The Mosaic Life

Unlocking Potential Through Mindset, Systems, and Delegating

• Laura Wagenknecht

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Transform your understanding of success as Justin Lund, a visionary leader who steered his life from financial peril to helm a nine-figure business, shares his personal transformation. Justin's remarkable story unravels the power of adopting a resilient mindset, crafting efficient systems, and mastering delegation. Discover how a pivotal moment in his mother’s garage set Justin on a path to redefine productivity, moving beyond mere busyness. His unique approach, using a "TO DONE" list, underscores the significance of personal accountability and illustrates the profound difference this mindset shift can make in both personal and professional realms.

In our conversation, we dissect the three essential pillars that underpin any thriving enterprise: mindset, systems, and delegation. Justin reveals the art of designing streamlined systems that enable seamless delegation, ultimately freeing entrepreneurs to focus on strategic reinvestment and personal well-being. Learn how to utilize reclaimed time effectively, avoiding the common trap of frivolous spending. Justin’s insights offer a fresh perspective on achieving financial freedom while maintaining a balanced lifestyle.

Thank you for listening and joining us on the Mosaic Life journey, where enriching content and transformative ideas are always at the forefront.

Find out more about Justin Lund and Propel Your!

Website: https://propelyour.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsjustinlund
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-lund-propel/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/propelyour/posts/?feedView=all

A Mosaic is a bunch of pieces, put together, to make up the whole in a beautiful way. Here at Mosaic Business Consulting we discuss the various pieces of a business throughout the course of its life, and throughout all industries, and how these pieces, when put together, can help develop a better, more efficient, and effective running of YOUR business.
Find our more or register for a course today: Mosaic Business Consulting

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Speaker 1:

Good morning. I'm your host, laura Vagenknecht, owner of Mosaic Business Consulting, and you're listening to the Mosaic Life. Mosaic is a bunch of pieces that, when put together, make up the whole in a really beautiful way, and this show plans to discuss the various pieces of a business throughout different industries and how these pieces, when put together, can help develop a better, more efficient and effective running of your business. To reach me, contact bizradious. Today, my guest is Justin Lund, and Justin empowers entrepreneurs to achieve peak profitability and financial freedom, guiding them to earn more, keep more and work smarter. Boy, do I love hearing that. After transforming his own life from rock bottom, escaping foreclosure and a myriad of legal troubles, to a nine-figure business, okay coaches clients through the unique steps needed to elevate from one level of success to the next, showing them how to overcome the obstacles keeping them trapped in their current state, whether mindset blocks or low-value, time-wasting tasks, and adopt scalable strategies designed for growth. Boy oh boy, justin, I got to tell you it's exciting to have you on the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, happy to be here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I got to figure out how you attain that nine figure puppy, because I think we all would love to know that secret, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, we definitely can get into it today, but I will break it down to really three pillars. It's mindset, systems and delegation, and then with that you can redeploy resources back in more intelligently and you can continue to achieve a higher level of efficiency, a higher ROI on tasks and time and you can break. You can do that even while breaking free of that grind. And so many entrepreneurs they get stuck in a grind mode where it's just like white knuckle, they feel like I got to do a little bit more, I got to stay a little later, I got to work this Saturday and then I got to work Sunday, and that's often what gets them from A to B, but it won't get you from B to C.

Speaker 1:

Right, well, and I'm kind of curious, because you talk about your background of going from foreclosure, and so what? What journey did you have to travel to get to where you are today, because that's a long journey and what prompted you to do what you do today?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great questions today. Yeah, great questions. So the journey of kind of hitting that rock bottom, I would say I had to give up excuses was probably the big one, you know, and up to that point, through all the navigation of all the different opportunities and the failed attempts and the this, and that there was always a scapegoat that I was leaning on and there was always some excuse and some reason why this didn't work out or that didn't work out.

Speaker 1:

Can you give an example, what might be an excuse that we think is not really an excuse, but is an excuse?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, in my case I had dozens of them where I would come up with an idea and then try to sort of hitch my wagon, so to speak, to somebody else and with this idea we're going to take their business and turn it into some new little side venture that collectively, as a partnership, everybody could win. But then as we're progressing maybe they would cut the legs out from underneath the opportunity. Or I've had people even take the opportunity and kind of rebrand it as their own. So I always had some narrative or some reason to say no, it was his fault that that didn't work, or it was that the economy's fault that that didn't work.

