more than feeding into an insecure story that I'm not going to be good enough to deserve this, I'm not going to be whatever. So, I started sharing it. So, am I worth modeling?

I also am very bullish on strong stances. So, I'm very strong on the stance of working your absolute ass off in your younger 20s and 30s to build the life of your dreams. I'm very big on not investing your cash outside of your main wealth creation mechanism, i.e., your business. I'm all about—the money that you make in your business is not yours until you've got a business that makes the money that you want and gives you the freedom that you want without you needing to be there. I'm against investing in property; I'm against investing in stocks and shares and ISAs because they bring out like 7 to 8% return. In comparison to the thing that you're an expert at, they pale in comparison. You only invest in those things when you've got FU money. I am huge on relationships and understanding that—you can't attract successful people around you or friends until you become successful yourself. Everybody wants to know, how do you hang about with a millionaire? How do I hang about with this? It doesn't work like that. You need to be successful, and you need to be able to hold a conversation with somebody that is at or above your level and be able to add value to them to create some form of relevant, interesting, and useful connection.

I also have content that demonstrates industry expertise. So, you might have seen the recent stuff with me coaching James Smith on YouTube—coaching him through building a team. So, I want people to see what I'm actually talking about, what I'm actually doing in the background—behind-the-scenes content of my company, team meetings, events, client results. And I also shoot my personal lifestyle, like I said at the start, and I show me cooking—people love that. It humanizes me a little bit. And that's pretty much it. My main company is Fitness Entrepreneur, which was essentially an uncoupling of my own name because we wanted to disassociate Phil Graham from it and get the team more involved.

And I am in the process now of building out my digital footprint for my personal brand. And the reason for that is very simple. I have built a business now that makes millions in profit every year, requires very little amounts of my time, and I've got space and time, and at a very young age—I’ve just turned 36. So, for me, it's to build a personal digital footprint of content where people can see me, learn my lessons of what I've built, the life I've built, all that kind of stuff, and then get keynotes, book deals, but most importantly, it's access to opportunity. You know, for somebody to discover me and go, "Hey, I like the way you think, I like the way you talk, I like the way you do this, I like the way you do that," that gets me into rooms, that gets me deals, that gets me all of that stuff.

And I currently use my business as a cash vehicle to buy investments and assets, and I'm in the process now of taking the exact same model and going into a new vertical, which I'm currently in legal discussions over. And then I will take the same model again, and I will do something in the mainstream business market down the line. And essentially, we'll have a portfolio of coaching companies underneath.

So, yeah, that's how I look at content. I can go into the specifics of YouTube, podcasts—we try to stretch content as much as we can; we try to repurpose as much as we can. But yeah, we have a combination of short-form, long-form, medium-form—very important, not just short-form. I always say to people, "Do you remember the last reel that you watched?" Nobody can give me a straight answer. The answer is you don't remember because it's short-form—it's like junk food. Your best clients are always going to come from your long-form content. We want to produce evergreen assets that lie on the internet that are still relevant in 10 years, and those are the very things that people are actually looking to read, absorb, consume, and look at before they make a buying decision.

Adam Kitchen:

That is such an important point. I think, as you said, it's like junk food, right, those short-form videos? And a lot of people get caught up in the vanity impressions, but actually, if you really just get rid of all that, what attracts the clients is the density and the quality of the content. And as you said, it's generally found in long-form. You might hook someone in with some type of short-form, but when they enter your world and consume the podcasts and the long-form articles, and like you said, the webinars—that's when they really buy into your methodology and buy from you.

Phil Graham:

Big time.

Adam Kitchen:

Big time. Yeah, and how about time blocking, Phil? Because for me personally now, it's like Wednesday to Friday is all content. I don't do any calls; I won't do anything client work—it just has to be content. Do you have a structure like that, or is it...

Phil Graham:

Yeah, I just work Thursdays. I work from nine o'clock in the morning to twelve, and that's all I do. I'm very, very clear on the amount of time that I want to dedicate to something. We have a full content manager; we have three editors. We're very specific—we're putting a lot of time and energy into our YouTube at the moment, very high production value. We have built out the Phil Graham personal channel and started to flesh it out. It was trying to get editors and stuff beforehand. But I've done that many... I've been doing a podcast for like 15 years. We've just started my new personal brand stuff, "Phil Graham Life on Your Terms," and the goal with that is to build and produce content for a year and then launch something on the other end of it, you know?

