🐝 Brandon Fluharty: Founder of Be Focused. Live Great.

Market-to-Revenue

Meet Brandon Fluharty, Founder of Be Focused. Live Great. The concept of a personal operating system. Transformations over transactions. Thinking bigger with prospects. Staying committed to long-term thinking. Overcoming imposter syndrome. Level up your environment. Leveling up tools. Thinking like a designer. Discipline, flexibility, curiosity.

22 insights. 7 rapid-fire questions. Show transcript.

Here’s what Mehann Misiak said about Brandon:

Brandon Fluharty is one of my favorites. He is actually a million-dollar seller, which is like a huge goal for a lot of people. Just released an incredible e-book that talks about a lot of the things I mentioned in terms of not doing more, but doing better, and really aligning habits with your big P purpose, forming, and bringing in, a lot of strategies that will help you get there.
—Meghann Misiak, Founder of The Path to President’s Club

What are 3 ways that your team converts your market into revenue?

Content, community, and connections. I’ve been doing it with my business. I learned it really effectively at my old company, LivePerson.

1) Content. Putting out good, authentic content draws people in.

2) Community. Building, not an audience, but a community, where prospects can commingle with actual customers. I think having folks talk to those who are maybe 12-18 months down that path is a really powerful thing for those who are maybe on the fence of buying a digital solution, buying a transformation.

3) Connections. So, having those connections that are a level deeper, a bit more meaningful. And, I always liked to turn every meeting that I had with a prospect into more of a collaborative design session. Just a great way to get folks to open up, lead with curiosity, get those insights, and then use those insights in a really actionable way. You can actually cut down a lot of meetings in the sales process by turning your meetings into more of a meaningful connection and using design principles.

What are 3 hard problems that you recently overcame?

1) Overcoming imposter syndrome. So, as someone who's highly introverted, being in what is mostly perceived as an extroverted world, in sales, overcoming imposter syndrome was really important for me. Especially as I was leveling up, I needed to learn through working with a specific coach who specializes on imposter syndrome. And, what we realized is imposter syndrome is a healthy sign for high achievers, especially as you're elevating inside your career. So, that helped me to sort of repurpose my introversion, and being really quiet, into a sales superpower by being more empathetic, being a really good listener, being an over-thinker that helps me to look deeply into a company that I was pursuing as a prospect, and to be able to pull in insights that might be meaningful, and helpful to, to that prospect and lending that opportunity. So overcoming imposter syndrome was a big one for me.

2) Transformations over transactions. Less transactions, and thinking more about transformations. So thinking bigger with my prospects. And, by getting outside of the box of selling a one-off transaction, which is common in, particularly, the industry I came from SaaS, software as a service, the usual model is land then expand. I wanted to rethink that model and think, “How could I think, actually, more expansive, from the beginning, and open up the aperture of where we started? And then, make a more meaningful impact using our services, and using our solution, pulling in more people who could help a really large brand, like a Delta Airlines, a Chipotle, and United Healthcare to really go after big moonshot ideas, and challenges, that they were trying to solve for?” So second one: transformations over transactions.

3) Saying no more. A big one that really changed really the direction of my career in my life was saying no more. So this concept of slowing down in order to speed up, I had the temptation to want to hold on to every account, wanting to say yes to every opportunity. And unfortunately, what that was doing was just spreading me too thin and leading to a path to burn burnout. But when I worked with a manager and a coach who really helped give me some good sound advice and outside perspective of, “Hey, your best suited when you can go deeper with an account versus trying to work too many accounts at once. Why don't you slow down in order to speed up your progress?” And that was really profound and game-changing for me.

What are 3 roadblocks that you are working on now?

1) Staying committed to long-term thinking. So, I've made the transition from intrepreneur as a individual contributor, a high impact strategic SaaS seller working for other large companies, public companies, to now being a solopreneur and saying no. As I'm trying to grow a business and stay focused on long-term initiatives and goals, that's been a real challenge. The best thing that's been helping me is the commitment to pillars and a theme that I said when I started my business, when I launched my business just a month ago, staying grounded to those operating principles versus saying yes to lucrative consulting opportunities, or coaching engagements, that are coming at me often. Great first world problem to have certainly, I'm very fortunate and grateful for that, but, I know that could lead down a path of tempting me to steer away, veer away, from my long-term vision and north star for the organization. So, playing the long game is definitely a challenge, and a roadblock, I'm trying to overcome.

2) Comparison syndrome. Sort of over imposter syndrome that creeps in from time to time, but a challenge that I'm currently facing a lot, that encounter is comparison syndrome. So comparing my business, or myself, to others that I might see being hyper successful in social media or other businesses that I aspire to be like and comparing myself where I am now. I think it's been a challenge and one thing I'm always trying to keep in the back of my mind is, you know, everybody's on their own path and I can't look at someone or a business that might be 18, 24, 10 years further down that road than I am and expect the same results or impacts, it’s just unfair and unrealistic. It's hard. It's hard in today's modern world when we're constantly bombarded with notifications and the dopamine hits of novelty of social media, to constantly see how well other people are doing and wanting to compare yourself. That's the second one.

3) Personal operating system. I'm really bullish on this concept of a personal operating system. So, refining my personal operating system in the sense of turning it into a thrive system. That's what I'm endeavoring on. And that takes looking at things like, how well rested I am, how I'm sleeping, how healthy I am, how that's integrated between my work and my life, so that I can be at my best when I'm trying to work. I can stay undistracted when I'm trying to do highly strategic work, and I can focus and get in flow states. So, fine tuning, tweaking, and evolving that personal operating system so it's a consistent thrive system. That’s something I'm really excited about working on.

What are 3 mental models that you use to do your best work?

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