Philip Portman, founder of Textdrip and author of Three Keys to Success, shares his raw journey through entrepreneurship and leadership. At his lowest point—deep in debt, grieving the loss of his dog, and questioning his choices—Philip made a commitment: he would never work for anyone else again. That moment became his turning point.

In this episode, he explains how personal hardship catalyzed business growth, ultimately scaling his startup across six states. Philip lays out the three pillars of his leadership philosophy: written goals, healthy habits, and what he calls “arrogant confidence”—a mindset just bold enough to fuel breakthrough action.

He also digs into the power of SMS marketing, explaining why it delivers stronger engagement than email and how to use it without annoying your audience. His insights on human connection, especially in a world saturated with AI-generated content, emphasize authenticity as a core leadership trait.

Want to learn more about Philip Portman's work? Check out their website at https://philportman.com.

Connect with Philip Portman on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/philportman/.

KEY POINTS WITH TIMESTAMPS

• [00:02:21] “Summer of Darkness” – Philip shares how personal crisis drove his resolve to succeed.

• [00:05:11] Commitment to Family – Leadership for Philip means being present and purpose-driven.

• [00:06:04] Innovation Under Pressure – Creativity thrives when survival is at stake.

• [00:08:17] Focus on What Works – He ditched flashy strategies for old-school grit and Craigslist ads.

• [00:09:11] Textdrip Origins – Built a text-first marketing platform due to higher engagement rates.

• [00:13:47] SMS for B2B – Texting converts better for high-ticket leads when used quickly and correctly.

• [00:15:17] Follow-Up Discipline – 80% of sales need 5+ touches, but most give up after one.

• [00:20:35] AI Burnout – He predicts a return to raw, human marketing as AI floods the space.

• [00:28:08] Leadership Through Simplicity – Success doesn’t need complexity, just clear focus.

• [00:30:50] Three Keys to Success – Written goals, strong habits, and confident action.

• [00:35:10] Arrogant Confidence – Leaders succeed by doing the thing before they’re ready.

• [00:38:59] Goal Setting Works – Philip and his wife have proof their written goals turn into results.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment in my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on this show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;06;16
Craig Andrews
Today I went. Welcome Philip Portman. He is the founder of Textdrip. The author of Three Keys to Success and the host of the success is podcast. Philip is a serial entrepreneur,

00;01;06;16 - 00;01;07;11
Craig Andrews
who,

00;01;07;11 - 00;01;09;07
Craig Andrews
has had many,

00;01;09;07 - 00;01;17;00
Craig Andrews
ups and downs in his business like any entrepreneur. But he has his fascination about what makes people successful. And that's,

00;01;17;00 - 00;01;20;08
Craig Andrews
part of his book of the Three Keys to Success.

00;01;20;11 - 00;01;24;08
Craig Andrews
He owns a 54 acre horse farm and,

00;01;24;08 - 00;01;34;08
Craig Andrews
my biggest regret is he and I have been talking for the last half hour, and we probably should have hit record a half hour ago. This is going to be a really great episode.

00;01;34;08 - 00;01;35;22
Craig Andrews
So. Welcome.

00;01;35;25 - 00;01;40;04
Philip Portman
Hey, thank you for having me, Craig. And absolutely looking forward to this conversation with you.

00;01;40;07 - 00;01;41;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So,

00;01;41;23 - 00;01;43;28
Craig Andrews
the,

00;01;43;28 - 00;01;50;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I really do regret not hitting record. We were covering so much stuff, and the,

00;01;50;16 - 00;02;06;01
Craig Andrews
you know, one of the things, you know, one of the things we were just starting to talk on, I mean, clearly you've been very successful. You've done amazingly well, and it's so easy to look at that.

00;02;06;01 - 00;02;11;08
Craig Andrews
You know, I think Mark Cuban said people remember me for my 1 or 2 successes.

00;02;11;10 - 00;02;21;04
Craig Andrews
You know, they don't know me for all the failures that led up to those. And you you mentioned something about you called it your Summer of darkness.

00;02;21;06 - 00;02;37;07
Philip Portman
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes people see the the top of the iceberg, but they don't see the stuff that happened underneath the water. Right? They don't they don't see the times where you were struggling. And I had this summer. It was about a year into this,

00;02;37;07 - 00;02;43;17
Philip Portman
restaurant delivery service franchise that I started, and I was all in on this.

00;02;43;19 - 00;03;05;23
Philip Portman
My partner comes to me and says, hey, I want out. I want you to buy me out. I want to leave. I want to go back to the corporate world. And it took everything I had to buy him out. In that same time, we found out that the marketplace insurance that we had for my autistic son was not paying, and we were paying about six grand a month,

00;03;05;23 - 00;03;07;05
Philip Portman
for his ABA therapy.

00;03;07;05 - 00;03;11;00
Philip Portman
And then they just dropped us. My dog ended up,

00;03;11;00 - 00;03;34;28
Philip Portman
his stomach flipped and I was at the vet and they said, hey, we're going to see what's going on and be about $15,000 for the surgery. Oh my me, who's massively in credit card debt. Not a dollar to my name at that point. Freaking out, going, what's going to happen if I can't afford this?

00;03;34;29 - 00;03;57;27
Philip Portman
I got a wife and a son out there bawling in tears. I mean, we've had this dog since before the kids were born, and they came back and said, unfortunately, the surgery is not going to help. We got to put your put your dog down. And in that moment, there was kind of a sense of relief that I didn't have to figure out where I was going to come up with these funds.

