Q 1. Kindly give our readers an introduction to your business. Please include what your business is all about, in which city you are located and if you have offices in multiple locations/ cities.
Ans: LifeExcellence is a success coaching and personal development business located in Plymouth, Michigan. Brian Bartes, the company’s founder, is a success coach, author, speaker, and host of the podcast and YouTube show, LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes.
Q 2. Kindly give us a brief description about yourself (it should include your brief educational or entrepreneurial background and list some of your major achievements).
Ans: My educational background is in accounting and finance. I have an MBA in finance. But my most valuable learning and growth came outside of traditional education. When I was a senior in college, I was introduced to a book called “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, which is one of the great classics in personal development literature. The book changed my life, because it started me on the path to personal and professional development.
I remember being very intentional about goal setting when I was 11 or 12 years old, but reading Hill’s book it thrust me into this whole world of books, seminars and people whose lives were devoted to the field of personal professional development. After reading “Think and Grow Rich,” I started reading all the classics personal development literature – Dale Carnegie, W. Clement Stone, James Allen, David Schwartz. I read every book I could get my hands on. Later, I started attending seminars, and meeting and working with people like Stephen Covey, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy and Mark Victor Hansen.
I started learning these amazing success principles, applying them, and seeing phenomenal results, in every area of my life. For example, I became the Chief Financial Officer of a $100 million company at the age of 23, and helped grow it to $1.5 billion in annual revenue. I’ve been married for more than 30 years to my high school sweetheart, Heidi, and we have four amazing adult children who are all thriving and making a positive impact in the world. I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been and am committed to a very high level of fitness. I attribute the success I’ve created in every area of my life to the consistent application of the tools, techniques, and strategies that I’ve learned over the last 30+ years. I teach those same techniques to my newsletter subscribers, podcast listeners, and coaching clients, so they, too, can create success – however they define it.
Q 3. What inspired you to (start a new business venture) or (to make significant changes in an existing business)? How did the idea for your business come about?
Ans: My original idea for LifeExcellence was that it would be a product-oriented company. Nightingale-Conant was the leading personal development company back in those days. It was a publishing company for audio programs, and supported all the top salespeople and speakers of the day – people like Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, Tom Hopkins, Jim Rohn, and Zig Ziglar. I wanted to be in that space, so I started down that path, created a company called LifeExcellence, and created a business plan to distribute resources for personal and professional development.
At that time, and this was back in 2000, “coaching” as we know it today was a very new concept. The closest thing to coaching was management consulting on the business side, and therapy on the personal development side.
As I was starting LifeExcellence, I met a man named Thomas Leonard. Thomas was a successful financial planner. One of the things he noticed in his financial services practice was that, more and more, his clients – both individuals and couples – were asking him questions about areas of life outside of money. One of the things that happens when you’re an expert in one area is that people automatically assume you’re an expert in every area, which of course is not the case. But it just so happened that Thomas knew enough to add value in those conversations. He was having more and more of those types of conversations, and realized there was a need for people to receive this type of coaching.
Since there wasn’t an existing support structure for coaching, Thomas founded an organization called CoachU, and also started the International Coach Federation (ICF). I met Thomas Leonard when he was speaking here in the Detroit area, and what he was saying really resonated with me. I had an epiphany about LifeExcellence, because I realized that what I really wanted was to not just add value to people by providing them products, but instead through sharing the same tools, techniques, and strategies that I had been using and applying to achieve phenomenal results in every area of life. I attended CoachU, got certified, joined the ICF, and started coaching clients using my background in business, and the coaching tools acquired from CoachU and the ICF. I began writing articles and books, and have built on that model ever since.
Q 4. What three pieces of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?
Ans: First, never stop learning. Jim Rohn said that “formal education will make you a living, but self-education will make you a fortune. The world is changing faster than ever before, and the only way to stay on top of those changes is to continually learn. One of my mantras is “always learning, always growing.” I’ve shared this with my kids so often that they repeat it today as one of their mantras. I highly recommend that you engage in continuous learning. You can do this by reading an hour a day in your chosen field, listening to audio programs or podcasts, and attending seminars and other events in your field or profession.