Speaker 2:

And what I had to get down to it was actually in my mother's garage after almost losing my house. We had it sold just before the bank took it back and that's where I just decided that I had a little folding table and a space heater and thought I'm going to sink or swim on my own efforts and there's nobody to blame but me whether it goes bust or is successful. And I slowly started putting one brick on top of the other but me, whether it goes bust or is successful. And I slowly started putting one brick on top of the other. So I think that's the big thing that I took away from that chapter of many years of failed attempts was get rid of the excuses.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and it's such a big thing because we don't. I don't think people realize how much the time wasters we we utilize really are a part of our daily life and yet if we eliminate those, how much more productive we can get. And I was just thinking about the Hurricane Helene that passed through here recently and demolished Asheville, and the interesting thing was it gave me time to reflect on some of those time wasters I was using. And so I really appreciate what you're sharing because it's so true. It is so true that we don't realize just how much time we do waste.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's so. Many of us mistake action for production and it just they're. They are not the same thing. But it's very easy to trick ourselves into, into that mindset where, because we're busy, you know because we're moving around, we think we're doing things. Because we're busy, you know because we're moving around, we think we're doing things.

Speaker 2:

And there was a stint in my life, after my father passed away, that I got to spend time with my brothers who were running construction companies and doing different things.

Speaker 2:

I was the only child in the family that wasn't married, so I moved back in with my mother and I had this unique six-month window of time where I wasn't really working.

Speaker 2:

I was reading a lot of books and doing a lot of things and I came up with an idea or an experiment to try that, instead of making it to do list, I'm going to make it to done list and I'm only going to write things down after the fact that I did. And so I kind of experimented with the social experiment with my brothers and friends. I just I shadowed them for days and days at a time and I would realize there was so much talking about how busy they were, what they needed to do, what all these appointments and obligations, but when I actually put a pencil to on, you know, if I only get 10 things done, I'm going to celebrate those 10 things and I want to celebrate that I have this big chunk of time that I can kind of kick my feet up and relax and be, because that's better than tricking myself into thinking I'm busier than I really am.

Speaker 2:

So so that was my to done list. Experiment that began to open my eyes. I love that concept.

Speaker 1:

I mean that's such a great concept because it's almost like because now you're looking at outcomes, Now you're looking at productivity, You're not looking at busy. And it's interesting you say that because I do find myself very busy all the time, but am I really productive? Have I really accomplished what I've set my mind to do? That's fascinating. That's a great paradigm shift. I really love that. And so you shifted your mind. You've taken yourself from this dire straits position and now you're unsure. You're in that. What am I going to do with my life?

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm, now tell me, what am I going to do?

Speaker 1:

with my life. Now tell me what happens next.

Speaker 2:

So, I began working with some different colleagues and friends to try to come up with some business ideas and started to get into a lead generation and marketing company and I knew kind of the gist of the business.

Speaker 2:

I knew that people would create leads that would go into other companies or their own company and then that was the opportunities that they would make sales. So I got the general gist of that. But I didn't have specialized skills. I didn't. I wasn't a software developer, but I was doing most of this online. For I was thinking, okay, if I can figure out a way to leverage the internet to get traffic to people's landing pages or websites, to generate the lead so that they can get customer opportunities, there's, there's this gap there. Now this is 2000, you know, early to 2005, 2004, 5, 6 in that range. And so there was. It was a different landscape, you know.

Speaker 2:

There was no instagram back then so that wasn't even a part of the equation. Facebook was new-ish at that point, so that was kind of just beginning and I got into that business and began to figure out that there were these pockets of people. There was companies that advertised widgets and products. Then there were companies that did, say, email distribution. There were companies that provided that would buy ads and deliver ad optimization, but they were never. Often they were not the same company typically.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's kind of weird right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So if you're selling these widgets, you didn't really have expertise in all the other things that got you the customers. Now I'm talking small to mid-sized businesses, not large Fortune 500 companies, clients like that. And I started to find that there was this there's a gap in the market because the person selling the widget or the company that's selling the widget often had a combative stance toward these people that were doing email distribution or ad buys or media, and they never. They didn't really understand one another's business. So I thought my hypothesis was that if I can understand enough of that person's business and this person's business and be the go-between to facilitate that relationship, that maybe there's some margins there in the middle. And so I really just became kind of a facilitator and that is how the engine started to move. So I began to facilitate these connections and realize that if this person wins, this person can win with the right community. It's kind of like leveling the playing field, so to speak.