00;03;57;27 - 00;04;27;02
Philip Portman
I didn't have. But at the same point, that was my lowest point. At that point, I thought, did I mess up my family's future? I left a comfortable six figure job to pursue this entrepreneur ship dream, and everything in that moment crumbled and there was no hope for my future. That's the part that a lot of entrepreneurs don't like talking about because it's traumatic.

00;04;27;03 - 00;04;49;26
Philip Portman
There's some PTSD that comes along with that, but if you dig deep and ask a lot of these successful entrepreneurs and say, hey, tell me about your low moment, we'll say, let me, let me tell you about it. And then it's the coming out of that that's important. And for me, the way I got out of it was when I had left my corporate job.

00;04;49;29 - 00;05;10;28
Philip Portman
I made a commitment to the universe. I. I said this out loud. I said, this is the last time I will ever work for somebody else again. I said, so during the troubling times. I said, hey, I told myself this and I have a A North Star, and that's to spend more time with my family and my kids.

00;05;11;01 - 00;05;34;21
Philip Portman
That's what I want to do. That's what my future is. As long as I'm heading towards that direction. I know I'm on the right path. And then the second thing is, when my back's against the wall, I work harder than anybody else out there. And so what started off as the summer of darkness and with the launch of my business, and we ended up franchising it across six states.

00;05;34;21 - 00;05;44;08
Philip Portman
So we we had massive growth by the end of that year. But it all started with the catalyst of me hitting that incredibly low point in my life.

00;05;44;11 - 00;06;04;04
Craig Andrews
You know, one of the misunderstanding, some of market or one of the misunderstandings that people have is they think, oh, as a marketer, you need a blank canvas to be creative. I'm like, no, I need you to give me like some really tight constraints. Put me in this tiny little box I can barely crawl out of. Do you think that's some of what happened at that time?

00;06;04;07 - 00;06;36;09
Philip Portman
I think so the problem with us humans, two problems. One, we limit our beliefs. We're far more capable than what we actually think. And so when you lift that off and say, hey, I have to figure out a way to do this. Suddenly your brain's looking in all different directions for a solution to that. And so I think that's a big part of what happens when you get really compressed like that in the marketing efforts.

00;06;36;12 - 00;06;44;16
Philip Portman
With me, with marketing, I always looked at it like I needed to do things this certain way, because that's the way marketers do it.

00;06;44;18 - 00;06;45;04
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;06;45;06 - 00;07;04;14
Philip Portman
When you're in a tight box where you have to pull it off or you're dead in the water, you find a solution. And at the end of the day, that's what marketing's really all about. It's taking off of the barriers, taking off everything. And saying, you know what works in marketing? The thing that works.

00;07;04;16 - 00;07;15;24
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it forces you to go back and cut out. Cut out crap that's not really performing. You know, there's some things,

00;07;15;24 - 00;07;27;20
Craig Andrews
you know, something I run into and and you, I, I see that everybody universally knows they should be doing something on social media, and they feel like they should be doing more on social media.

00;07;27;22 - 00;07;33;24
Craig Andrews
And they come to me and they're like, Craig, what should you do? I'm like, I don't know, I suck at social media.

00;07;33;24 - 00;07;39;23
Craig Andrews
I've I haven't cracked the code. I know 2 or 3 people that credibly think they have.

00;07;39;23 - 00;07;46;05
Craig Andrews
But I'm like paid media and and the social media takes a ton of time.

00;07;46;05 - 00;07;51;14
Craig Andrews
And so in that, in those moments of scarcity, where are you going to use your time?

00;07;51;17 - 00;07;52;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;07;52;24 - 00;08;17;13
Philip Portman
I agree with you on that. I think there's aspects of, well, there's so many different ways to market now. There's so many different avenues that you can market. And when you're when you're pushed into a funnel or something that you have to do when you're, you're back's against the wall, you're not going to entertain the ideas that are not producing results.

00;08;17;14 - 00;08;32;03
Philip Portman
And if you have natural talents towards something, you're going to automatically gravitate towards that. Mine and I probably dating myself. But back in the day we were using Craigslist for. Yeah for advertising a lot of the businesses and

00;08;32;03 - 00;08;41;00
Philip Portman
I don't know that it was, it was moving more towards social media at the time than Craigslist. But Craigslist got us great results at the time.

00;08;41;02 - 00;08;51;24
Philip Portman
And so I gave up on the other strategies and just doubled down on the thing that was working during that summer and was just making phone calls and just grinding it out. And,

00;08;51;24 - 00;09;02;18
Philip Portman
yeah. So I agree with you. I think if you're trying if social media works for you, great. Keep working on that. But paid ads, if it's email marketing, if it's text marketing,

00;09;02;18 - 00;09;06;04
Philip Portman
figure out what works and then and then build on that.

00;09;06;06 - 00;09;11;12
Craig Andrews
Now your current business tech strip, isn't that a like a text marketing platform?

00;09;11;15 - 00;09;40;09
Philip Portman
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So text strip, we built, because most of the platforms that I was finding out there were very email centric, and they kind of threw texting on there as an afterthought. Well, text messaging when you're marketing has a 45% response rate compared to a 6% with email. So we thought, well, if we look at the 8020 rule, the 20% that's giving us 80% results.