Adam Kitchen:

Yeah, I've been following your channel, and I can see you've got the wood slap panel setup already, so you're already halfway there as a creator.

Phil Graham:

Yeah, yeah, they're a prerequisite for anyone.

Adam Kitchen:

Talk to me a little bit about how you put advertising behind your content, because I follow you on Instagram, on YouTube, other channels as well, and I do consume all your content organically, but I'm also hit by a lot of advertising from you. How are you trying to bring people into the funnel through paid at the moment?

Phil Graham:

So, we use a range of different things—from lead magnets of various different types, sizes, and goals, right the way through to sales workshops, sales webinars, right the way through to boosted content. We look at paid advertising in the realms of brand awareness content—we want to build an audience of viewers, we want those viewers to then follow, and then we engage in a conversation. We then look at, you know, hand-raisers, lead magnets, workshops, webinars—if I'm interested in it, I'll put my details in, then we'll offer you a call and then look to nurture you in the back end through email marketing. So, we're pretty bullish on advertising because it creates forced omnipresence. Organic content is a pretty damn poor way to build a business. It's very unpredictable; you're at the mercy of an algorithm, and it's not free because it takes a lot of time and effort to go and recreate content every single week to then post it, to then be at the mercy of getting 12 likes on Instagram, even though you thought it was an absolute banging piece of content. When you can put exactly the same piece of content on an ad, put 20, 30, 50, 100 quid behind it a day, and literally let it follow your target market around until they buy, block, or do something else.

Adam Kitchen:

Love that. Out of curiosity, you mentioned webinars, lead magnets—any specific medium that's worked really well for you in terms of converting people into paying customers?

Phil Graham:

Sales workshops are the best. Webinars, events—because it's a maximum time exposure for somebody to come in, watch through a webinar, they sit through an hour of training from you—it's a long-form piece of content. If you get those people to stay to the end, they're very high-qualified prospects, leads.

Adam Kitchen:

Definitely. So, again, you're bringing them into a long-form piece, right, to gauge their intent and then try and close them afterwards?

Phil Graham:

Exactly, yeah.

Adam Kitchen:

Do you ever take—go on, sorry.

Phil Graham:

And if you've got client testimonials and case studies at those live events...

Adam Kitchen:

Yeah, they can just be pure gold. I'm going to come on to the events in a second, but just a final point on this—do you ever amplify your organic content that's performed well? I know YouTube's quite new to you, I know you have lots of posts going out on Instagram—do you ever see, okay, this one really resonated with people, let's put some paid behind this and see what happens?

Phil Graham:

Yes and no. I mean, I could put up a recipe of me cooking a steak, and it could perform extremely well, but it's not going to grow my bank balance, you know? So, it's really relevant. We usually tend to find a demonstration of industry expertise, a demonstration of social proof, and a demonstration of a strong statement opinion that polarizes and separates and segments a marketplace.

Adam Kitchen:

Yep, yep, fantastic. Let's come on to the in-person events as well. Just tell me a little bit about how they complement your online business and how you use them to build this flywheel in terms of your business and also audience online as well.

Phil Graham:

One, they're an amazing place for clients to create friendships—friendships that last a lifetime, marriages, relationships—you name it, they’ve all happened. Two, it gives them a break from me, so they get to speak to somebody else about their problems—they get to create relatability. Three, it's an amazing place for creating content for both me and for testimonials. Four, it's something for clients to look forward to that plays into the customer journey, which creates excitement and retention. And five, from an onlooker perspective, when clients are creating user-generated content from the event, it's just incredible social proof. And again, it all accumulates together into an ecosystem of cause and effect, and it's beautiful. So, they're very useful.

Adam Kitchen:

And how about the logistics of setting them up, Phil? Because obviously, you've mentioned about, you know, trying to make sure that nothing infringes on your time, but I had to imagine like there's a lot of logistics, planning, and time that goes into these events.

Phil Graham:

\Well, the content is very, very easily done because we've been doing that for so long. But we have somebody that manages the events, and their role is specifically to book the hotel, make sure everything's there, make sure the merchandise is there. So, we have a team operating on all fronts around that, so it's pretty damn tight.

Adam Kitchen:

Yep, good system in the back end—building that infrastructure again. I want to finish on something that you've touched on a little bit. Tell me about now that you've built your businesses, this plan to leverage your personal brand in the future. How are you thinking about it in terms of maximizing your wealth and impact that you said at the very beginning that you're trying to make?