Second, decide that you’re going to work harder than anybody else and then do it. If you’ll do what no one else is willing to do, then you’ll be able to have what people only wish for or dream about. And the way to do that is through hard work. Successful people do what they know they need to do to be successful – whether they want to do it or not.
Third, get a coach or a mentor. A coach will hold you accountable for the things you say you want to do and the things you know you need to do to be successful. He’ll help you design what success looks like, create action strategies to create that success, and then help you do it faster, easier and with greater predictability than you would on your own.
Q 5. What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
Ans: I think the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur are:
- Willingness to take risks
- Strategic thinking
- Strong work ethic
Anyone going into business must be willing to take calculated risks. The decision to go into business is the first such risk, and is just the start.
A successful entrepreneur also has to be able to think strategically. The world is changing faster than ever before, and adaptability is essential. There’s a Wayne Gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going to be rather than where the puck is, and successful entrepreneurs must do that, too. Thinking strategically is what enables successful entrepreneurs to know where to skate.
Finally, successful entrepreneurs must be willing to roll up their sleeves, and work harder than anyone else. A strong work ethic is a great starting point for success, and hard work is often enough to overcome other deficiencies.
Q 6. How many hours do you work a day on average?
Ans: At this stage in my life in the season of my life I’m working a lot. 10 hours a day, six days a week. The reason I’m working so much right now is there are certain things that I am very committed to accomplishing in this season of my life, and so I’ve made work a priority. We’ve created a new online program called “Living Your Best Year Ever,” and I’ve invested a tremendous amount of time and energy into that project. I’m also writing a book on goals, and have another book that I will start writing just as soon as that’s finished, which is around the success habits of high achievers. That book idea came out of our podcast – the success our guests have achieved. I’ve studied high achievers for over 30 years, and there are common characteristics that account for their success, whether we’re talking about a professional dancer, or an Olympic athlete, a New York Times best-selling novelist, or an astronaut.
Our podcast, LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes, is also something we’ve been working very hard on. And I’m creating a mastermind group, which is a group of 10-12 entrepreneurs, small business owners, and self-employed professionals who meet quarterly to share their successes and their challenges around business growth, and receive feedback and advice from others in the group about how to take their businesses and personal lives to the next level.
Q 7. To what do you most attribute your success?
Ans: I attribute my success to having made the decision that I’m going to be phenomenally successful in every area of my life, and then doing what it takes to make that happen. I’m very intentional about the results I want to create, and I work harder than anybody I know to achieve those results. I realize that “excellence” is not the standard for most people, and I get it. But for me, the bar is very high, and any success that I’ve created has been through intentionality and hard work.
Q 8. How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?
Ans: Our business gets cross marketed in everything we do. We publish a weekly newsletter, we post blog posts on our website, I host a bi-weekly podcast and YouTube show. Our books are a form of marketing because they talk about other products and services that we offer. We do some advertising on social media. Our most successful form of marketing is coaching clients until they hire me to coach them. I receive a lot of inquiries about coaching and a lot of questions from our subscribers and prospective clients. I happily respond to those questions, because I want to add value wherever and whenever I can. People have told me I shouldn’t talk to anybody unless they hire me. At least part of my purpose on earth, though, is to add value to people, so I don’t feel like I need to charge for every bit of coaching or every piece of advice that I give.
My business model has always included entry points from free all the way up to a sizable investment. I’ve had a weekly newsletter for a long time, and people can go to brianbartes.com and sign up for it. The next level is a book, which costs around $20. Books are worth far more than that, of course, because of the time and effort authors put into first accumulating the experience and the expertise to be able to write a book, and secondly the time it took to research and sit down and write the book. Our online programs, like “Living Your Best Year Ever,” require more of an investment, but also provide more value.