00;09;40;11 - 00;10;07;09
Philip Portman
What if we really focused on the text messaging messaging and text marketing. So instead of throwing it on there as an afterthought, let's build our entire platform around that. Become the experts in it and see what happens. And the results have been incredible. So for us we do a completely free trial, no contracts because we know when people when businesses get on our platform and start using it, they're blown away with the results.

00;10;07;11 - 00;10;24;11
Philip Portman
And so that was the the idea around Textdrip. And it's really taken off because people are able to take their same lead list or same strategy that they had for email, build in inside of a text campaign and the results speak for themselves.

00;10;24;13 - 00;10;24;25
Craig Andrews
The,

00;10;24;25 - 00;10;31;29
Craig Andrews
I guess one. Let me ask some questions there and yeah, I'm. Yeah. Just so you know, I'm doing nothing in text.

00;10;31;29 - 00;10;32;12
Craig Andrews
I,

00;10;32;12 - 00;10;45;06
Craig Andrews
yeah, I'm on HubSpot and that's one of those platforms where I was like, oh, yeah, we should probably do this. And it's a little bit of an upcharge. The the thing I haven't gotten over in that is,

00;10;45;06 - 00;10;50;24
Craig Andrews
I know with email, you know, if you start spamming people with email, your emails are going to get buried.

00;10;50;24 - 00;10;56;17
Craig Andrews
They're going to nobody's inbox. Yeah. And I really worry about doing that with text messaging.

00;10;56;17 - 00;11;03;20
Craig Andrews
Because I know if I don't opt in to a text message, even the ones I opt into, I'm a little bit annoyed when they show up.

00;11;03;20 - 00;11;04;02
Craig Andrews
And I'm not.

00;11;04;02 - 00;11;23;20
Philip Portman
Exactly how it works. Right. Because emails you can kind of ignore, but text messages you can't. Right. That's one of the things with and why you have such a high response rate with texting is because if somebody is receiving a text message that they don't want to receive, there's an emotion around that, right? And,

00;11;23;20 - 00;11;27;18
Philip Portman
you don't want to keep getting those text messages, so you're 100% right.

00;11;27;20 - 00;11;51;16
Philip Portman
Email and texting are different from that aspect. Email can you can do more of a cold outreach with texting. It's a powerful weapon, but you have to use it correctly. So the way you want to use it is based on an interest or a promotion or something exciting where you're saying, right now this is available in this moment, right?

00;11;51;19 - 00;12;09;06
Philip Portman
You're getting excitement. You're generating excitement around it. It's not designed for lead nurturing in most cases, like email would or information like email would. It's more for hey, I need a quick response now or I have this flash sale right now or,

00;12;09;06 - 00;12;17;24
Philip Portman
something that's going to get your attention immediately. That's really what texting is designed for. What you're talking about with the the spam part.

00;12;17;26 - 00;12;32;20
Philip Portman
In 2019, they rolled out something for ten DLC, and it was regulations to prevent spam messaging with text messaging. And so now there's a lot of rules. There's regulations around it. And we became the absolute experts in that.

00;12;33;19 - 00;12;58;08
Philip Portman
We help when you come on board with us, you actually get a one on one interaction with a specialist who's going to help you create your campaigns, set up your account, understand how to use the platform, what to do and what not to do. We pay for all of that upfront. We give you free credits. There's no contracts.

00;12;58;10 - 00;13;19;17
Philip Portman
We invest a lot in making sure that our customers are educated when they come on to our platform, because if you don't get the results on our platform, since there's no contract, you're going to tell us to kick rocks. Yeah. But if you get the type of results that our customers get from that platform, we can't even kick you off the platform.

00;13;19;17 - 00;13;26;27
Philip Portman
You're not going anywhere. You're going to stick with us because you're getting the results. And at the end of the day, that's what we're doing with our platform.

00;13;27;00 - 00;13;47;27
Craig Andrews
So let me ask you this. I mean, you know, you probably gathered if, you know, when I'm using HubSpot, I'm usually doing, you know, B2B stuff. Often it's high ticket stuff. And you talks about using SMSs for running specials. What would be what would be the use case for higher ticket B2B using text messages?

00;13;47;27 - 00;13;57;22
Philip Portman
Yeah, absolutely. And high ticket is really the best area to do it, especially if you have leads coming in from a website or something like that. Right.

00;13;57;22 - 00;14;14;27
Philip Portman
Because you want to contact them immediately. Like if you contact a lead within five minutes. Yeah. It increases your conversion rate by 900%, right? 900% in the first five minutes. Emails are kind of one of those afterthoughts.

00;14;14;29 - 00;14;24;26
Philip Portman
Like if you look at your phone right now, how many unread emails do you have versus how many unread text messages do you have? Yeah, maybe. You know, it's a good.

00;14;24;26 - 00;14;25;29
Craig Andrews
But you're right.

00;14;26;01 - 00;14;50;11
Philip Portman
For me, it's I have like 50,000 unread emails in there. I have no unread text messages unless they came in during this call. Because as soon as you see them, you want to read them and you want to open them. So the benefit for a high ticket sales is as soon as somebody comes on your site and requests information, boom, you send out the message immediately because you're increasing your conversion rate on top of that.

