In this episode Zachary J. Babcock in da house! He is the host for TOP-RATED Apple podcast UNDERDOG EMPOWERMENT. Join his Underdog Empowerment Movement – Community For Alpha Entrepreneurs. He and his team help entrepreneurs like you launch, grow and monetize top-shelf podcasts.
His podcast is great – all about entrepreneurship, productivity, mental toughness, and mindset. We met through Project Persuasion inner circle and the vibe totally resonated with me. My journey has been bumpy and as you know I am coming from a poor background. His podcast gets all that deep, when the odds in life are stacked against you, everyone is counting you out, not believing that you could be something more, but you have a vision and you are committed levelling up and winning. Zach is known for interviewing some of the most successful visionaries and celebrities.
We talked about entrepreneurship, podcasts, jumping from planes, companies internal culture, scaling and more!
Let’s get into the interview so you can learn more about it yourself! Check out questions you are especially interested in or listen to a full interview on a podcast.
(02:20) A little bit about Zachary Babcock
Long story short – I grew up without a real goal in my life and ended up doing 5 years total in prison for making a lot of bad decisions in my life. Then I got to a point where I missed my twin sons birth for going back to prison and that pain was what got me to flip my whole perspective on life. I came out and used that as a driving force by taking full ownership for everything wrong and right in my life and went out to build a thriving 6 figure business that we’re currently scaling.
(03:40) Weird things
The reason why I know I dominate the sh** I put my mind to, it’s because I’m super empathetic. […] In order to dominate and be the alpha and be the very best at what you are doing you gotta know that you are gonna make sh** tonnes of mistakes […] and if you can’t learn from other people you gonna get cleaned out every single time. […] I feel like that’s a superpower. […]
That’s kind of a picky bag.
[…] At the end of the day, everything right and wrong in your life is your fault. Some people will try to say – you can’t control certain things from happening. Yes you are right […] But you can either decide to be miserable about it .. or you can decide to turn out that into some kind of power. […]The moment of my life when I started to take ownership of everything wrong and right, that’s what gave me power.
(7:35) What is the Underdog Empowerment Movement and how did it come up
That is the number one resource for Alpha The Underdog Entrepreneurs to level up our business and life. That’s the whole premise. How I came into it? […] I was about 3, 5 years out of prison and any time I tried to collaborate with anybody, nobody gave me a chance. […] So I started a podcast for selfish reasons first and foremost to fill up my cup. Because you can’t fill a cup from an empty cup. I started a podcast to break out of that mood and also to help other Underdog Entrepreneurs in the process. […] Lot of people will say it starts with your why. And it’s really important […] but what I feel what comes before why is the who – who are you? [… ] When I got really clear on who I was […] I’m an Underdog entrepreneur, I’m gonna win no matter what. […] Then I created a brand around that. Knowing who I have attracted my tribe to it.
(11:10) How did Zachary choose to go with podcasting
It was 2 different breakthrough moments. Podcast blew up out of the gate, but I still wasn’t making a lot of money yet. […] So I started this program. […] Program was on leading, customer acquisition, and skill in the business […] with me being a face. However, I felt like a sleazy slimeball, because I was sitting here, trying to achieve something by teaching it and that was just ass backwards. […]It didn’t resonate with who I was as a person and how I want to live my life. So on Christmas day 2018 I made a post and called myself out. […] What was a breakthrough with a podcast – I got invited to speak out in San Diego at a Marshall Gillen’s event. […] When I started to talk about all the stuff I know about podcasts and people’s eyes were lightened up and they were asking me all these questions. [… ]I was like – Men, I might have something here. When you are inside your business the day today, it’s like being in the bottle, you don’t see the label outside, some things that are your superpower, you don’t know they are your superpower. […] So I put together an offer and it was a hit. […] I would break it down to the dumb luck […] and a drive of consistently wanting to achieve my goals and moving that direction.
