Chris Norton: 0:04

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast where we dive into the lessons and stories from the world's top marketers. I'm Chris Norton and today's guest is Brian Keane, bestselling author of the Fitness Mindset and the book that I read, rewire your Mindset. Brian is not just a fitness entrepreneur. He's also an endurance athlete who has completed grueling challenges like sahara ultra marathons and 230 kilometer arctic treks, all whilst he actually hates running. He is massive online he's got 250 000 tiktok followers, 160 odd thousand instagram followers and almost 15 000 on youtube. Through his experiences, he's developed a unique perspective on resilience, branding and persistence, which he shares with audiences worldwide of the corporate state. I got him on the show as I listened to his audio book and I found it really useful as it helped me with my mindset during sport. But it works for any practice, whether that's football, business and, of course, marketing, and Brian has literally written a book about learning from mistakes. So today we unpack the lessons that Brian has learned from the fitness world and how that can transform our approach to marketing From building an authentic personal brand everywhere online to rewiring your mindset after big setbacks. Brian's insights are going to be hugely invaluable for anyone looking to overcome challenges, whether in business or in pleasure. So, as always, sit back, relax and let's hear how you can apply the principles of a strong mindset to build a brand that lasts and thrives.

Chris Norton: 1:35

Enjoy, brian Keane. Welcome to the show, lads. Thank you so much for having me on. So, brian, I came across you in a very unusual situation. You've written a book called Rewire your Mindset. In fact, you've written how many books is it?

Brian Keane: 1:53

We're coming into the fifth one. It'll be out in January.

Chris Norton: 1:57

All right, another book, there you go, that's good. So I listen to Rewire your Mindset, and the reason being is that, um, outside of work, this will be a shocker, but I'm not a a professional athlete like yourself. Um, I, uh, I, I I've got something. Will does badminton, I do squash. Uh, we don't try and compete each other outside of work, but, um, I'm, I the point, and on the uh, in the games, and I'd get to like, in squash you've got to win by two points, and I, um, it's, it goes to 15 and I'd get to 13 and think I'm going to win, and then every time I just throw it all away and end up losing 15, 13 or 16, 14. And I thought, right, this is mindset, because I'm winning the games but I'm getting to the.

Chris Norton: 2:40

So I thought, oh, I'll listen to an interesting book. And I went, went on the internet and looking at different books and yours sounded really interesting. So anyway, I started listening to your book and then I got like about three chapters in. I was like, and all you talk about all the way through is how you failed and fucked up and made mistakes, and learn from it. I'm like we need to get this guy on the pod. So that's why. That's why I got you on. So do you want to tell me how you got? Do you want to tell Will and I how you got into what you do now and how?

Brian Keane: 3:13

you've set about building the empire that you've got. Thanks so much, chris. And yeah, and it's funny, because one of the jokes that I have on my channels, on my platforms, is it's just, I'm basically turning all my fuck ups into profit because you're just using it to write books, you're using it to create courses, using it to create programs, you're using it to create content and nearly 80 to 90% of everything I've created is just off mistakes I've made and learning from those mistakes and moving forward and failing forward with this and a long story short, I was a primary school teacher, so I worked in the UK, in London, for four years as a primary school teacher, but for two of those years I was working as a personal trainer in a gym at nighttime and at weekends and in evenings, and then during school holidays and in 2014, I decided right, this is my third attempt at making a fitness business work because I went broke twice. I made so many stupid mistakes in business, from trying to look the part, getting business cards, getting gear, getting all the kit with my logos and I had no clients. So trying to look the part without being the part every mistake you could probably make when it comes to going from zero to one with the business I made. And then, on attempt number three in 2014, I said right, I'm going to give this one final go, I'm going to move back home to the West of Ireland. I've been personal training in the gym now for two years. I've got quite decent at my craft. If I don't make it work, I will go back on the teaching registry in the summer and I get a job for that September. This was 2014. And then over the space of two months it ended up doing better than I ever thought. I actually ended up getting a waiting list that had to bring on other trainers underneath me to clear that waiting list. And then the business kind of grew and scaled from that point onwards.

Brian Keane: 4:51

And then in 2015, my daughter was born and I was competing at the it was the WBFF world. So I traveled around. I was in fitness modeling and things like that. So bodybuilding shows, fitness modeling magazines, things along those lines and I went into that space to help cement my name or bring my name up as a trainer. So people will want to come to me, want to work with me, and it did all of that and more.

Brian Keane: 5:15

And in 2015, my daughter was born, I was preparing for the world in Vegas and I said, right, this is something I'm going to have to stop doing. I need to leave this world of bodybuilding. It's making me really narcissistic. It's making me really self-centered. I'm walking around like a calorie depleted zombie. I'm going to be a crap dad. I'm going to be shit at everything I do except for bodybuilding. I need to get out of this and remove myself from it. And I said I'm going to move my business online. And I and I gave it a six-month window of I want to spend more time with my daughter, I don't want to miss the pivotal moments of her life growing up. And I moved the business online in 2016. And then that's where everything just went skyrocketed to the moon.

Brian Keane: 5:54

I wrote my first book, the Fitness Mindset, in 2017.

Brian Keane: 5:57

It was 16 weeks on the Amazon bestseller list.

Brian Keane: 5:59

It was bestseller in the stores it went into in Ireland. It sold over 350,000 copies to date and it opened up all these other business stores and for scaling, for growing with programs, for fitness programs online. The mindset element was something that people really grasped onto. So I then wrote Rewire your Mindset, the book you mentioned, which again has done tremendously well more than 100,000 copies to date in terms of what it sold and I was able to go into corporate speaking. I was able to set up a separate business, which is business consulting now.

Brian Keane: 6:31

So now I split my time with my fitness company, where I've got staff, fitness programs, courses, books, speaking in health and wellness, and then I've got a consulting business where I help and mentor different gym owners, personal trainers, online coaches and I spend all my business time doing that and again have built up a very I want to say very fulfilling business, something that I love to do. What I would do for free. I talk about and rewire your mindset asking what would you do for free, and that's something that I get to do on a daily basis now with the people that I work with, and I've built a podcast, social media, the books, all these incredible things that I've been lucky enough to do, and that's, again, not a very short version, but it's a shorter version condensed down into the last 10 years or so. So, yeah, that's what got me to this point here.