Speaker 2:

And that began to teach me just a lot of lessons and some of my background and classes in psychology and different things, some of the books that I've read and how to win friends and influence people, and some of those things became very valuable. My sales experience became valuable and a component in that success, and I just began to learn that it's not many people that will really get behind the eyes of another and try to consider where they're coming from, and so if I could do that in both cases and level that playing field a little bit and convey to the others a message or a narrative that we can all just get along, there was plenty of room there, and so I typically would negotiate around a 10% margin on the advertising spends.

Speaker 2:

And those advertising spends started to grow and grow and grow and grow. Where we facilitated, at first it was just the communication and the payment of bills, and then we got into facilitating technological needs, then we got into facilitating fulfillment and different things. So one company turned into two, turned into four, turned into eight and it just continued to grow.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic that is. I love the process that you went through and I like the fact that you did your research first of all, and you studied to figure out you know where that gap in the market was, because I think that a lot of people have an assumption that, well, I have the service or I have this widget and everybody's going to love it and they don't really look at the market and that market analysis to figure out is it really going to sell, Is it going to make it, and what do they need to do to make it Right.

Speaker 1:

And so I think that what you're offering is really, really critical, in that you know that whole scheme of things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I like what you're saying, laura. It reminds me of what our team here probably tires of hearing me say which is the new ideas that come up. It's like go sell it 10 times and then come back. If you can validate with 10 sales, if you can get 10 different people to purchase it, now you have demonstrated not just hypothesized, but demonstrated that there is a potential for a market. Now let's allocate some time and some of our resources and put into researching market viability and total area market possibilities and we can look at some of those things a little differently. But just because it sounds good in your head doesn't necessarily mean that there's a market or any odds for success for it. Right, and I know that because of all of those aforementioned failures, they sounded really good in my head, you know without selling them to actual people and providing a service that others found valuable and were willing to pay for. Again and again and again, all that enthusiasm, excitement just kind of fell on deaf ears eventually.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I can totally hear that. Yeah, and it's happened so often, I have to say, especially somebody who deals with more of the newer market, new business market. People have great ideas and great intentions, but to launch a business takes a lot of effort and takes a lot of forethought and planning that some people aren't willing to do, and so I really appreciate that. But I'd really like to also get back to some of the three things that you mentioned in the beginning of how we need to position ourselves and our businesses differently so that we're more successful, and if you could remind our audience what those three items you mentioned of how we can grow our businesses more effectively and things like that, that would be great because I know they were spot on.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, Well, thank you. Yes, so the three pillars that I like to keep coming back to with all of our coaching clients, with all of our clients in any field, and even our team here, that we just keep kind of beating the drum over and over, if you will, is with mindset, with systems and with delegation.

Speaker 1:

Boy, that systems word I got to say the mindset definitely, the systems definitely. And delegation, oh yeah, it is fascinating because when you have and let me just play this one scenario, so when a person has a system in place, delegating is easy.

Speaker 1:

Be easier because it's explained already, it's already defined, it's already laid out in a process of this, this, this Right already laid out in a process of this to this, to this right when a person who doesn't have a system can't really delegate because they don't know what they're delegating and they don't know how to define to somebody. This is what I need done. They're saying, oh, I just need a social media post. Or oh, I just need a social media campaign. Oh, just for what? Are you trying to get more of an audience? Are you trying to increase your exposure? Are you trying to increase your conversion? All of those have different approaches, right, and so we want to think about what is our strategy behind that. But to do that goes back to the mindset that you were talking about.

Speaker 1:

So I really love this. This is perfect.

