Hidden Gems: Meet Fredrick Douglas Bussey of IconStatus

Today we’d like to introduce you to Fredrick Douglas Bussey.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My journey as an entrepreneur was an accidental one.

After attending college in Alabama I was pursuing a career in music.

At the time, I was part of a R&B group that was trying to land a record deal.

All of the traveling and late nights in the studio became a challenge for holding down a 9 – 5.

So I started thinking about starting my own business as a way of freeing up more time.

I wasn’t even really thinking of making a lot of money, just more flexibility with my time.

After meeting a guy who was selling commercial cleaning franchises, I decided to meet with him.

We sat down in a Subway shop a few weeks later and I bought my first business.

I was 26 years old.

That was my baptism into the world of entrepreneurship.

I ran that business for 7 years.

The last few were done remotely after I’d moved to Atlanta – post breakup of the group – where I was now a songwriter and producer.

Things hit rock-bottom for me though.

By 2009, the music industry was a wasteland.

This was before streaming, so because of Napster there were few artists to produce for, and way too much competition from songwriters.

Meanwhile my commercial cleaning business in Alabama had fizzled out. It was a pretty dark period for me then.

Ultimately I made a the decision to shift from the creative side of the industry to the business side, becoming an artist manager and a marketing director at a label for several years.

Over the next few years I would go from being a junior publicist to being a partner at a successful PR agency for several years before launching out on my own again.

That agency ran for several years, having moderate success, but nowhere near what I’d hoped.

it was at that time that I was asked by several young ladies to coach them on their businesses.

I didn’t even know that coaching was a thing, but I fell in love with helping people to connect the dots, so they can stop banging their heads against invisible ceilings, sharing with them the proven frameworks I’d learned working in multiple ventures over the years.

Since 2018 I’ve been built IconStatus into a profitable advisory firm, specializing in working with a select clientele of owners who want to multiply their profits – not just incrementally grow.

Since then we’ve worked with hundreds of businesses and have been featured on Fox and in Forbes Magazine.

When people ask what we do I like to share this analogy:

If you wanted to fly across country how would you do it? Most people would take a passenger flight.

Those flights are usually between 5 – 7 hours, moving at around 600 MPH.

Well what if you could take a military fighter jet with diplomatic clearance, so the only plane in the sky was yours?

That same flight would take half the time, gate to gate!

That’s what we do. We get people to their desired outcomes with military precision.

No fluff.

No tricks.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth??? Ha!!!

Not even close! I still remember when everything fell apart.

When my commercial cleaning business collapsed I was working as a junior publicist for one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Things disintegrated overnight.

I got fired from my job, lost my business, & got my car repossessed all in the space of a week!

By the next Tuesday I was stuck living in my aunt’s basement feeling like a failure.

I remember not being able to get out of bed for several days because I had no clue what I was going to do.

That’s the thing about being an entrepreneur that no one talks about:

the incredible challenges and lowest of lows that you endure on a regular basis.

Despite all the highlight reels you see people share on social media, you will become far. more familiar with failure than success. It takes a different type of person to endure the brutal nature of success.

Gary Keller, founder of Keller/Williams Realty said something that always stuck with me, because it’s so true:

“Sometimes you will be failing so slowly it feels like your succeeding, and other times you will be succeeding so slowly it feels like you’re failing.”

I’ve been evicted multiple times.

Hadj multiple business fail.

I’ve signed 6-figure clients, and had years when it seemed we wouldn’t make $6.

To be successful requires a deep, abiding sense of self and your purpose.

Honestly, most of the time you will battle with self-belief and self-worth.

But, if you can win that battle, you can win the war.

Most people fail to succeed – not because they’re not good enough – but because they simply quit before it happens.

I’m blessed to have an amazingly supportive wife.

I’m also delusional enough to believe this is the only path for me.

I’m completely unemployable. Lol!

Winning is the only option!

As you know, we’re big fans of IconStatus. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Here’s how I’d describe us:

When get in your car for a trip to a place you’ve never been, you’d likely use a GPS of some sort to guide you there.

You put in the destination and the GPS gives you turn by turn instructions.

Now you could use a map, but that’s obviously not ideal,

because even though your destination is there, it doesn’t help you make the most accurate decisions in real time.

For most business owners the issue isn’t knowing how to drive a car, it’s in knowing exactly which turn to make when, and why.

For some, they’d rather just trust their own instincts and battle the road on their own.

We specialize in working with business owners who are committed to getting further faster and without making the common mistakes that 99% of them make. It’s not information – it’s navigation.

Our best clients are facing challenges with hiring and retaining the best employees,

understanding how to keep more money in the bank every month (instead of starting from scratch way too often),

and would love to be able to make more money while being obligated to work fewer hours each week.

For those who have family as their number one priority, and want to create generational wealth either through the business or an exit, we’ve seen amazing results.

It’s not magic.

As Einstein says: There is genius in simplicity.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Obviously AI is the giant gorilla in the room in everyone’s minds right now.

What we’ve found in working with our clients is that the more things change, the more the fundamentals matter. People think that AI is a magic wand.

What they never ask themselves is “Where should I point it?”

The point isn’t to do more stuff!

The point is to do more of the right stuff optimally!

A recent MIT study found that most companies aren’t seeing the benefits of AI right now.

The reason for that isn’t that it’s not a powerful tool,

But because, as with all tools, people have to have the right skillsets and contexts to make the tool optimal.

Right now, AI is the hammer that sees a nail everywhere it goes.

One other thing that many aren’t really talking about is the shift in how humans connect with one another.

This matters in a world where automation is the buzzword for every task at hand.

What most companies are failing at is building an experience that benefits THEIR clients vs. one that is built to maximize profits.

History teaches us that the great businesses of the past and present always solve for that problem first.

The companies who dominate the future will be those who understand how to do that going forward.

Pricing:

• We charge more than most people have ever paid for business guidance. Because we only work with those who want the most extraordinary of results.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @fredrick.bussey
• Facebook: 7-Figure Circle Million-Dollar Mastermind: https://www.facebook.com/groups/7FigureCircle/?ref=share_group_link
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredrick-bussey-iconstatus/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/FredrickBussey
• Youtube: https://bit.ly/ICONSTATUS_YT
• Other: TikTok: @FredrickDouglasBussey

Image Credits
Miguel Serrant. Joe Jordan.