Chris Norton: 7:18

But the way that you've done it is, you've looked. Because when you talk about your mindset, you talk about focusing on things that you enjoy and so like if they're saying, if you hate your job, just think about what you can do about that, and like and one of the things I'm living by at the moment I think I told you this on email when we got you on the show. Before we got you on the show, you said all the way through the book, you keep saying if you've got something you hate, but you know it's better for you, just do it anyway. And every morning I'm getting into an ice bath and at the moment today it's minus two. It was this morning. I had to peel off the ice off the top to get in.

Chris Norton: 8:00

And I've still got your voice in my head going if you hate it. And I've still got your voice in my head going if you hate it, get in and do it anyway. And it's true, isn't it Like to push through? So, yeah, I think that's what really resonated with me is that people put things off, like they put things, everything off. They'll put the worst interview off, they'll put the worst client meeting off, they'll put appointments off, and that's what you were doing, right, and that's when, in your first two businesses, what you were talking about there, actually, as a teacher, you're a teacher first, which you haven't really mentioned, and you didn't get the buzz that you thought you would get from it, right yeah.

Brian Keane: 8:32

So the story I talk about in rewire your mindset and I mentioned this in the fitness mindset to the first book was when I became a teacher. It felt like I had spent years climbing a ladder only to realize it was up against the wrong wall and the sunk cost, fallacy of spending time, energy and money to become qualified in this area. And I was about half an hour into my first ever day of a year three classroom and with 30 kids in front of me and I was like I don't want to be a teacher. And it happened to me fast. I knew day one this isn't what I want to do, and part of the problem with why it took me so long to leave it was one not having the confidence, and confidence comes from either repeatedly keeping promises to yourself or building competence and then letting confidence grow on top of that. I didn't have the belief that there was something else out there for me. I was like I've done and I got stuck in this story of I've spent four years doing this. I've told everyone I was going to be a teacher. What will people think? I can't leave this career now, and I felt like I had just spent and wasted a chunk of my life. I was a very young man at the time, but at the time it didn't feel like that. I just felt like I'd spent years wasting all this time, energy, money and focus and it was the ladder being up against the wrong wall. And I still use that analogy to this day. Relationships, business, fitness, goals, things with my daughter is my ladder up against the right wall and asking the question which I didn't always do was am I enjoying this process? Am I enjoying climbing this ladder or is it for my greater good? You mentioned there about the ice baths. Nobody wants to jump into a fucking minus two ice bath, but you feel better after. It's what I call in the book the anchors of self-discipline.

Brian Keane: 10:16

I'm very vocal about my dislike for running and I run ultra marathons. So I've done marathon to sob. I've ran through the Arctic. I've ran 100 mile ultra marathons. I hate running. I hate it. It's so hard. It never gets any easier. It just it breaks my body to bits.

Brian Keane: 10:31

But it's something that builds a lot of self-discipline for me, because I don't find it easy Whereas I lift weights and I find it quite easy. I'm from a sports background. I can build muscle quite easily. From that background, they're not struggles for me, but running anything over 10 kilometers may as well be a hundred miles every single time, because it just doesn't come easy. But that self-discipline crosses over and allows me to do the things I have to do, regardless of how I feel. And that's what you're doing in the morning, chris, with the ice bath. You're conditioning yourself with a small win at the start of the day to do something that you know is better for you but you don't necessarily want to do. And that tends to compound positively in other areas of your life as well, from business to relationships, to fitness yeah, we'll.

Chris Norton: 11:16

I don't do marathons. My wife's uh run a marathon. Will's will's run a few, haven't you?

Will Ockenden : 11:20

I've. I've run one marathon and I must admit it's the hardest thing I've ever done, um, but I'm a big believer in that as well. I think running um mentally conditions you for almost everything else in your life, doesn't it so? So if, for the average um, you know, the average person listening to this podcast, who's probably in some kind of marketing job, how can they um, you know, and they'll be doing things in their day-to-day job that they love doing, they'll be doing things that they hate doing, sort of taking a step back, then how can they improve their mindset and their their, I suppose, ultimately their success at work? Through your, through your techniques? I mean, they'll be wondering how how we can apply this to the professional world without walking away from the job.

Will Ockenden : 12:00

You mean like you didn't yeah, because yeah, because, um, that's yeah, that's not always an option, is it so you know? Is it, is it teachable? Is there practical steps?

Brian Keane: 12:09

yep, anybody can apply. Yeah, 100, I think it one. It depends on the context of the danger being in the dose. I think 80 20 rule, pareto's principle is helpful here. If 80 of your day you hate what you're doing in marketing, in business, you do have to ask the question is my ladder against the wrong wall If you're spending 80% of your time, 80% of your day, every single day, and I'm not talking just sprint moments when it's a tough week, a tough month. We all have that in every career that we'll ever go into. But if you look back on the last three years and 80 to 90% of that time you've hated it, it might be worth asking do I need to shift my ladder against another wall? And again, it's not easy. You can have mortgage, kids, family commitments. But even just giving yourself that little bit of mental freedom that this isn't forever, it means you can persevere with it a little bit more. On the front end, same as a marathon you know that those 26.2 miles are going to end at some point. So you just keep moving forward and put one step in front of the other, but it doesn't make it any easier. It's still really difficult, but you know it's going to end. So if you're in that 80 to 90%, I would ask that question. If you are in a job or marketing capacity that is. Just there's difficult moments, mental gymnastics is huge. So putting a positive reframe on situations because it's normally not the thing that bothers us, it's the emotion we attach to it. So even reframing the language into something that you get to do versus something you have to do. So when you have a meeting with somebody that's like, oh my God, I have a new book coming out in January and I'll tell a story which might tie in nicely with this, because everyone has got one of these people in their work.