On the higher end, my Platinum Mastermind Group and one-on-one coaching require the biggest investment. These programs aren’t cheap, and they’re not for everyone. But our participants and clients receive tremendous economic return on their investment, and also receive a significant return that can’t be measured in dollars. Examples of this are stronger relationships with your spouse and children that comes from freeing up time, enhancing your health and fitness, which helps you take care of your temple in order to have energy for work and for play.
Finally, many of our coaching clients come to us after having been referred by our subscribers, podcast listeners, and other coaching clients. Truly successful people want success not only for themselves, but for others, too.
Q 9. What is the best way to achieve long-term success?
Ans: The best way to achieve long-term success is to first of all have a picture of what success looks like. If you don’t have a target, then there’s no way to hit it. So creating a vision, creating goals, and then creating a plan for the achievement of those goals. The plan might change, but it’s important to have a plan so that you know what to do, and then you know what to do next, and then you know what to do after that.
People get paralyzed because they don’t have a clear vision of what success looks like and they don’t have specific measurable goals that provide color to that vision and they’re a little uncertain about what to do to create that success. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world, and the builders wouldn’t have even considered starting to build that structure without a blueprint. And yet most people go through life and they don’t have anything close to a blueprint or vision of what they want life to look like in every area of life. So, the best way to achieve long-term success is to have that vision, and have those goals, to have a plan for the accomplishment of the goals, and then to take massive action and see how that all plays out and adjust as needed. You adjust the plan if the plan needs to be adjusted but you keep taking action. You keep moving forward.
Think about an ant. When I was a little boy, I used to pour water on ant hills. The ants would move in a particular direction, and this big pail of water would come crashing down on them. That happens to us in life, right? Things don’t always go the way we plan. The thing about those ants was, they never stopped moving. So they got splashed around and then they oriented themselves and kept moving and kept progressing toward their goal. And when you do that, then that’s how you’ll achieve long-term success.
Q 10. Where do you see yourself and your business in 5 – 10 years?
Ans: In 5-10 years, we’ll be in the same business, we’ll just be playing a much bigger game. I’ll continue to write and publish books. I love the podcast, so I think potentially that could grow in terms of frequency. We may do a weekly podcast rather than a biweekly podcast. And I’ll continue to create personal and professional development programs. I think our mastermind group will grow to probably several groups. I’ll continue to speak at least occasionally, and there will be opportunities to expand that part of our business. My coaching practice will always be part of what I do, although obviously as time goes on the ability to coach people one-on-one becomes more challenging, because of the demands on my time.
Our organization will grow, too. We’ll certainly expand our team so that we can branch out and grow in areas that we’re not able to do now because of capacity constraints. This will include operations people, and maybe additional coaches, too. I’m super excited for the next 5-10 years, and I can’t wait to look back five years from now, and then 10 years from now and see all that we’ve accomplished, the value we’ve created, and the difference we’ve made in people’s lives.
Q 11. Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?
Ans: I admire people in the personal development space that have laid the groundwork for my ability to be successful. There are three people who have profoundly impacted my life. I’m grateful for their contribution to my personal and professional success, and also for the business models they’ve created.
I’ve always appreciated the way Tony Robbins structures his business, and I’ve tried to emulate Tony in the way I’ve structured my own business. Now, I’m not Tony Robbins, and I’ll never be Tony Robbins. But I admire the model that he’s created and the tremendous impact he’s had on thousands of people.
John Maxwell is somebody who I’ve been working with closely over the last several years. His model started out a little different than Tony’s, but one of the things I really admire about John’s model is that he is working overtime in this season of his life to leave a legacy and change the world by training leaders, and then training the leaders to train other leaders. Zig Ziglar said you can get everything in life you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want. John’s organizations are growing exponentially as he leads people to become leaders and make a positive impact around the world.
