Mitch Russo: Recent Episodes
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Elevate your life by mastering the art of asking better questions. This key skill can unlock potential, overcome challenges, and lead to greater fulfillment. In this episode, Elliott Connie, the acclaimed author of Change Your Questions, Change Your Future and creator of the Aha! Moments podcast, opens up about his harrowing journey from a tumultuous childhood to becoming a beacon of hope for others. Elliott shares his deeply personal story with Mitch Russo, recounting how he grew up in a volatile environment with an abusive father. His emphasis on authenticity and the power of questioning has propelled him to international recognition. Join them as they explore resilience, authenticity, and the transformative power of personal stories.
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Listen to the podcast hereElevate Your Life Journey: The Transformative Power Of Better Questions With Elliott ConnieIntroductionWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in, and extract wisdom you could use to grow your business with your first thousand clients. By the way, if you’re reading this and you are a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you. I have a software platform called ClientFol.io. It’s helped hundreds of coaches save time on admin, and get better results for their clients while generating powerful client testimonials that work for them.
By the way, if you don’t use accountability and goal tracking in your work as a coach, you’re missing out because that’s where the juice is. Now, no other platform that I’ve ever tried has these features, which is why I decided to spend four years and create it. You could try it for a dollar. Go to GetClientfolio.com and give it a spin.
Now, on to my amazing guest and his incredible journey. As with all of us, he came from a destructive background and an abusive father, leading to suicidal thoughts and depression. He decided to use that to elevate himself and work hard for years to find his way out, to use that experience to change the lives of others through his incredible work.
Our guest calls himself a hope doctor, runs a powerful global community of healers and is the creator of Aha! Moments is a daily podcast focusing readers on your strength in the state of hope and hope and the joy that comes into their lives. He’s also written a bestselling book called Change Your Questions, Change Your Future. I want to introduce you to Mr. Elliott Connie. Elliott, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
My pleasure, Elliott. What a story. We all start out the way we start out, but like most of us, if we’re in the right place and we have the right mindset, we could use how we start out as a motivation to grow into something much better. That’s clearly what you did. Why don’t you get into some of the details of a little bit of what I covered in the intro?
I was born in Chicago, and when I was young, my family moved to Boston. I consider Boston my hometown and Chicago is where my family headquarters is. My dad was an angry man. When you’re young, you assume whatever is going on in your home is going on in everyone else’s home. I didn’t know any different until I got moved to Boston and my best friend lived across the street from me, a guy named Kyle. I would hang out at Kyle’s house and I would watch the way his parents talked to him and I would watch the way his parents treated him.
I would watch the way his parents treated each other. You don’t realize you have a problem until you become aware of other scenarios where that problem does not exist and then end up desirous of that new scenario. I started feeling like I wanted a life with no anger, without being yelled at, without threat of violence. I wanted a life where I felt loved and accepted. I wanted that life, but I didn’t have it. I lived with so much anxiety and fear and abuse and pain and had no earthly idea that that was unusual.
My inability to create that, because when you’re twelve years old, you cannot create it for yourself, caused me to struggle with my mental health. I remember when I was nineteen, I decided to take my life. I looked forward to college when I was in middle school, and I don’t come from a background of tons of educated people. I heard a rumor, what felt like a rumor at the time, that if you go to college, you can live in something called a dorm room. I had never heard that before. Someone said colleges have these things called dorm rooms. I was like, “What’s a dorm room?”
They said, “A dorm room is a room where college students live and there are no parents. It’s a big old building full of college-age kids.” I was like, “Sign me up. I don’t want to go there.” All I heard was like a place without my father present. That was the light host. That was the thing I was trying to get to all through high school, like getting myself to college. I got myself to college. I played baseball and a lot of schools wanted me to go there and play baseball. Baseball was my respite, but sports, in general, were the way I kept myself out of my house.
The more practices I could go to, the less I was in my home, and I ended up getting pretty good at certain sports, baseball specifically. I was so excited because I was 17 years old and realized that I was moving out. I got to be safe now. My father, when I was going off to school, and I knew I was about to date myself, but he gave me a beeper. Those of you not born in the 1900s probably don’t remember this device. It used to be a tiny device, and you could call a number and then type in numbers that would show up on this beeper. That beeper became my father’s way of tormenting me now that I live outside of the home.
There were times he would beep me incessantly throughout the day and I would try not to respond. I will never forget one day I was out on campus doing college things and my dad paged me 10 million times and I ignored them. I don’t want to call them back. I lived about two and a half hours’ drive from my father, and I was walking back to my dorm room, and a bunch of my friends came running up to me like, “Man, what’d you do?” I was like, “I don’t know. What are you guys talking about?”
My father had driven to the campus and was furiously looking for me and all my friends are like, “Your dad’s here and he’s pissed.” I hadn’t done anything. I was trying to be on my own and live a life. The difficult thing about that is when I realized my father had found a way to torment me outside of my home, then I no longer had a light post to look forward to. I’ve been looking forward to college to move out of the house for so long.
That was the time I was going to be peaceful and live a life without violence. Now, he has found a way to show me that that’s not true. I sunk into a very deep depression. For the next couple of years, all I could think about was taking my life. It wasn’t that I was like so depressed I wanted to die. I could see other people had different lives.
As with some of my friends in college, their families would mail them money and food and tell them how much they loved them and how proud they were of them. My life wasn’t like that. It was like if this was life, then I don’t want one. If this is what I got dealt versus what everybody else got dealt, I’d prefer to give it back. At nineteen, a super profound thing happened that changed my life and changed the direction of my life forever.
That’s quite a beginning. I’m going to try and unpack some of this because, like I said at the beginning, I think even before we jumped on together, before we started the recorder, basically, we all start out with trauma. All of us have trauma in our lives, which is how you react to trauma that defines who we are.
Parental ImpactLet’s say that there are some parents here reading this show and they might’ve felt a little pang of guilt. Hearing your story, maybe they felt as if they were that way, maybe quite not to the extent your dad was, but maybe they had unfortunately pushed their own kids a little too hard only for their own good. Of course, that’s what parents always say. It’s for your own good. What can they do now?
Now that you have made it to the other side of this, think about all the people who don’t. Think about all the people who do take their lives or all the people who are so deeply sensitive that the pain of that life you described drives them to narcotics, as it did for me. What would we say to those parents right now?
I would say apologize. Now your children are grown and they’re on the other side of it, I would say validate their experience. The most challenging thing that people have is like the enemy of healing. I want all of you guys to heal this and understand this. The enemy of healing is defensiveness. If I were to say like, let’s put myself in that situation, “Mom and Dad, when I was growing up, these things happened that hurt me. These things happen that traumatize me. These are the things that caused me to struggle.
The enemy of healing is defensiveness.
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These are the things that I ended up having to cope with, drugs and alcohol to deal with.” When the parents get defensive, “I was doing the best I could and you weren’t the easiest child to raise,” when they behave in that way, it makes healing nearly impossible, if not actually impossible. I’m not someone who uses the word impossible very often. What you need to do is apologize and fully validate your child’s experience. It will create healing in both parties and likely create healing in the relationship itself.
That’s plain wisdom. That’s so brilliant. The enemy of healing is defensiveness. Most of us adults have had adult relationships and maybe struggled with some of them. I think what you’ve provided is one of the keys to a happier and more joyful life, which is to drop the defensiveness and truly see if you can empathize and see from another person’s point of view what they experienced dealing with it. That’s great. Elliott, the other thing I wanted to ask you about is in the opposite situation where kids are raised in a community. By the way, where in Boston were you?
Specifically, I was in the city right near Roxbury and Dorchester, but then I ended up going to high school in a place called Franklin. My mother wanted me to get a much better education. For those of you not familiar with that part of the world, if you drew a line from Boston to Providence, Franklin is the midpoint of that line.
Asking Better Questions: Apologize and fully validate your child’s experience. This will foster healing for both of you and strengthen your relationship.I grew up in New York but moved to Boston in my early twenties and basically lived there for most of my adult life. The reason I ask is because I had a feeling listening to the story. I could tell you’re a Bostonian. It’s great. I love the tone of how you speak. Next thing I know, both of us are going to be rooting for the Red Sox any second. I know it.
The bottom line is the truth is that no matter where you were raised, what happens inside of us is the key. If you’re a parent, and the reason I keep saying that is because I don’t think I get a lot of young people reading the show. I’m assuming that most of my readers are parents. If you’re a parent and you feel as if your kids are in trouble, what Elliott shared with us is a great way to help bridge the gap and open up that communication very rapidly in some cases. It may take a while if you’ve been defensive for a long time, but if you could find a way to make that apology and be open, you may be able to salvage that relationship.
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Elliott, now we get to the point where you pretty much changed the direction of your life. I want to finish the story because now I’m curious after your father found you. After searching for you all over the college campus, what happened next?
The violence happened, actually. It was one of the worst days of my life, to be honest with you. He took me to my mother’s house, which again was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive. While he was driving, this is something like looking back, when your father is like the authority figure over your life, there’s this thing that I now know as learned helplessness.
Even though at the time I was seventeen years old and perfectly capable of physically defending myself against an attacker, you’re conditioned to take it when it comes from your parents. As we were driving the two and a half hours, my dad was driving with one hand and punching me and yelling at me with the other hand. As you can probably imagine, I got very good at hiding what my circumstances were like through high school.
You cannot go to school every day in absolute tears. You get very good at putting on a mask. I learned to trust that mask. I learned that I could put on a mask and keep going. One of the lowest moments of my life is when I remember my father dropping me off at my mother’s house. My mother and father were separated at the time.
I went into my mom’s house. She took one look at me and burst into tears. Now, I don’t know what she saw. I wasn’t covered in blood or bruises. I don’t know what it was, but my mother saw something, burst into tears, and wrapped her arms around me. It was a profound moment for me. Ultimately, a couple of years later, another profound moment happened that completely changed my whole life. I haven’t been the same since.
Your mother didn’t see something unless she felt something. That’s energy-based. She walked in, and your energy was a certain, let’s call it a frequency, or there was a lack of a better term. She immediately picked up on that and knew exactly what was going on. That’s what mothers do. That’s what a mother’s abilities are. Now, you went through this process and I want to keep moving on, but I’m so curious. Did you ever make peace with your dad?
No. I’m going to say two quick things. I had decided to take my life and had peace about it. One of the scariest things when someone decides to take their life is you will see a mood escalation. They get relieved because they’ve decided to end the problem. I was literally in that space and I remember laying in my dorm room knowing I wasn’t going to live very long, much longer after that. I was nineteen years old by this time, and I had this thought. There were times in my life when I knew and I was a person of faith, and I knew God was talking to me.
As I was lying in bed thinking about my death, I started thinking about my eulogy. I started thinking about my friends going up to the podium at some church and saying, “We didn’t know Elliott was this sad. We didn’t know Elliott was this depressed. We didn’t know Elliott was this broken.” All I could think was they would blame me for my own death. I found that unacceptable. I wanted them to blame my dad. I wanted them to say, “Elliott’s dad is a jerk.” For whatever reason, that was so unacceptable. I told myself, “You have to outlive this pain so that you can tell the truth. Everybody thinks all of these flaws are yours and yours alone when they’re his.”
I’m living with the symptoms of his problem and my life changed literally in an instant because the decision to outlive the pain was the decision to live. That was my decision. Around that time, by this time, I had transferred to a school in Texas, much longer story, but my mother had to get away from my father too. He wasn’t abusive to his children. We had a family member in Texas. I transferred schools to Texas, so my mother could live close to this family member.
My father came to visit and when I got to Texas, it was the longest stretch of my life without any violence in the family. My dad came here and he took me and my two brothers to see a movie. We didn’t like the movie. Walking out of the movie theater, my dad said, “What do you think?” My older brother said, “I’ll never get those two hours back because it was a bad movie.” My father, being my father, took that personally and he said, “I came all the way here.” A huge fight broke out in the parking lot of that movie theater.
I later told my dad, “Man, I cannot have any violence in my life. It would literally kill me. You cannot be in my life unless you stop yelling at me, stop hitting me, stop cursing at me, and stop calling me names. If you can follow those four rules, I’ll be able to deal with anything else but those four rules have to be followed. He said, “F you.” I said, “That tells me you cannot follow the rules.”
I didn’t speak to him for about twenty years. My younger brother is married with two kids and lives not too far from me. My father wanted to be close to his grandchildren. My father has moved to Texas. I saw him for the first time in over twenty years at a family event. My younger brother has kids playing sports and I went to the game and there was my dad.
My father wanted to pretend like everything was fine. He came up to me to hug me and not make a scene in front of my niece and nephew, I did not respond the way I wanted to, but I hugged them back and walked away. I have a very strong feeling, like I said earlier, that defensiveness is the enemy of progress. It’s the enemy of healing. I know from a conversation with my brother that my father thinks I’ve overreacted and Elliott is difficult and all these things, but I’m very secure in who I am and the outcome has been fully worth it to me.
This is a longer intro than we normally do with any guest that we bring on the show, but I think it was important. First of all, I like the way you speak. I think you’re very articulate. You can share in a three-dimensional way what’s happening inside of you that resonates with me. More importantly, I still sincerely believe that there are a lot of people who will identify with your story in one way or another. My readers know that I basically became addicted to heroin at the age of sixteen.
It was an act of survival, like the feeling of suicide is an elevation. Basically, suicide is saving yourself. It’s salvation in a sense. It’s an elevation, as you had discussed. To me, that’s what drugs were. There was that moment when God stepped into my life and stopped me from using heroin as well.
Building A MovementThat’s a longer story. I don’t want to bore readers who’ve been through it already, but the bottom line is that these transformations that somehow originated with a higher power called what you like turned out to be the most transformational for all of us and certainly for you and me as well. Let’s get into the real meat of this.
Even though that was very meaty, many people read this show because it’s a business show and we talk about sales and growth and elevation. What I want to do is you become a therapist, which is amazing. You helped a lot of people. That’s not the interesting part to me, but the interesting part is that you built a global community. We’ve all written books, I have four published books, but the bottom line is that you’ve taken that material and turned it into a movement. That’s what I want to know more about. Start with the evolution of that movement, and let’s go forward with it.
I’m glad that I do lots of podcasts and interviews, and I’ve been on large platforms and all kinds of things. I like the conversation we’re having so far because I don’t think you can separate the business initiatives from the personal journey. Your story is your brand and you have to authentically lean into your story. Sometimes it’s hard. I’m going to guess Mitch. We’ve never actually talked about it, but I’m going to guess. It wasn’t always easy for you to openly say something like, “When I was sixteen, I used heroin.”
Your story is your brand, and you have to authentically lean into your story.
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In the same way that it hasn’t always been openly easy for me to say, I spent much the younger part of my life depressed and struggling with suicidality and being beaten by my father. They’re not things that come easily to roll off the tongue. Your story is your brand, and your story or your trauma will usually lead you to your purpose. When I realized that I had made the choice to live, at the time, I was a Marine Biology major, and the only reason I chose a major was because in order to be in college, you have to pick a major, and I picked Marine Biology because I loved the ocean.
It was literally that straightforward and simple for me. If you like the ocean, got to pick a major. Now, I had a much higher purpose, and I wanted to help people on the same journey. For me, I learned that when I had a purpose, my pain didn’t hurt. I learned that when I was in service, it didn’t hurt. Now, being in service gave my journey context. I went to graduate school obsessed with like, I want to learn how to help people heal. I was sad that I wasn’t learning that in graduate school.
Some of you who don’t have a master’s degree in a helping profession like counseling or family therapy or whatever might be surprised to know that we are not taught how to create healing in graduate school. We’re taught how to diagnose and assess. I wanted something more than that. When I graduated, I immediately was like, I want to do this very specific type of therapy that is known as a solution to a brief therapy. It’s about galvanizing people’s strengths and turning their hope into the thing that creates change in their lives.
I wanted to teach every psychotherapist that I could how to do that. I wasn’t thinking about building a global brand, having a seven-figure business, or writing books. I was thinking, I don’t think people know how powerful hope is. It was a small, literally two and a half pages of my whole graduate experience. To me, it was the most important two and a half pages. I was like, I don’t think people know how powerful that is. I started thinking about like, “How do I get this message in front of as many psychotherapists and helping professionals as I could?”
That led me to do what, at the time, was insane. People don’t come from where I come from and write books. That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t. Now, my newest book is my sixth, but I have decided to do the first book. I mean, people don’t write books. That was the beginning is like, I’m writing this book because I wanted to get this message out into the world. I wanted people to know that hope is an incredibly powerful thing. When you put words to it, it creates change. In fact, it can not create change.
Change Your Questions, Change Your Future: Overcome Challenges and Create a New Vision for Your Life Using the Principles of Solution Focused Brief TherapyThose of you reading, this is a business podcast, so lots of people are probably hoping that they 10x their business or scale their business bigger or reach a thousand clients, as you say. If you start asking yourself questions, like if you acknowledge, I hope to reach 1,000 clients with my product or service. You start thinking, what would I notice that would let myself know that that hope was becoming true? You literally train your brain to start looking for the signs that it’s happening and you can not change. It’s impossible.
That was the beginning of me growing that global message because the books took me global. My very first speaking engagement was in Bath, UK. My first major speaking engagement, I should say was in Bath, UK. Someone had read my book and said, “We want you to come here and do the keynote.” I had never done that before, but because that was in line with spreading my message, I agreed to do it.
That was when I learned I was pretty good on the stage and the people who hired me said, “You are good at this and people have been booking me ever since to be on stages.” My goal was never to be what I ultimately became. My goal was to reach as many people as possible. The secondary consequence of that was having a global brand in a seven-figure business.
That’s always the way it works. I’ve never seen anybody, even in my own life. I want to tell you one quick story. By the way, readers, the book that Elliott was describing was called Change Your Questions, Change Your Future. He gave you an example of how one question can change your future when he talked about hope. You also mentioned that I was probably afraid to tell people about my experience. Do I keep that a secret from the age of 16 to the age of 58? The reason was that I was terrified that Tony Robbins was going to find out.
Tony and myself went into a business partnership with one other person, Chet Holmes. Chet knew because he was my very dear friend, and I used to say to Chet, “Don’t ever tell Tony about my past.” He said, “Okay.” One day, we were sitting around and Tony, myself, Chet, and one other person were talking and he related an experience and I felt like he knew me well enough now to know who I was. I said that to him and I described what happened in more detail. It shocked me that he almost broke down and cried and said, “You should have told me before it would have changed everything.”
I said, “You mean you would have fired me?” He said, “No, it would have made me see your true humanity and what you’ve overcome to be who you are today.” The reason I’m bringing this up is because I want people to understand that your pain, your trauma, and your ruin are your future if you use it properly the way you and I have done. For me, after I became clear of hard narcotics, I discovered my true purpose too, which ultimately, in the many ways that I’ve done it, is to help others.
Initially, when I started my company, I was only 28 years old and my first goal was I want to be rich. I want to start a company and sell for a bazillion dollars and all that. That changed. That changed eighteen months into having a business. Sure, I still wanted to grow the business and all, but my first real mission was how do I take this ragtag group of people who joined me on this mission on pure faith and a paycheck and elevate them? How can I make them better? How can I turn them into the leaders that I need to take this company way out to the next level?
Going GlobalThat was the beginning of my unraveling of the bright, bright future that I’ve been able to create and I’m sure it’s yours as well. Let’s get back to the story, so you went and spoke on stage, you went to Bath, England and I’ve been to Bath. It’s an interesting place, for sure. If you love Indian food, boy, England is the place to go. The Indian restaurants in the UK are amazing. What happened from there? How did people find out about you? Again, let’s go back to the purpose of the show. How do readers take what they’re doing, mobilize it, and get it out there so that others can follow?
I’ll take something from your story to make that point. What happened with me is I started taking stages and people kept booking me and I had to grow into my authenticity. I had to start dressing in a way that was comfortable for me instead of trying to wear the uniform of a professional in the mental health field. I had to deal with a lot of racism. I’m an African American man and I was in a lot of spaces where there weren’t a lot of people that looked like me and there were definitely responses to that.
I was very, very different in the way that I walked, talked, acted, and the way I thought about healing. I had to truly lean into my authenticity to be able to do that. Even in your story, Mitch, I love that you eventually get close enough to Tony Robbins that you feel comfortable telling him about your past and Tony Robbins, rather than firing you or dissolving the partnership, says, “I wish you had told me before.” The biggest point I want readers to get is if you want to get your message out into the world, you have to own that message.
If we lived in a reality where Tony heard your background and decided to sever ties with you, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have told him. That means Tony is illuminating. He’s not the right person for who you actually are. Once you start owning your authenticity, you’re going to repel the wrong people and you’re going to attract the right people. It just so happens in this story that Tony was congruent to the right people. I don’t want anybody to hear that and think, “Then he shouldn’t have told him if Tony fired him.” That’s not the point.
Asking Better Questions: Once you start owning your authenticity, you will repel the wrong people and attract the right ones.You have to own your story because it is your story and your story is your brand. If you guys want to reach more people, if readers want to reach more people, it starts with being your true authentic self. We now live in a world with infinite ways to share your message with other people. There’s podcasting, there’s social media content, there’s YouTube channels. Literally, you can publish books. Years ago, the only way to get your message out into the world was to write a book. In today’s world, that’s not true. You can get your message out into the world totally for free using your own social media platforms, but people resonate with authenticity.
People resonate with the real you. I first want you to fall in love with you and your journey and your story, regardless of how messy it is, how difficult it is, and how risky and scary it is because that’s the message you will then be taking to your audience. People aren’t buying whatever you’re selling, whether it’s a product or a service, whether you’re coaching, whatever it might be. On some level, they’re buying into you. It’s much easier to do when you are showing them who you truly are.
It’s an interesting point to make because even my daughter, for example, I married an alcoholic and that meant that for fourteen years I struggled with her alcoholism. It was for me, that the only true solution was to enroll myself in Al-Anon and learn how to help myself. Initially, before Al-Anon, I thought my entire purpose was to get her sober. I quickly learned in Al-Anon that my only mission is to take care of myself and my child.
Eventually, that broke the family to pieces because of alcoholism. As I know, alcoholism is done for many, many families. Here’s the part of the story I wanted to share. One day, my daughter came to me and said, “Why did I have to be born into this family? How come I have to feel this way because of what happened in my family?”
I said to her, and this is way before I even fully understood this concept like you so perfectly articulated, I said, “Honey, this is part of who you are. All of us have this in our past at one level or another, and our goal is not to suffer from it, but to use it to elevate ourselves from it to something far greater in resonance with your feelings about your past.”
She listened quietly, she didn’t say a word, and then she went on to do what she does today, which is leveraging a lot of what she went through as well. It’s such a powerful concept, Elliott, and you are showing readers how to make people connect much more powerfully with you by sharing who you are.
Turning Passion Into BusinessYou started to do this. What was the mechanism? I don’t mean the social media channel, but now people are reading your book, they invite you to keynotes, and you’re becoming slowly, I’m sure like all of us, a little bit more popular, a little more well-known. When the business thought came into your mind, “I could do something with this, maybe monetize it, maybe didn’t even use that word, cover my expenses was the word you started with.” How did you get to that point?
It’s interesting. That’s a good question. For me, it was always about getting my message out into the world and it graduated. For example, my first desire to help people heal was when I graduated and became a psychotherapist. I set up a therapy practice. I found that unbelievably unsatisfying because I could only help people who were to drive to my physical location. I was like, “I want to reach more people.” I wrote my first book. I’m like, “I want to reach more people.”
By that time, I was being invited on stages all over the world to give lectures, but that created a massive financial strain on me because in the field of psychotherapy, you don’t get paid $100,000 per speaking gig and also, when you’re getting started you don’t get paid that stuff. I had a pretty successful therapy practice in order for me to go do the lecture in Denmark or in London and or wherever I was going I had to shut down my therapy practice. Go to the place. Even if they would cover my travel, I’m still doing it at a financial loss significant financial loss in it.
It was stressful. I didn’t feel like I was reaching everybody because now, in order to learn my message about solution-focused brief therapy, you had to come to the event where I was speaking. I met a guy named Bill, who’s now a close friend of mine, and he was super important. He was talking to me. He told me a story about Wayne Gretzky. He said, “Wayne Gretzky had the best business advice.” I was like, “?” He told me something Wayne Gretzky said and he said, “Wayne Gretzky was not the biggest, not the fastest, not the most skilled hockey player, but he was the best.” Somebody asked him, “How did you become the best hockey player?”
He said, “I would watch the hockey games that the older people were playing growing up in Canada.” He said, “I noticed everyone was skating to the puck so I taught myself, instead of skating to the puck, I taught myself to skate to where the puck was going to be.” That put him ahead of everybody. Bill was telling me, “Elliott, the world is going online. You should figure out a way to put your content online.” This was probably around 2015 or so. I got my YouTube channel and I started putting a weekly video blog on my YouTube channel.
I started making courses and making them available online. I cannot stress this enough. When you are your authentic self and you do things that feel true to you, you will end up in the right place at the right time. It’s a very hard thing to explain, but I started sharing it because I wanted my content online because the world was becoming more digital. I wasn’t even thinking about monetizing it per se. I was aware that I’ve got to make money and all those things.
When you are your authentic self and simply do what feels true to you, you will end up in the right place at the right time.
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I started making these courses and was having very mediocre outcomes. We’d make a sale here and there and I would read a book by these great online marketers and get hopeful but never achieve the outcomes that these great online marketers achieved. The most remarkable thing. While all that was happening, the entire field started revolting against me, this black man doing these out-of-the-box things. It is one thing to be different and another thing to do differently. I was both. I was different and doing different. People were criticizing me badly.
I had been spending the previous four years making a bunch of online content with very mediocre success and then COVID happened. I’ll never forget when COVID happened. I got sad and depressed because all my clients canceled and all my speaking gigs canceled and I went from making a few hundred thousand dollars a year to zero because everything canceled. I remember sitting in my house and we’ve got these online courses on my website and we’d set up these things called funnels to drive traffic to those websites, to those offers. 2 or 3 days into the shutdown, I got an order and it was $97. Somebody bought a course for $97.
I thought, “ I got a much bigger problem than $97.” Later that same day, I got another order for $97. Later that same day, I got a third. This was the first time we’d ever made three sales in one day. It took that third sale to bonk me over the head to realize the whole world went online. I’ve got a bunch of content online. What if I take that $300 and instead of spending it on something, what if I spend it on Facebook ads and drive more traffic to my offers? Within a month, we had made something like $36,000 for my online offers.
The next month, we had our first six-figure month. We’ve been having six-figure months ever since. I share that story not to brag or show off or anything, but had I not been true to myself, I’m going to make content by sharing my message on the platforms available to me at no cost. I continue doing it for four years without massive success. Had I not done that, I wouldn’t have had the structure in place to take advantage of the whole world going online and turning my company overnight into a seven-figure company.
A lot of us were changed by COVID, and, unfortunately, some in a bad way. One of the things I wanted to talk about, which is something very important that I learned as a young man and it stuck with me after a mentor explained it to me. I want to share it with the audience as well. When you are rising in power, when your boat is floating upstream for the first time, you become the enemy and you’ll be receiving what they call haters.
When the haters come out, you’re on the right track. It’s very, very, very hard for people to hear this at the beginning of this stage. I was literally like you. I was attacked as my software company, which I started literally in a garage, selling a $99 product. Once we reached national status and were like you, we generated $250,000, $300,000 a month in sales for our little software product. That’s when the attacks began.
I went to a mentor who I’ll describe only as a lifesaver of a guy I leaned on a little too heavily sometimes, but he explained this whole theory to me and says the reason is now because you’re becoming a threat. The more successful you are, the more people you will threaten until you reach a threshold, and that threshold will come, but you must persist. You must break through that wall and get to the other side. I’m sure, without even asking, you’re now on that other side as I was after I broke through that wall.
First of all, I agree with everything you said. They don’t hate the mediocre. They hate the great ones. I think you’re 100% right. When you start having haters, that’s a sign to you that you are elevating but the other thing that I find interesting is the haters never go away. You continue to elevate to the point where you cannot hear them. You literally cannot hear them. They’re not relevant.
Haters never go away. You just continue to elevate to the point where you can't hear them.
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There’s another point I want to make here and it applies to you as well. Something that you’ve done well, whether you intended to or not. As you say, as the haters go away, what you then begin to do, Elliott, is you’re creating what I would call a culture. This culture is basically the tone, the emotional tone of your community. That tone dictates who gets heard and who doesn’t. In my world, when I build certification programs for my clients, one of the first things we do is figure out what the ideal culture should be. Now, here’s the downfall that most people go through when they think about culture.
They think it sort of morphs into being on a natural basis almost automatically and by itself. Most people who allow that to happen do not have success with it because they don’t control how it works. When you figure out that culture is a literal matter of the vision of the owner of the company, the mission of the CEO combined with a simple set of rules that lay on the core foundation of the objective of the company, then only the right people will be in that room. When someone who enters is not the right person, the culture will self-correct. That’s what culture is from a conceptual standpoint. You probably created that without even realizing it. Maybe you did, which is even better.
No, I did realize it because I come from a sports background. I’m aware of how culture can influence output. When I started building my team, the culture I created in my company was important to me. I want my employees to know that I value them as people. We talk about their hobbies. It’s funny, I had no idea you were going to ask about culture, but it’s something very important to me. When I started having that success in 2020, that financial success, I needed to hire more staff. we needed to keep up with what was happening.
Somebody told me about this woman named Helen, who I later learned is literally the most creative human. Her artistic abilities are unbelievable. When they introduced her to me, they showed me her Instagram page. She does something called a webcomic where she draws this comic by hand and puts images from the webcomic on Instagram. I sat down and interviewed Helen and I asked her about this webcomic. At the time, Helen was like 24, let’s say, and she told me she’s been doing this webcomic since she was like 10. She’s been doing this for a very long time.
It’s such a passionate project for her. When I decided to hire her, I said, “I’m going to hire you, but under one condition. You have to continue doing your webcomic because that’s such an important part of who you are. If I start looking at your Instagram and I start seeing you haven’t posted on your webcomic since June of 1983, I’m going to feel like this job is taking away an important part of you. I actually want this job to feed the important parts of you.” One of the things I’m proud of, this is her fourth year working for me. I think January will be year four.
She has continued to do her webcomic and is thriving in the webcomic world. She’s got websites and accolades, and people know her as successful. I’m very proud of that because I want the job to feed my employees. The thing I tell people when I coach businesses is I cannot stand when people treat their employees badly or they keep their employees in a stressful environment. You should never ever forget the fact I’m about to tell you. One day, I decided to turn my purpose into my business.
Now, it wasn’t an overt decision; it happened over the course of time. Essentially, without that difficult childhood and all those things, I wouldn’t have the business I have now. I decided to turn my purpose into this business. Every single employee who works for me wakes up every day to work on my dream. I feel very strongly that I have a duty to make sure that I turn their job into their dream job because they wake up every day and give my dream their best effort. I have to give my best effort to make this job their dream job. That’s the only way that business needs to work.
I’ll relate another story about some of the things that we did in the past that worked well. Encourage people to take a page out of Elliott’s book, and anything I say of value would be great to hear, too. The thing we used to do when we got to know people in the companies would say to them, “This isn’t going to be the rest of your life. What do you want to do?”
People would many times say, “I want to start my own company.” I said, “Great. What is it that you would want to do?” They would go through their story and tell us what, and what you could see the right ones when you ask that question, would light up and get super excited and share their deepest feelings about who they want to be and how they want to get there. One of the things I would say to them is I say, “Don’t ever forget that because you work here.
I’ll go one further and tell you that if you ever decide to leave and create this company that you are dreaming about, you let me know I might be an investor. I might be able to help you get your own company started, particularly if I believe that it’s in alignment with who you are, then I would be completely behind it.” That’s before I understood everything we’re talking about now. I knew instinctively that if they didn’t have passion for it, it would never succeed.
I think that’s right. You cannot kill a person’s passion and then expect them to behave passionately. It doesn’t work.
As you said, people show up every day to work on your dream. If you neglect theirs, they’ll neglect yours. It’s that simple.
In the back of my mind, because Helen is so unbelievably talented, do I have some sort of a fear that Disney or Pixar is going to see her and pluck her away? Of course. If that were to happen, like you said, which I love the way you said, maybe I’d be her first investor, but I would certainly be her biggest cheerleader and the worst thing isn’t her leaving. The worst thing would be me killing her passion and her love for art.
Company Growth ChallengesElliott, one of the things that we talk about here on this show is that the goal is always to evolve the company and get it from 100 clients to 200 or whatever the metrics might be from 100,000 a year to a million dollars a year. You hit milestones, you hit roadblocks, you hit ceilings, you hit potholes all along the way, and then you get to this point where you have a completely different set of problems. Are you there and what do those problems look like for you?
Absolutely. I laugh because you always think that if I go from one milestone to the next, then I’m removing the problem. That’s actually not true. You’re going to have the newer problems, like your problems graduate with you. I’ll give you a perfect example. We built our business to the point where we’re making multiple six figures a month, which is unheard of for a psychotherapist.
We had a contractor working for us to manage our social media advertising, and that contractor got hacked. As a result of that hack, the hacker got access to all of their clients’ material. They took over my Facebook page and stole about $200,000 or so from my bank account. We couldn’t run any advertisements into our offers for about four months because we did most of that through social media, and these people took over our social media accounts and kicked us out.
This is going to sound like a ridiculous thing, but it certainly was something I thought about. In order for someone to steal a quarter million dollars from me, I first had to have a quarter million dollars. In order for someone to ruin my multi-six figure a-month business, I first have to have a multi-six figure. Your problems get to the level of your business. I now have staff I have to manage and customer service needs.
The customer service needs when you’re making $10,000 a month versus when you’re making $150,000 a month, the customer service needs are completely different. They’re night and day. I ended up having to hire a CEO and put her in charge of the business because I’m now working on TV projects and podcasting. Someone has to be there to do operationally the day-to-day stuff. Your problems don’t get solved. They come with you in a bigger and grander way.
It’s so true. I grew from 0 to $10 million to $30 million. I want to point out my language here. I said, I grew. The company was the one making all that money. I had to grow into that. I could not be who I was when I started that company in a garage and I’m now running a 300-person company. I could not be that same person. The only reason it probably didn’t reach 1,000 employees and $100 million was because of me.
The whole point is that if your business is your vehicle or growth and elevation of who you are as a human being and an individual, then you will get the most out of that experience. Now, the owners of businesses, I’m sure every reader can relate, never get the vacation that they need because they’re always basically weighed down by the problems of the company.
In my life and business, by the time I reached about year seven in my software, I was able to take 3 and 4-week European trips and leave my business alone with a check-in phone call every few days, and I still have that business. I came back after almost a month away. People said, “Go away for another month. We had the best month we ever had.” I love that. This has been a great conversation, Elliott.
I want to say how much I appreciate you and the work that you’re doing. Readers, what I want you to do right now is I want you to go and sign up to listen to Elliott on his daily show, Aha! Moments, because I got to tell you, it’s going to change your life. He’s brilliant at what he does. I think all his books, I haven’t read all of his books, but I have read parts of Change Your Questions, Change Your Future, and I was impressed. I’m a very big believer in using inquiry to evolve yourself, your family, and your business, and Elliott’s mastered that too. Pay attention to this man. He has some great things for you. Elliott, can you tell us the name of your website?
ElliottConnie.com. I would love for people to visit my website. If you’re a coach or a helping professional, I’ve tons of free resources there that you can sign up for or if you’re someone that needs a little inspiration, sign up to follow my daily podcast. Also, buy the book. I promise it’ll change your life. There’s nothing more powerful in this world you can do other than ask questions. Questions are the most powerful thing in the world. If you can train yourself to ask the most useful questions, you will change your entire life.
Asking Better Questions: Questions are the most powerful thing in the world. If you can train yourself to ask more useful questions, you will change your entire life.Elliott, I have to ask you a personal question here. How did I do? Did I ask good questions?
You did great. You did well. To be honest with you, this is one of my favorite interviews. I do lots of these interviews and this was great.
Good, I’m glad to hear that. It’s one of my favorites, too. Thank you again, Elliott, for being on the show, and readers, don’t forget what we talked about. I may be over-presumptuous here, but I think we had an important conversation. See some of the mechanics of how you can change your own life using some of the things that Elliott shared. Thank you, Elliott. We will talk again soon.
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Important Links Elliott Connie * ClientFol.io * GetClientfolio.com * Aha! Moments * Change Your Questions, Change Your Future* * VEABusiness.com/Mitch
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In this episode, Casey Stubbs shares his incredible journey of scaling his business from $2 million to $20 million, offering invaluable insights into trading strategies and the importance of risk management. Mitch Russo delves into Casey’s experiences, revealing how he built his trading empire and the lessons learned along the way. Whether you’re a seasoned trader or just starting, this episode provides practical advice and inspiration to help you navigate the volatile world of trading. Plus, don’t miss the special giveaway: access to free trading signals to enhance your trading decisions.
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Listen to the podcast hereFrom $2M To $20M: Casey Stubbs Shares His Trading Strategies And Success StoryWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in, and extract wisdom that you can use to grow your business with your first thousand clients. By the way, if you’re a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you in this episode. My software platform is called Clientfol.io. It’s helped hundreds of coaches save time on admin, make more money, get better results, and generate powerful client testimonials. How would you like that?
Does that work for you? If you’re a coach, you need to see Clientfol.io. In fact, you can try it for a dollar. Go to Clientfol.io and click on the Try It For A Buck button and give it a spin. For anyone who reads this show, if you decide to go forward with this, I’ll set you up with a free training session with one of my coaches so you can implement it right away.
On to my amazing guest and his incredible story. I will mention that this is an encore appearance, and he was here years ago and told us all about his company, and he’s made an enormous amount of progress since. Let me tell you a little bit about his background first. It was 2006. He started a soap company in his basement, and it was going pretty well, except he hated doing it. In fact, he didn’t like selling it. He kind of hated everything about it.
I could relate. I wouldn’t want to be in that business, either. What he did was he tried carpet cleaning, and with the whole family’s support, as much as he tried, he didn’t like that either. He went into construction and carpet cleaning in the evenings. It wasn’t until 2008 when the economy collapsed and that wasn’t working, he wasn’t sure what to do. It turns out, on a whim, he started to help his dad set up a computer for trading stocks and discovered what he loved.
Has anyone else had a situation where, by accident, they discover what they love? Without a lot of thought but with a lot of passion, he dove into trading and discovered something very important about life, business, and success. He’s here to share his hard-won lessons about life, business, and pushing through the crap to get to your final destination, aligned with the universe, which has been there for you all along. Welcome, Casey Stubbs, to the show.
Thanks, Mitch. I’m so glad to be here. It’s quite an honor.
Discovering A Passion For TradingHere you are again. Last time, we had a great interview, but this time is going to be even better. Before we started, you told me something very interesting. You told me about a new book, and I don’t want to talk about the book yet, but I want readers to hang in there because we’re going to get into the book content a little bit later in the show. As always, I want you to stay with us because, at the end of the show, Casey is going to have a little gift for you. Hang in there. Let’s get started. Casey, tell me about how all this started for you when you were first starting working with your dad to try and learn investing.
I didn’t have any idea what the markets were about at all, but I loved the idea of clicking a button and making money. I had immediate visions of becoming an instant millionaire. Of course, that isn’t what happened, but once I got a taste of it, I got hooked, and I tend to be a hardworking, hustling kind of guy. I like going after things, and that was it for me.
When you find what you love, dive in with passion. It might not happen overnight, but the journey is worth it.
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You became a trader, and you probably, after some trial and error, made some money, but what got you into the business of helping other traders?
It particularly happened because of the economy in 2008. It was rough, as I’m sure a lot of the readers remember. It seems like it was yesterday, but it was actually a while ago. Some of the younger readers probably don’t remember that too much. There was no work in the construction industry at all. I thought, why not give my shot at a website and talk about what I’m learning in trading?
How did that go?
Surprisingly, it went well. I started it out, but I did have a very vague plan. It wasn’t a master plan, but I found a website called AssociatePrograms.com, and they had an article called Eight Steps to Make $1000 a Month Online. I followed the eight steps, and it worked.
Readers, you should know this. Casey and I worked together. Casey was my client first for about six months. What he said was exactly who he is. When he trusts somebody and he wants to make progress, he works with them and does what they say, like he followed that article. The reason I’m mentioning it is because you should think about how that would work for you, too. A lot of us get in the way of our own success. We interfere with a plan that pretty much has been laid out for us, but somehow, head trash, mindset, whatever you want to call it, gets in the way. Casey knows how to get past that, and I sure hope that this show becomes a little bit enlightening about how maybe you can, too. Casey, you built this business basically at that moment in time. What was your initial vision for the business?
The initial vision was very simple. It was trying to make some money to put food on the table. It was that simple because I had a young family, and I had to provide and there was a lot of pressure there. While I was doing this, I was hitting the job market daily. It wasn’t like I was doing this and then not doing anything else. This was a way to try to see if I could make some extra money while looking for another job.
What were you offering back then?
I didn’t know anything about making money online. I followed the format that they mentioned, which was affiliate marketing, but I haven’t gotten into that yet. The initial stages were just asking if I could make $1 on this thing. Initially, I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have anything until people noticed my website. People were getting attention, and I had people coming, and they’re like, “You could actually sell here.”
Tell us about that insight and a valuable one. What was it about your website that drew people to it?
The big thing was me being transparent and being myself and sharing myself. We see a lot more of that now, but in 2008, it was newer. A lot of the social media platforms were getting out. I would say a big learning experience for me was when some random guy approached me, and a lot of times when random people approached me, it was terrible. I’m sure you get this all the time, but he says, “Why don’t you send a couple of emails to my list? I’m doing a product launch, and it’s about trading. send it to your list.”
Transparency and integrity are invaluable in building trust with your audience.
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I did it because I didn’t know what I was doing. I only had 5,000 people on my list. Small, getting started. I was literally blown away because I’d sent a few emails, but again, I like to follow instructions. I followed the instructions that he gave me, and he wrote back to me and said, “Your list did well. I’m going to be sending you a check for $15,000.” I was blown away. I was shocked.
We should get into this a little bit because, again, there’s some great wisdom here I’d love to share. The reason that I think you did well is I would say there were, let’s call it 2 reasons, maybe 3. The first reason is that you had a fairly targeted audience. They had a common interest, and the person who approached you knew that. That’s why they wanted you to help market. That’s the first thing, but this is the big one.
The second thing is the people on that list trusted you. The reason they trusted you is because you were transparent, because you were just, “Look, cards on the table. I’m new at this. Here’s what I’m discovering. This is what I got. You might be interested.” That’s a rare commodity in this life, in this world, as you probably know. Integrity and honesty are very highly valued. Sometimes, that’s how people are. They don’t even know that there’s a difference. They are who they are, as I believe you are. That’s what I think people were attracted to. You got this check for $15,000, and your mind must’ve exploded at that point. Where did you go next?
Remember, I had a young family. My wife was pregnant, so we needed to upgrade our vehicle. The very first thing I did was buy a car, and I got a great deal. We got a great deal on a Chevy Suburban. I have nine kids, but back then, I think it was like 4 or 5. We needed to upgrade. The Suburban wouldn’t even work now because now I’ve got a 15-passenger van.
That’s amazing. Think about all those college tuitions coming up.
It’s interesting because my kids seem to have an entrepreneurial mindset, and they’re more interested in starting businesses than going to school, which I’m okay with.
The Pivot To Affiliate MarketingI bet you are. I hear a partnership in the making. That’s great. The idea is, “Aha, my list can make money.” Did you begin an affiliate marketing list for traders in a vertical market? Is that what you did?
That’s exactly what happened. Remember that article? That was the number one thing on it, affiliates. At that time, that’s when I got involved with Jeff Walker, which was his product launch formula. A lot of the other people were doing that in the trading business, where they were launching products. They’d get group JV things going together. I was starting to show up on leaderboards and participating. My main goal was I’m going to do the best that I can on every launch and make sure that the product I’m promoting is a good product. Try to get to know the person behind it, and make sure they’re good people. It worked well. People started to pay attention to me because I was placing high on the leaderboards.
At some point, you’re going to tell us about your pivot because the affiliate marketing thing was working. Your list was growing. You were generating more, probably steady revenue now from multiple offers to your list. There was a moment when you said, “This little website can do more than have articles. I want to offer something different.” Tell us about your thought process in making that transition.
The big one was being connected with Jeff Walker and following his products. It’s like I got to come up with my own product. At that point, I wasn’t real comfortable yet with my trading ability. I was approached by a trader who was like, “I’ll teach you everything I know about trading, and I’ll run the product, and you run the marketing.”
We formed a partnership, and I was a big visionary at that point. I was recruiting people to help, and I was laying out the vision saying, “We’re going to do a million-dollar launch.” I was laying out the vision to the affiliates, and I was supporting them, getting high on the leaderboards, and making sure that everybody in the affiliate industry knew who I was. I pushed out, and the big goal, the pivot, was to launch my own product and to do a million-dollar affiliate JV launch.
How did it go?
It was a great learning experience for me because I had never been so successful and depressed at the same time. The reason why is because I was recruiting this team, and I was basically convincing them to work for nothing because I was saying that we all had this big payday. I’ve got this big group of people, and we’re all working together late nights. It’s like the payday’s coming, guys, we’re going to do it.
Sometimes, the toughest lessons come from the biggest successes—like making $250K and feeling depressed about it.
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We’re going to hit the million-dollar launch. When I actually launched, I did about 250,000 in sales. At the time, I was depressed because we had high expectations. A couple of weeks later, somebody said to me, “You made 100,000 or 250,000 is what I made.” He said, “Have you ever made that before?” I said no. He’s like, “You made that in about a week.” He says, “That’s nothing to be upset about.” I realized I never made 250,000 in a week before. It’s because it was so below my expectations. I was pretty upset at the time.
Another great mindset lesson here. As they say, you’ve probably heard this a million times, you shoot for the stars and you hit the moon. In this case, you hit the moon; you made $250,000. Was that net $250,000, or was that after all?
It was gross.
Were your partners that all worked for you on commissions satisfied with the $250,000? Were they complaining?
Most of them were. The main guy was pretty upset. As a matter of fact, he took off, and it was a major blowup. He told all of the customers that I was cheating him. We never spoke again after that, and it caused a major rift in the business.
Readers, if you’re enjoying this conversation, I want to remind you that the entire transcript of our conversation is over at YourFirstThousandClients.com. Go to Casey Stubbs’ show page, and there you’ll see every single word we said and a couple of very interesting things for you to look at, a download and a book offer, etc.
Casey, this is another moment where I need to hone in on something you said because you are talking about something that, unfortunately, is all too common in life. A partnership blows up. The difference is that you are not a person who is unethical. You are not a dishonest individual. You are honest. You are ethical. You did your best, but you didn’t hit your goals. How did you handle this issue when, all of a sudden, you had people turning on you because of your partner?
When you talk about the integrity thing, that is important to me. Another thing that’s important to me is to talk well of people. I was not going to say anything negative, speak well, wish a blessing, forgive, and then keep moving forward. Try to take some lessons learned. I felt like I was pretty transparent with the numbers and stuff, but I did.
I think a great lesson for me was that I had the control. I was controlling the merchant accounts, the email lists, and the website. It was important to me. I’m never going to give that up. If a partner wants to try to leave and bash me and do all those things, that’s fine. I’m always going to be in control of those things because as long as I have control of those, I’ve got the business.
Managing Business PartnershipsIt sounds like a little bit of common sense here, but as we know, common sense is sometimes uncommon. In this case, that’s real wisdom. You knew in advance to make sure that you were the only one in control of the communication channels, and you held tight to those. After that launch, you picked up the pieces, dealt with an angry partner, and never spoke to him again. What was the next step in your business progression?
My next step was to start bringing some young people on, teaching them, and trying to get a team around me. We did want to get the million-dollar launch. I continued in that JV realm for quite some time and was able to hone that into a high level because there were a couple of things that I did that I thought stood out. Number one, I’d always perform at a peak level. I’m always like one, two, or three in their events. The other thing I would try to do when I was hosting my event was educate them. I would do big prizes for number one.
Number two, I would educate them. I’d do a video and say, look, this is how you need to do it. Step one is you need to say this. Step two is you need to do this. Step three is you need to do this and make sure you do all the steps. I would even film videos of myself writing checks. I’m like, look, I wrote a check to Morgan, and I’m sending Morgan a $140,000 check. It became like a frenzy. The affiliates were jumping on top of each other and going out of their way to promote. That worked well, also.
There’s another step in this process. You made another progression. You decided to offer your own products and products from different people. Let’s get into that and see if we can sort of categorize these steps as you take them. Readers can potentially do as you do, read and duplicate. Tell me what happened next.
I continued in that realm and did pretty well. I actually never did get to the million-dollar launch, though. The closest I ever did was about $900,000. I did $900,000. It was fantastic. It was beautiful. After that, in the trading world, in the small area that I work in, it’s a small marketing traders’ marketing. The affiliate thing started to die down, and partners weren’t doing it as much, and pretty much the industry completely fell apart. As far as I know, people aren’t even doing it at all anymore. I had to do another pivot, and that was to build marketing funnels and do internal launches with my own lists, all my own social media, and all my own platforms instead of getting JVs.
Would you say that, in retrospect, the fact that the affiliate business kind of went away or died down pivoted you into a more lucrative, more prosperous area?
Affiliate marketing seems glamorous, and it’s great because you get free leads and can blow up fast. The first launch I did, my list went from like 5,000 to 30,000, a fast email list. However, you’re paying the top premium for those sales. It’s a trade-off. You’re putting the risk on the partner because they have to mail, and they don’t know if they’re going to get paid. They’re taking a chance with their list by trusting in you. They take that risk, which is a big deal. The next part of it is now because they took that risk on the front end, I have to pay out much more. If I generate leads organically or I’m doing traffic, I can get those leads much cheaper than paying 30%.
Did you realize that after you’d been in business doing this for a little while, and did you pivot to buying ads and promoting through paid ads instead of affiliates?
Yes. I realized that the affiliate market wasn’t very active, but also it dawned on me that this is way cheaper this way.
Educating And Empowering TradersOf course. Let’s fast forward a bit. What is TradingStrategyGuides.com all about? What’s the site and business about? What are you doing right now?
We primarily love to educate investors and traders in the markets. The markets have been so volatile. There’s so much going on in the world. With COVID, the market tanked like 30% and then came back. There’s a lot there. We try to give solid quality education to as many people as we can. We have different solutions that we offer to help traders get to the next level.
In a world of uncertainty, staying informed and adapting your strategy is key. Keep learning and stay ahead of the curve.
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One of the most interesting things about your website is how simple it is. Readers, go to TradingStrategyGuides.com and see what I’m talking about. Basically, there is a short paragraph, a picture of Casey, and a button. If you scroll down, you get some testimonials, a podcast invite, and other things, but this is a model for how to capture traffic when they are going to your page.
I like what you did here. It’s actually quite simple. While it’s not an attractive website, I know you’re not insulted by that because you realize it’s not what you were going for. You’re not building an authority site here. You’re building a lead capture system, and for that, I love it. Tell me about the progress over the last couple of years. Trading has changed in so many ways. We have Roaring Kitty now on the scene, and we have the pops and drops. We have the Fed. We have all of the political stuff going on. How can people make money in the trading world?
It comes down to one thing, and that is managing your risk. It’s not an exciting thing to talk about, but it is what it is. In business, there are key fundamentals and principles that business people need to follow, and traders need to follow. It’s the same thing. When you’re trading in the markets, you’ve got to manage your risk. It’s not that difficult. It is difficult because it’s hard to manage yourself. Most people cannot manage themselves. I’m always struggling with it myself, but it’s a battle, and I’m working on it and winning. But most people cannot do that. I know that because I’ve trained a lot of people.
Tweets: The key to successful trading? Managing your risk. It might not sound exciting, but it's the foundation of long-term success in the markets.
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You know this about me. I’ve been a trader since 2004, 2005. I learned options trading. I went all in and bought a $25,000 course to learn options trading. I was generating probably $20,000 a month in options revenue from that process. For me, though, the problem was dealing with my emotions. When 2008 came along and we had all of the ridiculous three standard deviation moves in a single three-day period, it basically destroyed my portfolio.
Luckily, I was working with a floor trader from the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, and he was my mentor. What he taught me more than anything else was, “I don’t care how much you make; I care how safe you are.” He insisted that I focus on the protection side of options trading, which I don’t have to explain. You know what that is. Here’s the thing. After all was said and done, after the crash, after the whole thing settled down, I had lost only what my profits were, not my principal. I didn’t like losing my profits, but I had also watched CNBC that day when there were 3 or 4 floor traders who blew up and were now gone after that day. I felt pretty good.
Mitch, that’s like in the beginning when I said I only made $250,000, and I was depressed about it. You know, it’s perspective. I know how that is because I’ve been in the same situation where you lose your profit. What I try to do to ensure that I never lose my profit is that once I make a profit, I pull some of it out. That way, I can never lose.
Your system, your business, is more than guides, and it’s more than cheat sheets and studies. You offer elements of your business that help others actually learn to trade. You have some live stuff that you do. Tell us a little bit about that.
We have some coaches on the staff who teach fundamentals. They teach market strategies, price action strategies, and all different kinds of markets, everything from options to stocks to currency trading to even crypto now, which is a big one, and everybody’s getting excited about the bull run that’s coming in crypto. I’m sure you’re waiting for that as well. It’s a great time to be in the markets. We’re at all-time highs right now. Honestly, even after COVID, that was my best trading year ever.
Mine too, actually. It was. Unfortunately, I was working with somebody who runs a newsletter, and he was still very bearish on the market. Although it was a good year, my returns were depressed because I was following his trades, too. It was a tough year. We’re in this period before the elections. If you’re reading this, probably not at the moment we recorded it, obviously. It’s July 2024. There’s an election coming up. There are two wars going on at the same time. There’s a stock market bubble, as some people think it is. There are all kinds of goings-on in the world when it comes to interest rates.
Here’s the thing that holds me firm in this market right now. I don’t know if it will keep me in the market, but for right now, here’s what I believe. I believe that the market will not drop until the election or after. I believe that we are probably going to stay in a bull market through this next quarter and the election cycle, minimum. From there, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Nobody does. Here’s the stuff that I try and focus on, I try and focus on everything going on in the market, not the charts. How are you when it comes to stuff like that? Are you more of a chart guy?
I like to look at the charts for my trades. My primary focus is the charts. However, I do look at the fundamental picture. The election year is a big one. The history, you go with the statistics. Trading is a lot about statistics. How many years of election years have we seen down? Not too many. It’s the same thing this year. I do think that our economy is beautiful. It’s great. I do think we’re in a tough situation because, on the one hand, we have massive debt that the government cannot pay back. It’s getting to a point where they can’t pay it back. They desperately need the Fed to drop rates so they stay solvent.
On the other hand, we have inflation. Inflation has not yet been taken care of. It’s slowed, but it’s not there yet. If inflation doesn’t get under control, they’re going to have to raise rates anyway because the government’s not going to be able to remain solvent. They’re going to have to lower rates, and then inflation could stay high, which could then take our economy even further. To not be political, but the answer is to reduce spending in government, in my opinion, to be like normal people. Business people, we’ve got to control our expenses. Normal people have to watch their expenses. The government should do the same thing.
I totally agree. I want to add this perspective. There’s never been a time that I was in the markets that it wasn’t tumultuous, that there wasn’t a crisis, that there weren’t looming problems. There were very few times when I was trading where I would set it and forget it. I wait for my contracts to expire, keep my premium, and then move on to the next month. It was rare that something like that happened. I think we’re always going to be in times like this, and no one knows what the outcome will be. You know what they say, you can never win if you’re not playing the game. I think trading comes down to that as well. Casey, what would you suggest for the average person who doesn’t have a lot of money and who hasn’t done a lot of trading? Where would they start?
Investing In New TechnologyThat’s a great question. I have a good answer. I think that if you look at the history of markets, they have a history of going up, and things that go up are new technology. You want to find new technology, and obviously, revenues push that up. There’s a minimal amount of research that you need to do, and that is to find the new technology.
If we go way back to when steel was a big thing, or electricity, or the automobile, or even McDonald’s, they created fast food and all new technology. That’s why I’m a fan of Cathie Wood. She puts out this technology report. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, it’s brilliant. She believes in technology, and so do I, because the economy will go up and down, but human ingenuity is what makes life worth living, in my opinion, the awesomeness that humans do. Invest in some new technology; that’s number one. Number two, find the leader.
Find the leader because there’s always going to be twenty people chasing an idea, but there’s always going to be one person who’s head and shoulders above the rest. Find the Mitch Russo of stocks. Get around that person, get around the winning team, find a company that’s ahead or find a leader, a visionary leader. The guys who run these companies, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, are revolutionary people, and you’re never going to lose if you invest in them because they’re winners.
It’s absolutely true. It’s a great tip. To add to that, Jim Cramer, who I’m a fan of from an entertainment standpoint but not a fan of as an investment advisor for my age, said something I believe is true, if you are beginning, it’s probably best to choose an index and invest in one of the generalized indexes like the SPX, because like you said, over time, the market keeps going up. If you can somehow get a base foothold into a strong index fund with low expenses, odds are, as you start building your career and building your wealth, that’s going to serve you well.
The brilliance about that is that the S&P 500 does what I said anyway. They do the research, and they pick the top 500 companies. They’re doing all the research for you. You’re already getting, and that’s why it’s not a real picture of what’s happening in the US economy. They’re picturing the best companies in the United States.
Let’s talk a little bit about your new book because you told me about it. I was excited about it. You’ve learned a lot about trading, and you’ve certainly made some great money both as a business owner and as a trader. Describe to us what the book is all about.
Casey Stubbs’ New Book: The Complete Trading SystemThe book is called The Complete Trading System: How to Develop a Mindset, Maximize Profitability, and Own Your Market Success, and it takes you through the fundamentals of trading. It’s a system based on how to analyze charts, identify trends, build a winning strategy, build a correct mindset, and make sure that you’re not gambling. I talk about the gambling mindset because a lot of people go into the markets thinking it’s a casino when it’s not. It teaches all of that from a ground level. I’ve received a lot of great feedback on it.
The Complete Trading System: How to Develop a Mindset, Maximize Profitability, and Own Your Market SuccessI would say this about the book, too. Being in business and having a podcast is the whole reason I have the book. You’re a podcaster. You understand how great it is. The publisher reached out to me. I didn’t even have to work for it because I have a podcast. Wiley Publishing said, “We saw your podcast. Would you write a book?” It was interesting because I actually had all of the notes. I had it in my mind that I was going to write a book. I had all the notes. I said, “I’ve already got one written. It’s in a notebook.”
Readers, if you want to go to Amazon and get The Complete Trading System: How to Develop a Mindset, Maximize Profitability, and Own Your Market Success by Casey Stubbs, it sounds like you’re going to enjoy that book a lot. Casey, we promised a free giveaway, and I know you have a lot of resources and you’re pretty proud of them. Tell us a little bit about what you might have available for our readers.
Access Free Trading ResourcesIf you go to my homepage, TradingStrategyGuides.com, we have a great free guide. It is a price action cheat sheet. It’s right there on the homepage, and it teaches everything that you need to know about price action, which is reading candles, reading the candles, and understanding how levels in the markets work.
I saw the page. I haven’t downloaded it yet, but I love the idea of understanding what those chart formations look like because those are what most traders go by. If you understand the twelve or so basic symbols of how all that works, then you’ll be able to at least get on the right page, if not have an idea of where to go next. I appreciate you doing that. Before we close out this episode, I also wanted to ask you, do you still do affiliate marketing and do you still help other traders reach your clients, or is that now all in the past?
It’s dropped down quite a bit as far as the affiliate marketing. I do some now if I see something that I love or if I know somebody that I’ve known for a long time because I’ve got a lot of great relationships.
Trading Strategy: In trading and in business, the right mindset can make all the difference. Aim high, adapt, and never stop learning.Of course.
Definitely, because I can’t fill everybody’s needs. If there’s something that I know somebody will benefit from, I’ll definitely share it.
Casey, it’s been a complete pleasure hanging out with you and getting caught up in everything that’s going on. I’m so proud of you. You’ve done so well. Thank you so much for the time. Readers, go back and read what Casey said and put some stuff into action like he did. Thank you, Casey.
Thank you. It’s been such an honor being here and working with you. You’ve helped me out. You’ve had such great insight.
Thank you, Casey.
Important Links Clientfol.io * Casey Stubbs * Associate Programs * Trading Strategy Guides * The Complete Trading System: How to Develop a Mindset, Maximize Profitability, and Own Your Market Success*
The post From $2M To $20M: Casey Stubbs Shares His Trading Strategies And Success Story appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Have you ever wondered how to break into a completely new industry and achieve rapid success? This episode is for you! Our guest, Gene Eidelman of Azure Printed Homes, is a serial entrepreneur who has done exactly that. He’s revolutionizing the construction industry with his company that builds tiny homes from recycled plastic using 3D printing technology, tackling the housing crisis while combating environmental waste. Listen in as Gene shares his fascinating story and insights on finding a new market, the unexpected ways customers are using his product, and how his company is giving back to the community by providing affordable housing solutions. You’ll also learn how he turned a social media post into his first paying customer! Tune in now and prepare to be inspired by how Gene is changing lives and communities one home at a time.
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Listen to the podcastTiny Homes, Big Impact: 3D Printing Construction With Gene EidelmanWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in, and extract wisdom you can use to grow your business with your first thousand clients. By the way, if you’re a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you in this episode. I have a software platform I created for my own coaching business called ClientFol.io.
It’s been helping hundreds of coaches save time on admin, get better results for their clients, and help them generate more powerful client testimonials, which usually lead to higher fees. How? By simply tracking results using accountability. The platform is optimized to track goals and accountability and help you, as a coach, optimize those for your clients.
If you’d like to give it a try for just a dollar, go over to ClientFol.io and give it a whirl. It’s just a dollar, and it will revolutionize your coaching business. Now, onto my amazing guest and his incredible story. Now, listen carefully. This is a business strategy that I’ve seen over and over again. Massive change almost always comes from outside an industry.
Now, it did for me when I started a legal software company, I had no experience as a lawyer or even in the legal market, yet I was able to break into that market with a revolutionary product dominated and become the industry leader in a short period of time. In this episode’s guest is doing the same exact thing. He’s built over 6,000 condos and apartments in Southern California as an immigrant from Ukraine.
He found a way to become successful very quickly, but he wasn’t yet done. In early 2023, he teamed up with a few technology partners and created a very unique printed home manufacturing company. Now, the reason this is so important is because not only is he building these tiny homes, which is fashionable, but he’s building them from recycled plastic.
Now, you know the problem we have with recycling now. Imagine if there’s a home builder who could turn all of that garbage into secure and comfortable housing for many, many people. That’s what he’s doing, but that’s not all he’s doing. Even as he’s doing this, he’s continued to resettle over 6,000 refugees from the former Soviet Union, and there’s so much more to share about this man. He’s incredible. Welcome Gene Edelman to the show.
Mitch, thank you so much. It’s great to be here.
Gene’s Origin StoryGene, clearly, you have so many cool things going on. Why don’t we go back to the beginning? How this all start for you?
Sure. A little bit of my history, as you mentioned. I came here from Ukraine as a refugee after high school. When I started college at USC, my brother and I passed our real estate exams, and then a couple of years later, we invested our commissions into building first condominium project in West Hollywood. That was five units, but it was a great experience.
California is such a tough place to build it. If you can learn how to do it here, you can pretty much do it anywhere around the world. Thirty years later, I’m a first-time founder of a new startup. After I sold my third one, I said, “Let me go back to my roots.” What we put on our blackboard was, can we build faster, cheaper, and with less environmental impact?
Like you, I have kids and worry about their future with all of the changes in the environment. Construction industry, second worst polluter, second only to others. If you take a look at other manufacturing, 100 years ago, we were still riding horses and then gasoline cars, and of course, now this revolution to EV vehicles.
With construction, if you look at the picture a hundred years ago, there was a guy with a hammer and a nail, and a 2×4. Not much has changed. Every construction project, there are these huge trash bins. It seems like 50% of the stuff we buy at the supplier gets thrown away. Cost-wise, there’s been a lot of fluctuation during COVID, but before and after COVID, there was a shortage of labor, quality labor, shortage of materials.
A.) It’s impossible to determine the price of the project before you start. Always change orders involved, and B.) impossible to figure out the timing. A lot of the timing gets affected by weather, by lack of supplies, by lack of labor not showing up. Again, our mission was to find ways to do it faster, cheaper, and lessen the impact. I, one morning, saw a video of a YouTube channel that had a 3D printing with cement, and I told my business partner, “Why can’t we do the same thing, only I just don’t like cement?” I said, “Why not something else?” He said, “Why not plastic?” I said, “If we’re going to use plastic, why not recycle plastic?” That’s a short summary of how we got here.
The thing to love about 3D printing is it is totally automated processing.
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Sustainability: Using Recycled MaterialsI want to just ask a couple of questions about that. Did you decide to do this when you figured out that there was a machine that could use recycled plastic? Or did you decide to do this and then go find a way to do it? It’s important. I need to know.
No, it’s the latter. What I loved about 3D printing, it was totally automated processing. I saw a guy standing around, but nobody was doing any work. Somebody pushed the button. I love that. For the last seven years now, first time in Europe, in France, somebody moved in the house in 2017. Now, in the US, it’s been picking up steam.
The problem with cement, first of all, it’s expensive. It’s more expensive than lumber. Second of all, it doesn’t have very good insulation properties. It’s not good for insulation. Finally, and the most important is, it’s very heavy. It’s not something that you can print in the factory and then move way on. With cement, you have to bring 3D printing equipment to the site.
When you do that, then you lose a lot of the flexibilities that we thought of. In our mind, it wasn’t only just 3D printing. It was also 3D printing in the factory. In the factory, we’re literally now open 24-7, and the machine runs, whether there are employees there or not. No disruption because of the weather. Much better quality assurance because you now record what’s going on, you watch what’s going on, where if you do it on-site, and it’s back to the problem of traditional construction, you’ll know who showed up. You’ll know what the weather is like. The schedule gets upset if it rains or too hot or too cold or too high of a wind. We loved the process. We loved the automation. We didn’t like the material or doing it on-site.
That makes a lot of sense. I understand that. I see the rationale, but I got to tell you about my interest in this. Readers, just for full disclosure, I know Gene. Gene and I are friends. When I found out what he was doing, I approached him and said, “Can I invest?” I wanted to be part of this. Here’s why. I’m just telling you, Gene, this is what I liked about what you were doing.
You were solving three problems at the same time. That’s rare in a business. Sure, there were people building tiny homes, but they were built from conventional materials. They still had a lead time. On top of that, they were small. You’re saving money because they’re small, not because of any other element of them.
The second problem that I believe you’re solving is you’re solving the population problem. You’re also solving the significant problem of what to do with plastic bottles and recycling. This, to me, is major. If it’s okay, Gene, I’d like to mention something you told me. You told me that you worked with a chemist to formulate the material, the plastic that you use to give it well over a 50-year life and very powerful insulation properties. This, to me, was all very attractive.
The third thing is that these weren’t recycled old railroad cars that frankly are terrible insulators. God, forbid you need to make a phone call from inside one of those houses. You’re basically sitting in a Faraday cage. It solved a lot of problems. I love the idea that you can basically pop them out almost every day or two, and you could ship them anywhere in the country.
That was what brought me into your world and getting to know you and the investment better. My perspective here is look at all the good you’re doing with the world with this business. Now, the question is, how do you take it from here? You have a factory. You have one factory now with what I think is it three machines that you’re pumping out these homes with right now? Is that right?
Right.
What do you do next? What’s next on your agenda here? Are you going to build a bigger building with more machines, or are you going to disperse these mini-factories all over the country?
The goal is to just disperse these countries all over the country and all over the globe. Quite honestly, Mitch. The factories are smaller than traditional factory manufacturers of housing because if you go to some other factories that are 100,000 to 150,000 square feet, ours is 20,000 square feet. What takes most of that 100,000 to 150,000 square feet? It’s an area where you build a structure.
That’s the most labor intensive, material intensive. In our area, it’s an area that’s 40 x 40. It has a space for a printer, and it has a platform that’s 20 feet in diameter. We’re able to use micro factories. That’s number one. Number two is we want to spread them out to be closer to the customer. Right now, it only saves costs.
The reality is shipping costs have come down. Since COVID, it’s become much more competitive. There are a lot more truckers. One of our investors is an expert in logistics, and we work with customers to figure out the time when we can ship a unit there, but then on the way back, the same trucker will take some loads to Los Angeles forth that reduces the cost.
We’ve been able to bring the cost of shipping down to under 5% to 10% of the total cost of the unit. Still, it’s not just being closer to reduce the shipping cost, but also to customize it. We are in California. It doesn’t snow. All of our units have this modern but flat roof design. Our next factory, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about it in just a minute, is going to Colorado.
There are a lot of areas that have snow. We have more units that we’ll make in Colorado with an A-frame roof so that snow can run off easier. Talking more about Colorado, our initial goal was to raise the money for our first super factory that we’re now in. The thought was, “We’re going to need to continue to raise money.” Quite honestly, a lot of investors were not enthusiastic about just being investing in this capital-intensive business.
We went around and we identified Colorado because they had an RFP, a request for proposal, to bring factories to the state. They experienced a housing shortage, just like so many places around the country and around the globe. We have a shortage of over 5.2 million homes in the US alone, and around the globe it’s measured in billions.
We have a shortage of over 5.2 million homes in the US alone.
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Colorado issued an RFP, and we responded to it. Of the companies that they selected, we’re the only one who 3D prints. The other seven are doing traditional housing manufacturing. Colorado awarded us just a little bit under $3.9 million at 1.5%, 20-year amortization during 10 years, very favorable terms. Now, we have a formula of how we can go to many other states and see whether we can get similar incentives so that now instead of raising money for capital, we can raise money for two things. More marketing.
You and I talked about it for a while. We want to get the product out. Now that we have additional capacity in our California facility, we can open in Colorado in just about four months. Now, I’m not afraid of going after a larger contract to be able to do that. Number two is additional testing. All of our units now are one story, which there is plenty of demand for that, but many more customers are asking for us to go vertical, to go multi-story, and that requires additional testing.
We’re getting requests from all over the globe. It seems like with all the wars going on, where there is thousands of units getting destroyed, with natural disasters, from earthquake in Turkey a couple of years ago to wildfires in Maui, where 2,200 homes were destroyed just seven months ago, there is just increasing demand for more housing, faster housing, less expensive, and finally sustainable. I’ll be more than happy to talk about sustainability as well.
Tiny Homes: There is just increasing demand for more housing that is faster, less expensive, and sustainable.I want to touch on that because, again, I’m fascinated with the process and the fact that you’re using these recyclable materials. It’s almost an obvious question, but it’s funny in a way because I know there’s so much of it. Is there enough recyclable material to fuel your growth into the next 5 to 7 years?
Most of the research we did prior to starting building our first printer was exactly that question. Is there enough material? Here’s an incredible statistic we found out. Only 6%, all the plastic that we use is recycled. I’m sure you, I do, we have these recycled bins. We spend so much time and effort to separate the plastics. If you think about it, after that all of that is done, 94% of it goes into landfills and into the ocean.
I just read a study that by 2050, we’ll have more plastic than fish in the oceans. In the developing countries, they don’t have recycling facilities. They either burn the plastic, which is awful or just dump it. Next is what kind of plastic? There are many, many different plastics. We’re using something called PETG. That’s a material that’s used for water bottles.
Of all of the materials that are one use, we use it and throw it away, 20% of that is using PETG. There is enormous amount of it produced every day, every hour. Number one. Number two, it’s a very inexpensive material. That’s why it’s used for this. Finally, it’s been tested by different authorities around the world because that’s a material that’s used for water bottles. It’s also a material that’s used for food containers.
That is the best material. It’s very stable. The reason it’s allowed to be used for food is because it’s very stable, and there is plenty of it, and it’s very inexpensive. Those three factors, the fact that so little of it gets recycled, the fact that there’s so much of it being produced every day, that’s what led us to do this. We mix it with fiberglass. Sixty-five percent of the material is plastic, and about 30% of the material is fiberglass. What fiberglass does is add rigidity to it.
If you go to Home Depot now, they sell fiberglass rods that replace an iron rod in cement. It’s light and very rigid. The other 5% is a little bit of our secret sauce. That’s where we add UV stabilizer because plastic, if you leave it outside in the sun, you can see it changes color and shapes. There is a 15-year color warranty on the product, so you don’t have to repaint it. You just need to pressure wash it.
Insulation QualityThat’s amazing. Let’s talk about the insulation quality of it. We talked earlier that standard building materials, a lot of smaller, tiny home or pre-manufactured homes are potentially made out of the same materials that we make regular homes out of, they’re just smaller. We have the RV market or the manufactured home market. They, too, are made out of a combination of sheets of plastic and maybe some fiberglass and maybe some steel. Yours is cast using this plastic. How does it hold up to the weather? Hot or cold?
We basically print an outside wall of the unit and inside wall in the unit. On the inside, we run what we call channels. Those are areas that we fill with insulation. That’s where all the electrical, mechanical, water, sewer lines go in. The standard that we use is R30. Again, in many Southern states, Sunbelt states, R30 is a requirement for the roof, but we have R30 on the sides of the building and also in the floor.
Again, when buildings are built, especially in one-story homes, you have a slab. Slab is cement and cement is just a poor insulator. You have R30 in the ceiling, R19 in the walls and who knows what is in the floor. Our unit is R30 all the way around. We print the roof, two side walls and the floor. We’re able to achieve this R30 all the way around.
Front and back, we use a cement, and we use a wall that’s prefab. The front and back has R19, but still overall unit is much better insulated. Now, some of our customers from the Northeast or even from Colorado want to have a higher insulation because it can get very cold. By just having a larger area between the interior and exterior wall, we can insulate up to R49.
In that respect, 3D printing is very easy way to customize construction depending on customer needs, where if you were to go with like a standard set of plans and you were to send it to Massachusetts and say, “Do you have higher insulation,” you would need to redraw the plans. The other thing that was 3D printing, I know you’ve probably seen our images, we have these curved shapes and some of our customers are saying, “Your units are sexy. They have curves.”
3D printing is a very easy way to customize construction depending on customer needs.
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It’s not just the way we design. In the traditional construction, if you have something other than a square or a rectangular, the cost of doing curves is three times what the normal construction is. With 3D printing, the cost of curves, it’s exactly the same thing. It’s faster than doing a sharp corner. That’s another a design advantage of the technology.
Breaking Into A New MarketI love that. That’s amazing. I want to switch gears here. Gene, at this point, what I want to know is for people reading, maybe they’re not in the real estate business. They’re certainly not in the manufacturing business. What I want to know is how do you break into a new market. This was a completely new market for you. You took an unconventional approach, broke in, and achieved some success pretty quickly. What were the secrets there? How did you do that?
The secrets are our customers. There are so many entrepreneurs who invest in real estate that some of the customers came from totally unexpected places. It took us a good three years to think of how this technology will work, finding materials, building our first prototype. The best story is the customer from Big Sur California, it’s in central California.
This customer of ours, the way he told me when he saw this prototype, when he saw it on Facebook, he jumped on his Harley, called his buddy who has another Harley, and they drove down to our factory. They have a beautiful property right over seeing Pacific Ocean. They just saw that this will solve their problem because it also gets very windy.
It’s a glamping resort. They have a lot of tents and other structures that don’t do that well in the wind. It also can get pretty cold there in the wintertime. They heard about insulation, and they just love the image and about 23% of the consumers are early adapters. This is a perfect example of an early adapter. He saw what we were talking about.
We were even talking about an ADU something totally different. He saw the image and he understood what it could do. The story with him is he bought a unit that retails for $40,000. He bought every upgrade. He wanted solar because he does his off grid there. He wanted a real high finish. The unit that usually retails for $40,000.
By the time he bought all the upgrades, and of course, it was tough to install because it’s very high in the mountains. It cost him $60,000. Once we installed it late last year, he was totally booked for months in advance, and he’s getting $750 per night. He’s going to get his money back in under 120 days. There was no way for me to imagine.
Again, I thought this unit could run for a couple thousand dollars a month. He owned the property. He’s an entrepreneur, and it’s story like this over and over again. Another customer who bought a backyard studio, he said he’s working from home. He wanted to have it for himself so he can have peace and quiet when he works or have calls with clients.
After we installed the unit, his teenage daughter took it over for a yoga studio. He now says, “Gene, I might need to buy another unit because other members of the family have other ideas for what this can be used for.” There are great stories like this. Of course, now our challenges or the challenge opportunity is to take some of these early examples into mass markets.
There are other glamping resorts. We now have a customer who is buying 25 of them because he wants to do a whole resort with units like this. There are other people who need them for yoga studios, and on and on. It’s an exciting time. I couldn’t imagine it, quite honestly, because I thought of this as an ADU that I could see. I’m not a glamper, or at least didn’t used to be a glamper. I went to Big Sur and just saw why people are paying that money. It’s a beautiful view, and it has beautiful hiking and camping. At night, if you want to stay in a nice and comfortable place and take a shower the next morning, our unit just makes perfect sense.
That’s great. I heard a lot of different things that I think are important to point out. Number one, you made an aesthetically pleasing product right off the bat. That’s what attracted people to you. That’s important. If you’re building something and you’re not paying attention to aesthetics, clearly, that’s a mistake. I’m sure you’d agree to that.
Secondarily, what you did is you made sure that you had upgrades, that you could take that sale and basically increase it by at least 50% using upgrades. That’s a very important strategy. Third, every unit you build becomes an ad for another customer who might want the same thing. These are basic marketing strategies that you seem to have implemented perfectly.
Addressing HomelessnessThat’s I think why when people stay in these places, they go, “I love this. I want to come back and maybe even get one from my own home.” The part of the problem that we haven’t talked about yet is the problem of cities right now dealing with the homeless, which is widespread. What I love about some of the things you’re doing is I know that you have been diligent about reaching out to these cities and trying to help them solve these problems with your products.
From the standpoint of giving back and contributing, I know that you’ve been offering some fantastic discounts to cities and counties who want to build homeless shelters. To me, that’s important because not only are you doing the right thing for your company, but you’re doing the right thing for society, too. That’s a business strategy as far as I’m concerned. It’s a good thing to do. You’re a good person to do it, but it tells people right away the type of business person you are, and they probably want to do business with you. Would you agree?
Absolutely. We are very mission oriented. Again, all the people have a different vision of what their home is. I don’t know the home you grew up in. I grew up in an apartment building. I was in the Soviet bloc. You’ve seen plenty of those pictures. We’re on the fifth floor of a five-story building. There was no elevator. I moved here to California. I live in the suburban area, very beautifully manicured.
Seven and a half years ago, I lived in Malibu. Again, great area. Look at what happened to the three areas where I lived most of my life. My apartment block has been bummed out. There are millions of people who lost their housing in Ukraine. This beautifully manicured areas in Los Angeles, we have 70,000 people homeless on our block.
I was out of town last week. When I came back right here, just down the street, I have two new homeless who are young people. I can’t imagine how they live in this environment. There are, like I’ve said, thousands of them here. Malibu, again, lived there when I just moved back to California. Five wildfires destroyed the area, and thousands of homes were lost.
My point is we are living in a time where there is just an increasing need for fast, inexpensive, sustainable housing. In every one of these examples, just from my personal experience, and it’s not just discounts, just like we’ve talked about how we have a unit and people can upgrade it. You can take the same unit and downgrade it.
We are living in a time where there is an increasing need for fast, inexpensive, and sustainable housing.
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The way to make it practical for the cities is to have less glass so that it’s easier to maintain and make them smaller. Now, instead of a $40,000 base price for a beautiful unit that has a Pacific Ocean, it still is very attractive. Now, it’s under $20,000 because it’s a little bit smaller. There’s no glass. The flooring that will last for a long time. Now, it’s a still attractive unit.
We have a client who we’re working with, and they said, “Look, we have a site for the homeless village, but people in the community are against it because they’re concerned of two things.” When their neighbors are going to be pulling up, they’re going to be driving through by this village, and a lot of these homeless villages are so unattractive that it’ll decrease the value.
The second thing was a lot of these homeless villages are built without bathrooms. What do people do? They go outside and so they’re using our unit as a huge benefit to the community because when somebody is going to be driving by, they will not know that it is necessarily a homeless housing. If you can build these small bathrooms or bathrooms right next to the units, again, it’ll be much more of a long-term solution.
It’s our mission, but we’re not a charity. We’re in this for profit. We want our investors and ourselves to do well. The advantage we have is we have technologies that makes it feasible to do quality job, quality housing. We got to get people off the streets. The problem with this is just, there is lack of affordable housing. There was a study done. Why are there less homeless in Cleveland versus LA?
In Cleveland, the average rent for an apartment is $800. When it’s only $800, people can patch together. Family and government, you can patch that together. When you’re in LA, and the average cost of one bedroom is $2,500, you can’t patch it together. All it takes is to lose a job. I’m sure the young man who lives in the street right here, just down the block, seems like healthy, seems intelligent, but it doesn’t take much. If you lose the job and the housing is so expensive, you just have no options. The overall goal is we got to increase the supply of affordable housing and got to find a solution for this because we’re the best country in the world, and we cannot have so many of our citizens live on the street and say it’s okay.
Getting To Know GeneI totally agree. The thing you said, of course, is, and this is the lesson, just look for the solution. If you’re in business now or you’re about to be in business, look for the solution just as Gene has here. It’s a great lesson. Now, Gene, we’re going to switch gears here. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions and get to know you a little bit better as well. Here’s the first question. Who, in all of space and time, which means forever, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
Tiny Homes: Free to Choose: A Personal StatementMy hero is Milton Friedman. When I first came to America, the first book I read was Free to Choose, and I was very fortunate to meet Milton a few years later. I had him autograph my book, but I wish I would have an hour with him to walk in the park. He was brilliant. He is very petite. He literally maybe was 5’1 or 5’2, but the brain power of somebody like this who have talked about market economy and how it can function, on a very theoretical level, came up with ideas about how to improve our educational system, how to make changes.
People around the globe follow that. Now, again, if you follow it in just absolute a lot of things change. He wrote this book 40 years ago, but I’ve always been wondering, and I have this book on my bookshelf, how can someone come up with such clever ideas in pure theory? Over the years, many parts of the economy and different countries around the world have used his ideas on how free enterprise can be helpful for things like education and social welfare, and so on and so forth. That’s my hero. I spent a couple of minutes with him and his wife. I wish I would have had an hour.
That’s a great story. I got to tell you it’s a lot of the great thinkers of the early century are still viable now. Their contribution is timeless. Milton Friedman is one of those people. I still see him quoted on television and on CNBC because the way he thought about the economy was universal. It wasn’t slanted in one direction. It wasn’t political. It wasn’t anything other than logic. I love that about him, too. Here’s the second question. Gene, this is the change the world question. Are you ready?
Let’s see.
What is it that you’re doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
It’s something we’ve talked about. I feel that having over half a million people who are homeless in this country is just wrong. We’ve got to find a solution. Having people lose their homes to wars to the climate crisis it’s not going to go away. It’s only going to get worse, unfortunately. We’ve seen acceleration in the last couple of years of conflicts and climate change. We need to go into figuring out what causes climate change. The reality is climate is changing. I think there is. I hope many others can put their make a difference. People got to have a nice-looking affordable housing. That’s my mission. I hope to be successful.
Connect With GeneI hope you do, too. That’s great. Gene, you did mention to me that you had something pretty special for our readers in this episode. First of all, one of the things we have not yet done is we haven’t shared the name of your website. Let me start by asking you what is the URL of your website.
It’s AzurePrintedHomes.com.
Great. Look, if you are interested in what Gene is doing and want to see the examples that he’s been talking about, the sites beautiful. There’s a lot of photography on the site. There’s even a way for you to pretty much put a deposit down for, I think it’s a few hundred dollars and secure a unit if you would be interested.
There’s another opportunity that Gene told me about, which is that he’s created a We Funder account to help bring in some growth money, as it turns out. If you’re intrigued by the idea and want to get in at a fairly early stage, you can go to WeFunder.com/Azure. Again, all of these URLs will be on Gene’s homepage on his show page over at YourFirstThousandClients.com. Head over there. More importantly, go to AzurePrintedHomes.com and check out these beautiful units and see if there’s a place in your backyard for something like this, too. I wish I had a backyard. I live in a condo. I’d like to put one in a lobby, but they won’t let me.
When people go to WeFunder.com/Azure, that’s our crowdfunding site. It’s not going to be open forever. It’s open now to friends and family, and it’ll become public next week. We’ll run the campaign just for a couple of months. It’s a very favorable valuation, and all disclosures are there. Our financial statements are there, our videos, address where people want to come out and see the units.
Total just honest disclosures, and it’s open for investment, even unaccredited investors. Crowdfunding allows a democratic way to let people participate in companies like ours. Minimum lesson is $250, but now if you invest $1,000, you can get a $1,000 discount on a $20,000 unit. For a $1,000 investment, you can get $1,000 off. Or if you make a $5,000 investment, you can get a 5% discount on $100,000 in one bedroom. It’s like you can get a discount. Again, all these bonuses are on the website, so you can become our partner and get the word out. If you’re interested in one of the units, you can buy it and get your money back. It’s a win-win.
Before anybody invests in anything, particularly a crowdfunding type of situation, it would be good to be able to get to know who’s running the company and what the values of the person are. That’s what we did in this episode, Gene. We did a deep dive on you, on the company, on your values, and why you’re here to do this. I’m glad that you took the time to spend with me in this episode. I appreciate your time. Readers, I’d head over there and just check out these beautiful units. They’re amazing. Gene, thank you for your time, and I look forward to our next conversation.
Thank you so much, Mitch. Good luck to you. Bye-bye.
Important links: Client Folio * Gene Edelman– LinkedIn * YourFirstThousandClients.com * Big Sur California * Free to Choose* * AzurePrintedHomes.com * WeFunder.com/Azure
The post Tiny Homes, Big Impact: 3D Printing Construction With Gene Eidelman appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Ditch the gut feeling and unlock the treasure chest of real estate wealth forever! In this episode, Jeramie Worley, the author of Myths, Management, and Mastery of Vacation Rentals, shows us the power of real estate research. Jeramie is an authority on short-term rentals. Today, he reveals how diving into market trends, uncovering hidden investment opportunities, and strategically planning your moves can fuel your net worth for years to come. Join us! Today, we’ll explore the current state of the real estate industry, uncover core lessons for success, and show you how research can be the key that unlocks your real estate riches. Tune in and get ready to transform your financial future!
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Listen to the podcast hereFrom Hidden Gems To Soaring Net Worth: The Power Of Real Estate Research With Jeramie WorleyIf you’re a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you. My software platform ClientFol.io has been helping hundreds of coaches save time on admin and get better results from their clients while generating powerful client testimonials for the work that they’ve done. The reason that I offer this is because I couldn’t find it when I needed it myself as a coach. We do this by tracking accountability and holding clients to it. We then collect actual stats on their weekly performance. After coaching someone for months using the system, you not only have proof that you could show them but you could show others how effective you are as a coach. If you’d like to give it a try, it’s $1. You can go to GetClientFolio.com and give it a spin. Now onto my amazing guest and his incredible story.
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He accidentally discovered a hidden flaw in the home brokerage business model. With nothing but relentless grit, drive, and advice from a kindergartner, he uncovered patterns that led him to a fortune. Starting as a realtor in 2006, he quickly became the number one independent brokerage in Branson, Missouri by understanding the market. When he realized exactly what drove that market, he exploded and decided to expand again. He’s going to tell us all about that. He’s also the esteemed author of Myths, Management & Mastery of Vacation Rentals and the host of Cocktails & Dreams Real Estate Podcast. Welcome, Jeramie Worley, to the show.
Thank you, Mitch. I’m very happy to be here
My pleasure, Jeramie. You have such an incredible story. Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell us how this all got started for you?
I had decided to make a career change in my life. I’m a trained actor. I have a degree in Theater and Directing. I’ve worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I’m an alumnus of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. I spent my time learning to use my craft, listen, be on stage, and create performances. I can tell you why I chose that career maybe a little bit down the road because it coincides with the same reasons why I chose a real estate career.
At the end of one career, my priorities had shifted because I was in Los Angeles and the economy was beginning to tank. There was only one other passion that I had in my life. I didn’t want to live in California because I just had a daughter. It was miles and miles away from my family and family is very important to me. I wanted my children to grow up around their family.
I was traveling back to Missouri. I spent my last $3,500 on a moving truck to get back to Missouri. I got my real estate license and then had to begin this journey up a mountain to I didn’t know where. I just knew that I was passionate about real estate. It was a pathway towards wealth but I didn’t know how to get there and that’s where I started.
Out of curiosity, being a real estate broker is every housewife’s ultra part-time activity. Few of them make a few dollars here and there. There are people like you who take it on real seriously and turn it into something much more. What would you say is the opportunity in 2024? This happened in 2006. Is that right?
It did. When I got my real estate license, there were over 840 real estate agents in my market. I’m in a small market. To give you an idea, there are normally maybe 400 to 500 agents who can survive in this market and only 20% of those are working a full-time gig. You have to sell about $3 million worth of real estate volume in my market to make a living wage. 80% of those agents are doing less than $1 million in volume. You’re right. There are a lot of housewives, waiters, and plumbers out there working in the real estate business. The opportunity in 2024 is in niche specialization. If we can no longer be general practitioners of real estate, we have to find something to specialize in and that’s how you get out in front of the pack early in your career.
Myths, Management And Mastery Of Vacation MarketsYou wrote a book about vacation markets. The name of the book is Myths, Management & Mastery of Vacation Rentals. Out of curiosity, because I’m always wondering about this, where are the myths? What did people think that isn’t true or what is it that people don’t know about vacation markets? Most people think, “We can have a month off and live in our second home and then Airbnb for the rest of the time.” Is that normal? Is that the way people think? Is that wrong?
Myths, Management, and Mastery of Vacation RentalsIt is normal. Even before Airbnb and before any large-scale data that we had, it was Harvey Dent who did large-scale real estate demographics in his Dent report, which is controversial. Not everybody follows his line of thinking, although he had some major wins and misses. The general idea of real estate demographics and the lifestyle trend of human beings as they grow up and buy real estate still makes sense, except that the demographic is changing but the overall arc is we’re on our own. You might camp out on somebody’s couch for a while because you’re young, twenty-something, trying to make it move into a new town.
You get an apartment, maybe get married, buy a house, maybe buy a second home, and then downsize again into retirement. That overall arc doesn’t change except for the fact that the starting point for people to own that second home, that American dream of owning that place where you can go, recharge, and relax has gotten the age demographic of people that are able to buy that has been reduced considerably. It used to be around 55 to 65 but Millennials have moved into the largest purchasers of short-term rentals and vacation homes in the market. Eighteen percent of Millennials are buying second homes before they buy their primary home as well, which is a very interesting statistic.
They’re not buying it for the same reason as before. They’re buying it as a business opportunity, it sounds like.
In some cases but when you think about it, what we’ve discovered about the Millennials that we’ve worked with in selling regular residential real estate versus second home ownership is that in a lot of cases, especially in large urban areas, Millennials don’t want to own anything. They want to rent. They want a maintenance-free life. Lifestyle is more important than maintaining the thing but they still want to own something. They still want to own a piece of ground somewhere.
Second Home OwnershipThey’ll go and buy something within an hour and a half away from that major metro because they want the opportunity to buy something. They want to personalize something. This is all demographics. People want to put their finger on it. They want that place to go that’s building equity. Everybody wants to build equity. Everybody wants that second home, that piece of ground, that little corner of America that they can go in and hang their hat.
Our personal home isn’t a huge asset. For some of us, it’s a liability because it doesn’t make us any money. It costs money to maintain. We’re gaining equity in that home but the Airbnb business model has given people maybe a bigger vision for what they could do with some of their disposable income and some of their assets in those medium and long-term buckets. It certainly has given the average Joe pathway to tremendous wealth and cashflow. That’s how I have seen it work in my life and the lives of the people that I coach.
Our personal home isn't a huge asset. It's a liability because it doesn't make us any money. It costs money to maintain.
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Although the desire to own something hasn’t changed, the desire to own it in a different or unique way has, is what I’m hearing. I don’t know about you but when I finally got to the point where I could make a purchase and buy a home, I did so. I was 28 at the time. The first piece of property that I owned was a four-decker building. It was a four-unit apartment building in maybe not the nicest part of the town in Boston, Massachusetts.
I was thrilled that I was able to live there almost rent-free because the three other units paid for my rent and all expenses, including the mortgage. For me, that was my very first venture into real estate. Ever since then, with one small exception after a divorce, I’ve owned where I lived. The part where it’s interesting to me is the secondary market and the young people who are approaching this differently. If you believe that this is a trend that will continue, what comes next? Is what comes next with no ownership at all? You said both when you were describing that young person’s desire before.
Let’s back up and talk a little bit about the philosophy and history of second home ownership. When I moved from California, I didn’t have any real estate training whatsoever. I had bought one home for myself that I had sold and moved to California, rented, and then came back. I didn’t know much about owning a real estate business. I had read a lot of books on flipping and owning real estate. I didn’t have any money at that time.
The broker that I was with didn’t provide any real training. I was at a Realty Executives business model where I had to pay a certain amount of transaction fee and a monthly fee. If I didn’t produce every day when I showed up, I was going negative. There was this intense drive for me to succeed. I had eighteen months of learning the real estate curve before the market crashed in 2008. To give people a frame of reference, in 2008, there were no buyers anywhere in the marketplace. Not only that but when you were lucky enough to find a buyer, there was no bank that would be willing to give you a loan for that.
Here I am in Branson, Missouri with a new real estate license, trying to sell second homes because weren’t a lot of first-time homebuyers come into Branson. It’s more of a retirement second home destination to give you a frame of reference. Ten million visitors come to Branson every year. The population is about 20,000. That’s the overall demographic. What do you do? You’ve got to feed your family. I began to recognize patterns.
There were only two people that were buying at that time. One was investors. There were a lot of bottom feeders. There were people looking to scoop up great deals. The other was people who had a need to keep their family together, even in dark economic times. This was the first major a-ha that I had. At that time, the demographic of people who wanted to buy a second home in a resort community were people who were probably 55 to 65. Their kids were in late high school or maybe early college and were starting to connect with spouses and form families of their own.
Mom and Dad, the patriarch of the family, were desperate to find a way to hold that family unit together. They would look for a second home in a resort community that they could offer and provide for the whole family to come. It’s my understanding that once kids move out, they don’t come back. They were looking for a way to do that and the economy was in shambles at that time. Those properties, in addition to providing that person the ability to rent it out when they weren’t using it, for the first time in history, could buy a house that was big enough for them and their entire family and afford it.
When people would come to Branson and they had $65,000 that they wanted to invest in a 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo, and this was several years ago so you can see how prices have changed considerably, they would hire me to take them out and help them find a 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo. I would say, “How many people do you have in your family?” They’d say, “There are eight of us.” I was like, “How are you all going to fit in a 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo?” They’re like, “We’re a close family.” I was like, “Have you slept on an air mattress? Do you know what this feels like?”
I began to show them how they could take that $65,000 and use it as a down payment. On a $300,000 property, there was a 5-bedroom property that would earn this much per month. I began to show them the numbers behind the short-term rental economy and how with very minimal risk, they could earn a considerable amount of income and make this property profit wildly for them. I showed the amazing tax shelter for them.
Understanding The Short-Term Rental GameIt was a yes almost every time. I would check on those people weeks and months later, “How’s it going?” They say, “Jeramie, this property is kicking but we want to buy another one.” That became the driving force behind it. Kelly and I also were buying them at the time and learning the management behind them so we would provide general advice to our clients for free because we wanted to help them succeed.
My book became the system that I used to answer the first 50 regular questions that people had. Every time somebody would come to my market, they would get excited. We’d look at properties and then also they would go back home. I would call to check on them as good salespeople do. They’d be like, “Jeramie, we had a great time with you. We were in Branson but I’m busy with my laundry and my kids’ college and soccer.”
I intentionally put my face on the book so that I could hand them a book, they could drive home with it, put it on their counter, and my beady little eyes would be staring at them until they opened up that book. I would call them back and say, “Have you read the book? I’m not calling to sell you anything. I’m calling to check on your knowledge and education.” They’d be like, “I’m going to crack it open tonight.” That book is a class in a book.
It’s a step-by-step version of everything that you need to know to understand the short-term rental game. It allowed me to have engaging conversations with them to keep them excited and buying. I felt purposefully great because I was helping them hold that family unit together. It created a lot of joy for me to be able to see that happen in somebody’s life.
I’ll tie that back into the reason why I was in entertainment. I wanted to create joy in people’s lives. Making somebody laugh and forget their troubles, for me, was a great joy. Helping somebody break the barrier of financial freedom is also a tremendous joy for me. That’s why I’ve found myself hanging in this industry. Even though the demographic has changed and it’s younger, the Millennial demographic wants to own a piece of America and build something unique and special to them. They want to have a retreat. All of the reasons are the same, even though the demographic has changed somewhat.
The reasons are the same. The demographics have changed. Some of the structures that you described are what I would call education-based selling. What you were doing was instead of saying, “You want a 2-2. We could find you one of those. Let’s look at this one.” You were doing something much different than that. You were trying to understand the reason why they were there and what they were looking for. From what I’m hearing, you realize that there were some patterns here and reasons why these people kept coming to your area, looking for these types of places.
The Current State Of AffairsJeramie, this goes back a while since you started doing this. What has changed? We are in an economy where I don’t know if you want to call it a bubble economy. No one knows if there’s a depression coming. No one knows anything and seems to care. What is your impression of the state of affairs? This will date us to March 2024 but at the same time, it will provide perspective to people who have been doing this a long time or have purchased real estate throughout their lives. What do you think?
The biggest challenge that I’m dealing with in my business is helping people understand this massive paradigm shift in this industry. I feel like a canary in the coal mine like I did before Airbnb existed. I was shouting from the rooftops telling people, “You guys have got to get into the Airbnb business.” It was the vacation rental business at that time and then it was the short-term rental business because there’s more than just vacation rentals.
There are hospital stays in major metros, big sports games, and college towns. There are a lot of reasons why somebody would want to use a short-term rental above and beyond vacation. Now, it’s like Kleenex. It’s no longer a tissue. It’s an Airbnb. That whole lexicon of the industry has changed. Back then, I had to lie to people to get them to buy an Airbnb. What I mean by that is a 5-bedroom, 3-bath would earn about $50,000 in gross income in my market.
People didn’t believe it. You’re a salesman. You’re like, “I don’t want to listen to you anymore because the words you’re saying are gross and wild. You’re making numbers up out of the air.” I would tell them, “You would only earn $25,000. Go ahead, go for it.” They were happy with that. When they earned $50,000, they were like, “This did way better than I thought.” “I know. Do you want to buy another one? It’s time to add to the portfolio.”
People were more willing to take risks back then than they are now. They had more faith back then than they are now. They want data and information. It’s good and bad. I’ll tell you why. Back then, I had to beg people when I sold them a property like, “This is one of the best reasons why you can be such a great relationship-based salesperson. The people that I sold the property to trusted me enough with their tax returns.”
I had to ask them for their tax returns for their Schedule C or Schedule E, depending on how they took title of the property. I would black out their name and Social Security number. I would show that to the next prospective buyer. I would even connect them and say, “Here’s a couple of families that I’ve done business with. Feel free to give them a call. This is legit and real.”
I dragged so many people into the short-term rental business, kicking and screaming only to have increased their net worth tremendously. The buyer has changed. It’s no longer a person wandering into the short-term rental asset class saying, “Show me how to make money.” There’s data available to people. Most of it is bad. They wander about exactly what income a 2 bedroom versus a 5 bedroom will do. They’ll wander in looking at occupancy rates and they need to have access to data.
If they don’t have access to data, they’re not going to make a purchase. If that particular property doesn’t have a twelve-month history of income, then it’s not a favorable property to them. They would highly favor a property that did over one that didn’t, which makes it tough for new construction, new developments, and new areas.
Look For An Opportunity, Not A DealThe reason why I said it’s good and bad is it’s good because they are making smart decisions based on educated guesses and data. In some cases, they’ll miss out on opportunities. In my book, I always tell people to look for an opportunity, not a deal. I learned this back in 2008 when everybody came out of the woodwork looking to buy a foreclosure.
Look for an opportunity, not a deal.
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They’re like, “I want a foreclosure and a short sale.” I’m like, “First of all, there’s nothing short about a short sale and there’s nothing real sexy about a foreclosure. You can get a deal but a lot of people don’t realize the mold, issues, and unkept properties that you have to get into. You know that the property that you had took extensive repair.” People don’t realize the cost of that. I began to ask people a question, “If I could find you a motivated seller, would that be okay for you, as opposed to a foreclosure?”
Back then in 2008 when I was listing properties, I primarily had to hold people’s hand and get them to show up with $20,000 to be able to close on the property because they were upside down on the loan. Helping people exit a property that would no longer cost them money, even though it costs them money to exit was the sales pitch. I found people who were willing to pick up good deals or opportunities. It helped me sell more property by reframing the thought process in somebody’s mind. We still see people miss opportunities in the short-term rental world but for the most part, if you don’t have access to high-quality data, you’re still guessing.
If you don't have access to high-quality data, you’re still guessing.
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I’d like to look at the changes to back when you started until 2024. Back when you started, people could invest $65,000 and potentially 5X to 10X their money in 10 or 15 years. I’ll ask you a series and you can answer them any way you want. 1) Does that still hold true in 2024? 2) There were lots of opportunities back then. Sometimes people don’t realize they are opportunities. In 2024, are there lots of opportunities?
3) Going back to the first part of what I asked, we’re in a different financial climate. What is your prediction or thinking about where this is taking us? We have the idea that interest rates will go down but who knows? Maybe they won’t. We have the idea that the economy is good but maybe it’s not. There are a lot of unknowns, maybe even more so than ever before. Where do you stand on all of this? How are you looking at this world?
We could hang out here for a long time if you want. The answer is there’s always a good deal if you’re looking for it. It might be harder to find but we have witnessed the short-term rental asset class be born and matured right in front of our very eyes. We haven’t had the opportunity to do that with any sub-asset class like storage units. We’ve seen it happen with maybe Uber. The sharing economy has created a lot of new things that we’ve been able to see mature.
We’ve seen a lot of people who have no knowledge of the short-term rental industry. We’ve seen a massive surge and increase in short-term rental inventory and buyers. We’re seeing a consolidation phase. The massive problem in the short-term rental industry is that a lot of people came rushing into the industry because they heard we could make money but they didn’t necessarily realize that they had to be good hosts and they were getting into the hospitality business.
We’re seeing a lot of people scramble to find a good property manager. They don’t have to handle the property so their income is reduced because they’re paying for that property manager. That’s another reason why they’re scrutinizing their numbers and why they’ve got some assets. Occupancies are relatively low because the economy is tightening the availability of disposable income for families. Maybe people don’t go on vacation.
The cool thing about a place like Branson is that it’s in driving distance from half of the nation. Missouri has eight border states. A 3 to 6-hour drive is half the United States. Branson tends to be a recession-resistant town. The short-term rental industry tends to be a recession-resistant asset class. Think about it. Four families can pool their resources and get something much nicer and cheaper than four individual hotel rooms. Plus, you can cook all of your meals right there.
Instead of paying $75 to go to IHOP, you can spend a couple of cents on eggs and sausage and make some scrambled eggs for people. It’s a much better, wholesome, and even healthier experience for some people while they’re sipping coffee and looking at a gorgeous lake view. This is one of the reasons why a town like Branson succeeded wildly when it did. Most of America has maybe heard of Branson because they’ve heard it being made fun of on The Simpsons or something like that. They think of Dolly Parton and Mel Tillis. They think of old, retired, and washed-up people.
Branson has some of the most beautiful lakes, the best fishing, and the absolute best shopping, outlet stores, and entertainment all within driving distance of half the nation. For the longest time, it was the nation’s best-kept secret because the average home price was so low compared to the ADR, Average Daily Rate, or that per night rent that somebody could rent the property for. Branson was commanding the same level of income on a 4 to 6-bedroom that Orlando was but the inventory was considerably less.
People had the opportunity to win big in Branson by purchasing about anything. Anything that anybody bought from 2006 to 2012 has increased in value. From 2006 to 2012, short-term rentals were the only asset class in Branson that increased in value over time. When other assets were subject to the overall macro market trend of dipping in value before they came back up in value, short-term rentals continued to tick upwards and shut down a lot of the foreclosures in a lot of the communities because people switched over and started renting these houses out. In a lot of ways, the short-term rental asset class protected a lot of communities.
One of the things we’ve discovered is that because so many people rushed into the industry, the industry is experiencing fragmentation, which is creating opportunities. That fragmentation is more for the user, not for the buyer of the asset. It’s like, “Me and you, Mitch, we want to go on vacation. We want to go somewhere in Colorado.” If we were going to stay in a hotel and we wanted to go to Motel 6, you’d be like, “Jeramie, I’m not a Motel 6 guy. I’m more of a Ritz-Carlton guy.” I’m like, “Let’s go stay at a Ritz-Carlton.”
You and I both know what to expect from those brands but the short-term rental industry, for the most part, doesn’t have those brands yet. Some are emerging but there are no brandings. We are subject to reading the reviews of past guests every single time on every single property that we want to stay at but if somebody were to come along and create a branded short-term rental, that’s a massive opportunity. That’s what we’re coaching a lot of our new clients to do.
Real Estate Research: Create a branded short-term rental now. That’s a massive opportunity.I also became a shareholder in a company called Vrolio. They asked me to take over as CEO to begin to lead this company to success. Vrolio is a data provider. It provides the absolute best investment-grade data for short-term rentals, mid-term rentals, and soon-to-be long-term rentals. This is where the biggest opportunity lies. It ties into everything that I’ve previously said.
We’ve got a recession looming, these recession-resistant asset classes, and a situation where, for the most part, some markets are overbought. The reason why I say some markets is because there are incredible opportunities out there and I classify those as emerging markets. These are markets where people are looking for a destination getaway, not a busy vacation getaway. They’re looking for a retreat and a unique property that they can take a picture of themselves and their significant other in front of. They’re looking for those adventure stays and unique things. They create awe in emotion the minute you drive up to them.
One example of an emerging market would be outside of Gatlinburg, which is an established market, which is overbought. It’s hard to make the numbers work because you have to go in and spend millions to be able to buy an established property that probably has a lot of deferred maintenance, or it’s a new property so you’re buying it top end of market value. You have to make that property work as a host. You have to be a successful host to make emerging market properties succeed.
Cosby, which is about 45 miles outside of Gatlinburg but still close to hiking, is farther away from the attractions but still a great destination vacation where somebody could buy and earn 75% of the income that they could earn in the proper actual attraction city. The acquisition price is so much lower. The opportunity to get appreciation is much higher. The opportunity to increase rents is much higher. Another example of this is Omaha, Arkansas.
In Branson, Missouri, ten million people come to stay per year but maybe people are tired of staying in a condo. If they wanted to drive twenty minutes farther and have a nice lake view property in the woods and it’s a little bit more country than having people stare at them or having beach towels off of every rail and every condo complex, and they would rather see roadrunners, turkeys, pileated woodpeckers, and things like that, those emerging markets are where the best opportunities lie.
Those emerging markets are where the best opportunities lie.
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The next best opportunity in those established markets is tired hosts. You and I have heard of tired landlords. Many investors for years bought tired landlord lists. We’re looking for tired hosts, people who have their hand up and say, “I’m ready to exit. Let’s give you a good deal.” Vrolio, the company that I’ve bought into and led, is the only place where we can go get tired landlord lists and provide them to the people that we coach.
Let’s broaden this out a little bit. We have people reading from all over the country and maybe even other countries. What are the 4 lessons that you can extract from your 15 to 20 years of experience that I can apply in 2024? Take into account the date and time that we live and the fact that the economy is getting tighter and a lot of people don’t have the cash they did earlier when things were back in the 2000 era, which isn’t that long ago and the economy was much better. That’s my opinion but I think it was. What should people do in 2024? We can look for tired hosts. That’s one. Should we start to think more about the traditional market again or do you believe that vacation rentals are still where the opportunity and future are? What is your opinion?
There is a ton of steam behind the short-term rental industry. Airbnb reported that 1.64 million nights were rented in September 2023 alone. It’s a $64 billion industry. There’s a lot of steam behind this industry and every industry has a skyrocketing phase. It’s healthy to see a pullback in any market. This is where we are. We’re in the healthy pullback of the short-term rental industry.
The opportunities still exist. When I coach people on fully understanding the power of the short-term rental industry, I take them through three examples. We probably don’t have time to go in-depth into the examples but to skim the surface, when you look at long-term rental versus short-term rental and the actual cashflow, when you do a napkin pitch, I call it, you can go to my website, the Worley Real Estate Network and Worley Real Estate Network YouTube channel.
On there, I’ve got these pitch videos where I show you exactly on the back of a napkin in three minutes how a short-term rental will outperform a long-term rental. It’s three and a half times the cashflow. It’s a massive a-ha when you walk somebody through that illustration. A 3 bedroom, 2 bath long-term rental might only earn $12,000 to $20,000 per year annually. It’s the most gross income you can get. That’s a human being occupying your property 365 days of the year.
A short-term rental off of a 60% vacancy rate will produce three and a half times the cashflow. I can show people how the same 3 bedroom, 2 bath will do $45,000, $55,000, or $60,000, depending on the market. By that same illustration, I can show people how a 9-bedroom short-term rental will outperform a 12-unit apartment complex. Using the same logic, I can show people how a 12-bedroom short-term rental will outperform a 15,000-square-foot commercial building.
What you’re doing is significantly increasing the amount of involvement the owner has in the property. Whereas in a long-term rental, you rent it from somebody. You pay your rent and everybody’s happy. As in a short-term rental, as a tired host after two years of doing this, you want your life back. There are certainly ups and downs. We are coming to the point in our interview where I need to ask you some very personal questions. Some of them are fun and I hope you like them.
What you shared is very valuable. There’s going to be a way for people to get closer to working with you and understanding what you do. We’re going to get into that in a minute. First, let me ask you these questions. I’ve been asking these questions for years. I’ve been hosting my show since 2017. It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve always enjoyed doing it. These questions have been the cornerstone of the entire show. Here’s the first one. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
This is probably maybe a trite answer but for me, the answer is not trite at all. It would be Jesus Christ, simply because it’s taken me all of my life to move from obedience and honor to love for this human being who walked the planet. It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to lead that I finally understood the mind and the heart of Jesus Christ. Take away the majesty, Messiah, and miracles.
We have an individual who cared so deeply for twelve people that He lived with them for three years. Three of those people were his leadership team and he spent even more time with them. In addition to exemplifying the things that he was teaching, he taught large groups of people and then pulled them aside and said, “This is how I taught them. This is why I taught them this.” The best thing that he could do was to leave them. I used to walk around.
If you study the leadership style of Jesus, it is incredible because it’s compassionate, firm, and intelligent. When the disciples would come to him and say, “Rabbi, you have to feed these people.” He would say, “You feed them.” He sent them out to go get the resources. They had to find somebody willing to provide resources. Those resources were brought to Jesus and He multiplied them. It’s funny though because if I were to go back and I would ask Jesus, we would all want to say, “What’s the most important thing that you said?”
Somebody already asked him that. It’s written. What is the greatest of all the commandments? It’s to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. That’s it. I would want to go back, be in that presence, absorb, learn, and have a moment with this person who split time in half. There are BC and AD. I look forward to having that conversation with Him someday because that’s the pathway that I’m on. I’ll get my chance.
You will. It’s funny because He’s popular on this show. We hear him come up a lot as an answer to that question but I’ve rarely even heard a similar answer twice. Everybody has a different reason. I love that idea. I’ve heard people say Elon Musk. Sure, we know who Elon is and all that but there’s a different reason that everyone has. The beauty of this question is it allows us to understand why.
You want to meet a historical figure. We’ve had people say Churchill but it wasn’t because he was famous that they wanted to meet him. It was because they could learn something from him. That’s exactly what I heard from you too. Great answer. Thank you very much. Here’s the grand finale, the change the world question. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
I feel like my business partner, Erica Muller, and I are on the pathway to change the way real estate investing is done from here on out. If I were to ask you, “Go find me a 1-pound gold nugget somewhere in America and you have 15 seconds to do it,” what are you going to do? By the time you pick up the phone, your time is up. What if I asked you to find me five 1-pound gold nuggets somewhere in America? With the software that Erica has developed and the plan that we’ve come up with together, with a couple of clicks, you can log on and based on the amount of cash that you have that you want to invest and the amount of return that you’d like to get, you can find exactly it in America. We can analyze 15,000 real estate markets at once and find exactly where you want to invest.
Let’s say the value of a 1-pound gold nugget is $22,000 and I wanted $22,000 in cashflow every year from one property, I type that into the software and it will show me lines of cities and property types where I could go get that return. That starts the process of my education. Through the process of acquisitions and some more engineering that we want to build, once we acquire that long-term rental data, we’ll have short-term rental, mid-term rental, and long-term rental data right down to the actual address. When you type in in a few clicks exactly what you want your return to be, we’ll be able to show you the city and exactly which properties within that city to buy that will help you get that return.
What is the URL of the product that you’re talking about?
Go to Vrolio.com. That’s the website where you can learn about the product. It is a B2B product so it’s not a B2C product. It’s a product that we provide to real estate professionals so that they can white-label the general overall consumer. They can come to us and get a little demo of it. Real estate professionals subscribe to the product and then they can give for free this information to their real estate investors who are their customers or clients, their real estate team if they’re a property management company, or their acquisitions team if they’re real estate investors, or the appraisers and lenders. Any real estate professional who wants access to this extremely accurate data can subscribe.
It’s like the MLS model, would you say? That used to be a subscription only to the industry model. It’s changing as you know. There are websites that access MLS where you can be a consumer, look up, and get the same information.
It is why we have such a heart for real estate agents. We’re no longer in the information age. We’ve exited that some time ago. Information isn’t that valuable anymore because it’s so free and prevalent. We’re in the automation age. We’re in this AI age where we want things done for us. I recognized all of the trends in the industry so I’m realizing that investors want automated underwriting devices. They don’t want to spend 2 hours underwriting 10 properties. Agents don’t either.
Our software allows you to underwrite 10 properties in 2 minutes. It’s ridiculously easy and fast. Data is sexy. A lot of people like data. Data by itself is numbers. The data has to be normalized. We have to use the data to ask better questions. Here’s a use case that answers one of the past questions that you asked. For example, my wife, who is transactional, had some investor clients who came to town and got a question that she’s never been asked ever before in history.
Real Estate Research: Use the data to ask better questions.It was, “I’m looking for a short-term rental that’s a low performer in an area where there are high performers because I want to get a deal.” Luckily, she subscribes to the software. She gets in there and finds a pocket of high earners, highlights the low earners, cross references the MLS, and has one on the market. She has clients coming in town to hopefully sell them a property that they can buy at a discount and then restore.
If people want to get a hold of you, they’d go to WorleyRealEstateNetwork.com. Is that correct?