Brian Keane: 15:06

So when I worked as a teacher in West London, there was another teacher in the school and he was a grade A complainer. He was one of these people that there was a silver lining in every cloud, his wallet was too heavy because of all his money, his wife was too sexy or he's one of these people that would find a complaint with everything and and I and I remember I got put on lunch duty with him and which basically means in a school that you, every twice a week you have to go on lunch duty on just basically out in the keeping an eye on the kids for 45 minutes of the hour lunch break. And I I thought, oh my God, I'm going to be stuck with this guy who's going to complain and moan for the entire duration. And lo and behold, we went out the first day and he complained about everything from you know, he was a big football fan about how his team played the night before, how his wife was in his ear the night before, how his kids never listened to him, to the boss, to the principal in the school, and how he just wasn't giving him what he needed. It went on and on, and on, and on, and on and on. And I remember coming back the second week going oh my God, I'm actually going to blow my brains out if I have to go out on that playground again. And I thought, right, I actually need to completely reframe the situation, I need to turn it into a game. So I said, right, fuck it, the next time I go out I'm going to count how many times he complains in a 45 minute period. So I rocked out that Tuesday and three seconds bang first thing giving out about his wife. So I had a little bit of a chuckle to myself and I was like, okay, this is going to be fun. Three seconds in, he's already on one. And then every time he complained, I was just making these mental tallies in my head. He was one of these people that actually wasn't really listening to what I was saying, anyway, he was just giving out. So I was making these mental tallies in my head and that situation ended up becoming so fun that every tuesday and thursday I used to look forward to going out in the playground, that I would count how many times he was complaining.

Brian Keane: 16:57

And what a weird thing happened after that when I started to change the way I was looking at him. The things I was looking at him started to change. I started to realize he was actually quite funny and he was quite sarcastic, but he was quite witty and he was also the first one. If you got into the shit, he would cover it for you. And I made a lot of mistakes as a new teacher and he covered for me a lot, all stuff I had failed to see. I completely missed prior to this stuff I had failed to see. I completely missed prior to this.

Brian Keane: 17:27

And I understood then that, okay, this is all about how I'm seeing the situation and reframing the situation, and we go through scenarios in life with work, with marketing tasks, with jobs, with interviews, with things we have to do that feel like a massive struggle and we need to figure out what I can't get out of this.

Brian Keane: 17:38

I can't pull out of lunch duty and say I want to request to go out, what I can't get out of this. I can't pull out of lunch duty and say I want to request to go with somebody else. That wasn't an option. So I had to completely change the way I saw the situation. Everybody has a version of that in their work, with things they do, and sometimes you have to put a positive reframe or some mental gymnastics on top of the situation and change the way you're seeing it, whether it's an individual because a lot of discomfort tends to come from individuals they tend to be the ones that stir up the emotions, the anger, the sadness, the frustration. So it's changing the relationship with them and then you might have a similar situation to me. And if you're, if you're curious, he ended up with 72 was his record complaints in a 45 minute window.

Will Ockenden : 18:19

Uh, which I couldn't help but be impressed by what's that about 1.8 complaints per minute or something like that that's fucking good going.

Brian Keane: 18:26

By anyone's standard, that is good. That is really good going yeah, I mean you, you.

Chris Norton: 18:31

You also talk in the book about the book that I've listened to. You talk about the way that you take people because, first of all, you, you're quite big on social media, so which? Which is your favorite platform? It's either instagram or tiktok, is it uh?

Brian Keane: 18:45

I actually favorite, or the one that I use the most, because they're okay both let's go both.

Brian Keane: 18:50

Which is your favorite? Uh, well, well, I hate all social media, um, so I don't like any of them. Um, I love, I love my podcast, but I I like creating on instagram. Now, I'm very good with my audience, um, I reply to my d reply to my comments I create. I'm not a fan of social.

Brian Keane: 19:08

If I didn't have a business, I wouldn't be on any of them. If I'm being honest, and I've got quite a decent following on Instagram, facebook, tiktok, smaller on YouTube about 14,000 on YouTube but I create it because it's really good for business, it's really good for serving people, um, but there's a lot of negativity. I'm not a massive fan. The only thing I would do and I don't know if I talk about this in rewire your mindset or the new book, I can't remember cause they're merging in my heads now but the? Um, what would you do if you won the lottery? Like you know, I asked myself the question. I would do everything I'm doing now, but I would probably drop out the amount of time I spend on social. But I would keep the podcast, I would write the books, I would do the interviews, I would have the business helping and serving people, but I'd probably eliminate the social media, because it's just not my favorite way to consume, or not my favorite way to create, either.

Chris Norton: 19:59

Because that's the point I was trying to make, because you were talking earlier about people's opinions and how you reframe people's opinions and how you're looking at it, and I and one of the things I found interesting when you were talking about is you mentioned that when people you meet people um, they criticize, they don't agree with you, and you and you use that as feedback. Because he said if someone doesn't agree with you, don't just get angry, which is fascinating, because some usually some people you can't say anything to them without them being outraged, whereas you say if someone disagrees with you, see that as an opportunity and actually listen to what they've got to say and try and see it from their viewpoint, which sounds great. But if someone but if someone comes in hard for you, everybody thinks I'm under attack. Defend, don't they? And social media, especially those platforms.

Chris Norton: 20:47

You're going to get a lot of that, aren't you? Whether that's people outside marketing brands, they'll get criticized online as well. So how do you deal with that? Because the brand is yourself and your books and everything that you're doing online. People criticize you. Does that happen?

Brian Keane: 21:03

Oh, yeah, all the time. I already posted this up yesterday because I post up all the negative shit I get as well, like I reply to all my comments good, bad, neutral. I reply to all of them, wow, partly because I think there's benefit in it. So I talk about in Rewire your Mindset about the purple polar bear. This is what I come back to all the time.