Brian Tracy is a good friend of mine, and I’ve known him for probably close to 20 years. Like John, he is a prolific author, and one of the most successful speakers in the world. He created a phenomenally successful enterprise over the last 40 years. I was privileged to have worked very closely with him for several years. Brian has had a tremendous impact on my life and on my business, and I’m very grateful for that.
Q 12. How important have good employees been to your success?
Ans: Having the right people on my team has been one of the keys to success for as long as I’ve been in business. Having a great team is critical for several reasons. First of all, I’m one person. I work very hard, and I’d like to think that I work more effectively and more efficiently than most people. With that said, though, there are only 24 hours in my day, 168 hours per week. That creates a capacity constraint. I write a lot about surrounding yourself with success, and another thing I’ve learned is that, in order to achieve success in business, you must have people in your organization who are better than you. A lot of people are threatened by that, but business has always worked best for me when I’ve hired people who are better than me.
I’m extremely blessed to be surrounded by great people, and that brings so many benefits, not the least of which is high quality work. Just as importantly for me is the energy that comes from being around other action oriented super achievers. There’s a chemistry that takes place. It’s like a sports team when you get the chemistry right. And it’s not necessarily five superstars on the basketball court – it’s five people who gel really well together. And when you have that kind of chemistry, I think it’s a force multiplier, and everyone thrives. It’s like one plus one is the power of eleven, rather than two.
Q 13. How long do you stick with an idea before giving up?
Ans: The question of how long you stick with an idea before giving up is a very good one. Seth Godin wrote a book called “The Dip,” which addresses the subject of knowing when to quit and when to keep going. One of the big ideas of the book is that successful people quit the right stuff at the right time. I think that, more often than not, people give up far too early in the process and they don’t realize how close to success they really are.
I have quotes and photos and different pieces of inspiration in the dressing area of my bedroom. One of the pieces is a cartoon. The first photo shows a guy digging for a treasure, and the second picture is the guy walking away. He can’t see that he’s so close to reaching the treasure, and the captions reads, “Keep going! You never know how close you are….”
Unfortunately, there’s no clear cut answer about how long to keep going before giving up on an idea. And often we measure the decision in hindsight. If giving up on the idea freed you up to do something more valuable, then it was likely a good idea. If you “quit” simply because the going got tough, then maybe you should have stuck it out, and kept going.
Q 14. What motivates you?
Ans: What motivates me is what I believe is God’s purpose for my life, which is to add value to people. Of course, I would love to do that in huge impactful ways, but I also know I have the opportunity to do that every day – to add value to people every day in small ways. Transactionally. We don’t usually know what’s going on with people. We don’t have the luxury of being able to read people’s minds and know what’s going on. So, I really try to be a good human. I strive to be kind to people. Not just people who can help me, but anyone who comes into my path. I try to be friendly, try to be kind, try to be nice. I try to add value when I can, and ask people how I can add value to them. And sometimes you just need to help people without asking people how to add value. And so that motivates me.
The other thing that motivates me is my family. Wanting to leave a legacy, too. We all want to matter, and the people who matter most to me are the people closest to me. The people closest to me drive me to be my best, to model success, to model excellence. To be the best I can be in order to help the people around me, and to lead by example.
Q 15. How do you define success?
Ans: In terms of my personal life, success occurs when the people closest to me love me the most. If I’m out in the world achieving success the way the world defines success – economic success or notoriety or recognition or whatever that looks like – but I go home and I am resented or despised by the people in my family – that to me is not success. Success to me is life excellence, where every area of life is working and again the most important part of that is that the people closest to me love, admire, and respect me the most. That’s personal success.
In terms of business and areas of life outside my personal relationship with my family and those closest to me, consistently moving in the direction of my desired outcomes is success. Success to me is doing my very best, and I think that, at the end of the day, if you can look at yourself in the mirror and honestly say that you have done your best, and evaluate that in every year of life and have an affirmative answer, then I believe you’re successful.