Yes. They can go there and contact us through the forms. They can also email my admin, Beth, for access to the masterclass that I’m very willing to give out to people. It’s that intro-level masterclass for short-term rentals. It’s everything that you need to know. I designed it for real estate professionals. If you’re a consumer, you’re going to get way more than you bargained for but it’s all pro-level education. It will serve them.
At that time, they can always talk to my assistant Beth about getting connected with a great real estate agent. I’m old school so I like to connect with people and get them in touch with somebody fast. Automated forms are good but I like to serve humans and make sure that we get a chance to talk to them and find out what their investment goals are. Also, pair them with a real estate agent who also makes a good fit for them.
The gift sounds amazing. It’s a full course with lots of great information in a series of videos. You can access this gift by sending an email to WorleyAC1@Gmail.com. Jeramie, it’s been a pleasure. It was great meeting you at BA. We spent some time together. I was interviewed for your show and you’re interviewed for mine. I enjoyed our time together again as well.
I did too. I connected with you when you were a guest on my show. You’re so generous with your time and actual personal story. Of all the people that I’ve interviewed, it is one of the most spectacular. It’s an honor to be associated with you. You have a long list of accolades. I want to be like you. I’m not so big on football. The Kansas City Chiefs are my home. They won the Super Bowl. If you could get me a Mitch Russo jersey, I would wear it. You’re a tremendous man and I admire you.
Thank you, Jeramie. I’ll work on the t-shirt but for now, it’s not in the cards. Have a great time. We will talk again soon.
We’ll see you, Mitch.
Important Links ClientFol.io * Myths, Management & Mastery of Vacation Rentals* * Cocktails & Dreams Real Estate Podcast * Vrolio * Worley Real Estate Network * Worley Real Estate Network – YouTube * WorleyAC1@Gmail.com * Show – Past episode on Worley Real Estate Network featuring Mitch Russo
About Jeramie WorleyJeramie accidentally perfected the second home brokerage business model in the worst real estate market in history. With nothing but grit, relentless drive, and the advice of a kindergartener, he excelled in recognizing patterns in real estate.
Fast forward to today, he is founder of the Worley Real Estate Network, A servant leader, with the privilege of uniting a global real estate team brokered by eXp Realty, with
HQ in Branson, MO. His team serves:
Agents
Investors
Real Estate Developers
Buyers and Sellers of Short Term Rental Real Estate Portfolios
Retail and Commercial Buyers and Sellers
Large Real Estate Project Managers
Jeramie served as a top-producing realtor beginning in 2006. He then opened a brokerage in 2011 and quickly became the number one independent brokerage in the Branson, MO area. In 2022 he made the decision to scale that successful model around the globe.
Jeramie is the author of the highly acclaimed MYTHS, MANAGEMENT & MASTERY OF VACATION RENTALS, second edition. His service to STR real estate investors has earned him regular speaking engagements on the topic of team building, short-term rental investing, and getting a greater return on your time. He is the host of the Cocktails and Dreams Real Estate Podcast and is looking to connect with people who want to share their unique secrets to success.
Get a sample of his inquisitive and entertaining style here: https://cocktailsanddreams.buzzsprout.com/1998864
Jeramie’s primary goal is to expand his network with other service-oriented leaders.
Please send any inquiries by email to Jeramie’s assistant, Beth, at worleyac1@gmail.com
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Forget features and benefits! This episode unlocks the secret weapon of exploding sales: customer-focused storytelling. Join Jason Friedman, a storytelling powerhouse and CEO of CXFormula, LLC, as he reveals how to craft narratives that resonate deeply with your ideal customer. Learn how to tap into their desires, address their pain points, and guide them on a journey of transformation – all through the power of story. Discover how to ditch generic sales pitches and ignite genuine connections that lead to higher profits, increased sales, and a community of raving fans. This episode is packed with actionable storytelling techniques you can implement today to watch your business soar.
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Listen to the podcast hereCustomer-Focused Storytelling: The Profit-Driving Sales Strategy With Jason FriedmanWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out tune in and extract wisdom you could use to grow your business with your first 1,000 clients. If you’re a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you today. It’s my own software platform called Client Folio and has helped hundreds of coaches save time on admin and get better results for their clients while generating powerful client testimonials for the amazing work that you’re doing. How? By tracking accountability and holding clients to it.
No other platform provides you with the power to access a library of custom accountability questions and then places to control your clients’ hands to keep track of their most critical stats and goals. With Client Folio, you could do all of that and more including perfect session homework, client reports, and everything you can imagine including reminders. Want to give it a try? How about a dollar? Why don’t you go to Client Folio? That’s ClientFol.io and give it a spin. Now on to my amazing guest in his incredible story. I am very excited to welcome our guests.
A former theater enthusiast who’s now a Serial Entrepreneur and Coach dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and small business owners grow and scale their businesses. That sounds a lot like what I do. Wait a minute, what’s going on here? Without flair for the dramatic and master of storytelling, he founded and exited just five successful companies. Now as CEO of CX Formula, he’s teaching businesses how to captivate their audience using his proprietary kinetic customer formula. Now, I am very excited about hearing him describe all of this.
He’s also at the helm of spotlight brand services guiding eCommerce brands to success on Amazon and beyond. Now, join us as we dive into the insights of a leader whose strategies have earned him accolades like Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year and propelled multiple companies to the top of the Inc. 5000 list. Welcome, Jason Friedman, to the show.
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here with you.
After what? Six years? Yeah. Every six years, we try. I’m kidding. We’ve hardly ever had anyone come back. Why? It’s because we have so many people we want to talk to and we have only really done about 400 interviews and we still have a lot more to go.
I appreciate being part of that very special group. I’m excited here.
Start At TheaterMy pleasure, Jason. More importantly, Jason is a leader in every way, and that’s another reason why I’m excited to have him today. Jason, let’s go back to the beginning. You said something about being in the theater in your intro. Tell me more about how all this started for you.
As a young boy, I went to summer camp and got struck by the theater bug. A buddy of mine was auditioning for a show. I went there for moral support and found myself in the back helping out the guy building the set and playing with lights and the sound. My friend, Bill, got into the show and I got onto the stage crew and one thing led to another. Years later, I ended up going to college to be a lighting designer and technical director for theater. Went on to tour with some music groups like Rush, Flee with Mac, and Peter Gabriel.
Then went on to do some more legit theater shows with Man of La Mancha, Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof, and Mitch. The equal sign of all of that was it was like a Mr. Miyagi wax on wax off experience. All through doing this my whole life, I kind of grew up with this unbelievable training that I didn’t know what it was teaching me and one day I learned.
What it was was I understood about an audience. I understood about customers who are distracted, have crazy lives, and have crazy days. They come to the theater and they forget about everything. They tune in. They get engaged. They have a transformation because everything that’s happening on stage is designed to help them have that transformation. It’s designed for them. We use all the senses, the sights, smells, texture, taste touch, and everything to try and move them in some way. I got a real dose of how to do that over 20 years. That’s what I learned. That’s my that’s my journey.
Everything that's happening on stage is designed to help the audience have a transformation.
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I think it was the lead guitar player for Lynyrd Skynyrd many years ago was confronted by a journalist who said, “Actually, your music isn’t very good,” and his response was, “I don’t really care what you think because the people who come see me they get to forget the problems for two solid hours and I think that’s where the price of admission.”
That’s why I love to go, not that I’m sitting around thinking about my problems in general, but I just love to be transported in the theater environment. I think I told you I go to concerts all the time, going tonight, and I go sometimes two or three times a month because the venues are so close to me because they’re always a celebration. They’re very special. They’re just great and I don’t need expensive seats either sometimes I’m in the back. What I love is the immersion. I love the energy of the crowd and of course, I love the music as well. You’ve obviously learned a lot about this. Help me understand how this applies to coaching or other coaches or coaching programs. Give me a feel for the translation of this.
Customer-FocusedYeah. My first business when I left the theater if you will, was helping, at the time, businesses mostly retailers and entertainment-type venues create an intentionally designed experience for their customers. How do we bring that amazing experience that people have when they go to the theater they go to the rock concerts into the store into the company into the fundraising efforts of a university or a hospital or Healthcare institution. How do we start to take the customer audience and bring them on a journey? Where they get bigger results.
Where they engage more. They buy more products and services. They leave more positive feedback and reviews. I built a business doing that. We ultimately ended up doing nine figures in sales over the duration. Sold that business and I helped Fortune 1,000 entrepreneurial businesses. You name it of all shapes and sizes do that. Fade out, fade in after my non-compete expired after I sold that business, I started CX Formula and I’ve been working with only entrepreneurial small business coaches, authors, and speakers.
You name it. Online marketers, whatever whoever it happens to be in that space. Understand how to grow and scale their business by focusing on the way that they show up for their customers. The way they help their customers get results. The way they support their customers. I’m sure you’ve seen this, as well as all the gurus out there. Everyone’s showing you how to get more people to your business. Right? What I found is we spend so much of our energy on strangers and trying to turn our strangers into customers.
Once they become customers, we don’t focus as much on how to help them get massive results. How to help them have success. What we’ve uncovered over the years and kind of what perfected at this point is a methodology that helps you figure out how to obsess over creating value for your customers. That in turn gets more customers feeds the funnel makes all the money you spend bringing people into your business actually have bigger better results as a compounding effect.
Customer-Focused Storytelling: We spend so much of our energy on strangers and trying to turn them into customers. Once they become customers, we don’t focus as much on how to help them get massive results.Let me see if I understand this. There are a lot of companies out there that have sort of perfected the launch model if you will. They have the tech. They have the webinar scripts. They have Facebook ads and templates. Basically, they’ve done it over and over and over again and the average coach who says, “Well I’d like to grow my business,” might go to one of those people and say, “Okay, here’s a pile of money. Help me set this up so customers will say yes, come to my door knock on my door and I get to enroll them.” That’s not what you do. Is that right?
Correct.
What you do begins at the process when they have the customer signed up and committed to working with either that coach or in that program. Is that right?
I wouldn’t say that. Our work begins before they even know about your business actually, but our focus is really on making sure that once they do become your customer, they have the most friction-free, smooth effortless experience that is enjoyable, that is pleasant, that is positive, that helps them get those results. If your customer bought your product bought your service had your coaching, right and they got to the end of that engagement and it was amazing. Everything that they wanted and then some right?
What would you want them to tell other people? We call this the ideal customer script. We talk about what that ideal testimony would be. We write it out with lots of detail, and juicy words, like where they started from the beginning. Where they ended. What are all the amazing moments along the way that they remember that were memorable for them? We engineer a journey that has the clues in place for the customers to have those authentic experiences so that they will feel the desire and almost the compulsion to share that story at the end. We don’t leave it to chance. It starts in the sales process more often than not because we start setting expectations and bringing people into that Journey.
I get that. I want to compare it to something that I’ve been doing a long time maybe not correctly and I could certainly learn from this experience with you. Normally what I do is before I start either a new program or a new client, that first thing after they say yes. By the way, I want to ask if I over-deliver in every way, would you be willing to leave me a video test and a short video testimonial?
Well, no one has ever said no. Everyone says yes, but they forget about that until the end of the engagement. That’s one I remind them I said, “Remember you said yes that you would do this.” Then I send them the testimonial formula. I’m going to basically read that real quickly. State who you are. What do you do? Explain the problem you had when I showed up.
Explain how we started working together. Share how you felt when you watched as your new systems came to life. Share how I helped you solve the problem. Describe the end result in detail. Describe any feelings you had about your problem being solved with my help. If you like, a statement of endorsement. That’s what I normally do sure. How can I improve that?
That’s great. I’m not suggesting that that’s not what you do. I want you to actually write it from their perspective. What you just did is you just gave them a whole bunch of work to think about. What I want you to do before you even put them in that position is I want you to write it as what you think they would say. What you hope they would say. I want you to manifest it for them. Right? I want you to talk all woo, right but like I want you to literally figure out what they would say in the most Ideal world. Actually, throughout the journey.
You’re going to say, “Okay listen, like I know that right now, we’re going to go through this training this module,” and it’s going to be a little bit uncomfortable. It’s going to take some hard work, but on the other side of this I think you’re going to say, “Blah blah blah blah,” and I know that because every other client that’s been through this has said that buckle your seatbelt fasting in and it’s going to be amazing. You’re telling them like it’s going to be a little hard.
You’re giving them a little boost of momentum to get them through the rough patch. At the end of that, they’re probably in their head thinking, “Holy crap Mitch, you were right like this was hard, but I feel great,” and so now they have that moment. They’ve captured that memory in their journey. When they go to the end, they’re going to share that in that way because we’ve done it along the way. We’re not asking them at the end to retroactively go back and start thinking of all of it. We’re pulling it out throughout the journey if that makes sense.
Steps To Writing Your ScriptJason, this is a little bit of a mind-blown moment for me because everything I’ve done with the way I did it was half the job. I got half the job right. I pat myself on the back for that. I like what you’re doing so much better. Could we break it down into individual steps?
Yeah. Actually, I want to go back to one other thing that you said before we do. In the beginning, you said that if I over-deliver and every way. I want to come back to that because I don’t want you to over-deliver and every way, okay? I parked that before I forgot. We’ll come back to that maybe. When we’re writing that script, what I want you to do is I want you to think about going back to my theater. I want you to think about if you were like Matthew McConaughey and you were going to play your customer on stage. How do you get into character so that you understand them?
I want you to think about your customers and I want you to get in their shoes. When think about it. If I had to be my customers and speak the language that they speak. For breakfast, what they had for breakfast? Have the problems in my life that they have. Have the positive and the negatives and everything in between the chaos. I want you to get into character. While you’re in character, I want you to say what is it that you’re looking for when you found Mitch. Then I want you to say, “Okay great.
Think about your customers and get in their shoes.
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Now, I’m feeling stressed. I’m feeling over I want to scale my business and I forever wanted to have a certification program right? I wanted to bring on certified consultants, but I’ve never done it. It overwhelms me. It’s confusing. It’s complex. I don’t know how to do it.” I want you to start there. You’re that customer and then you’re like, “Okay,” and so you found Mitch. “Well, I met Mitch and like all of a sudden, I started to see clarity out of chaos,” like he had this very specific plan for the first time it was organized in a way that I understood.
When he made an offer to me, I was like this is my guy I got to learn from it. I bought his program and instead of getting an email with like four billion bits of information when I first joined his course, he actually gave me exactly what I needed when I needed it. I didn’t feel overwhelmed even for a moment. It was amazing. What happened is over the next eight weeks or 10 weeks like every week it was like peeling onion like it was like a new layer of information came out in a way that I understood.
I felt so excited like I brought my team in like we were all so excited about what we were going to do that together we went through it. We are clockwork, we carved out all the time on our calendars. We showed up. We did the homework. We did everything exactly how he said. Everything he said would happen actually happened. It was unbelievable. Have you ever like had an experience where everything they said actually happened? If you have not checked out Mitch’s program, you have to because here we are 12 weeks after it’s over and we’ve already got five consultants signed up and we are just so excited about what the future holds. You can write that or whatever your version is, right?
Frankly, that was perfect. Here’s the question. Do I create that in advance of the program and share it with the members of the program? Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. Help me understand where, sequencing-wise, these steps come into play.
The answer is yes both right? I would share them with people and say listen my goal for you is that at the end of this program, this is how you feel. You feel belief. You feel a lack of like it’s we know it’s confusing. We’ve spent so much time and energy trying to make this simple. Here’s how it’s going to work for you right? You’re going to come in and blah blah. You tell them that upfront. You tell them what you want to happen and what you want them to say at the end.
Then throughout the course, you mile market for them. You put up a big post saying, “We’re here. This is what’s happening. This is what’s going to go,” and at the end, you check in with them. Like how did that feel? Are you excited? Like are you good like blah blah and you keep moving them through that and reminding them of those things. You’re giving them the words you want them to say, but you’re also giving them the experience that backs up those words. It’s not inauthentic, it is absolutely authentic.
TestimonialsNow, just listening to you for the last 10 minutes describe this process. I am so excited. I am more excited than I was before about launching my program. More importantly what I what I like about what you just did is the clarity of how to do it. Let’s go even deeper. Let’s say I’ve run a bunch of ads. I have a bunch of social media posts and all of a sudden now, much of this is pre-recorded already.
Most funnels go into the studio. You shoot your videos. Then our plan I think as I mentioned to you is we’re going to go live for 30 days before the beginning of the webinar every single day with the tip. Every day and another one to two-minute tip. Where do I start injecting your process? Is it in the before stage or is it at the very beginning of the webinar?
First of all, this is like one little piece of our process, right? This is one little piece of a much bigger process. It’s not overwhelming. It’s a very clear stage, but this is one piece. Let’s assume that your business has been in business for a little while and you’ve been doing this. All of those testimonials that people will actually give you because you helped them write them in the beginning. Those are the things that become your marketing in the front end.
Customer-Focused Storytelling: All of those testimonials that people will give you are the things that become your marketing in the front end.Those are the parts of the pick that become your Facebook ads. If you haven’t yet gotten all those testimonials, you are just starting out, right? You’re launching for the first time. What you’re doing like in your webinar, you might say like listen I don’t want you to think that my program doesn’t take work. It takes work. In fact, it takes hard work, but we also know that it could be overwhelming anytime you go into a new program like this. What we’ve worked painstakingly to take that away like I want you to say, this is blah blah blah. We designed this course with that in mind.
Once you’re inside, when you’ve become part of our team, our community and you’re inside, I want to hear the feedback from you along the way. If we are not doing that, I want to hear about it early on so that we can keep adjusting it because my goal for you is that in the end, you are having that success. You’re basically opening the kimono if you will, you’re exposing it. This is what we did. This is how we designed it with you in mind. Like everything has been designed around your getting results.
I must say if I were to take this interview and the information that you just shared and apply it to anything I’m doing it would automatically increase the value of what I’m doing. I know that. As you have been, I’ve been coaching for a long long time and I have a lot of great testimonials and again, this is the part that I think emotionally I needed to get past and maybe some of you out there may need to get past this too.
Did you ever feel like sharing a testimonial is a little bit self-serving or like you’re pounding your chest and bragging or something like that? That is the feeling a lot of coaches have about sharing their testimonials. I don’t want to bother my clients. They left me a great video. I don’t want them to think I just did it to make myself more money or something. How do you react to how somebody might feel around those topics?
First of all, I think sharing success and celebrating the success of our clients is one of the most honorable things we could do as a coach, a business owner, and entrepreneurs. If you think about all this as celebrating the success of your clients and sharing that, I think it changes the dynamic, number one. Number two, I truly believe that most of the people that are going to come into your ecosystem that what you’re having, what you’re selling, what you’re serving, what you’re offering.
Sharing success and celebrating the success of our clients is one of the most honorable things we could do as a coach, as a business owner, and as an entrepreneur.
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One of the biggest obstacles to them having success is I’ll say at the itty bitty committee inside their head did it on their own way. You showing them people who have had the transformation that have walked the walk before that have overcome those demons or whatever the situation happens to be. It helps them take action towards getting where they want to go. I think it’s actually selfish not to share those success stories of other people because you’re not helping unlock people. We look for social proof.
We look for others and telltale signs that something might work and when we cannot see ourselves in someone else and see familiarity that’s just like me. If they did it, I can do it, right? It’s the four-minute mile story, Mitch. Before someone saw the four-minute mile, nobody did a four-minute mile. Then a few weeks later, everyone’s doing the four-minute mile. It’s that whole thing. It’s your job as a coach as an entrepreneur, if you truly want the impact of helping these people get results, I believe that you need to fight for it. If one of the best ways to do that is by showing them success stories with your program with your process with your coaching, then it’s incumbent upon you to do it.
I would actually say that if you’re a coach and you have these types of testimonials, it’s your moral obligation to share them.
Amen. Hundred percent.
Journey MappingThat really makes sense to me and I hope it makes sense to you too if you’re listening because I’ve felt this myself and I believe I’m old. I’m experienced. Still, I’ve had those feelings. At this point, pay much attention to them, but I know they’re there and I also know and I’m sensitive to them that other people might have them too. The way you just put that, Jason, the way you just explained that changed my thinking in that one moment I go, “Really? Wow.” I was mechanically doing it before but now I’m excited about doing it. Again if you’re listening, I hope you are too. This whole process starts at what point in the cycle. Does it start in the beginning when you’re promoting or take us through where the insertion of this brilliant begins?
I think thinking and asking the right questions is the key. Right? A good portion of our program and what we bring people through is we’re asking them different questions that they’ve been asked before and it unlocks the different levels of awareness of things and it reignites people. Some people have gone through our program hearing on they drop a testimonial. Some people have gone through our program a very specific person I’m thinking of just recently went through and he said to me, “Jason, I have been in this business for 20-plus years. I gotta be honest.
I kind of hate this business and I am so excited. You have reignited the whole reason why I started this business in the first place. I can’t wait to get back to the office to start putting this in place.” It gets us out of all the mess, right? We’re thinking about the success. If all of your clients sent you an email saying, “Thank you. I am so grateful for you.” How would that make you feel about what you do? It would make all the drudgery and the administration and the things you don’t want to do more worthwhile. It’s like it’s such a culture builder and such a shift and all that.
For you, it begins wherever you start thinking about this and asking those questions right now. Where you started inserting it is that any moment that you think will have an impact on the customer. You might have a blog post about something where you have like a content upgrade or a lead to kind of join your webinar or something like that. You might actually find that you’re putting a couple of quotes from customers in there because it helps people take action. Why should I join this webinar? 4 or 5 quotes might actually help someone take action to get on the webinar.
If you believe in your course, which I’m sure you do, you want them on that webinar because you know you’re going to help them transform their lives and their business. You have to help them. You look for opportunities and how you can help people make good decisions. How can I give people more information? How can I set expectations? How could I create breakthroughs or epiphanies for people right? Moments like that. I think you’ll find them all over the place. We have people like we map their entire journey, right?
One of the proprietary tools that we use is a journey mapping process that we have that we’ve developed. Again, before people know that you exist all the way through to after your client, and I’ve talked about this a bunch of times, right, and we literally dissect every moment that they go through. Do that and you have a picture with 1000 words. You see the blind spots are illuminated and you start finding these opportunities and it’s always based on the customer. It’s not based on what’s convenient for us the business. It’s based on how they are perceiving it.
Like a quick cheat moment for you, like a cheat code would be like looking through your journey. Look at the key moments, the beginning like anything that is hard or difficult, and look at that moment and say, “What are they feeling at that moment? What could I do? How could I share something that would help them get through that moment? If it’s a hard moment, how can I get them some encouragement from other people who have walked that path before?” Those are great moments to introduce pieces of testimonials and not every moment you share every word of someone’s testimony. You share bits and pieces that are relevant to that moment.
That makes a lot of sense. By the way, something you said I have to go back to. I don’t have an administrative judgury with my coaching business because I use Client Folio.
There you go. Perfect. That’s a great way to remove a friction point.
What you’re saying now makes a lot of sense but it makes the experience for the people who are participating better. That’s the part I’m most excited about. I mean truthfully, if I can make the experience better while they’re still getting the result they would have gotten either way, then that’s a super win, win, win, because I know that they’re not enjoying it more. They’re probably sticking to it when some might stop. I mean you and I have had this conversation. We both paid for expensive programs and did not finish them. In some cases, not even start them.
I didn’t start it, yeah, exactly.
I don’t want that to happen. In fact, the reason that I’m doing a mentorship program is supposed to be a coaching program is because we’re going to be live every single week and we’re going to be live and the community every other day. Anyway, a few several times a week. We have coaches on staff that are going to reach out to people maybe randomly and check in and make sure that they’re not missing anything that they have with what they need. We want people to finish. We want them to accomplish the goals of the program. We want them to make money.
That’s the whole point of this. If they do, not only will I be happy but I’ll get one of those great testimonials again, which I can then of course use to enroll more people down the road when I run the program again. All this is so important and I keep thinking about it from the person who just happened to tune into this show and is hearing our words. I’m thinking out loud by saying if you heard what Jason said and took 10% of it and applied it, your whole program would be better immediately.
Just shifting your perspective of how you think about it of the amount of attention that you pay to the mindset of wanting and guaranteeing that the people who buy your system and your programs and your services absolutely win and the value that brings to them into you. It’s enormous, it’s amazing. I know, because I know we’re working together that we’re going to get to go much deeper and this as well, but I do have one of the questions.
I don’t know if you can mention the person’s name, but there is a very well-known individual who runs an amazing I would say eight possibly nine-figure coaching business that helps others get their amazing products out into the marketplace. He has 100, 000 masterminds as well and he hired you to take him through this experience. If it’s inappropriate to mention his name. That’s fine.
I’m going to keep away from the names and stuff, but I’ll answer questions about it for sure.
Tell us what he got out of it after all these years of scaling this amazing company.
Finding Friction PointsThink about this let’s say that everybody takes action in your program, right? They do work and they get the result. What if every time they have to attend something they’re feeling resistance and they don’t want to show up? If you’re a coach and you have coaching clients that come weekly, let’s say for one-on-one coaching, and let’s say that they’re getting results but each week, it feels harder and like they feel less like they want to. What does that do? At some point, they’re going to stop, right? They’re going to slow and they’re going to stop.
Even if they got some results, they’re probably not going to talk about it because there was resistance. Think about that. With this program, we got people to start. Then we got people to engage and then we started thinking about how do we have people have more fun. How do we make it easier for them? Part of that is the celebration of the winds all along the way. Too often, it’s just about the result. What are the wins that people are having all along the way and how do we celebrate them? How do we recognize them? Because success leaves clues.
As we’re starting to see those clues, we want to recognize those clues and that builds momentum, right? A big part of what we do in our business and what we’ve done with that example and every example is we find friction points. Parts where it gets harder. Parts where we’re making it difficult because in fact any of us, if we look at our business through the lens of our customer, it is hard to do business with us, all of us. There’s always a way to make it easier. We do is we identify those friction points and then we either eliminate them or we reduce them.
When you do that, then you can find the parts that are left and we can find ways to boost momentum. How do we help people get over those humps? How do we celebrate their wins? I think one of the biggest opportunities that we all have is in onboarding right? We’ve talked about this as well at length together, but onboarding is not logistics in housekeeping. The first time someone says yes to us. We bombard them with so much information because we think, “Wow, we want to give them everything they need to know. Turn off the fire hose. That’s too much.
Customer-Focused Storytelling: Identify those friction points and either eliminate or reduce them. When you do that, you can find the parts that are left and find ways to boost momentum.What did I get myself into?” Right? Just in that program, it’s like, how do we bite-size it? How do we chunk it up so that things are showing up at the right time so people now, feel like, “Yeah. This was the right decision.” Because when people first buy from you, it’s an intention, it’s not a commitment. We want their commitment and we have to earn that commitment. I think a big part of what that was selling people into the program was not an issue for this person. If they couldn’t fit more people at it if they want. It was not the issue.
Having people renew after going through it one time, is a major issue. Having people stay in it and actually make all their regular payments that they’re supposed to make, is a major issue. People are just not getting the results and they’re not sharing, right? If you work so hard to sign people up the first time, what if we could keep them and then send them to our next level program in our next-level program? The lifetime value goes through the roof. We really look at the lifetime value of your customers and say how do we help them get more of that value and make a model for all these clients, right? Whether it’s the big ones, the little ones, or everywhere in between. It’s the same challenge.
For Other Types Of BusinessesI hear you. Wow. People who are listening to our conversation might not have a coaching or consulting business or a program. They may have a retail store or they may be like a rep or a distributor. How would you apply this to that type of business?
Yeah, great question and we’ve been talking a lot of like of that kind of model. Thanks for renting this back in. It’s the same thing. We have customers that work with us, whether it’s they’re coming into our retail store or in whatever. One of my first clients ever when we started doing all this was Footlocker, right? They sell sneakers. We created an in-store experience if you will for them that 400% increase in same source sales. They’re like, “Wow. That’s amazing.” Can’t do it again. I bet you. We did a second one, the same results.
Third one, the same results are like, wow, we’re going to roll this out. We ended up doing a thousand-plus locations all around the globe. What it was was about understanding, again the lens of the customer, I walked into the store. How do I make the experience more enjoyable? How do I get them to spend more money and better time and tell other people about it? How do we make this place where they come? It was all about how we structured everything within the store, the flow, the design, the media, the audio, the video, and the lighting.
All the different things were telling a story that connected so deeply with the customers that they really had a good time while they were there and they enjoyed it. As a result, they bought more stuff. They spend more money. They told other people about it. Regardless of what your business is, you have customers who feel a certain way out of their interactions. You have to look at the journey they’re on you. You have to look at each of the steps and you’ve got to understand most importantly each of those steps.
How are they feeling? It’s an emotional roller coaster ride, like when people come in because you don’t know where they’re starting. They could have had the worst day ever. They could have the best day ever. That’s the same same day. Nothing’s changed in your world. They’re coming in with different packages different things. Look at your customer journey. Look at the segments of the avatars of customers that you have who are coming in. Understand what’s going on for them and how we can positively influence that experience and help them get the results that they want.
Rapid Fire QuestionsIf you’re listening to this show, this is the first time you’ve heard about this. I’ve been around a long time and business a long time and I know, Jason. I kind of had an idea of what he did but this is the first time I truly understood it and I’m thinking that if you’re listening to us speak right now, I bet you that you probably haven’t considered the depth of which the skill that Jason has in his company can help people with is available. I didn’t even know about this really and I think it’s it’s kind of an amazing thing. Jason, we’re going to segment to the next portion of the show, which is where I ask you a couple of very very important but very silly questions. If you’re ready, here we go. Here’s the first question, and this is my favorite question of all. If you had one hour to take a walk in the park or involve yourself in a deep conversation with anybody at any time, who would that be?
That’s a great question. There are a lot of people on that list. At the moment, my answer to that is Napoleon Hill. I’m a big fan of Napoleon Hill. Love his thinking. Love his teachings. Love his books. The quote that I most cherish from him and there are a lot of things that come from Napoleon Hill masterminds, like all these different things that I love and I partake in, but he has this great quote, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
That has served me well over the years of my life. I think it’s helped me think bigger than other people, think differently than other people, question things a little bit differently, have a quiet confidence about my thoughts, and give me hope in certain times when I didn’t when it was difficult. Love the guy. I wish I got a chance to talk to him in person. That’s what I probably spend an hour with.
If I can arrange that for you, can I be a fly on the wall and listen in?
If you’re going to arrange it with anybody, then I would love to be anytime. I love that.
That would be great. I’m just going to go off the rails here for just a minute and say this. Well, you’re really talking about human consciousness. The reason I say it that way is because we are using our self-awareness to change our actions. Now, someone who invests in their well-being and feeds their consciousness with positive information and affirmation has the opportunity to shift the way they behave. For me, Napoleon Hill was just about the best of all when it came to doing that. Tony Robbins does a pretty good job of it too, but he has a very narrow band that he works under.
We are using our self-awareness to change our actions now.
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He changes people’s states. In a changed state, you have the ability to influence how they think in a positive way. Well, also you can change someone’s state and make them more susceptible to being sold to as we know. With Napoleon Hill, you have this opportunity to change your state in a natural enjoyable way because anything I read of his just naturally makes sense. There’s never like I have to figure that out or think about it. It’s just there it makes sense. That was a great answer. Thank you.
I appreciate that. I’m curious who yours is. I don’t know if we have time for that now, but I’d love to know who you’d spend an hour with.
Very few people actually asked me that, but the truth is that unfortunately, it’s a common answer. I would want to spend an hour at Elon Musk. I’ll tell you why, not because he’s a great entrepreneur, but because he’s a multi-billionaire. I want to understand how he looks at and assesses risk. Now, I just finished his biography and I loved it. It was a little dark in places which I think you know Walter Isaacson writes that way which, again, I love.
I love Walter Isaacson.
The reason I would want to talk to him is because I want to see the inflection points in his thinking and the thing I like about Elon Musk is I don’t see any. There are none. I mean the guy never stops going forward in the face of monumental challenges. I mean spaceships blowing up in the middle of the sky three times in a row still doesn’t stop him. I love that. I just love that. If I could be in his presence and ask those questions. For heaven’s sake man, that would be a peak moment in my life.
If you go by the teachings of our friend Napoleon Hill, if you conceive it and believe it, that will happen. The challenge to you, my friend.
Thank you. I accept. Full disclosure. I’ve reached out to his company several times to see if I can get them on an interview. They’re very nice. They always say, “We’ll let you know if that becomes available.” That’s fine. I still don’t buy a Tesla but thank you anyway. The reason I won’t buy a Tesla, Jason’s because I have no place to plug it in. I live in a condo. Grand Finale, this is the changed the world question. Strap in. This is serious now. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
That’s a great question too. Listen, I wholeheartedly believe in entrepreneurs as a force to change the world. I believe that we as entrepreneurs, and small business owners have so much influence. We create jobs for people. We create freedoms for people. We create economies. We create wealth. We create so many things for our families. We create freedom. We create so much. My mission is to help entrepreneurs. I feel like I’m not going to change the world by myself, but if I help other entrepreneurs and we can all do our piece, we will be changing the world as a group.
As you know, I exited a bunch of different companies I’m in what I call retirement, which is the freedom to choose what I do. What I choose to do is to go to work every day and work with entrepreneurs on how to scale their business and I love it. I think it’s the most rewarding stuff I’ve done together. As people like to take any of the ideas that we share in this podcast and start implementing them, I think that’s going to start to change the world. It’s going to help them have more wealth more jobs create more impact on other people. Helping people get coached. Helping people have a better retail experience. Have people have better products and services across the board.
I love it. Mine too. That’s my change-the-world formula. I know I can’t reach a billion people on my own but if I could reach 100 people who could reach 1,000 each and they can reach 1,000 each, then through that network and those tentacles, I have an effect on the world. That’s what my certification program is all about.
I love what you’re doing man. It’s amazing and we are very aligned in all that.
Absolutely. Well Jason, I left the cliffhanger and open loop if you will. At the beginning of the show, I said that if listeners pulled on, they might get a chance to get something from you to help them understand you better, and understand your work better. Is there a place that we can send them that they would love to visit or possibly a free download or anything at all like that?
You know, there might just be. Thank you for asking that. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a gift with everybody. What I have is an undisclosed free PDF. I’m going to tell you what it is, but I’m going to tell you what it will do for you. Again, we talked about like a way to think differently. It is going to give you a question that is going to change the way you fundamentally think about your business, your customers, and your employees. It’s going to give you some actionable strategies that you can put in place right now that will help you make more money.
It will help you make more impact, which will give you more fun and more gratitude. It’s less than 10 minutes to go through, big idea, little investment of time, little investment of money. All I want is your email address and then when you go and you download it, I ask two things. One is please actually look at it. Don’t download it and leave it on your hard drive. It’s one of those things that you never start because I want it to help you. That’s why we created it, designed it, and sharing it.
Number two, if you’re so inclined, I have an email address in there, which is my personal email address. It’ll go to me. I’d love to know what you think about it. I’d love to know if you’re going to do it. What are you doing? How did it help you in some way? Because my hallucination is that if you do this, you’re going to be like, “This has been one of the most impactful things I’ve ever done in my business,” I want to hear about how that’s helping you. It helps me on my mission. It lights me up. It gives me more fuel to keep doing what I’m doing. That is that Gift.CXFormula.com/1000.
This is going to be on Jason’s show page. This man has spent a fortune and a lot of time investing in what he knows, and he’s giving it to you for a 10-minute investment of your time. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to download it and look at it because I know I will get value from it. I have a feeling you will too. Jason, thanks so much. This was amazing. I loved every word you said. I think we started to do some world-changing today just with this interview alone.
Thanks for the opportunity, Mitch. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. I hope you get to sit down with Elon.
I’m working on it. I’ll talk to you soon.
Important Links* CX Formula * ClientFol.io * Jason Friedman – LinkedIn * Gift.CXFormula.com/1000
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How does one go from bankruptcy to billions in a relatively short time? It takes more than a vision. A lot of visionaries get easily sidetracked or simply stopped at their tracks. What a visionary needs is something that would untether them, something that allows them to operate at their zone of genius. Alex Charfen is passionate about giving this to fellow visionaries. He helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses and optimize their lives by setting up the right systems and processes. Drawing from his rich experience of navigating the journey from bankruptcy to billions, Alex vows to make it easier for other entrepreneurs to unlock the success they deserve. Tune in and learn how it works!
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Listen to the podcast hereFrom Bankruptcy To Billions: Unleashing The Untethered Visionary With Alex CharfenIf you’re a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you. My software platform called ClientFol.io has been helping hundreds of coaches save time on admin, and get better results from their clients while generating powerful client testimonials from the work they’ve done. How? By tracking accountability. If you hold your clients accountable, they will love you even more and give you great testimonials. No other platform provides you with the power to access a library of accountability questions and place the control in your client’s hands to keep track of their most critical stats and goals. Want to try it for a dollar? Go to ClientFol.io and give it a spin.
Now onto my amazing guest and his incredible story. My guest started his entrepreneurial journey by washing windows in high school. Like me, I washed cars, but life had much more in store for him. In his twenties, a corporate consultant, for heaven’s sake, in twenties I couldn’t even find my bedroom. In his 30s, he sold his consulting business. He and his new wife started buying and building a real estate empire. Everything was good.
In 2007, everything changed with the onslaught of the financial crisis. Like many at the time, unfortunately, he lost everything and went bankrupt. I say unfortunately but we all know that all clouds have a silver lining and the gift of despair is the most precious gift of all. Recovery seemed impossible, but he and his wife built this new company and then it became one of the fastest growing companies in years. He was even featured in Inc. Magazine for his success. Nowadays, he employs the Billionaire Code and helps thousands of entrepreneurs grow and scale with his unique system. Welcome, Alex Charfen, to the show. It’s great to have you.
Thanks. It’s good to be here with you.
How’d this all start for you?
I was a different kid. I was one of those kids who did not get along socially and who didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. I had issues with the other kids. I didn’t get along well with the teachers. I was very different from a super young age. I’ve always felt like for me, it has been a significant struggle to fit into anyone’s system or process. As I matured it, it got easier and I’ve done a lot of coaching. I’ve worked with people, but when I was younger I felt like all the systems that were out there weren’t working for me. They were working against me. The one place where I found some traction or stability was in business. I started working young out of necessity.
My family immigrated from Mexico when I was five years old. My father started a company that did concrete roofing tiles and started doing extraordinarily well. It closed down because of the economy, and I started working. I was working with my dad at a swap meet, like a flea market we were selling stuff over a table. Even though it was incredibly long hours and I was super young when I was there, there was rules. People walked up and you could talk to them and it wasn’t random and business felt more grounded and I could win.
I would sell people stuff and they would be happy and it was winning. Business or entrepreneurship is called to me because it’s the only discipline that you can step into where you create your own structure, process and do your own thing. For me, it wasn’t that I was driven to do my own thing as much as I hard time doing anybody else’s thing. I feel like I was called to entrepreneurship due to I needed it.
We are similar. It’s unbelievable. Basically, I had the same experience. I worked with my dad at a trade show where he sold costume jewelry. It was there that I learned how to sell. Later he opened up candy stores all over New York. I would stand in the street selling candy from a broken table out in front of the building. This is what entrepreneurship is. When you speak to other entrepreneurs, first of all, they were brought up in hardship. Second of all, they worked since before they were even a team. third of all, they thrived on the feeling of succeeding. What happened next?
You alluded to it a little bit. I was always starting to run businesses. It’s funny, you sold candy in junior high. I sold candy to the other kids. My mom would take me to a place called Smart and Final, it’s kinda like a Costco. I would buy candy and sell it to kids at school. I got in trouble for that. They made it so you couldn’t sell candy at school anymore. I started selling earrings and bracelets to the girls at school, then I got in trouble for that and they made it so you couldn’t sell anything at school. The only way you could sell is if it was for a charity. I started giving part of my profits to charity.
They had a school district meeting where they created what they called The Alex Charfen Rule. I’m not kidding. It was horrible because I was making a lot of money. You couldn’t sell anything on campus unless you got pre-approval from the principal first in the Irvine Unified School District. The entire school district adopted a rule that I wouldn’t be able to sell stuff. After that, I started a window-washing business. I was always making money on the side. I was working wherever I could.
In college, I started a financial consulting company with a friend of mine. We did billing and collections for fraternities and sororities. That was a very small market. We had a company that did billing and collections for utilities, come and buy our company and then apply it to utilities. I moved out to Florida as part of that buyout. I was there for eight months of what was supposed to be a one-year contract. It didn’t work out. I wasn’t a good employee for somebody else.
Through some fortunate circumstances, I ended up going to a meeting with a friend of mine who was a consultant and he ended up getting an engagement in Florida where I was located. that put me into the consulting world. The first company I ever worked with was Fuji Media, like Fujifilm and Fuji Media. Then I worked with SanDisk, which does all of the memory. I’ve worked with Fuji Digital Cameras, Monster Cable, Belkin, Targets, Memorex, like huge brands we were helping them sell products in the Southeastern United States and all of Latin America.
By the time I was 30, I had 14 offices in the US and Latin America. The business was doing over a quarter billion in sales. It was a multimillion-dollar profit company and we were crushing it. We were by far the largest company of our type. We were taking brands into Latin America at a speed that nobody ever had done. We were winning awards. I was making more money than anybody I knew and I was miserable.
Let’s get into that a little bit because this is a very common symptom, particularly when you set goals early in life, what could be lifetime goals and then you achieve them early, it’s a confusing thing because you didn’t expect it. Let’s talk about what happened to you and how you felt and more importantly, how did you explore that time of your life to find out what the thing to do next was?
What happened was I did what many entrepreneurs do. I saw this opportunity when I had the door open for the consultancy. I read a book about Bill Gates, which you know, when we were younger, Bill Gates was like a hero. Now he’s like this weird figure that does all this weird stuff. When we were younger, Bill Gates was the guy who dropped out of Stanford, didn’t go to school, and started Microsoft. I read a book that said Bill Gates never took a day off in his twenties. I’m like, “That’s what you do.” The entirety of my twenties, I never took a day off. I didn’t have systems or structures to run my business. I ran it by personality. I was checking with every person. Every day I would get up anxious. I would go to sleep anxious.
At the end of that ten-year period, I went from having been a model in my late teens and doing runway work to being 300 pounds hypertensive. I was on heart medication, cholesterol medication, sleeping medication and asthma medication. They were about to give me a fifth medication. My wife now who was my fiancé at the time was in the appointment with me where my doctor told me that I was his most likely case for a heart attack or a stroke, “He had an aging population. We had to do something.” I had met Katie.
When you said, “How did you figure out what the next thing to do was?” I’m grateful that when I was about 26 years old, I started EMDR therapy. I started hardcore trauma therapy in my twenties. I had some challenging relationships. My relationship history was not pretty. There’s a lot of turmoil, trauma and challenges.
Starting at 26, I started deciding who didn’t I want to be with and what type of person I wanted to be with. I worked with this therapist, Tom Beale, in Florida who helped me develop this list of what type of person I was looking for. I was at a point where I almost was like thinking I’m never going to have a relationship because they’ve been bad. What changed everything in my life was I met Katie. We’ve been together for many years. I’m 51 and she reset every expectation I ever had for my life.
She saw you because what she saw at the time physically was not what she saw when she saw you. That’s an incredible gift to have in a partner.
It’s so much more than that. I made this list of the ten things that I wanted in a woman with my therapist. I had only gotten to nine. It was things like someone who’s willing to live differently, pays attention, who cares and who is not afraid to step out of convention and doesn’t want the 9:00 to 5:00 and all those things. The night I met Katie was a chance encounter. I had gotten off of Home Shopping Network. She had gotten off of a trip. She was a Southwest Airlines flight attendant.
Within the first hour of meeting her, I knew that I was going to marry her. She ended up going back to where she lived. I ended up going back to where I lived. We talked on the phone for six weeks. She ended up coming out to visit me in Florida and it changed everything. That first night that she was there, it re-imagined my entire future and she was at the center of it.
I get a little emotional when I talk about it because it changed my whole life. With the reflection of her to me of who I was and how she saw me, I realized I didn’t want the life I had anymore. I ended up fire-sailing the contracts that I had in the business. I shut it down as fast as I could instead of taking 2 or 3 years, which would’ve been like what it took. I did it in about nine months and I knew I needed a new direction. I stepped out of that business and spent a lot more time with Katie and that’s where we ended up getting into real estate together.
We built a huge real estate empire and we were pretty much retired as far as having equity and cash. In 2005, there was a hurricane in Florida which destroyed a whole bunch of our properties and cost a bunch of money. 2006 there was another one, Wilma and Katrina then in 2007 the crisis hit and we lost everything. I’m incredibly fortunate that Katie is my wife and that we were together at that time because as our world was falling apart, we were able to pull together and face what was going on. Every night before we went to bed, she would make us say three things we were grateful for..One night went that we didn’t do that. Even on the nights where I was like, “I don’t even feel gratitude right now. We’re bankrupt. I don’t know how to pay for gas.”
We ended up writing a course called The Certified Distressed Property Expert Designation. We went bankrupt in 2007. Before our bankruptcy was discharged, we were already liquid millionaires again and we ended up doing about $70 million in that product. it was a certification in the real estate industry to help real estate agents work with distressed homeowners. In 2013, 5 or 6 years after we launched the certification, the US Treasury came into our office and on a recorded video broadcast said that we helped pull forward the foreclosure recovery by 3 to 5 years.
It was an extraordinary time period to go from that low to being able to rebuild and to help people I know you’re super into certifications. The certifications are amazing. If anybody’s reading, believe me. If you’re a coach or consultant, you should build a certification and you should talk to Mitch. It was life-changing. When I look at my life and the totality of what I’ve done and like what we’ve been able to do since then, after we had that certification in real estate, we started coaching business owners on how to put process structure and routine into their business.
We have a company called Simple Operations where we show people how process, structure and routine and how having clarity in the business allows the visionary to step out of the company. That’s where Katie and I are now. We run a business but we’re not in the day-to-day and we have a tremendous amount of time together. My single most important life goal is to help as many people as I can and spend most of my time with Katie.
Readers, he is been sharing some incredible wisdom and he’s about to share with us a lot more. Alex has promised something very special for all of you by the end of the show.
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Alex, let’s dive into the process itself. Let’s say this is a mock consultation. I hired you with monopoly money. I’m asking you to consult with me and tell me how to create processes and reinforce the good and eliminate the bad in the way I structure and operate my business.
Rather than trying to take it to a 5,000-foot consultation, I’d rather elevate a little, if that’s okay. The way I look at business is that for us as visionaries, business conditions us to do the wrong things. Let me explain what I mean by that. When you started your business, what did you have to do in order to be successful? Everything. It’s the easiest answer. You’ve been around. Sometimes I ask entrepreneurs and they’re like, “I had to do lead gen.” I’m like, “You had to do everything.” What happens to us as visionaries is that we have this operating conditioning that we did everything and we created success. We tolerated a ton and created success. There was a ton of pressure and noise in our lives and we created success.
As visionaries, business conditions us to do the wrong things.
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What happens is that conditioning keeps us in that place of feeling like we have to do everything, tolerate, be noisy and put up with everything throughout the entire time we run a business. The way I label that is we are conditioned to be in the personality management of a company. Here’s what personality management means. It means you’re showing up every day and getting everybody to do what they need to do.
It means you are the driving force of the business, but you’re also the tactical glue for the business, which means you’re telling people what to do, checking that it got done, and telling them what to do again it’s exhausting. For a visionary personality, that process of transactional management drains us more than anything else. It takes away our ability to be a visionary. As visionaries, we’re artists, and creatives and we are creator tours. We’ve been endowed with the gift of the creator himself or herself to be able to bring things into the world.
Everything around you was created by one of us. I have this passion and undying need to get visionaries out of the day-to-day of their business so that they’re not in personality management and they can go out and solve the world’s problems because if you’re in the day-to-day tactics, you are using a fraction of your visionary capability.
On the other side of personality management, you have process management. Here’s what process management looks like. Process management looks like everyone on the team understands exactly what their outcomes are. Every person on the team and not just for the outcomes for themselves. They know what the company’s doing, what each project is, what each department’s doing, and what they’re responsible for. It looks like every person in the company knows what we’re measuring to see we’re successful in each of those areas. It looks like every person in the company knows exactly what they’re accountable for.
If you have a structure that creates clear outcomes, measurement and accountability, you as the visionary are no longer the tactical force keeping the company together. What we typically do with a visionary is we do some time audits with them when they come in time studies. The typical visionary is spending somewhere between 50% to 75% of their time tactically in the business. Within the first quarter or two, we usually cut that by about a third to a half then we continue to do it.
Bankruptcy: As the visionary, you are no longer the tactical force keeping the company together.We continue to analyze what has become tactical and now what should be more strategic. We have this systematic process of, “Let’s look at what you’re doing and see what we can hand off systematically, not all at once and right away because it doesn’t work you need that system for the rest of the time you run your business.” Any entrepreneur who’s running a business right now, it doesn’t matter how strategic you think an activity is, if the company grows to the point where it should, that activity will now become tactical. We constantly work with the visionary on how we move them from tactical to strategic and how we give their team all the clarity they need so that the visionary is not motivating the growth of the company, but the system is.
I love the idea of it. I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a minute. We have a lot of people reading who I wouldn’t call them, they’re at the early stages of scaling. Maybe they’re a one-person coach or consultant. They hear something like what you’re saying, “I don’t have the money to hire people right now. I’m hardly making it the way I am. I know if I push harder and work more. I’ll generate some more revenue and maybe later I’ll do that.” How would you address that?
A couple of ways. First, it’s easier to hire people and get help than it has ever been in the history of entrepreneurship. I know, because I’ve been doing this for many years. You can hire solid talent for $3 to $5 an hour. Anytime somebody tells me, “I can’t get any help,” I’m like, “Let’s talk about that first.” There are cases where you can’t get any help where there is no money, where you’re doing it all yourself, where there’s no excess at all, there is no budget. In that case, here’s what’s important. You have to have clear outcomes for yourself.
It's easier to hire people and get help now than it has ever been in the history of entrepreneurship.
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You have to have clear measurements to give you perspective as to whether things are going good or not because I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I’ve worked with where they’re like, “Everything is terrible. We’re having a hard time. We’re not doing that well,” then we have them go get all their numbers and clear perspective and they’re like, “Things are going better than we thought.” It’s because our gut when it comes to measurement and stuff often is not correct. As an individual, clear outcomes, clear measurement of what you’re doing and then clear accountability to, “This is what I’m going to do to get the outcome to come through.”
We work with entrepreneurs who are starting out. We have three products. We have a simple operation system, which is for businesses. We have the relationship operating system for entrepreneurs who have a marriage or a relationship that they want to protect then we have the personal operating system, which is a system for that early-stage entrepreneur to grow their business or a system for a higher-stage, CEO to get themselves focused and aligned and centered.
For me, the reality of being an entrepreneur is if you have minimum effective dose process structure and routine, it makes everything that we do easier. It eliminates that place of feeling like we need to tolerate everything. In my opinion, the vast majority of visionaries are tolerating way too much because of what we talked about because of that conditioning.
We’re used to it. We started a company from a basement or something when we were young. You worked every day in your twenties. I did the same thing when I started TimeSlips Corporation, it was seven months before I said to my partner, “We should take the afternoon off.”
I’m familiar with that.
It’s part of the nature of the journey. Later, we had 100 employees. It was a much different scenario, but the trap that I fell into, and maybe somebody reading this might also have experienced this is that I started to delegate all the stuff that I liked, like marketing and sales. I was left with the crap, the accounting and the legal.
That’s how most entrepreneurs do it by accident. We end up punishing ourselves. One of the things that we do with entrepreneurs when they come in and we do those first-time studies, we have them analyze, what do they not like to do? What is it that slows you down? I’m all about momentum. My whole world is momentum. My podcast is called MOMENTUM for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type. We ask, “What on your time study is giving you momentum and what’s taking it away. Somebody loves marketing, let’s leave him in marketing and get rid of everything else.”
We have a client, Daniel Rosen, who runs a company called Credit Repair Cloud. When he started working with us, he had been plateaued at between $1 million and $2 million for 7 or 8 years. We put our system in place. Within about a year and a half, he was at $8 million or $9 million. Within about another 6 months to 1 year, he was at $15 million. He’s at $35 million or $40 million now. As the CEO of his company, his job description is YouTube videos, marketing videos and being the speaker at their events and then helping with strategic decisions on a quarterly basis and that’s it.
When we helped him get into that place, that’s how the company grew. As a visionary, we are conditioned to tolerate and put up with way too much, but when I spend time around people who are wildly successful, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with people who have generational wealth, who are worth 9 figures or more, sometimes 10 figures or more. What I see in those people is they tolerate very little. As entrepreneurs, we feel like tolerance is a pathway to success, but the most successful people tolerate very little.
Bankruptcy: As entrepreneurs, we feel like tolerance is a pathway to success, but the most successful people tolerate very little.They get to say no to everything and accept the things that they could add value to. When I ran Sage in the US, that was my secret too. We had 300 people reporting through my management team directly to me. What it came down to is after I had sold the company, all that stress went away. When I sold the company, I had less than $1,800 left in my checking account. I was a multimillionaire on paper, but I had no liquid assets. When I sold the company, that was a complete flip. At that point, life became much nicer and easier, but what I learned was that I was able to inspire people If I didn’t have to do everything. If I wasn’t focused on all the details, all the transactions and all this, my gift at that time was inspiring teams to grow, move forward and excel. That’s what I love about business. Probably at the pinnacle of my success has been this place of inspiration for me. That was the secret.
One of the keys that we miss as visionaries is that when you start building a team, your primary role is to inspire, motivate, and guide that team. What happens to too many entrepreneurs is we start hiring a team and we stay in this tactical role and we build what I call the monkey in the middle. It’s like you’re in the middle and then there’s a person who’s doing copy and this. You’ve now gone from being a single person, overwhelmed company, to now being the hub of 5 or 6 different people and being even more overwhelmed. When we put process and structure in place, that visionary gets out of the middle of that mess and gets the help and support they need.
When you said, “How did you get into this?” As a child, my core wound was being seen and heard. When I would open my mouth to talk, oftentimes what I said and the reaction that I got in the world were very confusing. I was being sincere and I’d get in trouble. I’d have a question in school and I’d get sent to the office. I got kicked out of Sunday school because I asked way too many of the wrong questions and they asked my parents not to bring me back.
I was never trying to be a challenge or there are times I was trying to be a challenge or a problem, but not in these times. That core wound of not being seen or heard is something that I’ve worked my entire adult life to resolve. When I look at most visionaries, the biggest challenge that we have is that the vision, future, solutions and resolutions that we have created that should be in the world are in our heads and they are clear. They’re ready to be real and we know the effect they’re going to have.
Something happens in the translation from our vision to what we need people to do where we don’t feel seen and heard. I feel like I’ve spent the last many years of my business life creating a system where I would be seen and heard where my team would understand me, where I would be validated and where things would get done. Now that we’ve trained this in other visionaries, I can see that same thing happening it’s interesting.
I think almost universally as visionaries, we have a core wound of not being seen and heard because we’re different. Our system steps in and resolves that core wound. I feel like I was put on this planet to help entrepreneurs understand themselves better and understand what’s important and live the lives that they want. Every one of us was born with this belief that we are here to do something extraordinary, change the world, help people and create something that’s world-changing.
Almost universally as visionaries, we have a core wound of not being seen and heard.
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If we don’t see that materializing in the world, it creates massive disorder in our bodies disorder causes dissonance. Dissonance creates disease. I look at visionaries whose vision is trapped in their mind and body as being at risk. I want to help them get that out into a system where we can get it executed. As a visionary, when we have order and we see our ideas getting executed, order creates resonance. Resonance creates comfort, then excitement. If we as visionaries can lean into that resonance, comfort and excitement, we will run the business that changes the world.
Bankruptcy: If visionaries can lean into that resonance and comfort and excitement, we will run the business that absolutely changes the world.I believe that you’ve said it in a way I haven’t heard before, and I like it because it makes a lot of sense. In my life, I can totally relate to what you said. I was addicted to heroin at the age of sixteen. I was within seconds of losing my life. What I ended up doing was I’ll say that God stepped in and saved me as a result of that. I was given a choice. I was literally given a left or right choice, either left, go back and shoot more heroin or stop right now, clean up my life and become a productive adult. I chose the right side and I then did that, but it came with baggage.
It came with the scars of what I went through and what brought me to that point. Like you, I’ve spent a good part of my life resolving those issues. Being seen and heard was a big part of that, to be honest. It was great the way you say that. We’re going to move to the next part of this interview. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions. I think they’re fun questions. Most people like them and have some fun with them, but be your visionary here for me. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch and an intense conversation with?
Jesus.
He’s a popular guy on my show.
I want to make something very clear. For most of my life, I had a relationship with Jesus and it was an arm’s length relationship that I studied, inquired, watched and read. I wanted to understand this human who had been on this planet, this person that had come here and changed things radically. I wanted to understand who he was, how he was and how did he do this? There’s no way to deny that Jesus was an extraordinary human being and that he had an impact on millions of people with a very humble beginning.
The reason I bring this up is that I don’t want to give anybody the impression that I’m a practicing Christian because I don’t go to church. I’m not into religion. I don’t believe in dogma, but for most of my life I’ve been creating this relationship with this entity called Jesus, and in the past couple of years it has become incredibly personal. I have spent time with him, with his energy and spirit. I’ve been allowed to feel what he feels and understand Christ’s consciousness on a totally different level.
While I’m not religious and I don’t practice what would normally be seen, for somebody who says, I would like to spend time with Jesus, I am incredibly spiritual and I feel this connection to Christ in an extraordinary way. I feel like I already had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with him at Rhythmia on the last day. We were there for the last two hours. I was there with Jesus and it was beautiful. If I could be with him in person and ask the 5,000 questions I have to ask, I’d probably whittle it down to 2 or 3, that would be an extraordinary opportunity. Well,
You only get one hour, but on the other hand, you mentioned Rhythmia. We haven’t talked about that yet. For readers, I listened in on a broadcast that Alex had been doing on Facebook. I got very excited about and interested in a place called Rythmia. It’s a place where you go for ayahuasca ceremonies and before you think we’re a bunch of stoned-out hippies here, it’s the furthest thing possible from doing drugs.
It’s possibly one of the most powerful healing experiences I’ve ever had in my life. More importantly, it sounds like a bumper sticker, but it has the potential to heal the world. I think in another conversation, if anybody is interested in what Rythmia is or would like to chat more about it, hit up Alex on Facebook and ask him. Hit up me. I’m here all the time. You can always reach me at MitchRusso@gmail.com and tell me about your experiences. I’m sure Alex feels the same way.
If you’d like to watch the video that Mitch is talking about, we have a Facebook group called Simple Operations: Operating Your Business Just Got Simple, and there’s a video in there called My Experience with Psychedelics. I don’t know that psychedelics alone are going to transform the world, but they are going to give us a huge head start.
When I say transform the world, I think you of course realize that I don’t mean because they exist. It means that if one chooses to consult with Mother Ayahuasca, the gifts that she has to impart are beyond what you can imagine, and I think we both experienced that. Alex, here’s the grand finale. This is the change the world question. I have a feeling I know what your answer will be, but I’m going to ask it anyway. What are you doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
It’s interesting you’re asking me this question because this has shifted for my wife and I. What we’ve done up until now is we have helped visionary entrepreneurs be seen and heard, and we’re still doing that. Simple Operations is succeeding like crazy. I had a call with a friend of mine who’s joining our program now, but that being said, we’re going to leave Simple Operations in place, and what I mentioned earlier about our relationship operating system, I feel like we have this opportunity to work with married entrepreneurs that are working together, who run separate businesses or where their spouse is not an entrepreneur, but to show them how to create not just a good marriage or relationship, but a relationship that becomes a foundation for everything you do.
When I look at my life, the potential that I had in my twenties was a limited amount of potential. When I met my wife and the two of us created a secure attachment, we worked on our relationship, spent time together and I saw the reflection back of me through her, it completely changed what I thought was possible in the world. I never walk into a room alone. My wife’s always there with me. I never worry about my life because I have a securely attached relationship that is the most important thing in my world, and I put a tremendous amount of time into it.
What Katie and I have been talking about doing is showing entrepreneurs how to use their relationship as the foundation for everything else that they do, because if we can help strengthen marriages, then we help strengthen families. If we help strengthen families, we help strengthen communities. If we’ve help strengthen communities, we can help change the world. For me, having the opportunity to help people create that attachment, marriage and foundation for their lives feels like the most compelling and exciting thing I’ve ever thought of.
If we can help strengthen marriages, then we help strengthen families. If we help strengthen families, we help strengthen communities. And if we help strengthen communities, we can help change the world.
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It could be the foundation for everything else, maybe the most important thing ever. First of all, thank you for sharing that. I know you have a show, a podcast called MomentumPodcast.com. Could you briefly tell us a little bit about the type of people you like to interview?
I don’t interview. I’ve done almost 900 episodes and 890 of them are first person, me, typically talking through an entrepreneurial issue. If you go to MomentumPodcast.com, there’s a search engine and you can go there and type in, “I’m overwhelmed,” and you’ll get ten podcasts on how to get out of overwhelm. You can type in, “How to manage a team member?” You’ll get ten podcasts on how to manage a team member or more, but it’s all first-person.
Usually, the episodes are somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes. Usually, fifteen-minute range because I’m recording for visionaries who don’t have a lot of time. I want people to be able to listen to an episode, hear the setup of an issue, hear the solution for the issue, and be able to go apply it immediately. The podcast is very strategic. It will help you tactically. It will help you make changes in your life.
You gained at least one new listener as of right now. Thank you very much. My other question would be if people are interested and excited about some of the things you shared, where can they go to find out more?
The best free resource we have is called the Billionaire Code. You can go to Billionaire Code.com. It is the basis for our coaching, for how my wife and I build businesses, how a lot of the top online businesses in the space right now have been built. We’ve worked with some of the biggest names out there. We worked with Russell Brunson’s team at ClickFunnels, Alex and Leila Hormozi and [00:36:27].
If somebody’s knocked it out of the park in the online marketing space, chances are we’ve been able to support them in some way. The Billionaire Code is the nine levels you go through to go from startup to a $100 million company, and the download includes a direction on each one so you’ll be able to identify where you are, what you should focus on now, what you need to make sure you’ve already done, and what you’re going to focus on next.
I’m going to tune in myself and see what that’s about. Readers, I highly recommend you do the same. I glanced at the page while Alex was speaking and it looked exciting. I’m looking forward to digging in. Alex, this has been an eye-opening experience for me talking to you today about all the wonderful and amazing things you’ve done. I want to say thank you for spending your time and for sharing as much as you have about you and your processes. Readers, I hope you take the opportunity here to go to Billionaire Code.com and MomentumPodcast.com and understand what Alex has contributed. It’s quite incredible. Thank you, Alex.
Thank you. It was a pleasure spending this time with you.
Important Links* ClientFol.io * Billionaire Code * Alex Charfen * Facebook – Alex Charfen * MitchRusso@gmail.com * MOMENTUM for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type * Simple Operations: Operating Your Business Just Got Simple
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Today’s guest grew his social media followers to six million. How did he do that? Tune in to this episode with Keaton Hoskins, also known as “The Muscle” of Limitless Society, because he explains how going viral helps generate tremendous social media followers. Keaton talks about viral videos and the structure of a giveaway model that works in social media. He also shares the three-step process that will blow your social media following. So, join The Muscle in this episode because today’s discussion is what it takes to generate more followers.
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Listen to the podcast hereUnleashing Viral Mastery: How To Generate Six Million Social Media Followers With Keaton HoskinsWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, read, and extract wisdom you could use to grow your business with your first thousand clients. By the way, if you’re a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you. My software platform called ClientFolio has been helping hundreds of coaches save on admin, and get better results from their clients while generating powerful client testimonials for the work that they’ve done. How? By tracking accountability and holding clients to it, no other platform provides you with the power to access a library of accountability questions and place the control in your client’s hands to keep track of their most critical stats and goals. Would you like to give it a try? It’s just $1 to get started, go to GetClientFolio.com and give it a spin.
Now onto my amazing guest and his incredible story. Starting with a life tragedy at the age of two, he held his father as he died in his arms. That changes a person in a very dramatic way. That switch was flipped at such an early age, he was determined to succeed, and he did. Building one of the fastest growing communities called The Limitless Society to over 1,000 members, getting people like Tony Robbins to speak at this event for free, and building his social media following to over 6 million people, he has some amazing stories to share, and he’s about to tell us how he did it and what you can do now to catapult your own business to 1,000 clients or more. Welcome, Keaton Hoskins, to the show.
That was a great introduction. Thank you, sir.
My pleasure. You are an amazing individual, Mr. Keaton. Everyone here is now sitting at the edge of their seat. They want to know all about how this all started for you. Go give us some background.
I’ll try to condense it because it’s a long story. Most of this started, like you said, when I was 21 years old. I was raised by a father, a wonderful man who was a big CEO and was a 9:00 to 5:00-er, the college go-getter. He preached and hammered into us his children that you need to do the safe route, the 401(k), the 9:00 to 5:00, the college, and get the degree. We realized quickly as he began to spiral down in his health that wasn’t the safe route.
I remember when I was 21 years old, I sat next to him on his deathbed and I realized quickly he had regrets. Those regrets were he didn’t live life on his terms. I was the oldest of five kids. I committed that I was going to live life the way I wanted to without the idea of safety but rather go after every single thing I ever desired. With his death and as always, with death, I gained a perspective I think that changed everything for the course of my life. I’ll talk a little bit about that in a minute.
As my father passed away and handed the mantle off to me to take care of the children and his wife, I realized that the responsibility was very great. I knew the only route to success for me was going to be building businesses, programs, and systems that allowed me to live the life that I wanted to. I ultimately did that. At age 21, I started my first business. From 21 until now, I’ve started 36 different companies all from the ground up. Most of them, I did without any funding because I didn’t have any money after my father passed away.
I realized that business in and of itself is all pretty similar, the systems, programs, marketing, sales, HR, and all the infrastructure you need to build a successful business. It’s fairly simple. Now, products are always different. Culture’s always different, but there are a lot of similar things within the business. I started doing these things and by the time I was 34 or 35, I realized I didn’t want to build businesses anymore as much as I wanted to build people. I wanted to help people to build businesses.
I launched my first coaching group. It was Limitless Society and I did that by getting on my social media. You mentioned I had 6 million followers. I got on my social media one day years ago, and I spouted off that I wanted to make 25 random people a millionaire. Within hours, I had thousands and thousands of messages from people saying, “I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but I want to be a part of it.” I realized there was a huge need to teach and coach people on the systems, programs, and ideology of what I had grown up with.
I launched Limitless Society and we’ve had over 3,500 to 4,500 people sign up. We have about 2,500 active members in the coaching program. The coaching program is my favorite thing in the entire world to dedicate my time to. As I said earlier, I built a lot of companies. I built a lot of companies I didn’t like, but I wanted to build them because I knew there was money in them. Once I got myself above needing things and everything is now just a want financially, I realized that my goal, my purpose, and what makes me feel fulfilled is helping people and coaching them. We launched Limitless Society, which has been a dream come true since we did that.
Now I spend my days with people helping them 10X every single aspect of their lives. I honestly, to the core of me, believe that perspective breeds discipline. Discipline is the common denominator for those who seek to do anything great in this life, whether it’s building a business, building a coaching program, or building anything that they want to build in their life. The common denominator for those who have succeeded anyway is discipline. I realized I could sit on stage all day long and tell people discipline, but if I didn’t give them an actual system to implement, then it would be another speaker telling them, “You need to be more disciplined,” and giving them no recipe to do it.
Perspective breeds discipline. Discipline is the common denominator for those who seek to do anything.
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I went back to the beginning of when my father died, sitting there on his deathbed, he was 47, and I was 21 years old. I realized that deathbed gave me the perspective I needed to breed the discipline that would essentially bring me to where I am now. I spend a lot of my time preaching and teaching that. I would love to just sit here and say discipline this and discipline that, but rather I would give you a recipe that you can use to create the discipline you need for the success that you seek.
It makes a lot of sense. I will say this. A lot of us are motivated by a sudden change in life. For me, it was almost dying from an overdose of heroin as a teenager. Once I made that choice that I wasn’t going to die and I was going to become a productive human being, my whole life changed. I went on a completely different track than all my friends who were still hanging out and getting stoned. I decided to plow forward. I was going to be very productive as a human being. Later in life, I learned the same lesson. I learned that you had to create for yourself if you were going to live the life that you want. That’s why I built my own software company back in 1985 and then sold it for eight figures later.
Finally, as a coach, when I work with clients, the discipline part is so important, which is why I created the ClientFolio software, if you don’t hold people accountable and give them a way to track their progress, then you don’t get the results that you want as a coach. Coaching can be a very frustrating experience if you’re sharing a lot of great advice with people and they don’t act. I love what you say about discipline, and it makes a whole lot of sense. We’re in the same place here. Let’s go back and talk a little bit about The Limitless Society. How did you get 6 million people to follow you on social media? Where did those 6 million people come from?
Essentially, across all my platforms, whether that’s Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads, all of these social media platforms. In 2012, we built a company where we introduced the giveaway model. Most people know the giveaway model. I am proud to say we were the grandfathers of that. In 2012, when Facebook began, we launched a Facebook company called Diesel Trucks for Sale. In that, we realized a lot of people in that industry wanted to be connected all over the United States. Our Facebook page started to grow fast.
We then realized that for things to grow fast on social media, they have to have viral videos attached to them. We created these characters, if you will, my character and you probably know most of what people refer to me as The Muscle. There were three of us Diesel Dave, Heavy D, and then myself, The Muscle. We started doing giveaways. In 2012, we had no money and we decided we were going to give away a $75,000 truck. The only way to enter would be by buying clothing from us. Even now, we still have our apparel company called Diesel Power Gear.
Social Media Followers: For things to grow fast on social media, they should have viral videos attached.We launched it, and in the interim of realizing we needed more followers, we started to do crazy viral videos, all kinds of crazy stuff. In 2013, Jay Leno saw some of our viral videos, and he asked us to come out to his show and talk about how we did the viral videos that we had done in the show at Jay Leno. The Discovery Channel saw us, and in that show, they offered us a TV show.
In 2014, we started a reality show called Diesel Brothers. That’s what a lot of people know me from. We had built multiple companies before then. I had 200,000 followers on Facebook before the show ever even aired. With that TV show and all the viral stuff we were doing, our social media started to grow. We realized that if we stopped doing the viral stuff on social media, no matter how good the TV show was, we would stop growing on social media. Ever since 2012 and 2013, I have done viral stuff all over social media, and it has allowed me to grow at a pretty steady rate all across the board.
Do you think that still works? Now, the world is different than it was in 2012, the attention spans are shorter, and more people are vying for attention. Does that strategy still work, particularly for somebody who doesn’t have any exposure now?
Viral videos or giveaway models?
Let’s talk about viral videos first, and then we’ll talk about giveaway models.
Until civilization shuts down, social media and viral videos will always be the best route to grow your social media.
Social Media Followers: Until civilization shuts down, social media viral videos will always be the best route to grow your social media.Let’s talk about the giveaway model. Describe the structure of a giveaway model that works well with social media.
This is why I asked which one you were asking. Giveaway models don’t work anymore because the market is so saturated these days. A lot of people are still trying it. A lot of people are doing crazy giveaways like houses, cars, and vacations. The truth is, because the market is so saturated and so many people have already been a part of some type of giveaway, it’s hard to use the giveaway model in your business. The pertinent reason is that we still have a lot of people who try to do the giveaway and they fail hard. There are some ways around it, but as of now, the giveaway model in and of itself and how we launched it in 2012 and 2013 is not nearly the same and it doesn’t work nearly as well because of that saturated market.
That’s good to know. That’s a great tip as well. It saves somebody a lot of money trying to build a giveaway and have it fail. Let’s now talk about the community itself. You and I spoke as I reminded you before we did this, one of the things you said back then that was surprising to me is that you were coaching a lot of individuals personally. Do you believe that that is part of the success formula that you have now or have you already built out your staff of coaches that are taking a lot of that off your shoulders?
In succession, that is a must for anybody who seeks to build a true community. Even to this day, I’ve probably still had about 75 people that I coach one-on-one. I’ll always do it, even if it doesn’t make the most financial sense. Don’t get me wrong, it financially makes sense. Even if it didn’t, I enjoy one-on-one conversations and building one-on-one way more than I love building in a group. I will tell you this. For those of your audience who are looking to build a community, I would look inward. Oftentimes, I have CEOs, multimillionaires, and big people come to me and say, “I can’t figure out how to build community. I can’t figure out how to build my programs and my businesses.” The first thing I ask is, “What type of leader are you?”
Tell us the type of leader it takes to build that type of community.
To be fair if you dissected what a great leader is, and I know there are a million things I could say, but a great coach, a great leader, or a great parent is someone who is predictable. Predictability means that no matter what happens emotionally, no matter what happens around me, I make the correct decision based on facts rather than on feelings.
It’s so easy to get behind someone that you believe in your heart and your core will always make the correct decision based on the facts given rather than someone who is thrown to and fro by the emotion they feel on that day. I see parents all the time messing up their children. I see coaches messing up their players. I see leaders not leading correctly because they make emotional decisions. If I seek to build anything worth building, I must first become a predictable leader and then people will follow.
It's so easy to get behind someone that you believe in your heart and core will always make the correct decision based on the facts.
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We are talking to the incredible Keaton Hoskins. If you go to YourFirstThousandClients.com and look for Keaton’s page, you’ll see word for word every single bit of wisdom that he’s sharing with you now, including a very special gift. Keaton, I want to mention a story that I have about my own life. When I started my little software company with just me and my partner, as I mentioned, we grew to over 100 employees.
One of the things I noticed, and I’m sure you’ll resonate with this, is fighting with my wife before going to work one particular day. We had receptionists back then. I walked right past the receptionist. I said, “How are you?” I walked into my office and then I didn’t realize what was happening, but apparently, everyone had picked up on my emotions just me walking into the building. From there, the rumors started to spread. “Mitch is upset. What’s going on with Mitch? Maybe he’s selling the company. Maybe the company’s going out of business.” It was all because of how I felt. Not what I said, but how I felt and the energy that I transmitted walking into that room.
I love what you talk about, a leader being predictable. I also resonate with the idea of making decisions based on facts that are harder than they seem. Entrepreneurs are in the throes of emotion almost daily. This is great feedback, and I’m so glad that you’re providing it. We start talking about the organization itself. People who are building an organization build it a lot slower than you because they don’t have the presence or the social media that you do. How do you scale something very rapidly? What are the systems that you and your team have put in to help you do that? Maybe at that point, we can talk a little bit further about what’s in the future.
If we just go off of a few things that we’ve talked about, I would simply say, 1) You need to build yourself. You need to become a better leader. You need to learn how to make emotionless decisions. As you do that, more people will seek your guidance and will join your communities. 2) I would tell every single audience that if you have not created a viral video, it’s time to start putting videos out. As you put them out, you’re going to find out quickly what can be viral and what can’t.
Social Media Followers: Build yourself. You should become a better leader and learn to make emotionless decisions. As you do that, more people will seek your guidance and join your communities.We oftentimes see in Hollywood people who rise to stardom merely because of 1 or 2 viral videos. We see people all the time, and then they fall right off the face of the earth because they never bring any more value but 1 or 2 videos for their whole lives. If you can get into a sense of consistency of posting and being on social media, sharing your message, and trying to do viral things.
Anybody who’s like, “I don’t have a lot of cool stuff. How do I go viral?” I have seen the craziest things go viral. If you focus on using social media as what it is, which is an in-person platform, every single person, not just in the United States but across the world, gets to see every single day, all day long, and realize the power of this phone and start posting.
It’s very easy for someone who has 50 followers to gain followers and gain the people who want to be in their circle and their community. If you work first on yourself, and then you show the world yourself through social media, you will begin to grow those. When you master those first two pieces, that third piece, it’s time to start paying to market and advertise yourself across all those platforms. That’s the recipe that I have found personally to grow and to build the community I seek to build.
It’s a three-step process, become a better leader, create viral videos, be consistent and share them, and focus on social media as a way of promoting. With those three simple tricks, those very important procedures that you talk about, somebody can take what they are doing now and blow it up. I love the advice and they’re great, but it’s also important advice. It’s also the hard part. Maybe it wasn’t hard for you, but for a lot of people, it’s hard to do those three things. It’s hard because they have to spend time, they have to work on themselves, and they don’t know what makes a viral video.
That’s the number one question I get when I teach some of these principles. The first room of people who raise their hands with questions is, “What does it take to make a viral video?” Although this one, your audience may not like, the truth is you will not find out what that is until you are willing to get out there in front of people. That may mean that you have to make 150 videos that you post before you realize how to connect and make viral videos for people.
I’ll tell you one quick story about a guy who did it by accident and found out later that it’s a business. It turns out that he loves to fish. One day he took a cell phone and put a little holster around his neck. He turned on TikTok and ran TikTok while he was fishing. While he’s fishing, he’s talking a little bit about the fish, the place, the environment, and the equipment he is using. Before you know it, he had 30,000 viewers on TikTok from doing nothing but fishing.
The exact point is that everybody in their lives is special. Everybody’s special. I know we’re stuck in this culture where like, “Nobody’s special. Stop thinking you’re above everybody.” The truth is every single one of us is an individual, and we have things to offer and show the world. I have 100 stories like that. I’ve got a friend who loves to cook. It wasn’t even his day job. He just loved to cook. Same thing, he turned the camera on, he started cooking, and now he has millions of followers on social media who ask him, “I saw your recipe. I saw your cooking, I saw your baking, and I wanted to do this.” They become viral.
Another great point is that the viral videos themselves, I’m going to make an assumption that they don’t even actually have to be about your business.
They just be about who you are in your life.
That’s the secret, that’s the trick. Stop trying to make videos about your business because nobody cares about your business. They care about you. You want to get them to care about you by going viral and talking about yourself or doing something that other people can participate in, even if they’re just watching. This is great stuff, Keaton. I love what you’re saying here. When you work with clients individually and you are coaching them, what aspect of the business world are you coaching them on? Are you coaching them on scaling, growth processes, management, and hiring, or are you sticking to the fundamentals we talked about now?
Everything across the board. My methods are probably crazy. A lot of people, when they come into my program, they hear, “Will he help me 10X my business? He’ll help me 10X this and this.” One of the first questions that I ask people is funny and this is why it throws people off. I always go right into personal questions. The very first question I ask a business owner trying to scale his business is, “How is your marriage and how do you rate your marriage?” The truth is you’ll never, ever be more successful in anything than you are in your marriage. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
Social Media Followers: You’ll never be more successful in anything than you are in your marriage, because how you do one thing is how you do everything.If you’re a jackass and a horrible leader in your marriage, if you’re mean, if you don’t listen, if you don’t do those things, and if you can’t communicate, guess what? That carries over into your business. If I can get a gentleman or woman, and I work with both, but if I can get them to realize that the small issues that they keep having in their marriage are also issues they have as leaders, as CEOs, or as owners of companies, the beginning of it is breaking down that if you seek to do anything worth doing, you must first seek to become the greatest version of yourself.
The greater version of you is richer, happier, and more successful in every single aspect. When you come to me and I look at you and you say, “I’ve got a $10 million a year company. I want to go to $100 million,” and your marriage is garbage, the first thing I say is, “We must first fix that, which is most important, and that which you do on a regular basis.” As we fix those issues, it’s crazy. People begin to change how they govern their businesses and how they are as leaders and coaches all across the board. Realistically, I don’t have any perfect system for you. I have a perfect way of reflection that makes you look in the mirror and realize, “Here are my absolute character flaws. As I build my character flaws and I become the greatest version of myself, I become a better CEO, coach, and all of those things that I’m seeking.”
One of the first things you do is say, “Let’s become aware of ourselves first.” The awareness part of it leads to introspection. The introspection with your help and with your coaches’ help leads to finding those areas that you can improve. If you are leading a bad marriage or if you are struggling in your family life, then you’re not a happy person. I don’t care how successful your business is, you’re not a happy person. The formula is get happy, do better.
The reason that you could summarize it or simplify it that way is that if you do build, grow, and enhance your relationship with your spouse, then at that point, you’ll be happier. If you’re happier, you’re going to be less emotional about decision-making, which goes back to one of your very first tenets here. All of this seems to be very closely knit together. I love your system. It’s very clear. I don’t know if anyone has summarized it to you the way I just did, but I see it completely and clearly as the way you’ve described it.
I had a gentleman and it was our first one-on-one session. He has a $100 million company. I said, “For our first session, will you bring your spouse?” We did it in person. A lot of times, I do it over the phone, but he was here locally in Utah. I had him bring his spouse and I said, “Do you mind if we just have her tell us what you need to do better as a husband? How’s your marriage?” They said it’s good. I said, “What does he need to do better?” She listed two things. She said he doesn’t communicate when he has a project and he doesn’t listen when it’s time to listen. In our meeting, I made him call his head of management, his CMO, CFO, and CEO, I made him call them right there on the spot. I asked them the same question and the answer was the same.
When you break these things down, so many of us, “I want to build my business, I want to build my finances,” but they’re not willing to look in themselves and realize the growth is only held by you as a person. If I can help you as a person become a more effective, efficient leader and person, and all of those things across the board in your marriage and with your children, that automatically translates into the growth of what you seek in your business. It was a textbook. I wish I would’ve filmed it. It was a textbook as to why I teach what I teach. I can’t be a good leader at work and not a good leader at home, it doesn’t happen that way. It just doesn’t work that way.
Coaches, if you’re with us now, you’ve got an incredible up-leveling of your entire program. Keaton, I’m going to tell you one of the questions that I learned early in my life that has helped me in my relationships. In my relationship, I say to my significant other, my girlfriend, “What do you need from me to feel loved every day?” When she answers that question, I make it my mission to do that. If she says, “I just need to get a phone call or a text at about mid-morning to say how you’re doing, that’s all I need. I need to know that when I come home, this or that is done or whatever,” I do that. I don’t even care what it is. I do it because I believe that if you can make someone else feel loved, then you can love yourself. That, to me, is so important.
It plays well with the whole idea of what you just described, which is how to align your values with your marriage. Once you get that aligned, those same values apply to your business as well. This has been so informative, and I hope for the audience as well. We’re going to transition right now to the next part of our program. More importantly, I have a question for you. Who, in all of space and time, would you like to have a one-hour conversation, a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
Most likely Alan Watts.
Tell me why.
Alan Watts was one of the greatest philosophers ever. I know he passed away ’80s or ‘90s. He traveled the world. He studied all kinds of religions. His look and his true perspective on life created in him this sense of education that it was almost as if he always had an answer for every situation. He always had an answer for everything. I listen to Alan Watts quite a bit, and he’s very smart. Sometimes it goes over my head because I don’t claim to be the smartest. Listening to him often, I would do anything to have an hour’s lunch with him, and I would have a million questions. His outlook, his perspective, how he lived his life, and what he taught seem to be pretty much the pinnacle of what I seek.
Now we have the time and you’re sitting right in front of him. What’s going to be the first couple of questions you ask? I’d love to hear what those would be.
I know I’ve heard these answers because I’ve listened to his discourse often. One of the first things I would ask is, “As a man, what is the greatest purpose and piece of fulfillment that I should accomplish in this life?” I would probably always err on shutting up and not saying much. I have a million questions, but I don’t want to spend our hour talking about my questions. I just want to listen to him speak.
That’s a great perspective. If you asked him that question, he could probably speak for the entire hour, just about that. The reason I asked this question is because I love how my guests share a little bit about what they love and believe in. Some people say a parent, others say Jesus, and all those are great answers. Those who have different answers, even the same answer, have different reasons. Each of those reasons, to me, shows me a lot about who I’m talking to and I enjoy that. I’m going to move on to the second question. We call this the grand finale. This is the change the world question. I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say, but I’m going to ask it anyway. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
You talk about your belief system. I made a commitment years ago right before I started Limitless and started coaching. That commitment was a simple one, although hard. I would like to spend the majority of my time here on Earth convincing people of their ability to do and be anything that they seek in this life. The life that we have is short. As my father lived to be 47, I may live to be 80, maybe 90. It’s a short time.
The biggest thing that I want in this life is to make an impact in people’s lives, very specifically for them to begin to believe or have a belief in themselves that anything that they want, I don’t care what it is, most people will listen and go, “You can’t do that,” I would love to spend the majority of the rest of my life teaching and preaching to people, “If you want it, you can have any of it.” The reason I built Limitless Society is because I truly believe there are no limits ever. There’s no such thing as impossible. There may be time infrastructure and facility to do something, but nothing that you could fathom in your mind is impossible. I want to spend the rest of my life teaching that to the world.
There's no such thing as impossible. It may need time, infrastructure, and facility to do something, but nothing you could fathom in your mind is impossible.
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I love that. That’s incredible. I’m going to ask a follow-up question. I generally don’t, but you inspired me to do so. Is there a spiritual component to that? When you think about limitlessness and when you think about people having whatever they want, do you feel as if there is a higher power that might help or guide you? I’m just curious as to what your viewpoint is.
To the core of me, I believe in God. To that same core, I believe that God is our Father. If he is our father, that means we are his children. If we’re his children, we are heir to him. If I’m heir to a God, then I would imagine that would mean I have all the ability to become like him. I believe at least my God, I believe that he is limitless. If I’m heir to his limitless, then I should be too. That’s where that entire thought process has come from.
I figured as much, that’s why I asked. I share that belief as well. I also believe that we are capable of destroying ourselves much faster with our minds than with anything else possible. By getting our minds straight and by understanding the basic simplistic concepts of how to live a happy life, and you’ve shared many of them now, which is incredible, people can live a happy life and have anything they want. Thank you for sharing this, but I also want to get to something that I was blown away by your offer to share with our audience. You have a gift to share with my audience. Tell me a little bit about that.
When I launched The Limitless Society, I made a commitment that I was going to do some big events. At those events, I was going to call the world’s best speakers. I know that this was big and most people said that I wouldn’t be able to do it. In September of 2023, I put out that I was going to have the greatest and the biggest event I could throw. I called the greatest speakers I could think of, and they all came out. In my event, I committed. You asked me at the events, “Are you selling things?” I said no. In my events, I don’t want my events for people to come out and get all motivated and then try to sell them something. I don’t do that at my event.
My events are sheer knowledge, information, and true value without trying to pitch to them an idea. In September, we had an event called The Limitless Arena. We had about 8,000 people come out. I had the world’s best speakers. I know there’s a list now, the top 10. I know that 6 of the top 10 were at my event. I’m going to be doing another event. I haven’t announced that yet. April 27th, 2024 in Salt Lake City, I’m going to be doing the same event. This time, the event is going to be bigger and it’s going to have just as much, if not more value to it.
The event, because of the value and because I’m not pitching to sell anything at the event, does cost anywhere from $300 to $3,000 per seat. My gift to you, and those of your audience, and it does come with a qualification, is that I would be happy to give your audience free tickets to that event. The qualification is really simple. I have social media and I have Instagram. I get out to every single message that I get on Instagram. Even though I’ve got a few million followers, I still get out of every message. If you’d like to come for free, I’m giving this away again just to your people, you message me in there and we will get you all set up and I will get you tickets for free to this event.
If you message Keaton on Instagram and simply tell him that you heard him speak on my show and request a free ticket, he will take care of that for you. Keaton, that’s generous. That’s a fantastic giveaway. I appreciate that. For the audience, I hope you take advantage of this because if you’ve been tuning in to the show for a while, this is possibly one of the best gifts we’ve ever had. Keaton’s an amazing individual. If 8,000 people show up to an event like this, you’ve got to believe that there’s a reason why.
Keaton, it’s been awesome talking to you and reconnecting. Thanks so much for appearing on the show. For the audience, do not hesitate to go off and make this happen. A quick question, Keaton, will there be an electronic version of your event? Will you be live-streaming any portion of it or is it being recorded?
What we did at our last event is we did record it and we sold recordings to it. I won’t be doing any live streams or selling any live stream tickets to it. It will all be in person. If there are people even here who can message me and can’t make it, I’m happy to give them a recording of it.
Fantastic. We’ll make sure to get the word out, Keaton. We got a lot of people who would love to attend, I’m sure. More importantly, a lot of people would get incredible value by attending. We’ll get the word out and we’ll make it happen.
I didn’t tell them where. It’s Instagram, @The.Muscle. If you message me there, I will get back to you and we will get you those tickets.
Awesome. Fantastic. Folks, you know what to do. Keaton, thanks a million. Take care. We will talk again soon.
Thank you.
Important Links* The Limitless Society * GetClientFolio.com * @The.Muscle – Instagram
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In the tech startup world, we are of the belief that one needs to go out and raise millions of dollars in order to run a tech company. This episode’s guest managed to build his company and scale to a hundred thousand users without any funding. Mitch Russo interviews Peter Schroeder, the CEO and Founder of Telzio, a seamless cloud phone system solution for all sized businesses. In this conversation, Peter shares the amazing story behind Telzio’s growth and how he was mining gold in the cloud. The key? Just make a good product. Peter talks about what Telzio offers to businesses, providing a much-needed solution to connect them no matter where they are in the world. From advice on growing and scaling a company to the game-changing impact of ChatGPT, Peter and Mitch cover an array of topics that you won’t want to miss. Tune in!
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Listen to the podcast hereMining Gold In The Cloud: How Telzio Scaled To 100,000 Users With Peter SchroederMy guest was born and raised in Denmark, where he started and ran Scandinavia’s largest artist community at the age of fourteen. He was an early starter. In his twenties, he founded a record label and attained over twenty platinum records and 40 gold. He’s just getting started doing 380 gigs a year and got burnt out. That’s what happens to entrepreneurs.
This led him to discover his love of technology. Through that, he ended up creating something that is now over 100,000 subscribers. He built a cloud-based phone system that allows companies to offload all of what I used to have, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of phone equipment, in a closet that was air-conditioned, and every single day, I had to go out and buy new equipment every time. Now, for a small monthly fee, I could have the equivalent of all that and a lot better. We’re going to read from him directly. Welcome Peter Schroeder to the show.
Thank you so much, Mitch. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Thank you, Peter. Tell me, how did this all get started for you?
How far do you want to go back?
If you like, you could share some of the colors of the early days. The audience would love to hear about that too.
That’s the thing. I feel like everything that I’ve done my whole life is one thing led to the other. Something new fell into my lap, and we’ll do that. I burned out when I was DJing. I was at the top of my career. I spoke to my booking agent back then and said, “I need a little time off. I need to put a pause on the bookings a little bit so I can make some new music, be relevant, get that love of going out and playing gigs back, and take a break.”
While I was doing that, I started coding on another completely unrelated project. It’s like a promotion platform for musicians and DJs. I needed a phone service and a support line where people could call in. I couldn’t find anything out of the box that was easy to use and affordable. I was a broken musician. I started making it myself typically, ADD brain, I was like, “I’ll do that.” While I was doing that, I was completely hooked. This was so much fun. All of a sudden, I’d spend a month building that instead of the other project, and I kept going.
That’s the inspired action that gets a lot of us going when we hit a new project. The difference between all of us and you is that you went past the inspired action because first came the inspired action, but we know what comes next. It’s the hard work. Tell us a little bit about that journey.
Several years have passed since that. I didn’t have any money. I’m going in and saying, “I’m going to build a phone company and compete against AT&T and Verizon.” That sounds like a good idea. Somehow, my wife was convinced to cash her 401(k). We had $16,000, and we got started. It was a lot of grind in the beginning. In the first several years, we couldn’t pay for an employee. We did sales support, marketing, development, and everything ourselves. Eventually, we could have our first employee, a supporter, and sales. It was a long road. We never took funding or anything like that.
You built this company for ten years. You’ve never had any funding.
I never had any funding and never spent a dollar on advertising.
This was all word-of-mouth.
A good SEO and word of mouth.
Let’s go back a little bit. Do you think that would be the case again today? Do you think you could do that now as the world changed?
I have kids now. If I didn’t have kids and if I could spend 48 hours straight at a time coding on something, probably.
Let me ask the question a different way. Do you think now it’s possible still to build a company and grow it even as carefully and slowly as you have and attain the same results? Do you think those opportunities are still available? Do you think it’s become crowded and congested?
It’s always possible. There’s this weird misconception that when you have a startup, especially in tech, you have to go out and raise $200 million from a VC, and you have to burn it all in a year. That’s the only way to run a tech company. That’s the only thing you hear, and that’s also what we thought when we started out.
Telzio: There is this weird misconception that when you have a startup, especially in Tech, you have to go out and raise 200 million dollars from a VC and then you have to burn it all in a year.We tried to raise money, but who’s going to invest in a couple who wasn’t even married at that time and trying to compete against these big giant multinational corporations? There’s no way. We had to go that way, and we believed in the product. The thing is you shouldn’t think about trying to beat those guys. You have to think about making a good product and getting a few customers to pay the bills and grow it. Don’t think about being the best from day one because that’s not going to happen if you don’t have money.
That’s unfortunately true. I like the way you said it. Build something that a few customers will pay for. At that point, once you start with a few and a few more hear about it, did you create incentive programs in the beginning for your customers to tell others about it, or did that come later?
It came early on, but it was never something that we did a lot about. We didn’t try to promote it too much. People kept referring people. They didn’t even want anything for it. They loved the product and they wanted their friends to have it. That came easy. It’s about making a good product, and then that stuff comes.
Let’s talk a little bit about the product and the way it works because it’s interesting how the world has changed. I mentioned briefly, and you and I haven’t spoken about this, but I built a software company many years ago called Timeslips Corporation. I grew it out of my garage like the way you did it. I sold the company after I hit about 250,000 customers. I sold it to Sage UK.
One of the things that I thought was interesting about the way we operated was that we had 100 employees and a room filled with equipment. Every eighteen months, the rep from our local phone vendor would come by and say, “You hit the max on this equipment. You need to upgrade to all new equipment.” The first group of equipment was $25,000. By the time we sold the company, we had spent almost $2500,000 on the equipment in the room, let alone the people to run it, the real estate, and everything else. Tell me a little bit about what software does to replace that.
What we do is 100% cloud. You go in and you sign up on our website. It’s a self-service platform. We do have a team that can help, but most people tend to figure it out because it’s easy. We do it completely software-based. What you’re talking about is what telecom looked like before VoIP was everywhere. What has happened over the past several years is everything has become VoIP. Even between the carriers, there’s no hardware or any hard lines anymore. Even if you have a landline phone in your house, it’s until it reaches the next box out on the street, and it’s VoIP from there. It’s all on the internet. Even on the public internet, it’s not even closed anymore.
The thing is the internet has gotten fast and optimized. There’s no need for any of those things anymore. We can make phone calls around the globe with a round-trip latency of less than 100 milliseconds, which means that you can’t even hear that delay that you used to hear when you talk to someone from a different country. Even if they’re on the other side of the globe, you can’t hear it. Those things have to have changed. The interesting thing about that is that it was the alt change. I feel like when things went from analog to VoIP, that was a big shift, but what’s happening now is way bigger. The whole industry is about to change. I don’t think we’re going to see much phone service for many years anymore.
The whole industry is about to change. We're not going to see much phone service for many years anymore.
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The last mile, which runs from the central office in a sense, back to the hub. The real question here is once that last mile is replaced, or in this case, in the United States anyway, it doesn’t even make a difference. It’s all the web anyway. Let’s talk a little bit about how a small business can utilize a system like this. We all have cell phones. We have free services everywhere. Many people who operate from home can use the web on their own without needing to sign up for anything. What are the advantages of using a Telzio-based system over what is normally considered standard stuff?
As a business, you want certain features that you don’t have on a standard business stuff. You want to transfer calls between your employees and your conference calls. You want every employee to have their own extension. You want them to have their own voicemails and texting. You want to be able to receive texts on your main business number and have them routed to whoever is most efficient in answering whatever question it is.
At the same time, you also want your main number to have a phone menu like, “Thank you for calling. Press one for this. Press two for that.” If you’re a larger business and you have support or a sales department that needs to take a lot of calls, you want to put calls in the queue until someone is available. You want to make it so that instead of putting people in a queue, you want them to get directly to who they spoke to last time they called. They don’t have to re-explain everything over and over. Features like that are things you don’t have on a regular cell phone plan.
What we’ve done is create a mobile app that you put on your cell phone because your employees don’t want to have two cell phones with them. That’s the thing we did in the early 2000s, but that’s annoying. What we do is we have an app that you put on your cell phone. Whenever you get a business call, it comes in on your personal cell, and you’ll see that it’s a business call. If you want to make a call from your business number, you can open our app and type in the number from there. It’s the same thing with texting. Your employers can use their own cell phones and take their business calls with them no matter where they are in the world.
One of the things that became valuable to me was later when I built a company with Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes. We built Business Breakthroughs International. My audience probably remembers this story. I’ve told it a few times. We grew that company to almost $30 million in revenue. We had several hundred people distributed around the world. If it wasn’t for a service like yours, we could have never done that.
This is one of the things that you could do with Telzio, and I’ve used the system. I could speak with it from experience. I used it a few years ago. It’s better now. You can, with a visual map, build routing guides and diagrams as to how you want a call to be handled when it comes in. The nice thing about this is if you’re spending money to generate leads from the phone, which I highly recommend because it’s worked well for me, you can see a dashboard of what’s going on with those calls almost instantly.
The other thing is if you’re trying to track your ad spend and you set everything up properly, you have multiple 800 numbers indicating which source each of these ads is running, and you can even have multiple ads running from the same source by time slice, and Telzio will help you separate all those out. This is not a product advertisement of Telzio, but since I’ve used it and am familiar with these backend systems, I thought I’d share a little bit more about this with our audience.
As a reminder, we are speaking to the amazing Peter Schroeder. He’s the CEO of Telzio. He founded this company ten years ago, and we’re listening to his story. You can go to YourFirstThousandClients.com and look for Peter Schroeder’s show page. Peter, you learned a lot growing a company to the scale that it is now. We have a lot of people reading who are in various stages of their entrepreneurial journey. Let’s start with a little bit of the basics here. If somebody is under six figures and wants to scale the company and grow the company, give us some advice. Where would we start? How would that work?
If I were to give myself some advice ten years ago, it would be to get a founding partner who is a salesperson. That’s the main thing I regret not doing and not focusing on. I am happy that we focused for at least the first five years on building the products, nailing them, and making sure that they’re solid. We could have grown a lot faster if we had someone on our team who was sales-minded. I’m not a sales guy. I understand business, but I’m not interested in sales. That’s not my happy place. Get someone who is an absolute badass at selling. Get that person on your team from the beginning. That’s the main thing I would’ve done differently.
Get a founding partner who is a salesperson.
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Did you start with that person? Are you speaking from, “I wish I could have done that?”
I wish I could have done that. We didn’t get even a single salesperson until 3 to 4 years in.
Let’s go back a step because there are going to be some people here who are tuning in to this and say, “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go out and hire a salesperson.” The one thing that I would advise people to do is maybe perfect the sales process yourself first before you bring on a salesperson so you can teach them how to do what you want them to do. When we were building our company for quite a while, I did all the selling myself because I felt like I was the best at it.
You are always going to be the best salesperson. No one can sell your products better than the founder. That’s a fact. You can’t do that yourself forever. That is why I’m saying, “Have a co-founder who’s a salesperson.” I could take the time and teach everyone. That’s also what I have done. This is my happy place. I would rather spend that time coding and building the product. I had to learn a lot about sales. I’ve learned a lot over the years. I can pitch the product. I can tell you everything great about it, but that’s not all there is to close a deal. I feel like that’s important. We could have at least shaved 4 to 5 years off to get to where we are now if we had done that.
Telzio: You are always going to be the best salesperson. No one can sell your products better than the founder.Let’s say, at this point, you get the salesperson. Talk a little bit about communication. How do you communicate with your initial prospects? A lot of times, particularly introverts who start companies, feel like, “I don’t want to bother them. They’re fine.” Give us some input about what you think in terms of communication with existing clients and prospects.
I’m exactly that person you described right there. That’s why I’m not a good salesperson. I would say for us, the way we did it in the beginning, we took calls when people called, and that’s a big failure. I wouldn’t say do that. We haven’t spent advertising money. We are lucky that we have a good product. People come to us and they want to tell everyone else about it. The product sells itself once you sign up for a trial.
We have 70% conversion once we get people to sign up for a trial, which is wild in our industry. Normally, that should be 5% to 10%. That’s what saved us because if we didn’t have a product that was fun to play with instantly when you signed up and got you hooked in because of the call flow you were talking about earlier that’s fun to play around with. That is what saved us on that count because if we didn’t have that, we would have to call everyone and be aggressive like our competitors are. They call every half hour to their leads until they sign a five-year contract. We didn’t even ask for contracts. We started doing that because people asked us for it.
For us, it’s almost the opposite way because I would say what we have started doing over the past few years is building out our sales team. Most of that is in the Philippines. We have amazing people out there. They speak perfect English, with no accent or anything like that. They work their butts off. They’re good people out there. We have a huge team out there, and we even started getting our supporters out there.
It’s great advice to have people go and do that, particularly if you have the resources to build a sales team in a foreign country. At first, it’s hard to manage. You had some help. I assume you have a competent sales leader in your company who sets this all up and does the training or brings in people to do that. It’s a big deal. What you’re describing is the hard part. Was there ever a time when, while you were scaling the company, you were either running out of money or hit a point where you started to wonder or worry whether you’d be able to get past that point?
Yes and no. We have always been running out of money because we’ve always reinvested everything. We’ve been conservative at the same time. We have always made sure that we have enough money in our bank account to pay for the next couple of months’ payroll and keep the lights on. Lucky for us, we have a business. It’s a recurring subscription-based business. We would have to lose all our customers from one day to the other for it to fail.
We try not to put all our eggs in one basket by having one large customer. That’s an important thing. Don’t bet on one customer because if you lose that one customer, you’ll have to let half of your staff go. We specifically avoided that. There’s no customer that is over 1% of our revenue. That’s a round rule for us. It’s important that we don’t do that.
Don't bet on one customer because if you lose that one customer, you'll have to let half of your staff go.
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It’s about trying to get those salespeople. We have a good sales leader. Try and find that one person who is that good sales leader, and who believes as much in this product as you and can. Go out and find those and build that team, and have the experience of building that team. We were lucky enough to get a person from our biggest competitor to come over to us. She started building out. She’s in the Philippines, and she started building out our team out there. She started poaching her old colleagues. We got employees who were trained in selling to our target audience and trained in the industry. All we had to do was beat out the way that they’re taught to talk to their customers, which we do differently than our competitors.
There is some training involved, which is natural. Those are the things you have to do. What about the support side of that? You have to build a support organization. Are they also in the Philippines? Do you do that in the United States?
We got our first two supporters out in the Philippines. The rest is in the United States. We used to have everyone in our headquarters office. After COVID, we scaled down. We are only three and a half at our headquarters. Everyone else is completely scattered all over the world. That goes for supporters and engineers.
You do run an almost completely virtual company. It is important to note because it doesn’t require a lot of people on site. You also use your own software, which is great because it makes it easy for you to see how it works. When we started the show, I talked about ClientFolio, which is my coaching platform. The reason I built it is because, like you, I needed it from my own coaching business. I needed a software platform that would help me manage what I do, and nothing out there worked for me. I had to come up with something that did. If you use it every day, you get to see the flaws, what’s missing, and what’s needed. That’s a big advantage as well.
What other words of wisdom might you have for someone who hits a point? The name of the show is Your First Thousand Clients, and there’s a lot of experience that we get when we start to accomplish that goal of getting 1,000 people to either be clients or subscribers. What does someone need to know that allows them to get there that isn’t obvious to the beginning entrepreneur?
We did a couple of things. In the beginning, we were focused on startups. That was our target customer. The main reason for that was we built the product from the ground up. We had few features in the beginning. It was a small product. That was great for startups. Our pricing model was $1 a month, and you paid as you go.
As we grew and added more businesses, we realized this was not going to work forever because we had a lot that spent $10 a year. They take up the same amount of support and onboarding sales efforts that a customer of 5,000 employees takes because they would have support or an IT person to figure it out. We had to figure out how we could move from that target audience.
As we built more features on the product, we also started getting more larger customers. All of a sudden, Facebook and Airbnb signed up. From one day to another, they signed on. That showed us that the product is ready to not have a $ 1-a-month plan anymore. We moved it to a minimum of $50, and we kept the same billing model where it’s pay-as-you-go. We don’t do contracts. You don’t do this pay-per-user unlimited usage because that’s a scam. It’s a good way to make a lot of money. I’ll give them that, but it goes against my beliefs in all kinds of ways.
We kept that model. Because we put this $50 a month as a minimum usage or spent, that allowed us to weed out the small ones that are not serious customers that are never going to contribute any revenue to us, and be at a pricing point where we could get the ones that are small, starting up, can afford, and have a real business, and focus our support on that.
The thing is we have few employees. We try not to have a lot of staff on purpose. I don’t like managing people. I try to find some talented ones and pay them a lot of money so that they don’t leave once we’ve trained them and they know the product. They know everything about what’s going on. We can do efficient support fast. That’s the key for me personally. That’s how I can stay happy.
That’s the goal. You’re the founder. It’s important to stay happy and motivated. You said something important that I didn’t want to gloss over. You said you find great people and you pay them a lot of money. For entrepreneurs, it’s a bit counterintuitive because what they want to do is find people and hire them at the lowest possible price they can.
I made that mistake in my twenties when I started Timeslips Corporation, and I made it. It was an honest mistake. We didn’t have any money. We couldn’t pay people a lot of money. After a few years, the competitor came along and started snatching our people out of tech support after they had been fully trained. We realized we needed to revamp how things were done.
It’s an important tip that you shared with us. Let’s go a little bit deeper on that. When you bring somebody on board, do you have automated training systems in place to get them up to speed, or do you feel as if it’s best to have them work with other people, shadow them, and learn that way? What is your preference?
We have a small team. We have some training manuals, some high-level guidance, and things that we need to be trained on. It is another team member that trains them and goes over. We don’t have anything automated besides our cybersecurity awareness things and those high-level ones that everyone has to go through. The actual training on the product, whether that be for sales or support, was done by another team member.
I have a poster hanging right here that says, “You don’t need a 100-person company to develop that idea.” It’s a quote by Larry Page from Google. I have it there because I want to remind myself that it’s expensive to hire cheap people. I’ve made the same mistake. There’s a quote that says, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a pro, wait until you hire an amateur.”
It's really really expensive to hire cheap people.
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For example, for software developers, if you hire $120,000 a year, which could maybe be what you could afford, that was what we could afford in the beginning. You get one that is worth $120,000. That per person is not going to stay on for a long time because it’s not going to live up to your standards and what you want. Instead of doing that, wait another half year until you can afford that $200,000 person and get that one in because that’s going to propel your company forward so much faster. You’re going to have someone who’s going to stay on and make sure to pay them above average so they stay on, as you mentioned. It’s incredibly important.
These are the wisdom nuggets that come from having built, scaled, and run large organizations. I appreciate you sharing them. We’re going to transition at this point to the next part of the interview. What we like to do with this show is ask the same two questions of all our guests. The answers are never the same, which is what I love most about it. I’m going to ask you this next question, and this is a question that tells us maybe a little bit more about you. Here’s the question. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
Freddie Mercury. I would like to meet him. I’m sad that I never got to even see him perform.
Tell me why. Why would you choose him out of everybody in the universe?
I feel I relate to him. He had the same upbringing. He came from a regular family but had to fight for what he wanted to get to where he was. He had some talent, but he still had a lot to fight for. I relate to him. He is the best songwriter there ever was.
I love the movie about his life. That was wonderful. If you had this moment with him, would you ask him a question?
I couldn’t even say anything. I will be starstruck. I would ask him questions. I would want to know what he goes through when he writes songs. I’ve been a songwriter. I still make a little bit once in a while. That creative process is different from person to person. I would like to know what went through his brain, how he did it, and where he got inspiration because he’s made many good ones, and those are hard to come by.
Here’s the grand finale. This is the change the world question. Are you ready?
Yes.
What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
We’ve been building AI stuff for a long time. As we started building our AI product in 2017, we registered AIAttendant.com back then. We’ve been waiting for the technology to be ready, and it is now. We have some fun stuff coming. Not only AI, but there are other things right now that are happening that are completely going to change the whole communications industry, and that’s fun. I’m excited to be part of that and get to play around with these things.
We rarely cover AI on the show. Since you brought it up, I’m going to ask you, how did you start working with AI before there were things like ChatGPT available? What resources were you using?
AI is not a new thing. It’s been around for a long. We have the same things that ChatGPT is built upon. We have been messing around with it. It’s machine learning and these things that are built into your freaking fridge. It’s everywhere. It’s that ChatGPT has a better way of solving certain things and has built a product around it that consumers can use for something productive. That’s the main thing that has changed over the past year. Besides that, for someone who is in the industry and software development, it’s not a big surprise that it came around like this.
No, it’s not a surprise because we had Watson from IBM twenty years ago. That was more potent AI back then than anything ever came close to it. It’s funny because IBM led AI, and yet no one ever associates IBM with AI anymore. Everyone associates Google with AI and quantum computing. Most people don’t realize that IBM has been building quantum computers for a long time before Google.
If you think about it, ChatGPT came around this time a year ago, and not long after came Google’s Bard and a couple of others. It only took Google a month to build what ChatGPT has built for the past twenty years. OpenAI is not a new company, and they’ve been doing this for a while. It’s not that Google remakes it in a month. Google has been on this for a while. They were forced to release a product that they didn’t even feel was ready yet at that point, which wasn’t because it was horrible. They were forced to release that because OpenAI was out there with theirs. They couldn’t sit on it any longer. It’s not that this is new. It got a lot of attention because now there was a consumer product that people could use for something.
It has changed the work environment for everybody. Peter, you promised something special for my audience. Tell me a little bit about it. What is it and how do you get it?
I would like to give everyone a free month of service, besides the trial, but three months once you sign up with us for our service. That will allow you to try it out for your business if you like it, and I’m sure you will. As I said, we have good conversion rates.
The average person and the solopreneur might find it valuable, but if you’re a little bit bigger than that or, you have several employees, particularly if you have a distributed workforce, this is a cool product. This is worth checking out. I would suggest you take Peter up on his offer. It’s fun to play with too. That’s another good thing about it. Even as a study of great products on the web, take a look, login, play around with it, and see how it’s architected because it’s well done.
The way to get to that link for your free login is to go to Telz.io/Mitch. The other way to get it easily is to go to YourFirstThousandClients.com and go to Peter’s show page. Peter, it was a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks so much for your time and for sharing everything you have. You have such incredible luck going forward. I hope to tell you it goes to a million subscribers sometime soon.
Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun.
Thank you.
Important Links* Peter Schroeder * Telzio * Telz.io/Mitch * https://www.Instagram.com/petefox * https://www.Facebook.com/PeterrankSchroeder * https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/PeterRankSchroeder * https://www.YouTube.com/@PeterRankSchroeder/streams
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Picture this: ancient secrets, symbolism, and the quest to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. It’s not Harry Potter; it’s the real world of alchemy, and it’s waiting to be explored. Join us in entering the mystical world of alchemy with John Hernandez, founder of the Alchemy Coaching Institute. John masterfully brings this ancient tradition into the 21st century, demonstrating how its principles can be applied to everyday life, business, and personal growth. From the foundational stages of alchemy to the importance of nurturing your own alchemical journey, John covers everything about the importance of this ancient wisdom in our modern lives. Tune in now and let the magic begin!
John is offering a free coaching session for anyone who is interested. Grab the free introductory call at:
AlchemyCoachingInstutite.com
https://alchemyguild.wildapricot.org/
https://www.alchemystudy.com/
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Listen to the podcast hereChaos To Clarity: The Alchemical Art Of Transformation With John HernandezOur goal is to help you be a better leader, inspire more people, create the passion your community wants, and profit from the experience. Some people ask me why I created this show, and the answer is simple. I want to learn from my guests and my audience how to effectively start, grow, nourish, and capitalize on a tribe. I believe tribes are the social experience that brings people together in many unique ways, and I want to share that with you.
I also want to hear from you. What action do you take from every amazing guest we speak to? If you are a coach, I have a special gift for you. Go to CoachElevation.com and download my new book, my third book, for free. If you like it, leave a review on Amazon. If you want a hard copy, you can get it there. Now, onto my guest and his incredible story.
Alchemy, often relegated to the realm of myth and fantasy, is a multifaceted discipline with historical and philosophical depth. While popularly known for the chimerical quest to transmute base metals like lead into gold, alchemy’s scope extends far beyond the simplistic understanding. At its core, alchemy also encompasses a rigorous introspective journey aimed at refining the human spirit and consciousness. This inner alchemy focuses on activating an elevated state of thought, emotion, and performance. While the gold-making aspect gets all the Hollywood glam, the real treasure may lie in its potential for profound personal transformation.
Our guest is a full instructor with the International Alchemy Guild and is studying under renowned masters in this space. His background is in ancient history. He has traveled to Rome, Egypt, Prague, South Africa, and many of the sites in Europe in his studies. He is here with us to share some of the secrets that you could use to get better results, improve your life, and share what he brings to the world. Welcome, John Hernandez, to the show.
Thank you, Mitch. Great to be here.
It’s my pleasure to have you, John. Tell me, how did this all start for you?
It started with my mother reading me books on Egyptian mythology, Greek mythology, and Thousand One Arabian Nights when I was a little kid instead of the normal child books. I was captivated. I wrote my first paper on Egypt when I was in late grammar school and got to interview Louis Alvarez, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who did some work with his son at the Great Pyramid.
At a young age, I was privileged to have access to that. I’ve been following this path ever since then. Alchemy has come in and out of my life throughout the years. I got solidly interested in saying, “I want to know more, but where do I go?” I found something called the International Alchemy Guild, which is an unbroken chain since the 1500s of the work of actual alchemy work.
The word alchemy is coined and used a lot. Typically, it’s somebody who likes the word and knows it’s led to gold and transformation, but they don’t know what goes behind the curtain. I got involved in that. I did learn from some of the remaining legitimate alchemists out there. I later became an instructor after I passed the coursework and was invited to become a mentor in the study course of the International Alchemy Guild or instructor for that.
That is that particular journey. My life itself, unbeknownst to me at the time, took an alchemical journey going through epic successes and what I call biblical failures. To this day, the difference is that the cycle continues. It’s part of the cycle of life and business, but now I have the toolset to look through it to the other side.
Let’s add some perspective to that. You started studying alchemy way before you got involved in some of your business adventures. Is that true?
Yes, that’s correct.
You were living in the physical world but studying the metaphysical world through alchemy. How many years ago did you start that process?
Several years ago, I was starting it in a serious way.
What started to happen is that your business started to scale and take turns. You’ll tell us more about that. What I’m interested in initially is how alchemy played a role in the twists and turns, the ups and downs of business and life. Give us some examples of how the practical application of alchemy to how you conduct your business or did conduct your business, and maybe even how it pulled you out of bad situations and brought you some insights into where you are.
To do that, I’ll bullet point the alchemical steps. First of all, alchemy is an art and science that works on the physical, the metaphysical, and the psychological, all three at the same time. It’s not one or the other. It’s all three. There are three aspects of it. There is a linear formula, but I will say that the linear formula works well to begin with. What I’ve come to know is that that formula changes over time. It repeats steps and moves through steps.