Brian Keane: 21:22

When somebody says, chris, you're a purple polar bear, brian, you're a purple polar bear, you're like, okay, that's okay. Sure, mate, yeah, and you forget about it a second later. If somebody goes, you're stupid or you're fat or you're ugly, and you're like, oh, I felt that one. I felt that I didn't feel the purple polar bear, but I felt that one. That's time to get curious, that that's an emotional attachment you have and that's something that I need to work through, because if I got triggered or activated by that, that means that it's a specific thing to me. There's potential gold in that that if I can work through that, it won't bother me the next time.

Brian Keane: 21:57

So when somebody says a negative comment to me, one, I understand how psychological projection works. So people tend to project their own insecurities and their own issues onto you. That's just what we do as a human species. Anyone that's gone through and met anybody in life has seen this at some point. When someone's like, oh, brian, you shouldn't do that, or Chris, you shouldn't do that, or Will, you shouldn't do that, or John, you shouldn't do that, or Mary, you shouldn't do that Because they're saying that to themselves Most advice we get and we have to completely drown that out, especially in the beginning, when you're running a business or you're in marketing and you're helping people and serving them in a meaningful way, or your brand getting hate and negativity from some person on the outside.

Brian Keane: 22:37

It normally means that person's going through some shit. Like I'm really empathetic to that. Like if somebody is coming on calling me really nasty things on social media, their life's in a pretty bad fucking place because, like, if you've got that inside, you need it. Like you can't throw hot coal at somebody unless you're holding on to it yourself. You can't have and project that negative anger onto somebody unless you're holding this internally yourself. And I know that and I'm empathetic towards that.

Brian Keane: 23:03

Now, sometimes people are just being dickheads because that's, they're having a bad day and this is the way that they get out of it and and I get some fun out of that because I literally reply sarcastically to a lot of replies and comments, ie the ones that I link up on my Instagram stories or Instagram DMs from people messaging.

Brian Keane: 23:17

But doing the filter of the purple polar bear helps a lot because then you know that, well, this is something I need to work on. This isn't what they've said, because if they call me a purple polar bear, I wouldn't have been bothered by this. But they call me fat or they call me ugly or they call me stupid, and that really bothered me. That means I clearly have a trigger around that word and that means there's an emotional reaction going on within me and I put everything through the filter. If it's hysterical, it's historical. Ie, if I'm replying or responding hysterically to something, it means it's historical. There's something else deeper down there that I actually need to work through and I actually think that's a really positive thing. So actually dealing with the negativity, dealing with the hate, understanding psychological projection of people and that's something that they're just going to do helps a lot for me when it comes to navigating that online.

Will Ockenden : 24:02

I think that's quite an interesting point. I mean, bringing it back to marketing for a moment. A real kind of problem and challenge, particularly for social media managers, is, you know, when a social media manager is on numerous social media accounts every single day, very angry and actually there's a psychological impact of that, and a lot of people find it really really difficult, don't they? So that idea of kind of reframing it and the purple polar bear analogy, I think will be really useful. I wanted to ask you about resilience. So I think, in all forms of business, resilience is really important, isn't it? And I think, particularly in marketing, when you're launching campaigns, often you'll put an enormous amount of work into a campaign and it maybe won't connect with consumers and it will fail, and then you've just got to move on to the next thing and you've got to move on to the next thing. So that kind of idea of resilience is really really important in business. Practically speaking, how can people build more resilience than when it comes to their professional life?

Brian Keane: 25:05

It's interesting because I wouldn't necessarily have resilience as the term I would have used personally for marketing campaigns and, as an entrepreneur and someone that runs a couple of businesses and works with a lot of businesses, failure is part of the process and failure isn't final. Failure is feedback and generally in a marketing campaign, all the line I've used is the seed of failure planting the tree of future success. That's how my entire business and every marketing campaign that I've ever done has gone down, and I think it's similar for a lot that when you realize that, yes, it didn't work, but that's not a negative reflection of you, you tried and now you can pivot and you can course correct and you can use that failure as feedback. That is knowing that this is part of the process. I think when it comes to the resilience, it's a slightly different angle, because resilience is something you can build and I think, similar to what we talked about earlier with the ice baths or going for the run or the workout, you build up an element of self-discipline which ties into your resilience. Your self-discipline is the ability to do the thing you have to do regardless of how you feel, because you know your life will be better as a result of that. And then when you do that repeatedly over time, you end up building these layers and blocks and anchors of self-discipline which actually from the outside look like resilience to people who are like, oh, he's so resilient, they're so resilient reality, they're just actually really disciplined. And then you've got that failure as feedback and you're using it as part of the process. And I think when you know that it's the quote it's so cliche at this point, but the quote of I didn't find a thousand ways that the light bulb didn't work, I just found 10,000 ways that it didn't work. And then you eventually stumble onto the way that the light bulb worked All those cliches that we hear in business are true because you're just failing forward.

Brian Keane: 26:52

I think failure is only final when you decide to quit. And there's times when you have to quit something and move on because your ladder's against the wrong wall. You don't quit because something's difficult the ice bath, running a marketing campaign, a business goal you don't quit because it's difficult. You quit because it's directionally incorrect and now you need to move on.

Brian Keane: 27:14

Same as in a bad relationship how many of you know guys that are going out with a girl or a girl that's going out with a guy, you're like man. They should cut the cord with that. They are toxic for one another and for whatever reason they can't, you would never say it's a bad idea for them to quit that relationship. It would be better for all of them if they did so. There's scenarios in life when you should quit. You just don't do it because it's difficult, and failure is exactly like that. You don't quit the marketing campaign or to quit the job or the goal. You course correct and use the failure as feedback and as a result of that, you end up building self-discipline because you know what's the thing that's ultimately going to help you, and then resilience is built on top of that so, brian, this show is all about mistakes.

Chris Norton: 27:51

What's the biggest mistake you've made in business, do you think?