Phil Graham:

One, it lets people know how I think. Two, it lets people know what I've built. Three, it lets people see my skill sets. Four, it adds value to people. Five, that gives me the opportunity to offer them something down the line if I feel it's relevant. Six, people are going to want to bring me in for specific corporate trainings, bits and pieces, private one-on-one mentoring—I don't do a lot of that, but every now and again, I get somebody that's absolutely crushing it, that wants to come and spend a day with me. I'll teach them everything that I know, and I always yield very high-quality people from that, and the results are amazing because when they're at the level to commit one-to-one, they're a fast action taker. And you know, I've seen people come to me, and in 90 days, they've doubled their business, or they've shaved off the amount of time that they're working in the business, they've got their freedom or their life back.

So, the opportunities for that are really more just reputation. So, Phil Graham is the guy that's built a really good coaching organization, coaching business—that's the niche that I'm in. But it also opens me up to other people when they start looking at me and interacting and consuming stuff. And again, it's not just business—it's like my whole approach to life. So, there's a system there that is ultimately feeding into the overarching goal of filling a room with predominantly men, which is my main target niche, of like how to build a great business, how to make a shit ton of profit, how to build a life on your terms. I also talk an awful lot about personal growth as well—you can probably feel that through my content. I go into a deeper level of thinking behind a lot of stuff rather than just like, "Oh, like say this in a reel," or "Do this hook," whatever. That's just so superficial—that means nothing if you don't know how to think.

But all of that is to really just provide life-changing value that then opens people up to, "Hey, how can I work with you?" You know, I'm going to run a series of workshops and boot camps at the end of the year around business, personal growth, all that, and I'll fill them.

Adam Kitchen:

Epic, man. You've got a complete flywheel—in-person, online, different channels—I love it. Out of curiosity, before we finish off, I'm guessing you're the type that doesn't really get affected by this, but I know I speak to some people who've built big audiences online, and it comes with some negative mental health impacts. For example, it's all-consuming, right? You log on, yes, you get a lot of praise, a lot of people giving you positive feedback, but there are also a lot of haters and people who will be extremely negative and also proactively hunt you around the internet to attack you. Does that ever impact you? And if so, how do you manage to deal with that?

Phil Graham:

I couldn't give a f**k because with every upside comes a downside. One of the upsides of building an audience and building a following is that you're going to have people that are the opposite. So, I would not have taken that on if I didn't embrace and understand that there was going to be a downside. And I have to ask myself a very simple question whenever there's a negative piece of information—and that can range from all different types of comments: what is that person's agenda? That's the question that you've got to ask yourself. And when you look at it, well, are they trying to annoy me? Why? If there's anything constructive there that I can pull from and learn from, it's gold, it's useful. But if there's something there that's completely incorrect, out of context, a snapshot statement, and it's posted by somebody with a profile photo of a giraffe or a dog, it tells me, one, that they haven't got the courage to have a voice and that they don't want to deal with the criticism and feedback of being ridiculed for what they've shared. Two, it tells me that they're hiding, so what depths of darkness must one be in to be able to do that without being able to do it and speak their own truth? And three, the only reason why someone would do that is to make themselves feel better because they've seen something that they've taken time to watch and interact with, and the only way to make themselves feel better is to throw or cast stones at it.

Again, very different if there's feedback there that's useful—big difference. And I don't get involved in arguments on the internet—it's just not a high-value use of time. There's genuinely no ROI in it. So, it's all anchored down into identity. I know who I am, I know what I do. I have a track record of evidence of being successful in my very thing. If somebody's going to come along and wants to give me a mentoring session on how I could do things better, I am all ears. But if it's just random garbage that's got no element of truth to it, I mean, what can I—I can't do anything about it. So, everybody's entitled to their opinion; it really makes no difference. I don't pay any attention to it; I just rock and roll. And I'm sure, you know, sometimes when I'm asked these questions, I have to go, well, you've obviously experienced the same thing yourself, and you know it's part and parcel. It's a common thread. If I was to ask you, have you experienced the same thing on the internet?

Adam Kitchen:

Absolutely.

Phil Graham:

Yeah, if I was to go to your best clients, and if I was to ask them if they experienced the same thing, what are they going to say? Has it changed anything? No. I think there's massive downside to being famous. I don't think there's any real advantage to being famous unless it's connected to something. I focus much more on building wealth, building a really successful and profitable business, and the fame is being like a bit of a byproduct. And I wouldn't even call myself famous at all. Yeah, it has never been an intention, it has never been a goal of mine. It is what it is. But again, ask yourself, what is their agenda? And if their agenda is to assassinate you or take you down, why? Have I done something wrong? Is there something that I can learn from? Am I factually incorrect? If the answer is no to that, then what is the agenda? Leave it at that. The agenda is they want to make themselves feel better because your magnificence makes them realize how insignificant their life is, and the only way for them to feel better is to cast stones.