00;14;50;13 - 00;15;17;01
Philip Portman
The way the text chip works is we keep them on a drip campaign. And that's important because 80% of sales require five follow ups or more, but 44% of sales agents give up after one attempt. So the benefit to text marketing is immediate messaging where it's in their face, they're seeing it immediately and then continue drip campaigns. And we connect with platforms like HubSpot.

00;15;17;02 - 00;15;38;07
Philip Portman
All of your top serums we integrate directly with. Or we have a Chrome extension that you can use that will connect with HubSpot or any of the other CRMs that you use if you want to use texture for that, that matter. But our biggest thing is with our platform, you will have the best deliverability and highest response rate that you'll get out of any other texting platform out there.

00;15;38;09 - 00;15;49;25
Craig Andrews
You know, something is like a minute ago is about responding in the first five minutes and and then also just giving up too soon, you know, and I, I see this,

00;15;49;25 - 00;16;02;16
Craig Andrews
unfortunately too frequently with my clients, you know, they're like, well, the laser no good. I'm like, okay, well, one. How often how many times did you follow up with them?

00;16;02;18 - 00;16;09;16
Craig Andrews
And two, how quickly did you follow up with them? And there was one client. We finally,

00;16;09;16 - 00;16;11;13
Craig Andrews
we finally looked at,

00;16;11;13 - 00;16;16;27
Craig Andrews
people. They were able to put leads. They were able to book calls with versus people they weren't able to book,

00;16;16;27 - 00;16;26;11
Craig Andrews
calls with the number one. The number one thing that determine if there was a book call was the speed in which they followed up.

00;16;26;13 - 00;16;51;03
Philip Portman
Absolutely. Yep. Speed is. Speed is the number one benefit to text marketing is there is no other way to get to somebody faster. You could potentially argue if you had a push notification, if they installed your app. But once again, nowadays apps can disable the notifications pretty quickly. Text marketing is the fastest way to get something to get to somebody directly.

00;16;51;05 - 00;17;03;09
Craig Andrews
Now, I mean, like Apple, you know, when they rolled out I forgot which iOS version where, you know, the the easiest thing to do. They ask you, hey, do you want notifications from these guys? I'm like, nope, nope.

00;17;03;12 - 00;17;17;06
Philip Portman
Yeah. And that killed it because back in the day you remember everyone wanted an app. Every business want an app. You go to McDonald's, you go to your coffee shop. Everyone wanted their own app because they wanted to be able to send notifications to you about promotions, deals,

00;17;17;06 - 00;17;20;13
Philip Portman
you know, and your situation when you're doing high ticket sales, it's,

00;17;20;13 - 00;17;37;01
Philip Portman
Hey, I've got a speaking engagement. Hey, I've got this. I'm going to be interviewing so-and-so on a topic that I think you're going to be really interested in. It's tonight at 7:00. Jump on. You're going to want to see it live, right? Or hey, the biggest mistakes that marketers are on that other than,

00;17;37;01 - 00;17;42;07
Philip Portman
in the age of AI, things like that, that you're getting to them instantly right then and there.

00;17;42;08 - 00;17;52;22
Philip Portman
Hey, I only have 20 spots available. Book yours now, right? Things like that that you know, those individuals are going to look for is really where text marketing is great for.

00;17;52;25 - 00;17;58;15
Craig Andrews
Yeah. How do you keep from being annoying?

00;17;58;17 - 00;18;28;03
Philip Portman
Yeah. So that goes back to how you're using it. So when you come onboard with us, we're going to teach you how to use text marketing marketing correctly and how not to use it. Most of the time you are responding to an inquiry on your website or off of a lead nurturing process like an email. So somebody comes on and they request something, they immediately get put on a text drip campaign.

00;18;28;06 - 00;18;58;07
Philip Portman
We follow opt out procedures with tag strap. But not only do we follow opt out from the keyword base, we actually built our own AI model that understands the intent of an outdoor. You never want to be in a situation where you're continuing to drip somebody who does not want to get messaging from you. Yeah. That's the immediate way to break trust because they may not want to receive the text messages from you, but they may still want to get the email communication from you.

00;18;58;09 - 00;19;18;24
Philip Portman
So by respecting them on one area and still dripping them in the other, you can find that you're still going to still work things out. But when you're messaging cold outreach on text messages, if you're just blasting out cold outreach, that is not applicable to that person. That's the quickest way to burn a lead.

00;19;18;26 - 00;19;39;17
Craig Andrews
You know, another practice I've been seeing lately that I find really annoying is, you know, you go on to my website and based on your IP address, they're able to harvest your email. And next thing you know, you're on their email list. That's right. And I've got I've got websites I actually like I like them, I like their message.

00;19;39;17 - 00;19;49;05
Craig Andrews
I like what they're doing there. As soon as they show up in my inbox and mark them as spam. I'm like, I never gave you permission. Never gave you permission to enter my inbox? That way.

00;19;49;07 - 00;19;54;00
Philip Portman
Same. Same. Exactly. Yep, yep. So once again,

00;19;54;00 - 00;20;10;10
Philip Portman
SMS powerful tool, but if you use it wrong, you could piss off the right customers. And I'd argue that same way, right? Like, I don't mind getting some ads. I know that that's paying for a lot of the services, but people that are directly sending me emails or text messages that I didn't ask for.

00;20;10;12 - 00;20;35;08
Philip Portman
That's a problem. So use it wisely. Absolutely. Couldn't agree with you more on that. The latest thing I don't know if you're getting this is is the use with AI. So not only did I not subscribe to their messaging, but their AI is scraping every piece of information about me out there, combining it in a creepy email and sending it over, and it's like, could you imagine a human doing this?