Brian Keane: 27:54

the most tangible one that's actually relevant and this is going to sound so obvious is not learning from the mistakes of others, and this is what I love. What you're doing with the podcast lads like embracing marketing mistakes. You're learning from the mistakes of others so you don't have to make them yourself. And I would also say and I'm a big Charlie Munger fan, so Warren Buffett's business partner, charlie Munger, is one of my favorite people on this planet. He died last year. I've read all the books about him. Poor Charlie Zalmanak is one I go back and reread every year and he's got a great line in there that he says just tell me where I'm going to die and I won't go there. Which basically means tell me all the things that could be a death blow for life or my business in general, and just don't do that, because you can die in business, in marketing, a couple of ways. You can die with a death blow or you can have the figurative death by a thousand cuts. Both will kill you, and avoiding both of those, I think is important.

Brian Keane: 28:49

So if I could go back a decade ago, 12 years ago, I would have listened to podcasts like this, I would have read more books, I would have worked with mentors. I would have cut my learning curve and not made the mistakes myself. So you did it the hard way. I did I'm sadistic sometimes when it comes to things like that A hundred percent, I will also. So you did it the hard way that because I left a teaching job, which was a quote unquote safe and secure job, wasn't particularly well paid job, but it was safe and secure in the traditional sense of government job, et cetera, I was so afraid of what my friends and family members would think when I left that that I would doubt and I bought the branded gear and kit. I got the business cards. I wanted to look the part before I was actually generating any revenue and having any clients.

Brian Keane: 29:47

That was an internal insecurity on my side. It was one of the reasons I went broke the first time. The second time was just taking on way too many overheads. Overheads equals death in a business If you're an entrepreneur versus a marketer, that if your overheads are too high. I was living in London, renting a gym in London, renting a space, and mys were just. You know there was way too much month at the end of the wage, like just points where I just had to decide if I was going to eat that week and I just I couldn't. That's more entrepreneurial than just marketing if you're in with a company, but that was definitely up there, with me too, having my overheads and my spending too high when revenue wasn't coming in at the level that it would have been several years later.

Chris Norton: 30:28

So you said you don't like social media, but you're doing videos regularly on social media. I mean, we're talking high numbers as well. How long do you spend on? You said you'd spend too much time. How much time a day or a week do you spend marketing on social media? And is that? You've got your podcast? But what other sorts of marketing do you do? How do you split it?

Brian Keane: 30:49

yeah, it's a really important one because the thing is with social media and I actually don't want to be too negative on it because social media was the initial thing that got me off the ground and was it allowed me to get into markets and niches that I wouldn't have had access to in a one-to-one space, either even in london, or then when I moved back to the West of Ireland. So I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater completely, but for me social media it's a tool, it's an amplification tool for my message, for either trying to help and serve people because I'm at a different stage in business now. I'm at a place where I don't have to worry about money. It's not a thing for me. It's all about getting the right fit of people into programs, into courses, and trying to serve in a meaningful way. I'm at a different stage now. 10 years ago it was revenue. I needed to keep the life load of the business going or else I couldn't help anybody. So it changes in terms of the seasons and with social now it's just an amplification tool, so I don't spend as much time as you think.

Brian Keane: 31:43

So we batch, create our content, so we put out. We do 12 videos so three a week that are properly edited videos with my videographer. We record them two hours a month. He edits them and then sends them to me and they go uploaded. But my assistant normally uploads a lot of them. We clip the podcast, which again is done internally through the team, which goes up onto social and then if I have an idea of a reel or a video I'll just create it kind of off the cuff, but generally I don't spend too much time doing it. So a few hours a week.

Brian Keane: 32:09

I spend most of my time replying to DMs and messages of people in my audience because they're normally really good people. There's a lot of negativity on social media. I've got really good followers, the people that are following me. You unfollowed me ages ago. If you don't like the way I swear, you unfollowed. You don't like the way I talk, you unfollowed. You don't like the way I look, you unfollowed. You think my teeth are stupid? You unfollowed For whatever reason. So there's a selection and an availability bias there that the people who have stuck around tend to be people who are either positive or want to see the good in the situation, or who just genuinely want help or genuinely want to say something nice, just genuinely want help, or genuinely want to say something nice. So I spend a lot of time cultivating my audience, and so that's what we use it for. That's one tool.

Brian Keane: 32:52

The podcast is another one. The book serves as a marketing tool. It worked with you, chris, as you mentioned. We've got lead magnets that are working for evergreen email campaigns, so we do a lot with that as well. We've got the website when I appear on podcasts, that indirectly works for marketing because it brings new people into the ecosystem.

Brian Keane: 33:09

Collaborations, speaking at events a whole host of things that tend to be quite beneficial on the front end in terms of reach but have a long tail end, such as a podcast. You might be listening to this the week it comes out. You might be listening to it six months after it came out and, as a result, you found out who I was was. So that ends up serving as a top of funnel for people coming in to either potentially buy a book or a program or just follow, because I'm putting out content that helps them in a meaningful way. So we kind of we go with a bit more of a shotgun approach, more so than a sniper approach in marketing. You'll go shotgun or sniper ie targeted or omnipresent. We tend to go a bit more shotgun approach and omnipresent versus sniper rifle and targeted.

Will Ockenden : 33:48

So I'm curious you're in a sector that, superficially at least, you know fitness, mindset, coaching. That feels like a really busy sector, particularly on social media. I mean, there must be a million and one people not as good as you, necessarily, but talking about similar issues. So how do you cut through? I mean, think one of them is is this kind of commitment to real community management, genuinely engaging with your followers? So that feels like a real strength. But how else do you kind of cut through in this, in what ultimately is a really noisy sector?

Brian Keane: 34:18

I'm big. This is something I do, a lot of work with my mentees, so I'm working on the next book at the minute, which is a business book. It's called scaling your story so Story. So it's pulling out your story. It's a marketing book. It's pulling out the individual story. So I'm using case studies from things like companies like Apple, who historically have been very good with this about leaning into being different and using the stories and then using that for a personal brand and going into the things that you struggle with and that's what makes people connect with you.

Brian Keane: 34:45

So when I'm creating content online, I'm generally trying to lean into either a story through my side or a story through a client side, something they've struggled with. And again, nobody can out Brian Keane. Brian Keane Nobody can out Joe Wicks. Joe Wicks Nobody can out James Smith James Smith these are other people.