Q 16. What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?
Ans: My favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur is innovation. It’s creating ideas and creating programs and writing books. It’s delivering information that makes a positive impact on people. As an entrepreneur, you have tremendous flexibility in how to do that. If you’re working for someone else, the way that gets done might be dictated by your boss or by your company. But as an entrepreneur you have lots of free rein to innovate. And, of course, the smartest way to do that is to find out what the marketplace needs, and then satisfy that need.
Q 17. What has been your most satisfying moment in business?
Ans: My most satisfying moments in business are when my customers or subscribers or listeners or clients achieve success because of something I wrote, said, or did. Because of that, my goal is to help people achieve their goals. When that happens, and if I’ve had any input into that, then it’s very satisfying.
Q 18. What do you feel is the major difference between entrepreneurs and those who work for someone else?
Ans: The major difference between entrepreneurs and those who work for someone else are freedom and autonomy to make decisions around what gets done and how it gets done. If you have a boss or you’re working for a company, then you are bound by the direction that comes from the top. An entrepreneur is the boss, and gets to make those decisions.
Q 19. What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?
Ans: Our team is probably better equipped to answer that question, but I think we have a culture rooted in positivity, and one in which people value others and feel valued by others. Our culture has the bar set very high for results we’re looking to create, and we have a lot of fun doing it. For me, it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a mission. Like a calling. It feels like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
I think the tone was probably established right from the beginning, and reinforced over time. One thing I have a very low tolerance for is toxic people. We don’t have toxic people in our organization or around us – that’s a boundary we’ve created.
Q 20. In one word, characterize your life as an entrepreneur.
Ans: The one word that I would use to characterize my life as an entrepreneur is awesome. If I could use two words, then I’d say crazy awesome, because it is a wild roller coaster ride of fun. I believe very strongly in the work we’re doing. I believe it makes a difference, and that’s what makes it fun.
Q 21. If you had the chance to start your career over again, what would you do differently?
Ans: If I had a chance to start my career over again, I might be more collaborative from the beginning. For me, there’s joy in collaboration and I work well with others on projects. I think there is a synergy and momentum that occurs with great groups, and so maybe rather than being the “front man,” I would be part of a larger team doing the same thing.
Q 22. How has being an entrepreneur affected your family life?
Ans: The hours of an entrepreneur are crazy. The flexibility is really good, but you can also work literally every waking hour. If I’m working every waking hour, that would have a negative effect on family life, and I need to monitor my time to make sure that’s not the case.
On a positive note, my family sees that my work is not work – it’s a calling. They know how passionate I am, and they see the impact it has on people. My family reads just about everything I write, and they listen to the podcast. They benefit from the material, and have tremendous appreciation for the impact I’m making.
Q 23. What is your greatest fear, and how do you manage fear?
Ans: My greatest fear is insignificance – that I would lead a life that in the end didn’t matter. Thankfully, I know that my life does matter, and that I make a difference at least for some people. I see evidence of that almost continuously, which really helps alleviate that fear.
Q 24. Do you believe there is some sort of pattern or formula to becoming a successful entrepreneur?
Ans: I think the formula to becoming a successful entrepreneur is to find a need and fill it – to find a problem that needs to be solved and solve it. Once you know what problem you are solving, work very hard to do it.
Q 25. If you could talk to one person from history, who would it be and why?
Ans: If I could talk to one person from history I would want to talk with Jesus. I feel like I know him pretty well already, and I’ve learned so much from reading the Bible. It’s a richer experience, though, when you’re able to actually sit down and speak with someone. To have meaningful conversation. I would love to talk with Jesus, and I can only imagine how amazing that would be!
Q 26. Who has been your greatest inspiration?
Ans: My greatest inspiration has been my children. I’ve wanted since the day my oldest son was born and even before that to be a good dad – to set a really good example for how I think life is intended to be lived. To be a good husband, and have our children see that. To be a good friend, and have them see that, too. To be for people – to genuinely care and be a good human being. To be a positive role model not just for the people closest to me, but for strangers and people I’ll never meet. That inspires me.