00;20;35;10 - 00;20;48;08
Philip Portman
Hey, Phil, or founder and CEO of blah blah, blah, and let's talk about my whole journey. I own a 54 acre commercial horse farm. How's the weather there? And Holly. Go, lions. You know, like, it's just cheesy as hell.

00;20;48;08 - 00;20;49;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah.

00;20;49;27 - 00;20;51;22
Philip Portman
Clearly, I.

00;20;51;25 - 00;21;13;29
Craig Andrews
I see so many companies that are looking at AI and they're trying to push customer service every day. AI, all we can, you know, and some MBA with their spreadsheet looking at saying, hey, we could cut this many customer service agents and the I can't explain it, I can't explain it, but I know, I know for a fact.

00;21;13;29 - 00;21;29;27
Craig Andrews
I'll give you a I'll give you a, a proof point that there's a human element that AI hasn't been able to replicate, and that human element is essential. And here's here's my proof point.

00;21;30;00 - 00;21;39;21
Craig Andrews
The fact that OnlyFans is a viable business model. Yeah, tells me there's something that humans bring to the picture that's absolutely essential.

00;21;39;24 - 00;21;42;14
Philip Portman
Yeah, because they could absolutely create all of that with AI.

00;21;42;16 - 00;21;48;02
Craig Andrews
They're not reciting Shakespeare. The dialogue's pretty simple. Yeah.

00;21;48;04 - 00;21;52;26
Philip Portman
No, no, I think you got a good point there. And for me, I,

00;21;52;26 - 00;22;09;01
Philip Portman
I'm almost looking for emails now that don't use am dashes. Right. Emails that maybe have, aren't perfect because I know it came from a human. Yeah. I think more and more people in this age of AI are looking for human connection.

00;22;09;03 - 00;22;10;00
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;22;10;03 - 00;22;24;00
Philip Portman
I was looking on like LinkedIn, and you look at these posts that were clearly written by AI and then commented by bots and AI, and I had the thought that AI is just talking with AI at this point.

00;22;24;03 - 00;22;25;09
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;22;25;11 - 00;22;48;07
Philip Portman
Is there any humans out there? And I don't know, I think a lot of it's becoming bot based because they're just casting out a big net and trying to market that way. My thought is over the next few years, you're going to see people just getting burned out by this highly, highly polished AI marketing world and looking for real, raw human connections.

00;22;48;09 - 00;23;00;22
Craig Andrews
So here's here's something for you. And this is a conversation going back to I think it was 2018. And I'd written some emails and I hand them off to,

00;23;00;22 - 00;23;10;29
Craig Andrews
one of my copywriters or one of my editors to review them. And she comes back and she's like, she corrects some things that were like,

00;23;10;29 - 00;23;15;04
Craig Andrews
there were some grammar errors, like, you know, tense.

00;23;15;07 - 00;23;35;03
Craig Andrews
And I looked at that and I was like, I like it better with the errors. Yeah. And and so I had another copywriter. I said, hey, Sean, and will you look at this? And so Sean, I looked at her and she's like, yeah, no I agree with Libby. I think you need to fix these grammar errors. It will make you look bad.

00;23;35;03 - 00;23;43;27
Craig Andrews
Otherwise. And so I was like, all right, make it happen. You know, I had had two people. It was 2 to 1, two people on my team. Both of them professional writers. Yeah.

00;23;43;27 - 00;23;53;13
Craig Andrews
I was like, okay, I may have this one wrong, but like a day later, Shauna came back and she's like, Greg,

00;23;53;13 - 00;23;56;11
Craig Andrews
it pains me to say this, but you were right.

00;23;56;14 - 00;24;02;25
Craig Andrews
I went through, and I cleaned everything up. I gave it perfect grammar, and it felt cold.

00;24;02;27 - 00;24;19;04
Philip Portman
Yeah, yeah, I think there's. Because it's not your voice, right? Yeah. You lose your voice, it becomes cold. Yeah, I agree. And I wonder if I'm sure somebody out there has done some split testing on that, you know, the past,

00;24;19;04 - 00;24;20;12
Philip Portman
version versus the,

00;24;20;12 - 00;24;32;03
Philip Portman
the kind of raw version and same. And it's so easy now to have I clean up your text or Grammarly or whatever you're using to clean up your text instantly.

00;24;32;06 - 00;24;35;17
Philip Portman
But I go through and read it and I go, that doesn't really sound like me.

00;24;35;19 - 00;25;06;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, I think AI is an amazingly powerful tool and I, I agree with everybody. I think this is as significant as the advent of the internet, the advent of the personal computer. But like each of those, I don't know. You may not remember when the PC came out, one of the applications they were talking about for the PC was they said, you can store your recipes on your computer.

00;25;06;23 - 00;25;30;05
Craig Andrews
And I always remember, I remember this. I mean, I grew up with a PC in the 80s and I remember was like, what part of the kitchen are you putting that computer in? What's going to happen when flour. Yeah, you sprinkle flour on the computer and it was one of those things where they were looking for they, they had a technology and they were trying to wedge applications into that technology that just didn't make sense.

00;25;30;11 - 00;25;31;28
Philip Portman
Yeah. Trying to force it.