Brian Keane: 35:05

In fitness, you have to lean into your story. So I've had issues with things like mental health. I've had issues with things like abuse in early childhood. I've had issues with alcohol dependency during times in my life I've had serious issues with body dysmorphia and food relationship Things that are all part of my story. So I lean into those because I'm out the other side. Now you can only talk about a story that you came out the other side on and I'm able to lean into those and that message connects authentically with the people who it needs to connect to. There's other areas that have no direct contact to me and will never be part of my story, so I'm not going to speak about those things.

Brian Keane: 35:41

So one of the ways that I rise above the noise is a combination of picking a niche and going targeted into it, but also pulling out my story so that people can authentically connect and I live by the life that you know. Love me or leave me. I would rather people get so much from my content and that they love what I do or fucking hate me and be polarizing. I have no problem with that, absolutely none, because you need to stir an emotion in people and for every person that thinks I'm the biggest twat ever, there's going to be someone else who's like.

Brian Keane: 36:12

He helped me so much through that struggle. I couldn't figure out my mindset. I had anxiety, I had depression, I was struggling with mental health, I was struggling with suicidal ideation and I saw Brian came out the other side and now he's making his mess, his message and that's serving as inspiration for them. So I live my entire marketing philosophy off being fine with polarizing people, as long as it's authentically true for me fascinating and I think you know that absolutely is applicable to brands, isn't it?

Will Ockenden : 36:42

you know this idea of authenticity. You know if you fake authenticity, people will just spot it a mile off. Like you say, you can't just talk about issues that are too much of a stretch for you. And then the personal story.

Chris Norton: 36:52

He's got, like he's given his personal storytelling. So that's what, that's what, that's what. That's what pulled me in like because it was really authentic that you're talking about things that you've struggled with and how you've used that again through mistakes and failure, like you use it as feedback. You constantly come back to that.

Will Ockenden : 37:09

Just use it as feedback and that idea of being um unapologetically you, I think is is really relevant for brands as well. You know, and I think often you see brands trying to appeal to everybody, don't they? And? And in turn, they actually appeal to nobody. But those brands that are um really singular in their approach and do divide people actually have probably got much more committed fans and advocates. So yeah, fascinating.

Chris Norton: 37:33

What was the catalyst to growth then? You had all these different elements. You've got lots of different revenue. You had this big failure. The one story that stuck with me is when you did fail. I think it was on your second business. You were that skint that you had to and I don't know if it was over-exaggerated on were that skint that you had to and I don't know if it was over exaggerated on the audiobook. But you had to find the money in your house, in the back of the couch the back of the couch to get the bus to the bank.

Brian Keane: 37:55

No, true story. True story, literally, literally happened in my house in west london yeah, which part of london was it? So I was in, so stupid you'll be. It'll make sense now when I tell you that I was living in west london and chiswick across from I think it's is it the george is the name of the bear? I've forgotten the name of the bear now. Um, but there was five, four of us, four teachers, in this tiny little apartment but in a really nice part of chiswick. Um, but I did. That's a true story. I had to because I I ran out of money. It was the first time ever in my bank. It was was zero, zero, zero, cause I didn't have an overdraft. I had to go down to the bank to get an overdraft so I could pay my rent that month. So I had to get money down the back of the bus or down the back of the couch for the bus to go to the bank so I could set up an overdraft so I could take money out to pay my rent that month.

Chris Norton: 38:37

And what did you do the next day after that Cause? How did you turn that?

Brian Keane: 38:40

around. I didn't. I went back onto at the time which is going to sound so bad, but it's true is I was done. I was done with fitness. I went back onto what was the supply teacher. I signed up I think Protocol was the name of the company that gets you into teaching schools or into schools as a teacher, as a supply and I signed up for that the next day and I was like I'm done, I'm done with fitness by pure chance.

Brian Keane: 39:05

The way it ended up working was I was in a school and I was like I'm done, I'm done with fitness by pure chance. The way it ended up working was I was in a school and I was doing long-term supply teaching, so substitute teaching in a school, and one of the teachers who was in the classroom next to me was preparing for a wedding and and it heard that I was a personal trainer and she asked me she's like will you train me? I was like, look, I don't, I'm not doing that anymore. I don't even have the gym. I was paying for fitness first in Shepherd's Bush at the time and again, hints why I went broke and I was like, oh, I'm not doing that anymore. She goes, look, please. She was like, just, I'll come to your house. I was like, well, will you do Chiswick Park? I was like, will you train me in the park? And I was like, yeah. I was like, if you want, I'll do some body weight stuff with you and we'll see how it goes. And she goes perfect. So we ended up doing that for six weeks. I didn't take any money off her for the first.

Brian Keane: 40:03

It's the business stuff I haven't figured out. I actually understand how to help somebody lose weight. So that was kind of a gift from the universe in terms of how it happened. It was just pure random. She was in the classroom next to me Zoe is her name, she was getting married and she's from New Zealand. I think she moved back since and I was like, just by pure chance, that built my confidence back up and it also made me realize that the failure wasn't final and that I had wrapped all of the failure. I was a failed business person. I wasn't a failed personal trainer. They were two different things. So when I was able to be a successful personal trainer, I was able to fill in the gaps on business, and once I started to do that, the whole thing came together.

Chris Norton: 40:48

That's good. I mean the thing, if you do own a business, if there's people out there that own businesses that are listening to this like you, fail all the time, every day. And in marketing campaigns, you know, I'd love to say that every PR campaign that we've done, on our social media campaign we've done, has been an absolutely rip, roaringroaring success. We've won shit loads of awards, we've done amazing campaigns, but we've also done some things that have literally not necessarily because of us. But you know, you've, you've advised, but some campaigns just don't work. You can see them a mile away as well usually, but sometimes clients just want to do them, don't they will?

Will Ockenden : 41:18

yeah, I mean this. I love this idea of um uh, how did phrase it? A failure is feedback, and that's absolutely right. And actually, if you're not failing, you're not pushing hard enough, really are you? You know? If you never fail, then what on earth are you doing? You're not taking any risks. Yeah 100%.