(15:43) What are magic powers that bring celebrity guests to the podcast
I got a system I call it “Podcast penthouse mechanism”. It is based on 4 pillars and each pillar is simple things you do consistently over time to produce these results.
4 pillars are: 1) launching and being ranked on apple; 2) big reach podcasting; 3) celebrity podcast; 4) big money podcast.
Growing the downloads is in my opinion the most important pillar to focus on because it literally feeds every other pillar. […] But the pitch itself is literally as simple as this: pitch them, hit them up and keep it really short and sweet. […] Find them, hit up their DMs and ask them. Don’t be scared.
(21:18) About hiring and internal culture of a team
If you are like me – visionary, the best piece of advice that I can say for you is to find your integrator as soon as possible, find your chief operating professor. […] the person that actually implements things, builds the system and drives, is a great manager and pays attention to smaller details. […] What I do for culture development is get really clear on who we are, what we about, our core values and our mission, our purposes, why are we doing this, why it is important what are we setting up to do, what is the end game for us. Clearly articulating communicating that to the team and then most importantly is to lead by example – to live those core values and show your team each day you are living by those examples.
(24:40) The journey – mindset shifts and personal development
[…] realizing – hey I can dictate my life literally– cause I can control how I respond to anything that happens even if I can’t control it from happening. […] That was the starting point. And the complete ownership part – that everything wrong and right in my life is my fault, that was another one. But they were coming out of not being able to get a job anywhere…That was the switch, the mindset shift – all these things that I thought were a disadvantage, thought were holding me back, were actually my power.
Going to prison that’s my power. […] It’s literally what I lead with because it’s how I turned my so-called weakness into a strength. That is a strength because I had to work harder than a lot of people did. […] That’s a good thing. Because if it was just handed to me, I wouldn’t have the mental fortitude, strength of character, or the skills that I developed. I wouldn’t have the hunger and the passion if I hadn’t gone through that in the first place.[…]
(27:38) A man asking for help
I think it makes you strong if you ask for help. […] I got from the males perspective – you admitting that you don’t know how to do it, that you don’t have an answer right now or you need help with it and it’s hard for men to admit it in a lot of situations. This is how we are wired I guess. But it shows the strength of character to step up – I don’t have the answers and I would like to have your help. […]
(28:48) About haters
I love haters. I seriously love haters. I welcome them for so many different reasons. For one they help to build my brand for me. For two even more importantly […] people say – you get to the point where it’s no longer about proving them wrong, it’s about proving yourself right. I get that – that is first and foremost. But I still like fu***n proving that mot****r is wrong and laugh in their face – I told you so. […] That’s fuel to power.
(30:30) Balance of business and personal life
That is something I need to work on and get better at. […] It’s hard for me to separate the business from family cause I’m so fu***g passionate about what I do and love doing it. A lot of times I don’t give my family the attention they deserve. […] What I do to get better at… we just went to Florida last week for a week – I didn’t 100% unplug but I had literally 3 meetings that I set up, but I spent a lot of time with family and refined my vision. […] I have a morning routine that I do to fill myself up every single day – my workout, reading, cool showers, meditation, that I do before I do anything. That powers me up to go out to do everything else I do every day. I do stuff with my kids like we just made a vision board. […] I try to once again lead by example with my family. […]
(33:17) Lightning fire round
(35:05) Action steps, tips for building a personal brand
I used to think that I had to be that I was not in the marketplace. […] When we talk about personal branding here, the keyword would be personal.
[…] That makes shit so easy and you track the right people.You can’t make up some imaginary avatar and then try to be an ideal that serves that avatar if it doesn’t align with who you really are as a person. The beauty about that is that it makes a whole process easy. All you gotta do is get really clear on who you are.
Where to find Zach
The best place to hit me up it’s definitely the podcast. It’s UNDERDOG EMPOWERMENT you can check it out on pretty much every podcast platform. But to make it really simple you can go to https://underdogempowerment.com/