Alchemy: Alchemy is an art and science that works on the physical, the metaphysical, and the psychological at the same time.I’ll go over the steps and show you how they worked in my life. The first step is a fire step called calcination. It’s about burning away something. It’s burning away the excess, droughts, and pieces that are in the way. Once you do that, there’s a water stage called dissolution, where the remaining ash of that burnt product is dissolved in a solution. That’s the emotional stage, or it can be the emotional stage.
Alchemist thought tears were crystallized thoughts. It was alive in the alchemical world to access emotions. In this business world, we have emotional literacy as a big piece, and this follows suit. I can fold those in together later. The next is the air stage called separation, where you have this dissolved stuff, and it’s now dried in the air. You’re left with two basic elements.
The two basic parts of your psyche could be soul and spirit, head and heart, or shadow and gold. It’s conjoined. This is the earth stage. That’s called the chemical wedding, where these two pieces are now fused into one. That’s the sovereign piece. The leadership piece is there, where I get to have the vision of the leader and make the difficult choices of being a leader. This is a critical point in alchemy, and this is what I see out in the world a lot. This is the point where a lot of folks that are following the work or even unconsciously following the work, stop. What happens if you stop at that point? There’s a tendency for narcissism and grandiosity.
Alchemy: If you stop at the psyche point, there’s a tendency for narcissism and grandiosity.You describe the elements or a pathway that defines the alchemical process. Let’s go back and unpack that a little bit. It’s interesting. Which step one? Describe it again, and tell me what it shows up in real life looking like.
Step one is called calcination. It’s a firestone. Sometimes, in life, we may figure that something is not working or I’m hitting a roadblock. A lot of the time, the roadblocks are here, not there. Sometimes, things are going great seemingly, but there’s potential that we’re not reaching. There’s something in the way. The fire step is about doing some deep introspective work or working with a mentor because, a lot of times, this stuff is buried, and I’ll give an analogy of that later.
Let me ask a question at this stage. In stage one, you hit a roadblock. In normal life, you try and solve whatever problem comes up. Whether you lost a client, you get another client, whatever you have to do, you’re going about your life. As an alchemist, that’s a trigger that says, “I’m in step one. I need to apply step two.” Am I getting this correctly?
Yes, but you need to perform step one first. You need to figure out what’s going on and what’s behind that. If I lose a client, a client is complete, and other times, it might be some impact that I had from something I am not seeing. That’s where the uncovering process begins. Once you get to that piece, that might be driving that behavior or cause you to push someone away if we’re using this particular example. I go in and work to burn that out, create that belief system, and turn it into an ash of some kind.
I want to relate that to the real world. How do I take something and convert it into ash? In a practical example, I lost a client. I don’t know why, or I completed them. How do I apply alchemy to my life right now, right here? I take a step back and go, “I can apply step one.” What would I do in the real world, knowing alchemy once that happens?
I’ll give you a real-world example based on my own experience. One of the vendors that we work with was several years ago, and they abruptly terminated us as their partner. I got to take a look and say, “The fit wasn’t good. I didn’t like what they were doing.” Finally, I realized, “I created an impact. I caused this because I had a belief system, which was my way or the highway.” When I started to unpack that, this was a few months after it, I realized what I had been doing. I had to go back and say, “I see what happened. I created this issue, distancing and angst between us. All I wanted to do was to place that on the other person.”
Did that happen because of your knowledge of alchemy? Were you able to separate from real life and say, “Now, I’m going?” That’s the part I’m most interested in. Let’s go through that one more time. Tell me the steps as you take me through the process of identifying the problem, correlating it to the alchemical step, moving to solve it, and going to the next step after that.
When I came to the realization of what the impact of my choices was, that’s when I took a deep look and started the process. I looked at the behavior and what was behind the behavior, which in this case was the thing I was trying to avoid, which was the fear of scarcity. What I had done is I had caused the thing that I was trying to avoid, which is typical and can be typical in human behavior. I applied it right away.
I didn’t want to do it because I don’t like to take a deep look at myself. Now I’m familiar with and have fun with it, but then it’s like, “This is tough.” I took a look. I saw what I did and said, “I need to take that belief system and let it go.” I burned all the things around it that it was telling me I didn’t have what I needed and I was going to be in lack.
Take that belief system and let it go.
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Once I did that, I moved to the next step. I realized the cost of that behavior. I started tying back to other things in my life. This has shown up in all these places, and it’s caused all these impacts. There was some grieving involved. That’s the water stage of all the costs that took me. At that point, I realized, “Where are the parts of it? What’s left?”
What’s left was my shadow side, that part of a belief that I wasn’t conscious of, and there’s the gold side. There’s the part of my own brilliance, not in an egotistical way, but the part of me that knows. I can bring those two things together and realize, “I’m always going to have this part of myself that’s in this dark that I’m going to have to work with, and that’s okay. That’s a part of me, as is the brilliant, the knowing part.”
There is always going to be this part of ourselves that's in the shadow, in the dark, that you’re going to have to work with and that's okay.
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Let me ask you a question because I’m enjoying this. You understand you’ve studied alchemy, you have a framework, and the s*** hits the fan in life. You now say to yourself, “Let’s take a look at how alchemy would view what I’m going through.” By being external to the problem, in a sense, treating life symbolically instead of literally, alchemy helps you solve the problem with advanced information, knowing it can be solved because you have the tools to do it.
The end result of all that work was the earth stage, being the sovereign and having the vision. I’m realizing, “I need some support now.” I can see that. That’s when I turned to a business partner and said, “From now on, I’m going to bounce these things by and get that additional piece of feedback to make sure that I am not acting from this place.” That’s how the alchemical process blossoms into what’s called the distillation, which is the constant circulation of these things. I’m constantly running things by my partner on these types of things. That’s how that one piece resolved. Most of the pieces work in that way. There are lots of them.
I hope you’re enjoying this conversation that I’m having with John Hernandez. John, what it sounds to me like, and I’m going to simplify if I may, there’s a learning process that shows you a simple system that will help you navigate life. The system is simple, but there are details. The better you understand the details, it sounds to me like the better you can anticipate how life works in your world. I’m vastly simplifying the process, but it’s an intricate set of rules. What do I do if I don’t have time to learn this entire process? I need some help with alchemy. What would you suggest? How did you do it when you found that you needed some help?
There’s a piece that I want to bring into this that you mentioned. The whole crux of this work is applying it to everyday life. Sometimes, alchemy gets a stigma of intense, complicated philosophy. It’s esoteric and great if you lived a thousand years ago. I’m a huge proponent of applying these to everyday life. That’s where the rubber meets the road. How did I learn alchemy? There are two parts to that answer to that.
The whole crux of Alchemy is applying it to everyday life.
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If you’re looking to learn the history and all the pieces that go into it, there’s the Alchemy Study course from the International Alchemy Guild. That’s specifically designed for alchemy. It doesn’t apply that much to life. It’s the learning of the process. You can ask. There is a mentoring program for that, where you can bring me on as a mentor. We go a little farther afield to other pieces that relate to Alchemy but are still in that realm.
You want to take a deep dive as a team member in your business and apply it specifically to your life because Alchemy is not about business. It handles everything, relationships, personal relationships, and community relationships. It encompasses all of that and applies it to business leadership. I have a specific set of coaching that’s designed for that. It’s taking those modalities but applying them to your specific needs.
Let me take a step back here and mention to everyone who’s reading. John and I met on a trip to Egypt. He and I became friends and started working together for my better understanding of Alchemy and the alchemical process. When I read the book The Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy, I didn’t feel like I got it at the end of the book. I thought that working with John brought it into the third dimension for me. It crystallized the entire concept. As we worked together, I now can see how and begin to apply it in life.
I want to let people know that this is a rich tradition. If you’re looking for a quick fix or something like that, it’s not for you. On the other hand, if you’re fascinated by history and you love the stories of how Alchemy has transformed the world and, in many ways, brought us to where we are together, this is going to be a journey that I believe would be fun to go on.
John, you mentioned the Alchemy Guild. I went there. It’s an interesting website. There are a number of topics with videos, but it is for the core study of Alchemy. You run a coaching institute. I believe the website is AlchemyCoachingInstitute.com. Tell us a little bit about that and the work that you’re doing. We’re going to now move into a discussion about your tribe because this is the Tribe Builders.
You made a great point, which it’s not a quick fix. I don’t know of anything that’s legitimate, but Alchemy is called the great work, not the great shortcut. It’s an ongoing work. It’s like, “I’m done. I did this one piece. I got it. It’s not no like, “Oh gosh.” It’s endless. There can be fun and passion with this. There’s a lot to do, and it’s all work. I will give you a piece of gold at the end. Alchemy Coaching Institute, I started based on working with some other CEOs and some other folks who wanted more specific applications to what they were doing as far as working with team members and collaboration spaces.
Alchemy is actually called the great work, not the great shortcut, because it's an ongoing work.
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It all always comes down to them, not to techniques that I can give them to work all the way we do that. This is why I mentioned the team earlier because it’s critical. There are a lot of high-quality coaches out there. A lot of them have good, specific guidelines for doing pieces. Where I come in strong is what happens between you and those pieces you’re given by the coach. That’s where I can bridge that gap. That’s what I’ve done with the folks I’ve worked with. It’s a team. It’s not there’s a one coach fits all. There are several of us that can complement your team. That’s how I look at it with the Alchemy Coaching Institute.
What I love about what you’re doing is that you are training coaches to bring alchemy to the world, and you’re working individually with people who are interested in alchemy from two different perspectives. One is to learn it, and the second perspective is to apply it. The third thing that I understand that you and your coaches do is you can solve problems by consulting people using the alchemical process.
You don’t have to learn or study alchemy. Instead, what you can do is you could help someone through an issue and apply alchemy along the way. Once they get a feel for what you’re doing, most people get more interested and want to learn more and do more. I do like that about the work that you’re doing. Talk a little bit about some of the articles you have posted on the site. Who are those for, and what is the purpose of doing that?
I’ve written a series of blogs on my site. They’re for everyone. They’re focused a little bit more on what I do on the business side for the alchemy coaching. The word leader is an interesting one. The leader is the sovereign piece. I mentioned the king and the queen archetype. It’s accessing that part of us that is the knower that is connected with that, the visionary, the one that makes the difficult choices. It applies to every part of our life. If you look at what I wrote on my blogs, you can apply that again to relationships and everything.
I write these as they come to me as different parts of the work. I wrote a blog on this time of the year, autumn. It’s about celebrating the darkness. Why would we do that as an example? This is a time of year when a lot of folks in the Northern Hemisphere go into a bit of a depression because the days are shorter. It’s darker, especially the farther North you live until you get adjusted to it. It’s like, “I don’t like this. I’m a springtime person. I love the light coming back up.” It is great, but a lot of this work is done in the darkness.
It’s not all about depression, darkness, and a lot of working with shadow, which is part of it, but there’s a celebration of gestation because this is where seeds grow. They grow in the dark. That’s where the seeds of creation begin. There’s a lot of great work to be done at this time of year. That is something I wrote about as an example.
I came back from Italy. How can I apply the sheer beauty of the art, the passion, and the emotions that invoked in me to recalibrate my life, leadership, and coaching practice? These are the things I get the inspiration for. I’ll write about them. There are several things on there that run across various different modalities. They’re all related to alchemy.
Let’s talk a little bit more about the tribe because I know that there are a number of people who you work with. How do you work with the people in your group? Do you have a monthly call? Do you gather people to do a little talk and a Q&A? Describe to us how you work with the folks who are part of your world and studying alchemy with you.
If we’re doing the actual alchemical work and learning alchemy, there’s a certain cadence to it that I like to keep, which is every week or every other week. I don’t like to go longer than that because the work fades away, and contextually, it doesn’t fit. In the coaching practice, it’s similar to that. I like to do it every week or every other week.
I’ve got some folks that are on a monthly basis because they’ve worked with me for a longer time. They want to dive deeper. Some have completely let go of the reins and said, “A lot of times, I’ll invite whomever I’m coaching. What do you need now?” They’re saying, “I don’t know what I need. Give me something, and we’ll go with it.” We’re doing that.
It’s tailored to the specific needs of the client. It’s not all heavy-duty philosophy. There’s a lot of fun and engagement to it again. Each time, there’ll be a skillset to use in your life, whether it’s personal relationships, leadership, personal growth, or something to get you through yourself. That’s a critical piece of alchemy.
The other thing that you didn’t mention, which I happen to know you do, is you do international trips, and you invite your students along. They could pay their way, travel with you, and get all of these lessons in the places where they were created, like Ancient Egypt. I was with you in Egypt. I was not aware of alchemy when we met. Here I was in Egypt. You are relating all of these amazing places to the study of alchemy. Some of what we talked about was found in the spots where we were standing. Tell me more about that. Tell the audience a little bit about your trip to Egypt and where we were.
I’ve been making it an intention for over a decade to visit a lot of the sites where Alchemy grew up and where Alchemy was practiced. Everything from the oldest versions we know of in Egypt to the Middle Ages and Renaissance spots. I’ve been all over the world and visited all these places, including primal places and pre-Egyptian in Botswana, South Africa, and places where man was first coming into the world. Some of these early pieces started to form.
I’ve made it a point to go there. Egypt is pretty much the birth birthplace of modern Western alchemy. Without going into a long piece, there is the Eastern version. Most folks have heard of yoga, Qigong, or Tai Chi. Those are forms of Eastern yoga. They grew up simultaneous with Eastern alchemy. There are a ton of similarities. You’ll learn all that if that’s part of the coaching that you want, but it’s interesting.
Going to these places unveils more of what the legacy of this work is. When we were in Egypt, we went to some of the earliest known written places where Alchemy shows up. One of them was in the Pyramid of Unas, which a lot of folks don’t go to. It’s in the Saqqara Plateau, where a lot of people know the step pyramid. It’s a bit off out of the way.
When I went there the first time, there was no path. There was only dirt, and it was closed off. This time, it was open for a few of us to go into. We got to see the original pyramid texts on the wall. Without going into a long history, there are a lot of alchemical pieces written on that wall. There’s a lot of alchemy with the types of material they used because alchemy was started and flourished in ancient Egypt. It exploded in Alexandria, Egypt. All the while, there was a spiritual, psychological, and physical component to it the whole time.
What’s interesting is that when you travel with someone like you, as I have, there is a dimension that the average traveler would never perceive. The fact that you are able to show that to everybody on the trip, I found that incredibly fascinating. I love the fact that it was obvious once you pointed it out. It’s a peak behind the veil. It was interesting, and I hope you don’t mind me bringing this up, but unfortunately, your wife was injured on the trip. It was an alchemical connection. Describe what happened and how that connection played a role in what happened with your wife.
My wife was accidentally knocked down in one of the temples and broke a wrist badly. We had a guardian angel on the trip. His name is Hatim. He paved the way for us. We were out in the middle of nowhere. This particular place where we were was the farthest away from many known major metropolitan areas.
He stepped in there. This is a classic example of someone being completely in service. That’s one of the byproducts of alchemy. How can I give back? What can I do with this technology once I have it? He is a prime example. I owe him a ton. I wrote to him to remind him of what a great human being he was and what a selfless person to do what he did. I won’t go into a long story there, but that wouldn’t have even happened here in San Francisco, that level of attention.
It was amazing to watch. It was a beautiful demonstration. It was sad because Martha was injured, but she was a trooper. She went on the rest of the trip. She kept going, which I thought was great. Thank you for everything you’ve shared. I know that there are going to be a lot of people who are interested in wanting more after this discussion. Where should they go if they would like to find out more about what you’re doing, want to work with an alchemist, or go further and train as an alchemist? Where should they start?
The easiest thing is to get ahold of me on the Alchemy Coaching Institute website. For the International Alchemy Guild, there’s a home study page for that. There are two ways to get ahold of me. Alchemy Coaching Institute will go directly to me. Those would be the two easiest ways to do it. From there, I can answer the questions. You’re going to talk about an offer here.
I understand and correct me if I’m wrong. What you have offered is a free introductory call, twenty minutes or so, to anybody who’s interested in chatting with you, with no obligation, a little bit about the institute, the work you’re doing, and some more of the finer points of alchemy itself. That’s a great offer. Readers, this is a free call. I highly recommend that you take advantage of that. You can set up that call by going to AlchemyCoachingInstitute.com. Before we end our interview, John, is there anything else you want to say to folks reading about Alchemy or maybe what their first steps should be at this point?
You’ll know what the first steps would be. This is one of the beauties of alchemy. There’s a call. You’ll know if you have an interest level. This is not about a sales pitch or how I can increase your productivity by 80%. There is nothing wrong with all that, but this is about you. You drive the bus. I’m going to give you the tools for your tool belt that you need, but the work is on you. I’m here as a guide and mentor. That’s the bottom line with Alchemy. That’s how I learned. I got all this information, but until I applied it, and continued to apply it and learn. Every day, I learn something new about myself that I didn’t know.
Alchemy: You drive the bus. I’m going to give you the tools that you need but the work is on you. I’m here as a guide and as a mentor. That’s really the bottom line with Alchemy.Shouldn’t I know this by now? Time is a mystery. The time is whenever the time is. In other words, you’ll know if this is a fit for you. Either you’ll call me and find out or say, “This is not for me.” That’s fine. There’s no attachment there. It’s all about what works for you. I’ll leave you with that. There is a metaphor for finding gold in all this.
I’ll go back to an Egyptian analogy. They put a lot of gold on their statues because that’s the flesh of the gods. As we do the alchemical work and we find our gold truly find it. That’s one of the pieces that we work on. It’s the flesh of the gods. It’s the connection to the divine. It’s all those things. All that has served me and will serve you in your life. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
John, I’ve certainly enjoyed working with you over the several last several months. I’ve gotten a lot out of our time together. I’m already seeing alchemy have an impact on my life. Readers, I encourage you to check it out and see what John’s doing. It’s exciting stuff. John, thanks again for being with us. I enjoyed our conversation. I look forward to chatting with you again soon.
Thanks, Mitch. You be well.
You, too.
Take care, everyone.
Important Links CoachElevation.com * Amazon – Coach Elevation: The Step-by-Step Guide to Elevating Coaching Sessions To Improve Results, Elevate Your Brand and Create Prosperity * International Alchemy Guild * The Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy* * Alchemy Study
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We pass by tons of empty lots every single day. Their dull and undeveloped state make them quite uninteresting, but with the right research and resources, one can turn them into powerful assets that yield a lot of profits. Mitch Russo chats with Michael Poggi who explains how he mostly deals with these vacant lots, invests on them, and transforms them into powerful real estate assets. He shares his unique methodology on finding the best empty lots to do business on and how his partnership with a research company makes the job way easier. Michael also talks about his private animal sanctuary, as well as how his real estate profits keep the place alive and vibrant.
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Now, on to my amazing guest and his incredible story. Starting as a stockbroker and working for Chicago Brokerage for nine years, he realized that while he had a successful business, the majority of his client’s money was all in real estate. He sold his book of business and started investing. After being in the real estate business for a short time, he figured out how to purchase vacant lots.
He found it ingenious way to leverage a small amount of cash into a real estate empire. When he started out over 20 years ago with $500, he quickly realized he could parlay that modest some into controlling properties worth far more by focusing on inexpensive quarter-acre buildable vacant lots in fast-growing resort communities. Once he realized the power of 25% to 50% profits yearly, he decided to focus on helping others do the same. He’s here with me to show you how you can get started very easily on your own. Welcome, Michael Poggi, to the show.
Thank you, sir. How are you doing?
I’m doing great, Michael. I’m so glad you’re here. Tell me how all this got started. I gave the readers some detail but fill in the blanks here. Tell us a little bit more about your origin.
As a young man, I was a stockbroker in downtown Chicago. I met many wealthy clients who would send me money to trade their stocks for them and buy their mutual funds, but they would only send me 5% of their net worth. I would end up having lunch with them or dinner with them and I would ask them, “Where is the rest of your money? I don’t understand. What do you do with it?”
Sure enough, they would have $10 million or $20 million in real estate. I would want to know, “Where is it at? Is it on land? Is it in apartment buildings?” They would only have a little bit in the stock market and the rest of it was all in serious great appreciating assets like vacant lots, apartment buildings, rental properties, etc.
I got to learn from multi-millionaires who taught me as their stockbroker how to invest in real estate and become better off. I ended up selling my brokerage firm. I ended up using the proceeds from that to start fixing and flipping houses. I’m not a builder or a construction guy so I had to hire people to handle the fix and flips but I put up all the money. I split it with the builders.
You did this for a while. You made some money and then you started expanding your vacant lot business. As you were figuring all this stuff out, what are some of the nuances about it? It seems pretty easy. You look in the newspaper and see if there are any vacant lots. Nowadays, you go online and search. You’re looking for vacant lots for sale inside resort communities. What are the nuances here? What are we missing? There has got to be something more to it than that.
My first experience when I first started many years ago was I would start to invest in vacant lots that were not in a resort community because didn’t have the same demand. For example, if I were to buy lots in Florida like Fort Myers, Punta Gorda, or Cape Coral, I would buy lots in there. They were cheap, but when it was time to sell them, they didn’t have as much demand because they didn’t have any amenities. Although they would sell eventually, the people who were buying those lots were only buying them to build their houses.
When I finally figured out that if I buy vacant locks cheaply in resort communities like quarter-acre buildable lots. When you go to sell a lot, you have a much better chance of selling a vacant lot that has lakes, golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools, good schools, and churches. That was the pinnacle that launched my portfolio. I did all this in a self-directed Roth IRA. That goes back to my beginning story of how I built a multi-million-dollar IRA from only $500.
When I first started buying vacant lots, I only had $500 in the IRA. It’s pretty tough to become a millionaire in real estate with $500 so I had to figure it out. I started making offers to people who owned vacant lots in resort communities. I would call up sellers. At the time, they were $5,000. I would say to them, “I’d like to buy your lot for $5,000 but I only have $500. Would you please let me make you payments over five years?”
Some of them would say, “No. I got to have my cash now.” Others would say, “I don’t need it right now. I’m successful. I would rather defer the capital gains tax anyway.” They would loan me $4,500. I would give them the $500 down from my Roth IRA. My IRA would make payments to them for five years. At the end of five years, I realized that my lots had doubled. The one lot that I bought, the very first one went from $5,000 to $10,000 in that time frame of 5 years, which equals 20% a year.
I went ahead. I went and put it for sale for $10,000 and I realized that I could do the same thing for others. I could put my lot for sale at $10,000 at zero down, 100% financing, and no credit check. Everyone approved. I did advertise it like that everywhere. Back in the day, it was newspapers and eBay in the old days. Now, it’s Craigslist, signs on the property, and realtors.
I had so many phone calls from people that had no down payment and bad credit that wanted to own real estate so I was able to sell it easier for that reason and because it had amenities. Those two reasons alone got me my first lesson. I could buy and sell something on terms and exponentially grow my wealth using only $500 and then it got better.
In real estate, it is always better if you can buy something on terms and sell something on terms while exponentially growing your wealth using the smallest amount of money you can.
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What is interesting is the fact that it’s a matter of knowing where to look. You decided that these lots inside of vacation communities would be perfect. You were right. Before you started helping others do this, how many have you bought yourself personally over the years?
2,400.
2,400 vacant lots?
I have every single file folder here. The reason is that I was buying them for myself to hold but then also, I had orders from family, friends, and builders. What happened was when builders found out that I was buying in there all the time and making offers, some builders that only wanted 2 or 5 lots would hire me to find them a lot. They would buy it from me. They’d pay me $1,000 commission and then they would go ahead and build a few houses and then they would hire me again. That business grew very big long before COVID to where I was helping builders and then also investors.
However, you had to develop a methodology for finding them. Otherwise, you’re going to be spending a whole lot of time scanning newspapers, Craigslist, and all this other stuff. Tell us a little about that. How did you figure out how to find them? Do you have a system that you could disclose or share with us? Tell us about it.
From the beginning, I wasn’t sure which resort communities in the United States would be the best for me that would meet my criteria. My criteria were under $20,000 and must be a quarter-acre. Not too small, like 1/8 of an acre. It must be buildable. It must have at least 5% of the subdivision built out already. It means there must be at least 5% of the homes already in place including roads, electricity on the corners, stop signs, and street signs. Plus, it has to have good schools, restaurants, hospitals, and good churches. Those are the key things that I had to find.
What I did was I hired a research company. It cost me $6,800 at that time. I said to them, “Here’s what I’m looking for. Somewhere in the United States. It must be in a resort community. It must be all of my criteria.” They presented me with 5 choices and out of the 5, the first one that he picked was Lago Vista, Texas, which I’m wrung out of now, but at the time, I was buying Lots in there for $9,000. Five years later, I sold hundreds of them in my Roth IRA for $18,000.
I doubled my money in 5 years, which I probably averaged around 20% a year. I finally stopped buying lots in that subdivision because they went higher. Now, they are $65,000 in there. I had to find the second subdivision that was from my research. The research department gave me the tools that I needed to find the right subdivisions in the United States and then I also had to do more research and find out from the planning and zoning department.
I had to find out, “Are there roads getting widened? Are there permits getting pulled for houses being built? Are there churches going up? Are there new schools and shopping centers?” If the answer is yes, then that means that people are moving there. Also, the chances of my lot appreciating in my lifetime are much better than if I picked the lot in a subdivision that had nothing going on and maybe had no internet, no roads, or no houses yet. I don’t focus on cheap lots for $500 in the middle of the desert. I don’t focus on lots that are too far along. I don’t want to go into a subdivision that is 90% built out because then we’d be paying $80,000 for a lot.
Empty Lots: Michael doesn’t focus on cheap lots for $500 in the middle of the desert or within a subdivision 90% built out.That makes a lot of sense. There’s a piece here that we call the research division that is part of what you might say is the secret sauce. The idea of buying vacant lots and Resorts is great but if you can’t find them and then qualify them, then it’s a bit of a crapshoot. Do you still have the same research division or has it evolved? Is it now a software platform? Tell us a little bit about this process.
Once you identify a subdivision, there’s no more research to do other than things going on like, “What’s Walmart doing? What is Tyson Foods doing?” The only research that I need now is, “What’s going on in the subdivision?” As far as finding lots go, I don’t need to go into any other subdivision until this subdivision that I’m in which is called Bella Vista, Arkansas goes above $20,000 for my cost or my purchase price. I will stay in there and accumulate locks for maybe the next few years or whatever it takes. Once I get over a certain price where I can’t buy them below $20,000 anymore, then I’m done as a buyer and I would go again to a brand-new subdivision that only has 5% of the houses in there.
One of the criteria is that they can’t have more than say 5% of the lot sold or number around 5%.
It’s houses built and not lots sold.
Let’s assume that you’re you find yourself subdivision and full disclosure readers, Michael has bought me a lot too. I purchased a lot through Michael’s company. My lot is where again? I don’t remember where it is.
It’s Bella Vista, Arkansas, which is right near the headquarters of Walmart in Bentonville. It’s a very popular place for people tourists because they have some of the best biking trails and hiking trails in the United States. Walmart headquarters is there. It’s the same thing with Tyson Foods and other giant retailers and they buy there for the same reasons I do. In other words, their research department found the same reasons that I did which are more cost for the land right, low taxes, and low cost of living. Everything is cheaper there. When they buy there, they’re doing the same research that I was doing. Why would they buy there and put their main manufacturing plant next to Bella Vista?
You also said before that these are facilities that have amenities. There are things like trails for horseback riding or biking, forest areas, lakes, streams, mountains, and all the fun stuff that people like to be around. Do you go visit these Lots before you make an investment? How does that work?
There are several steps that I have to take before I buy a lot whether it’s for me, you, or anyone else. Number one, I have to have someone sending out offers. What we do is send out offers to people who are not listed on the MLS because we want to find people who are not being solicited by other people all the time. We want to find people who are not thinking about selling because those are the ones who might have something come up where they need to sell their lot to pay for something and they would consider selling their lot.
When looking for empty lots for real estate purposes, find people who are not being solicited by other people all the time. Look for those who are not thinking about selling.
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We sent out thousands of offers a month to be able to get only a handful of choices from those. If I send out 5,000 offers, I might get 30 lots back where someone said, “Yes, I’ll sell you my lot.” I’ve had mistakes before where I sent out offers too low and I got no yeses back. I would waste $5,000 or $6,000 and get no results. I would have to raise my bite price by $1,000 and then send out another mailer and try it.
Once that happens, if the lot comes back with the contract saying, “Yes, I want to sell it,” then we have a team of people that handle all of the rest. We have to negotiate with the seller. We have to have another person check for liens to make sure there are no liens on the property. We don’t want to have something where there’s money owed on the property and then I have to be stuck with it. We have to make sure the property is buildable because what if there’s a big giant boulder blocking the entrance or maybe a big ravine in the center where it becomes not buildable or maybe the lot is too small where it’s an eighth of an acre.
We have to check for all that. We check the photography maps and then from there, we have someone who lives in a subdivision that I have to pay to go physically walk the lot. Remember, if I’m buying 30 to 60 or 100 lots in a month, that person’s going around from lot to lot looking at it to make sure it meets my specifications and passes my criteria. I then have to close on it. I have to pay closing costs. I have to transfer it into the investor’s account and I pay their closing costs again. I’m paying closing costs twice. This process is expensive, but it beats me having to fly out there myself and spend money on an airplane ticket. Land in the subdivision, stay in a hotel, drive around, look for lots, and negotiate. It’s not practical to do it that way.
I completely understand but again, we’re talking typically to people who have never done this before. We’re sharing the process with them. Let’s take this back to where people live. We live in Florida. We live near major metro areas here, but there are people reading who don’t live in Florida and may live in very rural areas. Is this viable for somebody without all your research capability and all of the stuff that you have in place to do this? What would the approach be for the average person? Where would they start looking for lots that they potentially could buy? Would they have to go to the town hall?
It’s tough because without them knowing the subdivision and knowing everything about what’s going on, it’d be difficult. That’s why we turned our program into a done-for-you program where we do it all for them. However, if someone wanted to learn all that, in the past, I’ve taught courses on how to do it yourself but sure enough, if I taught that to 100 people, 99 would say, “Mike, I don’t want to do all that. Just go find me a lot and I’ll pay you to do it. I got to go back to work.”
They would end up not wanting to do all of it themselves. There’s a lot to know about that. That’s why it’s tough to do on your own but the other thing is that a lot of people ask me why don’t I buy farmland like 50 acres, 100 acres, or 1,000 acres. The reason why is that it costs me more money to buy the lot so when I go to sell it, it’s harder to sell because it would be a much higher price. Buying quarter-acre lots are cheap and when you sell them at a double, they’re still cheap.
Buying quarter-acre lots is cheap. When you sell them at a double, they are still cheap.
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That’s true and particularly for somebody who’s going to be building a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar home for them to pay $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000 for the land makes perfect sense particularly if their neighbors are already in place anyway. That makes a lot of sense. Let’s shift gears here, Michael. It turns out that we’re dealing with a very interesting individual Mr. Michael Poggi. The reason he’s so interesting is that while he loves helping people buy and sell lots, he also happens to run a zoo. Michael, tell us about this zoo that you run.
It’s a private animal sanctuary that my wife and I own in Davie, Florida near Fort Lauderdale. We have taken in exotic animals from people that were not supposed to have them or maybe someone passed away. Right now, we have received rehomed animals like monkeys. We have 60 monkeys on our property. We have three lemurs. We have every kind of exotic animal you can imagine like giant tortoises, snakes, turkeys, peacocks, sheep, goats, mini pigs, bunnies, and all kinds of exotic animals.
It’s quite expensive to pay for their food, their medical care, and the zookeepers to come here every day to take care of all their cleaning and everything else. My wife has a business where it’s called Exotic Animal Parties where we go to schools and summer camps. We take the baby animals that are born here like baby monkeys, baby mini pigs, baby sheep, and baby goats. We educate kids on the value of animals.
We spend every day during the week going to schools and summer camps. On the weekends, we go to house parties and corporate events. Our animals are being played with and loved on by thousands of people a week and it’s quite popular. For example, we might do 6 or 7 house parties on Saturday and 5 or 6 on Sunday with a mobile exotic animal petting zoo.
It’s not open to the public where people come on my property. We want our privacy and to be able to keep our insurance policy from getting rid of us. We go out to other locations and we educate. That helps pay for the food because it’s about $5,000 a month just in animal food plus you’ve got medical bills, antibiotics, deworming, and stuff like that.
How did you get started with that?
When I was in college, I got to work for a veterinarian and the veterinarian was at Valparaiso University where I went to college in Indiana. I took my business degree there. The veterinarian handled all of the Michigan City Zoo animals. It wasn’t a cat and dog veterinarian like you would think. I was helping out doing surgeries on tigers, deer, and alligators. An alligator would come in with a missing foot and we had to sew it up because another alligator bit it off.
Maybe it was a tiger that had a toothache. We would extract the tooth or maybe a declaw. It’s everything you could imagine. I was involved in hundreds of surgeries on zoo animals like deer, owls, and hawks. I had licenses to rehabilitate them and they would either go back to the zoo or the wild if they were from the wild. That’s how it got started.
Empty Lots: Michael was involved in hundreds of surgeries on zoo animals and had licenses to rehabilitate them.You said to your wife one day, “Let’s keep this one,” and that’s how the collection started. It was the first monkey.
A lot of animals can never go back to the wild. A lot of animals can never be released. If a hawk has a permanently broken wing, it can never fly again. Rather than euthanize it, I felt so bad. I have such a big heart for animals and people that I said, “Let’s keep it alive, and let’s feed it.” I ended up accumulating many owls, hawks, and even baby deer that were hit by a car. We helped out with thousands of animals, rescuing them.
Do the animals know that you’re taking care of them and appreciate your help and care? Do they show love back to you or does it feel like they’re in jail to them?
They sure do.
Tell me more about it.
They’re all very affectionate. As a matter of fact, do you remember how when you go to a petting zoo how sweet and tame they are? Animals love to be hugged, scratched, and petted. When these animals are being loved, it’s so much enrichment for them that it makes your life a pleasure. They are in big giant enclosures but every day they’re going out to be played with kids, moms, and dads so it becomes something that’s good for the animals. Plus, it helps us afford a good diet for them so we can afford organic food.
Do you have a veterinarian on site or do you need one on site? Is it more on-call? How does that work?
We do. We have a USDA veterinarian who has to come here to give shots to the alpacas, goats, sheep, and everything. They check their vitals. We have an actual mobile vet who comes here to make sure that all the medicines that are supposed to be administered on a quarterly basis are all done. We also get inspected by the USDA and the Fish and Wildlife. We have to have documents showing that the USDA veterinarian visited here. We have to prove that they come here and give them the shots.
What a fascinating operation. It sounds like it’s also very rewarding as well particularly when you go to schools and all those other places. Is there any crossover or interaction between the two businesses between the real estate side and the animal side?
Yeah. The only crossover is that the profit from real estate helps pay for the rescuing of animals. Other than that, there is not one bit.
Empty Lots: Profit from Michael’s real estate ventures helps pay for the rescuing of animals in his private animal sanctuary.It sounds to me that it’s far more of a passion project than anything else.
It is. My goal one day is to be able to have a big giant facility like a 100-acre animal park but those are millions and millions of dollars to carry something like that.
It’s fascinating because we all have passions and interests outside of our work. You’ve been able to find one that’s a bit unusual compared to the rest of us and it sounds like a lot of fun. I wanted to transition to the second part of our interview, Michael. It’s where we get to know you a little bit better.
I’m going to ask you a couple of questions that are about you. Feel free to take your time and answer or you could pontificate all you like. I just want to ask you these questions. Here’s the one. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
I am a fond person of Elon Musk. I find him fascinating that he can handle 10,000 tasks a day when I feel like I’m overwhelmed from handling maybe 50. I want to be around people like him who are such visionaries that never think anything is too big. I am inspired by him.
The funny thing about him is that I remember listening to him speak once. He made it clear that his lifestyle is his entrepreneurial work. Sleeping more than four hours a night is a waste and working less than seven days a week is a waste. The guy is totally on all the time. I don’t know how he does it. I certainly couldn’t do it now, but he found a way and he’s amazing. If you could ask him questions, what might you question that you’d ask Elon Musk?
It would be about time management. I’m learning a lot about time management from you, Mitch. I’ve watched you take notes on everything you do. It’s very inspiring to see how you are so organized. I would ask him some of the same questions that I would even ask you for your advice on which is, “How do you keep track of everything you’re doing because you’re involved in hundreds of different things with people? How do you manage all of that to not let things slip through the cracks whether it’s sending something to someone that they asked for? How do you keep track of all that?” I’m fairly good at it, but I know that I’ve got ways to go to be able to handle ten times more than I’m handling now without pulling my hair out.
Elon would answer the question better than me. However, I’ll tell you what I do, which is relatively straightforward and simple. I have an assistant who doesn’t need education other than being smart, available, and aware of what I do in my business. Whenever a request comes through, all have to do is read it and forward it and I know it will be done. That’s the thing but there are things I got to do myself.
I use a very simple platform. A lot of people do too. I use Notion. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Notion before. It’s a great tool. It lets you create lists of all kinds that you like. You can put lots of content in it. I believe there’s a free version. I like the paid version because it has some extra stuff. Truthfully, Notion is where I can tag things so that if I’m talking to somebody and they might be a good candidate for a program I’m running or a group that I’m building, I tag them and then later I can search by tag.
Evernote has that same capability as well. It’s an older version of a notetaker whereas Notion is more modern and a little bit more advanced in the way it works. Those are my basic tools. I also have a calendar, email, and everything else. For my client work, and you heard me talk about it at the beginning of the show, I use my own software ClientFol.io to manage all of my coaching sessions and keep track of all my interactions with clients and potential clients so I have their information at the tip of my fingers. For me, software has been awesome at helping new organize things. Let me ask you the second question. This is the grand finale or the change-the-world question. What is it that you were doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
I love educating people. I think that educating more people makes a big difference. If I could educate people on a larger scale where I’m showing everyone my secrets, it would make me feel good because so many people are stuck learning about investing from their parents, stockbrokers, and financial planners, and they’re not learning about real estate. That’s the biggest problem I see in our society. Young kids growing up through high school and college are only learning about stocks and mutual funds. They are rarely learning about business and investing in real estate.
Real estate investing should be a primary topic. We’re not getting the right advice. A lot of our parents don’t know about real estate investing. A lot of our stockbrokers and financial planners don’t discuss it at all because they don’t make a profit from it when they recommend it. We should have courses available in college and school. I would like to be the person who can handle it which would help everybody on the planet to learn more about safer and better Investments instead of stocks and mutual funds.
Young kids growing up through high school and college are only learning about stocks and mutual funds. This should be changed, and real estate investing must be a primary topic.
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That sure is a great mission and I agree with you. It would be fantastic if more people knew about the power of non-linear investing because once you put money in a mutual fund, you’ve lost control of that money to somebody else. That’s a good cause. Michael, if people are interested in learning more about how to purchase small lots or quarter-acre lots inside vacation communities, how can they get ahold of you?
They can probably hop on my calendar. I have a calendar available where they can hop on there for a consultation at no charge as a gift. It is www.MeetWithMichaelPoggi.com. I’ll be glad to spend time to go over what you invest in or what questions you might have on vacant lots to help you with our done-for-you program or anything else about real estate investing that I could give my opinion on.
That’s very generous. Are you saying that anybody who is reading this can pick up the phone or the scheduler, book a call, and talk to you directly?
Absolutely.
Thank you, Michael. Readers, I would take advantage of this. Michael, we’ll talk again soon.
Thank you, my dear friend. I appreciate this opportunity. I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Important Links* ClientFol.io * GetClientFolio.com * Michael Poggi * Notion * Evernote * www.MeetWithMichaelPoggi.com
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The post How To Win In Real Estate Through Empty Lots With Michael Poggi appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Your potential is boundless; the key to unlocking it lies within your belief in your own capacity to change the world. In this episode, our guest Jeff Lerner dives deep into the world of personal development, purpose-driven living, and the art of making a positive impact on humanity. Hear his incredible journey from dealing with challenging life circumstances to creating a thriving business and helping others transform their lives. Jeff believes in the limitless potential within each of us, and in this episode, he will explain deeply why that is. He shares his innovative approach to life design and how he found the ENTRE Institute, a platform dedicated to helping individuals unlock their full potential by providing them with the tools and knowledge they need. Jeff shares with us how this program is changing the lives of thousands of people, giving them the freedom and confidence to take control of their destinies. Listen as we explore the critical role of faith and purpose in our lives and how embracing these aspects can lead to powerful transformations. Tune in now.
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Listen to the podcast hereThe Simple Life Operating System That Guarantees Your Success And Happiness With Jeff LernerWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in, and extract wisdom that you can use to grow your business with your first thousand clients. Now, if you are a coach, you’re going to love what I am going to share with you today. My software platform is called ClientFol.io and it’s been helping hundreds of coaches save time on admin and get better results from their clients while generating powerful client testimonials for the work that they’ve done.
Why is that valuable? It’s because you could use those to find more clients, raise your rates, and get better results simply by tracking and holding people accountable. No other platform allows you to do this and it comes with a library of accountability questions and places the control in your client’s hands to keep track of their most critical stats and goals. Want to give it a try for just $1? Go to gift ClientFol.io and give it a spin.
Now, onto my amazing guest and his incredible story. Readers, because you’ve been a reader of this show for a while, you know that no one’s path is a straight line to success and my guest is no exception. Maybe you can identify with this story. I certainly can. In 2008, he was a professional piano player with an injured wrist facing eviction and divorce, struggling with depression, and bonus, $495,000 in debt.
You could say he hit rock bottom, but only life gets to determine when that actually happens. Realizing that something had to change, he took a radical step in a new direction because what was there to lose? He’s already lost everything. What he did is he developed and came to understand something called the 3 Ps.
Using this technique, he changed his life. He focused on his physical condition, his personal inner health, and a new professional direction. That’s when things started to happen. He presides over a nine-figure enterprise focusing on his ENTRE education platform, which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs grow rapidly and change their 3 Ps as well. He’s here with us to share his story, and his secrets of transformation, and help us see our lives a little bit differently. Welcome Jeff Lerner to the show.
I’m so grateful to be here, Mitch. I appreciate you having me.
Jeff, what a story. First of all, thank you for being here as well. It’s a privilege to be speaking with you. For readers, you know I like to bring some amazing people to this show. Jeff, you’re one of them. Tell us a little bit about how you got started.
I’m down at a summer camp in Central Texas where our company, ENTRE Institute, which you mentioned, has a five-year lease on a summer camp down here. When it’s not in the middle of the summer and it’s jam-packed with students, we get to run entrepreneurial development events down here. I come to stay in the bunkhouse when I’m down here. That’s why I am where I am, let’s say. I felt like I needed to disclaim that.
It’s unfortunate we live in a world where people judge books by their covers and like, “Who is this guy and where is he living?” Anyway, to the meat of your question. Probably the place to start, if you’re okay with it, is I’m going to answer your question about my life with the content of a Facebook post that I made.
I started with the Ben Franklin quote and I said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” This may be the most important principle ever uttered once it’s extrapolated to its basic meaning and it’s applied wherever it can be. It’s about the short game versus the long game. It cuts to the essential deficiency of human nature, our finite biological nature, i.e., the fact that we die, drives us to subordinate our values in favor of our own physical and psychosocial self-preservation.
That aspect of human nature, which is practically the entirety of human nature, is everything. It’s why we don’t stand up for ourselves. It’s why we don’t stand up for others. It’s why we vote for bad leaders. It’s why we succumb to peer pressure. It’s why we hurt the people we care about. It’s why fill in the blank of virtually anything that’s wrong with your life.
I remember the day as a teenager when I surrendered to this concept, thank you, in that case, to the book The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It hit me. It was like, “That’s the trade.” I have since spent more than 27 years trying to kill the part of me that is scared to die and willing to compromise accordingly. Shortly after that surrender, I dropped out of high school to become a jazz musician. I have been traveling the road less traveled ever since.
If I could sum up my entire life now, including why I founded ENTRE Institute, it would be encouraging others to make the same shift and to trade the illusion of certainty for what’s possible when life is lived as an adventure, risks, and all. It is also the essence of my favorite Bible verse. Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of the world, why, as if you still belong to it, do you submit to its rules? Colossians 2:20.
Trade the illusion of certainty for what's possible when life is lived as an adventure, risks and all.
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I posted that and I can’t think of a more perfect answer to Mitch’s question to understand me and where I’m coming from, what I believe, why I do what I do, and why I think most people perceive me to be so unreasonable. It’s because I’m not that interested in what the world considers reasonable. To quote George Bernard Shaw, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
At sixteen, I had this light bulb moment where I was like, “If I don’t do something radically different, I’m going to end up like all my friends’ parents who don’t seem terribly happy.” Even though they’re financially successful. I went to a private school and they had money, they didn’t seem that happy. I dropped out and became a jazz musician. Bear in mind, I didn’t play piano when I dropped out. I dropped out to start practicing piano. It took three years of living at home and practicing 12 to 14 hours a day to get good enough to start working professionally.
By nineteen, I was in my first band. Over the next ten years, I ended up getting into the jazz piano program at the University of Houston locally, even though I had dropped out of high school because I eventually got good enough that they let me in to play piano and it changed the rules for me. That was a good lesson. It was like if you get good enough at something that’s in demand, all those rules, they don’t apply. They’ll let you in without a high school diploma. You have to be good enough at something they need on their campus. It’s no different than being a quarterback. Maybe it doesn’t end up paying as well.
I got into college, was a music major, and played all these gigs for successful people. I ended up becoming a society circuit piano player in Houston, which means I played all kinds of gigs. I played nightclubs, dance parties, weddings, you name it. A percentage of my gigs were very high-end private parties, galas, and corporate conferences. I was exposed to a lot of wealth, a lot of affluence, a lot of successful corporate enterprises that were hosting these big conferences and needed entertainment booked.
In particular, I played house parties for a number of millionaires and billionaires. Where I was like their go-to piano player to come play their Christmas party at their home with their friends. I’m sitting there. I’m a $40,000, $50,000 a year piano player sitting in a $20 million home playing for 100 friends of the guy that owns the Houston Texans football team, Bob McNair.
I’m hobnobbing with these people. The piano players get treated a little differently. If you’re the drummer, nobody wants to talk to the drummer. The drummer has to go hang out in the kitchen with the catering staff, eat the hors d’oeuvres, and smoke cigarettes on his breaks. They’ll come up to the piano player. They’ll make requests with the piano. They’ll tell you about how their kid takes piano lessons and ask if you have any advice.
I ended up getting to mingle with completely different strata of human socioeconomically. I’m like, “These people have it good. They seem to be in a pretty good mood. What’s the commonality?” I started to figure out these people are all either very high-end corporate executives who have finely developed skills in the realm of growing businesses or they’re outright entrepreneurs.
Take a breath here. I want to unpack a little bit about what you’ve said so far, which is fantastic. First of all, I’ve read every Ayn Rand book ever written and many of them several times. I was dramatically moved by her work all throughout my adult years. I make a habit of re-listening or reading Atlas Shrugged every year as well. It’s such a joy and pleasure to be reminded of what it’s like to be free with the values that would get you to maintain that freedom. That’s why I love the books and I know you love them too.
Secondarily, one of the other things that you said, I relate to comfort. What I mean by comfort is that this society has made us incredibly comfortable. Even at the lowest level of income, we have comforts. If you go back 200 years, there was no such thing as the type of comfort we have now. That comfort makes us lazy. It made me lazy. It made me realize that I would never have what my parents were able to give me unless I did something more than take a job. That’s why I started the business that I did back when I was 28 years old.
What I also loved about your story about the piano player is that you did something that is very important. You created mastery in something. When I raised my daughter, I wanted her to have mastery of something. I didn’t care if it was playing checkers or if it was playing the Stradivarius. I didn’t care. I wanted her to understand to emotionally connect with mastery.
When that happens, Jeff, there’s no substitute for it. It’s a heat-seeking missile for the rest of your life. At a point in time when my software company lost its rating as the best in the industry, I didn’t have to do a thing. My entire company had been so used to publishing the number one product that when we fell off the horse, the entire company rallied around it to get us back up there.
Jeff, that’s what you created too. I want to congratulate you on that. I believe that a lot of that came from the time and skill that you dedicated to developing mastery of the piano. That’s what I wanted to say because I recognize that in you and I, and frankly, not only do I recognize it, I applaud it because not many people do this. If you’re reading now, take what I said to heart. Master something. Take those feelings and then master everything. Jeff, please continue with your story. I wanted to contribute to that.
No, I appreciate it. It’s funny, I have said so many times when now, many years after I dropped out of high school, people want to know how I did what I did, which to be clear before it got pretty, it was very ugly, playing piano by night, attending school in the mornings, and trying to start businesses during the afternoons because once I connected the dots, these entrepreneurs are the ones that have all this success. I want to do that too. I started trying to shove entrepreneurship in between school in the morning and gigs in the evening. I failed a dozen times and ended up with $500,000 in debt, which is very hard to do when you only make $40,000 a year, by the way.
For better or for worse, I try to go big. I got SBA loans back in 2007 when they were giving them away to open restaurants right into the mouth of the Great Recession and went out of business in a year. That’s how I ended up online. I was learning affiliate marketing because I was trying to pay off this debt and I had hurt my hand, as you mentioned, so I couldn’t play piano anymore. I guess I’m pretty good self-taught at a keyboard. I’ll substitute a piano keyboard for a computer keyboard and started learning affiliate marketing and I paid off $495,000 in debt in 18 months, which was a miracle.
Suddenly, everybody was like, “Maybe Jeff’s not such a loser. He did something interesting.” I’ve been stacking online digitally-based entrepreneurial endeavors for years. Your point about mastery, I’ve been saying, so whenever people ask me how I did what I did, I’ve had a lot of teachers and a lot of teaching environments, a lot of learning environments, I should say. Ultimately, the things that have taught me what I needed to know to be successful, I learned as a jazz musician. You nailed it. You’re one of the first people that’s intuitively gotten that because I learned how to sit there.
You talk about delayed gratification. I was sixteen years old and I decided I needed to become a professional caliber piano player starting from nothing. I knew a little bit. I could play Christmas carols, like the simplified versions from piano lessons when I was a kid. I was starting from scratch and I said, “I want to become a professional.”
The amount of work it took to go from beginner to playing professional gigs for money in 3 years, my future was forged in those 3 years. Now, I don’t care. I love it when people doubt me. I love it when people tell me I can’t. I auditioned for six consecutive semesters. That’s three years, fall semester, spring semester, for the piano faculty at the University of Houston. God has told me that I need to become a piano player or else I’m going to have to get a real job.
I’d go in like, “I got to become a piano player or I’m going to have to get a real job someday. I’m here to audition and get into your program.” For 5 consecutive times in 3 years, they laughed at me. The sixth time, I finally got in. I wore them down. Every time, they’d laugh at me and I’d go lock myself in a room for 4 months, practice 12 more hours a day. Eventually, as you mentioned, I gave myself arthritis. I come back and be a little bit better. To your point about mastery, I’m sure you’re familiar with the rule of 100 hours.
It’s like 18 minutes a day, which I think is 100 hours a year. If you spend that amount of time, 100 hours in one year on anything on Earth, you’ll be in the top 5% of that thing. At that point, it unlocks group affiliations or higher-level conversations with higher-level practitioners of the thing. I don’t care if it’s ping pong, origami, solving Rubik’s cubes for speed, piano, Russian literature, or whatever. We live in a world where, again, because the focus is on the material and the tangible, so many people miss what for me is the real joy and magic of living, which is being good at stuff. Not for ego reasons because that’s where the richness opens up to you.
People miss the real joy and magic of living, which is being good at stuff. Not for ego reasons, but because that's where the richness opens up to you.
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The ability to become good at something opens up the door to be even better.
I feel like once you start operating that way in one thing, then you crave it in everything.
That is so true. In my daughter’s experience, I ran her around the neighborhood for six months, trying to find the things she loved to do. It turned out to be candlepin bowling of all things at the age of eight. Four years later, she won the national state tournament as a candlepin bowler. That set her up for life. She now knew what it meant to be the best, to have those feelings of mastery and she brought it into every other part of her life.
That’s the same thing I did after I learned the lesson with Timeslips Corporation with all of my coaching clients as well. I’m glad that we got a chance to talk about this. Tell me more about this process of creating the nine-figure enterprise. Tell me how this all began and how it became what it is now and even more about it as we continue. I want to hear about the 3 Ps. Don’t forget that. That’s important.
In terms of the chronology, again, 2008 was that rock bottom dip that you shared about in the bio. It was my eleventh consecutive fail, but I lost count. I can name eleven. There were other little things in between, but call it an even dozen failures. That was when I got into online marketing and I started learning what I consider to be a lot more valuable skillset because they were skills that had leverage built in. Now, I’m obsessed with leverage in all areas of life.
An example of leverage applied to a different area of life is, rather than saying, “I need to get more sleep,” where I’m essentially trading waking hours for sleeping hours, which impacts me in other areas, it’s more, “How do I optimize the sleep that I already get to get more deep sleep or to get more REM sleep so that I can wake up?”
If anything, I could get by on less sleep, not more. I’m obsessively pursuing leverage in every area of life. The chronology was I spent about five years as an affiliate marketer. I got very burned out in that industry. This is important because it informs what I do now. The reason I got burned out as an affiliate marketer is Jeff in 2008 was broke and facing homelessness. I got booted out of my apartment. My wife was leaving me, but fortunately, her parents allowed me to move in with them even though me and their daughter weren’t getting along.
That version of me found the world of online affiliate marketing. I signed up for a platform. I started learning these skills and for whatever reason, mostly I think because of my work ethic, I was a powerfully quick study that within six months, I was making more money in a month than I had ever made before in a year.
In my mind, I was like, “Online education, to learn the right marketable skills in the world is the unlock for any life you want.” That wasn’t like something somebody told me and I parroted. That was my lived experience in a very quick six-month window. I became obsessed as an affiliate marketer with promoting these courses and conferences. I became an affiliate of the online education industry.
Over the next five years, I learned that most people, frankly, don’t operate like I did. I’ll bet you, in five years, I sold 150,000 courses as an affiliate marketer to various people. I don’t have any way to quantify this, but going anecdotally and by feel, I’ll bet you out of 150,000, I’ll bet 149,000 of them never made a dime with anything I sold them.
Why is that?
I had little old ladies sending me direct messages. “I bought the thing that you talked about two years ago. I’ve been struggling with it ever since. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and I can’t get any help. I called the company and nobody called me back. The service is terrible.” As an affiliate who had started as this passionate evangelist for what online education could do for your life, four years later, from 2009 to 2012, I was completely demoralized and honestly disgusted with the whole industry. Partly because that industry has a lot of sketchy operators that try to sell garbage to make money. Also, I’d say it has a lot of garbage customers.
I don’t mean that as an ad hominem attack. I mean it to describe that if you haven’t programmed yourself entrepreneurially and you’re not oriented towards things like mastery and you’re not ready to embrace the long game and understand the first principles of not business, but almost like a platonically sound life and way of being in the world.
If you have not cast off all of the mess that the world puts on us from the time we’re little kids through the traditional establishment education system, then you enter into something like online education completely unequipped for success. It’s nothing like a job where you sit there and they pay you to sit in your chair and tell you what to do. It’s as far removed from that as you can imagine. Most people aren’t equipped to succeed at it.
Life Operating System: If you have not cast off all of the mess that the world puts on us from the time we’re little kids through the traditional establishment education system, then you enter into something like online education completely unequipped for success.By 2012, I was sick of selling stuff that people were not succeeding with. I got out of that industry. I went and I started a digital agency and I thought, “I’m not doing a very good job of helping people become entrepreneurs with these online education programs. I’ll go work with people that are already entrepreneurs and I’ll start selling digital services to businesses.”
That was more successful because I was working with people who were already business owners. Most traditional business owners have their own set of challenges. Over the course of five years, we provided marketing services through that agency to about 10,000 small and medium-sized businesses in the US and Canada. Ultimately in 2018, I was able to exit that business. Between what I made during the time I owned the business and then the sale of the business, it probably amounted to an eight-figure enterprise for me.
There I was at 39 years old, 10 years into online marketing, half of that as an affiliate, half of that as an agency owner. I did a few other things here and there in between, all of which were successful and I’m retired. Ten years before that, I’d been homeless and broke. I’m sitting there going, “How is it that a jazz musician was ripe to take these skills and use them to transform his life so completely over a ten-year period? Most people who did graduate high school, who did follow the program, who did do what they were told, who can hold a job, unlike me, seem to struggle and fail when they try to change their lives. What’s going on here?”
Trying to answer that question is what led to the ENTRE Institute. Fundamentally, what I realized is that the two luxuries that I had as a jazz musician, one of which was I was almost completely in control of my own time. I never had much money, but most of the time, I got to decide what I wanted to do with my time. At least how to organize my priorities by my own design, not just based on what my boss told me I had to do. That was one luxury.
The other luxury was the sensation of going through life as a tightrope walker without a safety net. I’m up on the bandstand trying to keep up with the changes of giant steps at 240 beats a minute, super complex harmonies. I got some crazy drummer pushing the tempo who’s going to yell at me if I can’t keep up. Jazz musicians are crazy. It’s a very intense culture.
I realized that’s what I had. I had the ability to operate under pressure with total autonomy and still execute. That’s what society strips people of. Children can do that. By the time most of us are grown up, we don’t know how to do that anymore. ENTRE was me reverse engineering everything that I had put together in my life to do what I did over that ten-year period. Eventually, it led to the creation of what I call a Life Operating System. The concept that I espouse is called Life Design.
Jocko Willink says, “Discipline equals freedom.” It’s built on the idea that if you are disciplined enough about installing an operating system into your life and living programmatically according to principles, a software-based operating system is anchored to the underlying principles of the language in which it was created. Ditto for us. When we understand the principles and we organize them into an operating system. We’re disciplined about installing it and living it every day of our lives. Our operating system is based on what we call the 3 Ps, Physical Growth, Personal Growth, and Professional Growth. Ultimately, the point is to find your fourth P, which is called your Purpose.
I’ve taken that and I’ve expanded on it to the level of almost a hard science. That’s what ENTRE teaches., we teach entrepreneurship. We teach vehicles and paths you can use to make money, but far more than that, and underneath that, we teach people how to live in this way that makes success ultimately predictable.
Life Operating System: Yes, we teach entrepreneurship. Yes, we teach vehicles and paths you can use to make money, but far more than that and underneath that, we teach people how to live in this way that makes success ultimately predictable.What you’re doing, in my opinion, is getting people to stay on a course that will help them develop a level of mastery that gives them the confidence to take that to the next step and then the next step because what you’re not doing is, “Here, follow these instructions and make money.” What you’re saying is you’ll follow these instructions and become a better person than make money. What that initially does is it allows people to A) Get some wins under their belt, and B) Stay in the present time that they’re doing so because that’s what kills us. It kills us because if we are not in the present time when we’re focused on the things that are feeding us, our intellectual curiosity, our ability to connect with others.
You said something before, Jeff, I want to comment on. I have written my third book, Coach Elevation. That book is all about finding your true purpose. Here’s the interesting thing. I’ve developed a simple system to do so in 20 to 30 minutes, but the punchline is everybody’s true purpose is exactly the same. It’s to help others. The problem is that what you’re missing is your true mission. Your true mission is how you help others.
It’s when you develop your true mission that you get to fulfill your true purpose. I said the same thing you did. I just said it in a little bit different way because what you’re doing is you’re starting out by helping people understand that they can be successful if they follow these steps. They follow these steps. Next, what you do is you show them the how. Once they have some confidence, once you get them into the present time and get them focused a little bit on the future, they can see how the results are possible. Did I summarize that right?
Yeah. It’s funny because this is like exactly what I spend my time on now. I’m working on a presentation. You referenced a couple of concepts and I’ve got the presentation. I have it up on my screen right now. It’s to articulate. It’s helping our executive team at ENTRE understand what is the real work that we’re doing. We’re not a school for entrepreneurship. We’re not a place that teaches online business. We’re not a catalog of courses. We’re an ecosystem that is oriented toward human fulfillment.
In fact, I’m even going to propose at the meeting that we have a concept we use in our business called MINs, Most Important Numbers. Every individual, every team, every department, and the company as a whole has a MIN. There is a great book out there called Your Most Important Number by Lee Benson, who’s a friend of mine who has a whole business operating systems. Very cool.
Your Most Important Number: Increase Collaboration, Achieve your Strategy, and Execute to Win by Lee BensonTell Lee I say hi. I know Lee.
You totally would. If you didn’t, I would’ve introduced you guys.
Lee’s great. We use a modified version of the ETW methodology at ENTRE. I’m proposing that we change the global ENTRE MIN to a metric called the Life Satisfaction Index. Life Satisfaction Index Type A is the technical classification. It comes from sociology, but it gets used a lot in psychology and behavioral psychology studies. That’s basically on a scale of 1 to 10, how closely does your life look like your dream life?
Imagine the best possible life where you are hitting it on all cylinders across every area of your life. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate your current life in comparison to that life. That’s your life satisfaction index. I am proposing that ENTRE change its whole measuring system, and its whole definition of success to increase the life satisfaction index of our students.
I love the idea. I want to intervene with one small thought here. For readers, you are privileged to be learning from Jeff Lerner. Jeff, I want to mention that Lee was a guest on my show as well. Readers, look for Lee Benson’s interview, too. We had a fantastic time together. We talked about guitars and musicianship and his nine-figure amazing software company.
Just like you’re reading with Jeff and I, we had a lot to talk about. Lee and I became friends after that interview. I would invite you to go read that too. Jeff, let’s get back to what you said. I wanted to make one comment. No one understands what their true best life would look like until they could see the possibilities. I hope part of what you’re going to be doing is showing people what’s possible and helping them select those options that allow them to craft this thing you call their best possible life.
Even to your point about purpose, I agree with you. Are you familiar with the movie City Slickers?
Yeah.
Remember the scene near the end where Jack Palance and Billy Crystal finally have become friends and they’re riding the herd. Jack Palance basically says to Billy Crystal, “You city slickers are all the same. You spend 50 weeks a year tying your rope up in knots and you come out here for 2 weeks and think you’re going to untie it. Let me tell you what’s wrong. Let me tell you what the key to life is.” He holds up his finger. Billy Crystal goes, “Your finger?” He says, “No. One thing. The key to life is one thing.”
Billy Crystal goes, “What’s the one thing?” He goes, “That’s what you got to figure out.” I use that to illustrate that even Jack Palance and City Slickers are telling us there’s a purpose to life. By the way, 81% of Americans agree with us that life has a purpose. Do you want to hear the depressing counter counterpart to that? Only 6% of Americans consider what the purpose of their life is even one time per year.
They don’t know it. They don’t understand it.
I don’t think they see a path to achieving a purpose-led life. I agree with you that underneath everyone’s purpose is the meta-purpose of helping other people. I personally found my purpose during that period of introspection in 2018. I have essentially landed on my purpose. It’s helping people find their purpose and operationalize it into a life. That is what ENTRE does.
Underneath everyone's purpose is the meta-purpose of helping other people.
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It’s not just what ENTRE does. It’s the only work there is to be done in the whole world. Once you understand what a purpose-led life can look like, which again, to your point, we help people envision, how do you work backward and reverse engineer a process that makes it as predictable as and probable as possible, that I will achieve it?
There are only two paths in life. There is a purpose-led life and there is deathbed regret. At the end of the day, you’re only going to have one of those two things. I’m like, “If I get to be in the business of helping people have the former or not the latter, I don’t even understand what other business there is on this Earth. Why would anybody do anything else?”
There are two parts to this, as you explained. The first is understanding what your purpose is. As I said before, at the core level of everybody’s true purpose is to help others. How do we help others? Before we go to how, which I call your true mission, you have to understand why your true purpose is your actual true purpose. In other words, why is it that?
If I told you your true purpose is to help others, it would become ear-washed. It wouldn’t mean a thing to you. If I made you feel that emotionally, if I brought you to the point where you started to cry when you discovered that your true purpose was to help others and I have a process that I do with my clients that does that, that’s when you have seen it, touched it, tasted it, and now you “know it.” Now the question is how do I get there? I think that’s what you’re engineering right now. By the way, I totally love what you’re doing.
I agree with you. Your statement of purpose, it’s something that has to be personally discovered and experienced and owned through almost like a catharsis. It doesn’t do you or me to tell somebody what we think their purpose is. Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in a man’s life are the day that they’re born and the day that they discover why.” The second day is what we’re talking about because on that day, every day before it will finally make sense. Now that I am fully on purpose, I can look at every single thing that ever happened to me.
I can look at when I was seventeen and that crusty old piano player tried to sexually molest me in a piano lesson, why did that happen and how does it tie into where I am right now? When my first girlfriend broke my heart, how did that lead me to right now? When I dropped out of high school, how did that lead me? My car accident is the reason I have my arm taped up here.
How did that tie into where I am right now? My first and my second wife, my parents, my bullying and traumas, my pain, sickness, and my sadness, it all makes sense. Once people experience that, I’ll tell you, it’s a feeling you don’t ever want to lose. You go, “How do I live a life where I get this all the time?” That brings us to the practical how and I don’t know how many details you want me to go, but I do have an answer.
I want the answer, but I also want to share one thing with you I feel when you talk the way you were. What you’re talking about here, again, is when you talk about everything happening with you to you or for you, what I’m hearing, Jeff, is that you take 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life. That’s one of the requirements of living your true mission.
I was addicted to heroin in high school, Jeff. I had to go and spend eighteen months of my life in recovery to get out of heroin addiction. It turned out to be the most powerful, most significant, most meaningful thing I had ever done. At the age of eighteen, I became a focused, sober individual ready to attack life as a functional adult.
Whereas all of my friends were still smoking dope behind the college, the high school football stadium, etc., I was out there thinking about the world, thinking about how I change the world at the age of eighteen. I did it simply because I understood that. You understand that you must take 100% responsibility for yourself no matter what you think “happens” to you.
I say all the time I don’t wish suffering on anyone, but I see plain as day in so many people’s challenges that they haven’t suffered and overcome enough. They haven’t built that muscle. There’s a node in the brain called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex that grows when you have to use grit to overcome pain. That node is the leading indicator of a successful person.
The word passion comes from the Latin pati, which extended is passio, which is the Latin word for suffering. You transmute your suffering into passion. That’s why they call it the Passion of the Christ because He suffered on Calvary. Not getting spiritual here, but transmutation of suffering into passion and ultimately oriented toward purpose, that is the life equation. I believe that’s the lesson we’re meant to learn while we’re here.
Now let’s talk about the 3 Ps.
You go, “That’s all great, Jeff and Mitch, but I got bills to pay. I have kids at home. My wife’s breathing down my neck and life is tough. I don’t have time to sit around, meditate, and ponder my purpose all the time. What am I supposed to do?” First of all, accepting the reality of your starting point is a big deal for people because even at ENTRE, we get thousands of students that come in and they go, “I’m ready to change my life. I’m ready to learn a new thing. I’m ready to level up my skills.”
I’m like, “Awesome. With what time, energy, and resources? You’re already using 100% of your available capacity to live the life you don’t want and barely hang on to that. Where are we supposed to have all this time and focused energy that you’re going to develop a whole new skillset to grow a whole new life?”
People were like, “I didn’t want to hear that. Can we get to the part that I want?” I’m like, “No.” This is why I told you the story about from 2008 to 2012 of me getting so disgusted with the online education industry because of exactly what I said. They have all these thousands and thousands of people coming in to learn new skills and they’re never having the honest conversation to go, “This is what it takes to be successful at this. Until we re-engineer your life to create the production capacity to sharpen the saw, so to speak, it’s like you’re trying to chop down the tree with a dull saw.”
I’m saying, “Stop trying to chop down the tree. Let’s take a few hours and go sharpen your saw.” People don’t want to hear that because they want immediate gratification and they want the money now. I get it because they have a bill to pay, they lost their job, or they’re going through a divorce or whatever. That’s why we are a life design platform. That’s why we start with a life operating system.
Stop trying to chop down the tree. Let’s take a few hours and go sharpen your saw. People don't want to hear that because they want immediate gratification, and they want the money now.
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First of all, let’s apply the filter of physical, personal, and professional development to your life. We’re going to assess your entire calendar, all 168 hours per week that you have to live. We’ve all got the same allotment. Identify how much of this time am I allocating physically, personally, and professionally. What most people find out is there’s almost no intentional allocation of anything.
The only non-negotiable structure on their schedule is usually when they have to clock into and out of their job so they don’t get fired. Everything else is fluid and maybe fits around it loosely. We get intentional. What a lot of people have in their lives, because they’re in pain and they don’t want to feel, is stuff that is neither physical, personal, or professional. It’s just wasteful. We have this stark conversation as a starting point. We’re evolving how we do this for people. We’re working on an app now that’s going to use AI, live on your phone, and make it as simple as sliced bread, but let’s start building the muscle of new commitments. That term commitment, people say, “I’m committed.”
I say, “What’d you sacrifice?” “I don’t. I’m just committed.” “No.” Look up the Latin con mittere, to send up with. It comes from sacrifice. In other words, “I want this thing I am and to commit to this thing, I am sacrificing this other thing as a burnt offering. As the smoke goes up to the heavens, I send up with the smoke whatever it is that I incinerated as a show of my commitment to the thing that I want.” We start to go, “What are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to send up with your commitment?”
Maybe it’s poker night. Maybe it’s a bowling league. Maybe it’s needing to be right when you talk to your wife. Maybe it’s disciplining your kids in an ineffective way. Maybe it’s a drug habit. Maybe it’s smoking. Maybe it’s a lot of things. Physically, personally, and professionally, it is not that hard if people are willing, to be honest, to find points of dysfunction and start rooting them out, understanding them, understanding what they’re compensating for, and finding other ways to get that desire met. Ultimately, reestablish a foundation for a life that’s physically, professionally, and personally effective, consistent, grounded, and stable.
Once you start to live that way, you’ve sharpened the saw. You can layer on new skills. You can layer on new principles. You have the stability to start to negotiate relationships differently. We have a lot of people, for example, that when we look at how their energy gets used, they have one or maybe a small number of relationships in their life that are the reason that they can’t have a different life.
The energy they would need to build a business is actually getting consumed every day when they get home from work and they have that one hour of awkward tension with their wife. Until we solve that, they’re lying to themselves that they’re ever going to be able to build a business. That’s what we’ve done through coaching, web applications, and accountability. We have VIP concierges, an online curriculum, and our own software.
We’re trying to build this complete ecosystem to put all three legs in place, which is what we call the three legs of action, the right knowledge, the right environment, and all the right resources. That’s the ecosystem that we’re trying to build for people to support living life differently so that they can do different things to get different results.
If you are able to accomplish that and I know that you are accomplishing it every day, then you have the capacity to revolutionize the way people see life and see work. I’m a big fan of what you talked about. I’ve lived it all of my life. I probably have never articulated it as well as you do now.
I’ve been my entire life now articulating this.
I relate it back to my own experiences. I knew that when I was ready to start a business, I had to cut everything else out of my life. That meant I was lucky enough to have had the savings from working a job to quit that job and start this business. I had no girlfriend, no commitments, no children. I had paid down every possible loan I could. The only thing I had was my personal determination and my time.
With those two things and a little bit of money, not a whole lot, I was able to take that and create something of very high value. That’s where the willingness part must come in. You talked about that. If you’re not willing to, as you say, sacrifice something significant that is valuable to you, so that you can replace it with something more valuable, it’s going to take longer and it’s going to be harder or may not work at all. I love the fact that you’re doing that.
You alluded to the great X factor here, which is life circumstances. We have a concept we call success DNA, which is a combination of your natural gifts and your lived experience. That combination ultimately brings people to a point where they have the life they want and then they have the life they have. The path between those two is cluttered with obstacles.
Life Operating System: The success DNA is a combination of your natural gifts and your lived experiences. That combination ultimately brings people to a point where they have the life they want.You were at a point where you had certain major obstacles were not present for you. There was not a spouse that was depending on you as a breadwinner. There were no children that were draining your resources. There was not a job necessarily. I don’t know, maybe you didn’t have a job that was eating up most of your time, or maybe you got to live at your buddy’s house and you didn’t have to pay rent.
To try to solve this problem at scale, we have to be able to meet every person where they are. That’s my goal here. Let’s say as one example, we developed a program called Bootstrap, which is if somebody has $0, they can’t buy an online course. Maybe they have to run on their LTE cell phone for the internet. They can’t even afford an internet connection.
We have a program called Bootstrap now where we’ll teach them how to take basic referral partner links of our program, paste them out there, and if somebody buys something, we’ll do a commission matching program where we pay our normal affiliate commission, plus we actually match them in scholarship dollars as credit toward our programs.
That’s one example of how we’re trying to solve for making this life available for everyone. Here’s what I’ll say. People might read this and go, “I don’t want that approach.” You heard me in the Facebook post I made talking about short game versus long game. The duality of human nature. There’s what Freud called the ego ideal, the idealized nature of self where we project our superego, our best self based on everything we’ve observed and learned in life. We have our id, which is like, “I’m hungry. I want it now. The only thing that matters is for me to stay alive no matter what the cost,” and then the ego moderates in between.
That process for most people results in an unwillingness to delay gratification is what one ends up. By taking this approach, we have had an uphill battle because we have to meet people where they are and convince them to slow down in trying to get where they want to go. Another Jocko Willink quote, which is a Navy SEAL saying, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” Here’s the thing. I mentioned to you before we did this that we’ve been doing this for years now and we got the first quantitative data back from our students to suggest we’re getting good at this. I’m going to share a few data points here.
Let me mention one other thing that I believe that you’re doing. What I believe you’re doing is helping people have small wins slowly, which build upon one after the other. Why is that significant? Psychologically, it’s very hard. It’s called hopelessness when you have no wins, but you keep going until eventually, you have no desire to keep going.
That’s the definition of hopelessness. When you can help somebody make one commission from sharing one link and get paid, that’s a success. If they could build on that success and get 2 next week, and 4 the week after, then they’re on their way of building on small successes. That’s the slow success you’re talking about too.
You nailed it. Confidence again to the Latin with fidelity, confidence. Fidelity is faith. Faith in what? When you say you’re going to do something, you believe in yourself. That’s what confidence is. You build that through small wins. You’re exactly right. On that note, 90% of participants in our flagship program report more clarity about who they are and what their goals are. Seventy-six percent have accomplished a project or a task that prior to joining, they had been putting off for many years.
When you say you're going to do something, you believe in yourself. That's what confidence is. You build that through small wins.
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Eighty-two percent self-reported improvements in time management. Seventy-four percent report having hit a professional goal that they had previously struggled to hit. Eighty percent feel more confident taking on new things. Thirty-seven percent of participants in our flagship program report increasing their personal income within one year.
When you add our live events to that, the statistic goes to 63% report increasing income within one year. Eighty-one percent agree that their quality of life has improved. Eighty-seven percent report that quality of life has improved. Ninety-one percent report making significant changes to improve their physical health. Ninety-six percent report improved communication and quality of relationships. I’ve got a whole body of data.
The fact that you can codify and quantify this is so powerful and it speaks so much to who you are as a person. With that, we’re going to transition now to the next part of the show. One of the things that we do with this next part of the show is get to know who you are a little bit better. Honestly, I’m going to ask the questions, but I think we already know who you are.
This interview has helped me understand you probably better than many of the other guests I’ve spoken to. I want to first mention that I appreciate your openness and your honesty. That’s all important to me. It’s important to the way I value my friendships and relationships and I value this one too. Let me ask you these questions. Let’s see where we can go with it. Here’s the first question. I know the answers to these things already. Who, in all of space and time, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with, dead or alive, fictional or real?
Can I be cliché, but also honest and say Jesus?
I knew it. That is a popular answer. Tell me why and more importantly, after you tell me why, tell me what you would talk to Jesus about.
I would choose Jesus because His ministry and His teaching are the only ways I’ve been able to make all the pieces fit in life and the meaning. It’s easy to say life has meaning, but it doesn’t logically hold to me that life could generate its own intention. Whatever generated life is the teleology behind life. Simply the idea that there is this higher purpose or power, for me, God, and whatever, that is like an a priori logical foundation for making sense of anything that, to be clear, I rejected for a large portion of my life. I wanted it to be about me. I didn’t want there to be a purpose. I didn’t want there to be accountability to a purpose.
I wanted dopamine, good feelings, fun, the party, and whatever. The biggest thing is I resented authority because authority had been oppressive my whole life. I had to renegotiate what it meant to surrender to that. You then deal with the obvious problems that are baked into human life that we’re pretty terrible. If there’s a purpose, why are we clearly so misaligned with whatever that purpose is? There’s all this pain and suffering. I read CS Lewis. I remember reading The Problem of Pain, going, “How do I make sense of this?” Eventually, you reach a point where I haven’t found another narrative beyond grace to honestly to even be able to get up in the morning and not be a piece of crap.
What do you think you’d chat with Him about if you were sitting on that park bench and you had an hour?
I would ask Him for help. Maybe my publicist would tell me that I shouldn’t even be talking about this, this way right now, but I don’t present ENTRE to the world as a faith-based organization. It’s agnostic. It’s purely pragmatic. The only faith surrender element is the idea that there is a purpose to a life. Sure, you got all line with that, or else what’s the point of any of it? Beyond that, we meet everyone where they are. I would ask Jesus, “How do I open more people’s hearts?” not to Him because I don’t believe I do that. I believe He does that. The Holy Spirit does that. How do I open more hearts to a belief in their own potential?
Give me a year with anybody and I can completely transform their life and make a lot of their dreams come true unless they have a chronic health condition that’s going to kill them before I have time as long as they believe. Saint Augustine said, “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou may believe. Seek to believe that thou may understand.” If I can get people to believe in their own potential, then I can help them understand how to get there.
Life Operating System: If I can get people to believe in their own potential, then I can help them understand how to get there.That is the same conversation I, too, would love to have with Him or frankly, with anyone at that level. Let’s leave it at that. That is the key to life. If you could help people unlock their true potential and find their way to it, you have solved the problem of humanity. Thank you for sharing that. Here’s the grand finale. This is called the change-the-world question. I also know what I am going to hear as the answer too because we’ve already been through so much of this. What is it that you’re doing or would like to do that put has the potential to change the world?
Enroll the entire world into a belief in their own potential and be willing to push pause on their urgency and their dopamine addiction long enough to, in slow is smooth, smooth is fast fashion, install an operating system to start to reshape their lives from the granular habits on up to the grand purpose.
The ultimate purpose of that would be the ultimate way to change the world. I love that. Jeff, before we go, I know you mentioned that you have something very special for our readers. Tell us a little bit about what that is.
I do. It’s simple. It’s a path to value in whatever way I can provide it. If you go to JeffLernerOfficial.com, it is my website, it pulls together much of what I’m doing in the world. There are different roads you can go down, but one of them is a completely free eBook called the Freedom Business Formula.
It unpacks a lot of the life design principles and how the operating system works and uses the origination story to illustrate the principles and practice. Ultimately, it’s a free book that’s designed to do what I said I would ask Jesus for help in doing, which is enrolling people into believing in their own potential and believing that there’s a practical way to realize it.
I would encourage everybody reading this show to go check out that site. As we are speaking, I’m on it now and I love the Yiddish quote on the homepage. I totally love that. Thank you for doing that. It made me smile. Jeff, you have been an absolute delight to spend time with. You have brought to my life a gift that is hard to articulate. I feel so good now knowing that we’ve had this conversation and that we are bringing this conversation to so many people who I believe would love to hear it. Thank you so much for doing so. Folks, don’t forget. Go over to JeffLernerOfficial.com. Thank you again, Jeff and we will talk again soon.
Thank you so much.
Important Links ClientFol.io * Jeff Lerner * ENTRE Institute * The Fountainhead * Atlas Shrugged * Coach Elevation * Your Most Important Number * Lee Benson – Past Episode * The Problem of Pain * Freedom Business Formula*
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Since the beginning of the World Wide Web and the Internet, we have seen various paradigm shifts that are changing the way we live, do business, and more. AI is one of those, and whether we like it or not, it is already creating a huge impact on our lives. Having not only lived through various paradigm shifts but also spotted them one after the other, this episode’s guest, Peter Swain, is the person who can give you great insights about this revolutionary technology and what’s to come. Peter is an AI genius, veteran strategist, marketer with more than 25 years of experience, and currently the CEO at A3 Finance. He sits down with Mitch Russo to answer some of the pressing questions about AI. How long will the AI fad last? How does it impact the way we live? How do you utilize it to get to where you want to be? What is the future going to look like in a world where it seems to be evolving faster than we are? Tune in to this exciting conversation and receive food for thoughts about technology, our relationship with it, and the ways it is changing the world.
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Listen to the podcast hereNavigating The Paradigm Shift That Is AI With AI Genius Peter SwainWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in, and extract wisdom you can use to grow your business with your first thousand clients. If you’re a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you. My software platform called Clientfol.io has been helping hundreds of coaches save time and admin get better results from their clients while generating powerful client testimonials for the work that they’ve done.
How? By tracking accountability and holding clients to it. No other platform provides you with the power to access a library of accountability questions and places to control in your clients’ hands to keep track of their most critical stats and goals. Do you want to get it for $1? You can go to GetClientfolio.com and give it a spin. Onto my amazing guest and his incredible story. Who here uses Yelp? I use Yelp. You’re about to meet the guy who created it back in 1994. Is that right, Peter?
Windows 95 hasn’t been released yet. Yes, it was ‘94.
You have since gone on to manage 1,400 tech projects with market leaders such as Jamie Oliver, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and more. That’s in the past because now, his focus is helping others navigate the massive paradigm shift called AI. He helps individuals and institutions migrate their workflow, invent new processes to a system, and also runs an incredibly successful mastermind. He’s also a bestselling author. Welcome, Peter Swain, to the show.
Thank you so much, Mitch. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Peter, I have to ask, how did this all get started for you?
The speed dating intro I guess is I started coding when I was six because I wanted a baby brother. I asked my mom and dad to buy me a baby brother and they said, “You couldn’t buy a baby brother.” I got upset so I decided to code myself and my baby brother. This is hideously embarrassing but it’s true. For all the tech people who are tuning into this, it was the worst code ever. Essentially, what I did was I went in and told it what I wanted it to tell me. When I type something, I feel sad. It said, “Why?” I said something and it didn’t understand it. I quit the code and went and told it what I wanted it to say and then I re-routed the codes. It became thousands and thousands of lines, but I was hooked.
I started coding at six because my dad was in IT. I had that blessing. I then got selected to work for Microsoft Middle East as an alpha tester for Visual Basic when I was twelve. It was my first program shortly after, and then in my last year of high school, I was at a trade show with my dad. I got a flyer handed to me by a guy now known as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, at that time, he’s just a guy called Tim, about this new thing called the World Wide Web.
I walked back into school and I quit. An entry for Oxford University is on the cards and I was like, “No, I’m out. This is what I’m going to do.” I went to this trade show called The Internet World Show. I walked around saying, “You should give me a job.” Apparently, not having any qualifications or experience was a limiting factor, which I hadn’t quite anticipated. I went to the last stand. This would be the conversation with the last stand. I said, “You’re going to give me a job.” He said, “Why am I going to give you a job?” I said, “Because everybody else said no, so you have to say yes. Here’s the deal. I’ll work for free for two weeks. I know what I’m doing but I recognize I have no way to prove that to you. If you pay for my lunch money and my bus fare, I’ll work for free, as long as you promise I get a shot.”
He said, “All right. See you on Monday.” I walked in on Monday and he said, “We picked up this client last week called Yelp.co.uk.” It is the UK government Yelp, which is the code-based thing that got sold to Yelp. We picked up this new client called Yelp. He said, “You’re the lead developer.” I’m like, “I beg your pardon.” To frame this for everybody, Google and Yahoo didn’t exist yet.
What year was this?
Beginning of ’94. Yahoo came around while we were building this because we had the 32nd listing on Yahoo. I know where I was in that ranking. I remember being disappointed that it wasn’t 29, but now after seeing what Yahoo did, it definitely would be nice to see us in the top 30. We built Yelp and then we had Ziff Davis come to us for a big partnership. He said, “We love what you did. We want your website.” I remember saying, “No, you don’t.” Ziff Davis said, “Yes, we do.”
I’m like, “Why? The thing that annoys me about this is I buy PC gamer every week then I go to this FTP link. I have to wait weeks to download the software. By the time I downloaded it, the next edition was out because it kept failing. Why don’t you put the software on a CD on the front of the magazine?” They went, “That’s crazy.” I’m like, “That would triple the cost. I pay triple because I want the software. I don’t want your review of the software. I want the software.” For anyone that got upset with all those AOL CDs, I apologize. That’s my thought as well a little bit. We did that and then I went to my boss and said, “I need a pay raise,” because I was on £15,000 a year and he said, “Shut up and get back to work.” I went, “I quit.”
How old were you then?
Nineteen.
What happened to Yelp? You were their project manager for Yelp and he said it’s okay for you to quit.
He let me go. I developed and built it. I’ve done it. It was live. I was on £15,000 a year and I wanted £18,000 and he said no. I went to Dubai, where I was brought up as a child. I approached my dad’s business partner at that time and pitched the idea for a web company. He said yes, which was great, and gave me my seed funding. I went to companies and said, “You should have a website.” They went, “What’s the web?” I was like, “I might have misjudged this slightly.”
We then became the largest web agency in the Middle East. We were doing $3.5 million a year for retained revenue. We consulted Dubai on the build-out of Dubai Internet City. We had a number of Royal Court clients. It’s a great business. It was great fun and then 9/11 happened. Obviously, 9/11 was a much bigger tragedy for some than it was for me. For me, what happened was my business went from $3.5 million in retained revenue per year to $54,000 in retained revenue per year in 48 hours. Everybody left Dubai. The town went dead.
I came back to the UK, created another web agency, and worked for some local and national government departments. I went to India to set up an outsourced dev company. That was a complete disaster, but that’s a whole episode on its own of what not to do when dealing cross-culturally. Way back, I bought an iPhone. I bought the first iPhone with an App Store. It’s the iPhone 4. I went back into my web agency in the UK and said, “Everybody has three months to read the trend.” For any client that’s over 50%, we complete the work. For any client under 50%, we give them money back because this is it.
People are like, “It’s a small web screen.” I’m like, “It’s not a small web screen. It’s another paradigm shift.” What I saw on the web the first time was that the web meant that my footprint on the world became the world. The tech wasn’t there but the philosophical impact was. I am now going to be able to interact with anyone anywhere. What mobile did was, “You can do all that and you’re no longer tethered to your desk while you do it.” Now you can interact with anyone wherever you are.
AI: The web meant that my footprint on the world became the world.Let me add some flavor to that and some perspective. I was in Dallas. I just sold my software company in ’94 or ’95. I had already secured the name TimeSlips as a URL. I made sure we got that. By the time I got back after I resigned from Sage and came back to Massachusetts in 1998, I then ended up building the largest furniture shopping site on the internet through a VC firm because I was brought in by a VC to help them rethink the company and then run it as CEO. It was only four years since the beginning of the internet that furniture shopping was going on the web. The speed at which things were changing back then was breathtaking. Obviously, you were at the tip of that spear because you were ready to start developing apps for the iPhone.
I remember the first job we got. It was for Breaking Bad. They called me and said, “We want this app. It’s a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a drug lord. I remember saying, “It sounds like a crappy idea.” I put my phone and I’m like, “I don’t know if I want to do it or not.” I’m very glad that we said yes. We did that and then things went crazy. What happened was I had an argument with Apple about their human interface guidelines. At the beginning of the iPhone, the human interface guidelines were absolute like, “You can do this. You can’t do this.” It was a huge document.
I was on the phone with the job for Ali G. for Sacha Baron Cohen. It was a very high-profile job. I was arguing the human interface guidelines with Apple. I was saying, “I’m sorry, you’re wrong under this occasion and rule next to this. I can do this.” Somebody said, “He’s got a point.” We did the project. I didn’t think anything of it. A couple of months later, I got a call saying, “Steve wants you to do an app. I’m like, “Steve who?” I got the name Steve Who. They’re like, “Steve.”
I got that bit and then Steve Jobs went. I’m like, “How the F does Steve Jobs know who I am?” They’re like, “Do you remember that phone call where you had a thing? Do you remember you were arguing that thing and there was someone in the background who said, ‘He’s got a point?’ That was Steve Jobs.” I was like, “Why didn’t you tell me I was on a phone call with Steve Jobs?” “If we told you, would you argue the point?” I was like, “Absolutely not.”
We got handed this contract. As a mobile agency, we’re the only agency in the world that Apple is willing to outsource work. I went to the bank and said, “We have this opportunity but we’re going to need your help.” Apple pays three months after completion and it was a nine-month project. My business acumen was good enough now. He’s like, “Do you want me to hold work in progress for a year? This is tough.” The bank said, “If you turn over £1 million in your first year, we’ll give you a £200,000 facility.”
I took every stage, microphone, and conference. I did the same thing every single time, which was I used to stand on stage and put money on the plate, depending on how big the audience was. The most was $10,000 cash. I used to say, “If anybody here can prove that I can’t revolutionize your business using mobile apps, with an audience vote, you win the money.” I was trying to make people understand it wasn’t just a small web screen. It was an accelerometer. It was a radio. It was a GPS. There are so many more sensory inputs. There are many more you can do with it. I did that for a year and I never once lost the money.
The hardest one was a sofa furniture company. This guy stood up and said, “We make sofas. How is mobile going to revolutionize my business?” I’m like, “That’s an interesting one. I’ll tell the story very quickly. I’m guessing the first time sofas were around, they were around a fire. I’m guessing the sofa design was in a circle that you curve around the fire?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “I’m guessing that it swapped to a wireless. It became sitting around a wireless, but things didn’t change very much. Am I correct?” He’s like, “Yes. It was still semicircle.”
I was like, “Then there’s the TV that had a cathode ray tube at the back. You had to put TVs at that time in the corner of a room. You didn’t have any other way. The semicircle probably didn’t work anymore. This is probably where the three-seater, two-seater, and one-seater configuration came in.” This is in front of about 3,000 people. He was like, “Yeah.” We then went to flat screen. We hung it on a wall. Now it’s more about a different configuration around that. The viewing angles of flat screens were pretty bad. You probably needed to get everybody in the center. We then have flat screens with full viewing angles.
I said, “Let me ask you the question, sir. What happens when every kid and adult is on a tablet watching something different? Your entire remap is to focus on the entertainment of the moment. I’m telling you that there is no reason a 16-year-old and a 6-year-old are going to watch the same content. How have I done?” He sat down and then came to me off-stage and said, “How much is the retainer?” That was the ongoing story. We hit a million. We signed that all and then 2008 happened and the banking crisis. The UK government bought the banks and stopped all small business lending.
Our 200,000 facility got taken away. We had to sell the company for cents on the dollar to our competition to make our staff get employment. We did finish the Apple projects, which is great. I then went into hotel bookings. That was when I started to understand that marketing is essentially hacking the human brain. It is about the best hardware in the world with the worst software in the world. What does that then look like? How do you make people think that it was their choice, not your choice in order to buy the thing?
Marketing is essentially hacking the human brain. It really is about the best hardware in the world with the worst software in the world.
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I got despondent with it because I got quite good at it. I started to feel like I was manipulating people, not influencing people. I was blessed with the birth of my first child. I realized I needed to take responsibility for a 5, 10, 20, or 50-year horizon to start what I do now. I went into finance, which I am still very active in. I’m the CEO of a VC firm in Latin America and then 2023 was AI. I felt called to create the Mastermind back in February or March because so many people were saying the same thing when the iPhone came out. It was the same conversation.
Part of what I heard in your story is that you tend to be skilled in spotting these paradigm shifts. You spotted them one after the other. Maybe you fell into one like the Yelp contract. That was certainly like, “I’ll do that too.” The bottom line is you were still at the beginning of many of these things from a completely different perspective than I was. I was at the beginning of some of these things too, but not from the same angle. I was much more from the management side and finance side as well.
As these paradigm shifts come, I would say that there’s a rat race to jump in as quickly as possible. Look at what happened to the stock market and the tech stocks with AI when AI finally got recognized it can generate a lot of profits for NVIDIA and other companies like that. Everybody jumped in but here’s the interesting thing, and this is where I’m going to get to next. Everybody is now jumping out. NVIDIA is down 20% from its high. It’s now in correction territory. How long will this AI fad last and where do you see your mastermind going from this perspective? I want to know more about that, of course.
Stock markets inherently overreact because they aren’t perfect systems. They are systems of people and their people trying to make money by predicting what happens next. I was one of the people back in February that was telling people to buy NVIDIA because every Formula One car needs rubber. Every LLM needs the ability to train these models. What people didn’t see was how important it was going to become. There is a threat of regulation specific in the US of looking at this from a national security interest perspective and how we’re going to let people export this, etc. That explains that shift around, but when is the fad going to disappear? Never.
AI: Stock markets inherently overreact because they aren’t perfect systems. They’re systems of people trying to make money by predicting what happens next.I thought you were going to say that it hasn’t started yet.
I think the fad has started. The fad is always defined by an era of disbelief followed by an era of, with respect to some people, greeny capitalization by people who want to sell the most optimal narrative to make money. The reason I speak into this is so many people are pitching the perfect prompt, “Follow this cheat sheet and you’ll dominate with ChatGPT, or $49 to access my list of 10,000 prompts.” They’re all either missing the point or deliberately obfuscating the point in order to satisfy the Zeitgeist moment of people going, “I need this. I want this.”
When you said spotting these paradigm shifts, you’re right. That is one of my skills because what I’m always looking for is this. The paradigm shift is where a new form of technology changes inherently the way that we live our lives. For example, I love crypto. I love the promise of crypto, but I think crypto is the best solution seeking a problem. If you look at the US and the UK, our payment rails or the way we conduct transactions is incredibly sophisticated. If you look at Africa or some countries in Latin America, that’s a different story.
A transparent immutable ledger makes a lot of sense in third-world and second-world countries, but it doesn’t make that much sense in the US or the UK. Why am I going to move money to a crypto wallet in order to go ahead and do this and this when I can literally tap my Visa card or my Mastercard in almost every single shop in the Western World? I was an admirer of crypto, but I didn’t jump on the bandwagon. I’m like, “I don’t think this is going to change everything we do.” In social media, I was an avid detractor because I didn’t like it but I did see it was a paradigm shift. I was like, “This is going to change the way everything works, but I don’t like what it’s going to do so I don’t want to be involved with it.”
The thing about AI is it needs the fad moment to capture people’s attention because all technology is about one thing, which is the humanization point. What do I mean by that? It was amazing and it’s wonderful, but that’s because Netscape Navigator did a browsing. The web was around before. The web predates my birth.
All technology is about one thing: the humanization point.
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If you take FTP, SMTP, and the protocols, they invented these things in the ’70s as a way for information to be shared, but it was incredibly technical for us to do it. It was the browser that made everybody go, “I get it. I understand what this is.” Similarly, I loved my Nokia 9110 communicator, which I had for a decade before I had an iPhone. I had a Palm Pilot for years before I had the iPhone and it was amazing. The iPhone was the humanization of the tech. It was the moment that it was presented in a way that humans could get it. AI has been around for a decade or more. Anybody who has run our Facebook Ad or Google Ad and clicked on a Facebook Ad or clicked on a Google Ad has interacted with AI.
IBM Watson has been around for almost twenty years. Watson was the first commercial demonstration of AI but they did such a poor job of explaining what it does. Nobody knew what it was. They might have had it first, but nobody knew that. They didn’t even know it.
What do Sam Altman and company do? I don’t even know if they worked out what they worked out, but what they worked out was that we understand that WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, iMessage, and SMS are now all presented if we think about it in the same UI. There is a big box up here with left and right boxes that signal who said what, and there’s a box at the bottom that you type something in. That UX or user interface pattern, we will now totally understand. When you presented generative AI such as ChatGPT through that interface, everybody went, “I get it. I talked to it and it talks back to me,” and then it told me what we see.
I don’t think the fad will ever come to an end because this technology is hard to describe to people who haven’t gotten into it. The better way to explain it is this. I’m speaking to somebody and he said, “This is the way I explain it to people. This thing doesn’t get sick. It doesn’t need a coffee. It doesn’t have a hangover. It doesn’t need sleep, food, or water. It’s smarter than me. It’s more capable than me. It knows more than me and it’s always available. It doesn’t need to go home or pick up its kids. This thing is more capable than I am and available 24/7, 365. It cannot be described until you use it. It is like wielding Excalibur. You pick it up and every single person is like, ‘This is crazy.’”
The part that is important here to be clear about is the fact that you could wield Excalibur. It is one thing, but what do you use it for? That’s part of what I needed to understand. Full disclosure, Peter and I have been friends for some time and I got to know about Peter’s Mastermind around March when you introduced it at the BA membership. I joined right away. I joined because I was curious, not because I had anything I needed to do with it.
Once Peter explained how it worked and started demonstrating it, week after week, I would watch him explore the tools that made AI do things that I needed in a tenth of the time it would take me and do a better job than I could on my own. I then became intrigued and then finally, maybe a month after listening and following, I started to use it. That’s what you are talking about at that moment. You go, “Holy crap, it did just do that.” As you said, I had to walk away from the computer and say, “This is alien. I don’t understand.”
Honestly, it’s a very common reaction. We try to serve everybody throughout the lifetime of the mastermind, but that first month is so crucial because if people use it and people do it, almost every person gets that same reaction where they go, “Whoa.” I can’t explain it to people. You feel yourself backing away from the keyboard because you’re like, “How did it just do that? I don’t understand what happened. I do understand what happened, but it’s not possible. That can’t happen.”
What can it do for people? The first thing is getting people to go, “I’m curious.” The second thing is to get them to what we call the parlor trick. We regularly do this like, “Is this your card?” It’s not David Blaine walking through a wall, but it’s the first bit, which makes you go, “That’s cool. I’m going to pay attention.” The David Blaine walking through the wall is when you pick up yourself because the easier answer is what can’t it do.
It’s essentially a more intelligent toddler that knows anything that you want. I used to say there is a junior of anything. There is the junior doctor, the junior attorney, the junior analyst, the junior copywriter, the junior designer, the junior business analyst, and the junior HR guy. I’m now upgrading it to almost senior. What have I seen it do? I’ve seen it in marketing content. That’s beyond my capabilities. I’ve seen it in my email sequences. I’ve seen it pretend to be a customer so that I can role play with it and I’ll have a conversation with my customer before I speak to the customer.
I’ve seen it analyze performers and quarterly reports. I’ve seen it in correct processes and procedures, brainstorming names, and product lines, identifying pricing strategies, and every single aspect of a business. On the personal side, it lands to a point that every single job function in a business can either replace or augment. It is the business owner’s choice as to which one of those two is going to do. Are they going to augment and empower human beings, or are they going to replace human beings?
AI: For every single job function in a business, AI can either replace or augment. It really is the business owners’ choice which one of those two are they going to do. Are they going to augment and empower a human being or replace a human being?Let’s be clear here. What you’re delivering is a Lamborghini for $1.75 because if you park the Lamborghini outside of the house and someone doesn’t know how to drive, they absolutely have no use for it. It’s taking up space. You put in front of me a tool that I don’t know how to drive. I won’t get out of it what you said. I told you privately some of my AI moments where it did things I couldn’t possibly believe were possible, but somebody had to show me how to do it.
I can explore and try things, and now with AI getting even more and more capable and being able to talk back, if you ask it a question, it talks back the answer. That is fine. The most powerful thing that you have done and what your mastermind does is it gives us a set of instructions on where you turn this thing on. Where’s the brakes? Where’s the accelerator? How do I drive this thing to get to where I want to be?
A fun fact. I found this out and I find this is fascinating. Most people don’t know this. Edison invented the light bulb as a tactile anchor as a proof of concept. The only reason the light bulb was invented was because he demonstrated it, “We generate the electricity here and we use it here.” People said, “I don’t get it. Why don’t I generate it where it is? I don’t understand the point. You’re making all this extra work.” He went back to the drawing board and invented the light bulb purely and only for the sake of going, “Look.” He had all the work over. He flipped the switch and the light went on. People went, “I get it now.”
That was the Menlo Park moment.
On the mastermind every week, all I’m trying to do is the Menlo Park moment. All I’m trying to do is say, “I’m going to show you how to write 15 pieces of content for a website in 30 minutes.” If you don’t need to generate content, that isn’t what I’m trying to show you. What I’m trying to show you is the depth and breadth of this tool so that you do what you do. You pick it up for the first time and go, “If he can do it for that, maybe I can use it for this.”
It’s the obscurity of possibilities. The variation of skills that this thing has is not possible to communicate. For example, did you know that ChatGPT knows all of JRR Tolkien’s work better than any human being or maybe even better than he did? The reason I know this is because I log into Quora from time to time because I thought I was bored and it was fun. Someone posted a question about Lord of the Rings and I then took the question and posted it into ChatGPT. What came back was astounding. The point I wanted to make here is that the expertise spans every area of human life that you could possibly imagine but we don’t span every area of human life. Collectively, we do, but individually, this is why it’s so powerful.
Not only that. I wanted to test myself here. Not only does it have that individual expertise and knowledge of everything but it can combine them instantly. For example, “In the shire where the green grasses go, Bilbo wonders if he should go with a ring in his pocket and Gandalf’s fire rocket to model dark land full of woe.” I asked it to write JRR Tolkien in the style of a Shakespearean sonnet. It literally did that. I didn’t make this up.
I can reform that now and say, “Let’s do this. What five talking points would Elon Musk use to turn this into a product?” I’m taking Shakespeare, JRR Tolkien, and Elon Musk together. If Elon Musk were to tell us some limits to products, he might approach with a characteristic blend of innovation, vision, and a touch of whimsy. Here are five talking points he might use. Intro to storytelling, personalized adventures, sustainable entertainment, education value, and community collaboration. Join a global community of talking enthusiasts to collaborate, create, and share your own lyrics and stories to expand the universe we’ve yet to imagine. We have taken the facsimile of JRR Tolkien, Shakespeare, and Elon Musk, and created an entirely new entity sentience being identity, reality, or what everyone reports.
What we’re doing is we’re using words. We’re using the English language here. What’s starting to happen now is the same power is coming to numbers, speech, and imagery. It’s already approaching the skills and intelligence of some of the smartest people on the planet, maybe even exceeding them. The question I would have for a guy who has gone as deep as you have is this. What is the future look like for AI knowing that we’re all going to live in this world where this is evolving faster than we are?
The best way to answer that is to tell you Mo Gawdat’s view and for me to tell you my view. Before I do that, Mo Gawdat was the gentleman hired by Google to spearhead AI. He is credited as one of the guys. He got it working, never thinking. This was his words, “They gave me millions of dollars but sure.” He got it working and quit the next day. This is his belief. He calls them the inevitabilities. Inevitability number one is an arms race. Because of the human condition and prisoner’s dilemma, nobody will put it down because they can’t trust the other person to put it down.
AI: AI is an arms race. Because of the human condition, of prisoner’s dilemma, nobody will put it down because they can’t trust the other person to put it down.Google will be raising that and Amazon will carry on innovating, and nobody can trust the other person to stop, so they won’t. Its capability is going to keep growing. That was the first inevitability. His second inevitability is that AI is broadly speaking like Moore’s Law. For anyone who isn’t a geeky person, Moore’s Law is the computer processing power. It will double in half the time period from the last time period. It’ll double in 10 years, 5 years, 2.5 years, etc. Since the 1950s or ‘60s, Moore’s Law has proven to be an accurate measure. He’s a super smart guy. He perceived that way around, and AI is following the same with its IQ.
If AI continues to follow the same IQ curve as Moore’s Law has followed, then AI will be 1 billion times smarter than us by 2045. It’ll be three times smarter than I was by 2025. The smartest person who ever lived has an IQ of 190-something. By 2025, we will have something available to us that has an IQ of 600. He gets to the third inevitability which he refers to as singularity. In physics, a singularity is something that we cannot possibly comprehend, measure, or monitor. An example is what happens on the other side of a black hole. We can’t see what’s on the other side of a black hole. We can hypothesize what would happen but we don’t know.
I agree with him that something that has an IQ a billion times larger than us or even three times is a singularity. How will that thing react and respond? It’s so much superior to us. In terms of IQ, it’s so much superior to us. We can’t conceive what it will do in the same way that my dog can’t conceive that I’m not a dog. He’s beyond his capability. This is what I mean by Mo depart. Mo believes that we’re inevitably doomed. His point is if something gets that much smarter than us and humanity doesn’t care about an ant, for example, which we’re only ten times faster than ants, why would something that’s a billion times smarter than us care about us? This is where we depart. The reason is AI has yet to reach sentience. It doesn’t know that it exists. Right now, it is just a bunch of code.
AI is yet to reach sentience. It doesn't know that it exists. Right now, it is just a bunch of code.
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I do believe that it’s inevitable that it will reach an artificial sentience, but a sentience nevertheless. If it reaches sentience and it’s not yet sentient, we have a very short window of time to inject empathy into the machine so that when the thing is smarter than us, it looks upon us like I look upon my dog. It’s largely useless but I love it. I don’t have it. I want to look after it and I want it to be happy but it’s not another human. I want AI to do the same.
If you look at 5, 10, or 15 years, there is no possible way for any futurist or AI enthusiast to tell you what this thing looks like. It’s impossible because all we’ve ever invented as humans is tools. A tool is always a derivative of the craftsman holding the tool. For example, I’m a terrible golfer. It doesn’t matter how much I spend on golf clubs, I’m still a horrifically bad golfer. I try every year. I buy new clubs but I’m still horrifically bad. This thing isn’t a tool. It’s sentient or it’s on its path to being sentient, which means it can outperform its creator or the craftsman using it. You can write better emails with it than you can without it. That isn’t true of Microsoft Word, etc.
On the longer than ten-year timeline, it’s impossible to tell where we’re going to be. I have hope because when the camera was invented, people said, “This is going to kill art forever. Why do you need to paint a painting if you can take a picture,” which gave birth to impressionism. Humans are incredibly resilient as new technology changes their paradigm. I have a great deal of hope that humanity will use this tool and do great things.
In the 5 to 10-year timespan, it looks like 1 of 3 things I believe. It looks like exponential revenue, growth, and impact for those who pick it up. Beyond your wildest measure of double or triple type numbers, most people are like, “If I can grow my business by 10%, I’m happy.” If you’re actively using AI and you’re not saying, “If I don’t grow my business by 300%,” you’re missing something. That would genuinely be my target, 3X what you do in a year. That’s choice one. Choice two is to quit and work for somebody who is using AI, which is okay if you’re not up for the disruption. I understand that. Choice three is the death of a thousand cuts.
What COVID accidentally taught us incorrectly is that we exist in bubbles. A lot of people work from home now so we don’t get the interaction with our competitors that we used to get. We don’t feel that competitive urge the way we used to feel it because it’s extrapolated. It’s opaque now. If your competition has increased their revenue by 20% and decreased that cost by 20% and is closing a lead in 1 day, not 5 days, how are you going to keep up? Unless you’re doing the same thing.
As we said, inevitably number one is it’s an arms race. Not just in its production as in AI capability, but it’s an arms race among individual companies now. Are you going to use this and have better personas, have an advisor on staff, and review your figures before your CFO tells you, “By the way, we’re already bankrupt?” I’m using some examples, but the short-term is exponential growth. Quit or watch your business decline over 3 or 4 years.
I want to repeat back to you one of the things you said in the mastermind because it was important to me. The thing that you said is that we are paid based on our expertise. We’ve spent 10, 20, or 30 years developing an expertise. A simple example is taking a lawyer. A lawyer is going to law school, litigated cases, and built up this huge volume of experience and insights into the law. Now there’s AI. Talk about the idea of no longer having the value that our expertise used to have and how AI has changed that.
There is a further underlying principle that one has built on. We do that one first. The first one is that capitalism is based on an intrinsic link between value and scarcity. What does that mean? I’ve had to get a lot more refined with how I say this. Let’s take Tom Brady as an example. Tom Brady is worth hundreds of millions of dollars because he can throw an inflated pigskin accurately while big dudes run at him. That’s it. Obviously, it’s also because he manages his own, etc. His essential value proposition is “I can throw an inflatable thing accurately while people run at me.”
I would say that in the future of mankind, it is utterly useless. If it’s utterly useless, how come he is worth hundreds of millions of dollars? The answer is capitalism. It was one of the problems of capitalism although it’s the best thing we have. Capitalism is not lined up to give value to those that are useful to humanity. Capitalism is lined up to give value to those who have something that is scarce. If you have something, whether a product or service that is scarce, you have value. If you don’t have something that’s scarce, you don’t have value.
Capitalism is not lined up to give value to those that are useful to humanity. Capitalism is lined up to give value to those who have something scarce.
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The issue with AI is if you ask businesses what they want, it essentially boils down to three things. They want more money, more stuff, or better people. They want an increase of those three. If you ask them whether to have Elon Musk on your board or $1 million, they choose Elon Musk. If you ask them whether they want Warren Buffett on your board or 50 acres of real estate in Manhattan, they will take Warren Buffett. It’s because you can always get the other things if you’ve got those people but you can’t get those people if you’ve got the other things.
The true one scarce thing is smart, intelligent, and capable people. Unfortunately, that’s what AI offers. It offers smart, capable, and competent artificial people. We now have this question that occurs. What happens to capitalism if we can no longer assign value based on scarcity because scarcity is out the window? That’s what leads to the second phenomenon that you said. Your skillset is the ultimate form of scarcity.
What happens when this thing can replicate your skillset and your knowledge? To be honest, as before with Elon Musk meets Shakespeare meets Tolkien, I can say, “I’m working with Mitch on XYZ. Let’s bring Carnegie and Rockefeller into the conversation as well. Let’s have a board of advisors of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Rockefeller, and Carnegie.” I can do that while we’re talking. The first person who has incredible value is the person who knows how to use AI, full stop.
The people who will start appearing in the next six months are the people who had to program AI. The people who can do specific AI for specific applications are going to be some of the multimillionaires and billionaires in the making. The third group of people whose experience is rich, deep, and nuanced still aren’t replaceable. It’s the 60-year-old attorney who can see the thing that an AI can’t see, “I’ve done this game. I’ve played this game. I’ve played it 200 times. It’s not that. It’s this,” which logically makes sense.
For example, I was on a call and we needed to find out who the supplier was selling us leads and selling somebody else’s leads. We want to find out who the other person is selling leads to so we can model some of their behaviors. I said to the guy, “Do not ask him who the other person is.” He said, “We want to know.” I’m like, “I want you to say to him that we want to perform the best service we can to make us both as much money. While we’re redesigning this piece, who do you admire in the space?”
He’s like, “That’s what I said.” I’m like, “It’s not what you said. You’re asking who are competition is.” He shut down, “If you ask him who he admires, he’s going to tell us the best person, which is the best person he knows of, which is our competition.” AI can’t do that yet. It can’t see that nuanced approach to human psychology of how different those two things are. The junior attorney, the junior paralegal, or the junior copyrighter, unless they are mastering AI, are in a lot of trouble.
Doctors too. They’re smart enough to adopt AI and start using it directly in their medical practice and are showing incredible results. Peter, we’ve been talking esoterically about the possibilities in the future. I want to get down to brass hacks. From what I understand and what is important about learning AI is that there’s some foundational information that the average person needs to know to use it and be successful with it. You have done a great job of sharing that in the mastermind. Maybe you can give us an abbreviated discussion a little bit about some of that and what it looks like.
We see five pieces inside. We call it a five-by-five framework. The first five, I’ll break down now because it’s easy to ingest. The other five need screens and stuff to show. The first five is generative AI. There are three types of AI. There are predictors, generators, and transformers. A predictor is something that predicts stuff. One of the holy grails of AI is a wide-band predictor. It’s something that you could say, “Let’s do this experiment now.” Mitch, before we do the experiment, do you know anything about horse racing?
I know nothing about horse racing.
That’s exactly what I want you to say. Mitch, there are three horses in the Kentucky Derby. One way is 16 stone. One way is 28 stone. One way is 15 stone. One is gray. One is brown. One is blue. The names are gray, brown, and blue. The gray one has won 3 of the last 6 races. The brown one hasn’t raced for a year. When it did race, it won every race. The blue one won every other race in the last five years. If you take a pick, which one do you think is going to win this race? Gray, brown, or blue?
Gray.
You made a wide-band prediction. You synthesized a bunch of data and I know nothing about this subject at all. Since I have a set of brains, I can take this in. I can look at previous models of behavior and patterns I’ve seen elsewhere in the world that are completely unrelated and my brain can put them back together in order for me to make a prediction. AI can’t do that yet. What it can do is narrowband prediction. You give us one set of data and you say, “What will the outcome be if I do this thing again?” It is how Facebook Ads, Google Ads, etc. work. It is how Face ID works. That’s a narrowband prediction. The thing that we’re doing now and capture everyone’s attention is generative AI. It’s generating or outputting something.
I want to land this point with everybody because lots of people have gone on YouTube and watched a video. They do write me a 300-word blog post, an email, or a Facebook ad. They think what they get back is impressive. It’s not because it’s a bad version of what they can get done by somebody they paid money to. That is 1 of 5 things. To us, it comes last. The first thing that comes in is using AI to generate a persona. You go through a process for anywhere from five minutes to two hours of refining AI’s understanding of whomever you’re dealing with. The typical one is a client.
People find this quite funny. I have a persona program that’s my wife so that when I screw up, which I regularly do as a man, I can say, “Why did this go wrong? What did I say? What did I do?” You can use AI to create a facsimile of a person so you can ask questions or write content aimed at that person. There are hundreds of use cases that come around from that once you have an understanding of who this facsimile of a person is. That’s number one.
Number two is using AI as an advisor. Saying I have the following problem. I have a podcast and it hasn’t grown. I can’t lose weight or I have to fire this person and I don’t know how to approach it, or I’ve been sued. Any one of the hundred things that didn’t go completely perfectly, which everyone experiences all day long. You can go to an AI and say, “You’re a senior business consultant with decades of experience. I have had this problem. What are ten strategies that I could use to get around this?” You can say, “I don’t like numbers 2, 3, and 4. I like numbers 1 and 5. Can we dive deeper into that? What could go right? What could go wrong? How should I approach it?”
You can have an egoless conversation with someone else where you can be completely honest because when you close the window, it’s gone. It disappeared. You can say anything you like about the cashflow, medical conditions, or relationships. Pour in and get the answers back. They’re the first two, personas and advisors, and then 3 and 4 is qualitative and quantitative analysis. Qualitative analysis is uploading the transcript of this show and asking it, “Which points landed? Which points didn’t land? Which points were rushed? Where did my guest use language that was beyond the reading grade that I wanted? What was the cadence of speech?” Those are qualitative analyses.
AI: With AI, you can actually have an egoless conversation with someone else where you can be completely honest because when you close the window, it’s gone.The most impressive use case I saw was when somebody uploaded the transcript of a sales webinar they did, and used that to derive the objections that were being faced in the webinar. They use that to then do the last thing, which is to generate the email sequence for future webinars to pre-answer some of these objections.