Brian Keane: 41:35

You're playing way too safe. And the thing is, if you can rewire failure not only as feedback, but failure is a positive thing, I love it now. Now, obviously you don't want to fail all the fucking time, because if you do, it's going to be a disaster. But micro failures for macro success is a very real thing in business and marketing. That you can have micro failures. Just make sure they're not death blows. And then course correct, because you're only in a marketing campaign. You guys know this, I know it from running my business You're one word change away, you're one story away, you're one graphic change away from turning a massive failure into a roaring success. When it comes to a marketing campaign, we should use that in a pitch.

Chris Norton: 42:19

That's true. Another thing that I thought was interesting in your mindset is that you say surrounding yourself with positivity is key. So you talk about surrounding yourself with positive people and then you're bloody brutal when you're talking about if you've got people, like the teacher in the playground that you're talking about, who are quite negative, just cut them out of your life. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and how people can not. How people can get rid of negative people either. They're working with you. Know how do you do that. You're stuck in a marketing job and you're surrounded by negative people trying to one one down you all the time. What's the expression?

Will Ockenden : 42:55

bring you down bring you down.

Chris Norton: 42:56

Yeah, how do you cut them?

Will Ockenden : 42:57

out. Yeah, yeah, we want to be more positive, so tell us how to do that it's.

Brian Keane: 43:03

it's an interesting one because you have to audit the situation. I think in the case of the teacher in the playground I had no control over that. You know, there's some things you can control and you can remove certain people from your life and some people you can't. In that situation I had to change the situation because I couldn't change the person. So it ended up being the mental gymnastics we talked about earlier.

Brian Keane: 43:26

Sometimes you have to try and find the good in people, and some people not everyone has it from perspective, some people you're just going to clash with and that's okay. But there are times in your life when the danger is in the dose with negativity in people. You can handle a little bit of it, but if it's 80 or 90% of your inner circle or people you're spending time with at work, it's going to pull you down. My mom used to always tell me that if you lie down with dogs you get fleas, and I think negativity is exactly like that. If you lie down with enough negative people or you're around them all day, it's very hard to not let that impact you in some shape or form. So I think you have to be able to cut certain people out. But again, if it's a family member, you might not be able. If it's a work colleague, you might be able to just go to the opposite side of the building and not have lunch at the same time with them, or you know they're going to be around somebody. You're just going to avoid them.

Brian Keane: 44:14

There's lots of different tools and tactics you can use, but ultimately, I think it depends on the situation. I probably need more context in terms of what you're specifically speaking about, because there's so many different tools you could use in this scenario. But if it's just someone in your work environment or people in your work environment that are being really negative, removing yourself from that and like attracts like, because there's going to be other people who are feeling the same as you, they're going to be like I don't want to be in that lunchroom. It's really negative. And then you go spend your lunch in their office or in their department or their site, and again, there's lots of different ways to maneuver around it. Again, if you want to go specific and give an example, I can, because it's hard to go wide without knowing more situational context.

Will Ockenden : 44:57

So, people aside, then what else can we do on our own that's going to make us more positive people? Is it about a gratitude journal or something like that? I mean, that's what you always read about, isn't?

Chris Norton: 45:06

it the confidence table, isn't it Brian?

Brian Keane: 45:09

Yeah, I love that. The confidence table is something I'm a big fan of. So what I normally say positivity, confidence, self-esteem these things are kind of all kind of interconnected. Without getting too into the kind of the gratitude side which I will get into in a minute, because it does tie in. But the confidence table is a concept that I use in my own life which people seem to really like from the book is that every time you keep a promise to yourself or you set a small goal for yourself, you end up adding legs to a figurative table.

Brian Keane: 45:36

So if you picture a table and you say, right, I'm going to jump in the ice bath this morning, and you did it, you add a small leg to that table every single day that you do that. Same as the mornings you said you were going to go to the gym and you went. Or the days you said you were going to turn off your phone at 10pm and you did it. They're small promises that you repeatedly keep, kept to yourself. That's adding legs to your table. Then, every once in a while, you'll set a big goal, such as the case of running like a marathon, or running a couch to 5K, which is the equivalent of a marathon to somebody else or absolutely smashing a marketing pitch that you were really worried about. They're big legs to the table and consistently over time you end up building this internal confidence and if you can do that, negativity tends to impact you less.

Brian Keane: 46:21

What I always tell people is the start of a new journey is always the most difficult. New relationship, new job, new marketing campaign, new health or fitness regimen the start is the most difficult part of every journey because you don't have the confidence yet. And you can also build confidence by having competence in something, and you generally don't have a lot of competence when you're new at something. So that's when people it's very easy for them to figuratively knock that table because you only have a couple of legs on it. But over time, if you have a strong table, one of the reasons the social media comments don't bother me now is I have a lot of legs on that table, a lot of legs from different things where I've backed myself and I powered through that. A random comment from YouTuber 1234 isn't going to bother me at this day and age. It just isn't when 12 years ago it probably would have, because my confidence table is stronger. And that's the same with family members or friends or thankfully not work colleagues, because all my work colleagues are people I've hired, so it's fine. But work colleagues that you wouldn't have control on if they were negative, it's easier for me to kind of bounce the ideas off because I'm like, oh it's fine, I know what I'm doing, I know I'm directionally correct, I'm happy with how I'm showing up and working in this and in that you don't get impacted by it as much.

Brian Keane: 47:32

So there is an element of what can you control and the control, and I love the gratitude journaling and rewiring your mindset to see the gratitude in situations, because we have a hardwired negativity bias. It to see the gratitude in situations because we have a hardwired negativity bias, it's what's kept us alive, evolutionary, for years, because our ancestors, if they saw something rusting in the bushes and it was a tiger or an animal or something higher in the food chain, it ate us. And we're a byproduct and ancestors of people who have passed on that fear gene that supported people, kept them alive thousands of years ago. I'm aware that's our default and that's why we have a negativity bias. So gratitude journaling and gratitude affirmations rewire your mindset to default to something that's primitive and hardwired and it's an old brain for a new world. So you're changing that, so there's definitely merit to that.