Q 27. What book has inspired you the most? (OR what is your favorite book?)
Ans: Many books have inspired me. One book that comes to mind is Viktor Frankl’s, “Man’s Search For Meaning.” Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor. The book chronicles Frankl’s experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. One of the main ideas is that, while we can’t always control what happens to us, we can always control what we think about what happens to us.
Another inspirational book that I’ve read recently is “The Art of the Good Life: 52 Surprising Shortcuts to Happiness, Wealth, and Success.” Books like this cause me to reflect regularly on how I’m living my life, and whether it’s consistent with how I want to live my life. I think being aware of that and evaluating and assessing it really helps to enhance the quality of life. Merely being aware of it isn’t enough, though. You have to adjust. But I think I’m pretty good about doing that
Q 28. What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve made?
Ans: I’ve made lots of mistakes. I’ve invested money in opportunities that didn’t pan out. I’ve had ideas for businesses and started businesses that failed. Maybe one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made is not taking enough risks. I’m pretty conservative and would not consider myself a pioneer or particularly innovative or even a huge risk taker. So maybe that’s the biggest mistake – not taking enough risk.
Q 29. What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
Ans: When I’m not working, I love to read. I read a book a week on average, and most of my reading is non-fiction – business and some biographies. I read newspapers and magazines and I also read a lot online. Besides reading, I love to run, and I run quite a bit. I also love to play squash, and I try to play two or three times a week. I also love to travel. I’ve had the opportunity to travel all over the world, have taken some great trips with my family, and great trips with each of our children individually, which I’ve always felt very blessed to do.
Q 30. What makes you happy?
Ans: What makes me happy is feeling like life is going pretty well. I try to approach each day with gratitude, I try to end each day with gratitude, and being very thankful for all the blessings of life. I feel like I won the geographic lottery, being born in the United States and raised in Michigan. What also makes me happy is when our family unit is operating well – when our kids are thriving and doing well, and when I feel like I’m making a difference. I feel really good about that at this point in my life.
Q 31. What sacrifices have you had to make to be a successful entrepreneur?
Ans: The biggest sacrifice I’ve had to make in order to be a successful business person is the trade-off of time and energy. I used to sacrifice a lot of sleep. I would sleep 4-5 hours a day and for a really long time that was sufficient. I had high capacity and the output was much greater. Today, I’m honoring sleep much more, as I’m finally realizing the importance of sleep as it relates to overall health.
There is limited time. There are 24 hours in a day, and so the question becomes, “How are you going to use your time?” Whenever you say yes to something, then you’re saying no to something else. And recently in my business, because of the initiatives that we’re working on, because of the things that we want to do and the results I want to create, it’s required sacrificing time. Sacrificing fun time or relaxation time for high productivity work. I don’t mind that and I’m happy to make that sacrifice.
Through the years, I’ve sacrificed quality time with the people closest to me and that’s always a very difficult thing to do. I always felt like the construct of life is backwards in a couple ways. When our kids are young, those are the prime years of our career, and so we’re busy working on our career. The 20 years that our kids are around goes by very, very quickly, and I feel like at the point where adults have more discretionary time for their children – for those closest to them – their children are grown and gone. And so that’s definitely been a sacrifice. I didn’t get to all the kids’ sporting events. We have four kids, and there were a lot of activities that I missed. I hope I made it to the most important ones, but I know I know I missed a lot of them because I was working during that time. Thankfully, my wife has been a stay-at-home mom. She devoted 100% of her career to raising our children, and so that definitely helped.
Company Detail:
Company : LifeExcellence LLC
Contact : Brian Bartes
Address : 11347 Overdale Ct
City : Plymouth
State : MI
Zip : 48170
Country : USA
Phone : 888-349-0020
Email : info@brianbartes.com