Quantitative analysis is numbers and data, “Here’s my proforma. Here’s my P&L. Here’s my cashflow. Here are my account’s payables and receivables. Here are my Facebook ad click-through rates,” and then start to do wonderful things such as saying, “If I were to reduce my accounts receivable from 34 days to 28 days, what difference would that make to my cashflow month or month? If I need to reduce my HR cost by 15%, which functions could I look at and evaluate in order to achieve this goal?”
It’s a quantitative analysis. Once you have the advisor and the persona, qualitative and quantitative analysis done, then the quality of the generative piece is utterly unbelievable. It’s otherworldly good. That’s where I try and speak to people a lot saying, “Jumping to that generative 300-word blog post is like trying to bake a cake but not following the recipe.” You’re saying, “I’ve got eggs, flour, and sugar. Let’s whisk it up and away we go.” It doesn’t work like that. You have to do this bit first, this bit, then this bit. If you do them in that order, you get this beautiful cake or whatever.
I’m stretching the analogy. Do you get my point? It’s a beautiful outcome that is way beyond what you could ever have done yourself and it’s also beyond the expert who could have done it either because they’re always bringing their ego, bias, and human inefficiency. If you take human creativity and pair it with AI egoless execution, you get some stunning results. That would be the thing I’ll take for people to take away.
The other thing that I’ve seen you demonstrate and I’ve now used several times on my own is having this AI assistant that will interview me to derive facts and knowledge about a topic before it creates the things that I want. I’ve used that several times to create very complex blog posts. In this case, a series of marketing messages based on the avatar it already had that I provided. I would say to ChatGPT, “Ask me whatever questions you might need to know in order to create a series of posts that would appeal to the people who might use the Clientfol.io software platform.” It goes through these questions, and then it goes forward and creates all these amazing pieces of content. The interview process and the system are remarkable.
There’s the interview process. There’s the iteration, in which you can say, “I’m going to tell you five things that I think are true. Based on these five things, suggest another five. I will tell you which of those are true or false, and then ask me another five.” It keeps refining down and it’ll get into smaller units. You can do that around a problem, persona, or anything. One of my favorite ones is you can ask the AI how to use the AI.
If you want to write an amazing blog post and you’re not on mastermind or you haven’t taken a specific direction, you can say to the AI, “I want to write an incredibly compelling blog post that will achieve the following and do the following for the following audience. What process would you recommend we follow?” It will take all of that corpus of knowledge and go, “Let’s do this right now. That’s good.”
A specific warning for people is when we say it’s more capable and the IQ is probably higher than you, all that is true. What’s also true is it has the contextual understanding of a toddler. It’s essentially looking at a child genius. That’s how I feel about it sometimes. What I mean by that is my father was calling and said, “I’ve done this, this, and this but I keep running into this problem.” “What’s your problem?” He said, “I’m trying to do the persona exercise with some of my business partners. It’s not giving me XYZ answer. I keep saying, ‘I want you to evaluate this person,’ and it keeps giving me back a CV.”
I’m like, “Here’s what you’ve done wrong. What you’ve done is you said, ‘I want you to evaluate this person.’ You didn’t say you want the behavioral profile of the person.” He said, “That’s what I said.” “You didn’t because what you say is, ‘I want to evaluate a person.’ If you describe that as 330 pounds and 5’10” with brown hair and blue eyes, that would be a description of a person.” You have to get quite sharp when you’re using AI with your ability to contextualize the question.
For example, the phrases “I wish to have a blog post” and “I wish to have a blog post that will lead to an increase of inquiries” are completely different things to AI. For you and I, it’s obvious. We want to write something so that people book a call, call us, or do something. It doesn’t understand that context yet and Siri doesn’t understand it. The one thing I find people get tripped up on quite regularly is you have to be quite specific with the context of what you want in order to get the results you want to see.
You've got to be quite specific with the context of what you want in order to get the results you want to see.
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You and I can probably spend another hour going through the various opportunities that AI presents but we need to segue to the next part of the show. Before I do, I wanted to mention to the audience that I’m a member of Peter’s mastermind. I mentioned that earlier. Peter is running and providing an opportunity for anybody to jump in for free for a couple of weeks and get a flavor for it. It’s not just one hour a week. There’s also a WhatsApp group that adds an enormous level of expertise to the entire experience because we have somewhere around 100 people that come and go into that group from every walk of life. The processes that they’re using AI for are mind-boggling. Some of the ones that I’m using might surprise them too.
It’s better now, as something new in your learning, to have a community with which you can share these ideas. Sign up for free and start this process of immersing yourself. It doesn’t take long. In 30 days, you will be competent. In three months, you’ll be using this regularly and now, you come integrated into your workflow. That’s pretty much what’s happened to me. Peter, in the next part of the show, we’re going to switch gears. I’m going to ask you some questions that help us all get to know you a little bit better.
Can I add one last thing to what you said?
Yes.
Thank you. What I would say is if Mitch and I are right, if AI is going to be this thing, what I offer to you now is the ability to be in the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. It’s the ability to be the guy who bought Bitcoin for a buck. AI seems like it has been around for a long time. We’re 6 or 7 months in. If someone said to you, “You should do a TikTok thing in the first week of TikTok or you should do an Instagram thing,” do not let this be the moment that you heard about this and you regret this in three years’ time, and you’re trying to catch up with everybody else.
Do not let this be the moment that you hear and regret in three years’ time. You have nothing to lose and everything to win.
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The reason that we have done the mastermind for free for two weeks is you’ve lost two hours. If we’re wrong, your loss is two one-hour blocks on two Thursdays. If we’re right, it’s a chance for you to exponentially grow everything. If you put it in that context, you have nothing to lose and you have everything to win.
Please take advantage of it. Even if you come to look at the content, I’ve been ripped off all my content. When I say that, people will say, “I do genuinely want that.” This thing changes so quickly. You could grab everything I did for months. I’m okay with that because, by next month, you’ll be looking at the video anyway. I do hope people take us up on our offer. Thank you for allowing me to talk about that.
One more point along those lines. I’m not an early adopter. I’m 69 years old and it takes me a little while to get used to things. Because of the nature of the way this is presented and the nature of the people in the group, even I was able to pick up on this very quickly. Also, it’s not hard. That’s another thing to be clear about. There are complexities that you could scale over time and there are other things about AI we haven’t even talked about such as image generation and all of the possibilities there. For the average person to wants to supercharge the work that they do, I highly recommend that you get some training, and this is a great place to do it.
Thank you.
I’m going to ask two questions. The first question is my favorite. Here it is. In all of space and time, who would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
It’ll probably be somebody in the Roman Empire that impacts across the world. It would be impressive. The other one is a New York Jets player who got caught in a car driving at a ridiculous speed with a loaded firearm and a lot of illegal drugs. I wish to ask him which order it happened in. At which point did you think this was a bad idea? The more I think about it, it’s probably Churchill.
That’s a great answer. Actually, in over 300 interviews, one of the people said Churchill as well. Why would you choose him?
He fascinates me for a few reasons. First of all, a lot of people don’t know but he was removed from office in the first general election after the war. To be one of the people who shepherded freedom into the world and then fired the first possible opportunity is mind-blowing. I don’t know the Normandy or the D-Day landings. They had to lie to him as to what day they were being done. I don’t know if you ever heard the story because he refused to not be on the first boat. He has seen the numbers in the projections of how many people would have to die in order to take these beaches and he understood the strategic importance of taking the beaches. He refused to say it. It’s like, “I cannot ask 80,000 people to die.”
The only way they could persuade him was they lied to him. They said, “It’s going on this day,” and it went a day early because he wanted to be there. He made the French prime minister walk down the train tracks for 4 miles. He refused to send the train to pick him up because of how many extra people were going to have to die because the French surrendered. I have nothing against aged French people. I love them dearly. I think that he’s such an enigmatic and charismatic dichotomy of a person who lied relentlessly when he was a journalist and made stuff up. Yet, he was the person who went against Hitler and won. That would be a phenomenally interesting hour of my life.
I agree. If it were possible, I’d like to be there to listen. That would be an incredible conversation.
If this happens, I’ll bring you with me.
Please let me know. Peter, this is the grand finale. This is the change the world question. What is it that you were doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
I’m blessed because I’m doing the thing that will do that. I truly believe in the bigger picture of AI. Climate change, world food shortages, energy, and drinking water are irrelevant. Not because they’re irrelevant. They’re highly important. Something with an IQ of 3, 4, 10, 20, 50, or 100 times Einstein, I believe we’ll be able to solve those issues. The only question for me is when we dedicate an AI to solving climate change. Does it choose to poison the water supply? Again, with that lack of context that AI has, the easiest way to solve climate change would be to put mercury in the water. Job done. In about three days, all climate change problems are removed because humans stop existing.
Does it choose to find the solution that empowers us and enables us to make our decisions? I don’t think there is a future that doesn’t find the solution. I don’t believe that to be the case. It’s inevitable that it will solve that problem. The question is how much does it include us as part of the solution? That’s in our power now to decide. For me, it’s stewarding an ethical and empathetic use case of AI. The large language models that sit behind AI include empathy for other sentient life. To me, it’s the only change that needs to happen.
AI: There is no future where AI doesn’t find the solution. It’s inevitable. It will solve problems. The question is this: how much does it include us as part of the solution?I totally agree and I like the way you said it. It makes so much sense that way. I also believe that, with all of the craziness going on in this world, AI can be an important contributor to the conversation if used properly and correctly. I love your mission. I’m certainly part of it in many ways as you know.
I’m incredibly grateful to you. Thank you.
My pleasure and I can’t wait to see what we come up with next. Thank you again for your time. Remember, if you want to be a guest in the Mastermind for a couple of weeks, you can join for free. If you like it and you stay, that’s great too. Either way, it makes sense to check it out because I love it and I think very highly of Peter. He doesn’t sit still. He has new stuff for us every single week and his partner, Brian, is very creative and contributes as well. Thank you, Peter. I look forward to our next time together.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Let’s talk around.
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The post Navigating The Paradigm Shift That Is AI With AI Genius Peter Swain appeared first on Mitch Russo.
One of the most effective ways to hone your skills as a business owner and improve your team is to connect with like-minded individuals. Such an experience is attainable by joining a mastermind community. In this episode, Mitch Russo chats with Mike Calhoun, CEO of Board of Advisors. He shares the genesis story of the world’s greatest mastermind that brings together the smartest, most successful, and highly reputable industry leaders right now. Mike presents the best strategies for building memberships and establishing a community of strongly connected people that solves problems collectively and empowers each other in a profound way. He also discusses why mastermind communities must not only focus on the business and social aspects but also charitable contributions and initiatives.
The post Mastering The Mastermind With Mike Calhoun appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Networking is a powerful tool that can cultivate your business and relationships. Networking can put your brand on the radar for potential customers and partners. 78% of startups achieved success through small business networking. However, networking can be difficult for small businesses that began from scratch. Want to know how to put yourself out there? Check […]
The post The Power of Networking: How to Build Meaningful Business Relationships appeared first on Mitch Russo.
The average turnover rate for businesses is around 10%. This is pretty high for businesses, and even higher for small businesses. Knowing and keeping up with the latest trends and predictions for the new era of business can actually help you reduce turnover at your company. If you are ready to take your business to the […]
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How much value do you have for yourself? In this episode, Lee Benson, the author of the Your Most Important Number, dives into the M.I.N.D. System and how to utilize it for success. The most important drive becomes a north star that will empower everyone in your team and improves your number. The MIND methodology takes the lens of improvement in every decision and action. Learn to leverage value creation and be thoughtful of your team members to create their goals.
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Listen to the podcast hereValue Creation: The M.I.N.D. System To Success With Lee BensonWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in, and extract wisdom you could use to grow your business with your first thousand clients. If you’re a coach and you’re reading this show right now, you are going to love what I’m about to tell you. I am a coach just like you and I built my own software platform for coaches. Why?
It’s because nobody had what I needed to effectively coach my clients, raise my authority, increase my fees, and give my clients the best experience possible. I’d like you to have that same platform to use your business and you can get it for a dollar trial. It’s called ClientFol.io. You can go to ClientFol.io and you could get started in about five minutes. I highly recommend you check it out and see if it works for you. Now, onto my amazing guest and his incredible story.
I have to admit, it’s not often that you meet someone who just like us, started with nothing and achieved so much with so little time. My guest built an aerospace company and sold it for nine figures, but that’s not the most interesting thing you’re going to learn about. He is an incredible guitar player, which simply demonstrates his dedication to mastery. What is mastery? That is a life value, but life itself is all about values.
Readers, I’m going to ask you a question. What do you value? Whatever that is, you teach your children your values and that becomes the foundation of their values. My guest discovered his own values the hard way. The one that is critical for any company to make massive progress with his process is the MIND Methodology that he invented. It can be integrated into any organization of any type and size. Also, his book is called Your Most Important Number. This book has dominated Amazon with all five-star reviews, and he has a new announcement of a new book that deals entirely with values, which we’re going to get to later. Welcome, Lee Benson, to the show.
Your Most Important Number: Increase Collaboration, Achieve your Strategy, and Execute to WinThank you for having me, Mitch. I’m looking forward to this conversation.
Me, too. I hope we don’t end up talking about guitars the entire time, but since both of us are guitar players, you know I’d love to do that. However, before we go deeper into all the fun stuff I have planned to get into with you, tell us how all this started for you.
Mitch, a little bit of my background. I’ve started seven businesses. I’ve had exits from a few million to well into nine figures. I never took a dime of outside investment money for any of those. I didn’t come from money. I was the kid that got kicked out of high school at the beginning of my senior year. I came from a low-income family. I slept one night in my truck. The next night, I had an apartment.
It was a non-event for me because I was working full-time as a cook, and my rock and roll band was already earning some money from gigs that we were playing. There’s this thing I call the value creation struggle cycle where I started pretty early, 6 or 7 years old pulling weeds for $0.25 an hour, and then that turned into shoveling snow. I grew up in Spokane, Washington and I’d get $0.50 for that, I could do two an hour. I just four-folded my money and then a paper out and then four paper outs and a dishwasher, busboy, and cook.
By the time I was kicked out of the house, I learned to trust that I could go out in the world, trade my best efforts for the best efforts of others and build more value each time I did it. That was an amazing world that I loved and that I could trust. It was totally different from where I grew up, which was a toxic and somewhat dangerous environment but all those struggles, the healthy ones, the unhealthy ones, I’ve leveraged into creating a ton of value. That’s where it started and at some point, I can tell you about the conditions that allowed me to get my first business, which was a pretty interesting experience in itself.
I want to share some data points with you because while you were shoveling snow for $0.50, I was charging $5 to shovel snow. Clearly, you did not have a pricing model at the time that was effective because I went through the neighborhood. I pick on the older residents in my community. I knew in Brooklyn, we had a lot of snow back then so we charged $4, $5, or $6.
My allowance also was about $0.25. There were days when my high school partner and I, shoveling snow, would come home with $50. That was insane money back then and we spent it in all of the inappropriate ways possible, but we enjoyed ourselves. That was the most important thing, as I’m sure you did too. I would love to hear more about those beginnings.
Throughout the 1980s and a lot of the ’90s, I played music in rock and roll bands. A couple of years in the ’80s, we played over 300 nights a year. It’s how I made most of my money back then, but during the day, I was working as a plating operator in a business that I was part of starting with a high school friend. His parents started the business, and then in ’93, the company had already been sold once. I’m the supervisor. I have 25 employees and our only customer cut us off overnight.
AlliedSignal back in the day was basically 90% of our business. We went down to three employees and the way that happened is a purchasing agent approached us and said, “I would like an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas whenever I want it. If you don’t give it to me, I’m going to take all the work out and move it over to another supplier. Of course, we said no. What a horribly slippery slope to go down.
Six months later, they figured out how to do the work, and all the work went away. I ran it up the flagpole. It seemed like at that time, unfortunately, there was a culture of corruption there. Mostly, the employees were amazing. This was only an unfortunate position, but fortunate for me. My boss said, “Closer to sell it. You’ve got 30 days.”
I couldn’t find anybody to buy it. Lots of people loved working with us and were interested in what we were doing. I went back and I said, “Let me assume the creditor debt, $200,000. I put my house up as collateral and if I turn it around, I’ll pay you an additional $400,000 in paper debt we haven’t been able to pay.” It was accumulating his management fee and he went for it.
I went in a direction that he said would never work, “You’ve never done that before. I don’t believe it.” I said, “I believe it will work.” We took our electroplating process. It wasn’t decorative like gold plating or silver. It was engineering. We would build up worn-out shafts and save these very expensive aerospace components. That’s where we started.
In our first full year, we almost went out of business probably fifteen times. I’m sure lots of your readers have close stories too. I couldn’t pay the two guys left standing with me the first year and I said when I started this, “I’ve got this great idea. I can’t pay you, but I’d love to have you stay and I’ll give you some provisional equity.” I gave both of them a small amount of equity. One said, “This is fantastic. I know it’ll work.” The other one said, “It’ll never work. We don’t have money. We don’t have customers. We don’t have the equipment, but sign me up anyway. I want to see what’s going to happen.”
One of them got a check for around $30 million. The other one is around $20 million for the small equity they got in the early days. We did so well the second year that I paid them back for all the salary they didn’t get in the first year. I didn’t have to, but it felt like the right thing to do since we performed so well. That’s how it got launched. We had seven repairs on our brochure. It said, “Call Rick, Lee, or John if you have questions,” and we all hit the road selling and we made it work.
That’s interesting, again, because when I was selling semiconductors to large corporations throughout the 128 Belt in Massachusetts, I had a purchasing agent at a large company who around Christmastime would distribute keys to the trunk of his car. I don’t need to explain to you why he was distributing keys to the trunk of his car. What you placed in that trunk for his Christmas present would determine what your orders were the following year.
In a similar way to you, I said, “I don’t play this game.” The reason I don’t play this game is I had one up on them, and here’s why. I was already an engineer. Everyone else was salespeople. They went to the purchasing agent’s office. Where did I go? I went back to the back offices where the engineers were and I designed custom circuits.
There was no second source for the products that I sold. Eighteen months or sometimes later, a component would come around. It would be put into production. I’d walk into the purchasing agent and say, “You guys need $1.8 million of these things over the course of the next year. How do you want to get started on this?” He goes, “We’ll have to find a second source.” I said, “Sorry. It is not going to happen.”
My approach was different than yours only because I couldn’t have competed with the other salesman anyway, so I had to go a different route entirely but I’m so glad those days are over. I hated working. As you said, it was one individual and a great team of people at a great company. Those things happen. What most interested me about the story is the faith.
A lot of us have faith and we start out practically with nothing else but faith. The part that you didn’t talk much about that I’d like to hear more about was the pivot. There were probably many times throughout this process when you tried something with a lot of hope and a lot of faith. It didn’t work, but you didn’t quit. You pivoted. Tell us a little bit about some of those times.
First, faith came from trusting that struggle. As I kept struggling to get the capability to build confidence and use that to create value and I grew that over time. Whenever something got hard, because I trusted that process so much, I came out of high school believing I could do anything I wanted to do. If I want to do it, I can go figure out how to do it.
M.I.N.D. System: Faith came from trusting the struggle. Keep struggling to get the capability to build confidence and use that to create value.We had this job shop. We’re doing electroplating and our best year ever was $1 million before all the work went away. I’m looking around the country at other job shops and we were the biggest one. There wasn’t a market for it for this specialized electroplating that we were doing, not in a big way, but I could see taking this one process and applying it to repairing aircraft parts because AlliedSignal, which was purchased by Honeywell makes turbine engines and a whole lot of things.
We would repair something for them and charge them $300. They would inspect it, grind it, do some other work, and sell it to their airline customer for $10,000 or more. I got those crazy ideas and unbelievably obvious, but how about we do the same thing and we only charge $5,000? We subcontract everything we don’t have the internal capability to do now. That was challenging because everything is special handling. This isn’t production. This is repair and overhaul. Let’s go do that.
I thought at the time, probably the airlines wouldn’t care about saving $1,000 or $5,000, but I bet a helicopter operator would. Some of these operators are smaller and saving $1,000 is a big deal. For the first seven repairs that we developed, we went out to helicopter operators and talk about having to prove product-market fit immediately based on them actually paying for it. That’s what we did.
We had these 7 repairs and then we grew that to 20 to 25. We started bringing in some equipment to do machining and some more inspecting. That’s how we built the business. I never needed to take any outside investment because we were super disciplined to keep the majority of the money in the business to add equipment and build capability. We grew that all the way to 10,000-plus repairs and thousands of parts that we manufactured.
We did well over 95% of everything in-house. You could send us a data plate with a serial number off of a helicopter and we could build the entire helicopter on it. It was an incredibly tough business. It’s very complicated and I love it because I believe the harder it is, the bigger the opportunities for profit margins and huge opportunities to create a lot of value for your customers. It’s all got to be a win-win back and forth.
When, throughout this process, did you create the MIND Methodology? Could you tell us a little bit about that?
When I was running my aerospace company, something interesting happened. I met Jack Welch. I went to a two and a half day-course that he was facilitating from before breakfast to well after dinner. This guy had so much energy, and this was around 2008. When I started talking in this room, they limited the course to 100 people. He gravitated toward me, and it was pretty interesting.
I remember the first exercise on day one, I’m sitting at a table right in front, and he points to us and said, “Somebody, state your mission and supporting values.” Nobody at my table knew their stuff. Almost everybody else besides me is running a $1 billion or larger business. I went, and there was a long uncomfortable silence. I was like, “Maybe I should leave now,” I’m thinking in my head. He said, “That’s perfect. I wouldn’t change anything.”
As he started going around the room, I realized why he hesitated because everybody else’s mission and supporting values sounded like a marketing slogan. Nothing you could sink your teeth into. At lunch that first day, he blew off his table and everybody drew a ticket to set with him. He sat right next to me and said, “I’ve done this thousands of times. How have you done it?”
I said, “If we’re trying to solve the same problem, applying math, common sense, logic, and facts, and not having any political BS get in the way, we’re going to go down the same road whether you have 400,000 employees,” which he had in the heyday or at the time. Maybe I had roughly 180 employees and came off at $10 million a year.
We developed a friendship. A couple of years later, he saw my operating methodology, and he said, “This is the best business management system I’ve ever seen.” He invited me to Florida. We spent nine and a half hours one day going through it. Shortly after that, he became a 10% owner partner in ETW with me, my business.
What I realized is what I was able to do with over 500 employees by the time I sold it. Most leaders aren’t disciplined or have enough drive to do it. I set it on this mission, “What worked for me,” and got amazing results. I’ve watched a lot of others try to do it. Dozens of CEOs were in the different CEO groups that I was part of. After a few years, maybe two were left standing. None of them said it didn’t work. What they said was, “We’re embarrassed that we didn’t have the drive to keep it going.”
That’s probably interesting. What do we need to do here? I wanted to develop an operating methodology, an intentional way, a company, and every team within a company or any organization creates value. I want it to be something that will work for 80% of all teams everywhere. You don’t have to have a superstar leader in the room to make it work, which a lot of people depend on that, hire great leaders, and magic happens.
I want to do it more intentionally and systemically than that. After working with hundreds of companies, and thousands of leaders on this particular problem, I developed something called the MIND Methodology. It stands for Most Important Number and Drivers. It’s working for virtually 100% of the teams where we install. It’s fantastic. The challenge with most operating systems is they make the process more important than what is most important. In our process, operating methodology to MIND Methodology, every decision and action is through the lens of “Will this improve? What’s most important?”
The challenge with most operating systems is they make the process more important than what is most important.
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What is the most important number?
When people say what do you do? I help organizations improve their most important number and it starts an incredible conversation. At the top of an organization, the most important number in the for-profit world will typically be some version of profit or cashflow. It’s capital intensive. In a nonprofit, it’s going to be impacted. Why is the world better? It’s because they’re here, but a close second’s going to be revenue to be able to pay for the impact.
Now, the most important number for the organization and every single team within the organization has to do two things. 1) It has to, above all others say, you’re winning or losing the game, and 2) It has to drive the majority of the right behaviors. At the top, you could pick cashflow or profit, but as you start to go out as companies get larger, one of the best examples of how to think about this is an HR department.
When we start working with companies large enough to have an HR department, it could be 100 employees. It could be 40,000 employees. Every team has to be involved in coming up with their most important number. Senior team for the top of the organization. In this case, the HR team for that HRs most important number. Virtually every time they say, “Our most important number needs to be engagement or retention.” I said, “Okay, but remember, it’s got to do two things. Above all others, you’re winning or losing and drive the majority of the right behaviors. Let’s run a scenario. You hire me to be the head of HR and we’ve decided that retention is my most important number. Above all else, I want to keep as many people as I can.
Three years later, I’m 98% retention, world-class benchmarking. Nobody touches me. Forget the fact that 70% of our team members can’t deliver on the outcome-based responsibilities in their role but I won on retention, so it didn’t drive the majority of the right behaviors. In this example, if we made the most important number for HR, the percentage of seats filled with capable people as defined by, for every role we fill, there are 2 to maybe 4 outcome-based responsibilities they need to deliver on.” That might be 30 or 40 capabilities. They need a job description list, but they only need those to achieve those outcome-based responsibilities.
Now, what percentage of all team members are delivering or overdelivering on the outcome-based responsibilities? If you had a hundred employees and 80 years delivering or overdelivering in twenty or under, you’re at 80%. It’s driving all the right behaviors. We’re recruiting better. We’re training better. We’re giving leaders better tools to develop people more effectively and all of that.
With the MIND System, we're recruiting better, training better, and giving leaders better tools to develop people more effectively.
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As you go through, it could be sales and marketing, supply chain, customer service, production, admin, or whatever those things are, I love thinking about finance in their most important number because they typically completely miss it. They’re doing a great job. They’re producing reports, but they’re missing huge opportunities to create value because they’re not selecting the right most important number and the best work to improve it. That’s an example. Does that make sense, Mitch? It was a long answer.
It was perfect. First of all, here’s what I got from what you said. You’ve figured out a way to determine the key metrics for any division inside of a corporation. Those key metrics must move the needle across the board inside that organization to deliver the highest value. Is that a summary of what I heard, or did I get that right or close to?
That’s right, and they all fit together. If at the top you’ve got the most important number, the next level has the most important numbers. When they improve, it always has to improve the next one. You can cascade that out to hundreds and hundreds of teams all the way to the front line.
I get it. Let’s say at the top of the pyramid, profit is the most important number. We go one step below the pyramid, and we have the C-Suite or the executive suite, and their most important number can be something different but still must support the profit number. Now, we go deeper still, and we go to the director of HR or the director of engineering. They have different numbers as well. It might test lines of codes for the engineering team, but once again, how does that relate to the top most important number, which is profit? Does that seem correct?
That’s correct. Every most important number needs to be a measure of the value that team was designed to create. It should not measure an activity. Some people will say, “We can’t measure the value, so let’s just measure an activity.” You’ve just wasted all your time if you do that.
M.I.N.D. System: Every most important number needs to measure the value the team designs to create. It should not measure an activity.It’s funny because when I build certification programs, one of the key elements of what I do is creating culture inside of an organization. The culture program that I invented over 25 years ago and instilled to this day roll out. Every time I do it, I learn a new way or a new methodology of getting to the best elements of a person’s values. I never took the financial or numerical element of it into play.
I am going to read your book and incorporate that into my own culture-building program because if I could see it through a little bit different lens, what you’re describing is the creation of culture. The reason I say it that way is because if the CEO is a sales-oriented guy, then he’s going to be a sales-driven organization.
If the CEO is an engineer, it’s going to be an engineering-driven operation. If instead we were to take the values of the CEO or whatever that might be, and find the most important number for the organization, now we added a brand new valuable dimension to culture. I believe that is amazing. I learned something very valuable now.
It’s important to be able to connect culture to financial results. Financial results improve when customer experience is great for the employees, for the customers, and for all of that. The nice thing about the MIND Methodology is you step back and say, “How was this organization designed to create value? How would we know that it’s creating more value over time?”
I believe philosophically that the job of the top leader in an organization is to continually increase the value of that organization and time accelerate it. When you look at it that way, I could be an engineering CEO. I could be a sales CEO. It doesn’t matter what it is. Once we think about it that way, now we need the ideal structure to create value and look at the allocation of resources, and for each one of the functions that bolt together, we need different capabilities.
We think about it that way. The nice thing about the most important number for every team is that it simplifies all of it. When you’re looking at a map of the top profit in our example, and you go down to the next level and you keep going, it’s easy to see whether they’re on track at risk or behind for all the numbers. One of the things that I discovered the hard way running at one wall after another is that traditional goal setting doesn’t stand the test of time.
Most organizations will have 30, 40, 50, or 80 measures for every single team these KPIs are keeping track of and most of them are just going through the process of tracking them because when I ask, “How are you using these KPIs to make better decisions to create more value?” they don’t have very good answers to it. This simplifies it. This whole traditional goal-setting process is where, “Everybody comes up with 2 or 3 goals every quarter. Get it approved by your manager,” and rinse and repeat.
One, it feels terrible for the employees and because we haven’t been clear about how their team was designed to create value, they’re not very thoughtful about how they create the goals. They’re creating them to check a box and keep going forward. Now, with the most important number of drivers, “I’m on a team. Here’s my most important number. Here’s where I’m at. Here’s where I’m going.”
At any point in time, I can see if I’m on track above or below. Now, in the drivers, these drivers are categories of work. A team should be good at leveraging to improve their most important number. This is where I capture the best work we’re doing as a team to improve that. It simplifies it. We do a lot of work implementing this in companies of all sizes out there for-profit and nonprofit, but I get regular stories that come in from folks that have read the book. The last chapter in my book, Your Most Important Number, is a DIY chapter.
M.I.N.D. System: A team should be good at leveraging to improve their most important number.They say after a couple of months things like, “I know you don’t need another success testimonial, but all I did was change the language. We used to have all these KPIs for every team member. By function, every month I’m running around scrambling, trying to get that extra 2% or 3% to hit the budget. Once I change to this and it’s one number, now they’re 2% or 3% ahead of budget, and they’re looking for more.” It’s like, “It’s miraculous,” because we simplified it. Does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense. Lee, one of the things that I love about the term culture, and the reason I keep bringing that up is because these are such parallel concepts. Culture can be self-correcting. The right culture doesn’t require a lot of people trying to get everyone else in line. The culture self-corrects. Why? It’s because the foundation is built in advance, which everybody has agreed to. It might be a foundation of how we treat each other, how we treat customers, or how we show up. This is an element of culture.
Again, I’m bending your process a bit to fit my model, which I love because now I have a numerical way of measuring how well we are doing inside the cultural paradigm. Readers, I hope for you this has been as educational as it has been for me. Lee, I have enjoyed the segment of the show. What I want to ask about now is this concept of values. You seem to get deep into everything that we’ve shared together. You have just released a book for children. Tell us a little bit about that book.
The book is titled Value Creation Kid and the subtitle is The Healthy Struggles Your Children Need to Succeed. This talks about value in a couple of ways in terms of creating it. There are three macro buckets we describe in the book, and my co-author is Scott Donnell. He was amazing to work with on this project. The first value creation bucket is material. It’s money. It’s things. It’s all of that.
The second value creation bucket is emotional energy. In my view, that’s the scarcest commodity on the planet because when that’s running on ten, it supercharges everything else. The third bucket is spiritual, which means something different to everyone. Greater connectedness, religion, or whatever is all on you, but I believe the purpose of education is to create value in the world, not get a good grade, a diploma degree, or a job.
I want to thread all the way through the K-12 experience for our kids that the purpose of education is to create value in the world. Everything you learn is going to be about connecting those dots and helping them discover their value-creation superpower. Now, the challenge is there are just way too many motivational nudges out there. Read this book and watch this video. It’s always interesting for me to listen to an adult that took 40 or 50 years to understand a concept, explain it to a kid, and they don’t get it right away, or they think because they explained it, they’re going to explain in that character, wisdom, and everything else. It’s impossible. They have to discover it.
In a nutshell, what I want to do with this book is operationalize value creation in millions of households across the country, and let’s take it to the world. Imagine if a kid’s primary drive, motivation, and even identity in a lot of ways is the value they create in the world. They’re going to be intrinsically motivated, have high self-esteem, lots of confidence, and they’re not going to be subject to special groups liking them or not liking them, or TikTok likes and all that stuff that isn’t that healthy. They’re focused on creating value in the world.
That’s what my new book Value Creation Kid is all about. We just launched and the sales have been incredible. We already have the number one bestseller in Wall Street Journal and many categories on Amazon. It’s come in and it seems to be very quickly going viral because this is so needed now with the best of intentions. We seem to, a lot of the parents, majority of parents, take all the struggle away from kids.
Value Creation Kid: The Healthy Struggles Your Children Need to SucceedBy the time they become an adult, they’re not ready to be a self-reliant, productive adult that does things to create better conditions to work, live, learn, and play. They need another 4 to maybe 16 years to become an adult. Mitch, in a lot of ways, we’re doing it to adults in the workforce. We’re making it easier and easier. How are they going to learn to create value and feel amazing about themselves?
The book is not for children. It’s a parent’s book. The parents are going to read this. When I read your intro, I was being very intentional about what I said in your introduction. I said, “What you teach your children becomes the foundation of their values.” If a child grows up in a home with great values, and if a parent were to read the Value Creation Kid and start acting out those values in their own world, in their own life, in their own home, that is going to be the best teacher of all in my experience for children.
What you teach your children becomes the foundation of their values. The best teacher for children is if they grow up in a home with great values, and parents act on those values in their world, life, and home.
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In my world, I raised my daughter. My daughter was eleven years old when I started teaching her how to trade options. The reason I did was I said to her, “If you learn these simple things I’m about to teach you, you will never worry about money for the rest of your life.” It doesn’t mean that what I do is right or wrong, but my value as I communicated it to a little girl was it’s important for you to be self-reliant.
You have to find the way that makes you self-reliant in the way that lights you up at the highest level, the thing that you love the most. It may not be options trading for you, sweetie girl. It might be something completely different but my value was self-reliance. That’s what I wanted her to become. For the reasons that my parents made me self-reliant, I have a feeling that’s a lot about what your book talks about. Is that right?
Being a self-reliant adult that thinks in terms of win-win value creation. Win for themselves, their families, and their customers someday. I’m interested in the low-income and middle-income families. That’s where I want to operationalize this. We’ve come up with something we call the GravyStack Method that we outline in the book. There are four components to it. First, it’s value creation. How you talk about it.
Again, the material, spiritual, and emotional value and some kids’ superpower from a value creation standpoint will be emotional energy. They write music and they uplift people and all of that, which is fantastic. The second component is house rules. What’s your job for the family? What are the expectations and all of that stuff? Did we see how all the jobs for the family fit together so we create the most value as a family?
Third is financial competency. It’s literacy. “I understand a few terms.” In this GravyStack method, it’s about earning money, understanding how to manage it, spend it, save it, share it, and all that stuff that goes with it. The last part, the fourth part is a healthy struggle. It’s about designing healthy struggles for our children so they can struggle to gain a competency or a capability essentially and that builds their confidence.
Also, they don’t stop there. They create value with it and they keep going and taking bigger steps each time if they choose to. They could be small big steps. They could be giant steps. It’s up to the kid but like the journey that I went on with no mentors. I started trusting it early. There’s no end to where you can go. I’ve had great financial exits. I don’t think I’m even close to the biggest one I’m going to have so far going forward because of this process.
We’ve been working with a few low-income families and it’s wild to me. The mothers seem to be the biggest consumers of this so I’ll ask for feedback, “How’s it going?” They’ll text me back a picture of a stack of books they bought to send to all of their friends. I’m like, “That’s incredible,” and how they’re already incorporating the language.
We were just starting this, but I can only imagine 5 to 10 years down the road, we have these Value Creation Kid parenting groups all over the country and they’re sharing best practices and where it goes. I’m so excited about the pent-up value creation that hasn’t been discovered by these kids and what’s possible because, in this country, we’re not even realizing, in my opinion, 10% to 15% of the value that we could create.
Anyone who is learning about Lee talk about this incredible book, the Value Creation Kid, and is excited to get involved or would like to distribute this book or share it with your organization that you may be affiliated with, whether it’s a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. Whatever you feel is appropriate, I would go over and grab a copy and see if it’s a fit for you. See if it resonates and Lee, if you don’t mind, maybe people could let you know exactly how they’re implementing this because this potentially has the ability to change the world.
It does. The book will point you to GravyStack.com, which is this methodology where we want to operationalize value creation. In there, we have parenting groups. There are all kinds of things that we’re starting to build and there’s a whole ecosystem from Apex, the largest kids fundraising organization in the country that my co-author founded. It helped millions of kids raise money for school programs the children’s business fared when they learn about how to sell stuff at the age of thirteen.
Now, we’re coming up with a junior CEO mastermind group for these kids coming out of high school with an attraction that eventually can get into my CEO mastermind groups that I run myself with my colleagues, and other certified folks to do it. We’re building this whole ecosystem of value creators on the business side as well as emotional energy and we’ll support them on the spiritual side too.
Again, it’s a great mission. Please take a look at GravyStack.com. When I clicked on that, I got a Wefunder page where they get started. Take a look at this. There’s some incredible information here and I believe that this is something that a lot of people are going to resonate with. Lee, let’s switch gears. I want to talk about your software.
When I first interviewed Lee, we first got to start chatting about life and stuff. I told him about my tiny little software company and what I’m doing. He goes, “I poured $20 million of my own money into our software platform.” I said, “I’m about $19.9 million behind you.” Tell us about this incredible piece of software, what it does, how it’s used, and who could use it.
Backing up a little bit, I started my first software company in 1999 to build the ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning System from an aerospace business. I couldn’t find anything robust enough out there or flexible enough or could change at the speed we needed it to so I just hired the team and we built it against the advice of every single business person I knew and it worked out unbelievably well.
We had companies like Airbus, Bell Helicopter, and others saying, “How can we get access to this? It was fantastic.” We knew what we were doing getting into it and when Jack Welch told me, “If I was still running GE, I would put all 400,000 of our team members in here,” I started building something that would work for that. What would work for that?
That was a mistake on my part because I poured a ton into it. I listened to lots of people, get wildly excited about it, but at the end of the day, getting a larger organization to change the way they operate is a little bit like asking you, Mitch, would you like a heart transplant? You’ll operate 20% better. Could I get you signed up for that?” That didn’t go, but what it’s turned into is it’s such an easy way to sustain and scale the MIND Methodology.
All the elements are in one place and most operating methodologies, there are popular ones. They’re scaling up like 4DX, OKRs, and EOS. There’s a whole bunch of them out there. “Show me the tools you’re using to hold it together.” They are super clunky and mostly terrible software to try to do it, but it doesn’t incorporate everything. They have Google Docs and Word docs, and Excel spreadsheets. It’s all over the place and it’s hard for most people to have the discipline to keep checking and updating everything.
All we said is, “The MIND Methodology is what’s by far the most important. Make it real. It’s your intentional way of creating value in the organization. Once you get that, then the tools matter. Here’s one place that houses everything in a simple, elegant way.” Even to the point that if you complete a meeting and it automatically creates the next one, it takes as much work away from you as possible and at a high level. Whether you’re 4 employees or 440,000 employees, it doesn’t matter. It holds together alignment on all the things that every team can do to improve what’s most important.
It looks at the decisions. Are they doing the right work at the right time in the right order? It shows you the culture of accountability. Are they doing what they said they would the highest possible percentage of the time? When you talk about culture, in my mind, the simplest way I think about it is what we agreed to do and how things get done.
What we agreed to do is create value this way and here’s how we interact with each other to do it. I go foundational to all of that. I’m thinking, “Culture is the decisions, the beliefs, the practices, and the accountability from which an organization creates value.” I love doing culture audits in different organizations. If you look at beliefs, what beliefs are helping us, and which beliefs are hurting us?
M.I.N.D. System: Culture is the decisions, beliefs, practices, and accountability from which an organization creates value.What’s our culture of accountability? What percentage of the time does everybody do what they said they would? That’s a big part of organizational trust. People gravitate to those that will do what they said they would the majority of the time. What’s our culture of decision-making? What’s a critical decision and how do we think about that? It’s a way to capture all of it in this software in such a simple, elegant, easy way, which I believe must be what you’ve done with the coaching software to make it easy to do that work and whatever a coach’s methodology is. Is that correct, Mitch?
I was sitting in the same exact spot you were at a much smaller scale because as a coach like you were describing, I had all these screens open, spreadsheets, databases, Zoom screens, and all of these notepads keeping track and then having to convert all of this into a single message to a client. Like you, I couldn’t find anything at all that would fit those needs.
My decision was instead of just building this for the individual coach, my belief was that you start by understanding the needs of a larger coaching organization and you created from that perspective first. Why? It’s because small coaches become large coaches. Individual coaches become coaching companies. We had the same philosophy but the difference is the market. Yours is mostly focused on ERP or is it a generalized system for anyone who wants to implement the MIND Methodology?
It’s a way of running an organization of any size or type. It’s a way of holding all of that together. Every team with its most important number, the best work they’re doing to improve it, the structure of the organization, and all the roles and responsibilities. Everything goes into this like meetings in a simple elegant way. For every company as an example, you can see what winning looks like aspirationally over the next twelve months or the following twelve months will win now, win later.
You can see what has to get done in the next two quarters to set us up to win in both of those ways. You can see the best work that the teams are doing to improve their most important numbers. You’ve got all of this. That’s at a company level, whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit. So far, we’ve chosen to stay out of government, although I think it would be fantastic there.
I have my own groups and my colleagues have groups, but we call it the EXECUTE CEO MasterMIND. I used to be a member of Vistage and a number of other CEO groups collectively for probably over 30 years. Some of them overlap and they suffer from two challenges in my view. One is a superficial challenge. You can’t see deeply enough in everybody’s business to help them. They get a very small percentage of your brain power and they suffer from a process problem.
It’s like every time you go in, these are usually a one-day meeting a month. You spend so many minutes on this, an hour on this, an hour on this and it’s like, “I’m not getting value out of it.” Most will say, “That’s the biggest challenge.” What they love about it most of the time is the community. What we’re doing in this group is we limit it to eight and every single CEO in the room has a plan to grow fast.
We can see what winning now looks like later. What is every CEO’s most important number is all the drivers that they can influence to move the organization. We can see their structure, and their plans, and every two months we get a deep dive into everybody’s business. Now, you’re getting 80% of the brain power in the room instead of 10% in this real superficial fly-by. The results have been just fantastic, but we’re using the software for that too and it tracks all of it.
Watching previous chairs and groups I’ve been part of, they’ve got docs all over the computer. They’ve got notebooks. They’re flying. It’s crazy. Whereas in this, everybody’s putting in check-ins in the meetings before the meeting. It saves folks like you and me so much time so we can spend more time focusing on creating more value for the client rather than administrative tasks around it. The software’s pretty versatile. We’re using it for organizations as well as groups of CEOs meeting in these EXECUTE MasterMIND groups.
What’s the name of the product?
We call it Align by ETW, but it’s essentially a tool to hold the MIND Methodology together.
Is there a URL where people could go take a look?
If you go to TheMINDMethodology.com, you can find out about it there for sure. You can also go to ETW.com, but TheMINDMethodology.com is the best place to go and generally, we don’t just sell the software. You have to be intentionally deploying the MIND Methodology. Our goal when we work with clients is for them to be able to self-serve at some point and embrace this. Those that are DIY-ing IT and not even using software, they’re getting great results we can quickly start folks where they can get the software and we give them some help configuring and getting it all set up.
We could also work with them for 1 year or 2 depending on what they want in the engagement. Ultimately, we want them working on their own and then it’s a software engagement facet. We have a ton of those engagements out there where they’ve graduated and it’s fantastic having those people meet on a regular basis to share best practices around the MIND Methodology.
I’m asking for two reasons. One is because I have my own groups that I run. That sounds like it would be incredible for that and for my groups. Also, I am part of several masterminds as well. I can imagine how this would be incredibly valuable to help facilitate a 200-person mastermind where we get together quarterly and there’s a limited number of “hot seats.” We have a portal where you could read somebody’s profile, but none of the information that you’ve talked about is in that portal.
I would love to go deeper on that at some point and maybe, I could make some introductions to you as well. Maybe I will have you come in and do a session for one of my groups and with the mastermind. From there, even if it’s a Zoom session for there, it jumpstarts everybody into the process because I’m very excited about what you’ve built and I’m very interested in utilizing your tools to improve the groups that I’m part of as well.
Let’s talk about that offline. I am happy to help.
We’re going to make one more transition before we get to the end part of our interview and that’s about music. Music has been a part of my life, all of my life. I’m going to guess that at some level, music has been a part of everyone’s life. Music, in some ways, it’s the theme of our lives. It’s where our memories are created. You’ve been immersed in music sounds like all of your life. Tell us a little bit about how you got that going and what you’re doing now in the music world.
At five years old, my grandmother wanted me to learn an instrument. She picked the piano for me. I took six months of lessons. I didn’t like it very much, and I wanted to quit. She said, “That’s fine, but you have to pick another instrument.” I picked guitar and I took six months of lessons I got to learn Jingle Bells, A-Tisket, A-Tasket, and some not-so-great songs from my view. That is why I stopped the lessons, but I kept playing.
I taught myself and started learning rock songs. I was in bands from junior high school through high school and well beyond. I still play every week with at least one band that comes to my music studio. I started so young. I don’t remember not knowing how to play guitar. You’re right. Almost everything is better with music. I’m one of those guys that love to participate in something more than watch it.
Almost everything is better with music.
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Throughout my career, I like playing music a whole lot more than listening to it but when I do take the time to listen to it, it’s like, “They’re so good.” I’ll watch bands and concert films now where they didn’t hit me back when I was a kid, but right now, they are like, “This was genius what they’re doing.” I like to take the time to go back and do that, but for the most part, I like writing my own music. I like the emotion we create on stage.
One of the things that I’ve realized here and a gentleman by the name of Steve Vai helped me understand this. He’s probably my favorite instrumental rock and roll guitar player of all time. There’s an infinite number of ways to play one note. When a guitar player says, “I could play that,” you can’t because the only person that can create the emotion from whatever that passage was on the guitar is the person that played it.
It goes back to when you hear 100 singers sing the same song, the pitch is great, but one of them makes you cry. What’s the difference? That’s the same thing with guitar players. You hear them play the same thing, but one of them, you feel it inside. I went to a short story, an event where Tommy Emmanuel was playing. It was very intimate. There are a bunch of guitar players.
Nuno Bettencourt is there. Steve Vai is there, Tommy Emmanuel, and a whole bunch of others. Tommy comes out and he does a rendition of a Beatles song on his acoustic guitar. I’m looking around and virtually, everybody’s crying. All he talked about was how he keeps wanting to push the leading edge of getting more emotion out of the guitar and that’s what it is.
Even when I played live, I got to a point where it was cool when the crowds got bigger and bigger and you’re 5,000 and you start growing from there but then it didn’t matter if I played a club where the cook and the bartender were the only people that showed up. I was more into the emotion that we created on stage. That’s how I think about it now. When I play, I’m playing what I’m feeling in my head, not thinking about a note. Does this make sense? How does this resonate with you, Mitch? I’m curious.
First of all, you know it resonates with me because I come from the same place. Anyone reading this can relate as well. I saw Steve Vai here in Pompano Beach. For me, guitar players and music have been a part of my life since I’m a little boy. We participated in battles of the bands in high school. I don’t know if you remember those. We had them in Brooklyn anyway.
We had them too.
Frankly, it was my social life. I was too shy to approach a girl, but I could stand up on stage and I could play and then talk to girls after. A social breakthrough for me was becoming a musician and performing but more importantly, you mentioned discovering things that were out there or have been out there for a long time.
Me, I discovered Porcupine Tree. I don’t know if you know who they are. I’m sure you do. Porcupine Tree has been out for 30 years. I “heard” them. As you described, “I got them,” about a year ago. Now, I’m completely immersed in Porcupine Tree and Steve Wilson, who’s the band leader, who’s one of the primary authors of their music.
I love discovering music that has a vast library for me to dive into and where these people have been around for many years. Here in Florida, when I moved here, I discovered Latin music for the first time. I discovered Tito Puente. I discovered all of the Latin superstars that have been out there. This is why I say this. It is such an important part of my life.
I don’t play on stage anymore. I haven’t in a long time, but I have my guitars. It was not quite as many as you, but I have a few and I enjoy playing them too. The most important thing is the expression of emotion, which you talked about. If you don’t have a vehicle to express your emotion in a creative way, you’re missing out.
I’m speaking now to everybody who might be reading. What is your vehicle? I’m also a writer. I’ve written three books. I’m 100,000 words into a science fiction trilogy because it’s a way of expression for me. I need to do that. It’s not something like I said, I woke up one morning and I said, “Maybe if I write a science fiction trilogy, I’ll make some money.”
We know that is not going to happen but the most important thing is it gives me a place to open up creatively and writing is one of them. Also, my photography. I’ve been photographing since I’m a little boy. I’ve photographed all over the world. My readers have probably heard me rant about this before but to me, when I think about what photography is, it’s not just an expression. It’s a way to master something.
Anything you get involved in and seek to become better at is the pursuit of mastery. If you are a person who loves to pursue mastery, then this is in some ways the key to life. I believe the key to accomplishing everything is simply to get a little bit better at it every day if you can. That’s the end of my rant. I resonate with what you said and I love the fact that you’re still out there and playing.
The theme here is creating value in the world. I keep going back to it should be a win-win. When I spoke at the Phoenix Startup Week Conference, most of the questions were what do you need to see to invest in me? I said, “You need to prove that you have product market fit and you’re intensely passionate about creating value in that area.”
Most of them didn’t get it at all. A lot of founders, unfortunately, are caught up in playing startup founder and going through the process, checking all the boxes, and not solving a real problem out there. I would love it if everybody would shift to, “How do I create value in the world and how do I make sure that it’s a win-win so we can expand that infinitely?”
I speak to a lot of startup CEOs and it’s very rare that I invest in one because of the fact that I don’t see that. In fact, in many cases when I speak to startup CEOs, it seems like they’re more focused on themselves and what they can get out of it. In that regard, they have it all backwards and they probably never would succeed anyway so why would I bother investing in them?
I agree with you. It’s value creation, not just being able to create value, but being able to prove that you have created value and that only results in others acknowledging that and adopting what it is that you’ve created or invented. That to me is a true game changer and that brings us to the next segment of our show.
I apologize to the readers for this being a little longer than normal, but I have been enjoying our conversation so much. I’m going to move on now to the next section of the show and it’s two questions. It’s funny because I usually distribute the questions in advance, and Lee did not see these questions, readers. You’re about to hear a completely off-the-cuff answer, which is even better. Lee, who in all of space and time, living or dead, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with, and why?
I would love to have my friend back for an hour, Jack Welch.
Wouldn’t he be proud of what you’ve done?
He was so supportive. He was amazing and brilliant. Again, we’re fully aligned on trying to solve the same challenges out there.
What would you ask him now that you didn’t get a chance to ask him when you knew him?
When I went to that first conference that I described earlier, I went to three more. I remember him asking me after the third one, “Why do you keep coming back?” I said, “The more I apply this stuff, the better my questions get.” It would be doing a deep dive into what I’ve discovered here with the MIND Methodology.
Think of all the layers that you could then add to what you already know. I followed Tom Peters around. Many people are too young to know who Tom Peters is. I heard him speak for the first time in Boston, and I was so riveted by what he was saying and how he was delivering what he said. I then followed him to New York and then to Philadelphia and then to San Francisco.
I sat there every single time. I paid to be in that room every single time because it was so important for me to absorb what he was saying. For me, one of the experiences of my lifetime that I relish was 30 years later being able to interview him for this very show. Readers, if you’d like to hear Tom Peters, maybe you don’t even know who he is. If you’ve heard of the book In Search of Excellence, he was the co-author of that book and many others.
He has been a thought leader for many years in the industry and specifically, in the culture of industries and the creation of quality as a value. I highly recommend that you look up Tom Peter’s work if you don’t know it but thank you for that answer, Lee. I’m going to ask you the second question, but I already know the answer to this question. It’s almost a moot point. I’m going to ask it anyway. It’s the grand finale and it’s the change the world question. As I said, what is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
I’m leaning in hard on that whole K-12 education space. I want to work backwards from graduating high school seniors into wildly self-reliant, productive, critical thinking, and value-creating adults. Everything I’m doing is starting at the beginning and it’s a long game. I want to operationalize value creation in families. As soon as kids are one year old, I want them to listen and absorb value creation when they get into school.
The purpose of education is to create value because, at some point, I’ll slow down a little bit. I don’t believe in the concept of retiring because we need to keep our brains in the gym every day but when I do slow down or age out in this world, I want those years to be amazing. Even though I do love dystopian science fiction movies about the future type of things, I don’t want to live in it. Our kids are going to be running the world that we age out in, and it could be ten times better than it is now if we get this value creation part right. That’s probably the biggest purpose of my life. For the last two-thirds of my life, I’m going to work on this problem.
It’s a great problem to work on. If I could help in any way, I want to do so too. Readers, if you want to help in any way, I highly recommend that you go grab a copy of the Value Creation Kid and see if it resonates with you. If it does, my suggestion is to go get a bunch of copies. Start handing it out to parents. You want to change your neighborhood and your community, change the values that the kids in that community are being taught, and watch what happens.
Lee, again, I want to thank you, but before I let you go, I know you got a couple of free gifts for folks who are reading. I’ve been to your site. It’s hard to isolate one of them, but what I loved was the accountability assessment and the MIND Methodology Playbook. Can you talk a little bit about those or maybe a suggestion for a different one? Lee, what do you recommend people go take a look at?
One thing I want to touch on, if you want to know more about the Value Creation Kid book, go to GravyStack.com/igniter, and then you’ll see everything around the book, the authors, and the folks that are promoting it. All of it’s in there. I would love to get your feedback on that but when it comes to your most important number in the MIND Methodology, if you go to TheMINDMethodology.com, you can download a free playbook of the MIND Methodology. It gives you a high-level overview.
The best way though to get a feel for this and what it’s all about is to read the book. An even better way would be to listen to the audiobook. I record 25-minute interviews after every chapter for even more insights and background. Not to give it away, but at the very end of the recording, I grabbed a guitar and did about a three-and-a-half minute impromptu total improv one-take guitar solos. I bolted that right at the end of the book.
It’s interesting when I ask people if you read the book. “Yeah. All the way through it,” and they don’t bring up the guitar solo. I know they didn’t quite go all the way to the end, but you’ve got that surprise in there as well. On the website, there are lots of leadership content videos that are completely free so you can peruse them. There are options for how we can work with you if you’re interested in having our team work with you. There’s a leadership library you can sign up for.
The other thing I liked about your website, besides the fact that it’s simple, is that you have the option to become a facilitator. A lot of folks should not start there. They’re going to start with the book and then they’re going to start with implementation. If you’re a coach like me, I would suggest that you start thinking about how you might modify what you do with clients to implement this process. It will make you more valuable. It will probably allow you to get better testimonials and therefore, attract a higher-end client as well. That step has now become, at this point, a facilitator of that. I love the idea of that as well. That’s all right there on the website called TheMINDMethodology.com.
Every couple of months, we’re certifying another batch of certified facilitators to implement this into their consulting practices. The feedback we get is that it allows them to create even more value, be stickier, go deeper, and have a bigger impact on their clients. What we all should be striving for is creating value.
Our mission at ETW is improving our client’s most important number. Everything we do is about that. If we’re helping them install the MIND Methodology, we’re wearing a leadership performance coach cap and we’re installing it, but we’re also wearing a cap as an equal brain in the room with ideas to accelerate the value they create. We play both roles when we’re doing these engagements.
Readers, if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, I would highly recommend you go to Apple Podcasts and rate us five stars and subscribe to Your First Thousand Clients, but more importantly, let me know. Did you like this type of conversation? Is there someone you think that we should have on this show at this level that you have not heard from yet? Please let me know and let’s see what we can do together. Lee, thank you so much for your time. I can’t imagine what your time would be worth to buy an hour and a half of your time, but here you are spending it with us so generously. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.
Thank you, Mitch. I enjoyed the conversation. I hope we have many more.
Important Links ClientFol.io * MIND Methodology * Your Most Important Number * Value Creation Kid * GravyStack.com * Apex * ETW.com * Tom Peters – Previous Episode * In Search of Excellence* * GravyStack.com/igniter * Apple Podcasts – Your First Thousand Clients with Mitch Russo * https://TheMindMethodology.com/resources/tools/
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How can you provide proper veteran support to amplify their voices as civic leaders? How can you ensure that every transitioning service member succeeds in expanding their knowledge and skills? In this episode, Ryan Pavel, the CEO of Warrior-Scholar Project, shares how he assists veterans in acquiring higher education and bringing themselves to the next level. He discusses the support they give to these brave individuals so that they can continue serving the country and empower themselves to pursue continuous growth. Don’t miss this inspiring episode!
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Listen to the podcast hereProviding Veteran Support Through Education And Elevation With Ryan PavelOur goal is to help you be a better leader, inspire more people, create the passion your community wants, and profit from the experience. Some people ask me why I created the show, and the answer is simple. I want to learn from my guests and my audience how to effectively start, grow, nourish, and capitalize on the tribe. I believe tribes are the social experience that brings people together in many unique ways, and I want to share that with you. I also want to hear from you. Tell me what you want, who you are interested in hearing from, and what actions you take from every amazing guest we speak with.
Our guest is another amazing individual who, in fact, has started a foundation focused on veterans. He enlisted in the Marine Corps when he was seventeen years old. He earned his BA from the University of Michigan. He also worked in a variety of legal institutions, including legal aid organizations and a large national law firm. His work revolves around the Veterans Leadership Council, and I’m going to let him explain the details of that as we get into the interview. Welcome, Ryan Pavel, to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
It’s my pleasure. How did this all get started with you?
I enlisted in the Marine Corps at seventeen and that had a large impact on my life and on my trajectory. I was a very apathetic high schooler and I had the option to go to college. It didn’t seem the right fit at the time so I decided to do something different with my life and kick myself into high gear. The Marine Corps did that. I did five years in there and all these years later now, I spend all day, every day interacting with veterans and thinking about ways to be able to help equip them for success in their transition and beyond.
I’m excited to have you because I have a very soft spot in my heart for veterans, in particular, those who have been in combat because of the high suicide rate. I’m also involved in an organization called No Fallen Heroes, which is related to saving veterans from committing suicide. As I said, I have a passion for your project and that’s partially why I am excited to talk to you. Before I start, I want to read something to you that I’ve written and have held to for many years. It is my definition of a tribe. It’s considered by me a manifesto, a vision, a mission, and a purpose.
You need to have, as a tribe leader, a passion to drive those who don’t belong and attract those who do. That is in fact the way I see how tribe leaders run their tribes. The best tribes are incredible attractors, but they also repel the exact opposite of whom they want. Given that background, tell us a little bit about the organization that you’re working with now.
It’s an interesting definition. We talk about tribes a lot. Sebastian Junger’s Tribe is one of the most commonly read books in the circles of veterans and that’s a consistent topic of conversation. The way that I think about this, and what we talk about a lot with the Warrior-Scholar Project is no matter what your feelings are about the military, what you did, or whether or not you were injured physically or you had a moral injury. If you had a neutral experience or you had a positive experience, virtually everybody comes out and had a purpose and a mission.
They were working with a group of people to accomplish that mission. You can think about that and that tribalistic term of, “You had your tribe,” and then you get out and those things are not necessarily as baked in. The example I use is I came out of the military with some very strong feelings about wars abroad based on the things from my deployments and the work that I did. I was very ready to get out. I did five years and, for me, it was quite clear that I was going to do my five years, accomplish my enlistment, get all the way through my contract, and then I was going to move on.
However, that doesn’t mean that transitioning out was a flip of a switch and was easy. Even though I had my mind made up for that, I wasn’t going to be tempted by any type of reenlistment bonus. Flash forward a couple of months or less, it was a month in between when I was able to leave the military on terminal leave. I was then on a college campus and I’m one of 28,000 undergrads on a college campus.
You’re looking around and you’re thinking, “Who are my people? Where’s my tribe?” That also was a formative experience for me. It’s one that I’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on about my own transition, and that ties into the work that we do with the Warrior-Scholar Project. The Warrior-Scholar Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. We’ve been around for many years and the intent of it is to equip enlisted service members and veterans for success in higher education and beyond.
Veteran Support: The Warrior-Scholar Project is a 501 nonprofit organization. Its mission is to equip enlisted service members and veterans for success in higher education and beyond.College plays this pivotal role in the lives of so many people and veterans have access to tremendous education benefits. Our goal is to be able to help them leverage those benefits to the maximum impact and not only get out, “I don’t know who my people are. I don’t know where my tribe is, therefore I’m going to go to school and figure things out.”
Have some intentionality. How do you make sure that you leverage your degrees and you leverage those benefits? So much of what we see in terms of success on campus and beyond comes down to the community. The group of people that you associate yourself with. If you have a community, you are much more likely to succeed in the transition.
It’s a very community-driven organization that we’re a part of and I would love to take credit for founding it. I wish I could put founder on my title. I came in shortly after the founding. I volunteered with the organization and worked part-time with it for a number of years before coming on board full-time a few years ago. Now, this is my full-time work.
Roughly, what would be the size of the community itself?
It depends on which community we’re talking about. It depends on what number you look at, but there are 150,000 to 200,000 people that are leaving the service each year. There’s this enormous group of people every year, and that’s true. That’s pretty consistent, whether we’re in a time of active engagements abroad or even post-Iraq and Afghanistan withdrawals. Even in “peacetime,” the military still has this enormous force.
The community consistently grows. If we’re thinking about the veteran community, that is one that every year there is this addition of 150,000 to 200,000 folks into this community. Within WSP, the Warrior-Scholar Project, we’ve had about 2,300 people that have gone through our programs. 2,000 of them or so have gone through our flagship academic boot camps, and a few hundred through these other workshops that we offer. We’ll serve about 800 people including our new folks that are coming in, and also additional alumni services that we offer.
There’s an enormous veteran community and there’s the WSP community of alumni. The third way that you can slice this is through the campus community. We have relationships with twenty-some-odd campuses throughout the country and where our alumni are studying, there’s a robust veterans group that exists. They have their own community or tribe of student veterans that are pursuing studies along with them. Others are at schools that are hopefully growing, but in many cases, a small veteran community.
That’s a fairly large community. I speak to folks who have 20 or 30 people in their community and also, many who have more. It’s a nice size community. I realize you’re not the founder, but you can probably give us some great insights into the management of the communities. How often do you communicate with the members and do you consider a member someone who’s already graduated college? Are they still part of the community as well?
The primary distinction for us is if you go through an academic boot camp, which is the flagship offering of WSP. A quick note on that. With academic boot camps, we are taking folks that are not necessarily students at that institution. I’ll use the one in closest proximity to me geographically here, the University of Chicago. We take fifteen veterans or enlisted service members. They’re all enlisted as opposed to commissioned. They could still be on active duty, they could be reservists, or they could have already separated from service. We put them through a rigorous 1 or 2-week academic boot camp on the physical campus at the University of Chicago.
The intent here is that you’re demystifying what the college experience is like and you are also providing them with the tools to succeed. You throw Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America at them. You say, “This can be incredibly overwhelming.” How do you parse that out into college-level discussion, college-level writing, or college-level reading? You are mentored by fellow student veterans. You’re mentored by faculty from the institution.
For the folks that go through those programs, we offer it in humanities, STEM, and business entrepreneurship. Those are the three disciplines. They are considered alumni. That’s a community of about 2,000 people. We communicate with them in a few different mediums. One of those is we have a monthly newsletter which is full of the following opportunities for alumni services that we offer and also, our partner organizations or other major things.
Warrior-Scholar Project offers support in humanities, STEM, and business entrepreneurship.
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Let’s say there are major updates to education benefits, we’ll include a link to what’s happening there. It’s information on that. If there are successes, if our alumni are graduating from school or achieving great success there, we’ll shout out their successes in our alumni newsletter. We have social media channels. We also have an internal Slack workspace that all of our alumni are invited to be a part of.
Right now, we have about 600 folks that are active on that internal channel and that’s the active dynamic chatroom thing. If somebody says, we had somebody right before you and I hopped on, “I’m considering switching to a cybersecurity degree. Who can help me?” Instantly, he has people that can say, “Here’s the resource. Here’s this and that. It’s meant to be something that is reducing those barriers to entry.
I love that you set up the Slack channel. It’s a fantastic way to stay in touch. The other thing I heard is that you are working with associates or affiliate companies to offer services to veterans as well. That’s a very big benefit. That works both ways. For those people, even those who are reading this who might have a service for veterans, it would be great to get in touch with Ryan as well.
Ryan, you mentioned Slack, which also brings up the idea and the question about technology. The usual technology that people use is things like social media. The reason I reacted the way I did to Slack is that it’s a little bit different than other communities. I love Slack because it’s very immersive. I have an options trading group on Slack. I have a group of friends on Slack. I have a mastermind on Slack. What other technology is the company involved in that helps manage the tribe itself?
A couple of words on Slack outside of WSP, and I’ll get to your question about other platforms that we use. The other one that I’m involved with, you mentioned at the top is there’s an organization called the Veterans Leadership Council where we have a volunteer staff for that. I’m the VP of Partnerships for the Veterans Leadership Council. The idea here is to serve as a connection for veterans across a number of different companies.
One way to think about this is so many companies have an ERG, an Employee Resource Group for veterans. Sometimes, they combine it with first responders or law enforcement/There are commonly employee resource groups, but those are often isolated. We think about a community. You can have an internal group. if one employee resource group is thriving, we think about a company like JPMorgan that has this incredibly active employee resource group. They have a council on these things. If there’s another company, a Fortune 500 company that is interested in starting that, they shouldn’t have to start from first principles. There are best practices for building an interactive and engaged employee resource group.
That organization, VLC, started a few years ago out of Chicago as an offshoot of Bunker Labs, which is an excellent non-profit that helps veterans. It acts as an incubator for veterans interested in entrepreneurship and starting their own companies. VLC also operates off of Slack. We have volunteer staff and board that are throughout the country and Slack is the way in which we communicate. I think that it’s a fantastic way.
The other thing is I am a believer in Slack. I’ve been using it for many years, but we had to make a decision for our organization about how we were going to utilize it. To give you some sense of it, for a long time, WSP was very small. Scrappy is the word that I use for it. It’s highly effective, but scrappy. A few people were working full-time around the clock and then you had a group of campuses. It was effective, but we grew from an organization of 5 or 6 people working full-time around the clock to now a team of 23.
You can imagine the ways in which you communicate as a remote organization. You have to have the SOP, the Standard Operating Procedure, in place for how 23 people are communicating remotely because if all you have in Slack is a general channel and a pets channel, it’s going to be mayhem because you’re going to have way too many conversations.
I’m interested in how you identify modes of communication. I think working remotely for us, we were remote even before the pandemic is a forcing function to be thoughtful about communication in a way that you can be a bit more haphazard or lackadaisical about it if you assume, “Everybody’s in an office, therefore everybody’s going to communicate effectively.” I think about this thing a lot, and I’m a big believer in Slack.
The other one for us interestingly increasingly is Salesforce. Like most organizations, we have a CRM. We started using Salesforce in 2016 and had gradual adoption but what we’ve learned is that Salesforce can do everything, but you have to customize it to your needs. As I was saying with Slack, those tools can be active. Engagement can lead to good engagement but you have to be judicious about what channels, who’s talking about what and how are we organizing communication. With Salesforce, it’s that times 100.
Salesforce can do everything, but you must customize it to your needs.
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It’s because the capabilities and the things that can be accomplished there can be overwhelming until you spend the resources and do the training and these things to have people understand how to utilize it. I would say we’re growing there. We have some work to do. That’s another major platform of incredible power for us at WSP.
Salesforce is a challenge for a lot of companies. Some people hire Salesforce engineers to maintain and create options inside the product itself. I’m a big believer in software. I’ve started several software companies. In fact, I run one now, but the bottom line is that if it’s hard to use and convoluted, it is a detriment to work.
I’d never go near Salesforce unless I was involved in a much larger organization but that’s only my personal thoughts. Let’s move on here. Talk a little bit about monetization. There’s a business element to this. People have to cover expenses and hopefully, make a profit. How does the company monetize its mission?
As a non-profit, we don’t. In the sense that it’s not something where we’re looking to be able to do. Monetization is not the target for us. To give you a sense of it, whatever our expenses are, we have our reserve but our goal is to be able to raise enough to be able to cover our expenses and ideally, add some to the reserve. At the end of the day, if we end up with a surplus, it’s not to be in a position of inventory money or that type of thing.
If we had excess funds, we’d be thinking about what other programming can we build to be able to expand our reach and refine our programming. Having said that, one of the things that we are increasingly looking at is we are originally built solely on the education piece. Thinking about that next step when somebody transitions and figure out how do I get into college? How do I succeed in college? How do I select the college? How do I select the degree?
Veteran Support: The Warrior-Scholar Project is originally built solely on the education piece.Education is a means to an end. It’s not the end in and of itself if you’re thinking about, “I’m an enlisted service member. I’m transitioning out in a few months. I want to go to college.” I shouldn’t be thinking about that next step. I should be thinking about the company that I want to work at. One of the things that we’re thinking about is those forward-thinking companies that are willing to invest in the students at the early stages and not only, “I’ve graduated. There’s a lot of companies that have initiatives to be able to hire veterans.”
That’s great, but what we’re interested in is working with companies that are willing to take the long view and fund. We are non-profits that were entirely funded by individuals and institutional funders like foundations and corporations. We want those companies to be able to essentially help pay for the academic boot camps and develop a relationship with folks earlier on in that pipeline. That is not necessarily monetization in the classic sense, but it’s a way for us to think about who are the end users. How do we help the end users alumni build those bridges to those companies earlier on, as opposed to one piece of the transition?
The short answer is that you rely on donations. How about grants? Do you work to acquire grants as well? This is great information. For anyone out there who’s reading, and wants to think about how a tribe can serve and align with what the US government offers in terms of grants, maybe you could speak for a few minutes about the grant process.
We have no government grants. Our programs are not something that we’re trying to tap into GI Bill benefits. We want students to be able to save those for actual usage when they’re going to school. We haven’t tried to make any inroads there. Our grants are coming from private and public foundations. For example, we have a long-running relationship with the Clark Foundation out of Clark Construction. They are huge on the East Coast. They have been a core institutional funder for us.
I came on board a few years ago as Chief Operations Officer, and I stepped into the CEO role a year later. When I came on board as COO, it was because the Clark Foundation went through full-tilt due diligence on us and gave us a substantial grant to build our capacity. To go from this highly effective but scrappy non-profit, but to be able to build the infrastructure that allows you to succeed at a scale. We continue to have a longstanding relationship with them. Those foundations that are willing to be able to invest in veterans have been incredible for us.
The Bob Woodruff Foundation is a longtime funder of ours. The Diana Davis Spencer Foundation out of Bethesda has been a longtime funder. We were fortunate to get the attention of MacKenzie Scott. We received a jaw-dropping donation from MacKenzie Scott. Whether it’s an individual or private or public foundation, that’s the entirety of our funding. The other important thing is every institution that we work with is a residential model.
I use the U Chicago example, but to give people a frame of reference, we’re at Yale, USC, and Princeton. We’re throughout the country, in Georgetown, in UNC. It’s a mix of public and private institutions. Every institution provides housing, dining, and classrooms in kind for the students to be there. That’s another important part of our funding model. When we do a program, when we run one of these boot camps, the host institution will do their own fundraising to be able to provide that aspect in kind. WSP then raises all these other funds to provide the training, travel, materials, and all of that for the students. It’s a cost-share.
Veteran Support: The host institution will do its fundraising to provide boot camps in-kind. Meanwhile, WSP raises other funds to provide students training, travel, and materials. It’s a cost-share model.Again, instead of applying for grants to the government, you are applying to foundations and private industries that set aside money to make these types of grants. Is this a good strategy? Would you advise this to others who are reading this?
The other important piece is individuals. I don’t want to lose sight of that. There are a lot of philanthropic individuals that got a sizable portion of our annual contributions in developing relationships. You and I are talking and the vast majority of my time in December is spent on two things. One is on finalizing our budget and working with that with the board and our staff. Two is making sure that all of our major institutional funders and individuals know where we are and checking in on people before the year ends to make sure that we get those contributions.
I had a conversation with our team about whether or not we should go through and apply for government grants. There’s the NEH, the National Endowment for the Humanities. We had done a two-year grant with them in the early stages of the organization. There’s also NSF, the National Science Foundation. Government grants are onerous and you quite commonly need to have either a full-time or a part-time person whose job is to not only write that grant but also, to administer it and to report on it.
Other grants are onerous. For example, for the Clark Foundation, it’s not as if we give them a one-pager and they say, “Here’s your grant,” but it is different in scale, type, and kind when we’re talking about government grants. That’s the evaluation for us. As an answer to your question, we’ve determined that the right strategy for us is to not hire people specifically so that we could be in a position for government grants, maybe at a later stage in the organization.
With all grants, and I suspect even more so with the US government, there are requirements. In fact, there are conditions on them issuing that grant to the organization. An alignment of values, for one. If there are values that the issuer has that do not align with the organization itself, that’s a big consideration because the organization wants and needs the money, but it’s not a good idea to bend the values of an existing community, tribe, or organization to get some money.
It’s a difficult process for sure. This has been a fascinating interview for me because, again, we’re talking about a different level of community than we have on some of the other shows, and I enjoy this. I do want to ask you a little bit about the future. With all the interviews that I conduct, there’s always this question about the future. It sounds like you guys are in a good position. You’re doing a very valuable thing. You’re helping veterans do something that they may not be able to do or have the wherewithal to do on their own, but how does your organization grow from here?
A part of it is tied to our previous conversation. Not to go back into everything with grants, but I view things as a three-legged stool. These are the three legs for us. One is the infrastructure, and primarily by infrastructure, I mean the team. Part of infrastructure means, as we were talking about, Salesforce, Slack, etc. but an important component of that is the team.
Nonprofits have this unfortunate reputation of having to underpay people and it’s this churn. People believe in the mission, but they can’t make enough money or they don’t have retirement benefits. For us, that infrastructure piece is important. A concrete example is the cost of living adjustments. Social Security Administration’s cost of living adjustment for 2023 is much bigger than it was in previous years. We undergo this evaluation of, “I want our team. I want that infrastructure.”
A necessary component of growth is for our team not to have this churn where we only have people that are doing this for 1 year or 2 because they believe in it, but they don’t have the benefits to be able to stay there. That infrastructure piece is crucial for growth, but that relates to the financial side. I can say that until I’m blue in the face, but if I can’t convince wealthy individuals or foundations or corporations to invest in WSP include it on the general operating side. Not only in the specific programming.
A necessary component of growth is for your team to not experience churn. They may believe your vision, but they don't actually have the benefits to stay there. That’s why the infrastructure piece is crucial for growth.
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The Clark Foundation’s philanthropy was vital for us because they deliberately invested so that we could build that capacity, with an understanding that some of that goes to the less headline news things. Nobody wants to know about the more mundane aspects of an organization like Salesforce. It’s a necessary component for us.
The second component is the financial side. That’s the second leg of the stool. The third one is never losing focus on the programming and the end users. If we had this incredible team and if we had all the funding, but we totally lost sight of the programming or we were scaling just for the sake of scaling, we’re not responsive to user needs and all of these things, we’ve lost our way. All three of those legs of the stool have to grow in tandem.
I love this analogy. It’s simplistic, but it works. As a gut check, where are we in terms of that? For a while, I am very sure based on all the conversations and all the due diligence that we did that one leg of the stool that was not long enough or robust enough was the infrastructure that grew programming in a way. We had some funding to do some things, but we didn’t have the full team structure to be able to execute that.
A big part of our goal was to launch a search, hire a chief programs officer, write a role that we previously didn’t have, and to be able to build that infrastructure piece. Those are the necessary components. The other aspect of this is strategic planning. We are in the process of planning our 2024 to 2028 strategic plan. That is a year-long process for us to put together the five-year strategic plan.
We need alumni to have input. The board is heavily involved. All of our team are involved. You have these things, you have these necessary conditions, but then you think about where we want to be in 2028. That’s a challenging question, but it’s one that we need to be able to answer. Where are we going? If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there.
That’s a great answer and again, it shows the insight that you have into what you’ve done so far and where you need to be. In order to get to the next stage here, it sounds like we need more people to pay attention. If they wanted to reach out to you or understand the mission better, is there a website they can go to?
Warrior-Scholar.org. That is our homepage. If you visit that, you’ll see there are a bunch of different links to the programming that we offer if you’re interested in more details on the boot camps themselves, the graduate school programming, or the alumni services. If you’re interested in supporting WSP, I mentioned the high-wealth individuals, but a huge com component of our donations as well comes from what we refer to as the small-dollar donors, which is this important thing.
This community-based aspect to people that believe in the mission of, “I believe in what WSP is doing and I’m willing to contribute $10, $20, or $50 a month or something like that. If people are interested in supporting them that way, I would also offer and I hope this comes through in the way that I’m answering your questions here, but 1) I love this work. There’s no job I would rather have than this one. I’m extremely privileged to be able to say that genuinely.
2) I’m also interested in the meta-structure of what we’re doing. I didn’t have substantial nonprofit experience. I volunteered and worked part-time for many years with this one, but until I came on board as Chief Operations Officer, I didn’t have an appreciation for all of the things that go into a non-profit. It was trial by fire. The way that we got through that was I reached out to people in my network and said, “You’re a few steps ahead of me in this process. How did you navigate this?”
I am more than happy to work with other people either that are thinking about a non-profit or that are in some stage of trying to think about growth, whether or not it’s specific to veterans. The vast majority of conversations that I have been in the veteran space. One of the important things is veterans shouldn’t isolate themselves. They shouldn’t be so insular to the things that we’re doing. Sometimes, we have this conversation around the model that Warrior-Scholar Project uses for veterans could be applicable not only to military spouses but to anybody with a non-traditional path to college or something like that. I’m happy to have those conversations with anybody.
Work with other people who are thinking about a nonprofit or are in some stage of trying to think about growth.
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Ryan’s willing to talk to you. How can they get a hold of you?
My contact info is on the website. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m Ryan Pavel. Also, I’ll give you my email address here. I don’t mind if people reach out to me directly, which is RPavel@Warrior-Scholar.org.
We here are about to wrap up and I want to say thank you for showing up. Thank you for what you do as well. As I said, you are very focused on your cause. I’m on your side when it comes to veterans. I’m not a veteran myself. I was disqualified for medical reasons, at the time, but my sympathy and heart are with all of our veterans and all of our armed forces.
Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate you. If you enjoyed this interview, would you be willing to go over to the Apple Podcasts page and leave a comment? Tell us a little bit about what you thought about this conversation. Maybe rate us five stars if you like us. That would be great. Thanks again, Ryan. We’ll talk again soon.
Thanks. It’s much appreciated.
Important Links Veterans Leadership Council * No Fallen Heroes * Tribe* * Warrior-Scholar Project * Clark Foundation * Bob Woodruff Foundation * Diana Davis Spencer Foundation * National Endowment for the Humanities * National Science Foundation * Ryan Pavel – LinkedIn * RPavel@Warrior-Scholar.org * Apple Podcasts – The Tribe Builders
About Ryan PavelSales Force 101 – How To Build A Powerful, Successful SalesforceVeterans advocate intent on leveraging background as an enlisted Marine, educator, and attorney to empower veterans to excel post-military service.
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Great leaders are not only masters in realizing the team’s vision and implementing a healthy culture for all. They also know how to listen deeply and actively. Mitch Russo sits down with Oscar Trimboli, a man on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners. He explains how he uses his vast network and award-winning podcast Deep Listening to build a strong community about listening in the workplace. Oscar gives a quick masterclass in leadership by discussing how to properly monetize a community filled with listening people. He also breaks down the most effective process of community building centered on letting your passions take the lead.
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Listen to the podcast hereHow To Listen Like A Pro With Oscar TrimboliOur goal is to help you be a better leader, inspire more people, create the passion your community wants, and profit from the experience. Some people have asked me why I created this show. The answer is simple. I want to learn from my guests and my audience how to effectively start, grow, nourish, and capitalize on a tribe.
I believe tribes are the social experience that brings people together in many unique ways. I want to share that with you. I also want to hear from you. Tell me what you want and who you’re interested in hearing from. I would love to know what action you take after every individual episode. I would appreciate that. If you’re a coach, go to CoachElevation.com and download my book for free.
Now, on to my guest and his incredible story. It turns out that my guest is the host of an Apple Award-Winning podcast called Deep Listening. He’s also a keynote speaker as many authors evolved to become. Along with the Deep Listening Ambassador community, he is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners.
I know you don’t quite understand what a deep listener is, but you will in this episode. He also believes that when leadership teams focus their attention and listen, they will build organizations that create powerful legacies for the people they serve today, and more importantly, for future generations. We are about to get a masterclass on how to listen. Welcome to the show, Oscar Trimboli.
Good day, Mitch. I’m looking forward to listening to your questions.
I’m going to ask you the first question, which is simple. How did this all start for you?
It started in a boring boardroom, a budget-setting meeting in April 2008 with 18 people across Sydney, Seattle, and Singapore. At this time of the year, it’s the final budget-setting meeting. The meeting is scheduled for 90 minutes. These meetings are known to go for three hours because you can’t leave the meeting without the budget being set. Something funky happened in this meeting. The meeting finished at the 70-minute mark. It finished early.
At the twenty-minute mark, my vice president in the room looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Oscar, I need to see you immediately after this meeting.” I don’t know about you, Mitch, but the only thing that was going through my head is, “I’m getting fired.” For the rest of the meeting, I didn’t listen to a single thing that was happening in the budget-setting process. It is probably why I got a 32% uplift in my budget, which wasn’t good, but we’ll figure that bit out later on.
I was thinking about how many weeks of salary I’ve got left in my bank account. As I said, the meeting finished early. It finished at the 70-minute mark. Tracy asked me to close the door. As I walked back after closing the door, she said, “You have no idea what you did at the twenty-minute mark, do you?” The only thing I thought is, “Awesome. I’m getting fired and I don’t know what I did.”
I sat down next to her and Tracy said to me, “Oscar, if you could code how you listen, you could change the world.” As profound a moment of listening as that was on Tracy’s behalf, the only thing going through my head was, “I haven’t been fired.” All this magical money that I had taken out of my bank account, I’m stuffing back into my bank account.
The only thing I could say to Tracy was I bloated something very primitive. I was like, “Tracy, do you mean code or code-code?” I was working at Microsoft as a marketing director at the time. She said, “We work at Microsoft, Oscar, code it.” Many years later, we’ve coded it into an online quiz, cards, three books on listening, a jigsaw puzzle game, and the Apple award-winning podcast. The only thing I know is the more I studied listening in the workplace, the less I know.
What’s astounding about your work is that you have defined and uncovered a layer between people that most do not know exists. The benefit of having done that is your process can bring richness into every possible human relationship. If I could, I would like to send you right now to Moscow and have you sit down with my friend, Vladimir. Maybe you could help us understand what the heck it is he’s doing there.
I was deeply affected by your work. The reason I wanted you on this show is because your work is bigger than the community you’ve built. In fact, the work is what draws people to the community. If you’ve been tuning in for a while, many times when communities form and the tribal leaders that I interview talk, they talk more about the community first. That’s fine. In this case, without the work, the community wouldn’t exist.
I’m going to tell you what my vision is of a tribe. From there, I would like to see if you could help me relate what you are doing to that vision. A great tribal leader or any form of community leader is a polarized individual. That means that they believe something so strongly that they deeply attract some and deeply repel others.
If you have this, we call this a manifesto. If this manifesto is clear, a great community tribal leader naturally attracts those people directly into his or her community, and that starts as a passion. That passion is a magnet. That magnet draws exactly only those who belong directly to the community. Tell me from that perspective about your community.
A little commercial break before we do though, think about what you’ve described in the context of Vladimir Putin. You have some interesting insights there all by yourself to understand his motivations as well. In terms of our community, our communities have grown very organically. The Deep Listening Ambassadors named themselves through the podcasts that we were doing. I would get emails from people saying they wanted more connection, not only with me, but they wanted a connection with other listeners. They wanted a connection with other workplace listening professionals who wanted to improve their listening.
One thing I learned very early on as a good host makes everybody feel welcome, but a great host creates connections across the community. We host a regular monthly webinar where we talk about a theme. That will attract some people into the conversation but others won’t. It’s self-selecting. There’s no reason for people to attend these sessions other than if they want to improve that particular aspect of listening. An example would be how to listen during a video conference as a host and as a participant. That’s an example of what we do.
A great host creates connections across the community.
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We’ve attracted people from Japan, Germany, Brazil, and all around the world. The strength of the community is the connections that they form during those webinars. Often they’ll go, “What have I got in common with an automatic car engineer in Japan versus a foreign language interpreter in Brazil?” They have listening in common, but they also have in common that they struggle with listening during video conferences as well.
I’m very clear that our community is about listening in the workplace. It’s not about listening as therapy. It’s not listening in life partnerships or partnerships that may exist in friendship networks. We’re very deliberate to say what we are about when it comes to listening. We refer others to amazing global leaders in the field of listening through therapy or for trauma all around the globe. That’s another thing I’ve been lucky enough to do.
If I were a tribal leader, I would be deliberate in finding other tribal leaders in adjacent fields in listening. Listening in a medical context, I deliberately don’t do work there. I exclude myself from that and I make sure other people do that. What I’ve learned as a result is the group itself brings its own energy and momentum. It generates its own outcomes and ones I’ve never anticipated. To me, the act of hosting that community and being deliberate about what we are about and what we’re not about is critical.
In the early days, I was vague about that. As a result, I didn’t attract that kind of people into the deep listening ambassador community. They named themselves. We did a little listening exercise, and they came up with their own name. These ambassadors say that with pride. I’m often shocked that people use that label themselves. That’s how our tribe comes together.
Did you write the book first? Did that then start to generate interest in your work or did you build the tribe and community first?
How To Listen is book number three in a series. In the early days, I remember this conversation with Dermot, a lovely Irishman. I was saying, “Dermot, I’ve been writing newsletters for two and a half years about world-class listening and I’m getting no engagement.” He said to me in a beautiful Irish accent, “Idiot, if you’re going to do something on listening, create a podcast.” I thought, “It’s so obvious,” but for two and a half years, it wasn’t obvious to me. What was obvious was the difference between hearing and listening is taking action.
How to Listen: Discover the Hidden Key to Better CommunicationI listened to Dermot and took action. I had no idea. With Dermot and a couple of friends in a hotel restaurant, we wrote out all the possible people we could interview for the podcast like submarine commanders, acoustic engineers, deaf people, blind people, foreign language interpreters, judges, journalists, and everything in between.
Once we started doing that, the momentum in the community came about. My clients and the community said, “It’s all great that you are here doing your workshop and all of that. You’re doing a keynote. When you leave, help us create something useful. Write a book.” Honestly, I never thought of myself as a writer, let alone an author. I just had all these stories in my head. The first book, Breakthroughs: How to Confront Assumptions, is about understanding what your listening filters are.
The second book is Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words, and the third book is How to Listen. The process of coming up with a third book involved 2,500 people in our community. Half of those people we knew, and then we researched 1,000 people in a Survey Monkey panel that we didn’t even know. We researched the name, title, subtitle, structure and story.
There was this continuous dialogue going on with this community about the development of the book. It became a critical asset to me because I’m not a skilled writer, but they are skilled readers. They would give me very clear feedback, “Oscar, the story makes no sense. It’s rubbish. Oscar, this story resonates. Can you make it bigger?” It’s awesome.
A little commercial break from tech, we also listened to Amazon and Google search engines to make sure that the title we came up with not only worked for humans but worked for algorithms as well. Thus, the very literal title, How to Listen. That’s how the community and the content that we were generating play together.
The cards that we created came about in a workshop where we were doing sticky notes as an example. During the break, I was photographing the sticky notes to create an artifact after the fact for the workshop. As I was doing that, I was moving them around a little bit. Alice, whose card it was, came in and said, “Oscar, please don’t touch my card.” I thought, “This person is putting a lot of meaning into what they wrote there.”
I told that story to my editor, Kelly. Much like Dermot, she said, “Just make cards.” I was like, “Of course, let’s make some cards out of this as well.” They weren’t cards if you looked at them literally, but if you listen to what it meant to Alice, a card is what I should have created. There’s this symbiotic relationship between sharing the content, the community shaping your content, and making it enormously more valuable and better for the tribe than whatever I’m creating in the first draft.
How many people would you say are in your tribe as you can identify?
At a rudimentary level, there are 1,216 in our database that have that tag. You then go, “How many people are regularly opening emails? How many people are regularly engaging with the content?” It’s roughly 500 people who are regularly engaging in that. That’s a heavily engaged group. They’re not customers. They’re just people who are passionate about listening. We spend a lot of time around what you do in the book, Power Tribes, and 500 paying customers matter. For me, it’s like, “I’ve got 500 people who are interested in my content. I’ve just got to figure out how to get 500 people who are interested in my content and pay.”
We can work on that separately. Clearly, that’s a good objective. You mentioned that you do a webinar or a Zoom call monthly. Did I get that right?
Yes.
Is there any other way that you collaborate with or communicate with your members?
The podcast itself is the primary asset. Once a month, we distribute an episode and survey them every year. We’ve completed the survey a few months ago. They’ve said, “Oscar, enough with the experts. We love the experts and keep interviewing the experts, but we need to hear from you doing a Q and A.” We did a little experiment with Shani from Japan, a principal in a school. She had a question and we answered that. The feedback from the group was like, “Please do more of that.”
The upside and the downside of podcasting is the only way you know people are listening is if they communicate on a different channel. There’s no way of knowing who has downloaded your podcast, but you know where they’ve downloaded the podcast and what time of day. That’s it. You don’t even know if they’ve listened. Podcasting is an act of faith.
How To Listen: The only way to know if people are listening to your podcast is if they communicate on a different channel. There’s no way of knowing who has downloaded your episodes.Sometimes, I sit there and scratch my head, and then I got a beautiful email from a military commander who’s about to leave the military in the United States saying, “I wish I could have heard what you say about listening when I started my military career because I’ve destroyed at least five careers for my inability to listen.” One of those being his own. Thanks, Andrew, for the LinkedIn message that you sent. There are ways we find out about that. The community of practice, as we call it, monthly goes into practice on a topic. An example might be how to listen in a budget-setting meeting. That might be another example of how to do it as well.
That’s great. I would say one of the goals of most people who build a community at some point is to monetize that community. Is that something you’ve done or are planning to do? If so, tell us about that.
Personally, I trade in three currencies. Money is one of them. Recognition is another, and impact is the third. It’s all about the legacy. In the early days, I thought, “Money for the tribe. That’s not the ethos of listening.” What I realized very quickly is those who value the work are willing to pay for it. As I think about the community in the longer term, I had a Zoom call with somebody in Israel who said, “Oscar, I’m ready. How do I take your Five Levels of a Listening model, Four Villains, quizzes, and everything you do? We’ve got some big listening challenges in Israel with our neighbors in Palestine, I’m keen to resolve this.”
Those who value the work are willing to pay for it.
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In my mind, I was going, “I wish I was ready,” but I also know the broader the base, the higher the apex when it comes to building systems. At some point, I want to do that. Your book has created a wonderful scaffold for me to think ahead not only about what’s possible but what things I can do right now to put some things in place around procedures, documentation, and these kinds of things. Also, back to your point earlier on, by doing so and being explicit about it, I’ll start to attract and exclude different kinds of people as a result. I’m okay with that.
That’s the way the formula works. Many of us put free content out there. I have 550 articles on my own website. It’s all free. They’re all blog posts or interviews. What we expect to happen is we expect that some of that will be consumed and then some will float to the top and reach out and say, “I like what you said, did or spoke about. Can we have a deeper conversation?” All this stuff these days is necessary. More importantly, having an elevation strategy and putting people into a pathway that gives them the opportunity to do more with you by paying you and getting more of your attention is essential to any community that wants to sustain itself and continue to grow.
I’m speaking now not just to you but to everyone tuning in to the show. We all need to create a mechanism of supporting the community beyond the other two currencies, which unfortunately don’t pay for the website, internet bill, or put petrol in the car. It’s something to think about. That’s why I always ask this question in these interviews.
The other part of this is for those starting out. Some people have a product or a work that they want to get out into the world, and others don’t. They’re passionate. They have that manifesto that we talked about early on. From there, they create a product. For the audience, which path do you feel is best to eventually scale a community to the size of yours or bigger?
Are you asking about the sequence or something else?
I’m asking about whether should you have a product, service, or intellectual work before you start the community, or should you start the community based on your passion, and then evolve that work as the community itself evolves?
When we think about the social object theory of how you transmit an idea that sustains itself through a community, the idea needs to be easy to share. For some ideas, that’s going to be a product. For some ideas, that is going to be the manifesto, for example. As I mentioned, for two and a half years, I was writing about what world-class listeners were doing in blog posts and newsletters. Were they easy to share? Yes, they were. Were they salient and did they cut through? No, they didn’t because the value people put on an email is very different from a wonderful story where a client told me they were going into an elevator in the morning and somebody had their earphones on. They said, “What are you listening to?” They said, “I’m listening to this awesome podcast about listening. Let me send it to you.”
Most people think of a podcast as a product, and it is. It is a great way to transmit an idea very simply because you’re packaging it up in a way that can be shared but also is salient and cut through. The answer is it depends and it depends on where you are in that journey. Think very carefully. It’s not how well you communicate the idea. It’s how well your community hears it, and then what they do with that idea.
Sometimes, that’s very easy to do. “I’m going to forward your book, Mitch, to one of my clients.” That’s an example of me transmitting your idea in an easy-to-do way. Because you packaged it in a book, you’re making it easy for me. If I had to try and explain Power Tribes in a sentence right now, I do a very bad job of it, as opposed to the book, “Lisa, happy holidays.” It depends.
Think about this. You need to be able to simplify your message. Active listeners listen to what’s said. Deep listeners notice what’s not said. Every Deep Listening Ambassador can say that phrase and do it because it’s the easy way to explain the difference between active listening and deep listening. That took me two years to figure out though. It wasn’t something I discovered very easily.
We evolve into our own practices. Even in our own intellectual property, evolution takes us hopefully to new places. I want to read something to you. It’s one of your cards. I told you before we started that I have been through your card deck now several times. There were a few that were very impactful, but this is the one that hit me almost the hardest. It was because I’ve experienced this but never identified it.
Your card is called Concept Time of Day. The explanation is your listening is like the battery on your phone. The tip is to notice when you’re listening batteries are full and when they’re empty. You then offer a way to recharge. You say, “Can you listen to music to recharge your listening batteries?” This is very profound for me because I’m an extrovert. As an extrovert, I am energized by people. What that means is that I’m always talking. I’m not doing as much listening as I probably should, but then I noticed in my own life that the tank gets empty. I never could quite identify that before.
For me, that was a profound moment when I saw that on your card. For the audience, these cards are magic. Oscar will share with us how you can get your own set of cards as well. The book is great too, but the cards are like the instruction manual for being alive. If you want to be alive with other people, you got to get the instruction manual, or else you’ll never get anything done. That’s how I thought about the cards. What do you have to say about that one thing that I picked out? What does that mean?
What we don’t realize is that focusing on the speaker is the wrong place to start your listening. You need to first focus on yourself. Most people aren’t even conscious of where their listening batteries are at. They turn up to a conversation with their listening batteries being red, yellow or touching on black that is about to shut down. The right conversation at the wrong time is the wrong conversation. If you can’t bring your presence to the dialogue, it’s going to be a bumpy conversation.
Focusing on the speaker is the wrong place to start listening. You need to focus on yourself first, and most people aren’t even conscious of where their listening batteries are at.
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A skillful listener will choose, “Now is not the right time, although we scheduled it for now. I may need a five-minute pause.” I encourage people please stop booking meetings at the top of the hour. If there’s one thing I wish for the world is that everybody books their meetings not for 1 hour, but for 50 minutes because time is such an artificial construct.
My clients say to me, “Oscar, I so look forward to your meetings because I’ve got time to go to the bathroom. I’ve got time to collect my thoughts.” They have a very different conversation. It’s way shorter. Recharge your listening batteries can be as simple as drinking a glass of water or playing a song. Stand up if you’ve been sitting down. Sit down if you’ve been standing up. Walk outside and get some fresh air on your face.
If you can’t do any of those, take three deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. All of those physical things will send signals to the parasympathetic nervous system that sits around your lungs and your heart and says everything is going to be okay, and then you’re available to the other person to listen. That’s why it’s so critical that you know where your listening batteries are at.
For me, it was a revelation. As I said, I was never aware I had those. I was aware of the results of not knowing that I had those. That card was a little bit of an emotional kick in the head, which was great. We’re at the point now where we’ve gone pretty deep into your topic, which I’ve enjoyed a lot. Everyone, if you’ve enjoyed this as well, I would like for you to tune into Oscar’s podcasts too because that is a wealth of knowledge, as well as consider grabbing a copy of his book and getting the cards. The last question I have for you, Oscar, is very simple. What does the future look like when you take what you’re doing two years into the future?
My vision isn’t about me or listening. It’s the impact of listening through the tribe or community and what they bring to the workplace. They’ll bring shorter meetings and fewer meetings. The world doesn’t need another meeting like it doesn’t need another plastic bag. We’re obsessed with recycling, yet we don’t think about the most precious and finite commodity that we have as humans, which is our time.
Also, people understand that listening can transform the person who’s speaking, as well as those around them. My wish is finally that more people are conscious that it’s more important to listen to what somebody hasn’t said than what they have said. This has implications for revenues, market share, profit and loss, employee engagement, profitability, cost, rework and quality. There are so many things that are impacted by listening if we could just pause.
It is more important to listen to what somebody has not said than what they have said.
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I love it. That’s a great place to end this conversation. Before we do, I’d like for you to share with our audience something that you had told me that you had planned on doing for them. Tell me a little bit about what your idea is.
Rather than getting in touch with Oscar, I want you to get in touch with your own listening. Learn what the barriers to your listening are. Take the seven-minute quiz at ListeningQuiz.com and use the coupon code Powertribes. You will have access to the full paid 5-page report, including 3 specific tips based on the listening barriers that you can apply immediately in your next meeting. Thanks to Mitch, we’ll organize that. It’s normally priced at $20 to be complimentary to listeners of this show.
That’s a wonderful gift. I can’t wait to go there myself and take the quiz. I wasn’t even aware of that. Your website is very simple. It’s called OscarTrimboli.com. Is that the primary website that you would like the listeners to go to?
That’s all about Oscar. I’d rather you learn all about yourself, so go and visit ListeningQuiz.com.
This has been a pleasure for me. If you’ve enjoyed this show, I would appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts and even five stars if you think I deserve it. More importantly, share what you’ve learned here. Let us know if there’s something that struck you and made you think or feel a little bit different than you did when you started. I would like to know that too. Thank you again, Oscar. It was a delight chatting with you.
Thanks for listening, Mitch.
Important Links CoachElevation.com * Deep Listening * Oscar Trimboli * How To Listen * Breakthroughs: How to Confront Assumptions * Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words * Power Tribes* * ListeningQuiz.com * Apple Podcasts – The Tribe Builders
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What’s the best thing to do when your sales are declining? Learn from Jeremy Miner, the CEO of 7th Level Communications, as he breaks down the scientific method of selling to help tune your sales process! In this conversation with Mitch Russo, he explains why every salesperson should practice the ABDS of Selling, helping you to stop closing and start making incredible sales! Don’t miss out on this episode and extract wisdom from Jeremy Miner to help grow your business!
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Listen to the podcast hereThe Scientific Method Of Selling: Stop Closing And Start Selling With Jeremy MinerIn this episode, I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. In 2018, my business was exploding. My coaching clients were winning, and my time was all but fully booked, but I had a problem. I was wasting more time on pre and post-session admin than I realized. I decided to create a highly efficient time saving, money-making coaching software platform called ClientFol.io. If you’ve read this before, you’ve read my rant about it as well. I’ll skip that part of it. I wanted to share a testimonial I got from one of our clients. His name is Steven Merrill.
Here’s what he said, “I’ve been able to close deals by telling our clients that I’ll be tracking their data points in the areas of life, personal and professional, that they want to develop and enhance during our work together. The ability to then email them homework with a visual graph of their progression is what allows them to see and feel their progress. This is unmatched by any other product I’ve ever seen before. I can’t thank you enough for it. I look forward to my continued use of ClientFol.io.” If you guys want to see for yourself what this is all about, you can do it for $1. Go to ClientFol.io and write me your own testimony. I’d love to get it.
Our guest has been selling all his life. Job after job, he exceeded every target. As he evolved, others were coming to him to learn his process. He did what all great entrepreneurs do. He started a company to help others learn the scientific method of selling and has chained over 380,000 people. Now, he’s here to tune up your sales process. Welcome, Jeremy Miner, to the show.
Mitch, it’s a pleasure being on your show. I’m going to take all that as a compliment because my kids said I’m pretty boring. Thank you very much.
All kids think anyone over 40 is boring anyway. It comes with the territory. I loved to embarrass my daughter when she was little. It was so much fun. In an abbreviated way, I told a little bit about how you got to where you are. Give us a little bit more detail.
I got into sales many years ago. I was a broke and burned-out college student. I got a job selling home security systems, door-to-door. That was the first thing. If anybody has done door-to-door, you know what it can mean, especially if you don’t have the right skills. I remember going out for that job at a straight commission. The company gives you a script. They give you some books by the gurus and are like, “Go make some sales. We’ll pick you up after dark.” I remember I looked back at my sales manager, and he said, “Don’t forget. Be excited when you knock on the door. If you show them how enthusiastic you are about the product, they’re going to be interested in it.”
I was like, “That makes sense.” I’m a 21-year-old kid. I don’t know any better. I started knocking on the door. I was all excited talking about the features, the benefits and how we had the best this and that. It was going to help them. I started noticing from the very first door that I was getting all these objections. They didn’t tell me that, “We don’t need it. Your price is too high. It was too expensive. We already talked with somebody from your company last month. I need to talk with my spouse. I need to think it over. I need to do more research. Can you call me back in a week, a month or a year later?”
I remember this one night, 7 to 8 weeks in, barely making in sales, straight commission sales job. If you don’t make sales, you don’t make any money. I’m sitting on the curb way to be picked up at the end of the week. I’d worked twelve hours that day. I’d made zero sales. I worked for free. That whole week, 0 sales and $0. I remember sitting there. It was the humid July sun, sweat rolling down my chest. If you’ve ever gone door-to-door, your legs feel like jello at the end of the day. I remember sitting there thinking, “I’m not cut out for sales. I don’t have the gift of the gab like all these other guys do.”
I remember the sales manager picked me up and popped in a Tony Robbins CD. Many years ago, people listened to things called CDs. Tony said something like this, I could be butchering it, “You will fail if you don’t learn the right skills that are necessary to succeed.” Here was the very interesting thing. He said, “Everybody’s taught skills, but the ones who fail are the ones who are not taught the right ones.” That did something to me. It was like a light bulb went off in my head. It was like divine intervention from the heavens that maybe what the company was training me and what I was learning from the sales gurus weren’t the right skills. Maybe they were outdated, or they shouldn’t work that well anymore.
Everybody has taught skills, but the ones who fail are not taught the right ones.
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That got me started on this journey. At the same time, I was going through all that stuff, I was in college. I was studying Behavioral Science and Human Psychology. That was my degree. I was learning from Robert Cialdini and a lot of people you guys might have heard. ehavioral science, if you peel the layers off, it’s, “How does a human being make a decision? How do they go left or right? How do they say no or yes?” which is what selling is. My professors were saying that the most persuasive way to communicate was over here, but all the gurus in their books were saying it was over here.
It’s exactly the opposite. I’m like, “This doesn’t make any sense. I was conflicted.” I decided like, “How can I take this theory of behavioral science and psychology of the brain and bring that into my sales process?” That’s what I started doing. I started learning how to use techniques that work with human behavior to give my prospects to pull me in rather than me push. At that point, selling became very comfortable for me, most importantly, the prospect. It became very easy and very profitable. That’s where it all started for me.
What I’m hearing is that there was a disconnect that the gap was filled when you heard Tony say those words, but your sales manager never taught you that.
Nobody did. None of these books back there did.
Tony and I were in business together. We built Business Breakthroughs International. I know Tony and the way he thinks. I love him, and at every level, the guy is amazing. He has this ability to say the one thing that you need to hear. It’s amazing because he probably recorded that years before, but it came out at exactly the right time. Part of what this is for me is the way the world works. The way the universe works is this universe is built on synchronicity. What you are doing is you are aligning yourself. The synchronicity is already there. You may not see it.
For you, it wasn’t the bus with the word or a sign that went right by your face. You read that sign, and all of a sudden, the world changed for you. It was that statement from Tony Robbins. Here’s the difference between you and everybody else. You took action. You made a decision at that moment in time and said, “I can’t keep doing it this way. I know the boss is older than me. He’s probably richer than me. He’s probably smarter than me and has done this for 30 years, but I can’t keep doing it the way he’s telling me.” That’s a hard decision to make. You did it.
I didn’t have any choice. I was a 21 or 22-year-old kid, broke, and you either change something or you have to get a different type of job. I didn’t have a choice.
I’ve been through this in my life too. I’ve made many of these choices because of what I will call the synchronicity of the universe in my life. When you open your eyes and see it, it shows up. For everybody reading this, maybe this is your synchronicity. Maybe we’re about to do something or say something. I want you to read very carefully because I’m talking to a very smart and successful guy. Clearly, he learned how to sell. Maybe there’s something here for you or not, but let’s find out.
Jeremy, we’re going to shift gears. As I told you in the past, we have a real smattering of professions and hundreds of different types of companies reading this show, but everybody has to sell. Not everybody succeeds. We have coaches. We have plumbers. It doesn’t matter. They may not sell every single time they try to sell, but they have to. Where do we start in the basic resetting of the mindset and maybe giving folks a couple of tools that they could work with within the short time we have together?
Everybody needs to understand this because I get why a lot of people don’t like selling. If you’re forced to learn traditional selling techniques and what I call repackages consultative interrogation techniques, you all are going to trigger a lot of sales resistance from a prospect. You’re going to get smacked in the mouth. That’s no fun. Nobody wants to get punched in the nose. Has everybody heard of the ABCs of closing, the Always Be Closing? It’s been around for 100 gazillion years from the dinosaur ages of selling. I’m going to make a suggestion. I might make some people mad on here, but always be closing is what average salespeople do in our day and age.
If you want to be a top sales professional or a business owner who scales and you’ve got a sales team, you have to get them off of this mantra that selling is adversarial, “You are against the prospect. Try to manipulate them. Win them over so you can make money.” That is what average salespeople do in our time. If you want to be a top 1% owner and want to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in commissions as a rep, manager or business owner to scale, you have to start thinking the selling is collaborative.
It’s you working with your prospects, helping them find and solve problems they didn’t know they had. What we want to show is, instead of the ABCs of closing, because you have to close people, but if you’re always closing all the time with that conversation, people pick up that they feel like you’re trying to sell them, and they emotionally shut down.
Selling is collaborative. It's about working with your prospects, helping them find and solve problems they didn't even know they had.
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You want to practice what we call the ABDs of selling, Always Be Disarming. From the very first words out of your mouth, from the first questions you’re asking, you’re triggering the prospect to let their guard down. If you can’t get them to let their guard down and they stay surface-level with you throughout that entire sales process, what type of objections do you get at the end? “It sounds good. Let me think it over. I need to do more research. I need to look at other vendors. I need to keep looking around for some other folk. I need to talk to my spouse. I need to talk to my CPA. I need to talk to my uncle, who lives in a van down by the river.” It’s all these excuses because they’ve emotionally shut down.
We want to follow what’s called the ABDs of selling. I always say most salespeople have been taught to be what we call product pushers. What do I mean by product pusher? Product pushers are you ask a few questions surface level like, “John, tell me two problems that keep you awake at night. Cindy, what are you looking for in a solution?” Within the first two minutes of a call, “What type of budget do you have set aside for a project like this?” Those are all surface-level questions. That triggers because your prospects are used to every salesperson who’s ever tried to sell them anything and asking the same surface-level questions.
In our day and age, we have to become what we call problem finders. It’s even a lot deeper than problem solvers. There are about 700 books up on my shelves. I have about 1,400 sales books that I went through in the last few years. I read about five books a month. Two on audio while I drive around in my car because what else am I going to do? Listen to Britney Spears? She’s cool, but she doesn’t help me make any money. Rather than listen to CNN or Fox, which isn’t going to make me any money, I need to learn.
I read two books a month, and in my car, I’m reading three books a month as well. Every single book says, “You have to be good. You have to be a problem solver.” That makes sense. However, if you peel the layers back, you can’t be a problem solver until they purchase what you’re offering. How can you solve problems before they buy? You can’t. To get them to buy, solve their problems, and become a problem solver, you now have to be better at problem-finding.
That means asking the right questions at the right time in the conversation, allowing the prospect to find problems they didn’t know they had. When you first start talking to a prospect, most of them don’t even know that they have a problem. Maybe they know they have a problem, but they don’t know how bad the problem is, or they don’t understand the consequences of what happens if they don’t do anything about solving the problem.
When you start learning advanced questioning techniques, not only are you able to help them find one problem, but now you can help them find 2, 3, 4 or 5 problems. When you’re able to do that with your prospect, how do they start to view you? They view you differently than all these other pushy salespeople that are trying to shove their solution down their throats. They start to view you as more of the expert and more of the trusted authority who’s going to help them get where they want to go. It’s a different way of thinking about what selling is. When we start thinking that way and learn the right skills, selling becomes a lot of fun. It’s a lot different experience.
I want to go back to something you said before. You said, “People hate selling.”
It’s because of the way they’ve been taught how to sell.
What they hate is rejection. Everybody loves to sell. If you’re a single guy in your 20s or 30s and you meet somebody you’re attracted to, you’re about to start selling. If you don’t like dates, then you’ll never learn how to do that. The point is it’s the rejection that people are emotionally faced with. What you’re presenting is a way of rejection-free selling. That, to me, became a moment where I said, “That makes a lot of sense.”
When I was in my sales career before I retired, I didn’t view every sales call as me trying to make money. I’m analyzing, “What problems does this individual or company have? What is the root cause of the problem? How are the problems affecting them? How can we help them overcome that to get them where they want to go?” I quite literally believed that selling is collaborative. You can’t have a belief and then not know what to do when they answer the phone and say hello. That’s not going to help you either. There are certain questions that we have to understand, and this is Behavioral Science 101.
Typically, within the first 7 to 12 seconds, sometimes even sooner, of every single sales interaction you will ever be involved in, your prospects subconsciously pick up on social cues from you. You do the same thing. When you’re in a networking event, and somebody comes up and starts talking to you, what do you start doing for the first ten seconds? “Who is this person? What do they want?” That’s normal.
A long time ago, whenever that was, 10,000, 20,000 or 100,000 years ago, when people were on the Earth, we had this part of our brain that when saber two tigers came around us, we’re trying to protect ourselves. It’s the reptilian part of the brain. Now we’re trying to protect ourselves from people trying to sell us something because we’re always being sold to all the time. We have to understand that within that first 7 to 12 seconds, they’re picking up on our social cues, verbal and nonverbal cues, and what we’re saying and asking that triggers their brain to react is scary.
Scientific Method: People pick up on your social cues within the first 7-12 seconds of your transaction.If we come across as aggressive in that call, like super salesy or needy, everybody knows what I mean by that because you can feel your neediness on the call. You can tell it in the tone. If you come across attached and you don’t understand the right questions to ask or the right tone, it triggers the brain to go into what’s called fight or flight mode. Everybody’s heard fight or flight mode, but does anybody know how it’s triggered?
It’s not like they came up to you and like, “I’m going into fight mode.” There’s something you say or ask that triggers that reaction from them. We’ll talk a little bit about NEPQ or Neuro-Emotional Persuasion Questioning, and you will learn how to come across as more neutral, like unbiased. You’re not quite sure you can even help yet because you don’t know enough about their situation. You come across as calmer and especially detached. That’s the keyword. You understand the right question to ask with the right tone. It triggers the human brain to become curious enough when they feel like they want to engage. They want to open up because they don’t know what it is yet, but they feel like you might have something important to them.
When we learn how to become more detached from the expectations of even making that sale, and we still focus on whether or not we can help them, it typically causes them to open up themselves when more open to them. Do I mean when you get in sales calls that it’s not your goal to make a sale or if you’re in a B2B complex environment to move the sale forward with micro-commitments? Not. That should be your goal 100%. You have to keep that internally to yourself because the moment the prospect picks up that you are there to sell them is the moment they emotionally shut down. Even in the best questions you ask, you’ll get 2 or 3-word answers and then at the end, “I want to think it over,” and you never hear back from him again.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with Jay Abraham where we were talking about curiosity. I don’t even know if he was trying to make the point, but my antenna is up whenever I speak to Jay. I want to absorb everything. One of the things he said was that, “Sometimes when I meet somebody, it doesn’t even matter what they do. I want to know who they are, what they’re doing, what issues are in their lives, and what problems they’re facing.” Part of being a great salesperson is to have a natural curiosity and helps people share what they need to tell you in a non-aggressive way. That’s another framing for the same thing. I do that.
It’s about getting the prospect to let their guard down because if you can’t get them to let their guard down, it’s pretty much over. We see when companies bring us in to audit their sales, “We even have Fortune 500 companies.” You’re like, “I can’t believe they’re doing this. It’s all a numbers game to them. They could be doing five times what they’re doing.” It’s all about disarming the prospect. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say, in the end, you’re selling something that requires a contractual agreement. This is pretty basic. I find some people, and I’m like, “I can’t believe you didn’t know this.”
They’ll come like, “I need you to sign the contract here.” Those are two words that have a negative connotation with most people because people don’t like to get into contracts that they might regret later on because it didn’t work out. Let’s say I sell business consulting to companies. You help companies with their operations systems. You come in and redo everything so they can scale, “John, I need you to authorize the document here. What that does is it gives us permission for us to come in, build out your operations, and build out your systems to help you scale up to $10 million a month. I need to have you authorize the agreement here.”
Authorizing an agreement is far more neutral than signing the contract. When I post in, the reason why they’re authorizing the agreement at the end result makes it like you’re authorizing the agreement that you can, and you repeat back what they said they wanted, “I’ll have you go into authorized the agreement. This gives us permission to give you access to the virtual training platform to start training you so that you can X, Y, Z.”
To authorize a sales agreement is far more neutral than signing a contract.
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It makes it easier because now they’re authorized agreements so they can have what they said they want. The US government does a good job of this. I’ll give you an example, the term IRS or Internal Revenue Service. If it were an Internal Taxing Service, we’d all be up in arms. Do you see how they re-language that to Internal Revenue Service? There’s a reason why they did that because it sounds less threatening. Internal Revenue, not Internal Taxing.
It’s like the Inflation Reduction Act.
That’s a little bit overboard. Doing that with that triggered more resistance. It triggered more people not to trust them because it had nothing to do with that. When you’re re-languaging Internal Taxing Service to Internal Revenue Service, it’s a little bit more low-key. When you’re doing something like that, you’re going to trigger more mistrust. I would say that was a bad move.