00;25;32;00 - 00;25;53;14
Craig Andrews
And the the thing that I think made everybody excited about AI is, oh, hey, you know, I've known I need to write, you know, a blog a week or three blogs a week or whatever. Now I'm going to have I do it. And they're missing the obvious fact of guess what the new noise level is? Mass quantities of AI written content.

00;25;53;16 - 00;26;03;24
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And so if you're doing that, you're just in the noise and doesn't matter if you're deep in the noise by not doing it or higher up in the noise, you're still in the noise.

00;26;03;26 - 00;26;33;26
Philip Portman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're regurgitating a lot of the other stuff that's out there that's being trained on all that out there, and there's nothing differentiating you from everyone else in the market. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree, I think AI is a tool and I think it's very useful. But you can't lose your brand's identity in it. Yeah, because that's really what separates you and your company from everyone else out there.

00;26;33;28 - 00;26;39;00
Philip Portman
Because otherwise, what's preventing everyone else out there that has access to I

00;26;39;00 - 00;26;45;28
Philip Portman
bot or I chat to do exactly what you're doing. Yeah, you're exactly your brand.

00;26;46;01 - 00;26;50;03
Craig Andrews
Well, and I like your tool analogy because, you know, I, I do

00;26;50;03 - 00;26;55;20
Craig Andrews
woodworking and have some really, really nice Japanese chisels. Japanese chisels are just awesome.

00;26;55;20 - 00;27;06;08
Craig Andrews
They're easy to sharpen and they just work really well. But it's not the chisel that makes the magic. The chisels. Just the tool. Yeah.

00;27;06;08 - 00;27;09;19
Craig Andrews
I can mangle some dovetails with the best of them, you know?

00;27;09;19 - 00;27;17;23
Craig Andrews
And that Japanese chisel won't save me from mangling dovetails. What matters the most is the hand holding the tool.

00;27;17;25 - 00;27;49;13
Philip Portman
Yeah, yeah. You're right. Absolutely. It's the artist, right? Yeah. Yeah. Heard that about. But guitarists is too you know, some of the greatest guitarists, they said it didn't matter what they played on. You could hear them in that guitar. It didn't matter the settings, whatever. They had a way to make that sound the way they wanted to. Their voice basically still came through in that whatever the guitar was, didn't matter if there's a cheap or expensive guitar with the setup was, I'm sure there's good guitar enthusiasts out there that are saying, no, no, you're wrong.

00;27;49;13 - 00;28;03;11
Philip Portman
You know, you got to have this type of wood, this type of fretboard and all that. But the amazing guitarists out there, the ones that we know, their signature sound, I've heard that they could pick up anything and you could still tell it was them.

00;28;03;14 - 00;28;08;01
Craig Andrews
Wow. Yeah. Hey, I want to make sure we cover,

00;28;08;01 - 00;28;09;00
Craig Andrews
one thing.

00;28;09;00 - 00;28;15;21
Craig Andrews
Let's talk about your book, your Three Keys to Success. So for those that are listening,

00;28;15;21 - 00;28;19;27
Craig Andrews
he's holding up three keys to success. What's what's that about? What's your book about?

00;28;19;29 - 00;28;35;06
Philip Portman
Yeah. So I've been fascinated with the idea of success. Yeah. Your story is about incredibly intelligent, high IQ individuals not achieving their version of success or what society deems a success,

00;28;35;06 - 00;28;51;18
Philip Portman
versus other people who consistently find success. But there's nothing really different about them. Also, when you look at the internet in this day and age, you get what the internet tells you is success.

00;28;51;20 - 00;29;21;26
Philip Portman
And I was always thinking, well, maybe I have a different definition of success, but my version of success is not a fancy car for looking flashier than the neighbor next to me. What is success? And so I started a podcast interviewing people and would hear what their version of success was people that were entrepreneurs, authors, hedge fund managers, heads of nonprofits, stone women actresses, actors.

00;29;21;28 - 00;29;48;07
Philip Portman
And I asked them, what is success? Well, how do you define it? And then what steps did you take in your life to achieve your version of success? And there were some similarities that I'd pull out time and time again. And so I distilled it into my three keys to success. And these are things that I've taken from my own life, that in my own experiences, I talk about my own story growing up as,

00;29;48;07 - 00;29;57;15
Philip Portman
raised by a single mother, one of seven children to becoming a multi-millionaire, and I talk about my strategies for how I achieve that throughout my life.

00;29;57;22 - 00;30;03;00
Philip Portman
But I also talk about some of the strategies that I've taken from guests and people that I've,

00;30;03;00 - 00;30;15;22
Philip Portman
spoken to throughout my life, and we distill that into it. Now, the thing I'll tell you about this book is this is not a book that you can just read and then throw on a shelf and go, oh, that was a great book.

00;30;15;25 - 00;30;39;29
Philip Portman
There is work material in here, and it is difficult. But if you go through this work inside this book and work through it, it will change your life. If you're somebody who keeps kind of hitting this ceiling, just keep struggling. Feel like you're on a treadmill. If you go through the exercises in this book, it will change your life.

00;30;40;01 - 00;30;47;18
Philip Portman
So the three keys to success. You can pick it up on my website Phil portman.com and just click the link and purchase right from there.

00;30;47;21 - 00;30;50;03
Craig Andrews
So high level. What are the three keys.