Brian Keane: 48:15

But also, what can you do today? How can I win? There's an acronym in the book what's important now? How can I win? W-i-n. What's important now, what can I do today? That's going to build a little bit of confidence so that I'm able to deal with any negativity that does come my way. And then there is an element of just being that person that keeps those promises to yourself more often than not, building the legs in your confidence table and knowing that that's actually going to be the thing that helps you move through any negativity from the external world, because you have this internal positivity, because you're backing yourself, because of the self-confidence that you've built yeah, because you guys talking about marathons.

Chris Norton: 48:49

I, I hate running. I used to run five, six kilometers. I've done 10, I think, a few times, but I hate running. I'm not built built. You're a bodybuilder and you'd run, which is an unusual combination. I don't know how you all will put that foot. You said about putting that foot in front of each other, like because it's a figuratively thing. Isn't it like putting that foot in front of the other foot? It fucking hurts and like you're running and you're like I've got to get all the way home in a minute and I'm just I might as well just turn around and I don't know how people keep going. I don't, I don't get it and I don't know how. So I take my hat off to anybody, not that I've got one, but I take my hat off to anybody that can just keep going on. Do more than 5k, 10k. You. You know, fair play to you. It's discipline. I don't know how Will does it. To be honest, how do you do it?

Brian Keane: 49:36

you can learn it. Yeah, you could learn it Will. Would you agree that it's something you learn it?

Will Ockenden : 49:40

it is yeah, but um you, absolutely. I mean, it's a process, isn't it? It's, it's a. It's a process and it's knowing it's going to end at some point. That that was important to me, and I'd rather end earlier.

Will Ockenden : 49:51

That's the issue I've got I mean the idea of that, idea of um. I felt a lot of the lessons from running absolutely apply to all walks of life. They don't know about playing the long game, about properly preparing for something, about being patient. All of this stuff is so applicable and and it absolutely, yeah, I mean it's. It's awful, isn't it? I mean I can't imagine what an ultra marathon's like. I mean, I don't feel like I could have taken one more step after doing 26.2 miles, but I suppose maybe I could. Maybe I should sign up for an ultra marathon next year. There we go it's all relative.

Brian Keane: 50:26

The thing is like I always tell people because I've done multiple ultra marathons, multi-day ultras, things along those lines and like anything after anything after 15 miles sucks balls like I don't care what anyone says, even if you love running, it just fucking sucks like. So the difference between 15 and 30 miles and 50 miles and beyond, it's all horrible, it all hurts, it's all difficult, but there's a lot of post-traumatic growth that comes from that and there's so much crossover. I think ultra endurance, more so than any other fitness, has the most crossover for marketing and business Because, as you mentioned, you're keeping the end in mind. You know what's going to be over soon.

Brian Keane: 51:02

You have to plan accordingly in the lead up. You have to put the hours and reps in, you have to course correct. You have to take two steps back, sometimes for three steps forward. Sometimes you have to adjust and go on the fly and make a call on the fly Like they're all things that are very applicable to marketing that directly cross over to ultra endurance. So you can learn the tools that will serve you in marketing through a fitness endeavor like marathon training or half marathon training or ultra marathons, because of the crossover. So I think, when you have a positive reason and a non-domain dependent knowledge that this will actually make me a better business person or marketer, that sometimes can be a strong enough anchor for getting through these difficult races.

Chris Norton: 51:43

You've been on the show now, Brian. If you were us, who is the next person you would interview for this show to hear about their mistake that they could share? That would be interesting to our audience.

Brian Keane: 51:53

One of my favorite people is Marcus Smith or Tom Otten. They're actually both in Dubai. They're both ultra runners and ultra marathon runners, but Tom runs the largest digital marketing agency in Dubai and Marcus runs inner fight, which is a massive CrossFit box in Dubai. Both of those not only on top of being incredible individuals, are both friends of mine, but they're. They have a great perspective on business, on marketing, on failures, on fuck ups from either business or fitness, and how they all tie together. And they're just two incredible people. I don't think you can go wrong with either or both.

Chris Norton: 52:29

I might have to get you an intro to them, mate. They sound great. And so how can people get hold of you, brian? I mean just basically, google is quite an easy way to get hold of you because you respond to everything, apparently.

Brian Keane: 52:41

Yeah, well, on Instagram DM. I always tell people. Instagram DM is the only thing I'm on. Everything else is either automated or goes to my assistant. I don't do my emails I hate email and I don't do Facebook Messenger. That's all automated as a reply. But I am on Instagram DM. It's the one place that I'm on directly and I always tell people if they want a message directly to go on there. But I to go on there. But I'm on everything. I'm on all the channels. I have three podcasts the brian keen podcast, my health podcast, the online business podcast, my business podcast. And then I've got a ga lean body podcast, which is a top of funnel lead generation for ga players for one of my scale programs. And then the books are everywhere. So it's just really, if you like audio, if you like video, if you like written, you know to check out wherever it might be potentially serving uh, whether it's health fitness, mindset or any of the above or anything we talked on in today's podcast.

Chris Norton: 53:27

Yeah, and I recommend the book. It's great and what I liked about the book actually on the one that I've listened to Rewire your Mindset is that during it you say, basically I've done this book so you could listen to it today. And what you get out of it today you could re-listen to it in a year's time and your objectives have totally changed. And why you're listening to it, like mine was the squash thing. But actually it depends on where you are and what you're doing and it can depend, you know, in your life stages. You just had kids, or you've just changed jobs, or you've just done it. Really, I can see you've done it for all sorts of different things. So, yeah, I can highly recommend it. Um, thanks for coming on the show, brian.

Will Ockenden : 54:00

That was really great. Yeah, thanks, brian. I think we're both off to sign up for ultra marathons now, aren't we, chris?

Chris Norton: 54:06

uh, sorry, I'm still not having lunch with you tomorrow.