Speaker 2:

So, as far as the delegation and kind of touching on systems, I just want to give your listeners maybe a little hack, something that is a good thing. If I can plant it in their brains and it's the one thing they take away from this episode, I think it would be time well spent, which is, if I had a magic wand, I would. And that begins to get our minds thinking more about what does done look like? And if we start defining things the way done looks like and we can we get better and better at that definition we start to go backwards and almost reverse engineer into a system. Right? So most of us are moving so quickly and again that tends to be because we're so busy, like we talked about earlier that we'll say, well, we're not getting any social media done, so we should probably hire a social media manager. And if their first hire is a social media manager, I can tell you right now they're going to start losing money. They may figure it out.

Speaker 2:

Entrepreneurs are great problem solvers. That's what we do. You know, we deal with a higher level of stress than most people can deal with. We deal with uncertainty at a higher level than most people can deal with. So we're usually willing to take a problem and say give me a roll of duct tape, a couple of toothpicks and an Allen wrench and I can fix it. So that's great.

Speaker 1:

What.

Speaker 2:

I try to do with our team and our clients, with our team tries to help our clients with is utilizing that can do attitude and that tenacity to jump in and solve problems. But to do it with and those three systems to me I see the visual of almost like a recycling triangle. You know it's mindset comes up, systems come down, delegation comes over and then you can kind of keep repeating that Because as you learn this triangle of those three pillars, what you start to get as a result when effectively doing it is a little bit more time. When you get that time, you need to deploy the time into higher return on investment activities. And that's if somebody gets the triangle down. They're like, okay, I got the mindset, I got systems, I'm learning how to delegate, but they miss that next area of deploying that time back into strategic areas.

Speaker 2:

We've seen clients spend their time going shopping and then they're like, wait a minute, now I'm in debt more, I'm spending more money, I'm not making as much, even though I have these good systems and everything. Like, what's the deal? It's well, look at your credit card statement. It's full of Louis Vuitton and you know these are great. I mean, it's fun and congratulations, you can afford all these things, but is was that your goal or should we deploy that time back?

Speaker 2:

And that's often comes back to mindset because they often don't recognize that part of that process. We need to implement and instill a little an area of almost like self-care, you know where. Take some of that time you've regained out of the discipline of the systems and improving your mindset, building the systems and delegating some of the tasks, and say I'm gonna get a good massage once a month, I'm gonna treat me because I earned it, and by doing those things and balancing a little bit of that yin and yang, we can really start to deploy time back into the business and back into ourselves in a way that makes us go home to our family happier person and able to go home to our family a happier person and able to contribute more to our family, our community, our church or the different things, instead of just grind, grind, grind.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, so true, so true. I love that, and I was thinking about the delegating to and the mindset which people who need control need to learn how to let go and trust, and that is a mindset unto itself. So I like that connection as well, that this leads to that. So fascinating what you bring up. I hadn't thought about those three pillars, but it is really lovely how you have those together, that's thanks.

Speaker 1:

It's a really great model If people want to. Well, first of all, you never mentioned the company name, so let's, let's talk about it, sorry, yes. Yeah, briefly, in one sentence, tell me what does Propel and it's Propel your right. Yeah, so it's, it's Propel and it's Propel your right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it's Propel Business Services, but our domain name is propelyourcom. So we can propel your landscaping business, we can propel your bookkeeping business, we can propel your consulting company, we can propel a lot of your things forward to the next level. So we, just in a sentence, we help you break free from the grind and install intelligent systems so that you can get back and redeploy your time more effectively, efficiently and productively.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic, wow. And so if people want to find out more about your company, how can they find out more? Yeah, come visit us at propelyourcom.

Speaker 2:

We also have an Instagram. My personal Instagram is itsjustinlund where we do that's probably where we put the most content out and it's all around these topics and it's just kind of following me around and talking about the different trainings and programs. I'm sure we'll have excerpts from this conversation there and just kind of our methodology and dealing with our clients and our coaching customers, as well as the things we deal with as a team to train our team to bring these principles and concepts into play. And you know, we try to get. We do coaching, we do consulting to help people work through these things. But we also get more tactical, laura, we don't. It's not just about okay, you know, do your best and try harder and we'll work through the it's, it's. We have playbooks. I mean that that journey that we began talking about that I've gone through it looked like a hockey stick for a while but then kind of fell off of a cliff and it stopped and I went through a period of time where I thought that I was fortunate enough to take some time off to raise my kids.