00;30;50;05 - 00;31;16;04
Philip Portman
Yeah. So three keys. The first one is written goals. Having clearly written goals. Most successful people I talked to have written down these goals. And here's some data points on it. If it's written you're 33% more likely to achieve it just by writing it down. If it's written and shared with somebody, you're 76% more likely to achieve the goal.

00;31;16;07 - 00;31;38;16
Philip Portman
And then if it's written shared and you can visualize yourself achieving it, so you can visualize the steps that you're taking to achieve your goals. You can actually see yourself achieving it. You are 140% more likely to achieve that goal. So the first one is having clearly written goals, and we go through an exercise on how to help you figure out what your goals should be in life.

00;31;38;18 - 00;32;06;09
Philip Portman
I talk about some different buckets. So you're not just focusing on financial or career goals, but you're also focused on family goals, artistic goals, lifestyle goals. So you're living a well-balanced life. So the first one is having clearly written goals. The second one is establishing healthy habits while killing bad habits. And I'll tell you right off the bat, one of the worst habits is this thing right here.

00;32;06;09 - 00;32;07;18
Philip Portman
My cell phone.

00;32;07;18 - 00;32;12;08
Philip Portman
This thing's like Pavlov's dog, right? Every time the bell rings, you start salivating.

00;32;12;11 - 00;32;12;24
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;32;12;29 - 00;32;34;15
Philip Portman
So many people ended up just wasting their time on this box. If you're to go back in time and tell your ancestors, I'm going to give you this magic glass box you're going to have in your pocket, and you will have access to all of the world's information. It can answer any question immediately for you. Solve any problem that you're thinking about.

00;32;34;15 - 00;32;50;18
Philip Portman
Answer anything. What would you do with it? And they'd say, oh my God, that's how a magic. I'd be able to achieve anything, right? And it can be a great tool, but you have to offset all of the addiction, addictive natures that it can do.

00;32;50;21 - 00;32;53;23
Craig Andrews
And, and you know, there was a book called,

00;32;53;23 - 00;33;07;06
Craig Andrews
Oh, what was it? I forgot the name of it, but it talked about the addiction cycle that they built into it. And it's basically four processes. You have to have it. You have to have a prompt. You have to have a,

00;33;07;06 - 00;33;10;26
Craig Andrews
a variable reward. You have to have a wow.

00;33;10;26 - 00;33;12;24
Craig Andrews
It's been a while since I read that,

00;33;12;24 - 00;33;13;25
Craig Andrews
you had to have,

00;33;13;25 - 00;33;28;09
Craig Andrews
you had to have investment and you had to have action. So those are the four things you have prompt. You have action, you have investment in the future. And you have a variable reward. And those four things,

00;33;28;09 - 00;33;39;19
Craig Andrews
if you look at all these apps, whether it's Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or whatever, they all engineer that in there to make their app addictive.

00;33;39;22 - 00;34;06;09
Philip Portman
Yeah. And so you're fighting with this. Your nervous system is, is being hacked to just be staring at this screen every time you get a notification. I've had notifications turned off on my phone for over two years. Every notification, if you call me right now, it will not ring. Do not make me your emergency contact. But on the flip side, if you talk to successful people, they develop really great habits.

00;34;06;09 - 00;34;16;28
Philip Portman
One of them I have on my podcast, I can say, what book are you reading right now? And usually they can pull it out from a shelf and say, hey, this is the book I'm reading, right?

00;34;16;28 - 00;34;21;22
Philip Portman
42% of college graduates never read a book again.

00;34;21;24 - 00;34;23;01
Craig Andrews
Oh wow. Oh my.

00;34;23;04 - 00;34;47;11
Philip Portman
Is the top CEOs in the US read roughly one book a week 52. So there's a direct correlation between some of these healthy habits like reading and exercising. And we talk a little bit about that in the book. So the second one is killing the bad habits and building healthy habits. And then the third one I call arrogant confidence.

00;34;47;13 - 00;35;10;20
Philip Portman
And what arrogant confidence is, is this level of confidence that's just above your level of confidence. And I see it time and time again from successful people. They almost put on this hat of confidence that to an outside person and even themselves, seems a bit arrogant, like I can't oh, it's do that. I couldn't just do that with myself.

00;35;10;20 - 00;35;29;20
Philip Portman
No, but you put on this hat of arrogant confidence and you can do it. And for me it was, you know, who am I to franchise a company? I don't even go to college. Right, McDonald's? Who do I think I am? Right? And I went out there and franchise this company. Who am I to own a business overseas in India?

00;35;29;21 - 00;35;58;21
Philip Portman
Like who am I to do that? Right? And yet I went through and did it and you talk to these people in these massive buildings, they they build these companies that they've done the things that they've achieved in their life. And every one of them will say, yeah, I had that moment of self-doubt, but I just put on this hat of confidence and move forward and just did it and did that big risk thing, took that big leap of faith, jumped, and then the net presented itself, that sort of thing.

00;35;58;21 - 00;36;03;12
Philip Portman
And we talked about that in the book as well. So those are the three keys to success. And

00;36;03;12 - 00;36;05;10
Philip Portman
high level overview.

00;36;05;12 - 00;36;05;19
Craig Andrews
No,

00;36;05;19 - 00;36;18;23
Craig Andrews
I, I get it. I mean, that makes so much I like the simplicity of it because it's easy, you know, I look a lot of frameworks and they get overwhelming. And I love the simplicity of that. That framework. I

00;36;18;23 - 00;36;31;24
Craig Andrews
and on that, that arrogant confidence, the most exciting period of my life was the first six months after I left the hospital and had to learn how to walk again.