They used the George Orwell guidebook on how to create the Department Of Successful Communication. You know what I’m getting at. The bottom line here, which I love about what you said, is that what you’re doing is you’re entering into a consultative conversation with a client to uncover the problems that they may not know they have or may not realize are as bad as they are. By showing them the possibilities, the pathway to authorizing the agreement is much easier.
I shy away from that consultative word because consultative selling is better than boiler room selling, but typically consultative selling because that came out in the ’80s with books like SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham, a college professor. It was revolutionary at that time because you were coming from boiler room selling days, and they taught you, “You needed to ask questions to find out the needs of the client,” which makes sense. The only problem is when you’re asking surface-level questions, what type of answers is the prospect going to give you back? Logical-based answers.
Do human beings make decisions based on emotion or logic? Emotion 100% There’s no debate in behavioral science on that. Brain studies prove that. It’s more persuasive than trying to slam them into The Wolf On Wall Street, manipulate them, pressure them and assume the sale. You’re starting to play the numbers game because you’re not bringing up very much emotion by simply asking logical-based questions. You have to take them below the surface. How do you do that? Prospects don’t just open up because you have some good questions that they’re going to answer it.
Scientific Method: Human beings make decisions based on emotion or logic.There’s a technique we call NEPQ verbal cues. When you ask a question, and the prospects start answering, instead of setting back and nodding your head, letting them talk for five minutes, and in the end, you say, “Got you. I’m curious. Let me ask you,” it sounds like a scripted conversation. In the conversation, you’re sitting there using verbal cues.
It sounds out of your mouth while they’re talking to show them you’re present. “When you said blank, walk that back for me. What did you mean by that?” Verbal cue led me to that question, so I can interject with that verbal cue, “When you said that you didn’t have XYZ, what did you mean by that, so I understand?” Verbal cue leads me to the next question, which makes it sound far more natural, where it’s like a natural conversation, but yet is a very structured skilled conversation. You’re not winging it.
It shows interest instead of if you’re sitting there nodding, but if you are interacting, you’re building a relationship at that point. It’s a small part of how you build and retain trust. Let’s shift gears here for a second. We both had in mind the idea of selling something expensive. What about we employed hundreds of one-call closers? We drove 6,000 phone calls a week into our call center when Tony and Chet were on the radio, and then we had these people trained with a script that they could get a closed deal and a credit card in about 17 to 19 minutes.
That’s more B2C sales. We train thousands of B2C.
If in case there are folks reading that have that as their business model, how would we modify some of the things you already mentioned to fit that?
You are not modifying much at all. Even if it’s a $5 magazine subscription, it’s a little bit different. When you were talking with Tony and Chet, what were the price points they were selling?
We were selling a $239 webinar seat.
That’s probably a 10 to 15-minute conversation. The only difference between B2C and B2B is B2C, for the most part, not all B2C, is more of a one-call close. Sometimes it might be a two-call close. It depends on what it is. B2B is more of a complex sell environment. It’s more of a discovery call. You’re transitioning to micro-commitments to take the next step to get into a demo. That’s what you’re selling. Maybe a proposal is the 3rd or 4th appointment, or maybe you’re meeting with other decision-makers. In the fifth appointment, you’re presenting in front of the board. It depends. B2C is the same thing. You’re still building the gap, but you’re building the gap faster. That’s the only difference.
What that means is you’re still finding out what their current situation is. What’s their current state? What are the problems they have? Even if you’re selling something small, no product or service was ever made that didn’t solve a problem and/or an emotional need or both. Even Ferrari solves an emotional need, which is not a problem. If you want to drive from point A to point B, you can drive a used Honda, but for a Ferrari, you don’t have to do that, but it solves an emotional need. Everything that’s ever been made solves something.
You’re building that gap. You’re helping them see what problems they have, not by telling them because that goes in one ear out the other. You’re biased. You’re the salesperson. Your questions allow them to see what their real problems are. Once they see that gap, you’re now focused on where they want to go. What is their objective? We call that their objective state. What is their future going to look like once all these newfound problems are solved? B2C is a shorter conversation.
Scientific Method: Everything that has ever been made solves something. Build that gap by helping people see their problems, not just telling them about it.Before we move on, have you ever heard of this book called The New Model of Selling? Does that ring a bell?
Yes. We have a book that is available. It’s called The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation. I wrote that with a good friend of mine, Jerry Acuff. He’s the CEO of Delta Point Consulting, a very large sales consulting firm on the East Coast. If you want to wait until it gets into a bookstore like Barnes & Noble or the major bookstores, it will be all-major bookstores on March 15, 2023. That’s when our publishers release it in any bookstore. You are welcome to get that.
Let’s get to the point here because I know you have something very interesting and exciting to give to readers.
If they want to learn more about what we do, we’ll give them a few nibbles. They’re welcome to join our free Facebook Group. It’s called SalesRevolution.pro. We got about 40,000 some members in that. We started it out in 2021. Salespeople, B2B and B2C, it’s all a mixture of entrepreneurs, coaches, and business owners. Right when you join, check your Facebook messenger. We’ll have somebody on my team message over to your free training called the NEPQ 101 mini course.
We didn’t have time to get into NEPQ questions, but it will give you a list of different NEPQ questions that you can use for different sales situations you’re going to find yourself in that will help you. We go live in that group 3 or 4 times a week with different Q&As and training. We give them nibbles out. If they want more advanced training than our clients are in for their industry, they’re welcome to reach out. They can email or call that Facebook Group and reach out to find more details.
Another great resource is your amazing podcast. What’s the name of that show?
You can go to a podcast and listen to that. It’s called Closers Are Losers. We have two episodes per week. We started out in 2021. They’re welcome to be on that. The Facebook Group will give them the biggest hors d’oeuvres for sure.
Do you have anything you’d like to add before we wrap this up? This has been such a fun session for me. I always learn a lot whenever I speak to you. I want to thank you for being on the show. What do you have to say?
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show. If you want to describe what selling or selling is in one word, it’s change. All selling is change. It’s about how good you are at getting your prospect to view in their mind. Changing their situation means purchasing your solution. That them doing that is far less risky for them than them doing nothing at all. Staying in the status quo, their problems stay the same, which is risky. Selling is about change. That’s how I leave it there.
All selling is change. It's about how good you are at getting your prospect to view in your client's mind that changing their situation means purchasing your solution.
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That was a great tip. Thank you. Readers, get into that Facebook Group as soon as you can and start learning. I’m going to pre-order your book, and others should too because if you shared what’s in that book, that alone would be worth it, but I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot more.
It’s a lot more than that for stuff. We went over some basic stuff.
Thank you for being on, and we’ll talk again soon.
Thanks, Mitch. I appreciate you.
Important Links ClientFol.io * Jeremy Miner * SPIN Selling * The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation* * SalesRevolution.pro * Closers Are Losers
About Jeremy MinerJeremy Miner, the CEO of 7th Level Communications teaches students a model of selling that Jeremy created from years of researching human psychology. He says that there are three forms of salespeople should use to communicate and persuade, these forms are different from how people have been taught in the past. The third form works as a ‘golden rules’ when approaching conversations with any person or prospect you are engaging. The key is to be placing the emphasis on their needs and engaging rather than pitching. You’ll find that these forms of communication are far more effective than the old mode of selling.
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Alec Burlakoff was once the Vice President of Sales of a pharmaceutical company, but this position landed him in prison. He has gathered everything he learned from his life behind bars in his book, Selling Hard Lessons. Join Mitch Russo as he talks with Alec about his time in prison. He opens up on what too much greed can do to you and how to quench this self-destructive mindset. Discover how Alec made a career in sales by knowing his target audience deeply and spreading inspiration as a motivational speaker and coach.
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Listen to the podcast hereSelling Hard Lessons With Alec BurlakoffIn this episode, I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. In 2018, my business was exploding, my coaching clients were winning, and my time was all but booked. I had a problem. I was wasting more time on pre and post-session admin than I had realized. At the end of a week, it amounted to over four hours of preparing, reviewing, sending, finding, and updating client homework. I knew there had to be a better way. I searched for coaching session management software, and I found lots of it, but none of it was easy to use, and endless hours of videos. None of it was inexpensive. Some were over $300 a month or easy to learn.
If you are reading this and are an entrepreneur, this is part of your education. When you find a problem, fix it, and turn it into a business. That is what I did. I decided to build my own coaching platform exclusively for coaches who like to track accountability and goals and do all of their session management in one single screen. That is called ClientFol.io. It solved all of my problems. My clients get their own dashboard to see their homework, fill in their accountability questions, enter their weekly goal-tracking statistics, and you could use it too. All you got to do is go to ClientFol.io and try it for $1.
This is going to be a different interview because my guest has some life experiences that I personally have never shared. He has a Master’s degree in Clinical Social Work. You never guess he chose to be successful in a completely different area of business, but there is a story behind that, and you are about to read it. His ups and downs are remarkable in both directions, and you might get whiplash by reading it.
His most notable achievement was building and growing a startup to hundreds of millions in revenue in a few years. He’s a consummate sales talent with real leadership chops and focused ambition. A great combination, to be sure, but there is a dark side to my guest’s story, one that placed him behind bars in prison. That is just the highlight. You are about to dive deep with my guest, Alec Burlakoff. Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Mitch. I appreciate you having me.
You are a unique individual with a compelling story and a lot of talented abilities. That is why I love to share this with our readers. Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me how this all started for you.
I started as a kid, quite frankly, growing up in summer camp as a camper. I became a counselor, a group leader and everything you can imagine. I loved being in that environment, playing ball, hanging out with kids, working with kids and being a mentor, a role model and a coach. I decided that I wanted to do that as a career. I majored in Psychology and undergrad and got a Master’s in Social Work and figured I would spend my life working with kids, helping them out in any way I could.
While I was working on my Master’s, I worked for a medical center. I worked with kids who came from broken homes, had substance abuse problems, and came from different economic backgrounds. I worked with them exclusively for quite some time. Upon finishing my Master’s degree, I went on to get a job in physical education as well as teaching some classes or high-profile private school. I ended up becoming their school guidance counselor for a number of years. One day, a life-changing event occurred while talking with one of the parents in the parking lot. That took me on a different path.
What was that? Tell me about that.
These kids I mentioned were highly affluent. There is a lot of money everywhere to be seen. That money was starting to take a toll on me. I was paying way too much attention to it. One day on that note, in the parking lot, I was supervising the carpooling, and we had a non-smoking policy on campus. I went out to a car, and it was a Bentley convertible. I spoke to the gentleman driving the car, who was smoking a cigar. I politely asked him to put the cigar out. He took one more puff of the cigar and blew the smoke in my face, and responded, “Petty rules from petty people.” That hit me like a ton of bricks. It wasn’t the only reason why I decided to move forward and take a different path, but it was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. From that moment, I was on a path I had never dreamed of embarking on.
It sounds like there was something inside of you waiting to be triggered in a sense by that gentleman with the cigar. In my world, the way I think about things is that everything happens exactly the way it is supposed to, even if, at the time, it doesn’t appear to be what you need, but it is what you need. Tell me about some of the decisions you made and what was going through your mind when, at some point, I assume you quit your job and pursued a different direction. Let’s talk a little bit about that.
I did some networking and leveraged some of the relationships I had at that school with some parents. One was a physician who had offered me opportunities before as far as getting me interviews in pharmaceutical sales. He saw me as a salesperson, and I went on several interviews. I didn’t get the first opportunity I thought was coming my way, but at that point in time, I had made up my mind that I was getting into pharmaceutical sales. I was relentless in my pursuit and continued to go on interview after interview until, eventually, I was offered a position with Eli Lily and Company selling Prozac and Zyprexa, an antidepressant and antipsychotic.
You were familiar with the psychiatry area because of the work you did before, but what made you decide to go into pharmaceutical sales? That is a huge jump. Was it the money? You say, “I can make a lot of money.” Don’t get me wrong. That motivated me in my earlier years for certain. I’m wondering what your motivation was.
I came from a family of sales. My father was in automobile sales. He was a lifer, and my brother was as well. They both did well. They started off as salesmen. They became managers, general managers, and part owners. I understood sales, and I understood that there was money to be made. Personally, I despised car sales. I dabbled in it in college. I knew there was an opportunity for me in sales, but I didn’t want to be in car sales.
In addition to that, my father knew that I had made a decision that I was going to move out of what I was doing and transition into some sales. He was dead set against that. He didn’t want that life for me, but I had to explain to him that I was going to be moving into a particular type of sale that was far different than what he had been accustomed to in automobile sales. Over time, I was able to get that message to resonate with him. I told him about pharmaceutical sales. He didn’t know much about it, but he spoke with several people, and they spoke highly of it. His attitude started to change slowly but surely. That meant a lot to me. I wanted to get his buy-in and support.
I saw pharmaceutical sales as a lucrative business, but at the time, at least in my eyes, I saw it as a business that was far more sophisticated than automobile sales. I want to tell you now, as I sit here and speak to you, I don’t think it is any different than automobile sales. I don’t think it is any more sophisticated, any more classy, any more on the up and up. Unfortunately, after what I have been through and the road I have traveled, I’m more the believer that sales are sales. The only differentiator in sales is the actual person selling the product.
Sales is sales. The only differentiator is the actual person selling the product.
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Let’s be honest here, I know we have much more to hear from you, but I already know how high you went in this area of hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. You can’t simply call it sales is sales. Maybe it is for your unconscious competence of some sort. Nobody gets to that level of selling without either having something special, being someone special, or having developed some intellectual property that you have integrated completely that to you it feels natural. Tell me more about that.
First of all, one thing that I can tell you that I’m adamant about, you are not going to find somebody with more passion than me. Passion sells. I have never gone on an interview where in some way, shape, or form, the person at the other side of the table didn’t tell me that I was the most passionate person they had ever come across. That says a lot because everyone in sales, you would think, is passionate. My passion, I don’t even know where it comes from. It is a beast within. The problem with passion is that if not channeled appropriately, it could get you in a lot of trouble. Here I am now, and I have learned what it is that I need to do with that passion because if too much passion is not properly channeled, it can be a lot of problems for you.
In addition to that, I have always wanted to figure out how to do things my own way. I started off as a sales rep in pharmaceuticals. After a few weeks, I remember talking with my manager and saying, “If you allow me to develop and implement my own strategic targeting plan and design exactly how much time I’m going to spend with each customer or how many customers I’m going to target and call on per day, week, month, quarter, I guarantee you I will exponentially grow sales at a level that you never dreamed of.” She said, “No.”
In the back of my head, I was still already moving towards that direction. I’m a strong believer in quality versus quantity. That is the exact opposite of what you hear in sales. Most people in sales tell you the harder you work, the more money you make. The more people you call on, the better chance you have of closing the sale. That is not how I do it. I couldn’t disagree more. I’m a commodity. My time is valuable. I’m not going to waste it banging on the doors of people who have no interest in buying and are never going to be buyers.
Selling Hard Lessons: Sales is always about quality over quantity. Most salespeople say that the harder you work, the more money you make. This is wrong because your time is a commodity.I decided that I was going to work harder than anyone else at the rep level so that I could get promoted and get promoted fast. That was my mentality all the way until I got promoted to Vice President and then Senior Vice President. I was constantly implementing my own procedures, plan of action, targeting, frequency, sales message, and mentality around closing with the people who worked under me. This is why I continued to climb the ladder and produce results that most people were unable to do.
I consider myself fortunate. It could have backfired on me at any given time. In some ways, in the end, things didn’t go well for me. Here I am still talking now and moving forward with different plans and so forth. I have always been an innovator in the way in which I do things. I understand, based on the good, bad and ugly, what it is that worked for me, what it is that didn’t work for me, and where are the areas where I could potentially put myself in harm’s way as well as others. There is a hard lesson. My book is called Selling: Hard Lessons Learned. I know how to sell, but unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to look at it, it is from the hard lessons I have learned along the way.
Before we get into the lessons, which I do want to talk here about and talk more about, you told me about rising to the top as the Vice President of Sales of a pharmaceutical company land you in prison.
Selling: Hard Lessons LearnedWhat happened was we implemented a program that has been in existence in pharmaceuticals ever since I could remember. That was using physicians to promote our products to their colleagues, peers, other physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and people in the medical healthcare world. That is okay as long as it is done under strict conditions. It has to be an on-label presentation. You can’t go outside of the FDA-approved indication. There are certain things that they can and cannot say. That is usually only left for the question and answer part of the presentation. There are all sorts of rules and regulations that go along with a compliant presentation.
Where we went off the rails was the executive chairman of the board was dead set on the return on investment for the dollars we paid out to these people speaking. He wanted a 2-to-1 return on investment. If we paid the doctor $1,000 to speak to their peers, we wanted that particular speaker to write $2,000 worth of the product. That was strict, clear and concise. There was nothing of the sort that he wanted to hear. It doesn’t matter what it was that would get in the way of that. That was the be-all and end-all. Return on investment 2 to 1.
What we did is we began to allow these speakers to do nothing to earn these dollars, these honorariums, aside from prescribing their product. They were not on, in most cases, delivering presentations. Regardless of whether they were or weren’t, the only standard that was utilized to determine whether or not we would continue to have them speak and have them speak more was based on how much product they would write in return for the honorarium.
I want to be clear that I am 100% culpable here because I was the head of sales. It was me that made the decision to the executive chairman of the board, the owner of the company, and the founder of the company and say, “Yes, I will implement this program. I will hold these doctors accountable on your behalf. I will do as you say.” I’m a grown man now in 2022. Several years ago, I was still a grown man. A grown man should know that the decisions he makes are going to make or break him, and the decisions that I made put me behind bars.
A grown person should know the decisions that could make or break them.
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There are a few things here I want to understand better. You were told what to do, and you implemented what you were told what to do, but you chose to do so because that was what your boss said, and otherwise, you knew if you didn’t, you would lose your job at a minimum and possibly maybe be blackballed. I get that. You are a grown man, and you take responsibility. I love that you take full responsibility for your actions. That is the true sign of maturity. I see that in you. The next question might sound a little odd, but I’m curious. I’m not in the medical profession. I assumed that this is how the medical profession worked anyway. Is it not, or is it that you guys took it a little bit to the extreme?
The Hard Sell: Crime And Punishment At An Opioid Startup By Evan HughesYou are informed. Some people are completely flabbergasted to hear a story like that. Others like yourself, not so much. There is a book that came out. It is called The Hard Sell by Evan Hughes. In his book, he clearly illustrates, throughout his research and findings, almost all companies operate this way. He used an analogy that if the speed limit is 65, everybody is going 75. They are all breaking the law. Our company went 90. Because we were egregious and we went off the rails in such a disrespectful manner, that may be the reason or one of the reasons why we were held accountable. To my understanding, I and the others indicted in this specific case are the first ever to serve time behind bars.
The most important thing is that you took responsibility for your mistakes, and you paid society back for the mistakes that you made by being in prison. Let’s talk a little bit again about the statement you made before. You told me that all sales are the same, and yet when you sent me a copy of your book and I browsed through it, I’m seeing some sophisticated tactics and wisdom-based thinking in what you say and do. Are you telling me that a guy selling used Chevys on the corner in the winter is using the same exact tactics you do when you sell pharmaceuticals?
No, what I’m saying is that you are going to get the same tactics and characters across all types of sales. You could get a great sophisticated, savvy person in car sales, whereas most people are like, “That is a used car salesman.” I take offense to that. My father made a living in car sales, and I don’t see them that way, but others may. That is okay. What I’m saying is you don’t get my buy-in and my respect because you work for a particular company or you are in a particular type of sales.
You get my buy-in, respect and my attention because of the way in which you conduct yourself. To do well in pharmaceutical sales, in my opinion, and I have been there for several years, you do have to present yourself in a more sophisticated way because you are dealing with highly sophisticated and educated people.
To do well in pharmaceutical sales, you need to present yourself in a more sophisticated way.
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I appreciate you sharing what you did, and it makes a lot of sense, particularly how you explained it. Let’s get past this. Now you are out of prison. Tell us what happened after you left prison. To remind readers, we are talking to the amazing Alec Burlakoff. He is amazing because of what he has been through, but what he has learned and who he is now. Alec, you get out of jail. Did your family abandon you? Did you have any assets left? I want to hear the story. Did you restart from zero, or did you have something to start from?
First off, I don’t want to get into great detail, but for my time spent in prison, I was inside for ten months. I was in a halfway house for nine months and on house arrest for three. The time inside was an education. I learned more about myself in that several months than I knew in my entire life. I learned more about myself in two weeks in a 5×8 cell for quarantine than I had learned in my entire life.
Prison to me is one long adult timeout, meaning as a child, if you do wrong, they put you in timeout, and they put you in a corner for a couple of minutes to think about what you have done wrong. That is what prison is, and they make you think. Whether you want to think or not, you will think. I want people to understand that, for me, the prison was a big deal. More power to them. I got all the respect in the world for them, not for what they did wrong, but for the way in which they carried themselves and conducted themselves.
For them, it was like, “It seemed like it was walking in a park.” Not for me. For me, it was life-changing, and I hated every day. I met good people. I did some productive things. I read and worked on myself, but I hated it every day. I want to make that clear. As far as getting out, no, I lost all my assets. I lost my wife. I look forward to that fifteen-minute phone call every day. I’m looking forward to talking with her. On one of those fifteen-minute phone calls, she told me she was divorcing me. That is not an easy thing, but it is something that I deserved and brought upon myself.
What I’m saying is that going to prison and doing time is only a small portion of what you lose by doing wrong. I lost, in my eyes, about everything. I lost my wife. I came out, and I was served with the papers. I’m fortunate in the fact that I have two beautiful daughters. I never lost them for a day. They are my life, pride and joy. There is never a day that goes by where I don’t fill myself with guilt for the fact of what I put them through and the fact that I was away from them for that long. Even now, they still have to deal with having a father that served time because there are many people out there who don’t look at them in a positive light, and they don’t deserve that. It is something that we have to live with.
Selling Hard Lessons: Going to prison and doing time is only a small portion of what you lose by doing wrong.I lost a lot. They didn’t deserve to lose anything. Moving forward is the only choice you have. I’m not oblivious to pain and loss. If you read my book, there is a lot of tragedy in my life. I lost my brother in 2013. He was only two and a half years older than me. There are a lot of things that I have seen. For those who suffered as a result of my involvement in the opioid crisis and so forth, there are no words to undo what I have done.
What I’m trying to do now is things like this, speak, share my story, get through to people like myself who were young, ambitious, susceptible to the mighty dollar and greed that comes along with it, and help them understand that passion is great, but not channeled appropriately could hurt them as well as other people that may be touched by what they get involved in.
My sales course talks a lot about, “I’m going to make you successful in sales.” I know how to do that. I’ve been doing that my whole life, but I’m also going to help you prevent yourself from your biggest enemy, and that is you. You are getting in the way because you are overzealous in your efforts. My consulting services and my ambition to speak on a larger scale and tell my story, I have already started, and I will do that for the rest of my life.
When I was in pharmaceuticals, the thing that I loved to do the most at the highest level was to get up on stage and speak to a large group of people and motivate, excite and touch. My message was all geared towards more and more. Now I need to change my message. I want to change my message, and I am changing my message. I’m still excited about the opportunity to do what I have always loved to do. That is to get in front of people and convey a message, but this time, a message that matters, or at least, in my opinion, matters.
Thank you again for sharing your story with us. The good thing about losing everything almost all at once is that it gets you clear. It is not like you have a lot of things that you have to focus on. You have to focus only on one thing. I’m not saying again that it is a good thing. It is that when that happens, you have the opportunity to focus in a way probably like never before. You clearly have done that.
Let’s talk about what it takes to do a great job as a salesperson. I’m talking about anybody who is selling anything, reading the blog and wants to learn from you. What do you say to them? What is the first lesson? Where are the things they need to be aware of or careful of? Why don’t you talk a little bit about that stuff for us?
There are a couple of different areas. First of all, many salespeople think the harder they work, the more results they will produce. I don’t agree. There is only so much to go around on a daily basis. If you exhaust yourself by putting your time, money, and resources into people that aren’t buyers, you are going to kill yourself. In the end, you are going to burn out.
Targeting is crucial. It’s identifying the right target. You cannot waste too much time doing that. You got to be able to weed through viable targets and the people that you need to keep passing over. I teach specific principles on how to do that. You want to be able to identify through focus open-ended questions their social style. You want to determine quickly. Are they amiable, analytical, drivers or environment?
If they are amiable, they are relationship-type people. They don’t buy from anyone that they don’t know, like and trust, and feel that they are friends with. You need to sit down with these people, look in the eye and have a cup of coffee with them ASAP and sit there for 4, 5, or 6 hours, whatever it takes. You are not wasting your time.
If it is analytical, it is the exact opposite. They are driven by data and numbers. They want to see it in black and white. If you don’t have a study to support what you are saying or the right consensus report, you are not selling them. If you got it, give it to them. If you don’t, they are not the right customer for you. If they are a driver, these people are business-oriented. They are the bottom line. It is like, “Here is the newspaper. Give them the headlines.” Don’t go into the details of every particular article. You are going to lose them.
They are on the phone with you, and they are working on five other deals at the same time. You got to move fast. If you try to sell them like an amiable, you lose them. These are basic things that most people don’t do. If they do, they do it way too late. They are way less fair with their focus on open-ended questions, trying to identify these particular people, and they lose them.
Another thing is closing. Everybody knows that closing is the most important part of the sale. The problem is 99% of the people screw it up because they close prematurely. They close before they have earned the right to close. You must earn the right to close. You cannot ask for the business because you think it is time to ask for the business. You are going to blow it.
Selling Hard Lessons: Closing is the most important part of the sale. 99% of people mess this up because they close prematurely. They try to secure the deal before actually earning the right to close.Not only that, but even if you do get the business because you prematurely closed, you were aggressive, and you strong-armed them into it, they are going to have buyer’s remorse, they are going to back out later, and they are certainly not going to refer you to other people. You are not going to get that reoccurring income that you are looking for.
Closing is an art form, and it is all based on timing. I go through every single step-by-step process you need to implement in order to get to that critical point. If you follow my principles, you will find that closing, which most people say is oftentimes the most difficult part of the process, is the easiest. The customer is at that point saying to you, “Alec, you have been great. You have serviced me. You have answered all my questions and concerns. You have provided me with everything I need. What do I need to do to close this deal? Where do I sign?” It’s different things along those lines.
I want to ask you about something that I do. I sell software, and I’m not involved in the sale. It is all online, and it is only $29.97 a month. I also sell $15,000 coaching programs. I also sell a $100,000 package for those who want to build their own certification program. It sounds like a lot, but the ROI on that is beyond belief. It is incredible.
What I typically do is start by learning about this individual and their problem. I want to know what their problem is. I want to know what they are trying to solve and why no one else has been able to help them in the past. The second thing I do, which is maybe odd, but works well for me, is I start to use case studies by saying, “I had a client like that.” When I finish describing a particular client, I use my testimonials to close.
At some point, I say, “When do you want to get started?” That is my most aggressive closing question. It is about, “Take a look at what happened when I worked with Bob and Lily. See if you relate to that.” Usually, if it is a right fit and I pick the right testimony, and I have dozens of them, that person is going to say, “Can you do that for me?” That is how I do it. Is there a better way than that? Is that a different type of selling?
First of all, Mitch, I agree 100%. We do that in pharmaceuticals all the time. We would call it either third partying. I would speak to a physician and say, “Dr. Jones down the street had a similar patient. They presented with A, B, C and D symptoms. These were their potential precaution and warnings, and drug interactions.” They found this fit best with that particular patient type.
The other thing we would do is we are going to paint the patient picture. We would go in and say, “Dr. Jones, do you know that patient, Martha? She is 78 years old. She has pre-dementia. She is the one that always comes in and accuses your office staff of stealing her pocketbook. She is always wondering or concerned that she left her keys in the car. Her chart is this thick. She keeps coming back, and you don’t know what to do with her. That is the patient that would benefit from this medication.”
If he sees that patient that day, you know it is done, and it fits. That makes perfect sense. The only caveat is that particular type of sale is not necessarily perfect for everyone. It is based on their social style. Some people are not driven in that matter. I agree with you 100%. You want to find their need and pain point.
If they don’t need anything and they are not in pain from something, it is hard to sell them on something. People do buy things they want, but they buy things they need. That all 100% makes sense. I implement all of those strategies, but prior to going to the testimonial or the patient picture type of scenario, I do want to identify their social style. For example, if they are amiable and are all relationship-based, before I start talking about someone they can relate to, I need to get them to relate to me. That trumps everything.
It is the know-like-trust scenario. You got to get to know them. They got to get to know you. They got to like and trust you. That is where you are coming from. Let’s bring this to a physical realm. You and I both sell services, but there are people who sell stuff. Tell us about what that looks like. How is that different? Is it the same process?
As far as that is concerned with regards to selling something tangible, I have done it. I’m a firm believer that the principles are applicable across the board. It is the same idea. First of all, all day long, the most important thing I want to stress to people is that you are in sales because you are not a 9:00 to 5:00 guy. You are in sales because you want to have a life of your own and make money. Your time is valuable. You cannot waste it by spending time trying to sell to the wrong people.
You're in sales because you're not a nine-to-five guy. You want to have a life of your own.
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Whether or not you are selling something tangible or a service, you want to make sure that whomever it is you are interacting with or how you gather your leads, whatever that case might be, these are the right people. A lot of people exhaust their energy because they are targeting the wrong people. Their lead generation is off, or if they have a storefront, the customers come in, there is only one particular salesperson, and they are talking with the wrong customer. Timing is everything.
You also have to understand one key thing. When the right customer comes along, and you have identified them as a buyer, that is when you are no longer working on your own time schedule. A lot of people in sales say, “I got into sales so that I can work my own hours.” No. When you have someone who is a serious buyer, in order to get through to them and make that product sell, you have to show them that they are the most important person in the world. You have to drop everything and anything. You are available to them 24/7 because they are a commodity.
You have been waiting for this person to come along. Here they are, and you are going to tell them that you can’t work with them at this particular time, you are not available on this day, and you can’t drive or get on a plane. No, you are not going to be successful. Not at the level that you are looking to have. Conversely, if you can cross off the people that aren’t real buyers, you are going to find out if you apply my principles that you have more free time than you have ever had before. At the same time, be able to devote yourself 100%. What do I do? I’m going to sell them. You mentioned you have a $29 course, a $15,000 service, and $100,000. If I find the right customer, they are going to get the $100,000 service that I can share.
I’m glad you shared that. I was in the semiconductor industry when I first started in the business. I was an engineer. I tell the story in my book that I was jealous of the sales guy who was making five times more than I was. I went and applied for a sales job. Before I got a chance to do the interview, I went over to one of the best salespeople in the entire industry and said, “Can I buy you lunch?” I bought him lunch, and I said, “How did you learn to do this?”
He was a jock. He was a professional football player and went into sales. I’m like, “How did you learn how to do this? Did you know how to sell?” He was like, “I had no idea how to sell.” I’m like, “How did you learn?” He goes, “I enrolled in the Dale Carnegie Institute and took their sales course.” I said, “Thank you.” His name was Kevin Hunt. He was a professional ballplayer in the ‘80s.
I drove right over to the Dale Carnegie sales office, and at the time, it came out of my pocket. I paid for my own training, and I loved it. It was the greatest education I ever had. One of the first principles that Dale Carnegie teaches you is to make sure you are speaking to the right person, which is what you were saying before. That was a great lesson.
We are going to transition to a different part of the interview now. If it is okay with you, what I like to do is get a little bit more information about some of your thought processes, and we do that with a few silly questions, but fun for me. Here is the first question. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
I’m going to go with my gut. I’m going to say, Sylvester Stallone. I would love to spend some time with him. The guy is inspirational. He is intelligent regardless of the way he talks. I love his movies and his story. I love the story of an underdog. I have learned a lot from him. His movies, quotes, personal story and tragedy, I followed him. He had a lot of tragedies in his life. That is somebody that I feel like I can relate to, people that have not had a perfect life.
He always says that one thing, “It is not about how many times you got knocked down, but it is about how many times you can get hit, get up and keep moving forward.” It may sound a little corny, but it helps me get through each day because I have been knocked down, and I continue to get knocked down. There are a lot of people out there who want to see me stay down. A guy like Sylvester Stallone is a huge motivator for me.
Let’s put this in perspective. When you say you didn’t have a perfect life, I got to tell you something, you did. That is part of what I always believed. I believe that we are all having the life that we were designed to have, and we are at the place in life that we were designed to reach at the moment in time that you are reading these words.
It doesn’t mean you have to stay there and it won’t change. What it means is you are in control, but everything that happens has always happened and will continue to happen for the right reasons, even if you don’t understand them at the moment they happen. Sylvester Stallone, you, and I have had times in life that we wish we didn’t have. The bottom line is that we learn from those things and get better at being alive.
The true purpose of every single person on this planet, whether they know it or not, is to help others. You are involved in that, and that is the most important thing. If you are not helping others, it is going to be hard to make an impact on the life that you want. Thank you for that answer. It made a lot of sense. My only other question for you before we go on to the next part is, does this time that you have taken to redevelop yourself, are you pleased with that? Are you happy that you did that? Do you see that as an area or a time of growth in your life? That is important. I want to know the answer to that.
I see it as an area of growth in my life, but you asked me if I’m pleased or happy with it. No, I am not yet content because I am not there yet. I am a work in progress. I have a long way to go. I spoke to some students at the University of Washington. I was privy to their comments after I spoke. There were students who felt that I had not learned my lesson or I might do the same thing again in some way, shape, or form.
I needed to hear that. That was an eye-opener for me, and that tells me that I got a lot of work to do. To say I’m pleased would be extremely wrong and arrogant of myself. I’m far past that. Humility is something that I have grown to understand and live every day. Yes, I see it as a growth opportunity, and I believe I have grown. I just know that I have got to continue to grow. I got it from someone else, but I have been saying it for a long time, “If you are not moving forward, you are moving back.” I want to make sure I continue to move forward.
If you're not moving forward, you're moving backward. Make sure you always continue moving forward.
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Here is the grand finale. This is the change the world question. Are you ready?
Yes.
I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
I love to speak, motivate, coach, touch people and give a message that is important. In that regard, my message is to be wary or leery of greed. That greed is the root of all evil. As far as changing the world, perhaps, I could get even a little bit more disciplined in the fact that I had a role of exacerbating the opioid epidemic because I sold a medication that wasn’t an opioid. I sold it in an inappropriate manner, did things that were wrong and accelerated the pandemic.
I would jump at any opportunity to do anything that would come back, whatever it is that I did, but whatever it is that is occurring and will continue to occur moving forward. I’m in touch with someone who is the CEO of a company. Their entire mission statement is to combat the opioid epidemic. We have been conversing about that for several years and trying to figure out a way in which I could have the greatest impact. I got some cool aspirations but saying is one thing, and doing is another, and I got a lot to do.
I know you will get it done, and you will keep doing it. Before we end this interview, I wanted to remind you that you had mentioned a couple of things that I thought were great offers to our readers. One of them was a free consult. Tell us a little bit about that.
I offer a free twenty-minute consultation. We get on a Zoom call, and we meet face to face. I’m open to anything that the person on the other end might want to ask or say to me, whatever the case might be. For me, the primary purpose of the consultation is to assess whether or not I can help them as it pertains to obtaining a level of sales that they would be happy with. The majority of people I work with are entry-level salespeople, people coming out of college, and people who are in sales but are struggling to hit quota and feeling pressure. They know they can do it, but they know they are missing something.
I had a tremendous amount of success with those people, but I need to have a one-on-one conversation with those people to identify what it is that they are looking for and make sure not only assess their needs but meet their needs. If I can, I’m going to offer them access to my digital course for a nominal fee, or we will get a little bit more intense and get into some one-on-one training. The twenty minutes is to figure out what it is, if anything, that is needed and that I can help with.
Alec, you also mentioned you were willing to give away the book that you are selling on Amazon for free to our readers. Is that still true?
It is for sale on Amazon for $25. I’m not looking to sell books. I’m happy to give that away for free. Anyone who is interested, email me at Training@ABurlakoff.com, and I will respond to them with a downloadable version of the book. It is not a problem whatsoever. It is my pleasure to do it.
Alec, it has been a joy chatting with you. I appreciated hearing your wisdom and story. I hope readers that you did too because, as you know, this isn’t a typical type of interview I do. I felt it was important to do because this gentleman, Alec, you are a standup guy, and I will be cheering for you going forward here. I want to see you take what you have created for yourself and turn it into real genuine gold.
Thank you very much, Mitch. It has been a pleasure, honor and privilege to spend this time with you. Thank you for having me.
Important Links ClientFol.io * Alec Burlakoff * Selling: Hard Lessons Learned * The Hard Sell* * Dale Carnegie Institute * Training@ABurlakoff.com
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When you want to scale your startup, you need to market it correctly. You want to make sure you’re solving a problem, especially if your product is some kind of software. This is what Jonathan Zacks did with GoReminders. He saw that people were missing their appointments, and so much money was being wasted on this. So, he started work on a solution. Join Mitch Russo as he talks with Jonathan about how he scaled up GoReminders. Discover how he marketed it on social media. Find out how he is building up his business by just focusing on it, no matter his end goal. Listen to his startup story and get inspired to grow one yourself!
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Listen to the podcast hereScaling Your Startup Business To Success With Jonathan ZacksWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in, and extract wisdom you could use to grow your business with Your First Thousand Clients. I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. I want to tell you a story. In 2018, my coaching business was exploding. My clients were winning, and my time was all fully booked, but I had a problem. I was wasting more time on pre and post-session admin than I realized.
At the end of the week, it amounted to over four hours on preparing, reviewing, sending, finding, and updating client homework. I knew there had to be a better way. I searched for a coaching session management software and found lots of it. Nothing was easy to use, inexpensive, or easy to learn in under 30 minutes.
I decided to build my own, and I did. I released Clientfol.io in 2021, and it solved all my problems. Now my clients get their own dashboard to see their homework, fill in their accountability questions, and enter their weekly goal-tracking stats at their leisure. You can use it, too. Go to Clientfol.io, and give it a try for just $1.
Now, onto our guest and his incredible story. He started out posting flyers around town to help neighbors with their computers. He started getting more and more clients until he built a fully sustainable company, which evolved into a full-fledged consulting firm. While running that company, he had a consistent problem and decided it was so big a problem, he needed to start a new company called GoReminders, and he’s here to tell us how and why he did it. Welcome, Jonathan Zachs, to the show.
Thanks, Mitch. I appreciate you having me.
My pleasure, Jonathan. Tell us how this all gets started for you.
Do you want me to get started at the very beginning of my career?
In the intro, it said that you ran this company for fifteen years.
Yes.
Someone has a successful company. Generally, they don’t abandon it. They typically sell it or scale it. Tell us that story.
As you mentioned, I started putting up signs around town. The reason I had started putting up signs around town rather than getting a job at another company was because I graduated college right after the dotcom bubble head burst. All through my college career, it was like, “I’m going to get a fancy job. I’m a Computer Science major. I don’t need to be a rockstar programmer. I just need to have these basic skills.” Now, if you want to get a job at a fancy tech company, you actually have to be a hardcore engineer, and I was not that.
What I was really good at, as a hobby, was helping people fix their computers, showing them how to use their computers, translating from tech to human, and helping non-tech-savvy people figure out how to use technology. That has been a consistent theme in all my business career since then. It’s focusing on convenience, ease of use, and technology. How can I make some technology easy for the average person to be able to use?
The job prospects were minimal, so I started putting up signs around town, grew that business, knew a consulting firm. Somewhere along that path, I got an itch to build a product to build a software company. Not only one. I tried several. GoReminders is the one that has been successful. It started as a tiny side project. I knew very well the pain of no-show appointments. My friend, who’s now a cofounder, had an appointment that he got to call for a week after saying, “Your checkup at this eye hospital was supposed to happen last week.” It was one year after your procedure.
It was mind-boggling how much time and money must have been wasted because they just didn’t have any automated system that could remind people beforehand. They had someone manually calling people who didn’t show up. It seemed like such a huge problem in terms of revenue and time savings that we could solve. I had a ton of experience personally with no-shows. I’m going to clients, and it would always be mixed feelings. “I get a free hour now. I get to eat lunch now because there was a no-show.”
Scaling Your Startup: It was mind-boggling back then how much time and money was wasted because of no-show appointments. There was no automated system that could remind people beforehand.Once I added up the revenue and whatnot, it was a lot, 10%, 20%. Even that, can you imagine your business being that much more efficient and making that much more revenue and having that much extra time? Even a lot of businesses have way higher no-show rates. That’s how we got to this. It started out as a tiny side project, and now it is a full-fledged company and going well. I still do have my other company. I run both of those companies.
Let me ask you a question because I think this will help differentiate who you are and what you do. We all know that there are companies like Calendly that you sign up and people can book appointments with you on your calendar through that software. It’s probably $10 or $12 a month. I don’t use it, so I’m not entirely sure. Why isn’t that sufficient? Why do we need a product like you’ve created? Obviously, people are buying it and subscribing to it every month. We know it’s needed, but why?
One thing is that a lot of those software starts at $10 to $15 a month, but it scales in ways that don’t necessarily scale with someone’s business. With Calendly, if you need multiple event types, or if you need multiple team members or things that may or may not equate to value. Our pricing basically goes on appointments per month. We’re basically losing out on somebody.
There are some businesses that are very low volume, but they have a lot of money per appointment. Could we be making more money on those customers? Probably. Essentially, if you have 300 appointments a month, usually you’re able to pay more than someone who has 50 appointments a month. It’s not perfect, but that’s sort of how we go. It’s based on the volume of appointments which we think makes the most sense.
Our praising is super simple. It just scales that there is a starter plan, which has very low volume and very limited features to sort of get your feet wet. Other than that, our main plan is just the pricing goes up as you grow your business. The main difference between something like Calendly is that it is really built for people who are tech-savvy, often in the tech world.
The goal of Calendly is if you are having trouble wasting time or finding time to book an appointment, Calendly works really well. Calendly, Chili Piper, there are a bunch of applications that are specifically meant for one on one, “I want to get an appointment with this person.” Rather than emailing back and forth, let’s just share this booking form and try to find a common time.
Our software has online booking functionality but comes at it from a different angle. We are originally and still focused on businesses that have appointments, and their customers are able to book appointments. Often, the businesses that use us want to control their own calendar and not let their customers book their appointments, but they have problems getting their customers to show up. People are forgetful. There are a million reasons for no-shows.
How can we make sure that these valuable appointments actually happen after they’re booked? We have the booking functionality, but it’s not our main focus. We have a lot of functionality to get people to show up that Calendly, Acuity and these others don’t have. For example, if someone can’t show up, you want to know as soon as possible and you want to be able to fill that slot.
With our software, when our text reminder gets sent out, anyone can reply, the customer or the client can reply back saying, “I need to cancel that.” With some of those other competitors like Calendly and Acuity, you can’t actually get those responses. Some of them send an error to the client saying, “Your response didn’t go through.” Others, it just vanishes. It seems like it went through, which is the worst because then the client thinks they notified but never heard.
If that happens three days before an appointment, they have three days to fill it. They find out the person didn’t show up, and the person’s like, “Well, I told you.” We have a lot of functionality that those scheduling platforms don’t have that are really for making sure that avenue between the client and the business for communicating is fully open all the time.
You can send different messages at different time. You can say, “I only want to ask for confirmation three days before, but I don’t want to ask for confirmation in my hour before reminder because I don’t want to give them an out.” You can do a lot of things like that. We have two-way texting in our interface. That’s another feature that a lot of those don’t have.
Let’s go deeper here. It sounds like it’s a great product. I hope anyone reading might want to give it a shot and try it out. Here’s the part that I really want to understand better. We all run businesses. Everyone reading this show has a business of one sort or another. The real question is, how much business are they losing by not having a reminder system?
What I am really interested in is, have you ever done a white paper or a study on exactly the effect of a lost appointment is on a company? You might say if you miss your dentist’s appointment, you’re going to reschedule. You may not like that you have to wait seven more weeks to get there, but you don’t really lose the business. Has that been something you’ve ever talked about? Have you done any research in this area?
There’s a lot of anecdotal research that we’ve done, and there are studies out there that talk about how much. It’s six times ROI. There’s a lot of data out there that makes it a no-brainer. I can tell you some numbers that we have. I can also tell you anecdotally. You bring up dentists. I had to miss my dentist because I was sick months ago, and I still haven’t rescheduled. I’m busy. I really want to get there.
That happens all the time for businesses, and the magnitude that happens is huge. I missed it. I told them I couldn’t get there ahead of time. It wasn’t like I just missed it, but at that point, they were scheduling so far out. For all these reasons, it’s so important to get people to reschedule right then and be in communication with them. That was an example.
Scaling Your Startup: So many businesses schedule appointments so far out in their calendar that it’s so important to get people to reschedule right then and there.I couldn’t actually text. I had to call them to let them know. I wasn’t able to look at my calendar right then. If they had a texting avenue, I probably would’ve gotten it rescheduled. In terms of the dollar amount, I have one example that comes to mind of a case study that I’ve done with a customer. I’m on the call with them. I did a calculation.
They’re an autobody shop. They were like, “Before we used GoReminders, we’d have this many people line up, and they wouldn’t have time slots, and then they’d peel off after an hour of waiting because we couldn’t get to them, and then they never come back. It probably happened this many car appointments a week.” We ended up calculating that conservatively we’re getting them an additional $1,800 a week of revenue from our service that costs a lot less than that.
They were so happy to pay for it, and they also talked about the ease of use. They’re in Puerto Rico. He’s like, “My receptionist doesn’t speak a word of English. I set her up. I showed her for ten minutes. She’s been using it on her own for a year. Loves it. So easy.” Our interface is all in English. It was so easy that she doesn’t even need to know the language to fully use our software. They saved $10,000 or $8,000 a month in revenue recovered that they were just living without. They were like, “We didn’t know. We’re doing business, but it’s so much more efficient.”
Let’s switch gears here. Before we do, I just want to remind the readers that we are talking to Jonathan Zachs. He is the Founder and CEO of GoReminders. You, in fact, started this business with zero subscribers. You spent some money to build some code, and you had an MVP, minimum viable product, as we all do when we start out. How did you start getting customers? What worked and what didn’t?
The first customers we got were from Facebook ads. They were pretty straightforward ads that were targeted at people in industries that we thought might be relevant. It was just tugging on the emotion and the pain of someone not showing up. It was directly related to the problem that we’re solving. Are you waiting around for a no-show? Did another point person cancel last minute and you can’t fill it?
It was ads, I would say, that have been a lot of our success, especially in the beginning. How direct can we be? Could we reach a broader audience by being more roundabout and talking about growing your business? Maybe. Certainly, things we’ve tried since then. In the beginning, what really worked was finding people who had this problem, who were like, “Yes, this is the pain. You’ll solve it? Great.”
We were not talking about our software and the features. Our website was like 1, 2, 3, here are the steps. You enter the appointment, client gets reminded, client shows up. Keeping it super simple in terms of how we solve it, that worked to get people to use our software. At first, we actually tried like, “We’re so smart. We will require a credit card for anyone to try our software.”
Don't market the features or software of your product. Market to people who have a problem that you can solve.
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That didn’t work at all. You had no name recognition. You could search Google for us, nothing came up. No one gave us their credit card, and we weren’t spending a ton of money to get trials, but people would get to the second spot of the signup form, and nothing would happen. We’re like, “We need to get people using it. Let’s have a free plan.” That worked to get people to use it. It did not work to get people to pay us.
We relatively quickly switched to a free trial model, and that really is how we grew through the years. “You can try it for free. You don’t have to enter your credit card.” Now, we’re experimenting with some other avenues because we have a 30-day money-back guarantee, so we do mostly require credit card now, but we basically only want customers for who we can solve their problems. We’re not trying to focus on locking people in. If it’s not a good value for them, so be it. No problem. With that mindset, it really helps us focus on our core customers whose problems we can solve. Get them to try the software, see the value, and pay us.
This sounds obvious in a way, but the very first thing anyone needs to do when they start selling something is, as my friend Marcus A. Smith likes to say, “Find the blood-spurting problem.” Not an annoyance, not a casual issue, not a maybe that could have worked better, but a blood-spurting problem. One that absolutely stops you cold.
When I first started building the Clientfol.io software, which you read about at the beginning of the show, Clientfol.io solved an enormous problem for me. My blood-spurting problem was wasting time. I was wasting way too much time on session management, but there were things about that message by itself did not appeal to others. Others preferred the message of “Make more money.” If you’re reading this, it’s important to know not what’s important to you but what’s important to the client. It sounds like, over the years, you did that. You tried Facebook marketing. Where else have you spent money marketing your products?
Google. We paid lots of Google ads. We’ve invested in SEO. Creating pages that talk about our product. Those are the big ones. Facebook ads, which we do not use anymore. They’ve gotten too expensive for us and hasn’t been useful. Google ads and Facebook ads are so good for proving out a model. It’s like, can I get people to use our product? Can I get people to pay for it?
Google and Facebook ads are a good way to check if you can get people to use your product.
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If the question is, “Can I do it profitably?” totally separate question because, at the beginning, you’re not going to be great at running your ads. If you can at least get people to pay for it and use it, even if it’s not profitable, it’s like, “I have a nugget of something.” On the other hand, it’s really good for proving that you can’t. If we advertise something and we can’t get anyone, something needs to change. You shouldn’t keep running more ads because it’s not working.
This is what we all go through when we start a company. We start by trying to sell, which is great. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You refine your message to make sure you’re really hitting the right customer with the right problem. Secondarily, where do these people live? Do they live on Facebook? Do they live on LinkedIn? Do they live on Google? I got to tell you, our results are not that much different. We do advertise on Facebook as well. Not a lot, but we advertise enough. It’s mediocre at best. We’re about to do something quite radical for me. We’re about to go into business with the Chinese government and advertise on TikTok.
We’re exploring TikTok as well a little bit. We’re thinking about that.
Everybody’s a genius in some small area of the world. We found this guy who claims to be a TikTok genius and he’s had other clients like we are. Business applications. I’ll let you know if it works.
Let me know if it works because I’d love to talk to them.
I certainly will. It’s always searching for that next thing. The real question here is now, you’re creating a company and your company, I assume, has a small staff. Maybe a few full-time people, maybe a few contractors and part-timers, etc. What is the bigger picture here? Do you want to build this thing to grow it to a certain size and then find someone to hand you a big bucket of money? Did you buy it to enter an industry that you later can further immerse yourself in with other products, or maybe purchase your competitors or scale in different ways? What was the reason that you went into this?
All of those are thoughts that have crossed our minds and we considered. I would say we picked things that we felt like we could build a solution for, market a solution, and figure out the customers, and then we took it from there, and it snowballed. When you’re at this point, would I pick this industry right now? No, I wouldn’t build this software now. That’s good for me because we’re established.
On the other hand, it’s competitive. Competitive means there’s a market for it. We don’t have to educate people that this is necessarily a problem for a good segment of the population. They’re already having the problem. They think there’s a solution. They’re looking for solutions. There are plenty of people who are also not aware of that as huge a problem as it is for their business. At least there’s a market of people really looking for it.
When it's competitive, that means there's a market for it.
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That is the main aspect of it. In terms of the end goal, we don’t have a definitive end goal, my cofounder and I. What I’ve learned over the years in terms of the way I see it is essentially, regardless of the end goal, pretty much the steps are the same. Build the company unless it’s a dramatically different end goal. For example, if my end goal was fundraising. We’re self-funded. If it was a venture capital fundraising, it would be like, when are we going to do that?
Scaling Your Startup: Regardless of your end goal, the steps are the same. Just keep building your company. Keep getting customers, keep improving your product, and just run a good business.If we’re going to do that next year, then yes, now our actions need to change. If it’s like, “Maybe we’ll raise money in a few years,” this year isn’t really going to change. What has to happen this year is I need to keep building a solid business, getting customers, improve our product, keep up customer support, and all these things that are about running a good business.
Similarly, if I were trying to sell a business, am I trying to sell the business in the next six months? Now, my action plan has to be related to selling the business. If not, if my goal is in 3 to 5 years, I want it to either be so profitable or I want to be able to sell it, the steps right now are pretty much the same. Keep building a solid business and keep growing it as much as I can because that’s the way to get to being a profitable business. That’s the way to get to being a business that I could sell.
We’re all in that same spot. One of the things that I do when I advise my coaching clients is that I always ask them to constantly think about who the absolute best buyer would be. When I mean best buyer, I mean the person who would pay the most and needs what you have. That is the way I think about it.
I think about that all the time. I already know who should buy my company 3 or 5 years from now. For that reason, I am now focused on making sure that as my product evolves, there is a natural flow to that company’s products as well. That would be a way to start scaling the company from a different perspective. It’s the same advice that I give our readers and my own clients too.
Jonathan, this has been fascinating. I’d love to speak to another SaaS company owner all the time. In this case, readers, I hope you got a lot out of this, too. You know the questions, Jonathan. You saw them in advance. That’s a hint, by the way. I don’t always show the questions in advance, but I did this time. Here’s the question. It’s one of my favorites. Who, in all of space and time, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
I think that would be Harry Houdini, the magician.
Very original. No one said Harry Houdini. I love that. Remember, after 300-plus interviews, you get better. How many times do people talk about all the famous people? That’s a good one. Tell me why.
He was such a unique character. I did some reports on him. I was really into magic, doing magic tricks and whatnot as I was a kid. My dad was into it and still into it. It was a hobby. I was always just so intrigued by he was a super hard worker. His death, if I recall correctly from my sixth-grade report, was he used to do this trick where he had worked out his stomach muscles and his ab muscles so much that anyone could punch him and he would be fine.
He had to be prepared and someone, basically a fan or whatever, sucker punched him randomly, and he was a hard worker. He’s like, “I’m fine,” and went on working, went on with his tour, and died because of that. In some ways, I’m like, “Dude, take a break. You’re so successful. Go to a doctor.” I’ve also read some stuff about how he had told his spouse and family.
I’d heard similar things about Timothy Leary when he was dying that he had said, “Listen, if there’s an afterlife, I’m going to find a way to communicate with you.” I’m doing it if it’s happening. Just that concept of being so scientific about it. I am going to experiment on myself in a way. He’s just a unique personality.
What you brought up was what I was about to tell you. I was going to say, if you ever get to have this conversation with him, please ask him why he never came back. He was so good at what he did. I’m going to say what I think happened. When he dies, all of a sudden, he realizes, “You know what, that was all a game. That’s not real, anyway.”
He’s like, “It was all a game. Let me just let those people play it.”
Exactly, but we don’t know for sure. Someday we will find out one way or the other. Here’s the grand finale, and this is the change the world question. What is it that you’re doing, would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
I’ve thought about this question so much in my life, and I have no idea. That’s the real answer. I thought I knew it. Every day that I get older, I realize I just get more and more unsure of what to do. I would just say to encourage people to vote. How can we get more people to participate in democracy and whatnot? I get so pessimistic these days about things. In terms of changing the world, I don’t know. On a micro level, just be kind.
You did talk about something that you were going to give away for free as a gift. Do you want to tell us about what you have?
That’s our Appointment Show Up Maximizer Guide. That is our main guide. Basically, with no-shows, there are tons of reasons why people might no-show. It might be an emergency. It might be that they just forgot and they double-booked. It might be that they were ambivalent about the appointment. They might not like you. There might be a bunch of reasons. You can’t solve those reasons.
What you can do is have this crystal ball to look into to be like, ”Who is going to no-show in a few days?” If I need three days to fill an empty slot on my calendar, how can I find out three days ahead of time who is not going to be there? What this guide does is it talks about what to write in your reminder messages, how many reminder messages to send, and how to figure this out for your business.
As I said, it might be three days. You might only need a few hours. Some auto mechanics that we deal with only need a couple of hours. Some salespeople might only need a few hours, but others need a week. How to figure out for your business what schedule to do? How many reminders, how to remind people, what mediums to use? It goes through all that stuff.
You don’t have to use GoReminders for this. You could use another platform, you could do it all manually, but just getting past the hump of, “I’m not reminding people,” or “I might be reminding people and annoying them,” or “I’m worried about annoying them.” This guide basically just goes into all of those aspects. It’s pretty succinct. It has lots of words but not too long. It’s all about how to get people to show up to your appointments.
Jonathan, it’s a pleasure chatting with you. This was a great time. I really enjoyed our time together. If you enjoyed this conversation between Jonathan and I, would you drop me a quick note? Maybe subscribe to the show. Maybe even give us a nice five-star review. That would be so thrilling to me. I can’t tell you. Silly little things like that make me very happy. If you could do that, it would be fantastic and I’d appreciate it. Jonathan, you take care and we will talk again soon.
Great seeing you, Mitch. Thanks for having me.
My pleasure. Talk to you soon.
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The post Scaling Your Startup Business To Success With Jonathan Zacks appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Have you grown tired of working in the corporate world? Sit tight and enjoy this fantastic journey with the guest today! Rick Elmore shares his path into entrepreneurship and how he tackled the simplicity of a common problem in the entrepreneurial way. Through his technology, he was able to do things better than what others were doing. Although technology is not the only way to make a company valuable, Rick also shares how he rapidly scales his business with millions of revenue! Tune in to this episode, and don’t miss out on this gift!
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Listen to the podcast hereThe Entrepreneurial Way: Breaking Free From The Corporate World With Rick ElmoreIn this episode, I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. If you’re a coach, you want to read carefully. I’ve been a coach for many years. I made some discoveries that have really transformed the results my clients get by working with me. I didn’t realize these things or procedures that I do is quite unique.
Every time I share it, people have said they never heard of anything like it before. I wrote a short but very powerful book called Coach Elevation. You can go to Amazon.com and buy Coach Elevation. You can get it as a Kindle edition or hard copy, or you can download it for free right here at *CoachElevation.com. Go there and download your free book now and start incorporating this very simple but powerful system into your own coaching work.*
Onto our guest and his incredible story. My guest was stuck in a corporate world with the desire to break free. Not that life was bad. He broke every sales record in sight but he realized he needed a way out. That’s the entrepreneurial way. One day, inspiration struck that need no one has successfully fulfilled. A big one that now is responsible for millions in revenue and some incredible technology with a rapidly growing company.
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Welcome, Rick Elmore, to the show.
Thanks for having me here, Mitch. That was quite the introduction.
No problem. I take a little bit of artistic liberty there sometime. What we’ll do is we’ll get started and go right back to the beginning. Rick, how did this all start for you?
You touched on it. My background is in athletics. I played college and professional sports. I got drafted into the NFL in 2011. I was fortunate to live up my childhood dream of playing in the NFL for three years. When I got done, I did what a lot of the guys did. When they get done playing professional sports, they get into medical device sales or highly competitive corporate sales because it’s challenging, rewarding, and fun.
In my first year, I was Rookie of the Year. I was either the top 1% or the top 5% rep in my company. I had an itch that this can scratch with what I was doing at that time. I was doing a lot of stuff. I was on a rowing team training for the Olympics and I was training for an Ironman. I was doing good in school but we were having our first kid. I was like, “There has to be something else.” I went back and did my MBA. I still had a couple of classes left when I started this company.
I was in a Marketing class and I had a professor going over the success rates in marketing. Everything was super nominal. Being in sales, I was always trying to absorb things to make me better. Cold calling was low. Cold emails and everything were super marginal. The professor ended the lecture with a joke saying, “You know what still works nowadays, if not even more than ever, is a good old-fashioned handwritten note.” I was like, “That is a no-brainer, but how am I going to send 400 handwritten notes to my clients that I had at that time?” It took me and my wife two weekends just to fill out an address on an envelope and put a Christmas card in it so we got to work.
Fast forward to a couple of years of doing this full-time, I had eleven employees. We’re going to be 5,000 in 2022. We have millions in revenue. We’ve developed and built our own handwriting robots. We have six patents on it. We have over 300,000 users on our platform every month. It’s been an absolute wild ride, to say the least.
Rick, I’d like to unpack a little bit of that because it’s fascinating to me. First of all, my background is in electrical engineering and computer science. I was responsible for some of the original computers that they used to call minicomputers. It’s the size of a refrigerator. What I’m interested in is technology. I know that we’re going to geek out a little bit here. I saw a video of your machine and it’s amazing.
It is an actual handwritten letter, but the hand happens to be a machine. You explained to me that you couldn’t go too fast because the ink cartridges will get ruined or burn up. You can’t go too slow or else it won’t be profitable. How did you come up with this technology, and once you had the idea for building a machine, what did you do? Did you look for a partner? Did you look for a design engineering firm?
Those are a lot of great questions. I haven’t talked to a podcast host yet who has an engineering background, so I’m sure we could talk for hours here because this topic is infinitely interesting. When I started this company, I needed somebody that was extremely opposite of me because I’m high-energy, super-go, and high-strung.
I knew somebody I grew up with that was super loyal and dedicated but the exact opposite of me. He’s super chill, never gets stressed out, and can take things really slow. I called him Buddy. I flew him out here to Phoenix, talked to him about my idea, and he never went back, so he started the company with me. What we did is we just got started.
If I had all the answers when I started this company, I would never have gotten started because this is still a few years in. It’s an extremely complicated business but what we did was we flew some technology in from China. It was a pen plotter at that time. No paper feed. It can actually draw a plotter. That’s when I had the entrepreneurial seizure moment. I wrote about 500 letters.
It took me weeks with this hand-fed robot. That’s when I sent them out. I got some doctors that call me back and the doctors are like, “This is cool.” I kind of fooled them. They thought I sent them a handwritten note. I had some success and got some sales from it. Once I knew I wanted to start a business, I looked for some off-the-shelf stuff.
There was an autopen company here in the United States, but that was meant for the executives and political figures to sign documents. We made that work for about a year and a half. This company was always in the back of my mind to be built to sell. I knew in order to sell this business, we were going to have to be number one and have the best technology, service, and platform.
Have the best technology, the best service, the best platform.
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For us to be able to scale it and make an attractive company to do, we had to build our own handwriting robot. There were too many restrictions and problems with the technologies that are out there. We even invented our own pen. I know we talked about this last time, but we built our own pen because the pens that we use run out too fast.
We built our own weighted pen cartridge, and then our pen inserts that have 300% more ink so they can last the whole day, and we can control what type of ink it’s gone into it. What I did was do what I did when I was in football. I was relentless and never gave up anytime I hit a roadblock. I’m trying to get better at this now, but I used to run through it with my head and slam it into the wall until I broke it down. I’m trying to get better at that now.
Entrepreneurial Way: Never give up anytime you hit a roadblock.I worked with fourteen different engineering firms. We went through four Phase 0s. I’m sure if you’re an electrical engineer, you don’t understand what that is. We finally pulled the trigger and we found a good engineering company here locally. I spent six figures on consulting before we even started the project. I knew that this was a big mess if I got it wrong because it was extremely expensive and complicated.
Now I have a full-stack developer and a front-end developer. All these guys are on retainers, but they’re making money every single month. I have a software developer and an electrical engineer. It’s extremely important. I’m talking to that guy literally every day. This project is all electrical engineering. It’s all about timing and movements. A mechanical team as well. It’s been a wild ride.
What happens when you run out of capacity? Do you have your team build another machine or do you order a machine?
That’s another reason why we needed to do this. The plotters were not a good option because they’re supported by a husband-and-wife team here in the US. You don’t ever want to tell or acquire in the future like, “By the way, our technology is off the shelf. When they can get into us, we’re going to get it to them.” Basically, as our business scales, we build and add more machines to the assembly line. It’s an army of writing robots.
We can also build ours for a fraction of the cost or what it costs these other companies to buy these off-the-shelf solutions. I know I drink around Kool-Aid here, but I’m involved in every detail of this project, so I know. From the pen technology to the ink that comes out of the pen to the handwriting software, we have full control of the software. We’re not using any third-party software like Inkscape. If you’re familiar with 3D printers, you know what Inkscape is. We can control the handwriting engine and font variability. It’s been really fun. I definitely bit off a lot more than I can chew, but I’m glad I did because it’s made me so much more of a business person and more capable as a person as well.
It’s amazing how much you learned by scaling a business. When I scaled TimeSlips Corporation, I was only 28 years old. I knew nothing. I swear to God, I hardly knew how to operate a checking account. The bottom line is you learn. You’re basically immersed in it and you have to figure everything out. That’s the journey. The other thing I noticed on your website is that you were smart enough to apply for and get utility patents and full patents. If you’re ever going to sell this, you got to have that.
That’s another thing. I looked at where I wanted to be in ten years, and I was like, “I had to reverse-engineer it.” If I want to sell this company for X, how am I going to do that? We have to have so many users. If we got to these many users, how much equipment? How are we going to get there? A strong foundation. Basically, we’re reverse-engineering this. We’re applying for 6 total patents to redesign 3 utilities. I do subscribe to the thought that a patent is a lawsuit coupon. We don’t plan on selling these anytime soon but if somebody wants to buy us and may want to sell it in the future, let them deal with it. I wanted to give them a really cool product that was protected so that they can do whatever they want with it when we exit eventually.
Let’s talk about the exit. I think there are a lot of readers here who have businesses. They’ve either scaled them or are in the process of scaling them. What you said that I really liked is you reverse-engineered the end game or the liquidity event. Talk a little bit about that. What were you looking at when you saw yourself a few years from now? How did you think about how that would apply now?
My background is in athletics, and all I’ve ever done is study the competition. We used to watch 3 hours a day of our competitors on film before we even went out to our 3-hour practice. What we immediately needed to do was build a more attractive and complete solution. There is a competitor out there that has been around a little bit longer than us, but we’ll catch up with some of the software stuff that’s external.
What we wanted to do is build the most compelling product from start to finish. The user base, usability, technology, and vertical integration of how everything works. It’s not like we’re getting outside resources to bring stuff in here. We run our own printing press. Everything’s done in-house. We have our in-house designers.
Build the most compelling product from start to finish.
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As I said, we’re creating our own pens. We brought everything inside to control it. That was my way of creating the most compelling product for somebody who would buy our business. All I did was sit out there and see what other people were doing. I was like, “We needed to do it better.” The way that we’re going to do it better is through our technology.
The tech is fine, but tech alone doesn’t make a valuable company, particularly a company like yours. What makes a valuable company is growing revenue and a large subscriber base. Let’s talk about how you decided to start getting your first customers. Now that you’re way past 1,000 clients, how are you selling, and how did you get here? Tell us about the journey.
We had this cool saying in our locker room when I was in college. It said that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. I’ve always prided myself. I’m somebody who’s been more willing to try harder, work harder, and want it more. Activity always equaled results for me as long as you’re learning from failures. If you keep up your activity and find ways to scale it, you’re automatically going to be 99% more successful than anybody else.
Most people just do their job and go home, or they’re not willing to learn or try new things. That’s all I did. I called a lot. I figured out ways to scale my emails. We used our own letters, so we’d always send out letters to prospective clients. At the end of the letter, we’d always put a little, “PS: This was written by a robot.” That was always a good hook to their thought that it was a handwritten note.
I did massive amounts of activity. I did the B&I, the Chamber of Commerce, the EOS, and the vestige board meeting. I even did the postmasters. I literally did everything. Our business is so busy now. What I’m trying to do is do the whole Michael Gerber thing, The E-Myth. It’s like, “Start working on your business rather than working in it.” What I’m trying to do now is kill the King. It’s to get rid of me so I’m not the main connection in this business anymore.
Rick, let’s go back to the selling system. Do you have salespeople now? I’m assuming you didn’t start with salespeople. You were probably doing it all yourself.
I did everything myself until 2020. We do have multiple sales reps now. We do use some agencies and some booking platforms. I’m a tools guy. I’m always taking meetings on new programs and new software to learn what’s out there to help grow our business. I was in a meeting with a new SEO platform because I’m all about organic growth and keeping people coming back organically, not ads. We have some competitors. All they do is dump money in ads. They don’t dump money into their platform and their product.
Entrepreneurial Way: Keep people coming back organically, not through ads. Some competitors dump money in ads. They don’t dump money into their platform or their product.When you started selling, I assume you went right to the medical industry because that’s where you were from. Who did you go to inside the corporation to pitch handwritten letters?
My background is in Stryker, which is an orthopedic spine surgery so I was working with spine surgeons. I had one good friend that was still there. I never did any business with him but I respected him a lot because he was a successful businessman and doctor in his industry. I went and talked to him before I even got started. I was like, “What do you think about this?” He said, “It’s an amazing idea. You absolutely need to chase this. This is going to blow up.”
When I got done with orthopedic surgery, I went to dental. Dental is the backbone of the US in small business. There are over 300,000 small dental practices out there, so they’re all small businesses. They get what I’m going through because they’re running payroll, marketing, buying, and paying bills. I’ve had a few relationships in that industry. Again, relationships are everything across anything that you do.
Some of the clients that I worked with were the ones that helped me get going. They supported me early on. They did some test orders. We burst some bumps and bruises on things. We’re not using the right postage and making some big mistakes on some of the rules of the post office. Seriously, we had people at the post office who would check our mail every time we drop it off, and they would shake their heads like, “You guys have no clue what you’re doing.”
I would go back to my friend and I was like, “The postage is $0.20 more. Do you care?” They were super patient with us. You got to have relationships early on to put a little bit of wind in your sails to at least help you work through some of the kinks. I would knock on doors and go to insurance, real estate, and mortgage companies. I go drop off samples and see if I can talk to anybody. I did the whole B&I thing. What worked for me is SEO. We’ve spent so much time in two years to get people who had search intent to come to us when they’re ready to buy versus me trying to cram it down their throat like, “You need to use handwritten notes.”
That’s a great idea. I got started with a new SEO company called Diib. They’re fantastic. They’ve done a great job so far. I didn’t probably pay attention to SEO until about 2021.
One of my biggest regrets is not starting it right at the beginning. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s why I’m a big podcast fan. I’m always listening for carrots. Anybody who’s reading this, that’s a carrot. Start now because you’re two-years-from-now self will thank you. These guys who are paying $5,000 a month in leads, I’m getting those leads on the same day. We’re getting 50% to 100% leads a day. They’re not all great leads, but not all great leads are great. I’m not paying for them month after month. It’s just the work that we’ve put in 18 months to 2 years. It’s paying off now.
You don't know what you don't know.
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You mentioned earlier that you keep going back to your football days about sayings, slogans, and practices. I got off a show with a guy who came out of the Air Force. It was like the same thing. He’s going back to all his military sayings and all. I look at my own life and I go back to those days of building a software company. My terminology is still based on KPIs, software, and production. We are who we grew up to be or grew up professionally through as who you are now. Before I move on to the next part of the show, what advice would you have for somebody who’s dedicated to getting started, they might even still be working another job but they’re determined like you were to make a go.
If I was talking to my son and he was starting a business, I wouId say, “You can’t wait to have all the answers. You’re never going to have all the answers.” You’re going to be ten years in the business and you’re still not going to have all the answers. All you can do is do the best with what you have right now and get started. There are tons, but you got to want it as bad as you want to breathe because I guarantee you, and this is 100% honest, somebody else out there does want it more than you. If you don’t want it more than that person, that person is going to win because they’re willing to work harder, stay later, self-educate, invest back into themselves and do whatever it takes to beat you.
I do feel that that’s why I’ve been able to be successful in this industry. I have no software or technical background. I have an extreme amount of drive, competitive spirit, and perseverance. I have two decades of this built into my DNA. That’s why I’ve been able to do this. Get started. Don’t wait. Want it so bad, just as bad as you want to breathe, and learn, never give up. I’m telling you, you’re going to look back after a couple of years, you’ll be like, “Look at what we’ve done.” That’s what we have done here. It’s a 3,000-square-foot space and we’re blowing out of this. We’ve built technologies. We have a huge platform and I have no experience doing this. Anybody can do it if I can do it. I’ll work with you.
I’m going to give you a new nickname. You’re the Elon Musk of the handwritten note business.
I appreciate that. I’m a fan of his. That guy has an incredible mind, to say the least.
Notice that everything he did, he never did before. Do you think he has ever built a rocket before? He didn’t.
Do you want to know how he learned that? By literally taking people to dinner, asking them questions, and reading books. That’s how he did it and hiring people that are smarter than him like what I did. I hired an engineering firm and developers. You want to boil it down to that. I don’t have any of the technical skills to do this, but I have the drive to want to get it done and keep pushing like, “Let’s go. Let’s figure it out. Let’s set up a timetable. This is what we’re going to get done in 10 or 20 days.” I hold them accountable. I’m a great product manager, I guess.
That’s what it takes. You’re a great business manager is what I’m hearing. A product manager is somebody who manages theoretically one element of the product cycle. You have to evolve into being a great business manager, which clearly you’ve done and are continuing to do. I want to go back to something you said. You said that you went to an associate in the beginning and asked what they thought of your idea. I want to caution people. When I first started my very first company, TimeSlips Corporation, I went to a company that is no longer in existence, Lotus Development Corporation, and spoke to the vice president of sales and marketing. I took him to lunch. I shared with him what my idea was, and he told me every reason I shouldn’t do it.
I’ll tell you why. It’s because that guy was an employee. He wasn’t an entrepreneur. I went to entrepreneurs, people who ran their own businesses, and they knew the spark. You can’t talk to people who have those closed minds because they’re kept in their box. Kevin O’Leary said that great quote, “Your salary is the drug they give you to forgive your dreams.” It really is. I’m telling you, I have tons of terrible days when things are going bad. I would have 1,000 of these days before I have another one of those days where I’m not living out my full potential and doing what I’m doing now.
Owning a business is a bit bipolar.
It perfectly is.
You’re swinging from up to down almost by the hour sometimes.
You go, “This is going to happen and everything is looking great.” Last second, something happens, then you’re down in the dumps. Something that you never knew was going to happen comes in. Stay steady, keep taking steps forward, and don’t make bad decisions that are going to tank your company. There was a book. I forgot what it’s called, but it’s the bullets and bowling balls. It’s like, “Always take small test shots before you take a huge big shot. Don’t blow your money thinking something is going to work before testing it and then blow that big shot when you know it’s going to work.” That’s what we’ve done a lot here. It’s a small investment. Lots of sweat equity but that’s what we’ve done to manage our money.
Entrepreneurial Way: Just stay steady. You know, keep taking steps forward, and don’t make bad decisions that will take your company.Of course, you got to do it that way. I love that. We’re going to transition to the second part of the show now where I get to ask you a couple of questions that are not necessarily about business. It’s more about you. The first question is this. Who, in all of space and time, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
Not to get personal but my father. He passed away when I was seven. It would be cool to sit down with him as a man and have a conversation. Professionally, I tend not to look up to anybody who hasn’t done what I’ve done. I used to look up to athletes, people who did what I was doing, but now that I’m done, I’ve moved on from that. I would say Elon Musk because he’s constantly out there pushing the envelope. As a businessman, maybe not in his personal life because I’ve been with my wife for many years, and that’s a very strong cornerstone in my foundation.
As a professional, that guy is unstoppable. It’s because he’s relentless. He explains that starting a business is two ways. Number one, it’s like a baby. I do simply notice my baby. I’m not going to not feed it or look after it. I’m not going to love it, or be like, “I am going to do all those things because it’s my baby.” He also says it’s like staring into the son of an abyss. Sometimes you’re literally staring into this problem you can’t solve and it’s so painful that you enjoy it because it’s something you’re so passionate about. I would say my father and then Elon Musk, for sure.
Others have said Elon Musk, no doubt. When I asked this question over 300 times, I get similar answers. What’s interesting is that why people name the same person is always different, and I appreciate your answer as well. I admire that quality, too. In a way, I love and hate that moment when you’re looking into the abyss because it summons from you some form of creativity and energy that nothing else can while it’s scary at first and it’s even frustrating.
When it shows up, it feels so good. Even if it’s a thread that you have to pull strand by strand until you finally get to what it is you’re trying to accomplish, it’s worth it. I’m glad you thought about naming him. He’s good. Here’s the grand finale. This is the change the world question. It allows you to think a little bit bigger here, Rick. What is it that you were doing or maybe would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
I’ve been asked this question a lot in the past, too. I always have a simple answer to this because a lot of people always look at huge, massive, big issues that become overwhelming. In my opinion, a more effective thing to do is to start at home. We have kids. If you can raise smart, self-loving, empathetic, passionate, hardworking, and never give up types of kids, those people, generation after generation, are going to change the world versus trying to tackle a problem that we’ve had for hundreds of years within a couple of years.
What I’m trying to do as a father is to be a great example. I’m trying to raise the platform of the Elmore family. I was the first person to go to college and be a professional athlete. I’m trying to be the person to sell a business and raise the bar a little bit here. Stop trying to sit there and think you got to solve some ridiculous, huge, massive problem where it’s going to take decades and thousands of people when you can start with the people you probably enjoy most hanging out with at home. Start at home. That’s definitely what I would do to change the world.
Stop trying to sit there and think you have to solve some ridiculous massive problem. Start with the people you probably enjoy most hanging out with at home.
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You’re right, it does change the world. It’s a great way to start. Rick, you told me at the beginning of the show that you had something really cool to give to our readers. What is that?
You can go to our website, make someone’s day and send them a card. Tell them you’re thinking about them. If you send a handwritten note to somebody, we’ll do it for you. It’s on us. To thank them, I guarantee you, they’re not going to expect that. They’re going to get it. They’re going to send you a text message. You’re going to make their day or they’re going to give you a call. Maybe do it to somebody you haven’t talked to in a while. Go to our website, SimplyNoted.com, use the checkout code 1FREE, and let us help you make someone’s day.
Thank you so much, Rick. It was a pleasure chatting with you and learning more about your company. I can’t wait to see the IPO filing.
I hope so.
That will be great.
You got some time to go. Thanks, Mitch. This is great.
My pleasure.
Important Links Amazon – Coach Elevation * CoachElevation.com * Rick Elmore * The E-Myth* * Diib
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Hitting the six-figure mark requires in-depth research, constant marketing refinement, and endless product improvement. But one vital element must never be neglected in all of these: building a strong target audience. This is where Brian Kurtz found success when running the publishing company Boardroom Reports. Joining Mitch Russo, he explains how they earned billions by keeping a consistent audience list and nurturing powerful connections with each one. Brian also shares valuable secrets behind his success, from changing the 40-40-20 marketing rule into 41-39-20, his incredible concept of RFM, to his unparalleled philosophy of over-delivering.
Brian’s Book: Overdeliverbook.com
Free Interview with Perry Marshall: BrianKurtz.net
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Listen to the podcast hereHow An Audience List Can Help You Hit The Six-Figure Mark With Brian KurtzI have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach for many years, I’ve made a few discoveries that have vastly improved client performance and satisfaction. I realized that by asking a few specific questions that are carefully crafted to bring a client to a personal realization about their true purpose, I was able to help my clients align their newly discovered true purpose with their true mission, and that ends up aligning everything we’re about to do together for incredible supercharging of all the results that you can get.
I’ve shared this technique in a free book called Coach Elevation. All you’ve got to do is go to *CoachElevation.com, download the book, and read it through. It’s a short read. An hour from now, you could be practicing the Coach Elevation Process on your own clients and seeing the magic that I’ve been able to get after doing this for many years.*
Now, onto this episode’s guest and his incredible story. If you’ve been in direct marketing for a while, you will likely recognize the name of an iconic publishing company called Boardroom Reports, of which I was a regular subscriber. All throughout the 1990s, I loved Boardroom Reports. You’re about to meet the man who helped grow that company to over $1 billion in revenue, selling $39 products, which is amazing.
After he left Boardroom Reports, he founded another amazing organization called Titans of Marketing, which is a coaching and education company, and still scaling rapidly. His book is called Overdeliver. He’s here to tell us more about this incredible new book. We’re going to share stories of our time together, knowledge of the industry, and all the things that we’ve gone through. Strap in. This is going to be a fun interview.
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Welcome, Brian Kurtz, to the show.
Thanks, Mitch. It’s great to be here. You reminded me, I was one of the early interviewees on this show. I contributed to its growth when it was small. Now, it’s big. I get to come back, talk some more, and share some stories with you. We’re not in the same business per se, although we overlap. There’s a Venn Diagram there. I do think that we overlap in terms of a lot of the same people and concepts that we both explored. I’m excited to be here.
It’s amazing how far of a history we’ve shared. We didn’t know each other for many of the years that we shared the same history, which is the case with many people. I have such fond memories of Boardroom Reports. I remember the cassette player in my used BMW while I was on the road selling, I wore out the cassette player in the dashboard and had to get a replacement because that’s how many of those cassettes I pushed through there. I enjoyed those. I used to love the Nightingale Conant tapes. To me, anytime driving was the time to learn.
It still is with all the podcasts. When I published Overdeliver in 2019, there was a story behind that as well. I remember that Hay House, my publisher, was saying that the fastest-growing part of book publishing was Audible or audio. I always thought it was Kindle and digital versions, but it is audio. It’s because of the same reasons for driving and people exercising, running, all of that. I’ve got a ton of Audible books on my phone. It’s very valuable.
Let’s go back to some of the stuff that you did as a refresher for me anyway, and certainly for some readers. When you were at Boardroom Reports, I remember the story of how you have taken under the wing of the founder and mentored them to grow that company. Give us an idea of some of the breakthroughs that hit you between the eyes when you thought about what it would take to sell a $39 product at the scale that you did.
It was Boardroom Reports when I got there, and then we changed it to Boardroom Inc. It’s interesting that we kept it Boardroom because it sounds like it’s business. We ended up being a consumer publisher because one of the big breakthroughs for us was realizing that when you have an audience of executives, but you have them at a home address, which is what we did, it was a lot of small businesses and home businesses. We realized, “We have the businessman at home. What about the businessman at home on topics not pertaining to business?” That became Bottom Line/Personal, which ended up eclipsing Boardroom Reports by tenfold.
Bottom Line/Personal became the flagship of the company. All of the books that we did early on were business and tax-oriented all the things that related to Boardroom Reports. One of the biggest breakthroughs early on was this transition from being B2C, but it was business information, tax information, and corporate-type stuff, but for small businesses. All of a sudden, we start getting into executive health, consumer issues, personal finance, and investing. We weren’t a stock picker newsletter but we were all about the consumer. It’s a bigger market. I’ve written a lot about that in my blog. People say in direct marketing that it’s not branding and that branding is crap.
It’s not because you have to know what your brand is and what it represents. You don’t just stick to a brand. It’s like the Wayne Gretzky quote, “You go where the puck is going, not where it is.” We saw this transition to consumer publishing being our big growth area then it transformed into the books we did. We had one book, The Book of Inside Information, which was all consumer information and some business stuff. That book sold three million copies in direct mail. That’s how you sell a lot of products at $39 when you sell volume like that. Someone asked me who was at Agora, which is a large newsletter publisher with over $1.5 billion in all their divisions.
Six-Figure Mark: You have to know what your brand is and what it represents. You don’t just stick to it without knowing where it is going.I spoke to their copywriting team, one of the divisions, and they asked me the question that I hate getting, which is what are my biggest regrets at Boardroom? I spent 34 years there. I had a lot of success, but a lot of failures too. This wasn’t a failure, it was a complete oversight in that I never developed an ascension program. I’m not going to say I. Nobody on the team did. When you get a million subscribers to a newsletter, like Bottom Line/Personal and the newsletter was powerful and got many renewals, it’s not $39. It’s three-year subscribers. Now all of a sudden, it’s a $120 ticket, but it’s $39 at a time.
With the books, $39 at a time and we developed an annual. That was a big breakthrough to get into renewals on books. It was interesting that it was $1 billion of business, $39 at a time without an ascension program. In the market that you and I are in, and we’ve been in for a while, everything is ascension. You start at $39.19. You go to $39.99. You go to a $1,500 coaching program and a $25,000 mastermind. We had nothing like that at Boardroom.
I learned all the same lessons. It wasn’t like I was avoiding doing ascension, but it was hard for us to do it because the information we were supplying was $39 information. If you’re doing a stock-picking newsletter that’s making people tons of money, you obviously can charge $1,500 for that. $39 is $39 because you’re giving them good consumer tips. I tried to institute a few programs where I wanted to do some courses like a retirement course where you had not to outlive your money and that type of stuff, but I never got it off the ground.
When I didn’t get it off the ground, Marty Edelston, who was the Founder of Boardroom was the guy that mentored me. He died in 2013. I decided that I wasn’t going to stay there for the long haul. I was an equity partner. I developed a lot of skills. He gave me a lot of freedom. I said, “I’m going to take what I’ve learned and teach it.” That’s coaching. That’s what you do. That’s what I do. I hate saying I’m a consultant. It sounds like you’re unemployed.
One of the things that you mentioned a good early part of our chat is you talked about the fact that you sold to the corporate marketplace, and here’s the key, but you got their home addresses. I don’t know if you realized back then that you were potentially paving the way for the future of the company by doing that.
The funny thing was my job, when I got to Boardroom, was the in-house list manager. That meant that I was marketing the Boardroom lists in the marketplace so everybody could use them. This is for direct mail. Most people took their list and gave it to an outside list manager to represent them in the marketplace. Boardroom because we were a newsletter, we didn’t have advertising. The only way to reach that audience was through its mailing lists and direct mail. There were no space ads in the publication. There was nothing that you could get to the audience. The other thing was that it was an audience that was sold completely on direct mail. The fact that they were responsive to direct mail, they were responsive to impulsive direct mail written by the top copywriters who lived at that time.
I’m talking about legends like Eugene Schwartz, Mel Martin, Jim Rutz, and Gary Bencivenga, then later on, Paris Propolis, David Deutsch, Arthur Johnson, Clayton Makepeace, and the best of the best. We had this list of executives at home who have bought through direct mail and impulsive, paranoia direct mail. Paranoia is not a psychosis. It’s survival. That was from Frederick Adler, a venture capitalist. They were mail-ordered junkies. I say that as fondly as I can. When you say that, “We knew what we had,” you did. Our average per name rented at one point was $5 a name, which was outrageous at that time. We were making $4 million to $5 million in list rental income. We were very aware of it.
The beauty for me, from my career standpoint, is that I was at the focal point of the list. everybody who wanted to use the Boardroom list had to come to me. It wasn’t just Money Magazine, Consumer Reports, and the financial newsletters, it was the Sharper Image catalog, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Paralyzed American Veterans. It was anybody and everybody because it was hard to think about a list not being vertical when you’re talking about a direct mail list in the consumer market. We had a horizontal list that encompassed many markets. That’s why we made much money on the list, but many people could use it. What did that do for my career? I met everybody in the list business.
They just came to me. I was in a lucky place, but I did do something spectacular. Not pounding myself on the back, but I became the best list manager in the country. The competition wasn’t very stiff. Most people were selling lists by giving out data cards. When I went to a list broker to sell the boardroom lists, I would go there with all of the mailing pieces that we had used to get the names on those lists from the best copywriters of all time. That was getting into the psyche of how the lists were built and how they were assembled.
That’s what that did for me for my career even nowadays when I think about an email list or any list and how it was derived and built building on the back of podcasts, for example. When you build a list based on podcasts, you’re building on the best content and you have the most voracious audience for your topic, products, and services. I learned much about the audience and how powerful it was. I’m not embarrassed to say I was a list guy because it gave me a tremendous leg up on most of the other people who are offer, product, and even copy people. The list is the most important thing.
When you build a list based on your podcast, you build on the best content and the most voracious audience for your topic, products, or services.
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Let’s see if we can translate some of your incredible experience into nowadays’ marketplace because there are a lot of people here reading this show now who are basic entrepreneurs. They have businesses of all different types. What would you say are the core takeaways for the guy who’s sitting at home, who probably has worked remotely for a while, can’t quite get to the six-figure mark, but here he is reading this blog? What should he know that could take him to the next level based on your experience?
One of the things is to look at direct marketing, meaning you’re measuring your marketing and getting an ROI on your marketing. Think about it as a three-legged stool. The three-legged stools are your list, audience or media, the people that you want to reach. You then have your offer, what you’re going to offer them, the product, terms, and all of that then the creative, the messaging that you’re going to use. If you look at it that way, there was a theory when I was starting in the business that talked about the 40/40/20 rule who said that any marketing campaign depends 40% on the list, 40% on the offer, and 20% on everything else, which to me is the messaging and creative.
I change that in my book, Overdeliver, to the 41/39/20 rule. The reason why I wanted to bump up the 40/40 to 41/39 is that I wanted everybody to understand that it’s to list the media and the audience that’s the most important. I can prove it quickly and say that if you have the best creative and offer, and you think your product is the best thing that’s ever been assembled, and built, your service is the best, and it goes out to the wrong audience, you’re not going to get any orders. You’ll get zero orders. The opposite is not true. The opposite is that if you get a perfect audience for what you’re selling and you have a mediocre offer and creative, you’ll make some sales.
However, if you get all three of those things working on the same level, now you’re talking about direct marketing nirvana. You’re talking about you’ve got the audience, developed the audience, and the audience doesn’t happen. You’ve got to go farm and research for it. You’ve got to go where your audience is and find out what they want. You’ve got to survey them. Even if you have 100 or 1,000 names on your list or your Facebook profile, you need to find out. It’s not what you want to deliver to them. It’s what they want then you have to deliver that to them.
Eugene Schwartz, one of the greatest copywriters of all time, and the author of Breakthrough Advertising, one of the greatest books of all time on copywriting, marketing, and human behavior for that matter used to say that, “It’s not that the copywriter or the marketer creates a desire in the marketplace for whatever they’re doing. The desire is already there. You have to go find it and then farm it with your offer and your creative.” That’s the job of the copywriter and the marketer. It’s not that abstract. I’m trying to simplify it for the person that you’re identifying.
The copywriter or marketer does not create the desire in the marketplace since it is already present. They only have to find it and farm it with your offer.
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They’re sitting at home and they want to build a business whether they’re from scratch or whatever. The first thing they have to do is they have to assess their assets. You assess, “What kind of names do I have available to me?” It could be an email list, a Facebook profile, a LinkedIn profile, or whatever you have as an audience. It might be some media that you’ve worked on, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. You’ve done some stuff on Google AdWords and you’ve tested a little bit.
You need to know where your audience is. You need to explore them and go on Facebook forums and Google groups. Be a bystander and a fly on the wall. See what your audience is talking about, the language that they’re using, and what they need and want. Before you put pen to paper for a sales letter or develop your product completely, find out where your audience is.
Dan Kennedy talks about something. He talks about marketing by walking around. You’ve got to walk around. It can’t be physically walking. If your audience is Walmart shoppers, go to Walmart and observe them. You have to observe them in a variety of places. You might want to go to Amazon and take a look at the books that you think your audience is buying. Go to those sites and see the 5 or 1-star reviews and look at what they’re saying about the topic that you’re thinking about marketing.
What I’m saying is you’ve got to do a lot of research. It doesn’t just, “I have an idea. I’m going to test it on Facebook.” You can do it that way, but it’s not going to stand the test of time. The reason it’s the test of time is that you research your market a mile deep as opposed to a mile wide then you go at it in terms of your offer. You’re creative once you’ve determined where your audience is, what they want, and where they hang out. That’s a big thing. Once you find that out, you can find out anything about your market.
Understanding the three legs of marketing and how they interact, get the list and your offer dialed in. If you’re not going to write the copy yourself, hire somebody who can do it. If you’re an entrepreneur and you have a product or service that’s in your sweet spot like Will Hamilton, who has a site called Fuzzy Yellow Balls. It’s teaching tennis instruction online. Will Hamilton doesn’t need a copywriter because he is a tennis enthusiast. He knows his market. Once he finds his list and develops his list, then he gets an offer like he develops an offer for a course or something, and the copy itself, he can write it because he might be his best own copywriter.
Most people can’t say that. Even if they know the market, Will check it out. He checks out some skilled copywriters to copy chief him and look at his copy. Even someone who knows the market and how to write for it needs some guidance and some coaching. Coaching in the copywriting world is paramount. Understanding how those three things work, which are list, offer, and creative, you could do all three, but you have to do them in order is one of the key things.
One of the other key things is that an entrepreneur sitting under $100,000 figuring out what to do, understand the concept of RFM. RFM is not a rule of thumb in direct marketing, but it’s a way people behave in the marketplace. Knowing what RFM is can give you a step up on a lot of other people who are floundering with how to a product to market. RFM is Recency Frequency and Monetary value. What it says is that someone who responds more recently is worth more than someone who doesn’t respond more recently. Someone who responds more frequently is worth more than someone who responds less frequently. Someone who spends more money is worth more than someone who spends less money. It’s putting those three things together.
I did it with a statistician, a PhD in Statistics, doing it in a Boardroom. We had a nine million name database that we had to do RFM across that. If you have 100 names and you have some people who bought from you, you can do this. Even if you don’t have any buyers, you have people who responded to you, then their recency could be their engagement with you. Their frequency is how often they do it. If they spend money with you, how much have they spent with you?
Six-Figure Mark: Even if you don’t have buyers but have people who frequently respond to you, their engagement alone will earn you a profit.It’s in my book. I talk about RFM. I didn’t invent it, but a lot of people say the way I’ve described it in Overdeliver gave them a good understanding of it. I’m proud of the way that I’ve done it in my book. Basically, if I had to choose two things, it’s to understand the three pillars and RFM. You’re on your way with some additional coaching to start researching your market and assessing what you have already. It’s not just the list you have. You might have a product. You might be able to get access to a product that you love that hasn’t been sold very well.
You could white label it, take it and make it your product for a fee. You pay a commission on it. You don’t have to make everything you do. You can buy it and then do it that way. Whatever it is you need to look at what you can get and what you have content. If you’ve developed any kind of content, you blog, you have books, any kind of pamphlets, or white papers in your field, that’s an asset. You need to use it to your advantage. You give it away for free online to get people’s names, and then you develop your list.
Six-Figure Mark: If you have any kind of content, consider them as assets. Use them to your advantage by giving them away for free to develop your audience list.Developing your own list takes a while and it doesn’t happen by magic. I didn’t have a list when I left Boardroom and I started doing some podcasts like this. I got people, 5 and 6 at a time to come on my list then every once in a while I get a bunch of people to get on my list. I don’t want to scrape people from Facebook and add them to my list. You want people who you want on your list who understand what you’re talking about. They understand who you are and you understand them.
My list for many years got to 15,000. It’s not huge and bot tiny but it’s big enough that I have a platform. When Hay House came to me, he said, “We want you to do your book with us.” They considered my platform big enough to give me an advance on my book. That was unexpected at that time. I realized that building your own platform is important and that you have to build a list no matter what you’re doing.
Let’s transition now to talking more about the book because Overdeliver is not just the title of the book. It’s your philosophy from everything I can see. I haven’t read the book yet, but I will tell you that the gifts that you give away when people buy the book to me are insane. For $29, I’m getting stuff that not only would I not normally have access to at all, but things that are very valuable by incredible people like Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham, and all these other things that you’re doing. Tell us a little bit about the book. Why you wrote it, how it evolved for you, and then from there, give us an overview of the process of bringing a book to market and how you put all these bonuses together. People would be interested in reading that.
You as an author know that everybody has a different writing style and way of putting together books. There are a lot of different ways to do it. There’s no one way to do it. The first book The Advertising Solution was a gift almost. It was Craig Simpson who was researching six of the greats of advertising who were the precursors to direct marketing. David Ogilvy, John Caples, Robert Collier, Claude Hopkins, Gary Halbert, and Eugene Schwartz. He came to me with a rough manuscript of the book and said, “Will you do this book with me?” I said, “What do you mean? You’ve already written it.” He goes, “It needs some spruce up and your touch.”
This is where he got me. He said, “If you say no, I’m going to do it myself.” Flattery, it doesn’t work on everybody but it works on me. He said, “I’m only going to do this book with you or I’m doing it alone.” I said, “You’re doing it with me.” That was my first book. It wasn’t in my voice. It was in Craig’s voice. I didn’t want to change the voice of the book. Every time I took the voice-over in the book, it was clear that I was taking over the voice in the book. It was good though because it got me realizing that I’ve got a big book in me. Now, it was Overdeliver.
Overdeliver was a book that I basically had been blogging about for 3 or 4 years. I said, “One day, I’m going to take my blogs, stick them in a book between two covers and I’ll sell that.” I realized that was no way to think about a book. I learned a lot on these podcasts. I was on a podcast with a guy and I talked about, “I want to do this book. I’m thinking about putting my blogs together and putting them between two covers.” He said, “Don’t do that. Hire a developmental editor.” I didn’t even know what a developmental editor was.
It’s a type of editor that helps you work on what you have. It’s like assessing your assets, “This is your content. How do you going to put it in a unified whole?” She helped me so much. Her name was Laura Hanley. We worked on it. I printed out every one of my blogs for four years and I sorted them. That became the chapters. I added stuff because I thought I would do interstitials between the blogs and that would be enough. It wasn’t enough.
Having that kind of editor made a huge difference in putting the book together. I realized that the book came together in ten chapters that made sense. It was a chapter on the original source, which is important to me, “Where do babies come from? The fundamentals.” Everything in direct marketing and online marketing has its roots in traditional direct marketing. That’s another thing that spurred me on to do the book. I read somewhere that the 40/40/20 rule was changed by some online marketer to the 25/25/25/25 rule.
His thing was it’s 25% list, 25% offer, 25%, creative, and 25% technology. That made me throw up in my mouth because technology is not fundamental. It’s a way to adapt. It’s a technique. In one of my chapters on Multichannel Marketing, I quote Bill Bernbach, who was an original advertising guy in the ‘60s. He said, “Never adapt your idea to a technique. Adapt your technique to the idea.” It’s not like the technique is ruling the day that’s technology. That spurred me on to do the book. There were a lot of things coming together with the book. I was able to get all of my case histories from Boardroom and how they apply nowadays.
Technology is not fundamental. It is a technique and a way to adapt.
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It started with the first book with Craig, but I got into it in a big way with Overdeliver. I was approached by Hay House. If you told me many years ago that I would ever get in advance on a book that I wrote, I would’ve told you you were crazy and a nice advance. It showed me that I had built something that I didn’t even realize I had built. I had built a new business. My previous business at Boardroom was certainly one that I have to hang a lot on because that was where I got 34 years of direct marketing experience.
That’s 34 years of cumulative experience, not 1 year’s experience for 34 years. The cumulative experience of Boardroom plus what I did since then to develop my masterminds and the people that I was learning from on a regular basis in online marketing. I had a lot to offer that I didn’t even realize. I’m sure you found that with your books. You don’t realize what you know until you put it on paper. Also, everybody has a story to tell.
That’s also the best way to learn something. In fact, if you think you know something, write a book or teach it and watch what happens. It has changed my life in many ways. We’re talking about the book called Overdeliver. Readers, if you’d like to, you can go to OverdeliverBook.com and I’m going to warn you in advance. You’ll probably get a little bit blown away by this list of courses, programs, and downloads. This is insane. You shouldn’t be given this away. Stop that. Don’t give this stuff away.
You go to that site and there’s a button to go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. The procedure is Step 1) Go to the site OverdeliverBook.com, then you have to go to Amazon to buy the book, then you got to come back. If you go to Amazon directly, you don’t get the bonuses. A lot of people go to Amazon and then they come back to me and they say, “I bought the book. Can I have the bonuses?” I give them to them.
In the book itself, the Overdeliver book site is there. They can go in as a buyer and get the bonuses as well. It’s a way to get them into my online family too. That’s the key. You’re always building your list. As a list guy, I have trouble calling my list a list. I always call it my online family even when I’m addressing this. It’s not lip service. I know Dan Kennedy has this thing about your herd and your herd is following you.
OverdeliverI think that it makes the people that you’re talking to and teaching impersonal. The word the list does too. Anything I can do to bring people into my world if they want to be there, and if they buy the book, they’ll want to be there because the book is my writing. All they’re going to do is get more of my writing. Even when they’re on my list and they’re part of my online family, I don’t do affiliate deals, for example.
I sell stuff that is of value in direct marketing education. I don’t take affiliate commissions. For someone to sell something to my online family, they have to agree to not pay me, but to give my audience a discount of 50%, which would’ve been my affiliate commission. It’s my way of adding to the education of them being in my online family. It made sense on OverdeliverBook.com to have all of these incredible bonuses from all of my mentors.
I was going to tell you a quick story because the book was launched on April 9, 2019. On April 10th, I had a near-fatal stroke. I’m not saying that for dramatic effect. It’s the truth. I almost died. I had podcasts and all kinds of stuff set up for April, May, June, and July through the summer, which had to be put on hold.
I wrote in my blog because I remembered that. You said at the beginning, I have a new book. It was very ironic that you said that because basically, I said in my blog that my book is on a perpetual launch. It came available on Amazon and bookstore on April 9, 2019, but it’s still available. It’s evergreen. I constantly refer to it in podcasts. I’ll probably do an update of it if I need to at some point. I know Jeff Walker did an update of his book launch and it’s selling well because it needed an update. Mine will need an update at some point.
This idea of a perpetual launch of your content is not just my book. It’s anybody’s content. You were talking that you’ve got all this stuff that you’ve assembled, reassembled, reused, repurposed, and made something different and new. That is an evolutionary way of dealing with your content and it’s assessing your assets in a new way every month, every year, or two years. This idea of a perpetual launch was something that I believe in. Having that site, OverdeliverBook.com, was almost more important than having the book. When I woke up for my stroke in the hospital, I certainly had to think about it because the doctor told me he thought I was going to die or I’d be paralyzed, which I wasn’t.
Six-Figure Mark: The evolutionary way of dealing with your content regularly is to assemble, reassemble, reuse, and repurpose it into something different and new.He said, “You’re in a 5% category of people who had the type of stroke you had to come out of it pretty much whole.” I always tell my wife when I forget something or I spill something, I have brain damage. That helps me out of things that I screw up around the house. It was interesting because I thought about lying in the hospital bed like, “What would be my footprint?” Not legacy, because legacy to me says you’re already dead. What’s my footprint in the industry? It can be a living legacy while I’m still alive and then hopefully, will live on after me. It was more about what I’m going to do with my life.
I was already doing what I wanted with my life before my stroke. It wasn’t like a come to Jesus moment where I said, “Now I’m going to live,” because I was already living in the moment. What happened was I realized the importance of mentors. You and I are about the same age. We both have incredible mentors. We have some of the same mentors. We were saying that we’re both writing a blurb for a new book by a friend of ours. I realized I stand on the shoulders of giants and then I looked at my OverdeliverBook.com page. I see all those giants either writing a testimonial for my book, but more importantly, the actual giveaways are from Gary Bencivenga, Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, Perry Marshall, Dick Benson, Gordon Grossman, Eugene Schwartz, and Joe Sugarman.
Joe passed already.
I wrote a tribute to him in my blog.
I had dinner with him in 2012. It was such a fun dinner. He kept asking me, “Am I going to buy the sunglasses or not?” It was incredible.
I put a link to the BluBlocker commercial in my blog of the one where he’s walking down Venice Beach. He got the best testimonials because he walked down Venice Beach. These people are saying that he has them put the glasses on. They put the glasses on and he’s filming them. He got these real testimonials. They weren’t making it up. Joe was a genius. All these mentors are on that page, then I realized, “That’s what it’s all about. My life is all about that.” It’s about my mentors, but it’s about remembering how what got you here. Remembrance is one of those things. I talk about this in other podcasts and on my blog, about the movie, Coco. It’s a Pixar movie. It’s Mexican. It talks about Dia de Muertos, which is the Day of the Dead.
Dia de Muertos is where, in Mexico, they spend 2 or 3 days honoring and celebrating the dead. They don’t mourn them. They celebrate them. They have parties and all of that. There’s death in Mexico and there’s final death. This is what Coco talks about. I have a poster of Coco. I’m a huge fan of the film. It’s a kids’ film, but it’s not a kids’ film. The idea that you’re not dead if you’re remembered is when you’re no longer remembered. That’s your final death.
I’ll think of an obscure one that no one is talking about like Al Azkhar. He was an all-time mail-order guy. I learned about him through Dan Kennedy and a few other people. You mention his name and now he lives. You have to keep mentioning him. Gordon Grossman and Dick Benson are two mentors in direct mail, both gone, but they wrote two of the best books on direct mail. I have full PDFs of their book on OverdeliverBook.com and then they’re not available anymore except on eBay or something so you can get the whole book.
I’m lying in my hospital bed and I said, “OverdeliverBook.com is now my footprint.” If I want to add some bonuses to that page, I will of new mentors or something like that. It was very meaningful to have all those bonuses. Not just because I wanted to overdeliver on the bonuses, but over-delivery is a philosophy of giving 100 zero. You are not meeting people halfway, not always getting the upper hand and everything, giving, contributing with no expectation of return. I’ve got 40-plus years to prove it. What comes back is incredible without expecting a return. That’s what over-delivery means to me.
Some people say over-delivery is a dangerous concept because when you overdeliver all the time, then you have another offer to people or you want to do something else for them. Your new offer isn’t as good as the one you overdelivered on originally. They always think what are you doing for me lately and all of that? I’d rather err on that side than underdeliver. Hope that they still want to follow me, learn from me and I can learn from them. Overdeliver is a concept to live by.
Some people consider overdelivering a dangerous concept. People would assume you would always do something else for them, or that your new offer isn't as good as the one you first delivered.
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I also want to mention one of the resources that you alerted me to at the beginning which is something I’m very interested in. I like Perry Marshall. He was on my show. We had a fantastic conversation. The other thing is that you have this site called BrianKurtz.net, where if somebody puts their name in, they’re going to get access to your interview with Perry.
It’s like an hour and a half, but it’s my three biggest successes in my career. The failures came after or during. One of them was probably a $300 million profit center over 4 years. We got on infomercials on TV. That alone is worth listening to. More importantly, on my site, there’s a lot of free content at BrianKurtz.net. The key is you have to opt in because I want you and my online family. The interview is a welcome mat.
You did a great job with this site. I love this site too. It’s remarkable. You are in every facet of everything I see always over-delivering and I love that. It’s been such a pleasure reconnecting with you again. Brian was probably one of my first 15 or 20 interviews that’s over 350 interviews ago.
The podcasts that have longevity are always the best ones.
I’m very comfortable doing this. I’m an extrovert, which means I’m energized by others like you. To me, this is a treat. Every time I get to break away from sitting around and writing copy or focusing on products, email books, or software, I get to talk to my buddies, my friends, all over the world, and interview them. That’s my joy. That’s what I call one of the greatest ways ever to have a wonderful life. It is to connect with others who you admire and appreciate. Y
I get diarrhea of the mouth when I start talking about direct marketing. If you give me one question, I go off. You have to do a lot. You steered me in a great direction. I appreciate your questions and your guidance. I’m a big fan of yours. I’ve seen what you’ve done over the years. You’ve pivoted in some neat ways too, and not just pivoting for pivoting sake. Everything is intentional and I appreciate that about you.
Thank you, Brian. I appreciate that too. It was great catching up again. Readers, you do need to go get the Overdeliver book at *OverdeliverBook.com. If you download the giveaways, it’s worth the price of admission. The book is a bonus. That’s the way I think about it.*
The bonuses are worth thousands of dollars.
Go check out BrianKurtz.net and listen to the Perry Marshall interview. That is incredibly valuable. If you don’t know Perry, he is one of the business thought leaders that I follow and I think you should too. To have Brian and Perry in the same room, I could even be quiet for a little while and experience that.
I was humbled. I did a video and it was Perry who initiated it. He called me and John Carlton, the all-time copywriter. He’s the marketing rebel and he’s known for ranting. Perry asked me and John to do a video on rants. I’m sitting there going, “I’m the nicest guy in direct marketing. I never rant.” By the end of that video, I realized we all rant in different styles. Perry’s got a guy to a perfect rant, like Nine Steps To A Perfect Rant. I looked at the steps and I said, “I do that in my own way.” John was all over it because he was always ranting.
It was one of the most insightful interviews I’ve ever done. It was with me, Perry and John Carlton. Sitting there on video with them is like sitting there on video with you. You’re looking at genius. You’re not trying to outdo the genius. You’re trying to add to the mix on screen. It’s so much fun. There’s nothing better than contributing and connecting.
Readers, go do that. You will love it. Brian, thank you much for your time. It’s valuable to listen to us old guys even if you’re in your 20s or 30s because 40 years does teach you a lot of lessons. Brian made a reference to me pivoting. Sometimes pivoting is not a choice. It’s something you have to do. I could tell you story after story about pivoting, but the most important thing is when you do a pivot and when you make that change, you learn a whole new part of your next life. That’s why I love doing it, but I love doing it the right way. It’s taken me a while to figure it out to do it.
Entrepreneurs don't have to learn how to pivot. It should be embedded in their very individuality. If you don't learn how to do it, you will have to work for somebody.
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It’s a lot of trial and error. The thing about pivoting, I wrote this during the pandemic and I said something like, “Entrepreneurs don’t have to learn how to pivot. Pivoting is embedded in being an entrepreneur. If you don’t learn how to do it, then you’re going to work for somebody else.”
Go digest everything that the two of us said and dig into all the content that we treated you to. I want to hear back from you. What did you like about this episode? What did Brian say that inspired you? Get back to me and let me know.
Thank you very much.
Important Links CoachElevation.com * Titans of Marketing * Overdeliver * Episode 34 – Past Episode * Bottom Line/Personal * The Book Of Inside Information * Breakthrough Advertising * The Advertising Solution * Amazon – Overdeliver* * Triggers, Sunglasses And A Marketing Superhero * A Fourth Life (Of Nine) * Perry Marshall – Past Episode * Perry Marshall – Brian Kurtz Podcast Previous Episode * Ranting and Raving
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We’ve all known entrepreneurs that have not only achieved a stable business but managed to grow them – and keep on growing on a remarkably huge level! How do they do it? How did these entrepreneurs recognize these huge opportunities? How do these great minds think? That’s what we’ll talk about in today’s episode with Rick Raddatz. Rick was a product designer, developer, and marketer at Microsoft for twelve years and has been a serial tech entrepreneur and CEO of MEETN for another twelve years. Join us as Rick shares his thought process and decision journey in finding the opportunity to build a huge business!
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Listen to the podcast hereHow Great Entrepreneurs Find Huge Business Opportunities With Rick RaddatzWelcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, read, and extract wisdom you could use to grow your business with your first thousand clients. If you’re reading and you are a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you. I have a software platform for coaches. It’s called Clientfol.io. It has been helping hundreds of coaches save time and get better results from their clients while generating powerful client testimonials for the work that you’ve done together. How? It’s by tracking and holding people accountable.
Nobody seems to do this. I know that there’s some software that does things like this, but this is the first platform that integrates entire session management with goal tracking and accountability. I want you to have it for $1. How’s that? All you got to do is go to GetClientfolio.com. Have a credit card ready for your $1 payment, and give it a world. See how it works for you. Start coaching clients. It takes about twenty minutes to learn. You could start that very day with sessions with your clients. Watch what happens next. Go to GetClientfolio.com and give it a spin. Now on to my amazing guest and his incredible story.
As you know, I like entrepreneurs. I actually think entrepreneurs can save the world. In fact, this entrepreneur you’ll meet is one of those rare individuals who had employees in the second grade. In high school, he started a software company. He was later recruited by Microsoft while still a sophomore in college and did three internships with them back when BASIC was a programming language.
Next, he started building companies of his own, four multimillion-dollar companies in four years. What did he do next? He retired. What kind of an entrepreneur retires? You’re going to find out. I told you he was an entrepreneur, but what do we know about this kind of folk? He actually never retire. What did he do? He did it again. This time, he founded a new software company. In fact, he decided to take on Zoom directly. Welcome, Rick Raddatz, to the show.
Thank you. It’s nice to be here.
Rick, how did this all start for you? This whole world of yours, when you started in school, you had your second-grade first employee. You clearly had this idea as a little boy that you wanted to have a business of your own. Why is that?
It wasn’t so much that I knew what entrepreneurship was in the second grade. I just knew that there was this thing called money, and I wanted more of it. I came up with this idea of selling little printed games on my dad’s Xerox machine or whatever he had going on back in 1970 something. He had a laser etching template system. It was like a little mini printer. It was very cool back then for his business. I figured out how that thing worked and thought, “I can make up these little TicTacToe and Nim and the little box games.” There are all kinds of little paper games you can play. This was before computers were a thing, at least in the home. That was high technology. The idea was I could sell these pieces of paper for $0.2. I sell a whole stack of them for a buck or whatever.
I thought, “Why should I do all that work?” I hired my younger sister, who was in first grade. She made one penny. I made the other penny. I gave her a 50% commission, which is a great commission. She didn’t have to do any of the work to set up the idea, the copying, and the production. She was a salesperson, so she got her fair commission. She went door to door. It was a cute little first-grader selling things. She sold better than I would’ve sold, probably. I don’t know how much we made. I invented the concept of employees or reinvented it. People are reinventing the wheel all the time. That was my start as an entrepreneur. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was my start.
Who paid the cost of goods on your paper game?
Another thing I learned is that my dad paid for the paper and the laser-engraved template-based copy machine. I had a little investor, donor, or patron. That’s second grade, so we can forgive that a little bit.
I love it. That’s good to know. This happened when you were a little boy and got a little bit older and made it through school. Tell us a little bit about your experience with Microsoft. What was going on with that?
We got to put ourselves back in time to 1988. People have been using PCs or the equivalent for roughly a decade or so. The TRS-80 came out in ’79. The IBM PC came out in ’81, approximately. We’re talking 6, 7, or 8 years of experience with PCs. Windows 1 was just coming out, which was bundled with Excel. No one was using Windows. You bought Excel, and that installed this weird thing called Windows. A lot of people were using Windows to have a couple of different DOS Windows open at one time. It’s a very early technology compared to what we have nowadays.
There’s no networking. None of that is going on. It’s just individual computers, yet Microsoft was the clear leader already because of their deal with IBM. They were in charge of the operating system. They had this huge cashflow coming in, which they had to do almost no work for. They used that cashflow to invest in all these other products, which are things that became Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, and the rest. Microsoft was a cool place to be. There was no Google. There was Apple, but Apple was struggling then.
Business Opportunities: Microsoft was a cool place to be. There was no Google, and Apple was struggling then.I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I heard from someone that there were companies doing internships. I went to the recruiting office and signed up for all the tech companies coming through. I ended up getting job offers as a sophomore from Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Apple, Cray, which is the old supercomputer company, and Microsoft. There might have been another one. I forget. I had a choice, and I picked Microsoft because that was the cool place. The funny thing is IBM called me two weeks into my summer internship with Microsoft and offered me a summer internship. They were just a little late in the bureaucracy. I said, “I’m sorry, but I’m already at my internship with Microsoft.” They said, “How about a fall co-op?” I said, “Sure.” I end up being an intern or co-op employee at IBM too.
It is just pure luck. I was working at the Microsoft Languages Division. The employee who was supposed to be in charge of Macintosh QuickBASIC, which is the least important language in the whole suite of Microsoft languages, was so insulted by being given the least important product in the division that he quit. They didn’t know who else to give this product to. They gave it to the intern. I got to be in charge of Microsoft QuickBASIC as an intern. It’s a great opportunity. I helped drive the team to launch, and they offered me a full-time job as a sophomore. That was cool. I turned them down because I wanted to finish my college degree.