Speaker 2:

They kind of turned into a period of drifting where I wasn't accomplishing a lot, and it was during that period of reflecting on raising my kids and the time in the previous businesses that I exited and different legal and litigation issues that I had to navigate. That's where I really started to crystallize the lessons that were learned there into the playbooks that are repeatable and duplicatable. So something as simple as hiring, for instance, a system, by definition it's something that you do again and again and again, right. So if you're doing something more than once, once in a while, if you're doing it twice a year, maybe it doesn't warrant really a big system If you're doing it once a month let's see if we can add some efficiencies.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yes, so just one kind of an example is hiring people. That was always. That was something that just sucked a lot. I tried to delegate that initially, without a system, mind you. But I tried to delegate that many years ago and I started realizing the people that we were getting on the team were not the people that I wanted to be on the team. So I thought, as an entrepreneur often does, I better take control back of this task. So hiring people became kind of my Achilles heel. It took a lot of time, took a lot of energy. Oh, it was draining. I'd put hours and hours into the review of resumes and I'd finally have one and I'd be like, oh, this person is perfect. And then I would make the call to them and they'd say, oh, I'm sorry, I've taken another job. So four hours of reviewing flushed down the toilet just like that.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, and it's so funny you talk about a system, because I actually have a spreadsheet that I develop for each job post that I I help other employers hire for, and I'll go through that process and it's exactly. And so then it's scored, and so each applicant has a score, and then it's objective ish.

Speaker 2:

You know you can't be completely objective but yeah, you can try, right for sure. So, and that's, that's beautiful. I love, I love hearing things like that where you can add scores and some of that work can be done. First, I have found that most people, especially with those first three to five hires, it's more about the personality. You know you can teach people a lot of skills. You can't teach them a lot of character issues, and that's where a lot of entrepreneurs butt heads with their first hires. They'll hire them, they won't cut them loose soon enough and they'll waste a lot of money for a year paying the wrong person to do the wrong thing because there was never a personality match. But if you can take somebody that you align with with your morals, your values, your character, your personality, nine out of ten times you can teach that person the set of skills that you're trying to delegate, if you have the right systems. So we have a hiring playbook that we give to our clients. That is, it cuts down.

Speaker 2:

I used to spend on average 25 to 40 hours per job opening and I spend now at less than an hour. I do the interviews, the second interviews I do myself, but even when I'm doing the first interview, second and final decisions, I would spend no more than four hours on the entire job posting. Candidates went way up, quality went way up, alignment to our company's values went way up because I'm doing the interviewing, and so it matched with what I wanted it to be. And it's just. It's a three page Google doc on how to hire people. You know it's using AI to help you write the ads. It's getting the ads posted on the job boards. I mean, any person with any kind of computer skills can follow that Google Doc and they can hire successfully hire candidates for any role in their company in a couple hours.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and I love how you're talking about it and it's truly successful if they're following their system. But the key that I really want to bring people back to is the fact that you talked about hiring by characteristics and work ethic and things like that, which are critical to the business much more than their skillset. Totally appreciate that, yeah Well, and so I really do appreciate everything that you're sharing. It's wonderful, and people can reach out to you again by contacting propelyourcom, right.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic, and if you need anything.

Speaker 2:

You could also follow us on Instagram and message us there. If there's something and, laura, I was just thinking it's if we're talking about hiring, if anybody is experiencing that challenge, you would like our playbook just message me on Instagram. Instagram, go to it's justin lund, follow me and message laura hiring to me and I'll just send you the google doc. If that's something that would be helpful for your business, yours like just let me know, I'll send it over to you fantastic.

Speaker 1:

I love hearing that. That's wonderful and and I want to thank you so much for spending time sharing those wonderful pillars of your business model, which I think is fantastic. And thank much for spending time sharing those wonderful pillars of your business model, which I think is fantastic. And thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be on our show. It's fantastic to have you here, so thank you.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure. Thank you, I appreciate the time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, and I want to thank you, the audience, for listening to the Mosaic Life. You can listen to this episode again and get this great content by going to mosaicbusinessconsult.