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I never thought I would make much money, honestly, because I
just wanted to be a musician.
And I think what I wanted most was to do something I loved
for a living.
I never wanted to have a job I hated, and I was always a
creative.
My name is Graham Cochran.
I'm 39 years old.
I make about $1.6 million a year.
I work about 5 hours a week.
And I live in Tampa, Florida.
I'm a business coach.
I run an online business where I teach people how to make
money off of their passions, turn their knowledge
into income, sell online courses, and maybe build a
following around a YouTube channel or a
podcast or a blog, and then eventually sell their knowledge
in online courses and memberships or one on
one and coaching packages.
Welcome to Episode 167 of The Graham Cochran Show, where I'm
here to help you build your online business.
A friend of mine who is older, wiser, and he said, "Man, you
don't have any real family time.
You've got to take at least one day off with your family."
So from day one, when I got serious, I just committed to,
okay, I'm going to figure this out in Monday through
Thursday. I
decided in 2018 to launch my personal brand,
GrahamCochrane.com.
Teaching everything I know about online business.
And as that's become successful, we've built this house here
on the river and it's just been a dream to be able to have
the home the way we want.
The space and have the privacy to where we want.
Be on the water, which we love.
So front of the house, we love having a front formal living
room that rarely gets used.
But, you know, we love if we have people over, sometimes
people spread out.
So it's really nice, beautiful, quiet spot.
Piano. It's the one instrument I don't really play very
well, but my daughters play a little bit.
Guest room for guests, obviously.
And then really the whole house is all about back here, just
having a really cohesive living space.
Right? We love tall ceilings.
So the 20-foot ceilings and then the view, which is what
it's all about.
Being on the river. And we put in these custom iron arch
doors, which are so fun.
This is kind of a splurge to have something unique and
custom.
So the kitchen's all my wife.
She wanted it to be really open.
We decided to go more open shelf concept, which was
different, but it was just great.
Everything's accessible and we just wanted a big island and
keep it as clean as possible.
My wife is trying to take over with plants.
She wants us to be the jungle room.
This is a great room for the kids to do crafts.
All the stuff that's fun, that leaves a mess.
They can take over this table and not take over the kitchen
table.
So a dining room where meals take place, obviously, but it's
also like morning time.
So I'll sit in the morning first thing by myself, reading my
Bible, praying, coffee, waking up.
The summers it's great.
We have time with the kiddos since there's no school.
We can all sit around the table.
We try to go through a devotional together, read through the
Bible, trying to teach my kids how to read the Bible
themselves. So books are a huge part of my life.
That's how I've grown and learned.
Got my very own book, finally published my first book, How
to Get Paid For What You Know.
Everywhere we go in the house and in the office on
bookshelves and books.
And one of my only requests for the house was to put the
master bedroom at the back of the house so we
could have a balcony and a view of the river.
So we kind of built the house around that.
My parents were military early on, but we settled in
Virginia and I
fell in love with music as a kid.
Singing, playing trumpet, eventually played guitar and just
became a
music head. Played in middle school bands, high school rock
bands.
That's what got me into audio engineering and recording
music.
So I met my wife my sophomore year of college.
We dated for 3 years all through college and got married
right out of college.
It was a really hard year.
So I actually lost a job in 2009 before we moved, and then
it was really hard to find
a job in Tampa during the Great Recession.
I think I applied for 50 jobs, finally got one in the debt
settlement industry.
That's when we bought our first house.
My first daughter was born and then 4 or 5 months into
working that job, that company ran out of money and
they had to let me go. I had like an emergency fund that we
lived off for a while, but eventually we burned through
that.
The first couple of years that I was doing this were pretty
bleak.
At that time, we literally had no income.
I had family and friends sending me checks and trying to
help us out.
We applied for food stamps.
It was a very humbling experience.
So I would say for almost 2 years it was me trying to get
work and I got a little bit of work.
I think I made $7,000 in my first year.
It wasn't very much.
There were two moments where light bulbs went off.
One was when I sold my first online course.
Hey everybody, it's Graham over at GrahamCochrane.com.
Which, functionally, I was teaching things on YouTube for
free.
And then I thought, "Could I sell what I'm teaching?"
And that was probably 18 months before the second moment,
which was the back half of my
second year of business.
I launched two more products that became best sellers for
me.
And that's what I've got for you today.
It is the Behringer Truth Monitor's.
Studio monitors.
And in the last couple of months of that year, we brought in
almost $60,000 and I realized this is game over.
I used to make $30,000 a year working full time in corporate
America.
Same with my wife. So I was replacing both of our $30,000 a
year salaries from a website talking about what I love
to do, which is music and music recording all from home.
And that's when we didn't qualify for food stamps anymore.
And I knew my life was going to be different from then on
out.
I was trying to figure out how to build a business.
And at the time my weekends were taken up with this church
that we're starting.
So I never got a day off.
A friend of mine who was older, wiser, and he said, "Man,
you don't have any real family time.
You've got to take at least one day off with your family."
So from day one, when I got serious, I just committed to,
okay, I'm going to figure this out in Monday through
Thursday So 32 hours a week and work normal 8-hour days.
So that became the most I ever worked on my business when I
started.
And then every year, I'm kind of a weirdo.
I try to like play this game and figure out could I make the
same amount of money I made last year or grow it?
That'd be even better, but work fewer hours.
So it's been income go up, work hours go down.
And it's been that way ever since.
I remember I was at a beach vacation with my family.
Just a three or four day getaway at the panhandle of
Florida.
And I remember my wife looking at me with my laptop over at
the beach and she says, "What are you doing?"
And she said, "You can't even get away for three or four
days that you have to check your email."
And I remember feeling, "What am I doing?"
And that was when I realized I needed somebody to be in my
inbox for me to take care of those types of requests that
need a response right away.
Most of what allows me to work so few hours is a combination
of systems and eliminating a lot
of stuff that just isn't really necessary.
And I learned that. All the activity on social media I was
doing, being in email all day long, keeping my email like
tab open and responding to emails as they came in.
Working on all kinds of projects without really looking at
what of my products really make up the bulk of my money.
I use the 80/20 rule.
Paretos principle all the time as a framework of looking at
what I'm doing and eliminating as much as I
possibly can. I'm not really working faster as much as I'm
just doing less in my business and I'm only
doing the things that I have found actually drive revenue
in my business.
I eventually brought on a customer service person to take
care of some of those emails in my inbox.
And then I eventually hired someone to help me with the
boring, like uploading my videos to YouTube and making
thumbnails or editing some videos if I needed them edited.
Thinking about launching a membership site.
Today's episode is for you.
I've been making videos for 13 years, so I usually know what
I want to say.
Very few stops and starts and I can get it done pretty
quickly.
And then I'll wrap up the morning with checking email and
then I have a paid community of people that I jump in and I
answer questions and I touch base with those people and see
what they need help with.
And then I'm usually done by lunch.
I'd love to move into more public speaking
Going back to my music roots, I love being on stage.
What I'm going to be working towards is just getting on more
stages, getting in front of people and trying to share this
message of how to monetize what you know and turn it into a
flexible, automated business that gives you freedom.
I would say money is a great servant, but a horrible master.
I think people have more control over where their money goes
and what they do with their money than they give themselves
credit for. It's not worth being scared of or living your
life as if you're controlled by what
money you have or don't have.
Please play the YouTube video first