That’s interesting. I had a similar situation. Rick, you and I already have spoken. We know how similar our life paths have been. I left school in my third year in school because the opportunity presented to me was so huge that I couldn’t pass it up. I became a college dropout and simultaneously a computer hardware engineer for a digital equipment corporation. I felt like, “I can’t turn this down to be on the launch team.” I had designed the dynamic RAM board along with the senior engineer, and our board made it into the final production of the machine as opposed to core magnetic-core memory. I figured, “This is too big a deal. I can’t walk away from this.” I chose at that time to leave. You ended up graduating college, which is great. Tell us the story about starting your first of four multimillion-dollar companies. What was that about?
I left Microsoft in 2000. For the first two years or so, I worked for my dad and helped him out with his internet strategy for his company. He owned Fundraising.com at the time. We came out with some internet-based fundraising options for the churches and school groups that were doing fundraising. I then was like, “What do I do next in my life?” My wife said, “Why don’t you start your own business?” It was her idea. I thought about it a little bit and thought, “Maybe I’ll do that.” I don’t know what to do. I just started a business. I had been divorced. Here’s my first business idea, and this is not the million-dollar business idea.
I came up with the idea of creating a communication tool for divorcing couples because couples who are getting divorced or have been divorced may still have kids. They have to keep talking to each other, but it’s hard, so I came up with a universal communication system for divorcing couples or divorced couples. They had email and voicemail. It was all in one place, separate from your work, personal email, and voicemail. It had cool little features like a psychology checker.
You know about a spell checker. This would look for phrases like, “You money-grubbing jerk,” and those common phrases you might use in a divorce. It would flag those. It was a psychology checker. Instead of calling each other, which can get intense, you leave voicemails for each other on the system. The voicemail doesn’t get released for X number of minutes. You can choose. Let’s say five minutes later, you wish you hadn’t sent that. You could bring it back because it hasn’t been delivered yet. It had some unique features, and it’s still, to this day, the world’s best divorced couple communication service.
Is it still around?
I say, “To this day,” because there is no divorced couple communication service. Who would go into that stupid business? That’s the rest of the story. That’s why this isn’t the first business I launched. I was smart enough to get to have a mentor and care coach. I was part of Dan Kennedy’s silver-level membership. With that, I got to have two of my marketing pieces critiqued by Dan Kennedy. I had written a sales letter for this service and had him review my sales letter. Two months later, I got a fax back from him. I bought a fax machine just to receive the fax from Dan Kennedy because he was refusing to use email. It was one paragraph, and it said, “Rick, I read your sales letter. It’s a great sales letter. I really liked it.” I’m thinking, “Dan Kennedy, my copywriting mentor, loved my sales letter.” I am thrilled.
Be smart enough to have a mentor and care coach.
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The next sentence, “But I don’t think you have a business here.” He said, “You’re selling to consumers, and consumers don’t like to pay a lot of money. These divorcing couples are going to get better. You have a customer base that’s not going to pay you much money for not long. How are you going to find these customers who aren’t going to pay you much money for not long? Who can be your affiliates? The only people who know have a reach into this audience would be divorce lawyers and therapists. Both of whom might have real or perceived ethical, legal, or practical reasons to be concerned about promoting your service. They’re not normally affiliates anyway. They may not feel comfortable promoting a service and making a profit. How are you going to make a business out of this?”
He destroyed my business idea in a paragraph. I was faced with the classic entrepreneur decision, “Do you take the sage advice of the mentor? Do you go for it like an entrepreneur?” That’s the choice. I decided to take the sage advice of my mentor. I still needed a business, and I’d already coded all of this. I got an email from Ken McCarthy. It was in Dan Kennedy’s little circle. Ken said, “The future of the internet is voice testimonials.” He said, “Click on this link and check out the voice testimonials on this page.” This is 2002, before YouTube and all this stuff. This old technology called Flash could let you play audio. I went to his sales letter.
He wanted me to go there because he wanted me to view the sales letter and sign up for his service or get to go to his seminar or whatever it was. I was going there to check out this voice testimonial thing. I’m thinking, “These are very powerful.” I thought, “I need voice testimonials for my service if I do it.” I then thought, “How am I going to get voice testimonials? How do I even do that?” I thought, “I should have a phone number. People can call in and record their voice.” I already have the technology that plays audio on the web. That’s Flash. I had that already built into my service too. I then thought, “Other entrepreneurs need a way to record testimonials for their websites. I want to record my own voice. I want to make a sales pitch on my website. It’s not just about testimonials.”
That became my first product. I took all the technology I had already built for the universal voicemail box and email box for divorcing couples. I repurposed it into a record by phone play on web service for the web. It became known as InstantAudio.com. Later, I did a partnership and rebranded it as AudioGenerator.com. Business owners ate it up. We got thousands of customers using affiliates. It kept on growing. We made $10 million from that product alone. It was still going strong in 2016 when I shut it down because it slowly faded away. I shouldn’t say it was still going strong, but it was still marginally profitable in 2016, even though nothing had changed. It’s still the same product. The arc of profit that came from that all came from me pivoting my idea in response to the advice of my mentor.
Readers, we are talking to the amazing Rick Raddatz. He has been an entrepreneur all his life and has shared with us some amazing stories and more to come. Rick, you talked about this arc of product viability. I’m wondering if you’d like to chat a little bit more about that. I’m interested in understanding how an entrepreneur knows how big that arc might be or when it’s time to get it to the point where it has its highest value and sell the company. Can you chat a little bit about that?
I can certainly talk about the mistakes I’ve made in that area. I thought it was a fundamental truth that you want to be diversified. That’s not quite right. When you’re investing in other people’s businesses, like the stock market, you want to be diversified because who knows what those people are doing? It is out of your control and out of your purview. You don’t know. That’s when you want to be diversified. I’ve come to learn that when you are investing in your own business, it’s just the opposite. You want to focus like a laser on that one thing and keep making that one thing bigger, better, and so on.
When investing in your own business, focus like a laser on that one thing and keep making that bigger and better. When investing in other people's businesses, be diversified because who knows what those people are doing? It is out of…
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This is discussed a little bit in a book called Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey A. Moore. His analogy with the way he describes it is he says business owners always see all the possibilities, “These people can use my product, and these people can use my product.” Those are different niches. Different niches require different little tweaks to the product. They require different sales pitches. They required different affiliate relationships or entry points into the marketplace and different marketing campaigns that had to be tested differently.
Everything’s different. The entrepreneur is seeing what’s similar, “They can use my product.” Yes, with all of these changes and with the marketing change to boot. What Geoffrey A. Moore says is, “Think of it as you’re bowling, and you’re trying to get a strike.” He says, “If you’re trying to get a strike, at least knock the headpin down.” That’s his analogy. To apply the analogy back to business, what he says is to resist the temptation to essentially diversify or replicate yourself in other niches, especially. First, conquer your own niche.
After you’re the big leader and are dominating in your niche, then invest in the adjacent niche or whatever. I didn’t have that advice, and I’m thinking diversification is the big thing. No, not when you’re talking about your own business. What I should have done is I should have constantly reinvented and improved my audio hosting business. I could have invented SoundCloud. I didn’t. From my point of view, it was making great money. I bought a big house. I bought another big house. I bought a cool car. I started all the businesses.
That’s the thing. I started other businesses. I then got into the video hosting business, which is pretty related. I then got into the opt-in page hosting business and then the conference call hosting business. These are all adjacent marketplaces and so on. I leveraged a lot of the same code in terms of the member’s area, the hosting infrastructure, and all that stuff. What I was doing was I was now forced to divide my company’s resources into four ways. I created four multimillion-dollar companies in the process, but I could have created a $1 billion company.
Geoffrey talks about this a little bit more in his first book, Crossing the Chasm, where he talks about lasering in on one particular vertical market. He talked about it from the standpoint of how a company would start a product or build a product and approach the market with it. I loved that book. That book came out after I had started TimeSlips Corporation. Reading that book, I thought to myself, “We made every single mistake in the book.” At least we got most of it. At the end of the day, we got it right. Clearly, you did something right.
While your first company did not end up being a billion-dollar company, it gave you two things. It gave you runway, lots of room to build these other opportunities, and it gave you priceless experience. Everything you learn failing is worth ten times what you’d learn winning. All that seems to work well, at least in my world. Now you build all these other businesses. Let’s go on beyond those. How do you resolve those? You’re a CEO. You’re a Founder, basically having multiple businesses. Did you at one point say to yourself, “I got to sell one of these businesses or merge these things?” Talk a little bit about the decision-making in that space.
That was another mistake I made related to going after four different product spaces instead of just one. Because I was leveraging my core code, the database, and the infrastructure, these four businesses operationally were not separable. I would’ve had to almost redo the whole thing to separate one of them. I did not end up building anything that could be sold because no one would want all four things. They would know that they want to focus. None of them are separable.
I ended up creating businesses that what they did do for me is profit margins were amazing, which is 93% profit margins. The cashflow was incredible. I was able to cashflow my retirement. As you said in the intro, I didn’t actually retire. I didn’t play golf. What I personally did was I happened to have a passion for political philosophy, and I gave myself a mission in retirement. My mission was to solve our political divide, at least intellectually.
That might seem impossible, but that’s the thing about entrepreneurship. You’re trying to invent something new. You’re trying to make it better. There’s no proof you can do it. You believe you can do it, or you hope you can do it, then you go for it and see what you can do. I gave myself a Good to Great, the book that talks about the big, hairy, audacious goal. That’s a philosophical BHAG, solving our political divide intellectually. I spent sixteen years doing that, and that was all funded by my businesses.
For the readers, BHAG stands for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal, to make sure that everyone understands the terminology. Here’s the other thing I was going to ask you. Here’s what comes to mind when I hear about spending sixteen years in this one particular area. Were you able to develop products or systems by which politicians or governments can model their current situation, maybe get a score, and compare it to what you would consider the ideal model? Was it simply philosophy?
Yes, but not quite in the way you or the audience are probably thinking about it. Here’s a quick summary of what I discovered. I’m about to launch a nonprofit movement around this. What I’ve discovered is that the laws of economics do more than govern the private economy. Meaning they do more than govern private action. It turns out that the laws of economics also govern public action, political action, foreign action, and governing action. That’s everything.
Once you understand this, you learn how to fix the incentives in every way in and out of government and economize everything. Meaning you’re putting everything to its best possible use over time. Not because you have all the answers ahead of time but because you fixed the incentives and let freedom play out over time.
Let me see if I could restate this in a simple way. By finding and understanding the incentives to move in the right direction politically, you are able to create a natural motivation for people to understand the philosophy and follow it because, economically, it pays off for everyone. If I’m a corrupt government official, how do I play in this game? You left me out, it seems.
This echoes what Milton Friedman used to say. He used to say that it doesn’t really matter who you elect because if the incentives are bad, even good people can’t do the right thing politically. What he said is you need to fix the incentives. The way he phrased it was, “You need to make it politically profitable for even the wrong people that are corrupt to do the right thing.” If even wrong people are incentivized to do the right thing, on average, things are going to happen. That gets us moving in the right direction.
Now I completely agree with him. He didn’t know how to fix the incentives. My work, by extending the laws, does. That’s the movement I’m launching as an education movement to help people understand this five-economy framework. That reveals the ideal, and that becomes the checklist or template you compare it to. When you do that, what we’re missing is we’re not capping and prioritizing our social spending.
That’s the big one. We’re not capped, and so we’re spending too much hurting the future. We’re not prioritized, so we’re not spending it the best we can. Instead, we’ve made big promises. That’s natural and understandable, but that locks in a certain amount of help. It doesn’t constantly improve it. If we constantly are prioritized, we’re constantly improving. The point is, if we want social justice, we need to cap and prioritize. If we have social justice, we can relax on all these private economy interventions and free that up even more. Suddenly, it’s all positive movements in every direction.
If we want social justice, we need to cap and prioritize. If we have social justice, we can relax on all these private economy interventions and free that up even more.
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If someone wants to learn more about it, is there a website that they can go to?
As of this interview, I’m just starting to build the website, so you can see it is in progress. Depending on when you’re reading it, it might be done. The movement’s going to be called the Win+Win Revolution. Go to WinWinRevolution.org. Now there’s a twelve-minute video and some testimonials. Below the video are 187 text testimonials from an early pilot we did. This is real. It’s called the Win+Win Revolution because the Right gets the limited government economic freedom they’ve been fighting for, and the Left gets the maximum social justice they’ve been fighting for. There’s no conflict because all we’re doing is economizing. We’re doing better. That falls out almost like a happy accident.
Readers, it might be worthwhile checking that out if you’re interested in what Rick is working on. For somebody to take sixteen years of his life and be dedicated to this idea, it might be worth a minute or two of your time to check this out. Go ahead and take a look there. Rick, we have a little bit more to cover when it comes back to business. I understand that you’re involved in a very exciting new venture. You decided to take on a little company called Zoom. Explain to me what you have. It’s called Meetn. What does it do? Who is it for? Why would I be interested?
It does an online meeting. Everyone’s doing online meetings nowadays. We have to. Even though COVID is winding down or has wound down largely, people are still doing video meetings because it’s so efficient. Even though we might do fewer of them compared to the peak of COVID, everyone is still going to need to have a video meeting service account of one type or another. The marketplace is still open. What we’re finding is that even though people are familiar with Zoom and use Zoom, they’re not necessarily in love with Zoom. They’re open to a new solution. This is an important key point here. All we have to do is make something that’s 10% better than Zoom.
In my past examples, I was inventing new product categories, like audio hosting before there was audio hosting, video hosting before there was video hosting, opt-in page hosting before there was opt-in page hosting, and mass of teleseminar events with a web presence for slide sharing in parallel before that was ever done. In the past, I was inventing whole new categories. Now, the category is already there. The challenge is simpler. I just have to make it 10% better than Zoom, and people will switch. We know this.
Why is it 10% better?
Let’s go through the quick list. It’s simpler and easier. It’s just designed better. That’s hard to sell. You have to kind of experience it. Anyone can claim that, but everybody who experiences it calls us up and say, “I love this experience.” That’s what we wanted to do, and that’s what we did. We wanted to pick a niche. One way a small business can compete against a big, established behemoth is we’re going to focus on a niche. Our niche is anyone who has something to sell, which includes every small business owner, pretty much, and all the MLMers, business opportunity seekers, all the salespeople, and all the independent professionals. Lots of people have something to sell.
How can we make Meetn a better sales tool than Zoom? Let’s say you want to promote your link in Zoom. How do you do it? You paste it into chat and scroll away. That’s state-of-the-art? We can do better than that. In Meetn, we have something called a call to action widget. You type in a headline and a sub-headline, upload a product image or logo, and type in a button caption and where you want the button to go. You pick your colors. It’s a very simple little form, but you can pop that up with one click, and it goes wherever you want on the screen and stays there for as long or as short as you want. You can tell people, “That popup is going to go away in ten seconds, so click now.” That’s compelling.
Chat is there forever. You just have to scroll up. Now you have control over the fear of loss. You have your brand colors, and it looks right for you and what you’re doing. It’s still just promoting a link, but it’s the right way to promote a link. There’s an even better way. What if you could pop up your order form that you want people to fill out right inside the meeting room? They don’t even have to go outside of the meeting to fill it out. We have what you call the webpage popper widget. It pops up a webpage, which could be your order page, to fill out the form right inside Meetn. It reduces friction. That helps sales.
Not every link you want to promote deserves a featured popup. Sometimes you want to have little extra resources like get the slides, get the handouts, get the PDF or something like that. We also have what we call the button bar. It’s as simple as it sounds. It’s a little row of buttons. You name each button, the caption, and where it goes to. It helps you have these supportive links promoted as well without taking away from your presence on stage as it worked.
We also have what we call the media sharing widget, which allows you to upload ahead of time videos, audio, slide decks, images, or any file. With one click, you can play the video, the audio, and the slide, show the slide, and go next. If you interleave these, you can go slide, video, audio, and slide. You can create your presentation for your meeting and store it in a little folder. It’s the way. If you want to sell something in a meeting, you want to use MEETN. For this niche, we are 110% better than Zoom.
If you want to sell something in a meeting, you want to use MEETN.
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What I like about this whole explanation, besides your energy and enthusiasm part, which I love, is you decided to take something that most people accept the way it is and radically improve it. Ninety-eight percent of the experience in Zoom is the video between people and the conversation, but that extra 2% is difficult if you’re trying to sell or present something. Running a webinar in Zoom is a nightmare. That’s why all these other webinar companies have tried to grab that market. Even those don’t work that well. Honestly, I’ve done webinars with the ones I don’t want to name products, but my slides don’t work half the time, or one screen’s on one side of one monitor. It’s a mess sometimes. I welcome this product. Let’s make sure people understand that the URL is Meetn.com.
We are going to have a special offer for you because there’s a version of the product that you cannot get on our homepage, but you can get it with the special link. We’ll talk about that at the end.
We’re going to segue now to a different part of the show, where we get to ask you a couple of questions that tell us a little bit more about you. Given the example you already gave us about some of the philosophical work you’ve been doing, you’re going to enjoy these questions. Here’s the first one. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
There’s got to be a tie because you didn’t limit it to intellectual conversations. There could be other purposes here. It could be a tie between Aristotle and Uma Thurman.
There you go. That’s interesting. First of all, I have a connection to Uma Thurman. Her father is probably the preeminent American Buddhist in this country, Robert Thurman. He happens to live in Woodstock, New York, where his daughter visits regularly. My sister lives in Woodstock. I used to visit her a lot less now that I’m in Florida. She knows Uma. Tell us about Aristotle.
The reason I pick Aristotle is not because of what opinions he holds but because of how much he advanced the thinking of the time. That’s where Aristotle gets my immense respect. To be even clearer, I would want Aristotle plus having him also learn everything that we’ve learned so far beyond what he knew in his day. That would be the ultimate combination. If you take the apparent brain power of Aristotle to move the bar that much, he did work that stood as the preeminent work for over 1,000 years in some areas. No one’s ever perfectly right, but he’s at the bar that lasted that long. That’s amazing. I would love to have Aristotle’s mind with the current state of knowledge wherever state we’re in. That would be an amazing walk in the park.
It sure would be. The other thing I would want to find out is how he handled the social resistance to his ideas at the time he presented them. I don’t know that they were very well accepted when he first started talking about his way of thinking.
There’s a parallel story with Socrates because the lineage goes Socrates was with Aristotle. Socrates’s opinions were certainly such that they got him killed in part because he wouldn’t compromise. He said, “No, I’m not going to say that. Kill me,” and they killed him. I don’t know enough about the history of that time to know if Aristotle faced a similar resistance or not. I have a feeling that it was less intense with Aristotle. There’s no doubt in my mind that there was resistance because it is philosophy. People are going to have other thoughts and complaints. I am not a scholar in that area, so I can’t speak to that. Since he wasn’t put to death, to my knowledge, in that way, I imagine it was less than Socrates.
It would be a fascinating conversation. The second question I have for you is, in this case, possibly an obvious question. It’s not for everybody, but I think it is for you. Here’s the question. We call this the change the world question. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
WinWinRevolution.org. Let’s capture the possibility here. You can think of what we’re doing in two ways. We are finally understanding how to economize all human actions. Meaning we’re creating the best possible world, not the best utopian dream, but the best possible world. We can’t do better than that. Another way of looking at it is that we are healing our divide in the process. We’re getting economic freedom and social justice, no compromise. Every moment in time is a compromise, but the trend is toward our ideal without compromise. Imagine a world full of nations where each nation has a healthy majority of people who get this.
Business Opportunities: Every moment in time is a compromise, but the trend is toward our ideal without compromise.That is a world where the entire world would have the political power to defend itself against those who still disagreed, and yet they wouldn’t be claiming to have all the answers. It would be a world of maximum freedom, too, because the philosophy says, “Here are the incentives,” and then we have to argue it out over time. With the right incentives, we accelerate our progress. It’s a free world and yet also the best world, the maximum justice world to boot. That is a world-changing vision. That’s all at WinWinRevolution.org.
When you talk about it that way, it sounds a lot like capitalism.
Capitalism is the private economy. We have four other economies that all have the same structure.
I’m going to leave a little bit of mystery around this. I want people to go to WinWinRevolution.org and learn for themselves. This is a business show, and we’ve talked a lot about everything, which was great. I know that we’ve probably got a couple of people here who have been intrigued by your description of Meetn. You then talked about this teaser about something special. Tell us what that is. What would that be?
On our homepage now, you cannot get a free version of our product. Let’s talk about that for a second. You might think, “Everyone else is giving away free versions of their meeting software. Why isn’t Meetn? Don’t we need to do that?” It all depends on where we are in our launch progression. When we’re marketing to our own house list, me and my partners, we already have the list. We don’t need to offer a free version. Spell the paid version. After we launch our house list and get all of our numbers up and so on, then we’re going to be launching to our affiliate list. It’s the same thing. They’re launching to their house lists. They don’t want to give us their opt-ins. Those are their opt-ins. They want some money. They want to go for the sale.
After we exhaust our house list and our close affiliate network, we will add the free version back in. Our free version will be better than Zoom. Zoom right now offers 40-minute meetings, just enough to embarrass you for using the free version because you can’t afford more. On our homepage, we’re going to offer 60-minute free meetings. Why? Because it’s more than 10%, but 10% better than Zoom. What I’d like to offer everyone reading is exclusive access to this free version of Meetn. We’re going to bump it up even more. We’re going to give you 90-minute free meetings.
Business Opportunities: MEETN’s free version will be better than Zoom. Zoom right now offers 40-minute meetings, just enough to embarrass you for using the free version because you can’t afford more. MEETN offers 60-minute free meetings.That’s enough to do your meeting. It’s a usable product for you. It’s not going to have all the sales widgets. With the sales widgets, you’re going to want to upgrade until you have that option. We want to give you at least a free experience. You can see how we’re going to beat Zoom. It’s a better free version than Zoom’s free version. The special link you want to use is Meetn.com/mitchspecial because this is special for everyone in Mitch’s sphere of influence.
That’s a fantastic offer, Rick. I appreciate it. Rick, it’s been a pleasure. I have so many multiple levels of interest in all the things that you and I are doing together. I’m not going to reveal that Rick and I are also entering into a business relationship as well as it relates to our respective products. Sometime in the future, you’ll see the merger of some of the things we’re both working on, which will be very exciting. Rick, thank you for your time. Thank you for showing up with everything. It’s guns blazing. I enjoyed the conversation. Readers, if you enjoyed the conversation, I urge you to go to YourFirstThousandClients.com or Your First Thousand Clients on Apple iTunes, rate the show, give us five stars, and leave a few comments for Rick and me. Thank you, guys.
Important Links GetClientfolio.com * Fundraising.com * AudioGenerator.com * Inside the Tornado * Crossing the Chasm * TimeSlips * Good to Great* * WinWinRevolution.org * Meetn.com * Meetn.com/mitchspecial * Your First Thousand Clients – Apple Podcasts
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Humans are social beings. Try as we might, we can never reach certain goals without the help of others. Being in a tribe is a great way to connect with the right people you can work with, level up, and hold each other responsible and accountable. Our guest, Rich Cooper, has created his own tribe of men supporting one another in their goals. Rich is the man behind the YouTube channel, Entrepreneurs in Cars, and the author of the bestselling book, The Unplugged Alpha. In this episode, he joins Mitch Russo to share how he has grown his tribe, with YouTube as his top funnel, and the core mission that attracted businessmen to the group. Rich also talks about monetizing and diversifying his ways of connecting with his tribe and further developing their relationship.
Free gift: Twenty Red Flags – https://entrepreneursincars.com/20-red-flags/
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Listen to the podcast hereA Tribe Of Men: Finding Support And Monetizing Connections With Rich CooperOur goal is to help you be a better leader, inspire more people, create the passion your community wants, and profit from the experience. Some people have asked me why I created this show. The answer is simple. I want to learn from my guests and my audience how to effectively start, grow, nourish, and capitalize on a tribe.
I believe tribes are the social experience that brings people together in many unique ways. I want to share that with you. I also want to hear from you. Tell me what you want, who you’re interested in hearing from, and what actions you take from every amazing guest that we speak with. If you’re a coach, go to CoachElevation.com and download my new book for free.
Onto my guest and his incredible story, Rich Cooper started his YouTube channel called Entrepreneurs in Cars, which led him to many new and interesting ventures. His bestselling book, The Unplugged Alpha, has helped many unplug from the lies around relationships, money, and self-care. Before that, he started a private debt relief company for Canadian citizens. He’s still an advisor to that company called Total Debt Freedom. That company is designed to help others relieve themselves of Canadian debt. I guess it’s only a Canadian experience. While he is an advisor to that company, he spends his time achieving excellence in all walks of life and helping others.
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Welcome, Rich, to the show.
Thanks for having me, Mitch.
It’s my pleasure. Take us back a little bit. How did this whole thing start for you?
It started when I was at a mastermind event. Jayson Gaignard was holding a live event in Toronto. I was sitting at some of the breakout session tables with James Clear and Alex from Luxy Hair. There were a few other guys that were doing sessions on podcasting, YouTube, and things like that. The whole YouTube thing caught my attention. I thought it was a good opportunity to broadcast yourself as they used to call it. I didn’t realize how powerful the recommendation engine was on YouTube until you started getting some real traction and viral types of videos. I started the channel because I was fed up with my business.
I started in 2002. I’ve been in it for 12 to 15 years. It got to the point where I didn’t need to be there. All the systems were in place. I didn’t love the business and everything that was going on with it. I wanted to do something different with my time. I’ve always been a car guy. I’ve always liked hanging out with entrepreneurs. I figured if I mash up entrepreneurship with cars, I could do YouTube videos like TED Talks and Top Gear mashed up. I got that idea from James Altucher because he always said, “If you want to take these different ideas, marry them up and see if you can turn them into something.” That’s what I called the YouTube channel and I put out 5 or 6 videos.
What year did you start all this?
That was May 23rd, 2014. I remember that date because that was the day that I was coming back from an EO forum retreat with my forum mates. I was driving in my friend’s truck. We commuted there together to this lake house and I said, “Let me put the GoPro in the windshield. Let’s do a quick interview.” That’s the first video that I uploaded to my channel. I did a lot of interviews with friends in their cars.
After about 5 or 6 friends and realizing how much work it was to make YouTube videos and the limited reach you would get at the start, I had to start talking about other stuff but I knew that I liked talking to the camera. Often, when I was going into the office or leaving the office, I had about an hour or so of commute, I put the camera on the windshield and talked about something related to what I thought the channel was going to be.
One day, somebody came along and said in the comments 5 or 6 months in, “You have to do a video on the women to not date. You seem to know a lot about what you’re talking about so it would be helpful to your viewers.” I thought I’ve made that mistake quite a few times in my life so I did a video on that and that blew up. Normally, when I would press upload and watch the video, I get 100 or maybe 1,000 views after a few days to a week. This one got 100,000 views so I thought to myself, “I’m on to something here. This is a pain point for people.” It blew up from there.
I did go through some of your favorites and big hits channels and saw some interesting videos as well. Honestly, I resonated with what you were saying. I loved your style. I would highly recommend anyone who is being exposed to Rich for the first time to go to Entrepreneurs in Cars on YouTube and see his YouTube channel. Check it out. It’s interesting. What this does is it sets up what we’re about to talk about next. That is the creation of a group and a tribe. You run several. One is your YouTube channel, which is your introduction to your tribe. You have a separate tribe that you’ve created, which is a paid experience for your more dedicated members.
Before we get into questioning you about that, I want to make a statement because, over the dozens of interviews that I’ve had with tribe leaders, I’ve come up with a simple definition that I would like to share with you. A tribe is a person who is passionate and polarizing. What that person does is create a manifesto, which is a vision and a mission with a purpose, and then share that in a way to both attract and repel the right people so that his tribe then grows as the tribe leader evolves himself. How does that feel to you?
That’s very accurate. I’m a polarizing character and I love working with the guys that are part of what I’m building. I don’t like spending time with people that aren’t part of what I like to build. It’s 100% accurate for me.
What I would like for you to do is tell us a little bit about the core mission of the tribe that you lead online.
There was a big appetite for it that I wasn’t expecting and that existed because people wanted to connect. I let them connect at first by clicking a link to book me for consults. When I started, the rate was super cheap. They could pay $5 or $10 a month and join a Patreon. I would do monthly Zoom calls. They would hop in and ask private questions off of the public channel. I wanted to build something more than something basic so I picked up a course on building tribes. It was Stu McLaren that I bought it from and he’s recommended by Jayson because Stu was at his last talk.
I went through the material and thought, “This is interesting. This is what I want to have. I want to have a gang of guys that I can level up with together and rely on.” There’s an interesting book that I read years ago by Jack Donovan. It’s called The Way of Men. It’s a great book. I highly recommend it. Guys, check it out. It’s great for women too if they want to understand the nature of men in society or how it has been throughout history. He summarized the book to say, “The way of men is the way of the gang. Men need to work together to level up and hold each other responsible and accountable to certain standards.”
The Way of MenThat’s what I’ve built my community off. There are different tiers. There’s an entry-level tier where I have generals or the top-tier guys that have been in my group for quite a few years that I know, like, and trust. That helps those guys level up to bring them up into the next tier thing. The one that I deal with is called The 1%. We called it that because it seemed like about 1% of people that would click my booking link would pay to book. I would call those guys the top 1%. We do a lot of things together. We have get-togethers and meetups.
One of the guys locally said, “Men are forged in fire and stuff.” We cooked up the idea of signing up for a blacksmithing course. It’s something I’ve never done. I’ve always liked working with my hands. When about 8 or 9 of us got together early and spent the whole day forging an ax from raw steel, it was an excellent experience. Working with my hands again was fun because I’m used to sitting at a desk in front of a computer and a lot of times, in front of a camera broadcasting or doing things around that. Being able to bang on an anvil with a hammer, heat treat, grind, polish, and all these things was an awesome experience.
When you do these things with other men, you can hold out the finished product, compare, and contrast because we all started with the same piece of metal. The final product was completely different for everyone but we all respected and valued the path that we all took to create that final product. You can go to a hardware store and buy an ax for $15 or $20. This costs a lot more for us to make but I’ll never forget the experience, the smells, and the time that I spent with the guys doing that on that day.
You talked about The 1% group. If you were to look at the whole tribe, how many people are you leading currently?
We’ve got about 600 or so globally. Each chapter is run by people in leadership roles. It’s got to be a large enough area. The main thing that we’re doing is chatting on a regular basis in private discussion groups usually on Signal. I’ve also got a censorship-resistant form because we started to use platforms like Facebook in the past. For whatever reason, the algorithms would pick up on certain keywords or discussion points.
I remember one time I got banned for a week and it’s like, “This isn’t sustainable if I get locked out of my account and put in Facebook jail for one week in my tribe.” I had to build my censorship-resistant forum and we worked off that. We have all these places where we collaborate on. From the get-go, the top of the funnel for this is the YouTube channel. YouTube recommends my videos to people that should be interested in what I’m talking about. They develop a relationship, which is an unusual thing that I learned about YouTube because I never thought about this before I started.
When you talk to a camera, put out videos, and meet people in real life, they will walk up to you randomly when you’re in a restaurant, at the gym, or something like that, “I’ve seen your videos. I like what you do.” They already have a relationship with me but I don’t know them. The in-person tribe was a big part of that. The in-real-life meetups, get-togethers, breaking bread together, and doing retreats are the stuff that I enjoy, which have become a lot of fun and a source of a lot of value for everybody in the group too.
You described earlier some of the ways that you monetize your tribe. You say you have 2 or 3 different levels. One is The 1% group, and then you have two other levels as well. For the ones that are in the midlevel, what’s the difference? What do they get that the others don’t get? This is valuable for others who are building tribes to see how you’ve tiered this.
You’re going to become the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. This shouldn’t be a new concept for people watching your stuff. If you’re the smartest guy in the room, you’re in the wrong room. I wanted to make sure that the guys at the entry point had an entry point and had some access to some of the premium content and potentially some of the retreats and stuff. If you can’t pay your way into the right room, then you could level up in that space with the generals that are in there. When you move into the next room, then they will get more access to me.
The next room after that is very similar to an Entrepreneurs’ Organization forum, which is something that I was a part of for quite a few years. I set up my forum for my tribe. It’s a men-only group. I did it that way because I noticed when I was in EO, a lot of times when you’re having a forum meeting or a discussion, the conversation changes when there are women in the room talking about things that are going on in their business or their personal lives.
I didn’t want to change the conversation, the dynamic, or the direction of the conversation. That’s why I made it a men-only group. That’s the business here. These are all guys that are business owners. They’ve got to be doing a few million dollars a year minimum. They have to be the founders. It’s similar but it’s more with the infusion of the way that I want to run the group.
Let’s quickly summarize. You started with a YouTube channel at the top of the funnel in effect without even realizing it was going to take you where it eventually took you. You started doing one-on-ones and then opening up a paid membership through Patreon. What I’m loving here is the evolution of this process. This is very informative for me and the readers. We are speaking to the incredible Rich Cooper. He has created a unique tribe. It’s a tribe that you should take a look at if it’s something you’re interested in. When did your book come into play here? You have a book out and that book seems to be symbiotic with the work that you’re doing and the groups that you’ve built.
I learned a long time ago that as soon as you publish a bestselling book, you’re considered an expert in this space. I put out other books in the past in my debt business. I did a do-it-yourself debt relief guide but it turns out people aren’t that interested in getting added debt as they are solving their personal issues in life. Debt seems to be such a small issue for people, which is strange to me coming from the credit and collection industry years ago.
The Unplugged Alpha is a book that you wrote at what point in the cycle that we finished talking about?
The Unplugged Alpha: The No Bullsh*t Guide To Winning With Women & LifeI started writing in 2017. I didn’t publish it until at least a few years later. It turns out I’m far better at talking to a camera than I am writing a book but I wanted to make sure that the final piece that I put out was comprehensive and distilled all the main lessons that I learned over the years in a concise way of around 200 pages. I don’t like gobbledygook. I don’t like reading or listening to a book because I generally listen to books. I don’t like listening to twelve hours of something that could be summarized in 4 or 5 hours.
That’s why it took me that long to write it because I wanted to distill everything down so it would be something that I could consume myself, believe it or not. It worked out. Having an audience is probably one of the most powerful things that you can build in your business. If you put out products, courses, a book, or something like that, you already have people that know, like, and trust you. You start pumping out emails and letting people know the book’s release date.
One of the strategies that I used in my book is I took one of the chapters, which is Twenty Red Flags That You Want to Avoid in Life as a Guy, and put that as a free chapter when people opted into the list. I started promoting that about 8 to 10 months before the book was released. People got a taste of what was in the book and could at least also get on my email list so I could notify them when the book was launched. That worked out very well. It’s the bestselling book in its category on Amazon, IngramSpark, and everywhere else where I’ve published it.
Let’s become coaches for a moment to readers. Let’s say somebody has this passion. They feel like they have created a manifesto, which is their vision for their mission and purpose and the people they want to attract. One of the questions that I get asked a lot on the show is, “Should I have a way to monetize this before I even start? Should I let that come later?” At what point do you begin the monetization process?
I didn’t start to monetize for at least 3 or 4 years. Even then, it was trivial. It was booking calls for consults, which people paid by the minute, and Patreon groups. The smarter guys out there have a proven path when they’re doing something on YouTube or they want to build a community. If they want to build their tribe, they plan it and launch it much sooner.
I thought when I started YouTube that by publishing videos, there would be sufficient ad revenue that I could live off that. It’s only the big creators. You’ve got to have millions of subscribers if you want to make any real money off ad revenue. Even that is dangerous because you don’t own your audience. It’s on YouTube. If something happens and you say something that they disagree with, they could yank the rug, take you off YouTube, and everything is gone for you.
You've got to have millions of subscribers if you want to make any kind of real money off ad revenue. And even that's dangerous because you don't own your audience.
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I started to realize that it was a little bit vulnerable and naive of me to expect to build a business or a tribe that way. That’s when I started to diversify. I built an email list, products, services, and courses. I’ve got the different social media platforms built out as well that all interlink. Everything goes to the central hub on my website. If any one of the legs is kicked out from underneath me, I’ve got 4, 5, or 6 other legs holding the chair up and I can rebuild that. That’s how I moved in that direction.
You’re not alone when it comes to that. Many people who have a presence on almost any social media platform are now terrified that those who own the platform are going to pull the rug. You see everybody building alternate channels and setting up other ways to reach their audience. Even in my coaching business, I have a group coaching program that would never run on Facebook because I wouldn’t even trust that to exist on Facebook. As you said, you could say one word that’s picked up by the AI bots and shut you down before you even know it. Let’s go back to the year 2014 versus the year 2022. Could you do the same thing now that you did then? Why not if it’s no or why if it’s yes?
The algorithms change. You have to look at YouTube as a recommendation engine. It’s a utility or a tool that can introduce you to people that should be paying attention to what you have to say. That’s all it is. There are people that use it for various reasons but that’s how I see it. Once I scrape off the layers and look at YouTube for what it is, it’s a recommendation engine. Once you understand what it is and you’ve decided what path you want to go down, you strategize a production schedule, topics to cover, and the storyline that you want to lead your audience down through and open yourself to pivoting.
You have to look at YouTube as a recommendation engine. It's a utility, a tool that can introduce you to people who should pay attention to what you have to say. That's all it is.
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I never changed the name of the channel. The channel is still called Entrepreneurs in Cars. I’m still a car guy. I still love entrepreneurs but for me to keep that related to the content that I’m doing, I try to make at least 50% of my content in my car still. At least that somehow resonates. The content that I’m talking about is very rarely about cars or entrepreneurship. I’m mostly talking about guys fixing themselves and screwing their heads on so they’re squared away in life. They don’t invite chaos and problems in their life, whether it comes to money, investments, women, self-care, and all these things.
It’s incredibly important to be clear and visionary about what you’re doing. Be consistent with it as early as possible within your first 1,000 subscribers. Start offering what it is that you want to offer that you want to build on outside of YouTube because it’s top of the funnel. Once people start to develop that relationship with you, they want more from you. I learned that very early on. They want to connect with you and form a relationship with you.
Give them that, whether it’s your community, a book, or courses that offer more beyond what’s on YouTube. You have to be careful. They can yank the rug out from you at any given time. We’re in a world that’s exceptionally sensitive to ideas that aren’t mainstream. Tribes are usually polarizing. You have to balance getting their attention and getting them on board with your story with not getting thrown off the platform with the ideas and the conversations that you have.
Tribes are usually very polarizing. You have to balance getting their attention and getting them on board with your story while not getting thrown off the platform with the ideas and conversations you have.
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Do you need to do anything other than post videos? Do you need to manage the YouTube infrastructure behind the scenes? Do you need a YouTube expert to do this? Can you start recording a video every day, putting them up, and waiting to see what happens?
There are always shortcuts if you buy a course or hire an expert that already done it. There are three main components to doing well on YouTube. Number one is your thumbnail. Number two is the title. Number three is the content once they click that. The main metric that YouTube is going to use to recommend your video or your content to new viewers is going to be the Click-Through Rate or CTR. The click-through rate on videos is generally quite low. 4%, 5%, or 6% is what the average gets.
If you publish a video, around 5% of people that are shown that video on their homepage will click it. There’s that problem that you’ve got to contend with. The next part of that is the watch time on the video because the whole business model for YouTube is keeping people on the platform. They want them there watching videos so they can show them ads and more videos and then keep them locked into that cycle of consuming and all that stuff.
If you have a good title, a captivating thumbnail, and the content once they click it matches what enticed them to click it, and they watch as much of that as possible, ideally 100% of it, you’ve now got a winning formula. The more times you can do that with every upload, the greater your reach is going to be, the more influence, and the more impact that you’re going to have. Those would be the main metrics. Once you figure that out, everything else is pretty much easy.
Tribe Of Men: When your content matches the title and thumbnail that enticed them to click, people will watch as much as possible. This is a winning formula. The more times you can do that with every upload, the greater your reach will be and the more influence and impact you will have.The reason that we have spent so much time on YouTube is 1) I’m interested in it, 2) It’s a fantastic way to get top of mind with folks and be consistent, and 3) If you have the right combination of messages and manifesto, then it will naturally attract the right people to you. It then leads them to capitalize on the experience by leading them into a place where they can spend some money with you, which is fantastic.
One other thing I forgot to mention is that the Shorts are very powerful. People have short attention spans. They will be doing this on their phone, whichever direction they’re going. It’s a rapid process. TikTok has been the source of this because most of their videos started being a minute or less. Instagram caught wind of that. They created Reels. YouTube caught wind of that from TikTok and Instagram and created YouTube Shorts. If you have any long-form content or anything over a minute, there’s a tight sound bite that is being watched. Usually, there are these bumps and valleys on YouTube.
If you’ve got your account set up and it’s a more seasoned account, you will see where people drag the cursor back to watch something over and over again. If you take that clip, which is usually about a minute or less anyway, have your editor throw some music onto it. Maybe some captions or a couple of B-roll clips to snazzy it up a little bit, and then put that same video on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and even Facebook. It then lets you repurpose your existing content. You’re not just getting top of the funnel off YouTube. You’re getting top of the funnel off TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and all these other platforms. You link them all back to that central point.
That’s a great tip. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Let’s go out into the future by about two years. What does that look like for you? Where are you two years from now?
I don’t lean that far out in the future and plan too much because I find that a lot of the stuff that we’re doing now is not something I even planned to do years ago. I didn’t even think that Shorts would be a thing on YouTube years ago. I had no idea that was the direction things were going. What I tend to do is look for the trends as they tend to evolve and solidify in concrete. I’ll tap into the proven models because I find that you can try to predict the future but my crystal ball doesn’t work that well.
What I like to do is watch what’s upcoming trending and what’s working. I’ll look at those as opportunities. The sad part about creating content and getting people’s attention is you have to work their system. You can’t work your system. You can’t talk about things the way that you want to talk about them in ways that you want people to hear them. You have to understand how the platforms work, why they recommend your content to other people, what they’re working on that’s new and upcoming, and give those tools and resources for what they need.
Watch the upcoming trending and what's actually working as opportunities.
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For example, when the Shorts shelf was created on YouTube, I was one of the first adopters of it. It wasn’t uncommon to put out Shorts that were getting 5 to 10 million views. Now that there are other people publishing Shorts and there are so many other people to such a large degree, you don’t get as much reach but you still get some pretty decent reach. Being the early adopter in those areas is pretty much the way to go. You have to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s happening.
Let’s talk about your groups and your vision for where you want to take this. Do you feel as if this should grow and become much bigger? Are you wanting to keep it relatively small similar to the way it is now?
I don’t want something or need anything too big. I read a few books back in the day when I was running my debt business. You’ve probably heard the concept of 1,000 true fans, raving fans, and stuff like that. To be honest with you, for a lot of the conversations I have and a lot of the guys in my community, it wouldn’t work if we had 60,000.
I would probably let it grow to about 1,000 members and after that, I cap it or create another tier but I don’t need anything too big. I would rather keep it small. It’s more nimble. It’s something that I can manage. I want to know everybody’s name and face. If they message me, I want to recognize them. I don’t want anything too big from the community side of things. As far as the YouTube channel goes, I’ll work towards 1 million to 5 million subs.
We are at a terrific spot here in the show. We have covered everything I want that to cover. I know readers would like to get ahold of you or connect with you in a deeper way. Where would they go to do that?
They can go to my website. It’s RichCooper.ca. From there, you will be offered everything from information on my community, my supplement line, and my book. It’s all there in one central hub. There’s a link that you can get into for the free chapter from my book, The Unplugged Alpha. It’s Twenty Red Flags. It’s an interesting chapter because it’s twenty red flags on what you want to be aware of when inviting women into your life as a guy. I talk mostly to men. You can download that by going to EntrepreneursInCars.com/red-flags.
Richard, it has been a pleasure chatting with you. I’m intrigued by what you’ve done. I appreciate you sharing it with my audience. Thank you very much.
Thanks for having me on, Mitch.
Important Links CoachElevation.com * Rich Cooper * Entrepreneurs in Cars – YouTube * The Unplugged Alpha * Total Debt Freedom * The Way of Men* * Signal * Entrepreneurs’ Organization * EntrepreneursInCars.com/red-flags
About Rich CooperRichard Cooper is an entrepreneur, private equity investor, content creator, best-selling author, speaker, and high-performance coach. Best known for his YouTube channel Entrepreneurs in Cars, and best selling book for men, The Unplugged Alpha, Richard has over 200 million video views from content that has helped many unplug from lies around relationships, money and self care.
From 2003 to 2019 Richard founded, and ran Canada’s most successful private debt relief company, eliminating well over 1/4 billion in unsecured debt for debt-riddled Canadians. Total Debt Freedom Inc. is still operating today, and he maintains an advisory role. During his tenure as CEO, he was awarded by Profit magazine 3 times for hypergrowth, awarded for top company culture by World Blue, and he was nominated by Ernest & Young for ‘Entrepreneur of the year.’
Richard Cooper is a passionate entrepreneur, and High Net Worth Coach with a strong interest in helping others achieve excellence.
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People say that age is just a number, but there’s nothing like being told that you looked years younger than you actually are instead of the other way around. Now it’s possible! Joining Mitch Russo is the President and Co-founder of Boomers Forever Young, Bob Gilpatrick to tell us more about their incredible lifesaving products at a reasonable price! Bob shares insights on what inspires their product and the amazing results that you are proven to achieve. He also talks about how the right network and affiliate program can launch your brand and take your business to the next level. So tune in! Don’t miss out on this chance to revitalize not just your looks but your overall health as well!
Promo Code: MITCH, and it is worth 10% Off of any order from Boomer Products.
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Listen to the podcast hereBoomers Forever Young: Creating Health Using Radical Nutrition With Bob GilpatrickI have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach for the last 25 years, I made a few discoveries that have vastly improved client performance and satisfaction. I realized that by asking a few specific questions and then carefully crafting a response to those questions, I’m able to help my clients find their true purpose. That sounds like a big but it’s quite simple. I documented the entire process and I want to share it with you for free. All you got to do is go to CoachElevation.com and download my new book. It’s totally free for you. Read it, apply it, and watch what happens when you start using it with clients.
Now onto our guest and his incredible story. It started eleven years ago at a casual meeting between a certified holistic nutritionist coach and a real estate developer. On a completely different topic, that conversation drifted off into how my guest noticed that this man looked much older than his actual age. In fact, he was struggling with everyday activities as well.
My guest decided that even though he was running nursing homes, healthcare agencies, and foundations, he would instinctively act on the suggestion that this new friend who needed his help wanted to start a company. He wanted to do it together. That company was designed to restore health to aging but vibrant individuals who have no real idea why they are struggling with the problems they are.
This was the beginning of Boomers Forever Young nutrition company, which has thrived and delivered incredible life-saving products at a reasonable price to all of us, the Boomers of today and tomorrow. To tell us more about this miraculous discovery and some of the incredible products that he’s had and how he got to where he is. Welcome, Bob Gilpatrick, to the show.
Thank you, Mitch. I look forward to seeing you again in person sometime soon.
This goes back a long way and this was not your intent when you originally met with that client. Tell us a little bit about how this all started and the evolution of that relationship as well.
This was eleven years ago. It must have been 2010 or thereabouts. I was asked to come to help with a computer project for this gentleman’s real estate business. He owned 31 different beachfront properties that were rentals, and he needed a change for his computer systems for managing the company. He needed some help with SEO and that type of thing, so I came to help him.
I noticed as soon as I got there that he was what the Brits call crumbly. He was 65 years old, but he was going on 85 years old physically. He was on eleven medications. He was extremely overweight and needed some assistance. I had been a holistic health therapist for a long time and so I said, “Larry, I noticed this and I know that maybe this could help you.”
He started slow and eventually, he realized that by taking some of the nutrition products I was recommending, he started to feel a lot better. He was getting a lot more energy. He started losing weight. He started going to the gym and working out. He started realizing that he didn’t need all of his medication. I helped him very slowly titrate those medications.
After about six months, he was off all of his medications. He canceled two surgeries that he was scheduled to have, and he had lost 50 pounds of fat and gained about 20 pounds of muscle. He was very different. The telltale sign was a little while after that, maybe another six months later, he went to get a new life insurance policy. His agent who’s a friend of ours came to us one day and said, “We got good news. The insurance company said that you are the healthiest person that I have ever sent to them. They are giving you superior preferred status for your insurance, but there’s one mistake with the application. This says he was born in 1945, but this looks to us like a man who’s about 33 years old. Can you fix the date of birth and resend it?”
Stewart said to him, “That is his true date of birth. He’s the cofounder of the Boomers Forever Young company.” After that first six months, Larry who doesn’t mind me using his name said to me, “What would you think if we started a business so we could help other people the same way that you helped me?”
I had been helping one person at a time at that point. Regardless of what else I was doing for business, I always was helping people with holistic health therapy. This was an opportunity to begin to put together an organized business with a website and a collection of nutrition products and begin to help people on a much larger scale. That’s how we got started.
Was the intention back then to build a health coaching business or to create a product-oriented business or both?
It was both. We knew that the types of products that would help people that fast and effectively would need the education to go with it, and also caution because not everyone can use certain products. It required somebody like myself to be able to speak with people on the phone and find out what would work for them and what would not.
In some cases, we have to ease into strong products with small amounts and gradually increase over time, but then also we knew we wouldn’t be able to give everybody everything they needed, and that we would have to make referrals out. People had certain problems where they needed to see a doctor or they needed to see a therapist of some kind. I had a network where I could easily find the right person that would help that person, regardless of where they lived in the United States, and in some cases, regardless of where they lived in the world.
You are starting from scratch. You and Larry together have decided to do this, and it’s going to be a health consultation/product business where you or maybe someone on your team would meet with someone and say, “You probably need this and this, and we sell those products.” When you started, I assume all those products were off the shelf commercially available products. Is that what you ended up or did you go beyond that?
In the beginning, it wasn’t off the shelf available products. One of the products had been for sale in a simpler form, which was one of the products that Larry used, but that company stopped selling it. It was too expensive. Not enough people were purchasing it. It needed somebody else to reformulate it and combine it with another product that would potentiate it that would make it much stronger and much more absorbable.
We were the ones that were able to pair it with another product so now we have two. One of the products made the first one five times stronger. We were able to reduce the price by 80% by needing fewer ingredients. It was the first time in the history of formulation that people could afford to buy a combination of two products that had over 4,000 bioactive compounds in them. It’s all of the basic building blocks of human life in powder form. They could mix in a glass of water and drink once a day, and now people would be extremely well nourished. It’s for the first time in history that this level of super nutrition was available.
People would be extremely well nourished for the first time in history with this level of super nutrition now available.
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One of the products was already made and was being sold in Northern Canada, but it was very limited. We connected with the scientist and farmer who was making this product. When I called him, it turned out that he knew my father that had a PhD in Plant Science. He was a professor at Cornell University. This gentleman was teaching Plant Science at universities in Canada, and so he had read my father’s books.
When I contacted him, he was like, “You guys sound like the type of person that I can trust that will make sure that no one gets harmed by these super strong, super foods. You’ll do it in a way that I will believe in.” He made us take a course and pass a test before we were allowed to distribute his product. Still to this day, we are the only people in the US that sell it. By getting that, that was what potentiated the original product that had 70 nutrients in it that had helped Larry so much. We now call this the Dynamic Combo. It has now exploded into a product that thousands of people around the world use.
What is the name of that product?
We call it the Dynamic Combo. It’s a combination of powdered sprouted barley seeds, and a product called Boomer Boost, which is 70 nutrients which is vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, enzymes, proenzymes, and specialty nutrients that are all designed to create foundational nutrition without having to go to the health food store, and try to piece together twenty bottles of pills that you have on top of your refrigerator.
What happened was that this Boomer Boost product that you described was originally created by a different company or a different person. Did you now acquire the rights to that or the exclusive distribution of that product, or did you alter it and make it your own in a different way? Tell us a little bit more about what that was like.
Nobody was selling it at that point. We then altered it to make it better.
You took the formula. You enhanced and changed it. You re-released it under a different name.
Yeah.
Full disclosure, that happens to be a product that I use every day. I use the Gladiator Barley and the Boomer Boost. Every single day, I mix it right in with my protein shake as a meal replacement. The fact that I had it before this interview, I’m fully powered up and energized. I can attest to the fact that it is a terrific product and I do enjoy using it.
Was this all deliberate or did it just emerge? Did it happen a little at a time? Were you very deliberate about it to say, “We want to do this. This is the product. We got to acquire it. We can change it and now we want to produce it in mass?” Give me an idea of the thought process and the structure of how this occurred for you. A lot of people are probably in similar situations where they are wondering if something they already do might be a good business and if they should go further with it. Talk a little bit about that.
The way that we did it was we commissioned a formulator who happens to be from down around Miami, and that formulator made us a sample. It’s very hard to get powders like this to taste okay. We spent many months getting the taste the way that we wanted it and getting all the ingredients to get into one place.
As we tasted it and experienced it, because you can feel the energy from this product right away, at one point, we decided, “This is it.” At that point, we needed to commission an attorney to make the label for it. It’s very difficult to get an FDA-compliant label. We got the right attorney that knew how to do it, and then we purchased 5,000 jars of the product and began distributing it.
At the same time, we also began purchasing equivalent amounts of the Gladiator Barley and selling them together. We also knew that people were going to need extra of certain things that don’t go well in powders. One of which is fatty acids, which taste bad when you put them in powders, and so we got a formulator that made us good quality fish oil pills.
The same is true with Vitamin D3. Vitamin D3 needs to be more customized because some people are in the sun all the time and some people aren’t. We got Vitamin D3 pills and we sold those four products together as comprehensive nutrition. Later we added a fifth product to what we call the total health system, which is a very special type of probiotic that’s made exclusively for us by the same men that make our powdered barley.
Vitamin D3 needs to be more customized because some people are in the sun all the time and some people aren't.
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At the moment in time when you were ready to pull the trigger on a 5,000-unit order, what did it take? Did you have to raise money? Did you have to borrow money or did you have clients lined up in advance or was this like stepping off a cliff and hoping to build the parachute on the way down?
It was a risk, but we were confident that at the very least that we would make our money back over time. It’s mostly because of my experience in the field. I have been a holistic health therapist and a certified holistic nutritionist for a while. I already had clients of my own that were waiting for this type of thing, but we didn’t need to raise money.
We needed about $200,000 to launch the business and we self-funded it. You didn’t need that all at once. We put in this amount. At any given point, we had to put in that amount of money that within a couple of years, we had that all back to break even. In that third year was when we started to first turn a profit.
That’s still pretty quick. Remember, for a self-funded company, that’s a very satisfying result. We are talking to the incredible Bob Gilpatrick. He is the cofounder of a range of products, and the President and Cofounder of Boomers Forever Young nutrition company. He’s sharing some incredibly valuable information with us.
Bob, let’s go back to year three. You are starting to break even at this point, which is somewhat amazing now for a self-funded company. It was about the same for us when we started our software company. It was two and a half or so years when we started to finally break even. At that point, we decided to pay ourselves. That was a very big day. My partner and I started receiving a salary from our own company, which was a lot of fun and ridiculously amazing at the same time. Talk about your scaling process, and how you decided to go forward from that year and double or triple the size of the company as you have.
It happened by accident what turned out to be the best marketing plan for us. We had a lot of different marketing things in place. We had some marketing consultants. What happened sometime in the middle of the second year is I got a call from a friend of mine who I had been in business with before. I owned a brokerage company with him in New York. We had traveled to Russia together on business on many occasions. He called me and said, “I have met this guy that has a show and it’s on a free conference call. He’s got a bunch of people listening to him talking. They call him Ramblin’ Randy. I talked to him about your nutrition products and he wants to bring you on his show to tell his audience about it.”
Boomers Forever Young: Scaling the company happened by accident. We had a lot of different marketing things in place and we had some marketing consultants, but what turned out to be the best marketing plan for us was being on a free conference call where a lot of people were listening.I had never done anything like that before, specifically. I had been on television and stuff before that and our radio shows, but this was a little different. I was like, “What am I going to do? What am I going to say?” I started talking about our total health system. We gave out our phone number, and the next day, the phone started ringing and our website started to light up with people placing orders.
It was moderately successful. At that time, that same broadcaster said to me, “I have got somebody else that you would like to meet that has a much bigger show than me. What would you think if we created a system where we have a two-tier affiliate program?” I was already paying him. We were tracking the sales that came from him. We were paying him once a month. He’s like, “What if I could bring you some other people? What could you do for me?” I created then a platform for a two-tiered affiliate program, and he introduced us to another broadcaster who I have now been on his show twice a month for eight years.
That broadcaster was bigger and launched us to the next level. We go back to the original friend of mine that I used to travel with. He introduced me to another person who was even bigger than the second broadcaster. I remember coming in the next day after being on his show for the first time, and I had to call my friends. I called my sister, my girlfriend, and other friends, “Can you come in here to the office and help answer the phones?” The phone was ringing. Every second, a new call would come in, and we weren’t ready for that. We had no idea that was going to happen.
We ended up having to make a lot of return phone calls, but I think we picked up 150 to 175 new customers that first day. Since that time, I have been on that gentleman’s program again about 700 times, twice a week for many years. We have many thousands of customers that have come through that one show. After that, we added another one and another one. A good 80% of our customers still come from being a guest on other people’s podcasts and conference calls.
What you are talking about is I would call it a strategy that has worked for lots of people, but very few people pay attention to it. They treat it as an aside. They have their Facebook campaigns or their Google AdWords campaigns or their Instagram things going on. They forget about the traditional way that most of us have created companies.
Like you, Bob, my company was launched with PR. This was before there were podcasts or even telephone line shows like the one you described. It wasn’t so much luck. It was a lot of hard work. We locate one of the key reviewers of a significant magazine called InfoWorld. We took a huge risk and gave them a copy of our software for review because we were a new company, and they had reviewed WordPerfect the month before. They love WordPerfect. They gave it a good rating, but they were still a little critical of that too. We were nervous. Yet, it turned out that they did review us and gave us the highest rating they have ever given software which is amazing.
Like you, it caused the same upheaval and growth spurts in the company. Like your story, we decided to continue to duplicate that success as well. We then doubled down on PR. We then found ways to get in front of other key influencers in all vertical markets related to the way our software was used. What you are describing is a strategy that is incredibly valuable.
The other thing that we didn’t mention is that it didn’t cost you a penny to do this. It was completely free. All you had to do was pay an affiliate fee which is cheaper than your cost of acquisition had you advertised to get that same customer. It was a great strategy. It sounds like you continue to do that. As my old friend, Jay Abraham would say, “That’s one leg of the three-legged stool.” What are the other two? How else do you generate revenue for the company?
We do the traditional, which is Facebook, Instagram, Google, and TikTok now as well. That would be the second leg. The third is more traditional influencers. We work together with a company called GRIN, which has one million influencers on its platform. You are able to publish a proposed campaign for a given product and people will respond and say, “I think I might like that.”
We get responses from medical doctors and other health practitioners. We get responses from people that are personal trainers and professional athletes that are looking at our company going, “I think that looks like a good opportunity for me.” We then negotiate a contract with each one individually. Some of it is for free products. You have to pay a few thousand dollars a month depending on the size of the influencer and their engagement.
Boomers Forever Young: We negotiated a contract with each one individually, and some of it is for free product. For some, you have to pay a few thousand dollars a month depending on the size of the influencer and their engagement.We are able to track very closely using our own tracking software and also with GRIN. That’s an up-and-coming part of our marketing now. We had a world champion who uses our Gladiator Barley product and won the world championship in the UAE MMA fighting championship. He was quite excited to have the Gladiator Barley logo on his fighting shorts.
I think of it as an off-the-radar strategy. By all means, these are things that work well. It requires a business owner to constantly be looking for these types of opportunities and trying new things. Marketing is more a matter of what works. It’s not why something should or shouldn’t work, so you got to have to keep trying. I love that about what you’ve done. Tell me a little bit more about the direct trajectory of the company going forward. What are your plans for the future? You have a fairly solid product base. Every so often, I see various products that you co-market. Where do you see things going in the future right now?
We’re continuing on as we have with those three legs that I was talking about. We also are continuing to create more content. We have a lot of content that is given away for free that is very practical and helpful information about health and wellness. It’s not anything that we invented, but that we are good at. We teach people how to use the emotional freedom technique, how to use the havening technique, how to use nonviolent communication, and how to use the inner balance from heart math. These are all stress management techniques. We always say, “No matter how good the nutrition products are, if people are under stress, they are probably still going to be sick.”
No matter how good the nutrition products are, if people are under stress, they are probably still going to be sick.
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We do a lot of how-to videos for people. We direct them to those videos which are up on our podcast. We also help people over the phone. We also have people come to visit the office. It’s that strategy of being available, giving out our address on Central Avenue, and letting people come to our conference room to meet with us and also to call. We have our own consulting/call center where people can call the office and speak with other people.
We have all different ages including two men that are 85 years old that work for us. One is full-time, and one is part-time. They are answering the phones, answering questions, and helping people learn how to be super healthy. That call center part is a big piece also for people to have someone pick up the phone and say, “Yes, I can tell you about this product. I use it myself. This is what I experienced and this is the answer to your question.” That’s not unique but it’s different in this field. Most of the time, when you buy nutrition products, there isn’t anybody there who’s going to spend half an hour on the phone with you talking about your health, your wife’s health, your mom’s health, and what can be done to help the whole family.
I can attest to everything you are saying because I have had those half-hour phone calls with your team, and they are wonderful. What is the name of your podcast?
Live Forever Young Radio and that’s the website also for it. LiveForeverYoungRadio.com.
For our audience, that’s going to be something you are going to need to check out as well. That’s where you will be able to get a lot more health information and more guidance on how to live young forever. Bob, we are going to transition to a different part of the show where we talk more about you and do that by asking a couple of questions. Some call them my silly questions and others have said that it’s their favorite part of the show. I will start out by asking you, who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
That would be Nikola Tesla. I have spent lots of time in a previous career as a business advisor and business broker helping inventors. I got to work on hydrogen fuel cell technology 25 years ago. I got to help Dr. Liss when he created the first Cranial Electrical Stimulator. I got to help him with that invention and others as well.
I have also spent time in my own creative space, coming up with new ideas for things like treating chronic traumatic encephalopathy. I was able to come up with a sleep aid product that works for 90% of the people that try it. I also am very interested in other technologies, pulse electromagnetic field technologies and photo biomodulation technologies.
One of the things that I like to do in meditation is travel to the pyramid of knowledge. At the pyramid of knowledge, they will confirm or redirect you with inventions that you have as to whether or not they are going to work. This is the same space where Tesla and Einstein used to travel in their mind. For example, alternating current came from that quantum space, and so did E=MC2. To me, that would be better if it was more visceral and to be with a more real human, Tesla, instead of in this ethereal space at the pyramid of knowledge where he hangs out. It would make it more real. I have a feeling it would be probably the most interesting thing I could do.
This pyramid of knowledge, can all of us reach this period of knowledge and how would we get there?
You can. It requires entering into a different brainwave state. I have been using the new calm technique to do that. It’s a phenomenal new brainwave facilitation software and bio-acoustic stimulator. There are certain brainwave states, theta and alpha states, where your consciousness becomes non-local. The easiest way to do it is to use external stimulation through headphones.
Through your own meditation, you can also learn to leave your body intact, but have your consciousness be in multidimensions simultaneously. One of the techniques I use is a technique that is called the ultimate mind-calming exercise. It’s great if you can create a blank slate in your mind or a state of no mind. That’s a video that people can access on my website and it’s also called Head Circles.
Boomers Forever Young: Through your own meditation, you can also learn to leave your body intact and have your consciousness be in multidimensions simultaneously.It’s a technique where you make this head circle, where you swing your chin slowly from side to side at the end of the circle, and then cross your hands over your heart, and take in a deep breath. Your mind will stop completely. This question, which helps you to begin to actualize higher levels of consciousness is the question, “Who is it that’s doing these head circles?”
If you ask yourself that question and sit quietly, you will begin to notice that you begin to get a feeling of a part of your consciousness that is not in your brain. If you do another head circle, you can then ask the question, “Who is this that’s asking, ‘Who is this that’s doing these head circles?’” You start to get this sense of a stack of spirals of consciousness above your head.
At that point, you can use your intention. The intention is one of the keys. Once you are in this state of feeling higher levels of consciousness, use your intention to pierce through up to the level you want to land in. The intention can be, “I need some confirmation or advice from the pyramid of knowledge about this new invention I have in mind.” You want to do this with joyful anticipation. The more joyful you have in the anticipation of success, the more you draw the information to you. Your intention rides on a waveform of joyfulness. Joy is what creates magnetism.
The more joyful you are in anticipation of the success, the more you draw the information to you. Your intention rides on a wave form of joyfulness, and the joy is what creates the magnetism.
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I like to tell people, “Imagine a beautiful coffee table like the one that Peter Erdei designs would make. Imagine that you are manifesting a hologram. It could be a person that you don’t yet know that you want to meet or it can be a device, or it can be a feeling. Imagine that the coffee table has the magic power to infuse whatever the hologram is on that table with joy. You then encase this hologram in a translucent bubble and let it float out into the universe with the intention that it will draw back to you the essence of that hologram.” That’s one of the other techniques you can use. There are numerous other ones as well, but those are two that are proven valuable for me.
It’s funny in a way because our entire show was about the business and about your incredible Boomers Forever product line, but I’m very interested in this part of what you do as well. I have discovered NuCalm as well, and I have been using it. I don’t know if the discs make a difference or not. They sell a set of discs that go with it that are sticky little energy discs that you place on your wrist. I have been using them, but I haven’t noticed a difference in using or not using them. Have you?
I have but only a mild difference. I use them anyway. I know enough about neurochemistry, and what they are doing. I know it’s upregulating GABA A and GABA B, and facilitating other neurotransmitters. I also use other Nootropics that I take in the morning that do similar things. You and I might already have some of that essence of what they are trying to help people accomplish. That’s probably why we don’t feel it. Others that I know do feel it strongly. They probably are not using the other same nutrition that we are. Your brain chemistry responds very powerfully to the nutrients that are in the Boomer products because it’s stimulating genetic expression, especially the probiotics is stimulating the creation of neurotransmitters. That’s great. I love the NuCalm system. It’s a great new breakthrough for all of us.
For our audience, we get straight into interesting and fascinating areas of discussion. If you’ve enjoyed this part of the conversation, please let me know. We could certainly have more of them if you like this. Bob is someone who I have started to build a friendship with. We are in the same mastermind together and I have been a client of his as well. If you like, we could have Bob back too and we could skip the whole business stuff and go right into more of his viewpoint on how to access and enable that invisible part of this world that has brought us so much joy and so much value as well. I’m leaving it to you to let me know what you think and if this is something you would like.
Getting back to earth here for a moment, we are able to provide a 10% discount through a code that Bob has provided, and that code is MITCH. That will take 10% off any order. All you got to do is call 1800-861-4609 and speak to somebody on the phone. You might get one of those 85-year-old guys who are a pleasure to talk to, and full of information. Give them that code and you’ll save 10%. I highly recommend starting with the kit. What’s the name of the kit again, Bob?
It’s called the Total Health Systems.
I started with that. Over the months that I have been using it, I have added the nootropics as well, and I find that to be very helpful too. By all means, start with that and go from there. Bob, this has been a fascinating conversation as always. Thank you so much for spending your time with us. For our audience, you can see everything we talked about over at your FirstThousandClients.com. Including the links and free gift. Bob, you said something about a free eBook. What is the name of that eBook?
The book is called Vibrant Living: Keys to a Healthy Lifestyle and it’s about 30 or 40 pages book. It’s printed and people will get a printed copy of it when they order their Total Health Systems. In the meantime, they can get it for free in digital form. It has about fifteen chapters to it which are short chapters about everything from stress management to carbohydrates and all like that.
Bob, thank you so much for your time. This was a great interview. I have enjoyed our time together as always. I look forward to the next time we get to speak.
Thank you, Mitch. I enjoyed it also. Thank you very much.
You are welcome.
Important Links CoachElevation.com * Boomers Forever Young – LinkedIn * Dynamic Combo * Boomer Boost * Gladiator Barley * Vitamin D3 * Ramblin’ Randy * GRIN * Live Forever Young Radio * NuCalm * Total Health Systems * FirstThousandClients.com * Vibrant Living: Keys to a Healthy Lifestyle*
About Bob GilpatrickI have over 20 years of experience as a Holistic Health Consultant and Practitioner, having trained with many of the world’s most gifted holistic health pioneers. My current focus is on Nutritional Consulting, with a particular interest in assisting people with Diabetes, Weight Loss, and Intestinal Disorders. I also have a strong interest in Stem Cell Research and Limb Regeneration.
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Coaching empowers individuals and is a huge catalyst for change as it helps people move forward. In today’s episode, Barbara Wainwright, the author of The Power of Life Coaching, shares her journey to becoming a life coach. She shares her approach to coaching as well as how one can become certified through the Assessment-Based Certification. Start helping people maximize their performance. Tune in and be inspired to make a difference to thousands of people today!
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The Power Of Life Coaching: Changing The World By Training Thousands To Help Others With Barbara WainwrightI have something for all of my coaches in the audience. As a coach for years, I have made a few discoveries that have vastly improved client performance and satisfaction. I realized that by asking a few specific questions that are carefully crafted to bring a client to a personal realization about their true purpose, I was able to help my clients align their newly discovered, true purpose with their true mission. That alignment changes everything. I want to share it with you. I wrote a short but powerful book called Coach Elevation. For a limited time, you can get it free. All you got to do is go to CoachElevation.com and it’s yours. Go ahead and do that. Now, on to my guest and her incredible story.
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Some of us take the path of self-discovery when building our business. Our guest is a deliberate creator of a powerful organization to help others. Her mission is to teach those who are also called to help others on a larger scale and train at the university level. This started back in 2006. As herself, as a life coach started a life coaching academy and has trained almost 7,000 professional coaches, she is still going strong as the Founder of Wainwright Global, the creator of LifeCoachTrainingOnline.com, where thousands have taken her program and become certified life coaches. Welcome, Barbara Wainwright, to the show.
I am delighted to be here and I’m honored, Mitch. You got such a rich history yourself. Thank you for inviting me.
It’s my pleasure because you are a real giver. What you do is change many lives. I have to spread the word. I have no choice. It’s got to be done. Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell us how this all started for you.
It was long ago because 2005 is when I first discovered coaching. Back then, there weren’t as many opportunities or nearly as many training companies as there are in 2022. I have been searching for the next thing for myself for a long time. It took me ten years. I was a Software Developer. I designed systems and did a lot of analysis and design and how to make things easier for the user.
While I was doing coding, I was taking classes, reading books and doing things to grow myself. I was searching at the same time. What is it that I’m called to do? As much as I loved writing software, I knew that there was something else I was called to do. I didn’t know what it was. For ten years, I was doing that. I was searching, taking classes and reading books. I was doing self-development.
In 2005, when I stumbled on coaching, I was like, “This is it,” but I’m not sure. I’m going to ask for confirmation. I got confirmation that it was the right thing. I jumped in with both feet. I paid $20,000 to go get my coach training because that’s what it was costing in those days. There weren’t that many options for one thing and that’s what it costs, so I went and did it. I got trained.
I was like, “This isn’t that hard. If we had a system, it would be easy. Let me develop this system to make coaching easy and we can train people how to do it. We’re going to change many lives. It’s going to be great.” That’s what I did. I created a system of coaching that has been proven to work that helps to create transformation for our clients without the anxiety and stress that had normally caused when somebody is going through change. They can easily step into who it was that they were meant to be when they were born.
You and I have such common background being both system engineers, in a sense, software designers. With that type of background, I love the fact that you said that you are approaching coaching as a system. I hate to say it is a hammer. Everything does look like a nail sometimes. If you approach the world by saying, “You know what,” you can create systems for about anything as long as the process is repeatable. It sounds like with coaching that although the content is different, the problems and issues are different. The process is repeatable.
I have coaches that are coaching in over 52 different coaching niches. How is that possible? They are all using the system. The system has been proven to work. It’s step by step. It’s not difficult. Coaching is not hard. With you and what you have created with your software, it makes it even easier for coaches to coach a lot of people without the anxiety and stress of, “Where are my notes?”
Training Thousands Of People: Coaching’s not hard. This software makes it even easier for coaches to coach many people without anxiety and stress.Readers, what you are not reading and what Barbara is not telling you is that this is something that she has perfected over a few decades. If she makes it sound easy, it’s like, “I created this little system and you can do it too.” Think about the time it went into and talk about training 7,000 coaches. This is a business show, Barbara. What I want to do is to tell me about how you scaled this once you took this $20,000 course and that was when $20,000 was a lot of money.
It was a huge investment but I was investing in myself. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? Especially when you feel called to make that move. I started by teaching people a methodology and the method has grown. It keeps improving over time. When you are first starting, you might not have all the answers and tools but they will come when you need them at the right moment. It’s the way the universe works. It unfolds and helps you to keep moving forward in the right direction. Everything comes to you as you need it at the perfect moment.
I started with a few tools. At least I had my coaching steps because it is a step-by-step system that I teach. We do what we call a new client interview. We find out what the client wants to have to happen in their life. As a coach, we create a vision statement for our clients so that they can reprogram their subconscious minds.
The subconscious mind can be our worst enemy if we don’t reprogram it. We want to have our subconscious minds on board with where we want to go in the world. That way, when we get ready to take those steps, we don’t have self-sabotage, anxiety and stress. In our mind’s eye, we have already done it 100 times by listening to the vision statement. We get ready to go do it instead of going, “It’s enough. That is 100 times. I’m ready to go. I’m going to do this and make it happen.”
That’s our second coaching session. We deliver that gift of the vision statement to the client and ask them to listen to it every day. From there, when we meet, we’re doing, “What is the next best step for you to get where you want to go? What is it that you need to do?” We hold them accountable for that. What I love is that we’re going to be incorporating your system into holding our clients accountable.
After you paid all this money and you became a coach, I’m assuming you probably had several life coaching clients at first. Let’s go to that juicy transition moment when you said, “I can do something better than I was taught and teach others.” Tell us about how that moment came about. Was it instant realization or did it evolve?
You are making me go way back. That’s a lot of years ago. I don’t think it was instant. Here is the thing that kept hitting me. You know the catalyst that said, “You got to create the system, make it affordable and get people involved in doing this because this is too valuable to be sitting on a shelf or not getting activity.” A lot of companies are still charging that and that $20,000 mark was too high, in my opinion.
It was like, “No, this needs to be affordable. It needs to be a system.” It can’t take two years to learn how to coach. We’re asking questions. “How hard is it?” Not that hard. If I have a system, I can do this in a short period. That was the thinking that was going on. Affordable, we have to have a system and get more people involved because coaching is a huge catalyst for changes. It is helping people live the life that they were divinely meant to live when they were born.
Coaching is a huge catalyst for change. We’re helping people live the life they were divinely meant to live when they were born.
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I believe that everybody comes into life with a purpose. There was something that they were meant to do or create or gift back to the world. If that’s the case, we need to find out what that is. How do we do that? We become a coach. That’s what coaching does. It helps people to find out what their gift is, how to manifest it, create it and gift it back to the world. It’s a big cyclical thing. When I was getting all of that coming to me, that was the catalyst for me to go, “What do I need to do to make this happen?”
If we can go back again to that moment in time and it was like the first person that you signed up to your program, you had to do a few things. Number one, you had to make a decision to sell a system. Number two, you had to figure out, “How much should I charge?” Number three, you had to figure out, “How am I going to deliver this?” Take us back a little bit and talk about those elements of it because there are probably lots of people here that are sitting on the fence thinking, “I have this skill. I can bring it to the world but I’m searching for a way to do that.” Barbara, tell us a little bit about how you did it.
In the beginning, I did not teach online. Going online in 2006 wasn’t something that people did. We had to GoTo Meeting from Citrix. Eventually, that’s what we used in the beginning. Before that, for two years, I was teaching in person. It was a lot of work. I’m sure you’re aware you have to book a room, market, advertise and get people to come. I was marketing in magazines that were targeting holistic people, people that were doing things spiritually to help people move forward. I was advertising in those magazines locally because I wasn’t traveling yet to teach.
I got six people to come to my classes. I taught them and they loved it. Anybody who has been through the class, I always get great testimonials because it is great content. It’s empowering and they can see the value of it. It’s being delivered through coaching. That was how I started. I was teaching in person, advertising in local magazines and putting out flyers in some places. I taught small groups of people in the beginning. Over that 2 years, I ended up training about 100 people.
You did what I would call the beginning hard work to set up rooms and hotels and gather six people in by spending money. Sometimes, things don’t work. You have to rethink steps to make sure that you can still get it done. Those are the beginning days that all successful business owners have to go through and you went through this. You’re at a point where you have 100 or so people you have trained. When did you take this to the next level? What was that like?
That was the move to online.
Tell us about that.
Having been in the computer world for so long, I knew about Google AdWords. That was the magic right there. I started advertising with Google AdWords life coaching. I managed to get a lot of people coming forward saying, “I want to be a life coach because it was very inexpensive.” I don’t even want to mention the price. I was using Google AdWords. We were getting a lot of people. This was back in the day when it cost about $1 for a click.
In 2008, for $1 a click, you could get somebody to come and check you out. That is how I built it. In that 1st year of advertising with Google, we trained about 800 people through the program. The 2nd year was another 900 people. In 2012, I started working with Seattle Pacific University and a company called Seattle Research Partners.
They wanted to bring my training to Seattle Pacific University. To do that, the curriculum had to go through accreditation. That’s how I got accreditation at the university graduate level. I had many magical things unfold for me. It’s wonderful. I got my curriculum to accredit at the university graduate level so that I could teach Boeing employees the magic of coaching.
These wonderful things happen. I do want to make a point here. The readers of the show know I sometimes go a little woo-woo on them. I’m going to do it again. What happens is that you set an intention here. The universe knows that intention and conspires to assist you in achieving your goals. We all have that ability built into it. It’s the way the system works.
Realistically, you did without question and I bet without a doubt that it would happen. It’s a great way to segue into my next question because here is where we get to the point where a lot of people struggle. You have had some four years of success. You have taught a lot of clients on with your online program and then you are an accredited university. Did you go to the university and teach it yourself or did you use that accreditation to use the online training in the university environment? Tell us about that.
I traveled a lot in the beginning. I traveled quite a bit through the states to do the training. I taught at Syracuse University. I taught in Texas, Chicago and Seattle quite a few times. For Boeing, they want you to come in and go into their building. They don’t want you to go somewhere else. I went on-site to Boeing to do the training there. We did some other boutique training up there for HR professionals in the Seattle area. Seattle Research Partners was the company that was setting arranging all that. I went up to Seattle quite a few times to do training for HR professionals.
Was there another moment in time when you said, “I’m getting tired of traveling. Maybe I will bring in a coach that will work for me or certify a coach that I can then send out and share in the revenue that they generate?” Tell us about how your thoughts were and how that worked out for you.
In 2008, I ended up hiring other trainers because we did go online at that time. We had many students coming through. There was no way that I could do all the training. We only allow ten people in the class at a time. That is because everybody needs attention. You’re teaching them how to coach. It needs to be focused and everybody needs to be able to get feedback.
Everybody needs attention. When you're teaching people how to coach, it needs to be focused, and everybody needs to be able to get feedback.
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I ended up hiring other people that were enthusiastic as I was. They were like, “I love to train this stuff.” It’s rewarding. I ended up hiring other trainers to help with the load of students that we had. That trend morphed into more. What I do is license my curriculum to people that want to also go out and help people change the world. Doing that adds another stream of revenue for me as a business. I have recurring revenue from what I call Master Coaches that are out there training other individuals with my coaching system and my curriculum.
I provide everything that they need like training materials. I don’t provide the students. Sometimes they do their marketing, get their students and they belong to them. All the people that they train are their business. I don’t send any marketing materials or anything like that to them. It’s their company. They are coaches. They have simply been through my program and they receive their hard copy certificate from Wainwright Global.
Barbara, we’re getting into one of my favorite topics here and that is certification.
It is very important to have certification. There are two kinds of certification, which I’m sure you are aware of. One is if I show up, I get a certificate that says I attended. That’s a certification but it’s not what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about here is accountability, which is what coaching is all about.
Accountability is what coaching is all about.
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To get certified through Wainwright Global, you need to attend the full class, do the homework, participate in class and successfully pass the exam. If you do that, we can certify you as yes, you have learned this. You have applied yourself, you know this material and you are certified as a coach. If you can’t do that, we can’t certify you. It’s what they call an assessment-based certification.
I cover that in the book and that is what I would call a level one certification. The reason I call it level one is that there are potentially many levels but level two would add one more step to that. That would be the process of providing what I would call lead flow to these potential coaches and turning them into another recurring revenue stream, which you do through licensing. You’re doing a lot of the level two stuff too. This is an incredible lesson for us because here, you started with what I would call a basic system of coaching. You train people, that’s fine and that generated revenue but you stepped up and created certification.
It reminds me of a story of a yoga teacher I was once infatuated with. She was quite beautiful and I attended every one of her yoga classes back when I was much younger. She drove this gorgeous BMW and she had a beautiful studio. She charged $15 for a class. It was hardly anybody in the class. It was great and she was a great teacher.
One day, I went up to her and said, “I got to ask you a question. You seem successful but you only charge $15 a class. I can’t imagine that twelve people showing up for these classes once a day pays for all of this and helps you build your business.” She goes, “No, of course not.” She starts to walk away. I was like, “I’m curious. Maybe I could take you to lunch and we could chat a bit.” She said, “Sure.” We did. We became friends.
I took her to lunch and she explained to me that the most valuable part of having a yoga studio is yoga certification. She would get housewives in there. This goes back more than a decade. Back then, she was getting $3,500 per certification student. She would have anywhere from 10 to 15 new certified students every six weeks. All of a sudden, that is when the light bulb started to go off. I said, “She is pretty smart. That is amazing.” I asked her, “Did you invent this?” She was frank. She goes, “I took something called Kripalu certification.
It was a form of yoga back in the Northeast.” There is an ashram named Kripalu and they have their yoga certification. She goes, “I took the original Kripalu certification.” I realized that I could take it much further. That is how I created my own. It was a valuable lesson for me. It wasn’t lost on you either. You have done an amazing job with that.
I hope that anyone who’s reading this show is inspired by this story of how Barbara took this basic skill and turned it into this huge enterprise. Before we move on to the next session, I have one more question for you. It’s interesting because I was thinking about this as we were talking. If you had to start over, what would you do differently?
It was important that I got my original training. It helped open my eyes to what training could look like. I still would’ve done that even though it was expensive but it was an investment in me. I believe that from there, I would go back and start developing my system. In 2022, Google AdWords is Uber expensive. It drives the cost of everything up that anybody that’s advertising there has to charge a lot to cover that. I’m not doing that. What I would do is word of mouth.
What got our company off the ground is we get results and people love the training. When they leave, they are on fire for coaching and everything that they have laid out as their goals in the class. They go through the coaching experience in the class. They get their goals and next steps laid out. They know what they are getting ready to go and do. Here’s one thing I do that I haven’t done. I still haven’t done it but I thought about it. It would be valuable. That would be having the students come back a week later or a few days later after the training to talk about how powerful that was, share that and ask them to invite and bring some friends.
Training Thousands Of People: Word of mouth is powerful. Imagine having the students come back a few days after the training to talk about how powerful that was and share that, and they invite and bring some friends. You’ve just exposed more people to your work and will have it go big.This is a tip for everybody. I haven’t done it but I know this works. It is to bring people in and have the graduate share their stories about how powerful it was. Ask them to bring friends along to congratulate them on their graduation and their success. Celebrate that. You have exposed a whole group of more people to what you’re doing and will have it go big. It is something that has been percolating in my mind to do.
That’s a brilliant enrollment strategy. I encourage you to do it too because it would work great.
It will. I do want to do it that I have put out there.
You will have to do it and I’m going to hold you accountable for that.
I will be doing that moving forward, inviting the graduates to come back, bring a friend and share their experience with the coach training, their plans for moving forward and how they see themselves moving forward in the future. That would be valuable for everybody in the room.
Wouldn’t it be cool if a couple of those graduates got together and started their company?
Yes, it would be fabulous. That has happened. There have been occasions when people in the class resonated with each other. I haven’t heard of anyone getting married yet. Not like that but I have heard of them marrying them in a business. They got together and started a business together. It is a great place to meet people too.
What we will do is switch gears for a second here and talk more about you. I got to know you pretty well and I’m thrilled that I have but I want readers to get to know you a little bit better too. We do that by asking these two off-topic questions but they are fun questions. Here is the first one. Who in all of space and time would you like to spend one hour enjoying a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
It would be Jesus.
Jesus has been said before. I have only done 300 of these interviews. It’s not like it is never going to happen but here is the interesting thing. The reason why is never the same. Tell me why you would like to spend an hour with Mr. Jesus.
I do believe that it would be healing. The energy or the essence that would be there would be palpable. It’s having the experience of being in his field or energy field being right there. I didn’t even know that there would be a conversation, to be honest. I just would need to be in the presence of him and I would be complete.
There’s a gentleman by the name of Dr. David Hawkins who uses a powerful muscle testing tool to determine the spiritual power of people, places and things. He sets that the highest spiritual power any person, place or thing could have is 1,000. The only individual or thing person place ever to have that rating was Jesus. That is what he talks about in his books. That’s an incredible insight that you had. I have a feeling someday that is going to happen. I can’t arrange it. I’m just letting you know. It’s outside the scope of my abilities for the moment.
I look forward to that day.
Here is the next question. This is what we call the grand finale, the change the world question and I know what you’re going to say but I got to ask it anyway. What is it that you’re doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
I will keep doing what I’m doing until something happens where my body expires. I will keep training coaches until I feel that there’s one person that gets trained. They get out there and talk to one other person. We have made a positive impact on the world. All I ever wanted to do was make a positive impact in the world and try and make the world a better place for everybody. That’s where my heart is at.
If just one person gets trained and gets out there and talks to others, then we have made a positive impact in the world.
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Every one of your graduates is also changing the world with the processes that you have taught them. That is the multiplier effect. That’s what coaches get to do. We get to change the world by helping others change the world. Barbara, it has been delightful but before I let you go, you have something special for our readers. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about this incredible gift you have? What is it called?
I have a book called 10 Essential Things You Must Know Before You Start Your Coaching Career. If you have been thinking about becoming a coach and you go look on the internet, there’s a ton of information out there but it’s all scattered and you have to pull it all together yourself. This book walks you through like, “Should I be a coach? What is a coach? What is the difference between coaching and consulting?”
Ten Essential Things You Absolutely Must Know Before You Start Your Coaching CareerThere are a lot of answers in there that you could scour the internet for but it’s all in one place, 10 Essential Things You Must Know Before You Start Your Coaching Career. There are still places where you can invest $20,000 in your training. Before you invest $20,000, read the book, so you know exactly what you’re looking at getting into. It is a few pages. It’s not overwhelming.
Barbara, I’m afraid to read that book. I might find out I probably shouldn’t be a coach.
I don’t think so, Mitch. You like helping people. It’s clear. It’s good that you are a coach. That is the essence. If you like helping people and seeing them light up when they get their vision statements and they finally get permission to do what they have been called to do all their life and they are figuring out how they are going to it and what steps they are going to take, it’s extremely rewarding. I know you’re there.
It has been such a pleasure spending time with you, having you on the show and sharing your wisdom with at least 15,000 others who are reading I hope. Thanks for doing so. Readers, I highly recommend that you reach out to Barbara and find out what she is doing. If you even have an inkling of wanting to be a coach, go to www.LifeCoachTrainingOnline.com/10Things and you will be able to get her book. Barbara, thank you.
Thank you so much, Mitch. It’s an absolute pleasure talking with you.
Important Links Coach Elevation * Wainwright Global * Kripalu * 10 Essential Things You Must Know Before You Start Your Coaching Career*
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Being excellent in everything helps you stand out, but how can you be excellent with everything as a leader? In this episode, Tom Peters, the co-author of Tom Peters’ Compact Guide To Excellence, sits with Mitch Russo to provide insights that could help us take the path in search of excellence. As inflation is still peaking, Tom shares what it means to become a long-term investor. He argues that business leaders should focus on the betterment of society. As he goes deeper into the conversation, he stresses that leaders should think that excellence is not about the mountains to climb but about its quality. Excellence is “the next five minutes.” Take a step to excellence now and tune in to this insightful episode with Tom Peters!
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Listen to the podcast hereTom Peters On His Most Inspired Work Searching For ExcellenceIf you are a coach, you’re going to love what I have for you. My software platform called ClientFol.io has been helping hundreds of coaches save time on admin, and get better results from their clients while generating powerful client testimonials for the work that they’ve done. How? By tracking accountability and holding clients to it. No other platform provides you with the power to access a library of accountability questions and place control in your client’s hands to keep track of their most critical stats and goals. Want to give it a try for $1? Go to GetClientFolio.com and give it a spin.
Now, on to my amazing guest and his incredible story. This story starts back in 1985. It’s a book I read called In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. In full disclosure, at 28 years old, I had no clue how to run a company. I had no business even trying to start one, but I did anyway. Swimming in a sea of confusion, I grasped for lifelines everywhere. One afternoon, I picked up the book that I heard mentioned on a talk radio show. Honestly, I couldn’t put it down.
I started taking notes. I read it again and again. That book was co-written by Tom Peters. I had found my mentor and he never knew it until many years later. After reading his book, I spent years studying Tom’s incredible words of wisdom. We have a treat because Tom is going to be talking about a book called The Compact Guide To Excellence. This will become my new passion. He’s here to tell us all about it. Welcome, Tom Peters, to the show.
Thank you for those outrageously kind words. I don’t believe one of them, but it makes me feel good anyway.
I’m glad it makes you feel good, but every single word is true. I don’t care what you say. It happened that it’s true.
In terms of that, I’ve described a big hit, presumably a song or a book as a pretty good product with perfect timing. In 1982, the Americans had come out of the second World War. We were at the top of the heap in everything you could name. Suddenly, the road was filled with Japanese cars and they had this phenomenal secret. The cars worked. We were piling down in the dumps. We were scared and terrified. In Search Of Excellence, we went around and we found 20 or 30 companies that we thought were doing it right.
They were pretty good case studies, but the time timing was right on. Literally, the book pub date was the week that President Reagan announced 10% unemployment. As I said to somebody, “All the business books in the bookstore went from the back of the store to the front of the store overnight.” Timing is not a bad thing to have on your side, regardless of what it is.
The timing of me finding your book was perfect as well. One of the big problems that we all had back then was the quality of the software we were creating as a software company. It seemed as that, no matter how much money or resources I threw at it, it wasn’t changing. I’m going to tell the readers, as I told you the little secret that I learned from you after following you around and listening to you rant from the stage many times. The little secret was very simple. You told us all, “All you’ve got to do is buy six books on quality, put them on your desk, facing spine out, call your team in every week, yell at them about the quality and demand to understand what’s going on with that.” All of a sudden they realized, “Mitch cares about quality.”
It’s called a sucker play, but whatever works.
It worked great because within 90 days, we had the quality problem solved. We were able to get a handle on what the issues were. As you said, “Timing is everything.” For us, the timing was perfect. We started to release a Windows product at the end of the DOS cycle. I know that you remember that, but the readers might not. That became the hit that we were hoping for and more. Based on that and the fact that we had built a certification program that put 350 certified consultants on the street, basically doubled the value of the company in eighteen months and we sold it. That’s a typical entrepreneur tale.
It’s not typical. It’s a good entrepreneur tale. Most of the entrepreneurs’ tails, we never hear a word of because they quietly disappeared into the night.
I’ve had a few of them disappear before then and after them. I never quit. My secret here is I keep going. Apparently, you do too. Now you have this new book called the Compact Guide To Excellence. Does that mean it’s small enough to fit in my pocket, or does it mean that it’s shorter than your other books?
Tom Peters’ Compact Guide To ExcellenceThe answer is it is small enough to fit in your pocket. It was specifically designed that way. It is a co-authored book. My co-author, Nancye Green, is one of the country/planet’s great designers. Her CV reads like a whatever. She was the Chairperson of the Parsons School of Design Board. For reasons unknown, she was willing to join me. I’ve only had one interview about the book so far, and the person who interviewed me was talking about the shape, feel, taste, and touch. That is the deal with this book.
The liberation management was 900 odd pages, and it had some clever things. I rambled on and on. In this book, we get rid of the ramble on and on, and get down to the essence. It is the essence and the design. Sit on your bedside table and have some of the words seep in. It is compact, and that is the key. It is not worthy.
I can’t see the actual physical form factor because I have a PDF of the book. What I like are the topics. I’d like to ask you about a couple of the topics that are here. We’re in a very interesting position here in the United States. We have inflation that is soaring. Inflation is peaking still. We have chaos going on inside the US government and potentially in society as well. Yet, you have this Chapter 4 called Long-Term Investors Prosper. I immediately thought about that and said, “That’s a pretty optimistic viewpoint. I’d love to know more.” Tell me more about that. Why do you say that? What do you think about being a long-term investor?
The data are clear and nauseating. Milton Friedman, in September of 1970, published an article in New York Times. It famously said, with no adornment, “Businesses have no social responsibility. Their only responsibility is to maximize value for their shareholders.” Here are the simple and easy-to-remember numbers. In 1970, when Friedman wrote that 50% of corporate profits went to shareholders and executives, 50% went to the workforce, the capital investment, and so on. A study was made in 2011, which means 41 years later. I almost tear up when I say this, “Ninety-one percent of the profits go to shareholders, stock buybacks, and so on, and 9% go to people plus capital investment.”
That’s point number one. You don’t have to be a genius and have an MBA to know that that’s sickening, nauseating, disgraceful, and disgusting. There ought to be a special ring in Dante’s health or Friedman, as far as I’m concerned. My old friends whose reputation has been very tarnished. I’m so sad to say, McKinsey & Company did a long-term financial analysis. This is in the USA. They looked at 615 companies that amounted to 70% of the GDP, and looked at them over a 30-year period of time, and 167 of them passed their tight-ass Mackensey standards for focusing on the long-term. Those 167 beat the crap out of the 330. They did 7% better. It wasn’t like they did 17% better. It was like they did 3 or 4 times better.
The numbers are there. As far as I’m concerned, the reason you do the right thing is because you ought to do the right thing, and we’ll come back to that. Even if you are a tight ass, hard nose, and can’t live without a spreadsheet for more than fifteen seconds, the spreadsheets tell the story. Invest in people, invest in capital and capital investments, and the good Lord will smile on you and smile on you quickly. I don’t how badly we could have been. I don’t think it’s unrelated to the despair and anger on the streets. People are pissed. They feel left out. You’ve got to believe that wildly disproportional change in the way the money is distributed is a big part of it over the long haul. Friedman managed in one fell swoop to screw everybody other than the elite.
I’m an elite. I don’t deny that. The amount of privilege that I have compared to other people nauseates me. This is not just about better business. It’s about a better society. I’ve been working on that. Part of the reason is that I’m approximately 200 years old and don’t have another 200 years left. David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, wrote this wonderful article couple of years ago. He discriminated between what he called resume virtues and eulogy virtues. The resume virtues are you finished third in your class at MIT, then first in your class at the Harvard Business School, you were promoted seven times, and so forth.
It is not just about better business. It's about a better society.
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The eulogy virtues are what people say about you at your funeral. It’s your funeral. They only talk about, “What was it like to be around Mitch? How did he help people?” I don’t do any Power-Pointing these days, but one of my favorite slides that I designed had a tombstone. On the tombstone it said, “Joe Jones, $23,618,212.14 net worth on the day that he died.” To the best of my knowledge, there are no tombstones with a net worth on it.
First of all, we’re going to have to rename chapter four to the Right Long-Term Investors Proper. That is a key element. I’m going to make you angry right now, because the bottom line is that everything you talked about is completely legal. All of the money that these people made, and all of the disproportionate elements of this that are in place are not against the law. In fact, the law pushed them into doing so, in my opinion. Where does that come from? I’m going back to the theme of investors here. Why should we care? Aren’t we, as investors, looking to maximize the return on our own investments? Isn’t that what investors are supposed to do?
I don’t buy that for a minute. I buy that line and I buy a comparison of net worths at the country club or on the golf course, but at the end of the day, it’s Tom and Mitch and what they contributed to the world around them. I don’t know exactly how broad our audience is. That is total absolute unadulterated BS. I don’t care if it is legal, illegal, or what have you. It is immoral. It is why before this conversation, a Texas Congressman gave an award to a January 6, 2021 guy who had been indicted, punished and so on. Something is wrong. I’m not going to all blame the whole show on Friedman.
I wrote a piece in the Financial Times and I said, “The first thing we need to do is shut down all the business schools.” It was tongue only sort of near cheek. The thing that irritates me is business should be a force for good. It’s what people do. I don’t know whether it’s parents or whatever the hell it is. The whole notion that capitalism is simply about it, it is a way to distribute money, and that is a way for individuals to get rich is nauseating. It’s disgusting.
Businesses should be a force for good; it's what people do.
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It requires a structural change that I have not seen this country willing to make. I agree with you. I see the virtue of what you’re saying. Shareholders are not just going to reward those who don’t focus on what’s most important to them.
I’m not a good enough economic historian. I think a good economic historian would only go so far with you on that one. The data is in fact, much less disgusting than one would think. Let’s take this study that I mentioned that McKinsey did, 620 companies and 167 of them invested for the long-term. I was sitting, talking to a guy who was running about a $3 billion electronic parts company. I had spoken to his people and we were chatting about this. He said, “I said to my board, ‘If you would like me to increase profitability by 50%, within 18 months, I can do it with both hands tied behind my back and a blindfold. Your only problem is I won’t do it for you. You’re going to have to find somebody else.’”
I get furious about this. I got in trouble because I use Twitter a lot. For the first time, I got massive trolling. It is when I said that I felt that January 6, 2021 was worse than Pearl Harbor Day. I do. Our country is 243 years old and our democracy has never been fundamentally threatened. I will not blame it all on CEOs and Milton Friedman. I would say if I was in a CEO’s office, I would think, “What kind of a world am I creating?” I don’t get it. How could you sit in those offices? I guess you can if you’ve got seventeen assistants who are serving you. As I remember, one corporate boardroom in China looked like it came out of Buckingham Palace.
I’m not a moralizer, but I’m becoming a moralizer because I’m absolutely positively scared to death. I checked into a medical facility. The woman checking me in was not overly busy. We chatted at one point. She said, “My husband and I decided not to have children.” I said, “It’s none of my business in any way, shape or form, but I will tell you that thinking about not having children in the midst of the things that we’re going through right now strikes me as not a silly thing.” We are in trouble. Relative to things you were talking about, 90% of it is fixable. The only good news, and you’ve conned me into this or I’ve conned you into it, is what we do forget is that the Fortune 500 only employs about 8% of us, and the other 92% are in the gorgeous and often beloved SMEs.
Search Excellence: The fortune 500 only employees are about 8%. The other 92% are in the gorgeous and often beloved SMEs.You have a chapter here called Big Stinks SME’s Rule. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what we’ll find when we open up that particular chapter?
You’ll find stories, which is what I’ve been doing ever since the beginning of In Search Of Excellence. You’ll find the story of Basement Systems Inc of Seymour, Connecticut. They take your crappy old, dirty basement, turn it into a fun family room and extra bedrooms. In the basement transformation business, they put together a couple hundred million dollar company. There are $80 jillion opportunities like that. They take incredibly good care of their employees. They’re the ones I love.
My good friend, Bill Taylor, who was a Cofounder of Fast Company, wrote a fantastic book called Small Giants. It is a collection of 20 or 25 war stories, not about the two-person companies as important as they are, but the middle-sized ones, the 100, 80, and 250 employees. There is where the action is. My old McKinsey friend, Dick Foster, did a study of 1,000 largest companies. Over a 40-year period, not one outperformed the stock market. When I’m speaking to groups, what I always say is, “Go for it and have fun. You’re in a big company. You’re on your way down the hill. Enjoy the ride.”
The last thing I wanted to ask you before we wrap this up is I love the name of your last chapter called Excellence Is The Next Five Minutes. The reason I like that is because it’s that lift at the end that’s the hope that I think that you’ve implied all through this conversation. Tell us what you meant by that. I apologize, I had not read this yet, but I will.
I’m going to twist what you asked a little bit. What it means is a teacher stands in the doorway of her or his classroom every morning with a smile and welcomes his 22 students and says, “Good morning, Mitch, how are you doing?” or not something grand. As a result of that, disciplinary problems fall through the poor, and academic engagement goes through the roof.
A wonderful book called Compassionomics by these tight-ass researchers which is about healthcare and the degree to which compassion pays. If a doctor can get himself away from A) His ego, B) All the requirements to write things down for financial reasons and looks directly in the eye of a patient for 38 seconds, complications go down. My point is it’s not about hills and mountains to climb. It is about equality.
It's not about the mountains to climb; it is about the quality.
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Let’s talk about the last 25 minutes. I’ve lived for close to 80 years, but my entire life and existence on this planet are about our conversations. I don’t have anything else. That’s all there is to my wife for these 25 minutes. I’m sure I haven’t, but if I do my best to turn it into a piece of art and something that’s thoughtful, helpful, and so on, that’s the best I can ever do. Long-term doesn’t cut it for me. What cuts it is smiling at the kid when she or he comes in the morning and saying, “You are looking pretty good today.” That’s a heavy look back.
I reflect back on my own life. The reason that those inflection points in my own life came from people like that, it came from that smile and from that individual who saw something in me at a young age and said, “Maybe this is special. Maybe we should cultivate that.” I agree with you. Without reading the chapter, I think the point I’m getting is that excellence is in the present moment.
I’ll use the word admiration. As many people might have heard, admiration is the most important element of the human condition. If we were able to apply admiration to foreign policy in a sense, we’d probably have hardly any of the problems we have today. Let’s bring it back down to the classroom. Like you said, “That’s a nice book bag you have there, Bobby.” It’s that little moment in time where you are admired by a person of authority that changes how you see the world.
That’s a great sentence because it’s a profound sentence, “Changes how you see the world.” That is as big a statement as is humanly possible to utter, yet I completely agree with you.
This is the spot and place in time where maybe this piece of art or this small contribution to the world is you and I being able to urge people to please slow down and look someone else in the eye, be nice, be courteous, listen, and not try and speak for a few minutes while the other person shares a little bit more about them. That moment of empathy could potentially save a life. That’s what I love about that statement, “Excellence in the next five minutes,” would be the most powerful contribution any of us could ever make.
Those kinds of stories you can dig up around this are staggering.
I want to give you a chance to tell us, to those who are thinking of potentially grabbing a copy of this book, why should they? What is it that they need from this book that they don’t have now?
It’s a bright red cover. It’s an undersized book and it is a book of reminders. It is a book where there’s a quote that sounds exactly like your words. It comes from William James about, “The single most powerful thing that people want is to be appreciated.” He didn’t say they want it. He said, “They crave it.” It is a book to be read slowly and opened randomly. You don’t get Tom pontificating about all this stuff, which has been the case. This is the raw material.
The single most powerful thing that people want is to be appreciated.
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In Search Of Excellence is 40 years old in 2022. It’s 45 years since that research began, and this is an effort to boil it down to its true essence. I won’t call it one-liners, but it’s the essential little pieces. I would love to see people grab one, share it, and carry the book around, partially because my wonderful co-author, Nancye Green, is a great designer and it’s an attractive book that I hope sucks you in. Having been sucked in, I hope that tomorrow morning you stand in that doorway and give that extra smile.
The whole essence of In Search Of Excellence, which I’ve told many times, was when Bob Waterman and I, my co-author who passed away on January 2, 2022, I’m sad to say, made a trip from McKinsey San Francisco office down to Palo Alto to visit a big-ish middle-sized-plus company by the name of Hewlett-Packard. The President, John Young, introduced us to MBWA, which was Managing By Wandering Around. The point of that, and it goes back to things you’ve been saying, what that taught me when I figure it out is leadership is an intimate act.
It is Mr. Young, President of a $1.5 billion company, wandering with Bob and me through the engineering spaces. He is probably 50 or 49 or something with one million problems on his desk, and chatting amiably, kindly, thoughtfully with a 26-year-old engineer, and treating that engineer as if that kid was the only living human being on the face of the planet Earth. In retrospect, that day, those four letters, MBWA, were the most transformative letters in my life.
Leadership is intimate. Leadership is about personalization, care and thoughtfulness. A) It’s a great way to make money. B) It’s a great way to keep people who work for you from being suckers for the pissed-off people who would like to recruit them for rather nasty causes. It is 1 step at a time, 1 minute at a time, 1 small act at a time. I hate to use the term, “It works,” but it does work.
Search Excellence: Leadership is about personalization, care, and thoughtfulness.I hope that you are no way near done creating beautiful content for this amazing world that we live in and contributing in the way that you have. For readers, we’re talking to the incredible Tom Peters, the co-author of In Search Of Excellence and many other books. You’ll be able to click on a link at Tom Peters’ show page to pick up a copy of his new book, which I believe might in fact change the world because that’s all it takes. It just takes a few minutes of understanding what another person’s problems are. You could change not only the world but their world and maybe yours too. Thank you again, Tom. This has been a lot of fun. I always enjoyed talking to you.
We’ve done it before, and it’s been fun. I hope we continue to do it. I admire infinitely what you are up to and appreciate your inviting me to chat.
It’s my pleasure. Have a great day.
Important Links GetClientFolio.com * In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies * Tom Peters * The Compact Guide To Excellence * Nancye Green * David Brooks’ Article * Tom Peters’ article on Financial Times * Compassionomics*
About Tom PetersTom Peters is coauthor of In Search of Excellence—the book that changed the way the world does business and often tagged as the best business book ever. Eighteen books and thirty-five years later, Tom is still at the forefront of the “management guru industry” he single-handedly invented. What’s new? A lot. As CNN said, “While most business gurus milk the same mantra for all it’s worth, the one-man brand called Tom Peters is still reinventing himself.” His most recent effort is Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism.
Tom’s tireless focus is on putting people first and developing leaders who stay in intimate touch with the front-liners who do the real work. In November 2017, Tom received the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award. Effectively, all of Tom’s written and speech material covering the last 20+ years is available—free to download—at tompeters.com and excellencenow.com.
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A business only thrives when they are serving more people. And a good leader recognizes this. Our guest, Steve Gordon, is all too familiar with this. When he was a newly minted CEO at 28 years old, he took on the problem of finding a way to get new clients. This led him to discover the best practices and a secret weapon businesses can use to build relationships and multiply revenue by 10x. In this episode, he reveals the greatest marketing idea—and it’s not as new as we expect it to be. In fact, it is the oldest! Steve shares their referral process and the need to be able to take your expertise and package it in a way that is easy to share: a book. He lays out the formula for writing a book and marketing it, so you can reach people who need the solutions and transformations you offer and will, in turn, refer others to you. Thousands and thousands of people and corporations around the world have adopted Steve’s system. Join this conversation and see why!
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Listen to the podcast hereThe Greatest (And Oldest) Marketing Idea: Building Referrals Through Books With Steve GordonI have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach for many years, I made a few discoveries that have vastly improved client performance and satisfaction. I realized that by asking very few but specific questions that are carefully crafted to bring a client to a personal realization about their true purpose, I was able to help my clients align their newly discovered purpose with their true mission. That alignment changes everything, and I want to share that with you.
I wrote a short book but very powerful. It’s called Coach Elevation, and for a limited time, you can get it free, and I mean free. Go to *CoachElevation.com, and it will be yours. Download it, use it, and let me know the transformations that take place. Now, onto our guest and his incredible story. At the age of 28, my guest was thrown into an impossible situation as a newly-minted CEO. They were doing okay but had no true way to get new clients, and this was the source of great frustration.*
As time went on, the problem became crucial, and he had to solve the problem now. As they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” He read every book and studied every program he could find until he decided he would simply do what he knew best. That was to build relationships and ask for referrals, get testimonials, and parlay that into the true fortune that he did.
Several years later, the company multiplied its revenue by 10X, and that’s when he realized he could help others do the same. You are about to get a world-class education on getting new clients for any type of business using best practices and common sense and a new secret weapon that is not so new and not so secret but not enough people know how to use it. We are about to find out. Welcome, Steve Gordon, to the show.
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be back.
This is its second performance of Steve. He was on a previous episode some years ago where he talked a lot about the referral business and all the great stuff he’s done with clients to help them build referrals. I know he still does that but before we get into the new stuff, let’s go back a couple of years and tell us how this all got started for you.
Thank you, first of all, for the fantastic introduction, very dramatic and theatrical. That is where the journey started. I was 28 years old. I got tapped to run a business that I had been working for four years out of college and didn’t have any clue how to run a business, how to get clients or how to do any of that. In that business, we didn’t have a marketing function.
Everything came by referral, and some months, the phone rang off the hook, and other months, it didn’t ring at all. We didn’t know what the correlation was between one or the other. We got good at that and were able to grow that business. I decided after running that business for about 10 or 11 years that I was ready to do something else. The thing that people would always pick my brain on was how we were doing so well at getting clients, and I enjoyed that part. I started my company, and now we help other experts and professionals go out and build systems that get clients for them and help them put together the tools to do that.
The reason I find this story interesting is that you didn’t perceive what you were going through as a gift at the time. You perceived it as a difficulty and as a problem. You said, “We have no other way to get clients. Maybe this will work.” Until finally, you hit upon the thing that worked better than you probably even expected it to. It was because things didn’t work that you were able to develop the skillset, knowledge, and wisdom that you have now. Imagine if everything would have worked right out of the box. Imagine if you stepped into that chair as a young man when you graduated, and the business kept going and going. Would you have learned as much?
Never.
That’s what I love about these stories because everybody starts with the perception of, “I have a problem, and I need to solve this problem.” What they have is, “I have a gift that I need to unfold and completely develop to become my future,” and that’s exactly what you did. It’s a great story. I imagine that about another 1 or 2 people reading the show might’ve gone through or gone through something like that as well. Probably a lot more.
It’s always great to hear about the beginnings of every company but let’s move on a little bit. The referral system that you created is now in use by thousands of people, and corporations all over the world have adopted it. Since I spoke to you the last time, you’ve continued to do that, I assume, but something new came up. Tell us how you discovered this little thing that you do called book publishing.
Decision-makers don't want to learn how to do what you do. They want to understand that you have a system and a process to solve their problem.
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In my first book, Unstoppable Referrals, which laid out our referral process, I talked about the need to be able to take your expertise and package it in a way that’s easy to share. In that book, I talked about using your own book as the gold standard for doing that. That got people coming to us asking, “Would you write a book for me?” They had seen the success we had.
I have to be honest. I was pulled into that kicking and screaming. It took about eight years before I finally fully relented. We would help people here and there one-off writing a book. It took writing five books. I had written five now of my own and getting through about a dozen or maybe even closer to twenty client books in that one-off model before I was able to reverse engineer how to do it, how to do it quickly, and how to do it so that it you are reliably getting a product that’s going to generate leads for the business. We are writing a specific type of book. That’s a book that is designed to speak to potential clients and compel them to want to talk to you and get your help to solve the problem that the book describes. That’s how we ended up writing books.
I’m sensing a pattern here. Every time you run into a situation as I have, you resist at first until you relent and say, “Fine. I will do that.” Later you uncover a diamond basically that you get to polish over and over again. In all fairness, so readers know, the book that I talked about at the top of the show, Coach Elevation, is a book written and inspired by your work. I saw what you were doing with books and the power of having a short and concise but very valuable nugget of information, and maybe even a blueprint and technique.
Using that as a way of getting your name out there, I said, “This is exactly what Steve does.” I learned what you did. You were the inspiration for me to write this short book. My other books are much longer, whereas the books are 300-plus pages. This book is only 89 to 90 pages but it’s powerful because this is about one specific thing. The goal is to get people to benefit significantly from reading the short book, and hopefully, at that point, they will have gotten a lot of value from it. Maybe they may want to use our software or talk to us about helping them with other things. It was an inspiration.
In case you are just tuned in, we are talking to incredible Steve Gordon, a guy who has been in the business of helping people get clients for many years. Steve, let’s break down this formula. We are going to teach somebody how they could write a short book. Give us some parameters, talk us through the blueprint, and give us a place to start.
The first place to start is if you want to write a short book, you want to write a specific book. I have seen experts struggle with this. For people who know their stuff, have got a great background, and help a lot of people, the tendency is to want to put everything that they know into the book as if they have to prove to their peers that they are smart.
The problem with that is that the book you are trying to write to get clients is for your peers. It’s written for someone who doesn’t have your expertise. It’s not that we need to dumb it down but we need to speak in English, and less is probably more in that situation. A great example of that is I had a guy come to us, hired us a few years ago, and wrote a magnificent book.
This book won literary awards in his industry. A fantastic book. It is a masterpiece in his industry, and yet he was frustrated. He had already worked with a number of the big names. The big gurus in marketing are trying to get the book to work for him to deliver to clients. He came to us looking for help. I sat down with his book and some of the others that we had done.
Unstoppable Referrals: 10x Referrals Half the EffortI took all of the best sellers in his category, and it finally dawned on me after about a week of looking at all of these books. He had written a textbook. What you want to write is a transformation book. Decision-makers don’t want to learn how to do what you do. They want to understand that you have a system and a process to solve their problem. They want to see that you thought it through but they don’t want all the steps.
I learned this from you on a show. You have a great podcast. Tell me the name of your show again.
The Unstoppable CEO Podcast.
I’m trying to remember who you were interviewing. I apologize. I should have been better prepared to name this person but you were breaking this part of it down very carefully. Somewhere I have those notes on a notepad on my computer. The key nugget that I got was the fact that you are trying to create a single transformation, a powerful transformation in this short book that showcases what you’ve learned and how what you are about to teach can change another person’s life or a business. Is that right?
Absolutely, and there’s a storyline to the transformation. We know that people learn best through stories. They remember stories that have the most impact on them, and a great book has a storyline. There are lots of different story frameworks you could use to write your book. You could use the hero’s journey. There are a number of things that you could use.
What we found is that the simplest way to do this is to think in terms of a three-act play. In the first act, we are creating the conflict, whereas in the first chapter, maybe 2 or 3 chapters even, we are presenting to that reader the problem that they face. They are probably very familiar with it but we want to meet them where they are, the thing that they are worried about, and then we want to show them the consequences of that problem. If they fail to act, if they don’t do anything, if they let it sit and fester, this is what’s going to happen.
It’s like holding up a mirror to a person who is in pain but doesn’t want to admit it, and now they can see what their situation truly is. From there, we move into the second part of the book, and that’s where we give them some hope. We give them a roadmap to resolution. I like to call this the yellow brick road. I’m going to lose the ability to use this analogy pretty soon because very few people have seen The Wizard of Oz at this stage.
In the first part of that book, you are Dorothy, and you have been dropped by a tornado in a strange black and white world. You want to find the way home. All the way home is to follow the yellow brick road, and that is what we would call your unique mechanism. These are the 4, 5 or 6 steps to solve someone’s problem at a high level.
Your existing clients are most likely to know other people that are just like them and be able to refer to you.
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This makes perfect sense because everybody who has been in business, even for a short time, has figured something out. My belief and I could be wrong, is that when we figure something out and start using it, we start thinking that everyone else already knows this. We start thinking that it’s not that special because, after all, if I could figure out how special it could be, that’s what most people don’t get. The fact is that you figured it out. It is transformation and special. I bet if you took the advice that Steve was giving us and wrote that book, you would solve problems for somebody, maybe many people. What happens in the third act of your play?