Adam Kitchen:

Yeah, love that framework—great way of looking at it. To finish off, Phil, you talked a lot about your own content. Anybody in particular, especially on the offense side, that you really respect and learn a lot from online? Can be any channel.

Phil Graham:

This is going to sound slightly out there, but there's a guy called Chef Mike Robinson, who is a chef, hunts his own deer, runs his own restaurant, you know, just gets everything off the land and cooks it—demonstrates it from the hunt the whole way through. I find his stuff very warming and fascinating, and it's just really grounded on the lifestyle that I like. There are a range of people—I mean, I couldn't really narrow it down. There's a range of people, but you know, I produce more than I consume. So, I don't spend a lot of time consuming, consuming, consuming. In fact, you know, on my Instagram, I've got a timer block on it that tells me when I've been on it for too long. I don't go into it; I don't watch reels. One of my biggest superpowers, believe this or not, you're going to think this is crazy, has actually been disconnecting from content and not looking at it. So, when I create content, I speak once, and then I don't ever think about it again. It's taken from there, it's edited, it's chopped, it's put up. I do write my own content every now and again—you'll know when I've written it. But I genuinely disconnect from that because if you're consuming all the time, you're not creating. And if you're not creating, then you're not adding value. So, yeah, there comes a point when you know enough is enough, and you actually need to focus on production rather than consumption. And it really depends on what cycle you're in in your business or what season you're in. So, it's very important—you know, you're either in a season of scale and growth, you're either in a season of maintenance, you're either in a season of cleaning things up, or you're in a season of killing something off.

Adam Kitchen:

Yep, yep, succinctly put—couldn't agree more with you. I think there's definitely a space as well for someone to develop something where you're able to block out all the noise on these channels because there is a lot of great content and a lot of people that I want to follow, and I'm sure the same for you, but you have to sift through so much junk to consume that sometimes. And obviously, that's how these people make their money as well—through poisoning your mind.

Phil Graham:

Yeah, well, I've been fortunate enough to build some amazing friendships over the years. And if I'm struggling, I'll try to self-coach myself, or I'll pick up a phone. And the people that I make friends with have experience—they're usually a lot older than me. So, I'll tap into their life experience and learn from those guys. There are going to be things on the internet that you will read, that you will hear statements that will change your life. But you know, if I was to ask you, what is the biggest life-changing statement that you've ever read on the internet in the last 90 days? You probably can't remember. So, your retention of information is low whenever it's short-form junk content.

Adam Kitchen:

Yep, yeah, absolutely.

Phil Graham:

It's a hard thing for people to get their head around because they think that they need to be producing at the level of what everyone else is doing. But you need to think, what is the intention behind your content? Is it to get likes and followers, or is it to literally speak, communicate, and build trust with a very select person with a specific problem? And where are they most likely to go after that content? They want to read a guide, or they want to read your opinion or your stance, or your whole thought process on something, and take it from there. So, that requires deep thought.

Adam Kitchen:

It definitely does. And I think, as you said, you have to have a level of consistency in the output because the retention is so poor. So, you have to turn up consistently and create as well. That is something that I think people need to balance because you can obviously end up wasting so much time on so many of these channels.

Phil Graham:

Big time, big time.

Adam Kitchen:

But I want to finish off here, Phil. How can people find out more about you? What's the best way?

Phil Graham:

The best way is to go to Spotify, go to YouTube, type in Phil Graham and Life on Your Terms. Or on YouTube, it's called The Game Behind the Game. My new podcast, Life on Your Terms, is really, really good—personal growth, business, wealth creation, especially for people that are, you know, sub-40. It's very good.

Adam Kitchen:

And I find it weird saying sub-40, and we're all getting there, getting old.

Phil Graham:

Yeah, well, I'm 35 in a couple of weeks, so I'm on my way as well. Don't worry about it.

Adam Kitchen:

Appreciate your time, man. Thank you very much for joining us, and I'll speak to you again soon.

Phil Graham:

My pleasure, Adam. Thank you for having me on and taking the time to do this.

Adam Kitchen:

Cheers, mate.

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