00;36;31;26 - 00;36;59;18
Craig Andrews
And New Year's Morning 2022. I'm having breakfast with my wife. I'm sitting in a wheelchair, and if I was sitting at that point in my recovery, if I was sitting, I didn't have oxygen, and if I was standing, I had to have extra oxygen. And I looked at my wife that morning, New Year's morning, 2022. And I said, two weeks from today I'm going to Camp Gladiator, which is a outdoor fitness thing.

00;36;59;21 - 00;37;19;11
Craig Andrews
And. But I can attest to what you're saying, because what was going on at that period in my life, I would set some crazy goal that I thought would take, you know, like a month to achieve. I'd hit it in a week. Yeah. And I was like, crap, now I need another goal. And so I'd say another goal.

00;37;19;11 - 00;37;31;09
Craig Andrews
That thought would take another month to achieve. And I had it in a week. And so that, you know, just doing the crazy thing that normal, you know, sane, rational people would never do absolute good.

00;37;31;16 - 00;37;52;05
Philip Portman
The goal thing is really interesting. I had this whiteboard and I would work out and I'd write my workout goals on it. And when I started my entrepreneurship journey, I started writing business goals on it. Things that I wanted to achieve in business and finance. Right on it. And I started writing these things out and I would put a date on that.

00;37;52;05 - 00;38;12;18
Philip Portman
So I put, you know, what I was trying to achieve and the date on it. And consistently I kept hitting these and I was just I was blown away by it. So I started really writing these stretch goals out on that, and I kept hitting them and kept hitting them. I was tell my wife about this. She's, you know, you know, like, oh, okay, we'll see if this works out.

00;38;12;20 - 00;38;30;20
Philip Portman
So I said, you know, try right now goals. My wife's wife's an author. So she wrote out a goal and she said on this day, this year, this is what I want to hear, blah, blah, blah, you know, and stuff. Day one of the new year, she hit this goal and she said, I don't know what it was.

00;38;30;20 - 00;38;39;21
Philip Portman
I don't even know how it happened. But day one, she hits this goal and she's forever since been a believer in writing down your goals. And,

00;38;39;21 - 00;38;49;11
Philip Portman
it's it's amazing. But I hear it time and time from people. They'll say, I set a goal. I thought it was a crazy goal, but I wrote it down. I started talking about it with other people.

00;38;49;14 - 00;38;59;21
Philip Portman
We started really planning around that goal, and somehow we hit it every single time. So wow, try it out if you haven't done it. It sounds crazy, but somehow it works.

00;38;59;24 - 00;39;07;12
Craig Andrews
Yeah, well, so this has been great. So your book is The Three Keys to Success. I'm assuming you can get that on Amazon.

00;39;07;14 - 00;39;09;18
Philip Portman
Yeah, absolutely. Anywhere. Amazon.

00;39;09;18 - 00;39;13;14
Philip Portman
Barnes and Noble, any, any of the stores out there, it's available on,

00;39;13;14 - 00;39;16;23
Philip Portman
any of the retailers where you buy books. You can buy it from.

00;39;16;25 - 00;39;30;29
Craig Andrews
And your podcast is Success is in Supply cast about where you interview successful people and figure out what helped them get successful. And lastly, how can people and your company as tech strip? How can people reach you?

00;39;31;01 - 00;39;35;09
Philip Portman
Yeah, so if they go on to fill appointment.com, you can follow me. Any of

00;39;35;09 - 00;39;39;06
Philip Portman
the social media websites. Phil Portman you can look me up,

00;39;39;06 - 00;39;53;02
Philip Portman
for your guests listening. If you do sign up through Tech Strap, just let Customer Service know that you listen to this podcast. And not only will you get a free trial, not only will you get one on one consultation with somebody who will help you set up,

00;39;53;02 - 00;39;59;29
Philip Portman
the best campaign you've ever used, we will give you 3000 free credits just for listening to this.

00;40;00;01 - 00;40;13;19
Philip Portman
So you can take 3000 of your leads or contacts, run through tax strip and try us out free of charge. We'll pay for your campaign registration fee through ten DLC and everything else for you to try it out. Just,

00;40;13;19 - 00;40;16;28
Philip Portman
to check out how well texture does for you. And if you want to buy the book,

00;40;16;28 - 00;40;19;25
Philip Portman
it's available on Phil portman.com as well.

00;40;19;27 - 00;40;23;07
Craig Andrews
Phil, this has been awesome. Thank you for coming on Leaders and Legacies.

00;40;23;09 - 00;40;26;08
Philip Portman
Yeah. Thank you for having me, Craig.

00;40;26;08 - 00;40;53;02
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Ally's for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;40;53;02 - 00;40;54;27
Craig Andrews
episode on social media.

00;40;54;29 - 00;41;18;11
Craig Andrews
Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend, or posted on the socials. If you know someone who would be a great guest. Tag them on social media and let them know about the show, including the hashtag leaders and legacies. I love seeing your posts and suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content to make sure you don't miss anything.

00;41;18;13 - 00;41;26;18
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up. Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me.

00;41;26;18 - 00;43;28;23
Craig Andrews
It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Ally's for me.com. Or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.