I was excited to interview Todd Herman because he’s a common denominator among my other guests. As in, the best of the best turn to him for strategy, consulting and coaching. I couldn’t wait to pick his brain.
Herman is a “farm boy from rural Canada” who excelled at sports and mental toughness. His passion for those two topics led him to become a leader on and off the field, later bringing his gifts to the hospitality industry. After winning a small hospitality award and a chance encounter with legendary enterepreneur Jim Rohn, he changed his life and launched his speaking career — by speaking 68 times in 90 days.
In the 18 years since, he’s been personally mentored by Rohn and Harvey Dorfman — two of the world’s leading performance experts. He’s worked behind the scenes as a coach with Olympians and Fortune 100 companies. He’s become an in-demand speaker, traveling to over 80 countries to consult and give presentations. Now, he offers his goal achievement system used by athletes, entrepreneurs, high-profile companies and government agencies around the world as an online program called The 90-Day Year.
Here’s how Herman achieved such incredible success in two decades and the top eight lessons entrepreneurs can learn from him about mental toughness, building a coaching empire and launching a successful online business.
1. Jump at opportunities.
Before you jump to the “oh, he was only successful because he got lucky and met Jim Rohn” conclusion, listen to the story. Herman was at a banquet where his uncle was being recognized and happened to sit next to Rohn, not knowing who he was. As they started to chat, Herman explained he hoped to go into training and speaking like Rohn had done.
“He challenged me to do three things,” Herman recalled. “That was a Saturday night. Monday at about one o’clock in the afternoon I called him. . . . I said, ‘Hey Jim, it’s Todd Herman calling, I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the guy who sat next to you for five hours.’ (Of course, he remembers). . . . ‘I did the three things, now what do I do?’”
Rohn called Herman back the very next day, and said, “Okay, you’re officially the only person who’s ever called me back.”
What a lesson for all of us. How many other would-be coaches had the same conversation with Rohn and never followed through?
2. Use what you’ve got.
At the very beginning of his career, Herman landed two speaking gigs — this is one of the assignments Rohn gave him — by leveraging the fact that he’d recently won a “little award” in the hospitality industry.
In the same vein, his commitment and results with his local and regional high school athletes led to a referral to a professional player. Then word spread organically and he expanded to other professionals and Olympians.
Futhermore, his presentations at high schools led to his corporate training gigs.
“You’ve got to remember anytime you’re getting a message, even though you’re really targeting it towards a niche, whoever is sitting in the audience is always gonna filter it through their life,” Herman explained to me. “So I [had a lot of people approach me] after and say, ‘Todd, love what your talk is all about, but I’m dealing with something inside of my business . . .”
Herman went on to explain that if you want to be a successful entrepreneur you have to be brash and believe in yourself. Even though he didn’t have a set curriculum or system for non-athletes, he would always say yes to the new opportunities.
3. Make your own opportunities.
I love the story of how Herman got Harvey Dorfman to become his mentor. In short, he called him up cold and asked to shadow him for free and do all of his administrative work for a few months. He said he had an aunt and uncle nearby but in reality stayed…