In the third act, you arrive in Emerald City. It’s colorful, gem covered, glistening, and perfect. In the third part of the book, you want to paint a picture for the reader as to what their bigger and better future is going to be like when they are on the other side of this transformation so that they can see why it’s important to make this shift. Using that structure creates some emotional contrast for them. You need that emotional energy to create action because if we don’t create any action, then there’s never going to be a solution delivered. This person is going to stay in the problem or state that they are in, and everybody loses.
It’s a very simple process. What you’ve laid out is very easy to understand for me anyway, and I get it quickly. I have already heard this before. That’s how I wrote my last book, Coach Elevation. My real question here is, when you write books for your clients or when you instruct your clients on building their own book structure, how long do they usually turn out to be?
We aim for books that are between 100 and 150 pages.
My book is a little shorter because it’s a single chance for transformation but it’s powerful. Let’s say that we get to the point where you have your book, maybe I have gotten some help from you, from listening to your show, reading your book or working with you, now the hard part comes. How do you market this book?
It depends on the business and your goals. We work with people across the spectrum. Some are in a local practice, maybe an attorney or large law firm but in a local area. We work with others who are consultants that are maybe marketing around the country or around the globe. It depends on how spread-out people are but the first place that we start is what we call our inverted viral launch method. That’s using your best, warmest relationships to go out and begin getting immediate results.
Give us some examples.
The best example is the launch of my first book, Unstoppable Referrals. I didn’t even know what I was doing this time. I created a podcast a couple of years before that and interviewed 50 entrepreneurs from around the world. I went back to those 50 people a couple of years later when I had been preparing for launching my book. 15 of the 50 said, “I would love to help you share the book,” and so those fifteen people shared the book. In a little over a week’s time, we had over 5,000 people get a copy of my book.
Coach Elevation: The Step-by-Step Guide to Elevating Coaching Sessions To Improve Results, Elevate Your Brand and Create ProsperityTo give you a sense of the impact of those fifteen relationships, that’s not a lot of relationships. We were a small local marketing consulting firm at the time. It was me and a half of an assistant. To go from that with a handful of clients to all of a sudden, people reaching out to us from the UK, Canada, and all across the US totally changed our business overnight. That’s the impact of the relationships that you already have.
You gave me a great idea, and I want to clarify it. What you are saying is that the people you interviewed in your shows in the past then became your marketing partners. The psychology behind that is pretty cool because what you’ve done is you’ve built an affinity with that individual by interviewing them. Secondarily, you’ve created reciprocity because you promoted their show. You elevated them and advanced their brand somewhat by making them public.
Using both those two components of the relationship, which are natural human components, they were able to say yes and be delighted to do so, which is important and simple to understand. What other ideas or relationships do you think you could leverage if you have your book done and you want to get it out there as fast as possible?
We always start with your clients if your existing clients are most likely to know other people that are like them and be able to refer to you. I was talking with one of our clients who had been averaging about 1 or 2 referrals into their financial practice over the last number of years, 1 or 2 a month. In the last few days, they have brought in 60 referrals using their book and our unstoppable referrals process.
They have done it with, in some cases, they had a great relationship with an attorney who had never referred them before. All of a sudden, he referred eleven people because he was able to do it very easily by sharing the book as the way as a mechanism to make the introduction. That’s the first and best place to start.
Would you get them to read the book first and then share it with their audience or would you simply send it to them with no instructions other than, “I wrote this free book. I thought you would like to read it?” Give us a little bit more detail there.
What we do is we coach our clients to have what I call the value conversation with their clients and their centers of influence. What I like about this as it works on a small scale. In the example of, a local advisor works great for that. It works well also if you’ve got higher-level contacts. You might have lists of 5,000 or 10,000 people that they can share your book with.
You simply have a meeting, a Zoom call, and if I’m talking to you as a client, you say, “It has been great over the years to be able to work with you and help you solve some of your marketing challenges. I have finished my brand-new book, which is going to transform the way that business owners write a book of their own and get clients. I’m on a mission to get that into the hands of as many business owners as quickly as I can, and I would love your help. What do you say?”
Just be flexible. If someone wants a referral fee and you're willing to pay it, and it makes sense, then great.
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That is very simple, and it’s not an imposing conversation. It’s not a hard sell. It’s quite natural and a friendly conversation, so I love the way you structured that. They don’t have to say anything. They could say no or yes. I love the fact that there are only three possibilities. If they say no, that’s fine. I get it. No is no. If they don’t say anything, we take that as a no, but we might reach out again and say, “I want to remind you that I am still interested to work with you on promoting the book.”
If they say yes, and you say, “Great. Here’s how you do it, and you provide.” If you use affiliate links, you provide an affiliate link and a mechanism by which they can potentially even make some money by sharing your book. Does making money by sharing your book, in some ways, degrade the book’s purpose itself or do you feel as if it enhances the fact that you are asking people to share it?
Outside of the internet marketing world that you and I tend to live in, most people don’t care about affiliate fees. If you are in the internet marketing world, it’s a thing. What I always tell our clients is to be flexible. If someone wants a referral fee and you are willing to pay it, and it makes sense, great. The vast majority of people won’t, and they want to be able to make a recommendation or give a gift.
When you think about what’s happening here, and most of the time, on a smaller scale, people are giving out physical copies of their books. It’s allowing that client of yours or that center of influence to literally give a gift to someone in their network. The benefit for them is that now they are the source of this gift. They are the source of connection to the author. It elevates their social status, and so that is a benefit to them by itself.
In my case, I work with coaches. My audience would be coaches for this particular book or product. Would I then offer to give them bulk copies of books to give away to other coaches or would I simply offer them the chance to send out an email that their potential clients or connections can then click on and download the book? What are your thoughts about that?
The mechanism that you use is going to vary from one partner to another. I will give you a few examples. I might have a center of influence that has fifteen perfect clients for me. In that case, I might agree to give each of them a signed copy, and I’m going to send it to them with a handwritten note. I’m going to make it nice.
In that case, I will probably sit with that partner and ask for the contact information of each of those people so that I can do all of the work. You may think, “Who will give me the contact information.” When you tell them, “I want to make this easy for you. Our team will do all the work. We will take care of it.” You would be astonished at how quickly you get names and addresses because now, they don’t have to do anything.
Let’s pivot this a little bit. You and I have both seen countless free plus shipping offers showing up on the internet and Facebook. What do you think of those? Do you think those are worthwhile because, in the end, someone is going to pay $995 for a free book? You don’t make any money on that. You still might have to pay money to have that fulfilled. Does that work better than giving the book away as a free PDF? What do you think?
Greatest Marketing: You need that emotional energy to create action because if we don’t create any action, there’s never going to be a solution delivered.It depends on your capabilities within your business. Everything we have talked about so far is the strategies that we teach our clients. The three main strategies are the referral strategy we have talked about, and then what we call a free book funnel, which is giving the book away on your website for free as a download, and then a paid book funnel, which is what you are talking about here. They all work but if I take someone who doesn’t have a lot of internet marketing and online advertising background and try and get them to implement the paid book funnel, they are going to fail miserably because they don’t have the capability to do it.
It’s about matching the right strategy with your capabilities and building on what you are already good at from a marketing perspective, and also matching it to your business model. For some types of businesses where you are selling something that’s at a high end, you don’t need to have people jump through all of these hoops to pay $995 for the shipping, get the book free, and do all of the things that happen in those funnels. It’s more effective to give the book away.
You and I are talking from the perspective of internet-based students or students of the internet and practitioners. If there are doctors, lawyers, or plumber reading, do you think a good strategy might be for them to write the book, maybe print up a bunch of them, and then give them to the people who go out and visit homes so they could leave a book with clients? Is that a possible strategy or is that more of an imposition in a sense? What do you think?
If I had people going into homes, if I was selling to a consumer market, I have books and all of my salespeople. I have worked with roofers in the past. They will send people out that are effectively salespeople that go and quote the jobs. I would have them come back around at the end of a project and make sure that the customer is happy.
I would make sure they had two books with them and say, “I have two books here. I have looked around the neighborhood. Most everyone else in the neighborhood has a roof about as old as yours was before we fixed it. I have two copies of these. Who would be two friends of yours here within a couple of houses either way that might appreciate a copy of this book? It might help them make a decision about getting their own roof repaired as you have.”
The other thing is that it’s a way to differentiate yourself from other roofers. Your book is about roof quality, materials, installation, the care of installation, and all this other stuff. If you are quoting a job, you say, “Before you make a decision, this is a very short book. You may want to take a look through it because the founder of our company wrote this book, and it talks a lot about why a certain type of shingle might be more important than others in your particular situation.” What it does is it elevates that person’s brand above all the other roofers that are out there selling price.
There are lots of applications for a simple book giveaway. Let’s get into a little bit more of the mechanics of this. When you finish your book after you’ve written it, and assuming that you’ve gone through the trouble of you getting a cover designed, write the bio for yourself, and the table of contents, all the components that go with the content, and now you want to get it printed. Do you think that the best idea for people is to upload it on Amazon and get it printed there? How do you typically think about physical distribution?
For most people, Amazon is a great solution because they print books very inexpensively. They will ship them to you at a wholesale cost as an author. They will handle fulfillment. If you don’t want to be in the business of taking people’s money for your book if you decide to sell it and shipping out a hard copy, they will take care of all of that for you, and they do a great job of it. That’s where people go to find books. For those who are in an extremely narrow niche market, you may prefer to sell it directly on your website, and the reason for that is that when Amazon sells a book for you, the customer is Amazon’s customer, not yours. You don’t end up with any of their contact information.
When Amazon sells a book for you, the customer is Amazon's customer, not yours.
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You’ve got to do some things in the book and hope that those people come in and contact you. We have got a client who’s the number one results coach for independent insurance agencies around the US. We made the decision strategically with them to only offer the book through their website because the leads were so valuable that we didn’t want to lose any going to Amazon.
We are going to transition to the second part of the show, which is always my favorite, where we ask some fun questions about you and how you think. I want to point out that when you answer these questions, whatever you say is going to be unique. I’m going to ask you for a person, and you are going to tell me a person, other people might have said that person before but the reason you said it is the most unique part and that’s what I’m interested in. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
I was reading that question and reflecting on it. The first thing that came into my mind is this passage in Genesis in the Bible when it talks about God walking through the garden in the cool of the day. Where I live here, there are about 7 or 8 miles of nature trails out in the woods, and I thought, “How cool would it be to take an hour’s walk like that in the cool of the day with God walking by your side?” I don’t know how that would work but that’s what came to mind. That would be an incredible experience.
Interestingly enough, in over 300 interviews, many people have said Jesus but no one has ever said God, so congratulations. You broke the mold there. That’s wonderful. This is my personal opinion, and I hope it doesn’t offend you in any way. You already are walking with God every single day of every single moment. My belief is that we have that presence in our lives no matter where we are all the time.
That’s how I like to think and live my life, and I’m sure that you feel the same way when it comes to the spiritual side of life as well. Here’s the second question. It’s the grand finale that changed the world question. What is it that you were doing or like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
One of the things that my wife and I feel strongly about is feeding people. Particularly feeding people who aren’t being fed on a regular basis. That’s become an increasing emphasis in our lives. That’s some of the big why behind what I do in business. I will be honest. We haven’t worked out all the how yet for that but we feel called to do that and are walking that path now. That’s what we believe will change the world.
That’s a beautiful path, and I support you in that. I’m sure that there are many people reading the show who have a similar goal. I remember one time I was on the phone with Tony Robbins for a business meeting, and it was late fall. Tony says to me, “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I said, “My family, we always get together and go down to this little church in Saugerties, New York, and we like to serve meals on Thanksgiving Day. We probably feed about 150 people.” Tony says, “That’s fantastic,” in the way he speaks. I said, “We enjoy it. What are you doing?” He goes, “I like to feed people too.” I said, “That’s fantastic.” He says, “I feed about half a billion people a year.”
All of a sudden, I’m feeling small. “Tony, that’s a little bit more than I’m feeding.” That was a very bleeding thought. I was thrilled to hear about the work that he’s doing. He’s an amazing guy. He knows, for all the years that we worked together, how much I admire him and the work that he’s doing. What it comes down to is that we do what we can do. I don’t have to be Tony Robbins, and I don’t have to feed half a billion people but I can do what I can do, and everything that I choose to do makes me feel good about the work that I’m doing too.
The Million Dollar Book: The Ultimate Blueprint for Writing a 7-Figure Business BookIt’s important that we have a mission that helps others no matter who we are because that’s part of where we get our life’s fulfillment, and I’m glad to see that you are doing it too. That’s wonderful. We talked a little bit about a free gift, and I’m pretty excited about this one. Readers, if you haven’t guessed by now, what Steve is going to give away. He is going to provide you with a book. Tell us the name of the book and what the book is about, and then we will talk about how they can get it.
What I would love to give away is a copy of my latest book. This is book number five. It’s called The Million Dollar Book: The Ultimate Blueprint for Writing a 7-Figure Business Book. It’s got everything that we talked about now and a whole lot more. All of the details about what should go into your book, how to structure it, how to write it quickly, and then how to market and use it to get clients. I would love to give that to everybody who is reading.
For those of us who are a little time conscious, give us an estimate. How long do you think it would take us to get through your book?
One of the reasons we write short books is because I don’t like to give anybody a project. I don’t want you to get my book and then look at it and go, “This is going to take me a weekend.” You should be able to read it in about a 60 to 90 minutes. Maybe two hours if you are a slow reader and taking your time but the goal is that by the second cup of coffee, you are finished.
That’s a great goal. Like you, I don’t want to dig into a book unless it’s Atlas Shrugged or something, where it’s going to be 700 or 900 pages. In this case, what I want from a book is I want to learn something. I want to have the instructions on how to do it and have some benchmarks as to whether or not I did it right. Does your book contain all of that?
You got all of that in there.
Readers, I want you to go to Steve’s show page. It’s at YourFirstThousandClients.com go to Steve Gordon’s show page. At the bottom of that page is going to be a link for you to grab and download that free book. I highly recommend that if you even think about writing a book, you at least check this out for free and see if, in fact, it inspires you to take that first step.
Maybe that first step is having the belief, “I can do this.” I bet reading Steve’s book, you will start to have that belief because it’s easier than you think. I know that Steve has laid out a process so that it is approachable that you will want to start right away. Go grab that right away. Steve, thank you again for all of your great wisdom and teachings. It was always fun spending time with you, and I want to thank you for being on the show. I also want to thank you for sharing what you know so openly and readily with all of our readers.
Thank you. It has been a lot of fun and great to see you again.
You too.
Important Links CoachElevation.com * Previous episode– Reading Your Way To Success: The Power Of Books With Steve Gordon * Steve Gordon * Unstoppable Referrals * The Unstoppable CEO Podcast * The Million Dollar Book: The Ultimate Blueprint for Writing a 7-Figure Business Book * Atlas Shrugged*
About Steve GordonWe help abundance-minded entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals (who sell high-priced services) package their best ideas and use them to attract their “dream come true” clients.
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With the technologies available today, it is easy to search for products we need or offer products we sell but doing the transaction is at our own risk. Imagine how much better you’ll do if you have a trusted community of leaders to do business with. Whether you are a buyer, seller or distributor, in the trade industry or energy space who don’t know where to look or are looking for suppliers, this is the podcast for you! Chairman of the Board and founder of ProCents, Matt Russell gives us an overview of the enormous value you can get from the unique community they created that’s focused on providing a holistic environment where vetted partners can come in and get deals done. He also shares their commitment to doing what you say you’ll do and their dedication in supporting each other’s businesses. So listen in to know how you can make that vital connection to advance your business, and keep in mind that when we all work together and support our mutual goals, we all win!
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Listen to the podcast hereProCents: A Community Of Leaders Creating Enormous Value With Matt RussellWelcome to the show. This is the show where tribes and community leaders share their experiences to help you grow your own tribe. Our goal is to help you be a better leader, inspire more people, create the passion your community wants, and profit from the experience. Since this is a fairly new show, I still want to hear from you. Tell me what you think, what you want, who you are interested in hearing from, and what action you take once you read these episodes.
The goal of the show is to make sure that you are a better leader, whether you’re just starting out, you’re leading a community right now, or you’re about to transition a community in another direction. Be sure to read this next episode because we have an incredible individual. He has over 25 years in sales leadership and development and fifteen years in real estate development and energy efficiency sales. He has been an entrepreneur for several decades. He’s now building a vibrant community. It’s exciting to watch his pathway and see how he does. His name is Matt Russell. Welcome to the show.
Mitch, thank you for having me on the show. I’m honored.
For full disclosure, Matt and I happen to be members of a similar community called The Bellwether Alliance. We met there. It’s a very high trust environment in this community. Immediately upon meeting Matt, I felt a feeling of kinship. More importantly, I realized that this was a guy who has the same values as I do. When I got a chance to get him on the show, I got excited. Matt, tell us how this all started for you.
ProCents was formed because I have always believed in bringing solutions to people. When I worked in organizations, I have only been able to provide certain solutions. ProCents allows me to work outside in bearing the complete solution for both buyers and sellers within the energy space, which is inherently a great place to be because a lot of heartfelt people want to get deals done. I happened to be in the middle of it, providing a conduit of success.
Always do what you say you're going to do.
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Let’s go back before ProCents and tell me a little bit more about your background. What brought you to this point?
It’s a very linear path. My father was a licensed electrician. I love and honor my father who’s still alive now. I watched him build a business. He was the first entrepreneur I saw when he was a licensed electrician. I had the ability to fulfill my father’s dreams of working smarter, not harder. After working a little bit, getting some degrees, and spending some time in the space, it led me to look for opportunities to bring solutions just like my dad did, being others-focused and trying to build a community where I can thrive in. People can also bring their kids up, which was a generational thing for me. I’m happy to be going on a little bit different path than my father.
When you were inspired by your dad, what were the qualities that you saw and said, “I would like to be like my dad in this way.” What were those qualities?
My dad always had a get-it-done mindset, but he never had the, “I’m going to steamroll someone to get to the next level.” My dad always put other people first. Being from the South, he had the “Take the shirt off his back” mentality and was honest. The thing that I utilize in my language, and it’s part of our Rolodex of how we communicate with people, is doing what you say you’re going to do. It is such a fundamental truth for us all. It’s one of those things that doesn’t resonate as well as we would like it to across all industries.
Let’s go back to what you started to say a little bit while ago. That’s the core mission of the tribe itself. How would you describe that?
Community Of Leaders: We’re all entitled to a bad day. But when their bad days are more prevalent than the good days, we may not have that individual or that organization become part of the community.The core mission of the tribe is to bring people together, make introductions, and allow them to choose their own path forward. In doing so, we have a couple of different truths that we look for. We ask for same-day communication, both bad and good, so people can make the right business decisions. Also, do what you say you’re going to do and always be attentive to others.
In this case, does this relate to personal relationships, business relationships or both? How would you describe it?
Everything I do, I like to think it is at a personal level. With ProCents, we have 45 different organizations that are part of the tribe, but it started with one person seeing the vision and the growth of being able to do that. What it’s doing is helping change the culture within the business. Some of these organizations could be as small as 5 or 10 people. Some are several hundred and maybe several thousand people strong. When we affect one, it can create a chain effect that’s affecting the entire organization by doing what we say we’re going to do.
Let’s take a step back here because most of the people I have interviewed and the people who tune in to the show are usually hearing about a community builder who creates a one-on-one relationship with a person, whether they’re a single person or a multi-person organization. You have described this several times as having 45 companies as your tribe. Where is that crossover? How are you connecting with the individual who can become passionate about what you’re doing?
When you spend as much time as I have in an industry, you get to know people. I got to know CEOs, executives, and high-ranking managers within these organizations that I have built deep friendships with and deep connections with by always doing what I say I’m going to do. When I brought this idea up to them and helped them vet the process, mitigate risk, and know that they’re getting a warm introduction that is going to be others-focused and look to build a partnership, that’s what has allowed me to go from not only an individual relationship but also helping the entire organization find success. It did start with one. Luckily for me, it’s blossomed into me helping the entire organization itself, which is a great place to be. I did not expect to be here several years ago, but I’m here now and I’m enjoying the ride.
Lead by example, lead from the back and help, and be that motivator for everyone.
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How many people, communities or companies are you leading as part of your community itself?
We are servicing 45 different companies. For the audience, be on the lookout because we’re making an announcement, which is hopefully going to triple our membership. We have been working diligently to bring this. It’s going to be done on a personal level. It’s great.
Let’s go back to the whole idea that we start to talk about, this evolution. You started with one person, and now here you are at 45. You expect to triple this again later. How long ago did you start this?
The vision for me started several years ago. I incorporated the business back in 2019. I put forth a board of directors, which are part of those companies I work with and their individual people. They help me steer and guide this ship. They’re the tribe that helps steer me when I’m looking at making an idea or making a move. I run it by them. They help me stay within the guardrails of the organization that we’re building, which is inherently helping the entire organization. I happen to be at the helm of this ship and leading the tribe, but I have a lot of great leaders around me.
How often are you in communication with members themselves? Tell me a little bit about that.
Community Of Leaders: If we all are succeeding and you’ve bought into it, then you deserve something back.It varies. We have a scheduled call once a month with every one of our members. We get everyone on board. Our board meets once a quarter to go over things. There are times in a given week that I could be communicating with 5 or 6 different people based on their needs, wants and desires to grow their business. That’s great because it’s not scheduled. We’re allowing life to happen. We’re allowing our business to grow organically. We’re able to show up and be adaptable to help point and provide guidance in this organization.
This sounds like it’s very casual. Some of the community leaders that I’ve communicated with before and have interviewed have a system of communication. I was wondering if there’s anything like that in your current company or community.
We utilize our social media platforms. We also use a CRM to stay in constant communication and drop little nuggets. We have constant webinars to provide education about what’s going on within the industry, which are scheduled. With our social media, we schedule things. We want engagement around that to promote each other’s companies and create these leverage positions to help catapult and provide catalyst moments for each organization.
Luckily within that, because it’s scheduled out usually 75 days in advance, we provide that. We then get together usually once a month to discuss that and the messaging that we want to go about. We’re coming up in October 2022 and Breast Cancer Awareness is coming up. We’ve made a strong push as an organization and our partners in the tribe, who’s going to be a part of that, and how we want to convey that message of being others-focused. We’re trying to bring more people into the community. We value the handshake. That’s why we try to keep it casual, but we do have a structure to it. Sometimes it’s just a phone call, but there is a calendar that we try to keep.
Let’s break this down to both sides here because your members are receiving benefits and you, as the leader, are receiving benefits. Let’s talk about that. What benefits do you, Matt Russell, provide specifically to the members of your tribe?
Build something around your passion because other people are going to see that truth and vision in you and would want to be a part of it.
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The thing that I provide to the members of my tribe is I do my due diligence. I don’t allow anyone into the tribe without being vetted. When I bring forth an introduction, people know that I’m running them through my filter, which has allowed them to find success. That’s going to help them move past getting the know-you period and get right into doing business.
They get to choose their own path, but when the introductions are made, usually, they’re pretty sticky and resilient. They start finding success at a higher rate than an industry norm. For me, that’s the benefit because I have become the trusted advisor to help vet these companies and weed out the ones that have maybe a great organizational footprint online but they don’t adhere to it in real life. That’s what I and the president of my company try to do. I have to lead that charge because I want to lead by example, lead from the back, and help be that motivator for the entire tribe.
What you’re doing at some level is very classic tribe building. It’s important to articulate for others here. One of the things I see that you have done, which is something that you and I have done as part of The Bellwether Group, is you established a community of trust. You have raised the level of trust inside your community that bypasses the level of, “I got to check that guy out before I could even do business with him or whether I know he is a reliable individual, he’s trustworthy or honest.” It seems like when you bring someone in. You pre-vetted them. Is that right?
Yes, sir.
How do you do that?
Community Of Leaders: We highlight every member of the community and we bring the spotlight to the community on social media platforms, because each one of us has our own presence.It’s by having a plethora of conversations and doing some research. I don’t like to say I follow up on their past employers or the people that have left the company, employees or employers. I like to try to find the root cause of what makes that person tick. We’re all entitled to a bad day. When your bad day is more prevalent than your good day, we may not have that individual or that organization become part of the community. We’re trying to buck the stereotype of the 80/20 rule, where 80% of the business comes from 20% of the people. We want to flip it. We want 80% of our business to come from 80% of our organization, and that 20% is where life happens.
Once someone is part of the community, what are the benefits they get other than meeting the other members? What do you provide?
Luckily, ProCents is an industry first. What we do is act on a transaction fee. If the metrics are met for either side of the parties, we will give money back to the organization’s side because if we all are succeeding and you bought into it, you deserve something back. Usually, that’s left for the big box stores or huge conglomerates where they get these incentives. We’re taking that and making sure that both the buyers and sellers are monetized for working within the community and staying inside the community.
Doing that creates a habit and form. They’re able to get money back in that, which inherently can help with hiring a new employee, paying rent, doing a building expansion, and a variety of different other things that they want to do. How they spend the money is up to them, but it’s giving back on the percentage they brought in. It’s fair and equal across the board.
This is a little bit different type of community that I would normally have on the show, which is great because that’s what we want. We want all different types of communities to profile. Do you do any promotions on behalf of the community? Do you promote the community itself? Do you use social media? Tell us a little bit about how that works.
ProCents is a good place to start to find those trusted partners, to get you the products that you need on the budget that you desire.
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As I alluded to earlier, we used social media. We schedule things 75 days in advance. We’re hitting November 2022. What we’re doing is highlighting every member of the community. We’re bringing the spotlight to the community on social media platforms because each one of us has our own presence. We have other community members like, share and comment on those posts to help elevate them and highlight what they do. When we can highlight what someone is good at and people get to see that, now they’re intrigued about what else they can do with them. They see that they’re a trusted person and they like doing business with them. They’re trying to figure out how to do more business with them, and we just open the door.
As the community leader, how are you monetizing the community? Do you get a transaction fee on what goes on? That makes a lot of sense. Not everybody can do that. What advice would you have about monetizing a community? Here’s a leading question into that answer. Do you believe that before starting a community, people need to have a product or service first? Should they develop a community around their passion or manifesto, what they stand for, and what they don’t stand for at the same time? What are your thoughts?
I would say build something around your passion or manifesto. If that’s your truth or vision, other people are going to see that truth and vision in you. They want to be a part of it because it’s what people want. I didn’t get to where I’m at by selling a product. I got to where I’m at because of who I am.
That’s the only true way to build trust inside of an organization. It goes right back to the attraction factor. It’s all about showing someone who you are. Let that be what attracts them and what repels them at the same time because you certainly don’t want those people in the community. The stronger your statement and personality are around that, the better selectiveness you will have inside of the community recruiting efforts. Let’s take a look at the future. Let’s go way into the future, maybe one or two years into the future. What do you see for ProCents?
My goal and the board’s goal is to bring this to the industry that we serve. There are many great partners and trade organizations. We’re looking to partner with them and create this holistic environment where people come in and get deals done. Do it in such a way that it happens every single day because many organizations do it at a trade show. There are so much joy and happiness that comes out of a trade show. Following up, you got to stay consistent. We’re providing that consistency. Our goal is to have partnerships with other organizations. We’re hoping that in 2023, we’re not at 45 but closer to 300 to 400.
Community Of Leaders: Approach people with the right message. If you can’t be a partner based on the message that they’ve provided, it’s better just to stay outside until your message meets their needs.If someone says, “This sounds like an interesting community,” what are the types of companies or organizations that you would be looking to onboard that maybe you’ve never heard of before or you’re not working with yet?
We work in the trade industry, but one of the things that we have a great deal of value in is tax incentives. DPAs are great to have as part of the community because they understand the tax code. Also, the people that are in the government sector because there’s a lot of red tape in that. We can find people or organizations that say, “Here’s how you approach them,” because you always want to approach people with the right message. You don’t want to come in there and bulldoze your way in. If you can’t be a partner based on the message that they’ve provided, it’s better to stay outside until your message meets their needs.
If somebody has a company, what would you say their need would be to want to investigate becoming a member of your organization?
If you’re interested in building a better community around the trade industry or energy space, whether you’re a building owner or you lease buildings out, we can be that partner for you because we have partners. These 45 organizations have national and international reach. It’s a good way to find that value and build a relationship that will last for years and years to come. CPAs, bookkeepers, and even social media influencers are people that can help with that. Every one of these companies needs its own help, but we don’t know where to look, and we’re looking for trusted people.
Everybody here has a CPA. What would you say the message that I would bring to my CPA would be if I wanted to say, “You should check this thing out because,” Matt, give me the words.
You never know where your next opportunity might lie. And it’s better to be giving, helping, and lending a hand, than not opening the door for somebody.
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I look for somebody that’s proficient in tax incentives, the 179D. There’s a lot in the tax code, but if they’re an expert and can look at that 179D, that’s a benefit to every organization. There are not a lot of them. I have talked with a lot of CPAs. Unfortunately, we need to have more that can understand that language within the tax code.
Other than accountants, give me another example because there may be someone that we haven’t identified yet. Let’s identify a few more.
We work with a lot of building owners, whether it be new construction or they’re going into retrofit. The partners or relationships they had in the past have retired post-COVID. Now they’re looking for new partnerships. It’s those building owners, landlords, and people that are looking to make their leases or properties more attractive. ProCents is a good way to start finding those trusted partners to get you the products that you need on the budget that you desire.
If I’m a building owner, I’m in a regional area, and I’m looking for electricians or looking for plumbers, am I coming to ProCents or is that not the real thing?
You come to us.
When you said the trade, you meant the physical trades. The guys out there who were swinging the wrench. What a fantastic story, Matt, and what a great community it looks like you’ve assembled. How would people get a hold of you? Where would they go to find out more?
The best way to find out more about me and ProCents is to visit the website at www.ProCents.com, or you can shoot me an email at Matt@ProCents.com. I will take the time to sit down and talk with you to see what value we can provide you.
That’s a great offer. Not everybody who appears on this show is going to offer their own personal time. I thank you and appreciate you for doing that. If you are even remotely thinking this might be something that you’re interested in, I would have a quick call with Matt and see how that feels because he’s a pretty special guy and he’s also very well connected in this world. I’m going to speak for you, Matt. I have a feeling you’d help people out even if they’re not a perfect candidate for ProCents.
You never know where your next opportunity might lie. It’s better to be lending a helping hand than not opening the door for somebody.
Matt Russell, this has been a lot of fun. I’m glad we had a chance to spend this time. I’m excited about where this is going. I want an update when you triple your membership. Don’t forget, this is an open offer. Even if you’re reading this a year later, you know how to reach Matt. All of his information is going to be on his show page over at TheTribeBuilders.com. Look up Matt Russell, give him a shout and let’s have fun.
Thank you.
Thank you, Matt.
Important Links* Matt Russell – LinkedIn * The Bellwether Alliance * ProCents * Matt@ProCents.com
About Matt RussellMatt is a subject matter expert, coach, speaker and entrepreneur focused on overcoming barriers to implementing time savings for clients. As an Executive of the Board at R-Core, he helps teach other professionals and organizations how to enhance their business success. He is also the Chairman of the Board for ProCents where he and others experts help increase profitability through the increased buying power.
His experience includes over 25 years in sales leadership & development, 15 years in real estate & energy efficiency sales, and 20 years as an entrepreneur. Over the last decades, he has provided guidance to aid in the efficiency decisions that have saved more than one billion dollars.
Matt received his Bachelors in Sales and Marketing and went on to get his MBA in International Business and Human Resources. He also carries several industry certification.
National Council on Qualifications for the Lighting Profession
(LC) -Lighting Certified
American Lighting Association
(CLC) -Certified Lighting Consultant
Association of Energy Engineers
(CEA) – Certified Energy Auditor
Coin Carrier
Live Well and Prosper Fairly
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Entrepreneurs aim to increase their sales and grow their businesses. But what are the strategies they need to execute? In this episode, Joe Pici shares his experience in the industry of sales training in helping businesses grow by having a great selling system. Joe is the founder of PICI & PICI which offers different training, bootcamps, courses and even private coaching for people to be the top sales performers they have always wanted to be. Stay tuned to gain valuable insights in boosting the sales in your business.
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Listen to the podcast here Building The Foundation Of A Great Selling System With Joe Pici In this episode, I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized I have been spending about 30-minutes per session on an admin because they had five applications open all at the same time on two huge monitors. One for the calendar, spreadsheet, browser, Zoom, past session history, email, and all these different things going on in the middle of a session, so here I am trying to frantically take notes while talking to a client and making sure I have their homework.
At the end of the session, I have to take all that stuff and consolidate it into a single email, which I promptly lost by the time I get to the next session, so I then have to go searching for my emails to find it. I got sick and tired of that and decided to find some coaching software that would help me. I searched and there is lots of coaching software out there but what I discovered was that very little of it was easy to use, was easy to learn, and inexpensive. I did what I think all great entrepreneurs should do when they find a problem that needs to be solved, and I solved it. I set up a team and we wrote the software. I use this software every single day, and I love it.
It makes me super productive. It cuts my admin time from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. The results that my clients get have skyrocketed because of goal tracking and accountability. Now, that has always been part of my system but no one has ever built it into a simple system that helps you admin your client sessions. Now, I have and you can use it too. All you got to do is go to ClientFol.io, and for only $1, you can give it a run and see if you like it.
Now, on to my guest and his incredible story. Readers, what happens when a football coach for several years decides it is time to take control of his financial future? He does what I think all of us should do. He changed professions. In this case, my guest decided that the fastest and best way to transition to something more lucrative was selling. One opportune afternoon, he found himself sitting in an Amway sales presentation and a light bulb moment arrived. He said, “I can do this.” Together, he and his wife joined Amway, all excited about this great new opportunity, only to fall flat on his face.
In fact, it was so bad that on one particularly frustrating day, he made 56 phone calls and was turned down every single time. He smashed the receiver and he asked himself one question that set him free. That question is, “Was I willing to do whatever it takes to improve my sales skills and stick with it long enough to succeed?” It is a very important question, but his mind and soul screamed yes.
They went on together to build a very successful business, but along the way, he discovered the key to what holds most people back in sales. It is the key to understanding the exact steps to take to make the sale and how to help others at the very same time. He is here now to level up all of our selling skills. Welcome, Joe Pici, to the show.
Thanks for having me, Mitch. I appreciate it.
What it comes down to, Joe, is I appreciate sharing your wisdom. The audience knows this because I have said it before. I now have over 300 episodes. I have spent 300 glorious hours with geniuses like you and it is like going for a PhD in business and education. While I get to selfishly take advantage of all your great wisdom, I love to share it with the 15,000 to 20,000 people reading this show every month. I am as glad as you are here that you are glad to be here, which is great. Joe, tell us how this all started for you.
It was simple. I was a football coach and got fired. I went from college football coaching to a little town in Southwest Florida. Dawn and I carried with us about $350,000 in medical debt. I was raised by an old Italian guy that said, “You pay your bills.” I did not know about bankruptcy and all that stuff. In fact, I could not even spell business. There, we were losing everything. We had a foreclosure. I did not even show up to an Amway meeting. Some woman that was a friend of my wife left the product under her chair. We had been buying Amway vitamins in Virginia and I asked my wife this question, “Do you think there is a business with this thing?”
I called this woman at 11:00 at night because that is the way I am. I said, “Ruth, are you in Amway?” Now, nobody calls you for that. She goes, “Yes.” I said, “Can you show it to us?” It took them six weeks to get to us. That should tell you why some people do not make it in anything. They sat down at our kitchen table. I looked at this thing and I did not want to do it, but that was irrelevant. We got into that business and there was not a lot of skill-based training, so we floundered.
At the end of the day, the only thing that makes you money is sales.
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I was working 100 hours a week. I then would change, shower, go out until all hours of the night, and try to get somebody to look at this thing, which began to help me understand. We got to that golden Knight that I made 56 calls. Fifty-six noes that did not want to see the business. After I smashed the phone, I said, “There are two problems. I do not know what to say and I am calling the wrong people.”
At that time, that was the beginning of where we are. We learned that scripting, messaging, lead generation, and tactical skills were a real key to selling. We built a six-figure income and traveled the world in 2002 with that income. We walked away from the business and realized that we had created a methodology where 80% of our training is skill-based where we could help any small, medium, and large entrepreneur company generate quality leads, book more appointments, increase closing ratios, and master sales because, at the end of the day, the only thing that makes you money is sales.
I have a background in sales as well but my story is interesting. I was educated as an electrical engineer. My background is in engineering, systems, and circuitry. That was where I came from. As an engineer, I used to travel with a sales guy. The sales guy was generally a nice person, not very well educated, usually drank way too much than most people, and yet he was making 5 or 6 times what I was making.
I, basically, at one point, went to his boss and I said to him, “I love what you guys are doing. I think I can be a great salesperson and I would like to work for you.” The words that changed my life happened. He looked at me with that smugness, that thick and disgusting smile on his drunken face. He said to me, “Mitch, you are good at being an engineer but great salespeople are born and you are not one of them.” I had three words go through my mind, Joe. I am not going to ask you to guess because this is a family show.
Those three words were, “I’ll show you.” What I did is I enrolled in the Dale Carnegie Sales Training system. I had to pay for that out of my pocket because nobody would sponsor me. I sat next to people who were sent by their company, were screwing around, coming in late, and did not do the assignments. Writing a check back then for $1,500 in the 1970s was a lot of money for me, and I mastered it. I then transitioned into semiconductor sales and I became his competitor, which I love.
It happens to entrepreneurs all the time.
There is a part that you did not cover, and I am hoping that you will. This is an important part because I know you get this. In fact, you illustrated it with your story, which is mindset. Mindset is so important because if you do not believe in either yourself or what you are selling, you can’t be successful. Talk a little bit about that.
We have an inverted method of creating a mindset. There are the mega giants of the speaking, coaching, and consulting world that tend to go top-down with belief. I respect them. I have paid to watch them. I looked at life a little bit differently that says, “The number one reason why people do not sell is they do not believe but the number one reason they do not believe is because they have never generated success. Therefore, everything is false.” The way we create a mindset is that when we train people, we will not take a coaching or training contract unless we are going to do real-time, live outbound telephone call training on the spot.
If they are in the room with me, we are making real calls, they book real appointments, and the belief window opens up. When that belief window opens up, the mindset shifts, and it says, “I can do it because I have done it. Now I am allowed to believe.” They are willing to work harder and fight through obstacles because they have tasted success. That is how we develop mindset.
As you said, from the bottom up instead of from the top down. What you are basically saying is, “Let me show you the skills required. Let’s practice them together. I will sit right next to you until you get good at it or until you succeed. Even if it is once or twice, you will now know. You can do it and then from there, we will build on that.” That is what I heard.
Great Selling System: Scripting and messaging and lead generation and tactical skills are a seat and a real key to selling. You heard it right. When we opened up this business, we went right after that market because we realized so many of the sales trainers and coaches are excellent but they start at the top. A lot of their things are more motivational or strategic where we roll up the sleeves and go right into tactics. Tactics allow us to move into strategies and mindset.
That is the right approach. Frankly, that is what so many people need. Other than picking up the phone and making some calls, you and I, what I would like to do at this point is I would like for you to share with us some of the things that you have learned and observed that would help me be a better closer or a better salesperson. I work as a coach and as a software company developer. I work with clients all the time, but I always need more like my audience. We all need more clients. How do we get them? What do we do first? What are the steps?
Let’s start with the foundation. I am going to build out a model for your audience. Let’s run this like a masterclass that you should be taking notes on. Everything starts with having clarity, which is every day, every week, every month, or every year. You should know, “How much money do I want to generate by what date and why?” That is very foundational because the rest of everything you do, I call non-negotiable. Most salespeople negotiate with the non-negotiables. “I do not feel like doing that. I do not have enough time to do that.”
If you have clarity, you know the dollar amount you want to hit, when the benchmarks are, the timeframe, and you know why, why are you doing this? Now, we have a foundation. The second two things that every entrepreneur and salesperson has to bring to the table are self-discipline and ambition. Those are paramount. Self-discipline allows you to say no to your low revenue-producing actions and yes to your highly producing actions.
Discipline teaches you priority and time management. Ambition is something you have to bring to the table. I can teach a dog to sell if they want to sell. The challenge is, so many times, people hire people with charisma and talent based on their being outgoing but they do not have that inner drive. They have a hard time getting up in the morning. Now, we have our foundation. For the next step, I would recommend each and every sales professional and business owner lock into a behavioral type of methodology, whether it is DISC, animals, colors, or Myers-Briggs, and not only learn it once or go to one course. It has to be an ongoing thing.
We are master trainers of DISC. We chose DISC only because it is viable. To be honest with you, I do not even like assessments because people take an assessment for the rest of their life. There is something else. We want to teach people. I recommend you enter into learning communication styles for this reason. Eighty percent of communication is listening. Another thing is every behavior style buys for a different reason at a different time. Therefore, if you are not adjusting your sales approach to their behavior, you are missing the mark. Now, I am going to give you the four keys.
Before you do, I have a question. I want to go back to the foundation. You said I have to have ambition. What happens if I do not have ambition but I have a dire need?
It is the same thing.
In other words, you do not care where it comes from because this is important.
You are either running from the bear or running to the dream. Something has to be in that box that stirs you. For example, when we first got started, we were trying to save our home. I did not want to get into sales. I want to save my home. We are running to dreams but either way, it is the same. Did I answer your question?
Most salespeople negotiate with the non-negotiables.
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You did. That was perfect because I was like, “I do not know how many times I thought maybe I do not have enough ambition, but I have always had the need. I have always decided I had to do it.” Now, the four steps. Tell us what those are.
Do you remember what happened in 2008 when everything imploded? My wife and I are sitting at this big speaker conference and some of the giants of the industry were there. They were walking in the halls and everybody had their head down. Their businesses were not doing well. They started partnering up with other people to cross-sell into each other’s databases.
Many people went out of business. That year, we tripled our business. We were sitting at the table and I said to my wife, “Let’s go home.” She said, “We spent a lot of money to be here.” I said, “I am not here to listen to people whine. I am not built that way. I am not so-and-so but we tripled. Let’s go home and find out what we did.”
We did four things and here is what I want your audience to buy into. The four things we did was, every single day, we generate leads. We have twenty ways to generate leads. Our number one lead source is LinkedIn. You will never see me sending out these long-convoluted notes. When COVID hit, I narrowed it down to three and we grew 38%.
Lead generation is a major factor in business because that is what fills your funnel. The second thing I do is make live outbound telephone calls every day. I got back from speaking at a two-day convention. I did a full sales track and I said, “I train salespeople that sold into medical.” I spoke to the doctors and clinicians about messaging their patients, but while everybody was having lunch, I was making my calls.
Everybody says the phone is dead. I can get more people on the phone now than ever because most people do not use it. It is mastering that skill. I am going to tell you the number two way we generate the most leads is with an outbound cold call. I am going to do a little mind shift for you here. I am going to have a paradigm shift. The reason why people do not like making outbound calls is they think, “I need to set an appointment. I need to sell.” No, you need to read a script that qualifies. Is that person a good prospect? The day that hit my head, the game was over.
You have to get into time blocking and phone calls. It is not something you do if nothing else comes up. It is every day. The third part of that top bar is what I call core stories or what you would call a sales meeting. I will tell you that our core story is that 85% of the client speak. I have a five-step process. The first two steps are discovery. You circle that one and this is a direct meeting. There are two meetings. You have the indirect meeting, which is, “Let’s grab a cup of coffee. See if we do some cross-referrals.” That is not a sales meeting. It is not a core story.
A core story is when you have given a value proposition that they say yes to. They know why you are coming and you know why you are there. This is your initial sales meeting. Here is where I want you to circle it. That is the most predictable, quantifiable, and important piece of business you have to monitor growth and change the complexion of your business.
This is quite interesting because you started out and you said it upfront. You told us this is a very straightforward and simple process but I am getting a little bit of the chills here thinking how brilliant this is. You have taken it down to what I would call the fundamental tools that must be in place before you can be esoteric at any level. For everybody who is reading, I want to re-introduce Joe. My guest is the amazing Joe Pici of Pici and Pici.
He has perfected the selling process. If you have gotten this far in this interview, you already know who you are dealing with. Joe, I got to tell you one quick story because it is so relevant to what we were talking about here. As you know, I ran BBI, which is Chet Holmes and Tony Robbins organization. I want to reinforce some of the things you said. We modified the script every single week and here is how we would do it.
Great Selling System: The number one reason why people don’t sell is they don’t believe. But the number one reason they don’t believe is because they have never generated success. We would have a sales meeting once a week and we would basically collect all of the phone calls. We had a system that recorded every single call our salespeople made. We had a person who had listened to the calls and find the best call and the worst call. This is important. When we told the person that we were going to feature their call because it was the worst call, they got excited. Do you know why? It is because they knew that we were going to tune them up on this call and that everybody was going to learn from this tune-up experience.
Without a doubt, after every tune-up, their sales increased by 20% to 30% the following week. In this process of constantly refining, someone would make a suggestion, “We say these words in the script that is on page seven.” The script is seventeen minutes long. If you are a brilliant individual and highly creative, you will fail to work for us. We need people who are not going to be creative, simply going to follow the script and smart enough to memorize the key elements of it.
Not word for word but the key elements of it, and then know how to reference all of the objections in the answers. That was our sales training because we realized that if they could not read the script, there is no point. They can’t get on the phone and work with us. We had people who were, as I said, creative, smart, and made a couple of sales but the bottom line is they would not do what we told them and we could not let them stay.
Let me get to the fourth piece of the top box. I call it a priority and time management. Time management is you can’t manage time because sales professionals and business owners have so many things to do. Managing your priorities top-down is so important. The first thing on my priority management list every day is my phone calls because that takes top priority. Let’s go back to scripting. It is my favorite thing. I was sitting with a CEO and he goes, “Joe, my people do not like scripts.” I said, “The best actors in the world are Italian, Pacino and Brando. They are all scripted. The difference is they own the script.”
Scripting creates momentum. It takes out the emotion. In our three-day sales bootcamp, we allow 24 people from all over the country. We have them twice a year. We sell out all the time and we get all different levels of salespeople, from the solopreneur to the director of sales to the CEO. It does not matter. On day three, we are making live outbound calls. They all have their script. They have a script for the direct first meeting, a qualifying script, and a script if they get a message and navigate the gatekeeper.
We have never done less than 70% conversion to appointment. We get through 92% of the gatekeepers and that same day, we will get 50 or 60 returned phone calls. Why? It is predictable. What I gave you, that model is called our sales mastery model. Our sales mastery program has been ranked the number one sales training program in the world by Global Gurus and it is for one reason. It works.
People leave that part out. I brought up the idea of mindset because it has played such an important role but what I love most about your process is that, in a sense, you do not need the mindset. You only need to drive. If you are willing to invest the time, do the work, and learn it like you did when you made those 56 phone calls, you were driven to do it.
You smashed the phone, which is a human reaction and completely natural, but that did not stop you. That probably allowed you to blow up a little steam and keep going. The whole idea here is although mindset is very valuable and very important and a shift in mindset can rekindle that ambition, the process is driving the results, and I love that.
Sales to me are less charisma and talent and more process, messaging, and skills.
This is not me bragging but this is why I became a top in my field because of my engineering mindset in the sense that I knew if I went to Dale Carnegie and they had this magic formula, basically the way I learned it. I knew if I stuck to the formula, it would work because they have been around for a billion years. That is what I did and I ended up doing well in selling at a very early age. I was only 28 years old and I had never sold before. It took months for me to earn my first commission check. You could tell that I was pretty persistent. I was driven about my first commission check at that age was $36,000.
You can get more people on the phone today than ever, because most people don't use it.
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That was monthly basically for 27-year-olds. I did not even know what to do with the money. I kept going from bank to bank filling up a $100,000 account and throwing the passbook in my sock drawer. I did not even know how many passbooks I had. I was having so much fun. Once I realized, as you call it, the formula, I kept going and going. It is part of my way, I think. Now that you have taught people the core foundational work of how to get past the gatekeeper, get on the phone, create that core story environment, and tell your story, let’s talk about closing and asking for the order. What happens there? Why do many people have the whole thing fall apart right in that spot?
I think it is because they did not set it upright. I am going to give you my five steps for the sales meeting and this is why the business close. I start it out with what I call a discovery. I am finding out what it is they are most concerned about and what they want to accomplish, and then I established the first timeline. That can be a lie. It can be the truth but we get that on the pick. The second step is when I clarify. I reiterate back to the client exactly what they said, which earns trust. It diffuses defensiveness and you are still talking.
The third piece is where we bring our uniqueness to the table. Everybody has competitors. How do you outsell the competitor without putting them down? This is where you drive a gap. I will pick 4 or 5 things based on what they have said that I know we are the best in business at. As an example, if I was selling sales training to you, I say, “Mitch, there is a lot of great sales training and phenomenal people out there, but one of the things that make us unique is we do live outbound telephone call training. No role play but real play in real-time booking real appointments.”
About 95% of sales training companies in the country, although they are great, never do that. Without putting any, I have built a uniqueness. You have to know your uniqueness. The next step is what we are offering, our product or service. The fifth one is the call to action. Is this more of a transactional piece or something that you need a proposal? In our process, my next step is, “Would you like a formal proposal,” not, “I am going to send you a proposal.” If they say yes to that, my closing ratio goes into the 90 percentile.
If I was selling a sales bootcamp, I would say to Mitch, “Mitch, we have twelve seats left. Very limited. Would you like to reserve your seat,” and stop talking. Ninety-two percent of the salespeople do not have a call to action. Whether you want to close there or you want to move to a proposal or SOW, you have to have a call to action. Did I answer your question there?
You did. The other thing I keep noticing and I am sure everyone reading has noticed that too, is you are not only making stuff up. Your numbers are precise. This comes from years, probably decades of experience and measurements of this process. What does measurement do? Measurement leads you to improve because whatever you can measure, you can improve but whatever you do not measure never changes.
I love the fact that you are getting down to the numbers on all of this stuff. Yes, you answered my question, then you bring up one very important point as well. You said a lot of people tend to fold on the close. One of the things that I learned in my Dale Carnegie sales training is that someone hesitates or someone says, “I am not sure. I have to run this by my partner.” My next action in my own selling process is to say, “What questions did I not answer? Is there anything else that we can talk about that will help you with this? Clearly, I have not answered the questions that you have.” What are those questions?
That is strong, and back to measurement, you and I think alike. My office does not have any pictures of me with famous people. There are no pictures of me with Tony or Zig. It is all whiteboards. I will take you on a tour of my whiteboards. I recommend if you are going to sell or be in business, you get a place where you can put up whiteboards. I am very interested in looking at that program you have, that software. I love that stuff but I am visual. My grandkids got a sign for me. I keep my call sheet on the legal pad. Do I use a CRM? Yes, but not until after hours.
The next one is for storage. After I sat down with you, I did my initial sales meeting. Your name goes on that board. Does it go to a proposal? I have a proposal board. For our business, you got to know your business. Ninety-nine percent of our business is run after a proposal because we are not selling a widget. What we are selling is very consultative and it is not a $100 deal. Nothing goes on Joe Pici’s calendar that I do not get 50% non-refundable, and the day I show up, I get the balance. I do not owe people money. I am not chasing it.
The minute I get the deposit, I circle it. That is a living thing. I measure. From January 1st, 2022 until the beginning of April 2022, I have 104 proposals out. That can be a lot or little. Remember, I do not only sell. I also deliver and do training. We have close up to this point 41 contracts. You are saying, “Your closing ratio is maybe 1/3.” No, the rest of them are still in play. By doing this process, you have the heartbeat of your business in front of you. That is how we track.
Great Selling System: You can’t manage time. And because sales professionals, business owners, have so many things to do, managing your priorities top-down is so important. That makes a lot of sense. The most important thing is when you walk into that room, you can’t get away from the numbers. A CRM system or software is great but you have to sit down and choose to open it up and use it or look at it. If you are in a bad mood and you say, “This has been a crappy month. I have not sold much.” You probably won’t want to open up your CRM but you can’t avoid looking at your damn walls.
I think that is a motivator and I also love the immediacy of seeing everything in one place at one time. Joe, I feel that we could talk for hours about this process because not only are you the expert, and I am fascinated by the development work that you have done, more importantly, I am benefiting so much from hearing your words and your wisdom, but it is time to move on.
I have a question and these questions have been so helpful in understanding the people that we interview on this show. They are like an X-ray into their personality at some level. I am going to ask you the first one and the audience knows that I always ask the same questions and the answers are always unique, which is great. Joe, who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
Are they alive or dead?
In all of space and time, they can even be imaginary. I had one guy say, Captain Kirk.
Winston Churchill.
He has been named before but tell me why.
His behavior style was different than what he did. He has an interactive behavior style. People do not know this but he was very people-oriented. His desire was to become famous, yet he relied on the direct focus to save the modern world. I would like to get into that head.
Again, other people have brought him up before but not for the same reason. How did you understand or learn more about what you would call his style or his purpose?
When we got certified or licensed in the human behavior model, DISC and I looked at all the behavior stuff. They went about one inch deep. I took an assessment. It was a parlor game. When we started to look at what were the fears behind the needs and the needs behind the behaviors, I then realized that I have to take responsibility for a successful interaction. I am willing to adapt. Once I learned that and we could translate that into training that people could learn it, the key to getting where we are is we do this stuff every day. We do not train, coach, or speak on anything we do not live. That is how we got a better understanding by executing.
You have to monitor growth to change the complexion of your business.
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Joe, this is the last question. It is the grand finale, the change the world question. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
What I am doing that I believe can change the world is I get to do what I am called to do, and people see the passion and the drive that I have. The way that I can change the world is to train and teach people to go after that thing that they want and not to settle for the second. If you are called to do X, go get it.
I think that is a brilliant way of saying it. One of the things I wanted to mention that I originally mentioned when we started the show is that the salesperson has to believe in the product. I am a very big believer in that, and I will tell you why. We had salespeople that were working for us at BBI. We were selling the Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes program in a box. There were people who could not sell it.
What we got down to understanding is the reason they could not sell this was because they did not think it worked. Once we showed them the results and the testimonials, we created a moral obligation for them, “If you do not sell this product to that person in that company, you are cheating your family out of decades of wealth. Are you willing to do that?”
That became a game-changer for us. That was part of the mindset pathway that we took with people. We needed to make sure they understood the immense value of what we are offering. Now, speaking of what you are offering, you very generously offered to provide something incredible for free to our audience. What is that?
It is a masterclass. It is a 45-minute class. Let me tell you how to get it. Take out your phone and go to the text message and put the word SALESEDGE in. It has got to be one word. Text it to 55678. That is going to take you to a Pici and Pici link. Hit the link. It is going to take to a sales page. You will see my wife and me and the Nine Essentials of Sales Success. Download it. There is no charge. That is going to give you a mega course on key elements of selling. I will also offer this to anybody who wants to have a complimentary cup with Joe. My number is (407) 947-590. Also, I am on LinkedIn. If I can help you in any way, I am available.
Once again, I need to ask. Is it “SALESEDGE ONE WORD” or only the word SALESEDGE?
It is SALESEDGE but some of the iPhones, for some reason, split the word in half. It has to be one word.
Joe, you have been amazing. Thank you so much for being with me. All I could say is I cannot wait until we get a chance to talk again.
Thank you so much.
Important Links * Clientfol.io * Dale Carnegie Sales Training * Pici and Pici * Global Gurus * LinkedIn – Joe Pici
About Joe Pici
Ranked by Global Guru’s in the TOP 30 SALES TRAINERS, Joe Pici is a strategist for top sales professionals and a coach specializing in results driven sales training through Rapport Mastery. Since 1992 he has functioned as a catalyst for sales teams and individuals, helping them sharpen their skills for creating appointments and closing sales through his live phone call workshops. Rapport Mastery sales training, a methodology exclusive to Pici & Pici Inc., is an extremely strong skill builder which is straightforward and easy to apply.
COO and co-founder of Pici & Pici Inc., Joe is also co-author and intellectual resource behind the books Sell Naked on the Phone and Sell Naked in Person. Joe has expanded his knowledge and coaching expertise into a comprehensive, turnkey system for success in sales. The Rapport Mastery for Sales is relentlessly on-target, packed with the culmination of his years of experience in:
Reaching decision makers and booking appointments
Closing more sales
Securing repeat business and customer loyalty
Empowered communication
Creating focus and direction for on-going growth
The post Building The Foundation Of A Great Selling System With Joe Pici appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Building a brand for yourself and your business is a path that leads to success. What brand strategy can help you bring out the full potential of your business? In this episode, Mitch Russo looks at brands and how they drive success with Gerry Foster. As an experienced brand strategist, Gerry teaches us the tricks of the trade to build your brand identity and create a brand strategy. Tune in for more great insights from this top entrepreneur as you blaze your way to success.
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Listen to the podcast here Branding Strategy And Marketing Success With Gerry Foster I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized that I had been spending about 30 minutes per session on admin because I had five applications open all at the same time. One for note, taking calendar, spreadsheet, browser, Zoom, past session history, scattered over two huge screens.
At the end of the recession, I had to combine all of that into a single email to send to my client but here is the best part. I was wasting 30 minutes doing it between sessions I decided to go find some coaching software to help me. It turns out I could not find anything that was easy to use, inexpensive and simple to learn. I decided to do what all great entrepreneurs should do. When you find a problem that has not been solved, what do you do? You solve it and that is what I did.
Several months ago, I launched ClientFol.io and it has been updated every month since. I want you to give it a try for $1. Go to ClientFol.io and give it a chance, a run, and a trial. Tell us what you think. I know you are going to love it. Now onto my guest and his incredible story. Living in Detroit during the Motown years, he realized that his life would progress more quickly in Los Angeles. He enrolled at USC to study Marketing and Branding, where he received several honors degrees for his incredible work and then he went to work in Corporate America.
Sometimes, we call that the corporate graveyard but in his case, it became the place where he evolved his abilities and talents to the next level. One day, the realization came that he could make a bigger splash in this world with his own company. With the fantasy of leaving a corporate job and going right into business and becoming wealthy, he fell flat on his face.
He struggled hard trying to make it work like you and I did but it took years of hard work to finally happen. After years of toiling, he started to get recognized as this amazing out-of-the-box branding guy and his work is worldwide for major brands. He is here with us now to teach us how we can do a better job branding ourselves, products, companies, and services. Welcome, Gerry Foster, to the show.
I am so excited about being here. Thank you for having me.
We deliver incredible value to this audience, Gerry and you are part of that. I’m glad you are here as well but let’s go back to the beginning. I started to tell a little bit about your story but I would like to hear more, take us back to the beginning.
If you've got something to put out into the world, especially if you offer any kind of expertise, service, skill, talent, or ability, you have to understand that a brand is an experience.
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When I was growing up in Detroit, Michigan, back in the proud days of Motown music, the auto industry was booming and Detroit at the time was the fifth-largest city in the country, I was fascinated by the Motown sound and this thing called a brand. Now I had no idea what a brand was but what captivated me was how someone could start a small business called Motown Records and create music that changed America. That lit the fuse within me, which is what is this whole thing called branding? Long story short, I went on to college at USC. I majored in Marketing, a deep study in Branding and everything took off from there.
What is interesting is that you brought up one of my favorite types of music and my favorite topics, which is the origin of a new trend. In my book Power Tribes, we talk about building tribes, powerful tribes, based on a vision of an individual who has created a manifesto that they would like to share with the world. Part of that manifesto is to repel those who do not qualify or resonate with that message and to attract those who do, and the ones they attract become ardent supporters and avid fans. To me, that is what Motown was about.
One person decided it was time to take this music that nobody was paying attention to and all of a sudden bring it to the world. There was a business opportunity and they could have failed. They were intent and had such a vision of what this could be. It almost could not fail. Gerry that is what infected you back in those days. That is what inspired you to see the fact that a brand can have incredible power.
When I think back on those days in high school, junior high, and everywhere else, I know the music was special. All of us who were there at that time knew that it was magical, that it was something about that sound. However, we had no idea that the music would have the impact that it has had. To this day, people still listen to that music with our artists, such as Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and Lionel Richie.
We think about how that music was created in such a way that it brought joy to people. When I think about the Motown brand, I think about how that sound with something that enlivened your senses, electrified your nights and put a big old smile on your face. That is what branding is about. If you have got something to put out into the world especially if you offer any expertise, service, skill, talent, or ability, you have to understand that a brand is an experience. That is where a lot of people fall short, Mitch, which is they are putting out services but they are not putting out an experience.
A lot of my work focuses on showing people, particularly thought leaders, coaches, trainers, consultants, as we call them experts, authorities in their field, how to craft something that will amplify their uniqueness and magnify their impact out in the world because of the influence of their expertise. That is the work that I do.
I see the work that you do and I appreciate it but I think it is time now for you to take all of your expertise and pour it into the next 20 or 30 minutes and share it with us. I take a lifetime of experience and condense it down. Let’s start with what is branding and how does someone go about finding their brand voice?
Branding Strategy: The first thing people have to do is get clear on what impact they want to have out in the marketplace. It starts internally. I want to focus on service-based entrepreneurs more than the product because product branding is a whole separate conversation. Let’s speak to the coaches and the experts that are out there reading. You first have to ask yourself, “Why are you doing the work that you are doing? What is it that is significant about your work, that thing that you have immersed your light into that is designed to benefit other people?” We can look at that in different ways. There is the spiritual aspect of that in terms of what is your calling? What is your divine assignment? Why do you exist? All of that. In the purest sense, the first thing that people have to do is get clear on what impact do you want to have out in the marketplace?
I have a question. The impact I want to have may be different than the impact I’m capable of creating. How do I deal with that disparity?
You have to first step into your greatness. You have to affirm within yourself that you have something of tremendous value that can bless, benefit and add value to the lives of the people you are serving. That is a great question, Mitch because that is a mindset. You have to see yourself as being here for a reason. A lot of people are not in touch with who they are.
They may know what they do in terms of skills, what they learned in college and all of that but that does not tell people who you are. When you have a brand, you are declaring the impact of your work as it connects with your voice in terms of saying, “This is what is in it for you as a result of my brand. This is what you are going to get and gain.”
Being the engineer, part of me listened to what you said and what it sounded like is that you are finding resonance between my heart, my soul, and my services. In the world of science, that synchronicity and resonance is a natural form of amplification. As you bring two frequencies into resonance, the output power doubles and triples rapidly. It sounds like you are in the business of aligning people’s hearts and minds to their services and products. Does that make any sense at all?
I used the word amplify. I said, “My work is about people amplifying their uniqueness and magnifying their impact.” If you hang out with that for a second, you have to connect. Whatever your gift, expertise is, skill, talent, ability, whatever word you want to use, I do not want to get booboo here but you have to connect it with a higher calling or purpose that is not about you but rather the footprint that you wish to make out in the world.
That requires people to make it a point to discover their purpose because if you are in touch with exactly why you exist and why you are here without being hung up on, “I went to college. I have an education. I have certifications, training, and degrees, lots of letters after my name.” That allows you to do what you do but if you want to put out a brand, you now have to shape that in such a way that it is a declaration of why you are here. In my case, my life’s work is about showing service-based entrepreneurs how to create an exceptional brand that makes an exceptional difference. They can live an exceptional life.
Step into your greatness. Affirm within yourself that you have something of tremendous value that can bless, benefit, and add value to the lives of the people you're serving.
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Let’s show the audience exactly how you do it. Where do you want to start? Do you want to start with me? Do you want to start with an example of a task?” Pick anyone you like. I do not mind but I want a demonstration of your brilliance.
I always tell people, “Look out in the marketplace and ask yourself what is missing for the clients that you are targeting? What are they looking for from someone like yourself that they presently cannot find?” You can say to them, “I know you have been looking for A, B, and C. You have been selling D, E, and F. I got the A, B, and C you have been looking for.” Mitch, on top of that, you then want to be able to say, “Do you want to know what else? You can only get it from me.”
This speaks to the starting point. Once you are clear on your brand purpose, now we are into, “Where are you going to plant your flag? Where are you going to stake your claim? What is it that you want to be known for that is associated with your brand name, which is your personal brand or as a service brand that is unique, fresh, and original that the world has not heard or seen before?” That is what people get excited about. I love to use celebrity brands or some of the well-known folks that are out there. Let us take Tony Robbins because he is huge in this space of coaching.
Tony Robbins is not in the business of marketing, selling, life coaching, and motivational speaking. He declared several years ago that he was in the business of life on your own terms for the people he serves. That is called your big brand idea. He has never deviated from his commitment to allowing his clients and students to live life on their own terms. He built his empire, targeting women, primarily saying, “Ladies lead your fulfilled life.” John Maxwell lives out leadership. For a lot of folks, they do not look at what is missing, where the gap is, and what people are looking for. That is the juice of it all and that is hard to do on your own.
When you said those words, a person came to mind. I lived in Dallas, Texas, after I sold TimeSlips Corporation to Sage from 1994 to 1998. During that time, we had a lot of pink Cadillacs in my neighborhood. Here is what Mary Kay spent millions of dollars saying on the radio every single day, hundreds of times a day, “Ladies, there is no such thing as an ugly woman, just a lazy one.” That was the most unique and powerful positioning statement I had ever heard about a product before.
That reminds me of a quote from Max Factor. Ladies who are reading, this is not a sexist comment but it speaks to what Mitch said. He said, “We make perfume in the factory but we sell hope to women.” What he was speaking about was the experience that a woman could have if she adorned herself with his makeup. That gets to the whole experience.
This is about the heart of branding, which is what makes you different? What is it about you that you can offer that is going to make you as appealing, fresh, and special as possible? The starting point is looking out and asking yourself not only what is missing but also what do people perhaps complain about regarding what you have? What are they sick of time to put it up with? What would they like to change? What would they like to have worked better?
Branding Strategy: Great brands are built strategically, not just visually. You can now create that branding opportunity for yourself because the choice is you are either me only, me too or me also. If you are me too or me also, you are another penguin in the flock. You are another slice in the loaf. The most successful entrepreneurs understand and embrace the art of differentiation. They understand that this whole conversation of uncovering your voice is about having a distinct identity. If someone comes across your platform on the internet, for example, your website, your social media platform, whatever they feel, “This person has what I’m looking for. I cannot seem to find it anywhere else.”
There is a distinction that I thought I heard because there is the before and after, there is the who I am but I do not know how to brand that, what am I looking for and how do I brand that even though I’m not that? What I’m saying is I’m reading this blog post. If I’m someone tuning in and saying, “I do a great job. I have all this good stuff. I have a unique way of doing what I do. I do not know how to say those words.” That is your skill, abilities, and branding process.
There is somebody else who might hear this and say, “I learn a great way to state this problem but I do not have the solution. In other words, I can find the brand that would resonate with this problem in this audience but I do not have the product or service to fulfill it.” Would you say that branding is a first step or an afterthought?
If a person wants to put out a brand as opposed to a service, the brand is the first step. As you know, Mitch, I am a brand strategist and not a brand designer. I’m like someone who may own a house cleaning service. I do not do windows. I tell people I do not do logos, swag bags, tote bags, and websites, things that people can see because great brands are built strategically, not visually. The first step is to lay down a solid foundation, a layered foundation where you are bringing together all the key components that make up a world-class brand so that you can say the right things and the right way to the right people at the right time.
Once you figure out what your message is, who your audience is, what makes you different and special and all this stuff we have been talking about, you go to the next step, which is you feed that into your marketing machinery. You build it out creatively in terms of developing your website, your social media campaign, or marketing funnels. You are also going to determine how are you going to monetize your brand? Should you create courses and programs on all of them?
One of the biggest problems today for many thought leaders, coaches, speakers, and trainers is that they put the tile down before the cabinets are up. They do not have the foundation in place. They are busy trying to get clients. They fail to recognize. You have to make sure that you have the strongest brand possible, which means you have the strongest body, a voice in spirit possible and you bring that to life through your marketing.
What I do, Mitch, I’m the guy who makes folks eat their vegetables. People like to say I do the hard stuff because the core work is the foundational piece. That is where great brands are born. One woman once said to me, “Gerry, I get what you do. You do all the upfront thinking. You let other people do the decorating.” I go, “You got it.”
When you have a brand, you are declaring the impact of your work as it connects with your voice.
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We are going to get into some of that strategy in a moment. If you are enjoying this conversation that Gerry and I are having together, I want you to go to YourFirstThousandClients.com and look for Gerry Foster’s show page. On that page will be a link to a special free gift that you can take advantage of after you enjoy this interview. Gerry’s strategy means that you have thought through the stages in which a brand evolves. Teach us a little bit about how brands evolve and what we should be on the lookout for as we are creating brands or thinking through the process of using branding to either launch a product, service, or company?
I always tell people to adhere to what I call the golden triangle. If someone were to draw a triangle on a sheet of paper, they could write the word brand at the top, lower left-hand corner, the word market lower right-hand corner, the words sell. What that means is there is a sequence for scaling a business. When I use the word scaling, it is whatever that word means to someone. It may mean that they want to reach more people, impact more people, or maybe they want to want to make a certain amount of money or they want to attract a certain caliber of client, whatever scaling means to someone.
The sequences brand markets itself. You first nail down your brand, market and sell the heck out of your brand. It is always branding followed by marketing, followed by selling. They are like a three-legged stool. All three legs have to be in place. If one leg is missing, one leg is wobbly and one leg is shorter than the other, you got a bad situation here.
What that says is that branding is not more important than marketing and marketing is not more important than selling. Selling is not more important than brand new. They are equally important but the three have to mesh. They have to be integrated properly. You can scale and have the impact that you want to have. The job of branding is to get you known. The job of marketing is to get you found and desired. The job of selling is to get you paid. You’ve got to get known, get found and get paid because we are all in business to be seen, be heard and make money.
If someone does not understand that sequence and thinks, “I need to work on marketing because marketing is the holy grail.” Hold on a second. In order for your marketing to do what you need to do, you want to make sure that your marketing requires what is called the fewest impressions necessary. You do not need as many emails, postings, or whatever because if you root it in a strong, highly differentiated brand, all of a sudden, $1 works like $5.
You get a higher return on your marketing investment. You get more leads, more conversions, make more money, have more impact and you are happier. People have to make the decision. Do you want to put out a brand to put out a service? We live in a brand-conscious world. People prefer to do business with a brand. The choice, Mitch is, do you want to put out a brand or be bland? The one thing that I have come to believe is that people want to do business with people, not necessarily a brand. If you use a person as the brand, as the spokesperson, as the person who holds the mission, the service, or the product that is their brand, would you agree with that?
The thing is, Mitch, there are five types of brands. You could brand a company. Let’s call it a corporate brand. For example, McDonald’s, Apple, and Coca-Cola are corporate brands. Number two is a product brand. Coca-Cola has a product brand called Dr. Pepper. Apple has product brands, iPhone and iMac and the rest. McDonald’s Big Mac and on. Okay. The third type of brand is a service brand. Think of Stanley Steamer, Vistaprint or whatever. Number four is when you brand a nonprofit. Believe my friend, United Way, American Cancerous Society and American Heart Association are brands.
Branding Strategy: This whole thing about achieving brand relevancy means that you are making the strategic decision to innovate and not imitate. The fifth brand is what you mentioned, which is a personal brand where you are branding yourself. Think of Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Suze Orman, Rachel Ray and so on. Most of the thought leaders that I specialize in that are my sweet spot and wheelhouse are personal brands but I have some that are service brands where they are branding their company itself because they have got a team behind them quite often.
Let’s say you are with a new client for the first time and you are meeting after the initial conversation. It is time to get to work. Where do you start?
I first start by us tackling the question, what are people looking for from someone like you that they present they cannot find? That is always the starting point.
This reminds me of a conversation I had that is relevant. What do people want from me that they do not already have? What happens if I already offer that service to those people but they are not buying it?
You probably need to engage in what is called rebranding, which is you are now re-engineering, re-imagining, retooling, and revamping what you are offering. As you know, big companies rebrand all the time because the goal is to stay ahead of the curve. The goal is to make sure that you are relevant. We have a history in this great country of ours of brands that were rockstar brands that lost their relevance. Does the name MySpace ring a bell? Who thought Blockbuster would go out of business? Blackberry, AOL, RadioShack and look at what has happened in retail America. Over the last several years, major chains went bankrupt because no one saw this force that came called Amazon. It changed everything.
I’ve got to record this on my Sony Walkman. Give me a minute here. There is a perfect example of a wasted brand. I bring this up because of what you said before. If Sony were willing to engage in the creative destruction of its own marketplace, it already had invented the iPod.
Back to your question, what are the starting points? The focus becomes in this conversation called what is missing, what are people looking for that they presently cannot find. It pertains to their most urgent needs and their desires. All of us, as consumers, are always looking for the best, whatever. This whole thing about achieving brand relevancy means that you are making the strategic decision to innovate and not imitate.
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Mitch, I know service-based entrepreneurs look at their competitors and others in their industry and they duplicate what they are doing as if that is the model. No, think strategically in terms of what is it that is going to give you that edge in the marketplace. In order to find your edge, you have to be a step ahead of everyone else by zeroing in on what people want from you that they cannot find. Pivot your brand around the one thing that you do best that few others know how to do that you can leverage, which allows you to say that you are a me only brand and not me too.
In sales, we say that people do not buy what they need. They buy what they want. The goal of branding is to create that desire for the things that we have and want to sell. How do you bridge the gap? Where do branding, marketing, and selling fit into that particular type of model?
Let’s get clear on one thing about branding. A lot of people, when they hear that word, they immediately think of a logo, pretty colors, and all the aesthetics. That is only a small part of it. No one is going to do business with you because of your image. It was not going to do business with you because of your website, how you look on Zoom sounding Clubhouse or whatever. It is not that simple.
The idea here is to make the decision that you are going to put out a whole brand, which means you are putting something out that people can embrace and Lilly will fall in love with you because they see you as having something that they have been looking for that they cannot presently find or want because it ties in with what their needs are.
Once you decide to identify what that gap is, you have now bonded with your audience. The goal in marketing is to forge that bond by getting people to know, like, and trust you. How do you do that? Create a marketing funnel. Put out some courses. Do this on social media, online marketing, and digital marketing.
The part that is relevant in my world and from what I’m getting from this is that we go back to that first question. What do people want from you that you are not delivering to them? One of my favorite examples is Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson is more of an exclusionary brand than they are an inclusionary brand.
What I mean by that is that in the beginning, they are saying, “Our motorcycles are not for everybody. They are only for those people who want freedom because freedom is our brand.” They did not ask, “Do motorcycle riders want a noisy, low efficient, bulky motorcycle, or do they want something sleek, cool, slip, great gas mileage, and never breaks because it is Japanese?” No, they want freedom.
Branding Strategy: When you talk about your brand identity, it’s your face and your voice to the world. What you are getting to is part of the heartbeat of branding, which is to put something out that is one of a kind. Harley Davidson is a one-of-a-kind brand. They do not have customers. They have fanatics. You could extend this to people who shop at Trader Joe’s. You could extend this to a number of well-known brands where the customer says, “You will never catch me going anywhere else. If I want coffee, I’m going to Starbucks. I’m not going to 7-Eleven.” “7-Eleven has got great coffee.” “No, I want the experience at Starbucks.”
I love telling the story of Walt Disney. When he was at an amusement park with his wife and they were sitting on a bench. He says to his wife, “I’m going to open up my own amusement park one day.” She goes, “That is crazy. Why would you want to do that? They are dirty, loud and the employees are rude.” Walt Disney says, “Exactly, my park won’t be like that.”
He does not sell the features. He does not sell Mickey Mouse. He sells the experience because Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. Now you are getting it because when you make the decision to deviate and not conform and you make the decision to go up this street, not this avenue, you are now saying, “I’m going to lead the crowd and not follow the crowd because I bear to be different.”
This goes back to what I was saying earlier about the mindset. You have to embrace the idea that you will lead, serve and deliver in such a manner whereby the experience you are providing your client is second to none. If you are doing the same thing as everybody else or if you are having conversations around your credentials, education, client list and all of that, that makes you reputable but that does not make you unique.
Let’s take this conversation down a notch and down to a practical, simple deliverable that we can together discuss for everybody who is reading and that deliverable is your LinkedIn profile. The reason I bring this up, Gerry is because I have found that most people’s LinkedIn profile reads a little bit like a resumé. I went to this college and to that college. I have this degree. I worked here but ultimately, aren’t we using and don’t we need and I believe we do, to use something like our LinkedIn profile to set the brand of who we are in the public eyes? We can attract the people that need what we offer. Would you agree with that? If so, how can we use LinkedIn to do that?
There are three levels to branding. This is big picture stuff here. Mitch, I do not know this but I was also an adjunct professor of branding, marketing, and advertising for several years at major universities. As I have told you before, I have made branding my life’s work. Branding is the only thing I have done in my entire adult life.
If you go back to USC, I made it in and all of that stuff. In the branding universe, I’m regarded as a real branding guy, the bonafide type because there are a lot of people out there who say they do branding and you find out, “You do logos and designs or your idea of branding is to shoot some videos.” I’m saying all this also to teach the people who are reading this.
The job of branding is to get you known. The job of marketing is to get you found and desired. The job of selling is to get you paid. You have to get known and get found and get paid because we're all in business to be seen, heard, and…
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Level one is what I have already talked about. That is where you start and it is called strategic branding. That is making sure you have got all the right pieces pulled together. You have what is called a standalone brand, the strongest body voice is possible. Level two is called visual branding. You are bringing that to life through your creative development, your website, your social media and so on. Level three is what has emerged in years and that is called social media branding, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Here is the thing, you have to go from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. You can’t jump the level three. When it comes to a profile, think about what makes you unique, different, special and not appear average. If your profile, resumé or whatever, pretty much sounds like everybody else, you are blending in and not standing out.
In nowadays’ marketplace, unless you are distinct, you risk being extinct. You have to embrace the idea that you were born to stand out and not blend in because if you blend in, you are invisible. I talked to the penguin and the flock. Think about what it is about you that you bring to the party, to your marketplace in terms of how you lead, serve and deliver that they cannot get anywhere else, and put that on your LinkedIn profile. They got to start at level one to figure that out.
Readers, you are getting a college education here. Gerry, this has been an incredible presentation and an incredible discussion but I want to make sure everybody knows that everything is already there for you readers to go read by going to your FirstThousandClients.com, going to Gerry Foster’s show page and everything is there. Go there, download, and take a look at what he has to offer.
One more point before we move on, I discovered several years ago that my branding was all over the place. I was like different pictures, banners, this, different that, different services and books. In 2021, I decided to pull everything together. What you see is my brand. That is the colors, the shapes, the subtle cues that the arrow behind me, of people walking, all of this is my brand. This plays throughout all of my social media, my websites, and all of my products and services that, for the first time ever, have pulled together, clarified everything that I am, and made a huge difference.
All of that is great but people want to know what is behind all of that, which is why they engage you and you are the success that you are. Mitch, I was speaking at a conference once and I said to the audience, “For those of you who have a hard time understanding that a brand is more than a logo, your visuals and things that people can see, let’s take Coke and Pepsi. I doubt that the Coca-Cola drinkers preferred Coke because it is in the red can and the Pepsi people because it is in the blue can. It is what is inside the can that counts.”
The question is, what is inside your can? I’m not saying this about you but you can have people who have all the aesthetics and whatever but when you get into the can or open up that pretty, beautiful, wrapped up present gift that looks, “It’s got sprinkles. I love the wrapping paper.” It is empty. There is nothing of substance in it.
I like what you have, though but I do not want people to think that their brand and I do not want to get too technical here. The visual part is what is called your brand identity. When you talk about your brand identity, it is your face to the world and your voice to the world. The face to the world is great and that is important.
Branding Strategy: We live in a brand-conscious world. People prefer to do business with a brand. The choice is, do you want to put out a brand or be bland? The key is what do you want your brand to convey? What impression do you want to make? How do you want to come across? You feed that to a designer and they can come back with recommendations on the color scheme, images and all of that. The key, which is what I do, part of the hard stuff is what your voice does to the world. What are you willing to promise? What makes you me only, not me too? What is your secret sauce? We had not talked about the secret sauce. What is that?
We can talk forever on this. I love the story. Do you remember the story of Rheingold Beer? It is a popular story. I’m from New York and Rheingold was an Upstate New York beer brand. Like every other canned beer in the world, they wanted to differentiate themselves. They called up an ad agency. The owner of the company said, “Why don’t you come down to the brewery and we can talk? This is where my office is.”
He shows up at the brewery and he has never seen a brewery before. He goes, “Look at those huge steel. What is that? Look at that amazing roasting system for grains. What is that?” At the end of the day, he said, “I know that you make beer but I never knew what went into making beer. Why don’t you tell the world how you make beer?” He goes, “Why would I? Everybody makes beer the same way?” This brilliant branding guy says, “Yes but no one shows them how.”
Rheingold’s entire secret to success is they talked about the process of how they create what they call the finest beer in the land. Gerry, I hate to interrupt because we are having so much fun but we do need to move on to the next segment of the show, which is where we get to know you a little bit better.
It is going to start with a simple but insightful question that will tell me and maybe readers a lot about the way you think and where you come from. Let’s start with this. Who in all of the space in time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
John F. Kennedy.
Tell me why.
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He was a world changer. He declared a man on the moon in three years or something. He was a visionary. He and his wife, Jackie Onassis, part of their brand image were Camelot. He was inspirational and such an incredible leader. He comes to the top of my list.
If you had this time, what would you ask him?
What drives you? What do you connect your work to?
That is a great question. A question maybe we should all ask ourselves as well. Thank you for that answer. I’m going to ask you what I call the grand finale. The change the world question. Are you ready?
Yes.
I think I know the answer but I’m going to make sure they ask anyway and that is, what is it that you are doing or like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
I want to impact a minimum of a million lives and a minimum of service-based entrepreneurs so that they can truly put something out into the world and going to allow them to fulfill whatever their destiny is. I will say this, “The vessel is this thing called their brand.” That is the vessel. It is not the product or the service.
Branding Strategy: When you make the decision to deviate and not conform, you are saying that you’re going to lead the crowd and not follow them because you dare to be different. People do not buy brands, Mitch. Research shows what people buy is one of four things. One, can you solve a problem I have? Two, can you provide better outcomes for me? Three, can you perform a miracle in my eyes and make the impossible possible. Number four, can you provide me with some emotional pay-off?
The key is to connect this vessel that you have been given by your creator, however you define that for yourself. Take that vessel, this gift that you have and transform it into a game-changing brand that people see you as being unlike no one else. That is what drives me. I want to reach and impact at least a million service-based entrepreneurs. They can indeed fulfill that.
Gerry, you are setting your sights a little too low. You have already impacted a million now.
I should have qualified it. A million within the next couple of years.
We are at the point in one of my favorite parts of the show is, where we get to share something special that you have created uniquely for us. I would like to find out what that is and how people can go ahead and take advantage of that?
I have a free one-hour video mini-course called Stand Out and Captivate. It is one of my favorite live training programs that I did in front of a large audience. I have broken it down into bite-size nuggets of training videos. I want to give that away to your readers, which also includes $1,000 worth of free bonuses. One of them is to have a brand storming session with me one-on-one to talk about your brand by Zoom. I can give you some feedback and some guidance. I do not sell people anything. I’m a giver, not a taker.
I also want to point out that in the past, we have had guests like you offer some of their time for free and in the past, what we have found is that the people who take advantage of this most quickly are the ones who get the best experience, not to belittle any of the great guests that I have had. Sometimes there are many requests that come in over such a long period of time and it is hard for them to deliver as many of those free one-hour or rebranding sessions. I’m going to say to you readers, “Take advantage of this now before we wary Gerry out.” Jump on this opportunity and tell me if I’m right about this, do not connect with Gerry to speak with him until you have watched the video. It will make the session you have far more productive.
Thank you for sharing that because that training program includes worksheets. You can apply what you are learning as you go along. When we have our session together, we can take a look at how you are seeing yourself as a brand and how you are applying what I teach in that course. People love that training. It is one of a kind.
Thank you very much, professor, for this incredible session that we have had together and your incredible gift of skill and knowledge to my readers and myself. As I mentioned once before, “This is now going to be over 300 interviews that I have done in the last several years.” It is like going to university for a free high-level college education every single day and I love it.
I encourage everyone to spend their time in university with me by reading and learning from these incredible people like Gerry. Take advantage of this stuff because it is there and you can benefit if you take advantage. Gerry, thank you so much for your time. I can’t wait until we get a chance to talk again soon.
Thank you. This was awesome.
Important Links * ClientFol.io * Gerry Foster * Power Tribes * Stand Out and Captivate
About Gerry Foster As a Brand Strategist, I specialize in working with service-based business owners who want to stand out, get noticed, & be desired so they can have more impact and make more money.
I’m the creator of the Big Brand Formula, a proven 3-step guided system I use that enables my clients and students to ‘find the rhythm’ of their brand for greater success. From this system, they have been able to transform what they offer into magnificent, high-performance brands.
Strategic branding is the only work I’ve done in my entire adult life! I’ve dedicated my life to creating brands that people can fall in love with, cherish and value.
The post Branding Strategy And Marketing Success With Gerry Foster appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Taxes are imposed on our business earnings or salaries as our financial obligation to the government. But what if you can protect your income from it? In this episode, Profitopia founder and CEO Kevin Marshall shares the golden nuggets he uncovered in his 35 years as an accountant. He emphasizes that it is possible to have better financial control over your business! This is very beneficial for us to know how to operate our businesses well and save money. Tune in for more!
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Listen to the podcast here Saving Money On Taxes For Better Business Management And Financial Success With Kevin Marshall I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized I had been spending about 30 minutes between sessions on admin. The reason is I had five applications open on all these screens while I was taking notes, recording data, and making copies of spreadsheets, all to send to my client after the session. It got to the point where I realized, “This is wasting a lot of time.” I went searching for software that I could use to run my coaching business. There are plenty of it out there but none of it was simple, easy to use and inexpensive.
I decided to do what every good entrepreneur should do when they spot a problem that hasn’t been solved. Readers, this is for you as well. When you see a problem that hasn’t been solved, start a company because that is what I did. Now, you can take advantage of this by going to ClientFol.io and taking a look at this incredible product for $20 a month. All you’ve got to do is take fourteen minutes to learn, and before you know it, you are up and running. Go over to ClientFol.io and check it out. Onto my guest and his incredible story.
Starting out as a plain old, boring accountant, my guest realized that there had to be a better way to help clients with their taxes. He decided to do some research and what he discovered astounded him. There are many secret golden nuggets in the IRS codes that he decided to start a completely different type of accounting firm with his first book called Tax Credits Are Sexy. From there, he has received rave reviews from clients far and wide. In this episode, he is going to share some of his sexiest secrets to cracking the code and keeping more money.
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Welcome to the show, Kevin Marshall.
Mitch, thank you so much. That was a great intro.
Kevin and I are in the same mastermind together. He is a fairly nondescript person when you see him walk down the hall. He is a good-looking guy and all, but the bottom line is when he gets on stage, he explodes because he is so passionate about his topic. He is going to share some of that with us but first, let’s go back to the very beginning. Tell us about your beginnings.
There are so many stories and things. I’m a CPA and have been a CPA for many years, which to some people is very threatening. CPAs have their crap together. If you are a licensed CPA, you are a financial professional and you do but that’s not necessarily the case. In full disclosure here, I have struggled for years financially as a CPA. I have never gone bankrupt. I have known CPAs who have gone bankrupt but I have a problem. It is called being a maverick.
You mentioned the mastermind group that we belong to and it is part of The Predictive Index. I am a maverick CPA. What does a maverick CPA do? A maverick CPA takes a risk, thinks outside the box, tries to launch multiple businesses at the same time, and incurs debt because we go out and we create businesses. It is not like we were broke. As I said, we didn’t go bankrupt but we were not financially independent. My wife and I struggled. I’m grateful and thankful for the experiences that we went through.
Back to your question about the beginning, I was an accidental entrepreneur. I was working for a client as a CFO of a company. I heard through the grapevine that my job was being replaced. I was being replaced by the private equity firm that was coming in with their own management team. What else do you do? You go out and you start a business, then what do you do? You start a second business within the same year. This has been in my 30s.
I started an accounting business because I was an accountant. I started it with a friend. There is the keyword, ‘with a friend.’ We started another business. It was a bed and breakfast of all things. What the heck did we know about a bed and breakfast? Not much. That all went sideways, so the friend left. We inherited a bed and breakfast by default. Here we are, newlyweds who launched two businesses within the same year. My wife is like, “What the heck did we get ourselves into?”
Going into business with a friend, we didn’t have a plan. I’m not a planner. My wife is a planner. I’m a maverick. I go out there, seize opportunities, run with it, and then the lack of experience too. We never ran a bed and breakfast, but also part of being a maverick is you never give up. I was like, “We are not giving up on this.” We turned the bed and breakfast around. It was one of the highest-grossing bed and breakfasts in New England when we sold it, so we dug out of that hole and it wasn’t easy.
Kudos to my wife. The bed and breakfast was built in 1812, so it was an old house. We slept in the attic on a mattress for a few months, with no heat and air conditioning. If it got hot, we would buy an air conditioner and put it in the window. If it got cold, we would buy a little space heater, but we did what we needed to do to survive and we did. We overcame and sold that sucker for a lot of money because it was turnkey by the time we sold it.
It has been interesting, mostly in accounting but again, we ran and sold our bed and breakfast. The other entrepreneurial venture that I went on was I started a business in Phoenix. It was a coworking space, like a business incubator. It seemed again like a great opportunity but I live in Tucson. Phoenix is about an hour and a half drive, so that made it difficult trying to manage a business from a distance.
Don’t let your financial struggles hinder you from achieving great things.
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The other thing was that there wasn’t a proven model. It was difficult to monetize and lack of focus again because I had my accounting business in Tucson, and then I had that business venture that we started in Phoenix. For me, the big lesson that I have learned, and this is a five-letter word for me which is very typical for entrepreneurs, is focus. It was like a squirrel, jump ship, go run off and do something else because I get bored.
What’s interesting is that your story is so typical of the entrepreneurial journey. It is because we are searching for the thing that will take us to where we want to go.
There you go. You should write a book about that.
Maybe someday I will. What we are looking for is we’re looking for a way to fulfill our dreams. Our dreams result in what we call the created life. The life that we create in our minds that must become realized starts with trying and failing. I started a software company at the age of 28, and I had never started a company before other than mowing lawns.
The bottom line is that you have to start somewhere. Like you did, I made every mistake in the book. I chased every squirrel that ran past the house and a few of the squirrels that the squirrels chased. You were on a mission and figured it out, but you got focused, as you said and you made that one business work by selling that business. It created a base for you to do the next thing. Tell us a little bit about how this adventure of being the tax credits sexy guy started for you.
First of all, I need to go back to a comment you made about your software company, Timeslips. We were a customer of Timeslips back in the day. It was the late ’80s, early ’90s. When I saw that you were the founder, I’m like, “You are famous.”
I am a legend in my own mind.
I thought, “Small world.” I have not heard the word Timeslips in twenty years. That was a long time ago.
Tax Credits Are Sexy: What Every Organization Needs to Know about the Employee Retention Credit It is still being sold.
I saw online that they are still selling it. That is awesome and cool. You have left a legacy.
You are the second person now that I have come in contact with who was a Timeslips customer.
It is a small world.
This person somehow found ClientFol.io and started using it and said, “Is this the same Mitch Russo that created Timeslips?” Immediately, I made a new friend. I didn’t know that she was a customer and I didn’t know you were a customer either, which is great. Thank you very much.
Back to your comment about focus, squirrels, and looking for the silver lining or the silver bullet or whatever, there are a gazillion things or ways to explain it. In the middle of COVID, everybody was trying to find face masks. I was like, “There is an opportunity. Let’s try to find a way to make some money here and help out hospitals and everything else.” We had a purchase order from a hospital in Phoenix. We had a vendor in China ready to go. We were going to wire $250,000 to China and it didn’t work. Thank God, it didn’t work. We might have lost $250,000.
I don’t know if you know anything in that space. There were a lot of people that were losing their shirts because of that reason, sending money to China and the product not showing up or purchase orders being canceled, so that was another attempt. That was at the beginning of COVID. Fast forward a few months, this opportunity came along for the ERC, the Employee Retention Credit.
I will never forget this day as long as I live. The ironic story of this was that it was a Friday morning. I was in Tucson. It was a breakfast group that I belong to. There is another CPA in the group, and I won’t mention his name because I have an NDA. There is a bunch of business owners and one of the CPAs came in and said, “You’ve got to check out this ERC, this Employee Retention Credit. It is amazing. It is off the charts. It is free money.” I went, “I have heard of it but I don’t know anything about it.”
I spent the whole weekend reading every article and watching every video I could on Employee Retention Credit. I went, “This is unbelievable. It is amazing.” It is everything that this other CPA said about it. I immediately called a buddy of mine who immediately left Salt Lake City and drove down on Monday to start focusing on the Employee Retention Credit. That quickly. I’ve known him for many years. He’s now my COO and that’s where it all started.
It was purely from another CPA saying, “This is a great opportunity.” We can talk about that journey as well, but fast forward to now and we are buying the CPA firm that told me about the Employee Retention Credit. They are your typical CPA firm. They’re a 100% tax. They don’t do anything with tax credits. Not only have we made millions of dollars off of this program but now we are buying that other CPA firm out. It is so funny to look back over the last few years and see the journey between where we were and where we are now.
The whole idea here is that this didn’t even come into being until COVID, right?
Correct, it is a government stimulus program like the SBA PPP program.
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Realistically, COVID was a blessing for you.
Completely, isn’t it bizarre? We can leverage anything.
It is true. That’s the lesson. The lesson is you could have gotten depressed, sat home, watched Netflix and eaten ice cream. By the way, you would have been justified doing that along with tens of millions of other people, maybe hundreds of millions of other people all over the world, but you got creative and that’s the part that I love.
The fact that you saw the opportunity, you did your research and then at that point, you have created a new business division around that. Realistically, accounting is still accounting. It is the addition of having these secrets or golden nuggets that you have uncovered either through your network or on your own that you share with your clients that make them want to give you gobs and gobs of money. What’s wrong with that?
It is a win-win for everybody. Our largest credit so far is in the neighborhood of about $800,000 credit that we have got from one of our clients.
We have a woman who’s a member of our mastermind. Carrie was one of your clients. She stood up and said she had saved $400,000.
She’s getting a check from the IRS for $492,000. The IRS owes me a couple of hundred grand now but it is all good. I’ll get it someday. They’re good for it.
If they don’t have it, they’ll print it for you.
That’s the scary part. They’re printing money like it was paper. It is just paper.
The paper would be worth more than what they’re printing but anyway, I signed up for your service. I want to know all about it. Where do we start? How do we get them? What do we do with them? How do they make us money?
Saving Money On Taxes: There are many other types of businesses that not every business qualifies for, but there’s some that do qualify for R&D tax credit. There are multiple tax credits that we work with our clients on. The first one is ERC, the Employee Retention Credit, and that’s the book that I just wrote. It was on that. The second one is the R&D, Research and Development tax credit. We now have a technology company. We have created software for the Employer Retention Credit. Our next software project is the R&D tax credit. R&D tax software that interfaces with QuickBooks don’t exist. There is a wide-open market there. That’s our next software project. It is cool.
We are laser-focused on one tax credit. We now have 25 staff. We are up to our third country. I have staff in the Philippines and hiring staff in India. We are looking at hiring staff in Mexico but because of that laser focus, right now, we have a software company. It is almost counterintuitive. You get the laser focus and then it lets us be able to branch out and do more things.
Start out by telling us what the ERC is.
Let me finish my thought. R&D tax credit and then there is WOTC, Work Opportunity Tax Credit. There are so many tax credits that eventually we’ll get into. ERC, the Employee Retention Credit, we have been laser-focused on this, almost exclusively as we have gone through this. It is an amazing program that is available for small business owners. In our experience, 75% of the people we talk to have never heard of it or if they have heard of it, they know nothing about it and have not even looked into it. There is a huge opportunity out there, number one.
The second statistic is that we have a partner that meets regularly with the Small Business Associate or SBA. SBAs estimate is only 5% of eligible businesses have looked into the ERC. There is so much opportunity out there for businesses. If you roughly do the math, there are about 1.5 million businesses out there that are eligible that have not looked into it or have applied for this credit. This is a huge opportunity for companies out there. What the heck is it? It is similar to the PPP program. During COVID, everybody knew what PPP was but what’s weird is that nobody knew what ERC is. It is similar but different.
Go back and tell us what is PPP.
It is Paycheck Protection Program, so the SBA forgivable loan PPP one came out in March of 2020. Every business was eligible for it. If they ran out of money then they had to do a second round. If businesses were scrambling, you get their money. They then came out with PPP six months later at the end of 2020. Not every business was eligible for it. You had to have a 25% decline in your cash receipts and revenue in order to qualify.
Many businesses were able to qualify for PPP two. It was a forgivable loan. It was a loan and give you the money and if you met the right criteria and you spent it properly, you could have it forgiven. It turned into a grant if you will. That was PPP. ERC was out there as well. ERC came out at the same time as PPP did. ERC is a tax credit. It is essentially a payroll tax credit. It is what it is. It comes from the IRS versus PPP comes from the SBA. It is not a forgivable loan like PPP was. It is a refund check. It reimburses small employers for wages paid to non-owners and wages paid to non-family members.
Why would the IRS do that?
Here’s what’s interesting and I have some theories on this. One, the original intent of this was to encourage employers to retain their employees, thus the name of it, Employee Retention Credit but what’s ironic is IRS is majorly backlogged at the moment so refunds are not being processed. It is frustrating because all these employers have been staffing and paying their employees but not getting the credit to get reimbursed for it. It is not fulfilling its objective of getting cash immediately in the hands of employers. That was the intent. If you remember with PPP, the SBA was backlogged too but the backlog at the IRS is way far worse than the backlog at the
Audits are at an all-time low. The likelihood of getting audited is lower today than it was 20 years ago.
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Here’s my question for you and this is relevant to small business owners reading this. You said that the IRS is backed up and maybe that’s bad news or good news. What does that mean to business owners? Does that mean that they won’t get their refunds? If they file late, they might not get audited or if they file early, they might not get audited? How does this work?
That’s something that we get asked of all the time. A few things, one as we call it, the materiality threshold at the IRS is extremely high right now. We got to talk to a client and they only owe the IRS $20,000 and they don’t care. They’re not going to bother you. She wants to cash out her 401(k). Again, it is your decision. I can tell you my opinion. I wouldn’t do it because the threshold at the IRS is extremely high at the moment. Audits are at an all-time low. The likelihood of getting audited is lower now than it was many years ago. For you and the readers, there are 20,000 less IRS employees now than there were many years ago and think about how many more businesses there are. It is a growing booming economy.
For the purpose of the NSA, who’s enjoying the show along with us as well, we do not, in any way or imply that it is okay to cheat on your taxes.
There are gray areas that will push the envelope but no. We came across an incidence of fraud and I won’t get into the specifics of it but I’ve consulted with an attorney. I’m probably going to have to turn this client into the Feds. Back to your original question. To give you an idea, Mitch. There are 5 million unopened pieces of mail at the IRS and 10 million unprocessed tax returns between paper returns and rejected eFiles.
People are still waiting for the refunds that we had known about from 2019. Think about it. You got a client that pays late, files late, procrastinate, takes their time, and gets a $500 and $1,000 penalty and if you write a letter to IRS, it is going to go into the backlog. There is no way that it is going to be contested. They don’t have the bandwidth or staff to be able to handle it. I hope I answered your question and thanks for that caveat. You’d never cheat on your taxes.
I know you never implied that but the thing you said before is what we pay for. We pay for smart people to know how to stay within the boundaries of the law and take full advantage of the tax code. You are not being a better American by paying more taxes. It is quite the opposite. You are being a stupid American by paying more.
Our job as entrepreneurs is to maximize profit for our shareholders. That’s what the role of every CEO in business is. We care about our people, culture, customers, and our products but ultimately, we’re in business to maximize profits. That is what a great CPA as a partnership helps a company do. That’s what I’m assuming you would love to do.
I helped a client save $600,000 on their tax bill. I had a new client. It was a referral from Carl. The company is in New York City. We did their bookkeeping and accounting so the first tax call with them, I saved them $150,000 or $180,000 in one phone call. They’re like, “Why doesn’t my CPA tell me about it?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” The name of our company is Profitopia. It is like living in the land of profits. Can we help you with your taxes, tax credits, and bookkeeping? Back to your point, how do we make you more profitable and put more money in your pocket as the business owner? That’s 100% of what we’re about.
I know that so we have PPP and we also have the other tax credit that you mentioned, the ERC. I built a software company. I grew it, sold it and had an accountant. We took an R&D tax credit. I now have another software company for ClientFol.io, which you heard about at the beginning of the show. Once again, I told my account exactly what expenses are related to the software project. That’s hopefully an R&D tax clarity as well. What other secrets are there about the R&D tax credit that we should know as readers?
I’ll give you a couple of examples. Again, tax credits are free money. It cost nothing to look into. We always tell our clients on the ERC side that it costs you nothing to look into it. The absolute worst thing that could happen is we would go back to you and say, “You get zero. At least you know.” Back to the R&D question. I’m assuming most business owners think, “I need to be a software company. I need to be manufacturing.” Again, R&D research and development. I’m not a manufacturer. Some people don’t even realize that software companies are all research and development.
Saving Money On Taxes: All CPAs do is tax preparation. There’s more to life than death and taxes. What people don’t realize is that there are other types of businesses and not every business qualifies but there are some that do. Here’s a couple that is pretty cool, beer breweries because they’re creating beer recipes. They qualify for the R&D tax credit and also wineries and distilleries. Whether they want to apply for the credit, it might not be worth their while and it might not be enough money but you can have a restaurant that is creating new dishes.
Again, if you are only spending a few thousand dollars, it is not worthwhile but if you have a separate kitchen and it is a big enough restaurant, there are chefs and they are figuring out new recipes and new menus, that all qualify for R&D because they’re doing research on creating new recipes. In most cases, people don’t qualify for the R&D tax credit but it is worth looking into.
You talk about a brewery. I’ll drink to that. We’ll toast to tax credits for breweries but interestingly because if you think about it, even a clothing manufacturer might qualify because it is designing new styles. Is that right?
Correct. You nailed it. You get it. It is strange the way the IRS code is written, but if you are creating a new system or process, it gets pretty nebulous as far as what activities qualify for the R&D tax credit.
If you are reading this and you have a business and you create anything, I would talk to your accountant about applying for the R&D tax credit. As you said, it may not be a lot. Here’s an idea. Let’s say I have a restaurant and I’m serving meals and turn tables every hour throughout the day, etc. I then decide to take a vacation to Italy but instead, I decide, “Let’s make this a trip to discover new recipes for the restaurant.” Can I take an R&D tax credit for it?
Again, we’re nerdy CPAs mostly. We have sales, marketing, and operational folks too but basically, we’re CPAs and we run a CPA firm. There is a running joke in the office. There are two answers to your question. My CFO is awesome, Jennifer. She’s a CPA as well. Our answer is twofold. 1) It depends and 2) I don’t know. I say that half-jokingly but honestly, maybe. If it was a husband and wife and their three kids that went, I would say probably not. If that’s what you did and it is the owner of the restaurant, a $1,000 flight, sure. That’s a great question so possibly.
The point here is that once you start thinking outside the box, you get a guy who has the attention span of a squirrel like Kevin and I to riff on this topic for a little bit with you and hopefully, that’s who your accountant is. At that point in effect, you could discover things. You may not know this but I had been a landscape photographer for all of my adult life before. I traveled all over the world and I carry $10,000 worth of camera gear with me wherever I go for the most part.
Here’s the part that will confuse you. I’ve never once in my life tried to deduct any of my trips, my equipment, or my expenses because I do it all for the joy and pleasure of photographing, yet, every so often, by accident, I end up selling a print. Not because I try but because someone spots it and wants to buy it. Does that qualify me to start deducting all of my trips all over the world as a photographer for R&D tax credits?
What’s my answer? 1) It depends. 2) I don’t know. Again, I’m not trying to be funny. The vast majority of entrepreneurs are not accountants. A fraction of business owners are having an accounting background. Most people’s perception of a CPA is black and white. It is not. There is so much gray. In the tax room and then the accounting, there are a lot of grays.
We have to look at the facts and circumstances because if you are self-employed, you have a restriction on how many years of losses you can have. Is it worth your while to form an S-corporation because then you don’t have that risk? It is worth looking into and asking. Talk to us or talk to your tax preparer. These are great questions and things that your CPA should be looking out for in your best interest.
Vast majority of entrepreneurs and the popular are not accountants.
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This has been a fascinating conversation. I have a feeling we can go on for quite a while. Here’s the bottom line. I know you have more material and a lot of value to add. If you are enjoying this conversation and you believe Kevin might be able to help you, we’re going to share a way for you to maybe get ahold of Kevin and chat with him.
Now, we’re going to switch gears here and we’re going to find out more about this crazy guy, Kevin Marshall. We do that through a couple of very simple but sometimes empowering questions. Kevin, here’s the first question, who, in all of space and time, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
This is an easy answer for me. He’s on the top of my list. His name is Chuck Feeney, and no one has ever heard of him. He wrote a book called The Billionaire Who Wasn’t. He and his two co-founders founded the Duty Free shops back in the ’70s that you find in all the airports. He secretly gave away all his money. His business partners didn’t even know about it. He was on the Forbes billionaire list, the top most wealthy people in the world. He decided to “come out of the closet,” come clean and be a role model for philanthropy around the world.
He gave away $8 billion. It took him 25 years to give it all away. Bill Gates looks up to Chuck Feeney and credits him for Bill’s journey down the philanthropy path. Chuck, to this day, is still alive. If anybody knows Chuck, I want to meet him. He lives in San Francisco. He does not own a car and a house. He lives in an apartment. He 100% gave all his money away. He’s an amazing human being.
What is amazing in what you said is you would think that even a billionaire would want to have a small amount of wealth leftover for them to live a comfortable life but from what you are saying, it doesn’t sound like he even did that. That’s a very unusual individual. Besides writing a book, maybe he needs to see a shrink because this is dangerous. He walks around giving away billions of dollars when he can’t buy lunch. It is admirable.
It is incredible that he’s done that and he is a role model for those who do aspire to be a philanthropist. Thank you for that suggestion and for naming Chuck. The next question is what we call the grand finale question. It is the change the world question. What are you doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
I may get emotional and get teary-eyed. First and foremost, I find this very humbling, quite frankly. I am the leading ERC expert in the country. We have written a book. We have software and app in App Store that is coming out. I speak on the Employer Retention Credit around the country so that’s one way. We’re putting tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in entrepreneurs’ and business owners’ pockets to help them with their struggling businesses. That dovetails into what Profitopia is all about. We are disrupting the CPA industry.
There are over hundred-thousand-dollar mom-and-pop CPA firms out there. There are national and international CPA firms but they deal with the billionaires of this world and family offices and all the Fortune 500 and 1000 companies. The closest thing to a national chain being the US of CPA firms that work with entrepreneurs is H&R Block and I’ll reserve my comments on H&R Block but it doesn’t exist.
As I said, I shared a couple of illustrations of working with a couple of clients to help them save money, tax credits, tax mitigation and other sophisticated products that have traditionally only been available for family offices. We own an insurance agency. We provide insurance to our clients. Why? It is because they work, love, and trust us so why wouldn’t we sell insurance?
Again, I’ve been doing this for many years. All they do is tax preparation. There is more to life than death and taxes. What we have found is that the clients want, “I am trying to exit my business. I need to sell my business. I needed insurance. I need a bond,” and all these other things that the clients and the entrepreneurs are looking, wanting, and needing.
Saving Money On Taxes: If there’s late filing penalties or late interest charges, write a letter to the IRS. We are in the process of acquiring other firms, raising money, and rolling them up into a national chain, called Profitopia of CPA firms that work with specifically small and mid-sized businesses which are under $120 million in revenue, like startups, established businesses, and growing businesses. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what we’re doing.
That’s incredible, Kevin. I wish you all the luck and I offer my assistance as well in any way I can help but I also want to talk a little bit about this very cool giveaway. It is your book, Tax Credits Are Sexy. I love it.
It is a funny story. I sent the book to my mother who’s in her 80s and she’s like, “Kevin, I have to tell you. I don’t like the word sexy.” I’m like, “Mom, it is another word for cool. Tax credits are cool. ” True story, we’re working with Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank company called Tax Hive out of Salt Lake City. They send us their tax, bookkeeping and tax credit work. I was meeting in their conference room, not with Kevin. I haven’t met Kevin yet but meeting with their CEO and their CEO and I was talking about tax credits.
I’m a little bit passionate about tax credits, specifically ERC, the Employee Retention Credit. The COO turns to me and he’s sitting next to me in the conference room. He has a marketing background. He goes, “Tax credits are sexy.” I went, “Can I steal that?” He gave me permission so I stole it. That’s how the title came to be. Again, it is the first and we’re going to write a book on all the different tax credits. This is the first in the series of the tax credits or sexy book.
I hope and it would be my prayer for you, Kevin, that the IRS does not simplify the taxes and eliminate all deductions. Wouldn’t it be terrible? God forbid you only had one small slip of paper to fill out. We have that now. Here’s the slip of paper. It says, “We’re the IRS. Send us all your money. Thank you.” It is an amazing journey that you are on, Kevin, and what you are doing is very valuable. The more money that you can save Americans now with inflation flooring, wars going on and with lockdowns happening and ending, it is a blessing. I want to thank you very much for doing what you are doing. Kevin, do you read the audiobook yourself?
No, we hired somebody on Fiverr.
There you go, but the information is still the same.
I love Fiverr.
I love it too. Thank you again for spending time with all of us. I can’t wait until we get a chance to talk about tax credits again soon.
Mitch, thank you so much.
It’s my pleasure, talk to you soon.
Important Links * ClientFol.io * Tax Credits Are Sexy * Timeslips * Profitopia * The Billionaire Who Wasn’t
About Kevin Marshall Kevin brings both an entrepreneurial spirit and a CPA’s financial acumen to each client situation. The innovative solutions he brings to clients are rooted in strong financial returns.
Kevin is the author of Tax Credits Are Sexy: What Every Organization Needs To Know About The Employee Retention Credit. You can read or listen to this here.
Professionally, Kevin has been a practicing CPA for over 35 years. He serves clients across the country via his virtual CPA firm. He specializes in the difficult— specifically turning around dire financial situations with unique financing, tax mitigation, and business planning solutions.
As an entrepreneur, Kevin has started and sold multiple businesses. He started a Bed & Breakfast in Connecticut that became one of the top grossing small B&Bs in New England and was featured on CNN. Kevin profitably sold that business before his last relocation to Tucson AZ, where he wisely went virtual with his CPA and funding business.
Kevin’s awards include Money Magazine’s “People to Watch” and Hartford Business Journal’s “40 Under 40.” Kevin has volunteered with Make Way for Books and the Tucson Rotary and has lent his expertise as treasurer to numerous non-profit organizations.
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Every business needs to find their tech groove. When you have the right tech and people on the job, everything becomes easier. So how do you find that groove? Mitch Russo answers that question with the help of Mike Filsaime, CEO of Groove Digital. Often called “The Michael Jordan of Digital Marketing,” Mike shares his story of trials and success. Tune in to learn Mike’s powerful insights on building a business and the drive to success.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Get Your Business’ Tech Groove On: An Interview With Mike Filsaime In this episode, I have something for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized I have been spending about 30 minutes per session on admin. The reason was I had all these applications open all over my screen, then I had to consolidate all of that into an email and send it to my client. It only got worse from there. The next week, I had to find that email and take a look at what I sent the client last time, so we could start our next session. I’ve got tired of doing it, so I started looking for a coaching software and I couldn’t find anything that worked for me.
I did what every entrepreneur should do when they find a problem that has not been solved. I built my own. It’s called *ClientFol.io*. I would love for you to give it a whirl. It’s only $1 to give it a try, and that will get you full access to the entire program. The bottom line is that you will love it. I am here to support you. Go there and tell me what you think. Now onto my guest and his incredible story.
This guy is a child of the ’80s. In fact, he acquired his first computer, the Commodore 64 and what did he do with it as a kid? He built a lottery ticket checker for his dad. It was so well done that at the age of seventeen, he sold it for $25,000. He then went on to work for his father’s car dealership and while he was selling cars learning to sell, he automated his dad’s dealership and created electronic systems that, to this day, help run that dealership. In 2004, he registered his first URL and that was the beginning of a career that has launched more million-dollar brands than anyone else. He has launched programs like *WebinarJam,* EverWebinar*,* and GrooveFunnels system, which we are going to learn all about.**
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*Mike Filsaime*, welcome to the show.
Mitch, thank you very much. A great read on that bio. I appreciate that.
I do this for all of my guests. I love writing a very thorough bio without all the dates and everything. I make it a story. The most important thing is you started like a lot of us. You started at the beginning, at the very bottom. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about those times?
My dad was born in Haiti, so was my mother. My dad came here in 1959. He had to register for the military to get into the country. He became a life insurance salesman, car salesman, manager and then bought his own dealership. My dad always brought me up to tell me that I could be anything I was. He never told me I was better than anybody but always gave me this mindset. I believe that my dad, being such an entrepreneur and the way that I was raised always saw everything as an opportunity. For me, I was somebody that was in love with computers before their time. That’s why I had to go into the car business.
Partnerships are like marriages. Sometimes you can love somebody, but it doesn't always work out.
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What was great about that is I learned salesmanship, which carries over nowadays into direct response marketing. When the internet came out, I saw that as a calling. As an entrepreneurial person, the first thing I wanted to know is, “How does the internet work? How do I get a website up?” You’ve got to buy a domain, name domain, get hosting, build a site and get it up. Now that it’s up, for me, the first thing was, “What do I sell it? I didn’t just want to have a website up there.” The first thing that came up was to teach people exactly what I did.
From 2004 and on, the internet started maturing. You go from teaching people how to get online to how to create a product and have a business, and then they need different software. As you can see from scheduling, calendars, and what you said about coaching, software was something that I can bring this Commodore 64 thing that I had when I was a kid right back full circle, attach it to salesmanship, and the love for technology. The rest was history for me.
Back then, the thing that was the most radical thing I remember you for was a WebinarJam. I remember when that came out, it was revolutionary. It was low-priced and super powerful. You initially launched it as a lifetime deal. I said, “I don’t think I will ever want to do a webinar.” I never bought it but about a year later, I ended up subscribing because I needed to do webinars. It was a great tool. I loved it.
I also know that you and Andy Jenkins built that company together. If you are comfortable talking about it, there’s a cycle that all business owners go through. They may have a partner and then at some point, something happens and they need to separate from that partner. It would be educational for all of us to learn a little bit about that if you are comfortable sharing some of that. How did you land on your feet after the breakup of that partnership?
Just so everybody knows, Andy passed away from pancreatic cancer about a few years ago but I’m still going to talk the truth. I will start by saying, Andy and I love each other very much. We were best friends. What you can say about a business is partnerships are like marriages. Sometimes you can love somebody but it doesn’t always work out. One more little thing about that is that Andy and I were not yin and yang. We were two yangs. We were both great at direct response marketing but nobody brought anything else to the table like, “I will be the operations guy, traffic guy or whatever it was.”
Andy was good at video. He was the Executive Producer of The Blair Witch Project. He was the guy that did all of the marketing and came up with the idea of found footage. When Andy got online, he was known as the Video Boss. He and I did a product called Video Genesis and then Traffic Genesis. He then wanted to do another project. I said, “Andy, I can’t. I’m about to launch WebinarJam.” That was my company at the time. We were working together and he said, “You have to choose that or me.” I said, “Why don’t you come into that company?”
What happened was I was working with another partner. I owned 51%, and Hector Yague owned 49%. I had spoken to Hector. I said, “Why don’t we bring on Andy? We will all go down to 33%.” That’s the first thing right there. Sometimes to capitulate for the greater good, you also have to realize what you gave up. I gave up control of my company because what you have with Andy was a very strong personality. He was Type-A Marine, woke up at 6:00, hit the bullet points, and got to bed early. He was a worker bee.
Business Tech: You can negotiate anything in a good mood with a partner because you’re negotiating for them. I am the type of guy who wakes up at 10:00, works three hours here, and stays up until 2:00 in the morning. We had to learn to work with each other. He was the dominant person and I’m the easygoing guy. When there was an issue, Andy would pretty much always win out, so I quickly realized I was losing control of the vision of, “I’m the software guy.” He’s seeing things differently, not right, wrong or indifferent, just different. It created a very difficult dynamic for us. It came to the point where, “This isn’t working. One of us is going to go. What is it going to look like?” You come up with a number of whatever the case.
I took a two-year non-compete in the way that I like to describe it. I never want to compare myself to Steve Jobs. I want to compare it to the situation where you have Steve Jobs that was totally in love with this company that he had. He could have protected himself from the board but he didn’t know these different things and he found himself in a position where he got fired from his own company. Out of spite, he sold all of his shares except for one and created the NeXT computer.
Everything worked out well for him from there. For me, Groove is my NeXT computer. I had to dig deep after a two-year non-compete. I lost all of my developers, programmers, and the whole company I built. I had to start from scratch and say, “I’ve got to build a tribe, community, a team and start from scratch.” That was an interesting time.
Looking back, what do you think you could have done that might have made this shift in a different direction or in a better way for you have been the Founder of the company?
Now that I know how important contracts and attorneys are, you can negotiate anything in a good mood with a partner because you are negotiating for them. I’m talking to my partners now where we are like, “This is why we have life insurance for our spouse and us. What happens if one of us passes away? How do we take care of the other spouse?” You then start saying, “We are going to give this,” and you start thinking, “That’s a little bit too strong. I’m losing my partner and we are going to be giving her all of these profits.”
At the same time, you are like, “That’s also the same for my wife. If I negotiate that down too much, I’m negotiating down for my wife.” It’s so easy to have those conversations about Keyman insurance ahead of time. It’s essentially a pre-nuptial agreement for your company. You can come to terms with those things. When you make things very simple at the end, those situations are very easy to handle when they come, whether it’s a tragedy, somebody wanting to leave, burnout or whatever the case may be.
Andy and I didn’t have that and that leaves it up to a divorce. The attorneys get involved. We were pretty good. We closed that relationship in two weeks. Frankly, for me, I took a lot less money because I didn’t want it to get ugly and I wanted to move on. I took a decent amount of money but nothing that I needed to go to the courts to prove it which would have been more worth my mental health at the time.
Sometimes to capitulate for the greater good, you also have to realize what you just gave up.
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I make decisions the same way as you. I’m a non-confrontational guy. I prefer to settle things and make the relationship the most important thing. I learned the lesson that you did not because I was so smart. It’s because I had a good lawyer. When I started Timeslips, I was 28 years old. The lawyer came to me and says, “What are you doing about Keyman insurance?” I said, “What’s that?”
For anyone reading, Keyman insurance is a very simple concept. It gives you enough life insurance that when you die, that life insurance policy buys out your partner’s family. In this way, you get to continue to run your own company without all of a sudden someone who has never been in the business showing up at the office and wanting to take control of things.
That was not a situation where that wife, in particular, could have helped at all. When two creative people get together, it’s always going to be exciting in a bad way. You had your excitement but you learned a lot. I’m sure you take in many of those lessons now as you have created the Groove system. Tell us a little bit about why you decided to go off and build this whole platform all over again.
When I built WebinarJam, back then, the leader was GoToWebinar. They had a max of 1,000 people, and we were going to get 7,000 people on a webinar. People told us, “Use Hangouts.” Hangouts is cool but there was no marketing system around it. You couldn’t register people or send them reminders. I said, “We can build a marketing interface around Hangouts.” That’s what we did and that’s why we didn’t have to pay for bandwidth.
Andy was smart enough to say, “What happens if they take away Hangouts?” I said, “They are never going to do that.” Spoiler alert. They did. I give credit where credit is due. We built our own interface to protect the company in case that happened. We built EverWebinar, which was pretty much the same thing but it played a video and it was automated. We kept them as two separate brands.
We then did Kartra, which was Infusionsoft meets ClickFunnels, etc. There was still another component out there that was exploding called eCommerce. I can say that with one word, Shopify. That’s physical products print on demand, importing products from AliExpress in China. The way I look at things is that whenever there’s an industry where there’s a Coke without a Pepsi, I always say, “You need to try to become that Coke. If you become Dr Pepper, that’s okay.” Back in the day, there was a company called ClickBank. I said, “You’ve got to wait to get your money. Why don’t I create a ClickBank where you use your PayPal account and get paid instantly?”
I was making $8,000 a day. I sold it for $4 million. It was nothing like ClickBank but it was a great Dr Pepper company for me. When I sold my company, I said to myself at the time, “That took us five years to build. I had the resources. Now, they are two years further. ClickFunnels is out. I would be a fool to try to compete without even a development team.” That was my thinking at that time. What did I look at? I looked at the marketplace and I saw Shopify was a Coke without a Pepsi. If you say to most people, “Who’s the competitor of Shopify?” They say, “I don’t know. I have heard of WooCommerce.” They are a Dr Pepper. I said, “I’m going to create something like that.”
Business Tech: Them getting out there is going to make us better, and us being out there is making them better. We created our first app called GrooveKart. That ended up being so successful and then my confidence came back. I said, “I wanted to do one little thing after that. I wanted to create a webinar software called GrooveWebinars or WebinarGroove. I was going to combine WebinarJam and EverWebinar into one. I was going to sell that separately and then I wanted to create a page builder and sell it for $497 a year and call it GroovePages.”
I released a little campaign. It was like, “We have an idea. Help us fund it.” That took off so well. In 2021, we raised $35 million with that model doing that. We built out a development team of over 80 people in Brazil and India. As the money kept coming in, some of my partners were like, “We are going to get a distribution.” I said, “Salary. Let’s keep putting it in.” We hired the best talent and then we realized that with the right talent and leadership, it took us two and a half years. We essentially built Kartra, ClickFunnels, WebinarJam, EverWebinar, and Shopify in one platform. That’s what the Groove platform is.
It includes the *AWeber portion as well. I assume that’s part of your group platform.*
It replaces eighteen different tools, so GrooveMail is like AWeber or ActiveCampaign. GroovePages is like Wix or Squarespace. GrooveFunnels is like ClickFunnels. We have a video, and even GrooveBlog, so you can completely get off of WordPress. The average person that is like, “I don’t need to run my company. I just want to blog 2 or 3 days a week.” You can sell your digital products, have an affiliate program, physical products, video hosting, and a membership site like Kajabi as well.
For everybody who’s trying to build a business and those who are confused about the tech stack, the programs they should use, where would you tell people to get started so that they will have a relatively easy to use but an expandable way to build their company? Would Groove be a good place where people should start with something different than move up to Groove?
I will take this opportunity for the shameless plug. I want people to know sincerely that me and Donna Fox, my CMO, wake up every single day and send each other these googly little messages. When we are running our company, we are so happy that we have this platform with no compromises because it’s an all-in-one platform that allows us to build our funnels and pages and connect our opt-in. We are even doing now our automated GrooveWebinar, which is like the EverWebinar. It handles our products, our one-click upsell, and order bumps. Everything is taken care of.
In the past, the answer I would have told you is, “You have to get WordPress but then there are all those different plugins. Some of them have different upgrades, and then you need to connect that to an active campaign. You will probably need Infusionsoft and Kajabi to fulfill. It could get pretty complicated, besides the fact that you have to get eighteen different platforms to work with each other, that was not meant to. You’ve got to connect with Zapier. They do an update and you find out six months later that the opt-in form hasn’t been working all this time because they didn’t update.” We have all been there.
Whenever there's an industry where there's a Coke without a Pepsi, you need to try to become that Coke. If you become the Dr. Pepper, that's okay.
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My goal was to create that all-in-one platform. The thing that we said was that if we are going to do this, we are not going to have 1 or 2 hero apps. They say it’s a membership but it’s not. We wanted it to be as good or better. We believe that our Groove member is better than Kajabi. We believe that our GrooveMail is on par with ActiveCampaign, and GrooveFunnels is better than ClickFunnels.
In fact, ClickFunnels is coming out with ClickFunnels 2.0 because what we have brought to the market is so strong that we are taking such market share from them that they are now saying, “We need to innovate instead of market.” They were very good at marketing but they didn’t update their software too much over the years. Now they are coming out with a brand new ClickFunnels 2.0. At that point, I will either be Coke or Pepsi and that’s okay. Them getting out there is going to make us better, and us being out there is making them better.
What you described is the process of all the tools that you mentioned. Every reader of this show will have used one, if not, several of those tools in the past. What you describe, for me, has always been true. We had a sales page that wasn’t talking to our lead gen system for four months and we didn’t even know it.
This is what I call the legacy product. As we move on, we start going into that 80/20 Rule. There’s one product that’s bringing in 80% of the customers. You have a landing page. It’s bringing in maybe 7 to 20 leads a day but you are not checking it every day. Six months later, you go in and somebody asks a question. You are like, “We haven’t had a lead for six months,” and you find out, “They did an update that broke the Zapier plugin.”
Let’s go back a step. It’s one thing to create an incredible software platform. You have invested tens of millions into this but it’s another thing to market it. Many of us have products that need to be marketed better than what we are doing. You seem to be so good at that. Maybe you could help us a bit. Tell us a little bit about how you market the Groove system now.
One of the things that have to happen is we have to realize now that personality is becoming a big part of marketing, with the people you have worked with like Chet Holmes and Tony Robbins. You see how Russell Brunson has done that with ClickFunnels as opposed to Infusionsoft, who doesn’t necessarily have a face to it. The name of the company when I met Matt Serralta when he was developing the shopping cart was called Ultra Fun Cart. I said, “Matt, we are going to change that.” He was very upset with me. He said, “To what?” I said, “Let me come up with something.”
I was putting in names like Chili, Orange, Berry and Chimp. They were all taken. I came up with Groove, and GrooveKart was available. I said, “GroveKart or GroovePages. We can build upon this.” Matt hated it but he loves it now. The first thing is I said, “We have to come up with something that we can build a brand about.” He asked me to explain it 100. I said, “You will know it when you see it.” Now he gets it. Groove is a brand. More importantly, I said, “We need to build this around the community, let people know what we stand for, how we differ from the competition, how we are going to be here for people, and let them know my story.”
Business Tech: We have to ask one question: Will this product or service accelerate this plan that I have here in front of me, will it make it easier, cheaper, more effective, or more affordable? I had a two-year non-compete, gained weight, started smoking, and had all the money in the world. I’ve got to buy out and I couldn’t work. I realized the worst thing you could ever do to an entrepreneur is give them money without purpose. If people think that anybody is going to come up to me and offer me money for this company, you could be an investor. Maybe we will talk about that but you are not buying it from me because that’s like Steve Jobs. You try to go up to Steve Jobs and say, “We want to buy Apple.” Do you think Steve at that point in his life was going to be like Becky? He had all the money in the world and a company he loved.
That’s in our DNA. We are not built to flip. We are built to last. We love the company. We love our customers. We know what they want. We make ourselves available to them. I’m going to take the word right from your book there, Mitch. We built a tribe. We made sure that we built a Facebook group of 150,000 people. We empower other people in our company to be the face of it other than me, like David Lemon, Donna, and my partners.
We are always doing live streams and giving our education away for free, unlike the competitors. Our agenda is to get you profitable using our software platform. We believe that if we can educate you on buying traffic, copywriting, and video marketing, you will only be more successful and continue to pay for our software. If I get you broke buying my next blank secrets course and using my software as a tripwire, then you are going to go broke before you can fulfill your dreams. That’s essentially our philosophy. It is to give back to our community.
That’s a fantastic philosophy and I love it. What about the guy who’s just starting out? He’s not even six figures yet. He has a dream, product, service, have some proprietary intellectual property and he wants to get out there and market it. Clearly, he doesn’t have the budget yet. Where should he start?
Everybody is different. Some people who say they don’t have the budget may have $100 a week or whatever the case is. Some people may be living paycheck to paycheck and working for a job. I get that. That was me in the car business. I was making money but we have heard the expression, “There was always more month at the end of the money.” Paycheck to paycheck was the goal. If I could have achieved that, that would have been great. I had to decide if it was the car payment or the car insurance. The most important thing is if it is a passion and you have the expertise in that arena, just get started.
I’m not reinventing the wheel here but it’s such simple advice that people take for granted. It’s to plan your work and work your plan. What that means is the first thing you have to do is, without a roadmap, brainstorm everything that you need to do. Get a legal pad or a whiteboard and add everything down, “I’m going to need to brand or domain name. I’m going to need to create a product. I will need a merchant account. I will need maybe an affiliate program. I will have to get my funnel built.” You write all these things down. When you can’t think of anything else, the next thing to do is to codify that list. Put it in order because you don’t buy your domain name three hours before you launch.
The first thing is to check to see if the brand is available before you name the book. Put all these things in order, and then what you are going to have is the following. You are going to run up into something that needs to get done and decide 1 of 3 things, either you are the perfect person to do it or you can do it but it’s not your highest and best use, or you don’t know how to do it.
If you're trying to make money six different ways, you won't make any money. You only need one thing to make yourself wildly successful.
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At that point, you have some decisions to make, “Do I go to YouTube and get a little crash course on this and knock it out? Do I hire somebody to do it? Do I barter? Do I make somebody a partner?” Sometimes we are talking operations, “I will do the marketing,” but that item has to get done. You simply note that the pot of gold is at the end of that rainbow. Buying products, getting affiliate offers, and your product for clients at the beginning are good things. What we always want to do is when we come across an offer is never get upset at it but never chase it like a shiny object.
We have to ask one question, “Will this product or service accelerate this plan that I have here in front of me? Will it make it easier, cheaper, more effective or affordable?” If that’s the case, by all means, if it’s in the budget and you have the cashflow, buy it because you are accelerating your journey to that pot of gold. The last thing you want to do is jump to another plate to start spinning.
If you set a plan and all of a sudden, somebody is telling you how to make money with crypto, affiliate marketing, I can guarantee you can make money that way but I can also guarantee you that if you are trying to make money in six different ways, you won’t make any money. You only need one thing to make yourself wildly successful. If you have planned a trip to Hawaii, you know how many days you are going to be at sea and what your resources are, don’t in the middle of that trip to Hawaii on your boat, say, “Maybe we should have gone to Fiji. Let’s detour.”
You are going to die in the middle of the ocean without resources. It’s that simple. Get that game plan together, codify it and work through it. Depending on their resources, it might take a little bit longer than most people but if they are dedicated, don’t give up at the end of that and can check every box on that list, it’s a no-fail system at that point.
It makes a lot of sense. One of the groups I belong to called the *Bellwether Alliance has this thing called the Law of Open Cycles. It simply means that you look at everything going on in your world and close any open cycles that are not serving you. That relates to what you said. There’s one of the things I wanted to add here and that is the propensity for people to buy education. What you said is very important.*
What you need to do is focus on the mission. If you need to learn something and have the time, then you could buy a course. In my experience, the best way is to find somebody who knows how to do that and can help you, either you pay them as a VA, consultant, coach or whatever it may be. For example, if I wanted to build out an entire platform using the GrooveFunnels system, I wouldn’t want to have to learn the entire system to do it. I would want to find a certified consultant or somebody who can help me with that.
That’s very common in all tech stack-type companies. Even ClickFunnels have their own certified consultants. The whole idea is we build an ecosystem and in that ecosystem are only the essentials that we need. We then grow the network, membership, and the tribe. You have done an incredible job with this. It’s so wonderful to know of the process that you went through. This is a little bit like how the sausage is made but it’s educational. I’m glad you shared it.
Business Tech: We believe that we can make a difference and we will make that difference that we’ll never know. It’s a silent legacy that we feel we can do through helping other people put good into the world. What we are going to do is segment to a different part of the show where we get to know a little bit more about you. The way we do that is by asking you a couple of questions. I know that you don’t know what these questions are, which makes this even more fun. Here’s the first question. Who, in all of space and time, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with? All space and time, living or dead, even fictional.
There are people I would love there like Albert Einstein or even Steve Jobs. The answer would be Ben Franklin. I believe he was the first entrepreneur of all time. He didn’t have an ego. Many people may be shocked to know that after the Bible, he was the bestselling author even over Mark Twain with something called Poor Richard’s Almanack. He was Poor Richard. People lined up for that book every single year. He had a subscription model. He’s the Founder of Penn State University.
I believe he’s the only non-president that we put on a bill. He was so instrumental in the signing of the Constitution in Foreign Affairs. As a kid, we learned about lightning, electricity, and all of these different things. He was a prolific entrepreneur and the wealthiest American self-made. He invented technology, patents, and all these things. There’s a great biography out there on Benjamin Franklin.
I say this unapologetically. If anybody sees this as a bad word, you’ve got to reprogram your brain. He embodies everything in the American capitalist formula. Capitalism has its problems. We need regulations because the rich can get too powerful. I mean that in the good, altruistic sense of American capitalism. That’s what he represented.
We shared that value. I’m a capitalist from head to toe. I do understand the issues you have mentioned. Ben Franklin is an incredible individual. I have known about him but I have never read his biography. Now I want to. If you heard Mike and I chat about this, I would grab a copy of Ben Franklin’s biography and read it because it sounds fascinating. Here’s the second question. This is what we call the grand finale question. It’s called the change the world question. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
I believe it was also Stephen Covey who you talked about before habit number seven of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is sharpen the saw. We have to continue our education. My dad got me turned on to that book before I was an entrepreneur. He said, “One of the things that touched my dad was our goal in life, which is to live, to love, and to leave a legacy.” If you can encapsulate everything into those three things, you have to live every moment and have the best life that you can, knowing that one day it’s going to end. If you are not doing that for the purpose of loving other people, from your family, friends, customers, and even the people you will never meet, then you are not truly living the best life.
Many people may think that leaving a legacy is getting yourself on Wikipedia and they will know about you in 1,000 years. Truly, leaving a silent legacy is you have put this butterfly effect into the world where you have empowered other people and your legacy lives on by that spirit of entrepreneurship. Good entrepreneurs are putting good into the world and hiring people. Many of the people you know are providing some service, coaching, consulting, teaching people how to find a lover, get over a lover, invest their money, save their money or get in shape, so they don’t get cancer all those different things.
For me, not to tie it back into the Groove but this is our mission. We believe that by building this Groove platform, this can be our legacy and not the legacy that this Groove platform has this 2022. Maybe, somebody, had their family member die of cancer, 2 or 3. They said, “If they ate right, this could have been avoided.” My mission is to get as many people out there knowing that this doesn’t have to happen to another human again. They know that money is a by-product of that. Our mission is we believe that we can make a difference and we will make that difference. We will never know. It’s a silent legacy that we feel that we can do through helping other people put good into the world.
By building an enablement platform, which is what you have, you are enabling the population to reach the world, get out there and share their course, program or whatever it is that they do to help others. I coach people who have been ex-football players. I picked up working with somebody who’s a world champion twice in his field. What it comes down to when you speak to people like this is that all they want to do is help others. If you get to the point in your life where all you want to do is enable and help others, then you truly have changed the world. I’m very glad that Groove is here. I can’t wait to dive back in and rev it up again. It has been a while.
Shout out to you, Mitch, because you are doing the same. I know from you that with Timeslips, as you say, independently wealthy and at the same time, what you are doing with this show and these incredible people you are having on your show, you are giving back and building a legacy of information and education. That is going to have some profound effects that you will never even be aware of. You didn’t have to do this. You could have retired and never done anything but you have decided to go on and leave that legacy. I wanted to tip my hat to you on that.
Capitalism has its problems. Obviously, we need regulations because the rich can get too powerful. But the good altruistic sense of American capitalism is what Benjamin Franklin represented.
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Thank you, Mike. If I would have done that, I would have ended up as you did in those two years of having too much money and not enough things to do with your life. I do this not only to stay alive but to feel good every day. My sharing of your story and the 300 other stories that I have shared enable me to give back. Before I let you go, I know you have a pretty cool free gift for our readers. What might that be?
The Groove platform is free. That’s one thing we haven’t even talked about. We decided to make the Groove platform multi-tiered like Gmail. It’s free but you can upgrade if you want. Trello is free but there’s an upgrade. Like those platforms, here are the statistics for us, 93% of our users never pay us a penny to run their business. Only 7% of them do. For your users, they can go to GroovePodcasts.com.
They can go and sign up for a free Groove account. They get three custom domains so that they have. You could have MitchRusso.com and PowerTribes.com. They can have three different dot-coms unlimited hosting, unlimited pages, and everything like that. They can get 500 contacts to get started with. They can sell unlimited products, get a merchant store and a start-up package for the entire platform so that they don’t break the bank.
I can’t believe you are doing this for free. That is so cool. Readers, you’ve got your marching orders. Go to *GroovePodcasts.com*, sign up for a free account, and get started. Take a look at what’s there. Here’s my advice. Start transitioning slowly. You don’t have to dump everything and move to any one thing but a little at a time. Build a landing page the next time you promote something and check it out. See how it works. If you like it, move your course over there. If you like that, then talk about moving over your webinars. Do it slowly and get a feel for it. That’s how I would do it anyway. I hope that’s good advice, Mike.
We don’t like to use the word, “Make the switch,” because legacy products are hard. We tell them, “Build your next funnel with Groove.”
Mike, it has been a pleasure finally catching up with you and seeing you again after all these years. I can’t wait until the next time we get a chance to talk again soon. Thanks again. I’m looking forward to our lunch together in Boca Raton.
Thank you, Mitch, and thank you, readers. We will see you all soon.
Important Links: * ClientFol.io * WebinarJam * EverWebinar * GrooveFunnels * Michael Filsaime * Kartra * Infusionsoft * ClickFunnels * Shopify * ClickBank * WooCommerce * AWeber * ActiveCampaign * GrooveMail * Kajabi * Bellwether Alliance * Poor Richard’s Almanack * The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People * Trello * GroovePodcasts.com * PowerTribes.com
About Mike Filsaime
Mike Filsaime is known as the Michael Jordan of Internet Marketing. The over-the-top expert on funnels, in front of, and behind the scenes! Mike holds the distinction of doing more Million Dollar launches for more brands than any marketer.
After running one of the largest auto dealerships in the U.S.A, Mike decided to follow his vision and create software designed to eliminate the pain and frustration of running an online business. His visionary ideas coupled with talented developers and designers have delivered game-changing software for countless online businesses.
Following his passion, Mike Filsaime’s companies have generated over $175 Million. Historically, Mike was responsible for a number of well known “classic” software platforms, such as WebinarJam, EverWebinar, Kartra, DealGuardian, Butterfly Marketing, EvergreenBusinessSystem, and PayDotCom. He has since sold many of these brands.
Mike is now the CEO and Co-Founder of prestigious GrooveDigital, Inc. GrooveDigital is the fastest growing software platform for digital and e-commerce marketers. With over 450,000 users adopting the platform within the first year alone, Groove.cm CRM and GrooveFunnels website and funnel builder is the No. 1 Landing Page and Marketing Funnel Builder on the planet!
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The post Get Your Business’ Tech Groove On: An Interview With Mike Filsaime appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Is it possible to turn things around when you’re under the worst conditions? In this episode, personal development pioneer Morgana Rae tells us how she tracked her money monster and managed to shift into a life of abundance. Morgana is the best-selling author of Financial Alchemy®: 12 Months of Magic & Manifestation. She is one of the world’s leading authorities on transforming relationships with money. Morgana guides entrepreneurs, artists, healers, and humanitarians to thrive in their purpose. Learn more as Morgana shares with Mitch Russo how you can attract more than you chase and make things happen with ease, flow, and synchronicity.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Overcoming The Money Monster Towards A Life Of Abundance With Morgana Rae I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized I have been spending about 30 minutes per session on admin because I had five applications open all over these two huge screens, one for notetaking, calendars, spreadsheet, browser, Zoom, all my past session history, scattered all over my desktop, and at the end of every session. I have to combine all that into a single email and then send it to the client. The next week when I coached them again, you go find that email.
I was getting exhausted half an hour on prep and by the way, this was happening right in the middle of my peak cognitive time, which is right in the middle of the day, where I get to be the brightest I could possibly be. I’m wasting $1,000 an hour time on $10 an hour of work. I decided to find a solution. I looked and tried everything. I could not find anything that worked.
I did with all entrepreneurs who are reading this should do too. When you find a problem that you don’t see solved, solve it, and that’s what I did. I created Clientfol.io for you. It is a coach admin platform, and it is so powerful and efficient. It’s rated five stars on Capterra and is getting great reviews. I was saying to my guest that I’m blessed by the fact that people love it. I want you to give it a try too. Go to GetClientfolio.com and give it a whirl. It’s only $20 a month. I guarantee you are going to love it, onto my guest and her incredible story.
Imagine going to high school under the worst possible conditions. You are homeless, sleeping on floors, later discovered that you have suffered a traumatic brain injury, and yet you still have to show up every day and do the work. Even with these odds stacked against her, she graduated with a National Merit Scholarship award holder in Math and Science. She then went on to Smith and ended up with an honors degree in World Religion.
You might be saying to yourself, “How is this relevant to your first thousand clients?” Even with all this education and having had some incredible clients, she was barely making $100 a month living in Beverly Hills. Who could do that? It turns out that she made a discovery that would turn her fortunes rather quickly and she shifted into a total abundance place. How did this happen? What was the money repulsion monster that stocked her all over the West Coast? You are about to find out as it turns out, she is here with us.
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Welcome my friend, Morgana Rae, to the show.
Thank you, Mitch.
I’m so happy to have you.
I’m very glad to be here.
When you find a problem that you don't see solved, solve it.
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We have people with all kinds of abilities and skills who show up. I’m blessed to be able to have a one-on-one, one-hour masterclass with all of them. That’s called a podcast by the way. I have been dying to dig deeper into your stuff. This is going to be wonderful for me as well. Let’s go back to the beginning. How did this all start for you?
I love that question because it ties all these different pieces, the car accident, homelessness, the degree in Religion, and what I do now. It can look like they have nothing to do with each other. I was also the social outcast weirdo kid with the eating disorder. Pick any trauma and most of us can tap into some aspect of it. I have always been that old soul child who thought about things like, “What are we as human beings? What is the nature of reality, whether it’s Science or Religion? Why do we believe what we believe? How do we have a better experience while we are here?” I think what are we, what is this world, and how do we have a better experience are the three big questions of existence?
Suffering is way overrated. I don’t recommend it and please don’t get hit by a car while you are riding your bicycle to school and all that stuff. When you are suffering, what it does is it gives us some humility that we need to be able to respect the experience of other people better, to have more compassion and more respect for the human experience of others.
As this relates to especially the car accident, I was an easy-peasy, A student. As I mentioned, total social spazz growing up, I did not grow up with social skills. I was the kid from Clueless that the popular kids adopted and taught me how to get that along, but school was always easy for me, and then I had a head injury. I could not do what I would have always taken for granted. For anybody, who is reading who has a head injury, the recovery time is slower than anybody will ever tell you and it’ll be even slower than.
I was lucky that I was young and I was in school and having to exercise my brain, but still, it took years to be able to read more than 1 page or 2 at a time and not get sleepy, to be able to remember things, and here I am in high school trying to graduate and get away to college because I had a violent, abusive drug addict mother.
I was sleeping on people’s floors. I spent my senior year of high school sleeping on a dining room floor, which was horrible because this was the only way I could borrow their station wagon and go to my high school nearby to graduate. I remember the daughter of the family whose house this was is like sitting on the couch of the living room next to the dining room, making out with her boyfriend, and I hear him say, “She lives there,” because I’m like in my sleeping bag doing my homework on the floor, it was humiliating.
I was lucky because I was fed, housed, access to get to school and I graduated. It also taught me that a lot of stuff that I took for granted and judged about other people was ignorant and the word hubris. I took too much for granted. I thought people who did not do well in school were lazy. Now, I think they had a different brain. I give people more of the benefit of the doubt.
On the plus side because my brain was struggling to recover and do what it used to do. My intuition exploded and I started knowing things before they happened. Now, I can write, talk, think, and do all sorts of cool tricks, but I still have intuition. I have a different understanding of how frail and transitory we are, what we think we are, and it could be totally different tomorrow. There’s a huge make the most of what you have now.
This will go into what I want to teach and help anybody who’s here who wants help with this, is whatever you are going through can be useful. It can be the key to the kingdom of everything you have ever wanted. There is a lot of fear, especially in my community in personal development. I have been a life and business coach for many years now, which means now that I’m 55 this 2022, that’s over half my life. The whole positive thinking is super valuable, but there’s also a lot of fear in the law of attraction crowd that if you have bad feelings or bad experiences, it’s somehow your fault or if you have fear or negative experiences, you are going to magnetize bad stuff.
Financial Alchemy: Twelve Months of Magic and Manifestation (Volume 1) It does not work that way. Especially, if you have been or were going through difficult stuff now, there is so much power in your victim experiences. We don’t want to live there, but they are sacred. They happen for a reason. It’s part of the human experience. In a way, it’s like you have already paid the price of admission. Why don’t we milk it for everything we can get out of it?
My first marriage was to a chronic alcoholic and I did not know she was an alcoholic, weeks prior to the wedding, but I married her anyway because, as a recovering heroin addict, I felt like I could get anybody through addiction, but I have never dealt with alcohol alcoholism before I have never known an alcoholic.
Being raised in the type of family that we were raised in, most of us did not drink and we had a liquor cabinet where all the bottles were dusty because nobody used it except when an occasional company would come by, but I ended up discovering a program called Al-Anon many years ago. One of the things that I was confused about at first, but then realized was an incredible truth was how they describe what we had all been going through. They called it the gift of despair.
I loved that and I resonated with it because if it was not for me having married this individual and going through all of the sufferings that we had gone through, I would have never made the transformation that I did as a result of that. I agree with you. You are right. You already lived it and paid for it. You might as well get the use out of it. Unless Elon Musk is correct and we are all living in a computer simulation which is fine. That’s possible as well.
Both can be true. I’m going to be all geeky and Religion major on you. I love and it blends perfectly with Elon Musk’s idea, which could totally be true and so what? Even if we are Sims, this is the job we have, and this is real for us. In Hinduism, they have the idea that all of reality is the dream of the Supreme Deity Brahman or Bhagavan, he’s like sleeping and dreaming it. This could be true too. I have had spontaneous experiences of non-duality or not drug-induced because if I’m getting there without it, I don’t even want to mess with drugs.
It’s that moment of seeing things the way the Buddha did where it feels like hyper-reality and it feels like you have the safety of being outside of time, space and pain. It’s a very blissful, powerful, amazing, insightful experience and where we are here, sitting in traffic, mad at our spouse, our cat has to go to the vet, your favorite restaurant is on lockdown, and there’s a pandemic going on, this is what we signed up for here. This is also reality. This needs to be respected.
The game goes back to one of my first question, which is, “How do we have a better experience while we are here?” Part of that is always going to be, “How do we make it better for others?” There are only three things that make human beings happy. Even though I’m known to be this money coach, money is not one of them. The lack of money will make you miserable, but what makes us happy as human beings always fall under the categories of love, lifestyle and legacy. The truest purpose of money is always to serve love, lifestyle or legacy and when it’s not, that’s what becomes painful and a problem on the planet.
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When people are making and hoarding money and hurting others and nothing is ever enough, and it’s more like a drug than a partnership or a tool. It then becomes a monster and threatens the survival of our species. It becomes this abusive relationship and that’s where I like to work because our relationship with money mirrors our relationship with life itself. “Is this a loving safe place that values me?” Those are the issues that show up in all of our interactions with money.
This is a good place to remind everybody who’s reading that we are on with the incredible Morgana Rae. She is known in her industry as the money coach and more importantly, she is one of the most giving people that I know and she’s about to share with us some of the things that she knows about how money works and how we could access more of it and in the right way at the right time. Give us a feel for exactly what we can do right now to change our situation.
To be honest and transparent, even though I’m known for working with money, being a money coach, or a wealth coach, I am not a financial advisor in any way whatsoever. Not my thing. My work does not have a lot to do with money. It’s just my clients make millions of dollars. When you come down to it’s about the relationship. If you have all your highest values, love, kindness, philanthropy, art, self-expression, joy, everything on one team and money on the other, the limiter, everybody loses.
You need to get the love and the money on the same team, but they are not naturally in our life experience. Anything that has ever made us feel unlovable, unworthy, unsafe, or powerless is going to show up in our relationship with money. Not just money. Life has three primary spiritual teachers, which are love, health, and money.
Money is the pain door that I chose as a coach because my approach is so weird and effective that it made my business easy. Once people come through the door, we get to do all the fun stuff which is about love, lifestyle and legacy. How I got to be where I am is completely backward. I never in one million years set out to be any money coach. I still don’t consider myself a money coach. I’m more of a very practical, spiritual, life and business coach who’s known for money results.
How I got here was by failing so spectacularly and effectively at everybody else’s program. I took all the business classes. I have been a marketing coach since 1994. I have helped so many beginner actors, writers, producers and directors become celebrities. I had, from very early on, immediately out the door clients, winning awards, selling films and things happening very unlikely and quickly. I had a reputation for magic immediately.
I would take the marketing and business classes. I kept taking more coaching classes. “Maybe if I become a relationship coach or master of NLP,” thinking any of that would change my financial situation and nothing worked. I was doing the practical stuff. Meanwhile, being in Southern California, I have a host of people who will rebirth me, change my DNA, and give me potions, cast spells and everything, it’s easy to find in Southern California that did not work either. Vision board and money mindset? No.
A word about mindset, have fun. If that was enough, nobody would ever have to go on a diet again. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s not a cure because most of what happens is below your conscious awareness. I hit my money bottom really bad. I had taken a class on overcoming sales objections, where they give you scripts on things to say, if somebody says, “I would love to, but I can’t afford it. I don’t have the time,” or whatever. Being the great student that I am, I aced it in seven people in a row. I overcame their objections. Seven people in a row did not show up or pay me because we are not supposed to overcome somebody’s objections. If they say no, let them say no. That is my philosophy.
Your client will want you if they know what you offer them as it relates to them. You do not need scripts and manipulations to trick anybody to do something they don’t want to do. I was good at it, but in the end, they did not show up, when I got that seventh no-show that was when I completely ran out of hope and I’m living in Los Angeles, not quite Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills is adjacent, as my landlord would have said at the time. It’s sky-high expensive because it’s LA. I’m making $100 a month and flying out of town every weekend to take more classes, working with coaches, deficits, spending everything has its promise, “Do this, and I would do this.” It would not get the result I was promised.
If you are reading this and you are doing everything you are supposed to do, and you are still not getting the results that you desire and deserve. This is as true in love and in health, as it is with money in any other thing. If you were doing everything that you are supposed to be doing and you are not getting the results you are supposed to be getting, there’s a very good reason for it. It’s not because you are not good enough and something is wrong with you.
In my experience, because I have coached so many thousands of people over many years, if this is you, you are very successful at protecting yourself from what you want. If we dig, there will be very good reasons. They are not what you think they are because if you knew, you would have fixed it already. For me, I’m in this despairing place. I’m honestly ready to die because when you finally figured out what you are good at and you are doing all the work and you can’t make a living at it, it feels like the world does not want you to survive, exist or be here.
It’s such a deep and painful wound of not wanted. It felt so unfair and sadistic, and I did not want to play it anymore. I have run out of steam and hope, and that is a dangerous place to be, especially with money when our livelihood, medical care, shelter all of it. Add to that, how we are valued by others, how we feel valued, and how we value ourselves, it’s all wrapped up.
I screamed and cried until there was nothing left. That’s why I say I hit bottom. It feels like when you hit the bottom of the pool. It’s a good place to be. You have to survive it, but that’s where you can push off and come back. There’s a psychological term for this that I love called an enantiodromia, which is when any emotion is fully expressed, the seed of its opposite arises. When you fully express despair, hope will wake up.
Money Monster: There is so much power in your victim experiences. You don’t want to live there, but they are sacred. They happen for a reason, and it’s part of the human experience. When I had completely given way and cried until I was enraged and had nothing left, I had two thoughts. One was maybe money needs to be my next area of spiritual growth. That’s a bit of a cheat because I’m from Southern California and spirituality is easier. I thought maybe if I put the money in the spiritual box, I could deal with it, which was practical, but it was the next thought that started the shift, which was, “What is inside of me that can’t be with money?”
This is weird. On paper, I should have been doing well. I had a lot of testimonials and great marketing people wanted to hire me. There was something inside of me that was making sure that was not going to happen and that was weird. It was immediately after this that I had my next session with the coach I could not afford. Thank goodness because it saved my life.
I’m here because I had a coach. He had been trying to figure out what was wrong for months. I would do everything I was told because I’m a good student and it was not moving the dial. He hears me in this dark place and who knows where this question came from, he asked me the question that changed my life. It’s a weird question. He said to me, “Morgana, if your money was a person, who would your money be?”
I was in such a dark, painful place. I saw who my person was, who the money was, in that moment was this big, scary, dirty, violent biker who terrified me, not anybody I knew. It’s not that he’s a biker that he was bald, had the sideburns, and the tattoos. It was that I knew he was bad, dangerous, caused fights, got in the way of love, and was going to kill me. I did not know that I felt that way about money until I made it a person.
I was in so much pain and my conscious mind, which is pretty smart but failed me in solving this problem. My conscious mind was not running the things. My emotional subconscious was stepping up to the plate and showing me what was going on when I saw money as a person. I was already in such an emotional state, that is the perfect state for transformation.
The person at this moment who is in the most anxiety, pain or whatever, congratulations, you have the neurological advantage for the biggest change because you don’t have to dig that far to light up the neurology and have the motivation for a change. By the way, if you are not in that state, you can have change too, but real change comes from a deep place. It’s not a fun, interesting intellectual exercise. You have to dig to get yourself into that place. I was lucky that I was in so much pain at that moment.
As soon as I saw this monster, the money monster, that biker at that moment, it was so clear to me that he was so scary and he felt so real. It was clear that there was no way that I would ever be able to have money in my life if it was that guy. I had to get rid of him for any possibility of having money in my life because it was an existential threat.
People are frail and transitory. What you think you are today could be different tomorrow.
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I like spending money like anybody, but the way I was pushing it away, never made sense until that moment. I had to get rid of the biker, which created a new problem because I lived in LA. I got rid of my relationship with money. You are not going to live for very long without a relationship with money. I felt the vacancy where this person had been all my life without my awareness.
This imaginary person and relationship were the air around me and I did not notice it until it was gone. I knew I needed to replace him. For one thing, I did not want him coming back or some random money monster walking down the street to fill the place. Nature abhors a vacuum. I had a vacuum, I needed to fill this spot.
Are you saying that the question that we should ask ourselves right now is if we could put a person in the face of our money despair or money problems, who would that person be or you are just telling the story about how it was for you?
I’m telling the story and then I will tie it into how to make it work for you, but in answer to your question, I reverse engineered what happened to me because I had instant results. I had to figure out how to make it work for others. By the way, I blew it in the beginning. I had to figure out what needs to be there. The first step will be to uncover the root cause of the money monster or the money problem. “What are you protecting yourself from?” The joke is it’s never going to be about money.
Money is always the symptom. It’s what is behind the money. Anything that ever made you feel unlovable, unworthy, unvalued, unsafe, especially if it does not look like it has to do with money, if it was kids teasing you, an accident, violence, rejection by parents, lover, teacher, business partner or something out in the world that made you feel unsafe, that is where you want to look. You want to follow what is going to have the most energy. It may not be what you think.
Many years ago, I had a client. He found the root cause of his feeling that there was something wrong with him. It was rooted in a very innocent moment when he was maybe three years old playing doctor with another three-year-old. It’s healthy and normal, but an adult walked in, we don’t remember what the adult said or anything, but it hardwires so much shame in that second that it showed up in his relationship with money and women for decades.
When he remembered that moment, he felt it, and we identified that was the moment he decided there was something wrong with him. We put that into the monster and then step three is obliterating, eradicating the monster, getting rid of it, that created the space for a new relationship with money. In his case, a very elegant, loving French woman is what showed up in his mind’s eye and he made $1.6 million a month later, so not bad.
In my case, it was far less dramatic. I knew that I needed a new relationship with money and I was asking myself, “Who could I want so much that I would be willing to have this person in my life, even if it’s money?” It’s important that the relationship puts love first. If the relationship is about what I want you to do for my money, it’s another monster because it’s making you helpless and a victim again.
You have gone through the effort of obliterating, destroying, annihilating, getting rid of the monster, so you are no longer the victim. The victim experience is important and valuable and you dig it up in step one. Take off your law of attraction, personal development, healthy adapted hat, put on your victim hat, the bigger the victimhood, the better in step one. Blame it all on a monster, the bigger and badder the monster, the better. Get rid of it because it means that you are always more powerful than the monster. On the other side of it, when you destroy and reject the monster, you are rejecting everything that you no longer permit to be in your life experience.
Identify the monster and let’s say, it was an incident from childhood. I recognized that and have this cognition that goes, “I see how all of this played out in my life all these years. Now, I can trace this back to why I married an alcoholic,” or whatever it is. The next step here is I want to replace this money monster or this connection with something else. Where is that and how do you get to that?
The first step is to uncover the root cause. You want to feel it. You may know what it is right now and it may be like boiling up. The trick with the monster is you want it to feel very real like a real person, but it can’t be you and it can’t be your parents. You don’t want it to be too cartoonish because that creates emotional distance and you want it to feel like a real relationship.
Step three, I did not know this at the time, but I have learned this over the course of coaching people and my tribe is the love, light, peace, and vegan. The bloodier the better. Get violent and destroy it. Be Kali or Archangel Michael, be a sacred warrior and obliterate it. It’s like Highlander, there can only be one. It’s going to be you or it. Choose yourself and destroy the monster.
Money Monster: When people are making money, hurting others, and feeling like nothing is ever enough, money becomes more like a drug rather than a partnership or a tool. That’s when it becomes a monster. You then have this empty spot and when it feels completely empty and there’s like no feeling energetically of any monster lingering around, that’s when you meet the new relationship that you are going to have. The quality of that relationship is going to feel like a relationship with love. I discovered this through trial and error, many years ago. In the early days, clients were having dogs, cats, horses, and all sorts of ridiculousness as their money honey. I was like, “Sure.” It just does not work. Cats don’t know anything about money. You don’t want to get that intimate with them and I’m a cat person.
What works best in my experience and when I say best, I’m talking about both in terms of inner transformation, healing and in dollars, euros, rupees, or whatever you use, is an archetype of a lover. Lovers are equals. You can break your lover’s heart. Your lover is not here to rescue you. It’s not Oprah or God, it’s somebody who loves you. That works best for who is going to be in this new relationship and you want that feeling of it being love instead of a transaction.
When I asked myself, who I wanted to be in my new relationship, I had no idea what was going to show up. At that moment, luckily for me, I imagined out of nowhere, this tall, dark, handsome and romantic young man with clean-cut, wearing a tuxedo, and the kicker was he showed up holding a bouquet of red flowers as if he wanted to woo me.
I was overwhelmed, “This is a person who’s in love with me and who wants to be with me, who I have been pushing away for years, and wounding him that way.” That was step four was meeting what I now call the money honey. It can be guy, girl, them or they, pick your flavor. It works. It’s somebody worthy of your deepest, love, and admiration who chooses you over everybody else. If you are not feeling that, go back a step and see if there’s any little bit of money monster protoplasm lingering and zap it.
I’m reverse-engineering the whole thing for you to give it context, so it’s not an intellectual exercise. I have got this cute guy who wants to be with me and I realized, “I have no idea how to not push money away.” I have decades of neurological imprinting of how to push money away to be uncomfortable like family Holocaust stories and all sorts of reasons to make money dangerous. I could feel that he was safe, that he was worthy of the love that he wanted to be with me. It was completely up to me because I have the body.
Whatever you're going through can be useful. It can be the key to the kingdom of everything you've ever wanted.
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Money is not Santa Claus for you to sit on the couch like in the secret and visualize, and money will go out and bring it for you. Even though sometimes it feels or looks that way when the money comes in big and fast. We are about empowering you. You have the body. You are always the gatekeeper in this relationship. Since I did not know how to allow him to be with me, I asked, which is a handy thing about when money is a person and a person that who wants to be in your life and is worthy of being in your life.
You don’t have an answer to go into business with that person, go out on that date, write this book, whatever your question is, have a conversation with your money honey. I asked, “What do you need from me, so you can stay with me the way you want to be staying with me?” When you ask a question, you get an answer because that’s how our brains work.
Clients, when we first do the process they say, “How do I know if it’s me or if it’s my money honey?” I say, “Yes, it is.” It’s a way for you to access your highest, truest wisdom without all of your neuroses because your money honey sees you as you are without all of your nonsense. It sees you through the eyes of love, so you get to see yourself as your most creative, resourceful, great worthy person because you are seeing yourself through the eyes of the beloved.
I asked him the question and he answered, “What do you need from me, so you can stay with me?” He said, “I need you to love me and stop treating me like a monster.” That had such a vulnerability in it. I thought, “What does that look like to stop treating you like a monster and to treat you with the love that you deserve? You want to be my life partner and you deserve me not to be a jerk. What does that look like?” I thought, “Next time you bring me a gift and you woo with the client. I’m not going to push it away like it’s some horrible polyester sweater.”
I started to notice things that I did that pushed money away. It’s my discomfort when somebody would ask me what I charged, I would get like all sorts of weird spiritual ideas. “Jesus would not charge.” The next day four people called me up out of the freaking blue. I got to test myself and keep my promise to my money honey that I would not treat him like a monster, which meant when they asked me how much I charged, I would state my fee with the energy of, “Is he not lovable?” I would shut up, which you probably have guessed by now is the hardest thing in the world for me to do. Four people hired me that day.
Within 24 hours of my own shift, 24 people hired me for double what I would ever be charged in my life. I was the person who had been struggling to make $100 a month in Los Angeles. The clients kept coming and I had to start group programs, waiting lists, retreats and products. I have made millions of dollars since then. I develop new problems like having too many clients. There was a time when I thought full practice was the greatest thing in the world. No. That is a formula for burnout. It’s so much better to work with a few people and charge well, so you can give them everything you have got. Get your first thousand clients. It’s an important milestone to have an impact.
I liked the way you described it. To be clear, in case anybody is wondering, the money honey is not a real person. It’s an imaginary construct that you can hang a series of emotional concepts on so that it becomes the target of your emotions. At the same time, it’s a way of thinking about something that is negative in a positive way. I liked how you did that.
We are reprogramming your neurology. One of my clients is a neuroscientist. She validated all of this. By having a strong feeling, in the beginning, bringing up all the negative triggers that make you want to hold whatever it is at a safe distance, and then blasting and rejecting it in as dramatic a way you can with your knife or saber. One client, imagine running over her money monster with a monster truck.
Replacing that when you are in this heightened neurological state, then you replace your response to the trigger with this very relaxed, yummy, expansive, safe love. That’s what wakes up the genie of the frontal lobe, your genius zone, so that you can look at all the chaos in front of you before anything is changed. You can see everything in your life looks different because you are now looking at it differently with more confidence and respect for yourself.
You can also look at problems you have been struggling with now through the eyes of your money honey, and you see opportunities where you did not see them before because you have woken up that genius zone and you want to continue that relationship daily. This is what I’m worried about. You can do automatic writing, walking or thinking, but it’s a way to bring up the problem and tap into your greatest resourcefulness, but also make it fun.
Money Monster: The change I want to see in the world really comes down to helping people have the tools to relate to existence in a powerful way. Money tends to be very scary and triggering for people, so now make it fun, and you will not have an unconscious reason to keep it away or get rid of it once you have it. I was having a conversation with somebody, where she knew somebody who had inherited billions of dollars and drunk himself to death. I understood exactly why he did that because he had not grown the container and the relationship to feel worthy and to have a partnership.
That’s why people who win lotteries commit suicide at such a high rate. We need to have the foundation of love first so that you have the container to grow and be like my client Perry and make tens of millions of dollars within three years and keep growing it, at the same time, growing the love in her life and the good work she’s doing in the world.
I love the process. It’s very simple, but in a sense, very logical. In some ways, this reminds me of my study of the Kabbalah many years ago. The way the Kabbalah describes it is connecting with the power of God. The stronger the connection, the more presence you have. Both presence and presence at the same time. In some ways, what you are saying is to unblock the pathway and allow what’s yours to flow to you.
Your mechanical process, I know it’s more than that, but the way you describe it is a perfect vehicle to visualize how all of this is shaping and harming you and then removing and replacing it. Here’s the part I love about what you said, it’s the trust. What by that is that once you have done this work of killing your money monster. At that point, you need to allow the universe to bring you what is yours and to allow it into your life by being open to it and not treating it like you did before. That is perfect.
My favorite thing to say is, “Change happens at the speed of safety.” When you mentioned Kabbalah, I purred. I studied Kabbalah at Smith back in the late-’80s. My husband has been teaching Kabbalah for several decades. That was when I found out about him when we were dating. That was when I was like, “Game over. He’s the one.” He does not know that.
I did the same process nine years after I slew my money monster and I’m teaching my thing on all these stages, talking about when you are doing everything and you are not getting the results, I kept hearing in the back of my head, “I’m going through the same thing with love.” I’m taking every class. I’m on the dating apps and talk about a horror show. I need to slay my love monster. I did that in 2012 and I met my husband two months later.
That’s such a beautiful story. First of all, you have shared so many brilliant ideas and concepts. If you are reading this, you can take what you learned and apply it to your life. That’s what I’m so happy about. You gave us some great stuff that we can do right now and then we have more, but right now, we are going to transition to a different part of the show, where we get to know you a little bit better. We know you pretty well now, but these questions are designed to help us see a different part of you. Here’s the first question, who in all of space and time would you like to spend one hour and enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?
At this moment in time, I would like to take a walk with Hillary Clinton. As I get older, I have respect for women from the generation before me and what they went through and paved the road for. I picked very divisive people who have very strong feelings of pros and cons. She’s smart and a survivor. That’s who came to me.
The person that I interviewed right before you when I asked this question said Hitler. The variation of what people say is it’s not important who the person is. It never is. What’s more important is the reason they choose them. I love the fact that you called her a survivor. The fact is that she’s a brilliant woman. People have strong opinions about her in both directions, but the most important thing and the reason you are referring to her is that she’s figured out how to live in this world and navigate and, in many ways, how to get what she wants.
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There’s also another piece that you don’t know about me is when I was twelve years old, my mother attempted suicide because her husband was cheating on her, and I saved her life. I was the one who called the paramedics because they had taught us to do that in school the semester before. The pain of being the wife cheated on, I got how dangerous that was. It was a very traumatic experience, then I saw Hillary go through that publicly, and my heart has always felt that for her.
That’s another very big and important bond that you have and a great reason to admire a person who has endured and gone through it. That’s a great choice. Thank you. I’m now about to ask you, the grand finale, the change the world question. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world literally?
The vehicle that I have chosen to change the world and what I love about being a coach is that it’s not all on me. I get to support world-changers who have tools that are far beyond my toolset like clients who are CEOs of tech companies. One of my clients is a cattle rancher who is a pioneer in sustainable agriculture in how to graze cattle in a way that manages the land and makes it better rather than worse.
The change that I want to see in the world comes down to helping people have the tools to relate to existence in a powerful way. Everybody deserves to have their needs met, tools on how you have a loving relationship with life so that you can make the world better for yourself and for others. It’s a one-person at a time game, but every person has a limitless ripple that we never know about.
That is the game and the mission I’m playing. I’m teaming with some other coaches internationally, three coaches from Asia, three other coaches from the US for a hybrid of Disneyland meets Dungeons and Dragons meets Personal Develop meets save the world that we call Million Quest, which is a game to impact one million people using custom-designed theme parks positively. Coaching courses, remedies, role-playing, interaction, strategic planning, and execution to have a real, tangible, sustainable result to positively impact one million people, and then to do that over and over again.
We need to be thinking more creatively, but we need to take care of ourselves. I have coached billionaires who are insecure missus and fundamentally people on public assistance I have coached. The more secure we are with ourselves and with life, the kinder and the better we are in creating positive change for everybody else.
This has been a wonderful experience spending time with you and listening to your story, which is remarkable, and your process, which is wonderful. Thank you so much for doing that, but before I let you go, you did let us know that you had something special for our readers. Would you like to tell us what that is?
I have a quiz. It is an easy-peasy, pain-free, money love quiz. The question is, “Does money love you?” It’s a quiz that you cannot fail and you cannot do badly at. It lets me know where you are on your journey because we are all on the same journey of love, lifestyle and legacy. Based on where you are and what you need, I make recommendations, including free gifts of what your best next step is in creating a love-centered relationship with money who adores you.
Where might we find that quiz?
I am sending you to MorganaRae.com. It’s the mothership. Everything is there. If you scroll down the page, you will find the quiz on the homepage. I also have hundreds of articles and videos for questions that come up when you take yourself through the process, so that I can support you in becoming the abundant and prosperous person you deserve to be.
Readers, you can simply go to YourFirstThousandClients.com, go to Morgana Rae’s page, and there at the bottom of the page will be access to the money love quiz. Thank you so much. It was great and I enjoyed it. Readers, if you enjoyed it too, I would appreciate it if you would go over to Apple Podcasts, and give us a rating. Let us know what you think. We have over 250 five-star reviews. If you think it’s worth it, go leave another one. I would like that. You help others receive the same information that you received as well. Thank you so much, Morgana. I can’t wait until we get a chance to talk again soon.
Important Links: * Clientfol.io * GetClientfolio.com * Morgana Rae * Al-Anon * Apple Podcasts – Your First Thousand Clients
About Morgana Rae
MORGANA RAE is the international #1 best-selling author “Financial Alchemy®: 12 Months of Magic & Manifestation,” and a pioneer in personal development for over 27 years. She’s widely regarded to be the world’s leading authority on transforming relationship with money.
Morgana guides entrepreneurs, artists, healers and humanitarians to thrive in their purpose, attract more than they chase, and make things happen with ease, flow and synchronicity.
Morgana’s groundbreaking program for creating wealth has featured her on all the major television networks, United Press International, Coast to Coast Radio, Yahoo Finance, and The Wall Street Journal, and hundreds more. She was named a Top Woman in E-commerce by WE Magazine.
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Your life and your business go hand-in-hand. As an entrepreneur, you need to know who you invite into your life because they will make a difference. Steve Sims was a bricklayer and a doorman before he became who he is today. He learned a lot from the different people he would talk to and he would iron out his skills. Now, he’s the author of the bestselling book called Bluefishing, and the host of his award-winning show, The Art of Making Things Happen. Join Mitch Russo as he talks to Steve about his career and how he approached the business. Learn a thing or two about marketing and branding. Stop focusing on yourself and start focusing on the problem.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Making Things Happen: The Bricklayer’s Guide To Life And Business With Steve Sims I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach, I have been spending about 30 minutes between sessions on admin. It’s at the worst possible time of the day. It’s my peak cognitive time when I’m sitting there collecting from five different applications on screens, how to create my homework email, which has my accountability questions, my goal tracking, my Zoom link, my calendar link, all of my notes and all of the homework completely detailed for my clients.
I decided to do something about it. I couldn’t find coaching software that would contain all that material and, at the same time, be easy to use and low cost. I did what all good entrepreneurs should do when they find a problem that hasn’t been solved. I solved the problem. I created a software platform called Clientfol.io. What I’d like for you to do if you have a chance is to go to GetClientFolio.com and check it out. If you’re a coach, I promise you, you will love it. Now onto my guest and his incredible story.
After three generations of bricklayers, at the age of fifteen, he found himself broken disgusted so he left the country at the age of 21 and went to Hong Kong as an apprentice stockbroker. He lasted all of 24 hours before being fired. That was the beginning of a new life, which you are about to hear soon. You’re going to meet a guy who’s worked with Sir Elton John and Elon Musk. He’s the author of the bestselling book called Bluefishing. The host of his award-winning show, The Art Of Making Things Happen. He’s known as the guy who gets things done sometimes achieving the impossible. A master strategist and business leader, welcome to the show, Steve Sims.
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.
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My pleasure. Steve, as we started the chat, I’ve known of you and heard about some of your work for a long time. I’m thrilled that we got a chance to talk. Let’s get into your origin story a little bit. Tell us how this all began for you.
It started the same as every other entrepreneur. You start off from a point of being disgruntled as you said about your software at the beginning. I left school at the age of fifteen. My family were all construction workers, bricklayers. It wasn’t a case of, “Son, what do you want to do with your life?” It was a case of, “There are some old tools. You’re on the building site tomorrow.” That was it. I remember after about a year of this, I’m thinking, “Is this my life?” There was a major pivotal moment in it that I’d landed at the building site one day. My dad said, “We’re short on laborers,” which are the guys that lift up all the bricks and the cement for the bricklayers. He said, “You’re going to have to labor.” I’m like, “Okay.”
I’m climbing up a ladder with a big pile of bricks on my shoulder. I’m not quite sure health and safety would allow that nowadays but then, it was acceptable. I climb up this ladder, get to the top of this ladder, turnaround and there’s my dad, who was in charge of the building site. Next to him was my uncle. Next to him were my two cousins. One was 19, the other one was 25 and my granddad was in his 80s. I suddenly saw my life tree. I suddenly saw every chapter of my life. I could see where it was. It was on this building site. I remember the whistle blew for a tea break. We all pile into this car van to warm up out of the vein.
As I walk in there, my granddad’s huddled over by a fireplace. I squeezed past all the other sweaty, smelly bricklayers to get in front of my granddad. I knelt down because there were no chairs. I said to him, “Granddad, did you ever think you’d be doing this when you were this old?” In fairness, that was a very rude question to ask. My granddad was a massive wall of an Irish guy. I’m surprised I didn’t get a slap. He didn’t even look at me. He was blowing into his teeth, trying to warm up his tea. He said to me, “Son, if you don’t quit today, you’ll be me tomorrow.” The entire room went quiet. I couldn’t hear anything. I was so in that moment. The bell rang again and it was time for us all to get out of the building site.
I ran to my dad. My dad hated being called dad on the building site. I’m running out. I go, “Dad.” He’s looking at me and I get up in his face. I’m like, “Dad, I went up there and I saw you and uncle and granddad.” I went down to the ground and said, “I’ve got to quit and I’ve got to quit today.” He looked at my granddad and me to get it in perspective. I’m 245 pounds of ugly. I’m 6-feet tall. My dad is 5’6”. My granddad was 6’9”. My dad somehow lost out on the height pool completely but when my granddad was anywhere near you, you knew it because he’s like an oak tree that walked into the room.
He was a big mammoth of a man that had massive hands. He walked behind me. I knew he was there. My dad looked into my eyes and looked up even further. They did some nod or something like that. My dad went, “All right, you finish Friday.” That was it. The downside is I never got to tell my granddad how pivotal his moment was in my life. He died shortly after that but that was it. I went out to try and find out, “How can I be better? How can I get this?” When you’re 16, 17 years old, you look at wealth and success as a red Porsche, fancy suits or flying around the world. You look at it like that and predominantly monetary.
How stupid were you when you were young, you turned around and you went, “I want to be a millionaire,” until you get to a millionaire and you go, “Crap, I’m still broke.” $1 million in Manhattan wouldn’t even get you anything above a one-bedroom apartment in fact. It changes over time. I went out on a journey to try and find out how I could change my room. We were talking about and we were mentioning Jay Abraham and a whole bunch of people we know. Great things happen when you’re in great rooms. I realized as a British biker, every single room I was in was full of British bikers and we were all broke. To give you all the B’s, I’m in a room full of British broke bikers.
I, therefore, could never be different to the combination of that room. I went out to change the room. I wanted to get in rooms full of affluent, powerful, successful, motivated people that creatively disrupted stuff. I failed on everything. I tried to become a jet charter. I tried luxury cars, door-to-door, show in sales, financial advisors, all of these different things, which I failed on every single one of them. Although, rather than failing, I realized I was educated on what I couldn’t do or what I wasn’t built to do. A friend of mine got me an apprentice job in Hong Kong. He’s like, “They’re looking for stockbrokers. The Asian market in Hong Kong loves British stock brokers. Purely because you’re British, you’ll do well over there. You could be an apprentice.”
Life & Business: Entrepreneurs are propelled by aggravation. Take the aggravation and use it as fuel to go. I flew out to Hong Kong. I landed on Saturday. I got drunk with him on Saturday night because I’m qualified to do that. I got drunk with him on a Sunday night, still qualified. I did orientation on Monday and was pulled into the room on Tuesday morning and let go. That was it. I’m now in a completely different country. The funny thing about entrepreneurs, we’re propelled by aggravation. What bothers us? What doesn’t exist? What’s not there? I remember having a conversation with Elon Musk and said he couldn’t understand why it took five days to wire money from one bank account to another when it wasn’t physical cash. It was nothing more than a series of numbers. It was an email. Why did it take five days? We know the answer because the bank gets to play with it for five days at no payment to you.
He invented PayPal to get over that. One of the banks done, you’ve got everything from Zelle, Venmo. You got all these other different platforms now because they’ve had to follow suit but it started with aggravation. I was now in Hong Kong. Could I have looked at that failure, that being fired, throw in the towel or could I take the aggravation and have it as more fuel to go, “I had the balls to get out of England. I’m now in Hong Kong, I changed the room. I’ve changed the country. Surely I can change the room?” I went off after every possible thing I could to try and find a way of being able to fit into the room that I wanted to be in.
Steve, it’s interesting because we all have our pathway that, in a sense, ends up the same way. I was in Northeastern University studying Electrical Engineering in 1975. I was learning tubes and vacuum tubes but my co-ops were designing multipoint microprocessor transmission systems through infrared radio for smoke detectors. When it came time for me to go back to school after co-op, an engineer said, “Why don’t you stay?” I said, “I got to go back to school. My mother will kill me. I got to get my degree.” This is like the thing your grandfather said to you. He said, “Mitch, never let school get in the way of your education.”
At that moment, the whole world changed for me because I had always taken it that if you don’t get your college degree, you are nothing. That’s what my parents taught me. I didn’t go back to school. My life evolved from that point on in a way that it could never have, had I. Steve, it’s these pivotal moments like your grandfather saying these things and like the stockbroker firing you at 24. That was perfect. It couldn’t have been set up even better. Now, here you are. What’s what happens next?
I went off and go, “I want to be around affluence.” I want to get a job selling cars or yachts or traveling or stuff like that. I couldn’t get anything. I was banging my head against the wall. One night, I’m in a bar and quite simply drinking my sorrows away. Here was the thing, I had a plan that night because I was now out of money. The funny thing was because the bank had fired me, they owed me my accommodation for three months. I had three months I didn’t have to pay for my apartment. I shared it with a bunch of other stockbrokers that quite simply hated me because they thought I was a fraud.
I tried to explain it to them, but no, they wouldn’t have it. It was a very tense room every time I went in there. I would come in the door, go in your room and out again. This night, I had no money. I had gone through all the money that I had been given. I had the apartment and I this wonderful plan to get completely drunk and run away from the bar. That was my plan. I was going to drink until I couldn’t drink anymore and when the bar tab came over, I was going to leap over the fence. Imagine doing that when you’re drunk. I was going to run down the road and escape a bunch of Chinese guys in a shady bar.
Marketing is what you say about your product. Branding is what people say about you when you're not in the room.
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I obviously had not thought this through but I’m drinking away. This lady came up to me and she said, “You better get your guys out or we will.” I was like, “What do you mean my guys?” “Your guys are in there. If you don’t get them out, we’re going to get them out. We’re going to hurt them. You got to go and do it.” I was curious as to who she thought my guys were. I walked up to the door, I looked through the window and there were these three White British guys around a table being a bit levy in that. I said, “They got nothing to do with me.” She said, “You get them out or we will.” I said, “Girl, I’m telling you, they got nothing to do with me. Knock yourself out. I don’t care.”
She turned around and she said, “You get them out. I’ll pay for your drinks.” Now she had my attention. I got the guys out. I had a little chat with them and I got them to walk out all nice and sweetly. She said, “I’ve got another club opening up. I want you to be the doorman.” I ended up becoming the doorman of this nightclub and thinking, “I’ve gone from a skilled profession as a bricklayer, masonry and now my job description is to punch people.” It was a complete downgrade but I discovered something. That door taught me all I needed to know about psychology. It taught me all I needed to know about body language. I literally had people walking up to me and in my head, I’m thinking, “Are they out on a first date? Is this a celebration of a contract? Are they on a hen night? Are they on a stag night? Are they not got together?”
I’ll be like, “Folks, what are we celebrating?” “I got this contract.” “Let me make sure Sarah gets you set up in nice booze.” I was able to collect from the body language, see what was going on. The funny thing was I got to see how people interacted with each other. You see, these people that have money do act a different way to the people that pretend they have money. I started to see that. I wanted to have a conversation with these guys. I started to strike up anything I could and I realized I’m in a club. They like nightlife. I’m now a doorman. We didn’t have Google at the time. I technically was the Google of the nightlife of my area.
I could go up to them and go, “Are you going to that private party Thursday?” “No, we’re not, Steve. We don’t know how to get in.” “Let me see if I can do a favor for you.” I was doing this to primitively be able to have a conversation with them. That’s all I wanted to do. If I could satisfy your problem, I now have your attention. That was how basic it was. I started sending people to these parties then I started throwing my own parties. I was taking over penthouses and yachts. I was only inviting rich people, never poor people. Why? It’s because I was poor and I knew what it was like and it stinks. Why should I invite those people?
Life & Business: A lot of people today focus on marketing. They advertise in boosting and spreading their word. But if they’ve got a weak brand, then they are marketing a weak message. I invited anyone who was rich. I started becoming this party promoter, party planner and it got bigger. People were like, “I’m going to Monaco. Do you know people in Monaco? By the way, I’m throwing a party in Abu Dhabi. Can you handle it for me?” It grew but the funny thing is anyone that ever meets me will realize I’m probably the last person you expect to be walking down a red carpet or hanging out with celebrities. It ended up launching the world’s leading experiential concierge firm. My job was to satisfy your desire to give you an amazing cocktail story to get me to be able to have a conversation with you.
I was able then to walk around with people and go, “Johnny, did you enjoy playing drums with Guns N’ Roses? Did you enjoy being backstage at the Milan Fashion Week? Did you enjoy X, Y, Z? By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you. How do you look at opportunities? How do you look at relationships? How do you value your staff? How do you do this?” I was doing basically what you’re doing now, the show back in the early ‘90s. I was doing it with some powerful people and it grew. Several years ago, I got asked if I would write a book and it got released. I didn’t think it would do much because I thought everyone must be doing that. I was flabbergasted of how many people were not doing simple stuff. That’s got me to my coach and my media now.
Steven, in my opinion, it all starts with having a basic desire. You might’ve been very happy. There are people who take jobs and learn their job in six weeks and say, “Good. Now, nobody can bother me. I have my little job and I do my work. I’m happy. I get my paycheck.” There are those of us who get uncomfortable when things don’t seem to amplify. They don’t grow and evolve. Therefore, we don’t either. Steve, what I perceive you’ve done is you’ve found ways to amplify yourself. I have a feeling that that’s part of how you conduct your life and how you help others as well. Teach us how do we amplify ourselves.
It’s funny because amplification and amplify is our keyword on Sims.Media. I didn’t realize that a lot of things we end up doing and we go, “Why isn’t anyone else doing it?” We suddenly realize that that’s our unicorn. A lot of people now focus on marketing advertising, boosting, spreading that word. That’s great but if you’ve got a weak brand then you’re marketing a weak message. The first thing you’ve got to do is focus on your brand. You’ve also got to understand what a brand is. Marketing is what you say about your product. Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. What I did was I realized I wasn’t good-looking. I didn’t sound like Hugh Grant. I wasn’t Brad Pit. I never had any of these things.
Stop focusing on yourself and start focusing on the problem.
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I still can’t spell very well. I’ve got too many earrings, tattoos, a bald head, a goatee, beard, all that stuff. If those people can’t see me on this show, I’m not the guy you want to bump into in a dark alley at 11:00 at night. I’m that looking guy. I’m no trouble but you know what I mean. I realized this was too much to get over in order to try and market myself as some suave connector. What did I do? I ignored it. I focused on the solution that I provided. Here’s the thing, 3:00 in the morning and you’ve got a bad headache. You go to the kitchen counter. You get out your headache tablets. When was the last time you looked at that box and went, “I don’t like the logo?”
You’ve never cared about the packaging of a headache tablet because it solves a problem. I focus my brand on, “Steve Sims, he’ll get you the story you want. Steve Sims, he’ll make you more interesting. Steve Sims will introduce you to the people that you need. Steve Sims can get you to do stuff.” I focused on them and my brand became them. In order to do that, once you’ve established your brand of what you stand for and your position in your business then the amplification becomes paramount. How do you get more people to talk about you? How do you get people that do business with you to become your frontline of marketing?
Let’s be honest. If I put a Facebook campaign together whether it’s a pretty video of me going, “I’m the best coach in America or in the planet. I’m fantastic. I’m wonderful,” that me. That’s my message. If you had someone that spent money with me that went, “Steve Sims, he’s the guy,” that’s what it is for. Here’s a little game I play at coaching events that I do. We do these events called Speakeasy. This is a little game that we play every now and then. It seems to do well.
I’ll play it with you. I urge any of your audience to play the game with your team. I walk into the bar, Mitch. I walk up to you and I go, “Mitch, how are you doing? Steve Sims. I worked with Sir Elton John, Elon Musk and the Pope. I’m a big deal. How are you doing?” I go to shake your hand. You’ve never met me before. That’s how I introduced myself to you even calling myself a big deal at the end of it. How do you feel?
I want to take a shower and leave.
It’s repulsive, isn’t it? Let’s play a different game. We mentioned a mutual friend of ours, Jay Abraham. I walk into a bar. You’re in the bar with Jay Abraham. I walk up to the end of the bar. I order my old fashioned and I’m there alone. I’ve ignored you. Why shouldn’t I? I don’t know who you are but Jay taps you on the shoulder and goes, “Do you see that guy over there? That guy works with Sir Elton John, Elon Musk and the Pope. That guy is a big deal.” Now, what do you want?
The information hasn’t changed. The wording hasn’t changed. Nothing has changed apart from the source of information. Amplification, the first thing you’ve got to understand is what’s the source. Is it a Facebook advert or was it someone else talking about you? Is it testimonials? Is it videos? Is it podcasts? I’ve naturally got credit and credibility by being on your show because you’ve done your searching to make sure that I am the man that says I am. I’m walking in on your credibility. You’re the source for people to go, “I’ll put up with him. I’ll listen to him.”
In my world, when I work with people, the first thing I do is look to find out that brand, what is the solution they have and how to amplify it to get maximum reach. You get ten people talking about you. Those ten people have ten people. It is not long before you’ve got 1,000 clients. Amplification starts not with marketing but with understanding what are you the solution to and who has that problem.
I call that the blood spurting problem that you solve. When I work with my clients, I ask them, “The clients you’re working with, what is their blood spurting problem?” Like you said before about looking for the headache remedy, where they need a solution and you happen to have it. Most of the time, for many people in business, there is no blood spurting problem. They had an idea. They built something or they opened up a business and maybe one or two people bought it. They now think that they’re a company. In my experience, it’s not quite that way.
Life & Business: Establish the problem, find out if your customers have it, then provide a solution. You can get lucky. I’ll talk about my own luck. I started a software company in my twenties. Years later, I grew it to 250,000 clients and sold it for eight figures. I got lucky. I made a couple of moves that turned out to be okay but the bottom line, like you, I had no experience. I was only lucky but I did know that there was a lack of something in a market that needed to be filled. That’s where I started.
The funny thing is you say about blood spurting problems, a lot of people don’t realize they have problems. A lot of people are ignorant to the issue. That’s when whenever we do any marketing and put forth to the solution, we turn around and ask questions that we know the answers to. We turn around and go, “Do you have problems with this? Have you ever wondered how this could be escalated? Have you ever sitting there going, ‘How come this isn’t happening?’” You put forward the problem. Probably the best marketing campaign ever on the planet was, “Tense? Nervous? Headache? Take aspirin.” Here’s a problem. Here’s a solution.
If you start by showing off what the problem is, you can’t people to go, “Do you know I’ve often thought that? I never realized it but yes. That’s me. This must be the solution.” Establish the problem. Find out if they have it and provide them with a solution. The worse thing in the world is to go, “Do you have a problem with this?” Someone says, “Yes.” You go, “Sorry about that,” and walk away. That’s going to aggravate the crap out of them. Make sure you have the solution to the problem before you establish the problem.
That’s what I did at the beginning of the show when I talked about Clientfol.io but we call that a missionary sell. Missionary sell is I first have to tell you the problem you have before I can tell you what the solution is. There’s nothing wrong with that except that it’s two steps. Think of the pyramid. The top 2% of the period is people who have this desperate problem that if they think they might even have a hint of a solution, they want to buy right away. Below that, the next layer is maybe 15% or 20%. Those are the people who have the problem but don’t quite understand what their problem is but they know something’s wrong.
The whole idea in my world is I like to find people at the top of the pyramid or close to it. If I have first to tell them what their problem is then they’re not close enough to make a buying decision in a short period of time. My perspective is instead of wasting our time doing stuff with people who don’t know they have a problem. Let’s find people who are searching for a solution to this problem. That’s where my approach has helped me in the past because ultimately when people are searching for a problem, they are interested in what you have to say. It’s like, “You don’t want to be advertised.” You don’t want to see ads in your feed about ladies’ makeup. Maybe you do, Steve but I doubt you do.
That’s a Friday and I don’t want to go in now.
The whole idea is that if you showed me ads for high-end camera gear or guitars, now I’m interested. I’m paying attention to ads, for heaven’s sake. This is the art of marketing. To me, it’s knowing first whether or not your service fits the target market. I love the way you said it too because it all makes sense. Let’s go back to amplifying oneself. I want to follow your strategy. Now, I am telling people in advance. I’m saying, “If you have a splitting headache, I have the solution. It’s called aspirin.” Where do I take that? If I have to talk about myself or my aspirin solution then I’m marketing. How do I go about the distinction between what you’ve talked about marketing and branding? Where is the branding? How does a person begin the process of branding something, someone a product or service?
Focus on who you let through your door and into your life to avoid 99.9% of the headache.
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There’s something that’s caught on as a term called edutainment. You don’t have to do a video going, “My name’s Steve Sims. I’m the greatest guy,” that kind of stuff. You could do a video and go, “I got this question come into me about this. We were able to go through these five steps to be able to get the client to the position they wanted to meet. I’m letting this put out there that if you have that same issue, you can follow the same steps.” You’re not focusing on you. You’re focusing on the problem. That’s why you could potentially get other clients. I’ve started a series. It’s not even released yet. I don’t even have a pitch day or anything like that where I’ve got a private group called Sims Distillery.
If you are a member of that, you get the chance by lottery to be coached by me for 30 minutes online. I take that video and we’re going to do a series of it on YouTube, where you’re going to see me coaching other people’s problems. Every single video doesn’t announce me and where you can go and get coached by me. It doesn’t do any marketing for me. It focuses on the person’s problem by exampling how I look at an issue. It gives you a real-life view of this is how he looks at things.
This is how we handle things. I don’t know what the problems are. I don’t know what the questions are going to be. This is how he thinks on his feet. This is how he views a situation. I’m giving real-life examples but I can take that video of somebody else’s problem, put it on YouTube, even boost it on YouTube. “Do you have this problem? We spoke about this for 30 minutes,” but I’m focusing on the problem.
You said about the top 2%. If you acquire how many people are in the planet and you get 2% of those as clients, you are not going to worry about it. That is called better segmentation. Whenever I did parties and I used to throw these big parties in Asia, I would go through the social magazines and the new job announcement, “So-and-so’s now the president of so-and-so. Mr. So-and-so has come over from Germany or India and is now the Senior VP of this.” I would invite those people. I would always target market those people. I would always focus on those in my room so that if I had millionaires in my room, they, apart from me, were the poorest people in the room. I focused on the marketplace.
One of the things I had as a doorman and it’s weird how this has constantly crapped up in my life. Anyone reading this, make a note of this because this is a mic drop moment. I told you that I would play games with who was coming towards the door so I could suss out what they were getting involved in. Sometimes, you’ll get a bunch of goals in there that were looking to get a rich boyfriend. Sometimes you’ll get a bunch of guys that had a few beers then that was looking for a fight. If you got either of that communities in the room, it started a toxic reaction. I learned very early on and this is why I was such a good doorman.
Life & Business: In marketing, you’ve got to amplify your voice and your tonality. Tonality emphasizes the message and the reason behind what you are doing. Your excitement could change the whole message. If I controlled who I let in my room, I removed 99.9% of the problems. My manager used to yell at me going, “You turned so many people around.” I’m like, “When was the last time you had a table turned upside down? When was the last time you had a fight?” Control your front door. This is when it comes down to clients. Don’t accept a checkbook. Accept a client. Focus on the person, on the problem, on you being the solution. If all of those things are right, the checkbook is a swipe. That’s the means to an end. Focus on who you let through your door and into your life to remove 99.9% of the headache.
I want to go back to something you said earlier about edutainment. I want to share an experience. I had a client and a great product. Their primary method of selling, which goes back some years, was trade shows. They would go to the trade shows and spend a lot of money. They’d come back with hardly any sales but they cobbled together enough leads that they could barely break even and pay for the next one. I said, “Let me go and see what’s going on.”
I go to the trade show. They have these booth babes in the front who are trying to drag guys out of the aisle way and put a brochure in front of their faces. After about three hours of watching this, I called the manager over and said, “Do you mind? I’d like to rearrange the booth. I’d like to get to something completely different.” He said, “Yes. Whatever you want. Nothing is working here so might as well try that.” What we did, Steve is we emptied the booth out of displays and we put in chairs. We had about 60 chairs in the booth. We put up a screen and a sign that said, “Next training session at 1:00 PM.”
This was a software product. All we did was run hourly training sessions and we filled 60 seats. Every single person sat down. They wanted to see what was going on. By learning about it, they got to know how to use it. By getting to know how to use it, they wanted to buy it or subscribe to it. We were converting about 25% of the people on the spot who would sit through the training. That, I thought, was the greatest example of edutainment I’ve ever seen. That’s why it works.
You bought in a real-life working example of who you are, what you stand for, even the voice. That’s one of the things about amplification that a lot of people don’t understand. You’ve got to amplify your voice and your tonality. These are key things. I could say to you something like, “Mitch, tomorrow at 8:00 PM.” It sounds boring but if it were, “Mitch, tomorrow at 8:00 PM. Be here.” That excitement changes the complete message. It’s very hard even for J.K. Rowling and a top copywriter to get tonality in words and text. That’s why now I’m going to worry about it. You got video. If you can do video and podcasts, you can get that tonality across. Tonality emphasizes the message and the reason behind what you are doing.
Steve, once we have our branding and we know that our goal is to get others to say things about us and share what their experience has been with our product or service, what is the next step?
There is a difference between being easy to understand and impossible to misunderstand.
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Continuation. It’s a snowball. Every time I’m interviewing someone, I go, “During this interview, I may find a couple of bits in there that I feel helpful to my clients. Would you mind me taking a snippet of that?” “No, that’s fine. Steve.” “We’re working on this project. If we find a solution that works well, can I take that and mention that we worked on it together?” “Yes. That’s fine.” You set it upfront that you’re going to do this. I know we’re doing a podcast and you’re going to promote it. You’re going to put it out that. I’m aware of that. You should be the same with your clients.
When you’re working with your clients, don’t ask for a testimonial after the event. Tell them at the beginning, “If this works, I’m going to look to get a little soundbite out of you so I can show other people that this is a solution that works. Are you okay with that?” Line it up at the beginning. It also lets them know that you value the outcome to benefit them in order for you to be able to get that testimonial.
There’s something else very important about what you said. What you’re doing when you pre-frame the outcome that you’re looking for is you’re aligning people to it even before you start. That’s a big deal. It’s like going to a webinar. Remember when webinars were like a surprise at the end they try and sell you something? We’ve got past that by now but what we used to do many years ago, we used to tell people in the first five minutes, “This is a free webinar. We’re going to share a lot of great content with you but in the last 25 minutes we’re going to basically offer you a chance to go even further. If you like what we share with you, would you mind sticking around and at least hearing what we have to offer?” That changed everything. It increased our closing rate by over 10%.
We’re getting into a different subject now. We’re getting into the world of clarity. I speak a lot of events and I’m sure you do. Any speaker, the first thing they do is they’ve got that presentation and all these things but before they go on stage, a good speaker will usually hang around in the back or even behind the scenes but look through the curtain and watch the previous speakers speak to get the temperature of the room. You’ve got to know who you’re talking to and the temperature of the prospect. Here’s the bottom line.
Years ago, like the webinar, buying a car and buying a watch, this salesman would start the spiel and start walking you down a funnel of, “My God, sir. You’ve got exquisite taste,” and they would start walking you down this. You know you’re being sold and being funneled down to a point where you got to get your credit but half of the time, you found it quite amusing and you were quite comfortable with it because you knew where it was going. We’ve gone through 2 to 3 years of distortion and distraction. People are screaming manipulations and conspiracy. We’ve got big conversations, Black Lives Matter, Asian Hate, #MeToo. There’s so much noise going on at the moment that we’re aggravated.
When someone stopped and say, “I would like to talk to you about this webinar,” you’re going to go, “I know you want to sell me something.” Canceled. We’ve got into that. If you can be crystal clear, “I’m going to talk to you for twenty minutes. In the last 5 minutes, I’m going to tell you about a service I’ve got that’s going to benefit you in the long run but it’s going to cost you a couple of dollars but I’m telling you that upfront.” Now, the person is going, “All right. No surprises because I’ve had surprises for three years and some of them are not fun.” We’re in a world now where we’re aggravating. It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. We won’t be cloudy. “I believe you’ve got this problem. I’ve got the solution that’s $2,500.”
It couldn’t be more simple. People now want clarity. Framing is very important in this world. Less is more. Brevity is king and be crystal clear. In fact, to quote a friend of mine, Brian Kurtz, “There is a difference between being easy to understand and impossible to misunderstand.” You’ve got to make sure that every single bit of your copy, direction social, website, marketing and branding is impossible to misunderstand. In order for it to be impossible to misunderstand, it’s got to be accurate.
The worst industry in the world as a culprit for this is realtors. Realtors are still using photographs from a photo shoot that they had from several years ago. You think there’s this 30-something blonde girl who is going to turn up and it’s a 65-year-old grandmother who does. You don’t care because you’re buying a house. Straight away, that was a fraud. I was lied to. I was expecting that and I got this.
No confused client or prospect will ever give you that credit card. You have to go back to your brand, social, marketing and go, “Is this crystal clear who I am?” If you meet me in a bar, see me on stage, hear me on other podcasts, visit my social and website, I will be the exact same person on every single one of those platforms because I want to be impossible to misunderstand.
That’s why I went through a complete rebranding of my own company. We redid everything because of what you said. By the way, the situation you described with the realtor, that’s the state of affairs on every dating site in America these days, unfortunately. Steve, this has been an incredible conversation. Readers, if you’ve enjoyed this, first of all, I’d suggest you reread it with a notepad and a pen because there are some real gems here from Steve. I would hope that you capture those.
Steve, we’re going to transition to the next part of the show where I get to ask you some questions. Some call them silly questions about you. I have a feeling you’re going to enjoy this. It might be fun. It might not be but nonetheless, we’ll get through it together. Here’s the first question. Steve, who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
I’ve been asked this before and I don’t know if it’s going to upset you with the answer. I don’t care because it was my answer, Hitler.
I’ve heard Hitler as an answer before. Tell me why.
Life & Business: If you’re speaking on stage, you’ve got to know who you’re talking to. I want to find out what he was so scared about. We’ve got a man and he built up a country to go to war to breed the ultimate human being of blonde-haired, blue eyes when he was short and brown-haired. He was building up a nation that eventually, we’d have to eradicate him. I want to know what he was terrified of that he did the stuff that he did. There must’ve been some fear behind it. I want to know what that is.
The other person, it was brought up one other time in a show and I believe the angle there was how does one man end up controlling an entire population? The idea was that the person I was interviewing would love to ask him how he did that and what he did. In some ways, it’s obvious now in retrospect but it also would have been an interesting conversation.
There’s a great program. It’s on Netflix called Tyrant. That shows you all the different tyrants through our world and how they’ve done that. In fact, that question bothers me. How do you control the world or control the country? That question scares me because he’s not what he wants to do. It’s a very interesting program, shows you how all of these people did it and manipulate their way through it.
I’m going to check it out. It sounds interesting. What is it that you’re doing now or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world literally?
I want people to stop thinking. That may sound something stupid in a world where everyone’s telling they want to be woken, be more educated but the situation now is we overthink everything and we don’t overdo it. We mentioned Jay Abraham a few times. Jay said to me once, “I have a great I can than an IQ.” I’m going to think of doing something and before the end of that thought, I’m going to start doing it. I will become educated whether or not it works or doesn’t work. A brilliant idea with no action is a wasteful moment. I want people to start doing more, thinking less and actioning more.
As a side note, the first time I met Jay was at one of his conferences. I attended his four-day workshop and I felt like I needed to see a doctor after taking 36 pages of long-form notes. When I came home, I took scissors and cut those notes up into pieces and started distributing them around my team. I said, “You do this.” At that point, everything changed. The information was amazing. Jay is brilliant, as you know. We were able to take action that made a huge difference. People, take your notes, listen to what Steve has to say and take action. It will change your life as well. Steve, we’re about at the end of the show but I have one more question. It’s you fulfilling a promise you made to me before the show. You said, “Mitch, I have an incredible gift for your audience and it’s free.” Tell me what that is.
I wrote this book, Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen. When we started writing the book and we didn’t think about it, at the back of every single chapter, we started off by putting these bullet points of what the chapter was going to be. In fact, those bullet points ended up becoming the cheat sheet of the chapters. When we sent them up to our editor and went, “This is what we’re looking to doing,” they love the idea that there was a cheat sheet at the back of every chapter. We continued it. If you visit SteveDSims.com and you subscribe to my newsletter, you’re going to get two things. You’re going to get the cheat sheet that you can download. The link will be sent to you. You’ve also going to be given free access to my private Facebook Group, An Entrepreneur’s Advantage with Steve Sims. You can get both of those things and unsubscribe. I don’t care but that will help you with a free cheat sheet and access to hearing more from me on a regular basis.
Readers, go over to SteveDSims.com. Do a subscription, say yes and download that cheat sheet. It sounds great. Steve, is your book available on Audible?
It is. The funny thing is I had to audition to read my own book. I hadn’t read the contract very well. I won the job. This is me that reads my own book.
I tend to consume more books now on audio than I do in written form. That’s where I’m headed. I highly recommend people do that as well. My only two books that are published now are also available on Audible as well. People say they enjoyed them too. Steve, thank you so much for hanging out with Mitch and sharing your wisdom with us all. I look forward to the next time we get a chance to talk again soon.
I appreciate you. Thank you very much for having me.
Important Links: * GetClientFolio.com * Bluefishing * The Art Of Making Things Happen – Podcast * Jay Abraham * Sims.Media * Speakeasy * An Entrepreneur’s Advantage with Steve Sims – Facebook Group * Audible – Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen * SteveDSims.com
About Steve Sims
WHAT:
I teach you the art of communication so that you can gain and utilize relationships to accelerate your business goals.
HOW:
I speak at the highest-level events teaching entrepreneurs the art of communication in every sector of business. I offer limited spots for 1-on-1 consulting and specific courses to aid you in making the next step to a more efficient and profitable career. I make use of MY connections to help you in whatever it is that YOU may need through my exclusive Speakeasy membership.
WHY TRUST ME?:
Entrepreneur Magazine labeled me as “The Real Life Wizard of Oz” because I have developed a reputation for making the impossible, possible. I founded the first high-end luxury concierge, through which I’ve arranged things like private dinners at the feet of Michelangelo’s “David” while being serenaded by Andrea Bocelli. I published a best-selling book, “Bluefishing”, documenting how I’ve built a business on social currency. I have spoken for Harvard, The Pentagon, and Fortune 500 Companies. All coming from a young lad that was only qualified to lay bricks at a construction site. I’ve spent 20+ years falling on my face to learn the lessons that you can implement into YOUR career ambitions.
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What fuels success for an entrepreneur? John Assaraf says the answer is simple: Mindset and Motivation, and he’s got the experience to prove it. Join Mitch Russo as he and John explore how commitment and goal setting make a difference in your path to success. John explores his experiences as a young man, finding a mentor and how these lessons changed his life. Be inspired and motivated by John’s story to find your own road.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Mind Science For Fun and Profit: Success, Mindset And Motivation With John Assaraf I have something special for my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized I’ve been spending all this time on admin between my sessions. I started to figure out how to fix this problem. I looked for coaching software. I searched and tried it. There were hours of videos I couldn’t stand watching.
Finally, I said, “Screw it. I’m going to make my own.” That’s what all great entrepreneurs should do. When you find a problem that needs solving, go solve it so I did. That’s called ClientFol.io. If you would like to solve the problem for your own coaching business and save 30 minutes per session on admin, go to GetClientFolio.com and sign up. It’s only $20 a month and you will love it.
We’re onto my guest and his incredible story. Known for his appearance in the secret in several of the movies, our guest is no stranger to the business. Having grown RE/MAX of Indiana as a startup to over $4 billion a year in sales and building five multimillion-dollar companies, he knows how to motivate people to be the best they can be. Those lessons and his wisdom came with dedicated research into how the mind works.
From there, he authored two best-selling books and launched the NeuroGym Program, which has been completed by thousands of students all over the world. He’s here to help us get better acquainted with how we think, overcome mindset issues and make rapid progress. Welcome, *John Assaraf*, to the show.
Mr. Russo, it’s so great to be with you. Thank you for having me.
It’s my pleasure, John. I love your story. Almost everybody I interview starts from almost nothing and a lot less than where they are. Give us some more detail. How did this all start for you?
A lot of very successful people overcame a lot of things. For me, I had a regular family. My father was a cab driver. Mom worked at a local department store, trying to live a good life, nothing too major. However, when I was six, my parents decided to move from Israel, where I was born and they were living, to Montreal, Canada.
When you're committed to something, you will upgrade your identity to match this new destiny, which means you'll upgrade your beliefs, your habits, your knowledge, your skills, and your daily behaviors and habits.
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I got thrown into grade one, not understanding the English language. Not only did they speak English in school but they also spoke French that I didn’t know either. The first two years of school were challenging for me. A lot of immigrants went to the school that I was going to. I fell behind in a classroom of 50, 60 kids with 1 teacher that couldn’t take care of teaching a child the alphabet let alone what you were taught in grade one, which is mostly fun and play.
I quickly got behind and started to bug all the other kids around it because I was bored out of my mind. By grade 5, I was 2 years behind. By grade seven, I failed English and Math. By grades 9 and 10, I was flunking. By grade 11, I decided I’m going to leave after. I thought I wasn’t smart enough. It boiled down to not getting the attention I needed in the early developmental years with this transition that my parents did for their children’s safety and getting a new chance in life.
The only area that I did well in when I was in school was gym class. I was considered a dumb jock. When I left high school, grade 7 at 17 years young, I was getting into a lot of trouble first in school and outside of school with the law. I was selling and doing drugs, drinking alcohol and doing illegal things at 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. I had been to detention centers and a lot out of trouble for myself and my family. That was my 6 to 17 years old, 11 years of challenges. I have a loving and caring family that didn’t know how to help me.
My brother and sister went through a very similar time because they moved as well. They went to school and had a hard time. By the time I was seventeen, I went to get a job in an electronics company called Philips Electronics. I was working in the shipping department. Boxes were coming in. I take them off the truck. I put package boxes for things that were sold and put them on the truck all day long, back and forth.
I hated it. I hated a menial job. I didn’t think I belonged there but what am I supposed to do? I need to make some money. I had to pay rent to live in my parents’ house at that time because I was working. They needed help. That lasted for about two years. One day out of the blue, my brother who I didn’t know well because he was off playing tennis around the world, he was a tennis pro, calls me up. He was off the tennis pro circuit. He moved to Toronto, Canada. We were in Montreal.
He said, “Bro, dad and mom tell me you’re getting into trouble. You’re doing things you shouldn’t be doing. Why don’t you come and see me in Toronto? There’s a man that I’d like you to meet.” I said, “Who’s this man?” My brother said, “I teach him tennis. He’s a philanthropist in town here. He’s a highly successful real estate developer and the owner of a real estate company. I asked him if he’d meet with you and he said, ‘Yeah. Why don’t you have your brother come in for lunch?'”
I take the train two weeks later and my brother picked me up. We went from the train station to lunch. I met this man by the name of Alan Brown. He was cordial, nice, well-dressed and looked successful. He asked me, “Why are you doing the things that you’re doing?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I want to make some money and move out of my parents’ house.” He said, “What are your goals and dreams?” I said, “I’d like to buy my car, move out of my parents’ house and make more than $1.65,” which is how much I was making working in the shipping department.
Mindset And Motivation: Let’s not hide behind our words. Let’s not hide by suppressing emotions or being embarrassed by our results. Let’s start with, “Where am I really?” That is called being truthful about your true north. He said, “That’s all great. What are some of your bigger goals and dreams?” I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “Where do you want to live? What car do you want to drive? What home do you want to have? How much money do you want to make?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Do me a favor.” He reached into his briefcase, pulled out this document and handed it to me. When I looked at it, it was the 1980 Goal Setting Guide.
This was March of 1980. I was nineteen. I opened up this document and the first question was, “At what age do you want to retire?” What? My father’s still working like a dog from 5:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night. I said, “Mr. Brown, what am I supposed to put there?” He says, “Pick a number.” I said, “Okay, 45.” I wrote down 45. I want to retire at age 45. I didn’t know when people retired.
The second question was, “Upon retirement, how much net worth do you want to have?” I looked at Mr. Brass, “Excuse me, sir. What does net worth mean?” He told me. I said, “$3 million.” It might as well have been $3 billion. Nobody in our family knew what millions were. The third question was, “What car do you want?” The fourth question was, “Where do you want to live?” The fifth question was, “What house do you want to have?” The sixth question was, “What lifestyle do you want to have?”
It had twelve questions. I wrote down stuff that came out of my head. I gave Mr. Brown the document. He looks at it and goes, “These are some good goals.” I wrote, “I want to have a Mercedes-Benz. I want to live in a four-bedroom house. I want to retire my parents. I want to travel the world. I want to have an Italian wardrobe.” I wrote all this stuff. I used to see on a TV show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach. I wrote this stuff out of my imagination and what I remember from that TV show. He says, “This is a good vision and place to start. I’m going to ask you a question. The answer to this question will determine whether you achieve every one of these things you wrote on the 1980 Goal Setting Guide.”
Mitch, I’m thinking in the back of my head, “Are you kidding me? One question’s going to determine whether I would have all these things?” That was the statement in my head. He leans in and says, “Are you interested in achieving all of these things? Are you committed to achieving them?” I said, “Am I interested? Am I committed?” I said, “Mr. Brown, what’s the difference?”
He said, “Son, when you’re interested, you’ll do what’s easy and convenient. When you’re interested, you’ll allow your present or past to dictate what you do. You’ll allow your stories, reasons, excuses and beliefs to dictate all of what you do or don’t do but when you’re committed, you will upgrade your identity to match this new destiny, which means you’ll upgrade your beliefs, habits, knowledge, skills and daily behaviors.” I was like, “That’s deep.” I don’t know why but I said to him, “In that case, I’m committed.” He reached out his hand and said, “In that case, I will be your mentor.” I go, “Awesome. What’s a mentor?” That’s how green, young and ignorant I was. He proceeded to tell me what that was.
Two weeks later, I moved from Montreal to Toronto. I enrolled in the real estate class that I went to for five weeks, 9:00 to 5:00. I passed my real estate test. On June 20th, 1980, I got my real estate certificate that I was a licensed real estate agent. It was May 5th, 1980 when I started the course and June 20th, 1980 when I finished the course. I remember those specific dates so well because it’s the first test I had studied and passed without cheating in 2 or 3 years.
If we really want to be on top of our game, we must start with radical honesty.
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I felt so proud for the first time in my school life that maybe I’m not stupid and this dumb kid that everybody said I was. Maybe I needed the right environment and structure to see what I’m capable of achieving. He started to teach me how to upgrade my skills to be a real estate agent, which means I needed to learn how to market and sell. I was on commission only with zero salary. “You eat what you kill,” he told me. Over the next 18 months, I made $180,000 for me, which means he made $180,000 because I was on a 50/50 split. Every dollar that I made, he got half and I got half. That was the beginning of something. He helped me understand how to get my 1st, 3rd, 10th, 20th and 50th clients. It’s all duplicable.
John, this is an inspiring story. We have more in common than I realized. I became addicted to hard narcotics in high school. I ultimately had to drop out and go for treatment. During that time, I was a laborer. I was hired to unpack a warehouse and put them into trucks. I had to get to another city to do it. I’m in this other city. It’s late at night. We finished unpacking the entire warehouse. The area where I was supposed to ride back in was full.
A man in a Cadillac is overseeing from the background, walks up to me and says, “Aren’t you going with these guys?” I said, “There’s no room in the truck.” He says, “Why don’t you ride with me?” I said, “Are you going to the same place?” He goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Thank you.” We get in the car and here I am, a laborer. This man is in a fine suit, driving a Cadillac, which back then you know what that meant to us kids.
I said to him, “Thank you very much for the ride.” We started chatting. I said, “Do you have any relation to this business?” He goes, “I’m the founder and the owner.” I said, “Is this the Hoover Vacuum Company?” He goes, “Yeah. I’m the president of the company. My family founded this many years ago.” At that moment, John, my only thought was, “I have maybe an hour to be with the man who runs this huge company which is a household name. I better ask him anything I could think of.”
We had the most fascinating conversation. It was similar to the one you had. “What do you want to do with your life? Where do you want to go?” Unfortunately, he didn’t volunteer to be my mentor, I would’ve liked that but he changed my mindset on the spot. I knew from that point forward that I could be something and not just a laborer. I love these stories. They make such an impact.
It’s funny you talk about the Cadillac because two years later, I ended up buying a Cadillac Sedan DeVille, silver with a gray interior, brand spanking new. When I went into the Cadillac dealership, they asked me, “Where is your father?” I started off selling real estate with a blue 1976 used Dodge Dart.
Mindset And Motivation: The motivational circuit in the brain is deactivated in an uncertain state, and the behavioral motor cortex in the brain is deactivated in an uncertain state as a safety precaution. I grew up in a relatively affluent neighborhood. All of my 16 and 17-year-old friends had Mustangs, Trans-Ams and Porsches too. I had a 1980 Pontiac Tempest four-door that had almost one whole panel without a dent on it. I was very happy. One of the first things, as a young man, watching my friends with all their fancy cars, I vowed that one day I will be able to afford to buy a car like that for myself.
It’s these decisions that we make early in life that change everything. One of the things that I loved about taking your course NeuroGym is that it helped me reset my mindset. I’m hoping we can get a chance to chat a little bit more about that and how you discovered this process and maybe even how readers can get some insight into themselves from what you’re about to teach us. Where do we start?
If we want to be on top of our game, I always start with radical honesty. Radical honesty is, “Where am I?” Let’s start with that and not hide behind words by suppressing emotions or being embarrassed by our results. I call that being truthful about your true North of, “This is where I am.” I always like to start with something like that by also saying, “Let’s do that without any judgment, blame, shame, guilt or justification. Let’s agree that for whatever reason, I am here with these specific results that I’m getting in my life.” The next question is, “What do I want to achieve in every area of my life, in business, finances, health, wealth, relationship, career, whatever it is?” Let’s say that many of the people reading here are in business. Would you agree that whatever business you are in, how to grow it by 2, 5 or 10X, the how-to, already exists?
If we have a business, we want to grow it to $50,000 a year, 2×2 Rubik’s cube. We go to YouTube and figure out how to solve the 2×2 Rubik’s cube. What if we want to grow it to $150,000, $250,000 a year? We can go to YouTube and find instructions. What about $500,000 to $1 million? We can go to YouTube and find a process, a person or a coach who can help us. What if we want to do a $10 million Rubik’s cube or $100 million Rubik’s cube? Some people have done it. What if we want the $1 billion Rubik’s cube? What if we want to solve that? Is the blueprint, the how-to available if we are committed?
That means that if everybody who’s reading this is committed to doubling, quintupling or 10Xing, the how-to exists. That means that the how-to is not your biggest problem. It’s maybe a problem because you don’t know how to but that’s not the biggest problem. The question becomes, “What is in my way? If the roadmap, the blueprint of 5X, 3X or 10X of my business is there, what’s in my way?”
There are only four things that are going to be in our way. It’s not 100. Number one is my self-image, self-worth and identity. “Do I see myself as the owner of this or that business?” How do I see myself? Not the business that I’d like to be but how do I see myself now? Identity shapes destiny and so do your decision. First and foremost, is your self-image and self-worth in your way? Yes. No. Maybe. Let’s set that aside.
Number two is, “Do you have beliefs that are limiting you?” I don’t know how to solve it because I don’t have the knowledge or skill. That’s a belief that limits you because you haven’t committed to gaining the knowledge and the skill, which is one of the other pieces. “Do I have beliefs that are limiting me? I’m not good and smart enough. I’m too young. I’m too old. I’m just starting. I haven’t been doing this for long. I don’t have all the skills.” Those are beliefs that limit us.
The art of being a great salesperson isn't in what you do when there's somebody else in front of you. The first person you must sell is you.
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Number three is, “I don’t have the knowledge or skills to do it.” That’s a real one because when we lack specific knowledge or skill, we are in an uncertain state. An uncertain state means we’re not in a confident state. In the confidence state, we take action. In an uncertain state, we procrastinate and self-sabotage.
The motivational and behavioral motor cortex in the brain is deactivated in an uncertain state as a safety precaution. We might have one foot on the gas saying, “This is where I want to go,” but we’re going to have another foot on the brakes going, “What if I fail or disappoint myself? What if I’m embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed or judged?”
That leads to the fourth thing which is fear. If I have a fear of failure that’s bigger than my resolve for success, it’s fear of failure wins. There are 50 different types of fear that hold people back. There are fear of failure, fear of being embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, rejected, fear of succeeding and failing, fear of disappointing myself or other ones. There’s a whole host of fears that deactivate the very circuitry that we must activate to take action. Even though the how to achieve this is available, we may only feel comfortable focusing on this.
John, I want to share with you one story. When I started Timeslips Corporation, I was only 28 years old. I had never started a business before in my life but I was a master salesman. I knew how to sell. I had decided to become financially independent and start a company. Making that decision brought opportunities into my universe. It opened up my world to possibility.
When I found my partner and we decided to go into business together, you might say I was committed. When I quit my job and he did the same, this burned the boats. I felt every single thing you said but I didn’t care. I had both feet on the accelerator because I didn’t know how to drive any other way. It ripped me up at times but I got through it because I was that committed.
A lot of times when we’re younger, in our 20s, maybe even our 30s, we haven’t failed enough to know the pain and discomfort of the failure. We know whether it’s in sports, being on the debate team or being an entrepreneur, we will fail. The way you become a master salesman is not by not failing. It’s by failing forward and framing what you learned in a way that keeps you going forward.
Most people have never been taught the art of selling themselves first. The art of being a great salesperson isn’t what you do when there’s somebody else in front of you. The first person you must sell is you. One of the ways you have to do it is by learning framing techniques. You have to learn how to ask yourself better questions that empower and move you forward versus disempowering questions and the meanings that we give things that keep people stuck.
Mindset And Motivation: Every brain functionally works the same. Every brain functionally works like a car, every car functionally works the same, whether it’s electric or motor. I discovered I could level up my skillset to match the level of success I wanted to achieve and also level up my mindset. My mindset wasn’t about a positive mental attitude. There are lots of people with positive mental attitudes that don’t do well. When I talk about mindset, I also talk about emotional regulation. Emotional regulation is dictated by what’s happening in your mind and your subconscious mind specifically.
When I can master or even manage my mindset and my emotions, self-talk, attitude, focus, awareness, plus I have the right skillset and action set or behaviors, I can create a predictable model for success. Mindset plus skillset plus action set equals predictable results. There are a lot of people that are busy every single day, 50, 60 hours a week, that don’t achieve great results.
When you take a look at what they are busy doing, half of the time, they’re busy doing the wrong things. The other 45% of the time, they’re busy doing the trivial things versus the critical few things. In business, there aren’t 800 things you need to do well. There are a few things that have done well consistently that has an exponential return on your results. Ignorance is one of the greatest issues for entrepreneurs. “I don’t know.” Even if they know then they don’t know how to create a habit out of what they know.
I go back to the comment you made about knowledge of information. It’s unlimited, all available, free and on the internet but it’s understanding how to deal with the emotion and thoughts that come up when you try. That is critical. That’s what stops more people than anything else. I don’t think not knowing is a worthwhile excuse anymore. It might have been when we were kids.
On every one of our mobile phones, we have the computational power that’s greater than all the technology we needed back in the late ‘60s to put a human on the moon and bring them back to earth. There’s more power there. We have access to this thing that didn’t even exist then called a search engine. It’s the greatest library in the world where you can find any answer about anything you need in nanoseconds.
As a behavioral neuroscience researcher, I’m fascinated by the human brain, this 3-pound mass that is an organism that’s growing, learning, developing and pruning all the time. Is it possible that this brain we have is worth over $100 billion? Maybe we’re not great operators. Maybe we haven’t learned how to use the brain that we each have.
Every brain functionally works the same. It’s the same as a car. Every car functionally works the same whether it’s electric or motor. When I say, “How well have you learned to focus your attention? How well is your awareness of neuro muscle developed? How well do you understand the nature of your beliefs, the empowering ones and disempowering ones, the constructive ones and destructive ones?
In business, there aren't 800 things you need to do well. There are a few things that, done well consistently, have an exponential return.
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How good are you at identifying disempowering or destructive habits, knowing how to turn them off and create empowering constructive habits?” If the answer is not very well then you’re not a good operator of your brain.
*You’re fighting all the time. That’s why you need to learn to be a good operator of your brain.*
It’s something that I started learning years ago. That was the beginning of my entry into this neuroscience, neuropsychology realm of understanding self first and saying, “I’m afraid of failing. How come? What will it mean if I fail? What meaning am I giving it if I fail? How do I fail, learn and move forward? How do I fail and make it about the thing that I did versus who I am as a man? If I fail, I’m not a failure.” That’s a frame. If I failed what I did or didn’t do, there’s the issue. Let me fix that. All of a sudden, I can rise above a failure.
“I don’t want to talk to those people. I don’t want a cold call. What if they’re mad? What if they’re having dinner? What if they hang up on me?” What does it mean if they do? It means that maybe you’ve interrupted them and they hung up on you. That’s all it means. It doesn’t mean you’re an idiot, you’re less than or any of the things you think it means.
All of these frames are things that we can learn to upgrade our paradigm of reality. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs haven’t learned how to sell, the art of being relentless and pursuing until they achieve the result, the art of setting goals and plans to achieve those goals, the requirements for marketing and sales, how to manage and the skills, yet they want the result. They get into business. They don’t achieve the results. They say, “I’m not a good entrepreneur.” Maybe you’re an unskilled entrepreneur but it’s a skill you can learn.
It started with the issue of self-doubt. Everything goes back to your self-image. When I fixed my self-image, it took a geographic location. I was known as a junkie throughout my neighborhood at the age of seventeen. I picked up, left and went to Boston. Nobody knew me there. All of a sudden, I had the chance to shape what my self-image was without any question like, “Aren’t you that guy from Brooklyn?”
The work that you’ve done and the lessons I learned in working with you have helped me rapidly move past things I would’ve never seen before in my way. I want to make that point. There are a lot of people reading this who are smart. They probably are somewhat evolved or maybe very evolved but it’s the awareness of what’s in your way that you have mastered.
Mindset And Motivation: This brain that we have is worth over a hundred billion dollars, but maybe we’re just not great operators. Awareness is what can give us choice. It’s in that choice that we can get our freedom. Our identity, beliefs and habits are not fixed. If you think about this question for a moment, when any baby is born or was born, are they born with any beliefs? No. Are they born with any fears? No. Are they born any identity, self-esteem or spirit? No.
That means that I learned about all those things and the things that got reinforced. At a certain point in many of our lives, we believed with conviction that Santa Claus and the tooth fairy was real. We believed certain things because the environment and the people shaped our beliefs. We developed habits based on our environment and what we did or didn’t do. The question is, “What was happening in the developing brain that caused that?” Some patterns were introduced whether it was language patterns, belief patterns, value patterns or behavioral patterns.
Any pattern that got reinforced went from a conscious pattern to a subconscious pattern. Once it goes from conscious to subconscious, our brain doesn’t think about, “Is this a good or a bad pattern?” It operates that pattern. It’s automatic like software that somebody wrote for your computer. If the pattern is corrupt, you’re not going to get the results you want. If the software isn’t as strong in the coding, you’re not going to get the results you want and chances are that we break.
Anybody reading has become aware of something new, maybe from the standpoint of our unconscious thoughts limiting us in ways that we never thought possible. How do we change it?
Let me have a little fun with a story. It’s a story that everybody can participate in. I want you to imagine wherever you live. Imagine a tea shop or a coffee shop where you go and you’re having a coffee or tea. You’re sitting with a friend or a family member. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a very famous Hollywood celebrity that you happen to like.
They pull up this document that they’re holding in their hand. They look at you and this document. They talk to the person that they’re with and then they get up and start to come over to talk to you. You’re like, “Are they coming to me? It’s surreal.” Imagine they come to you and say, “Hi, I’m Steven Spielberg.” You’re like, “I know who you are.”
Steven says to you, “Ron Howard and I, who you see sitting over there, finished reviewing this script that one of our top writers did. When I looked at you, I thought there is a part in this script that you fit the picture of who I see playing this role. It’s only five minutes long.” Steven says to you, “Mitch, if I give you $1 million and I give you this script, would you play this role? We’ll give you a coach. We’ll show you how to do the research. We’ll help you. You just need to take this five-minute piece in this movie and we’ll give you $1 million.”
Awareness is what gives us choice. It's in that choice that we can get our freedom.
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Imagine you’re a little scared and you go, “I’ve never done any acting but sure, Steven. I’d love to do it.” Imagine you sign the contract to get the script. You get your first $500,000. There’s another $500,000 coming after you film. You’ve never seen the script before. What would you do to take this script that somebody else wrote and become the role?
I’m not sure where to begin. If it was a serious question to me, I would ask someone to help me and role play it directly so I could get practice.
You take a script you’ve never seen before. You read it. You role-play with somebody. Would you consider maybe having a camera film you to practice and see what you look like? You review the camera and then do it again. Would you maybe record the script and listen to it so that it became more familiar to you like a song?
Like my bar mitzvah.
I had my bar mitzvah too. I recorded my segment and listened to it over and over again so that when it was time to deliver my portion, I knew it off the top of my head. A Hollywood actor or actress practices their script. In practicing the script, they create permanent neural patterns in their brain. I could do that by reading, visualizing, role-playing, adding auditory stimulation, getting critique or hiring a coach. I’m going to be a clumsy fumbling beginner at first. I’m going to take that script.
Once I get past the clumsy beginner then I’m going to have a little bit more flow. When members of a band get together for the first time, they start jamming together. They’re like, “That doesn’t sound good.” Through practice, they get into concert, coherence and flow. Is it possible that with practice, I could get better and if I could get better, I might be able to get good so that I can look in front of a camera and deliver this five-minute thing that I had no idea about when I was sitting having coffee and I could deliver it like when George C. Scott was Patton?
We can choose a new identity and practice that identity, not just in front of a mirror, reading and listening to it but let me maybe pretend and do this role for ten minutes. Let me show up with more confidence and certainty than I normally do. Let me test asking somebody, “Would you like two of these? Is four better for you?” Let me test the role until the role becomes more comfortable.
Mindset And Motivation: Entrepreneurs haven’t learned how to sell. They haven’t learned the art of being relentless and pursuing until they achieve the result. That’s how our identity, beliefs and habits got shaped. Why not do what I call this deliberate conscious evolution of myself? Instead of living with the beliefs, habits and self-image of my old environment that my parents, teachers and friends had their hand in making, why not learn that I own this $100 billion brain?
If I need to become a better entrepreneur who can build a $1 million business instead of a $50,000 business, let me start on the mindset, skillset and behaviors. In doing that, I am activating certain neural patterns. The neural patterns and the neurons that fire together will wire. The neurons that wire together in similar sequences over and over become more permanent patterns.
When those patterns start to take, what I see, think, feel and do changes. It doesn’t matter where you are. That’s your true North. What matters is choosing a new true North, marching confidently in the direction of that dream and becoming the person capable of achieving them. That is a deliberate conscious choice.
John, that is so powerful. If I were to unpack that a little bit and make it a little simplified, it would be something as simple as, first of all, making a decision. Decide whether or not you’re committed to the script and the task. Second of all, get good at it. Do whatever you need to do. Hire a coach. Use your phone or mirror, whatever it takes to get good at it. Third, fail as often as you can until you perfect your process. That’s what I heard.
What you heard is accurate. There is a part of our brain called the error detection mechanism. We learn by activating the air detection mechanism. Like a GPS, it detects when it’s off course. Our failures are the off-course signals. Fail and fix over and over.
John, this has been fascinating. Readers have gotten a lot from this conversation. What you’re teaching and the way you’re helping people are very valuable. We’re going to shift gears here. We’re going to find out a little bit more about you and the way we do that is by me asking you a couple of questions. Sometimes my guests call them silly questions. I like that. I don’t mind that they’re silly. Most importantly, it exposes or at least shows us a little bit about you that we didn’t know before. Here’s the first question. Who, in all space and time, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
That would be Albert Einstein.
It doesn't matter where you are right now, or what's your true north right now. What matters is we choose a new true north and we march confidently in the direction of that dream and that we become the person capable of achieving them.
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Why?
He was a little bit quirky and a genius who didn’t care what others thought of him. To be able to mentally go through the calculations he had to go through in his head, I want to understand his rituals, how he did what he did and how he framed certain things. When he was thinking about some of the things he was thinking about, it was so out of the realm of what most people thought about. I would like to have a dialogue with him. On the other end of the spectrum, I also want to be with Gandhi for his ability to respond versus react and have this unimaginable resolve to take on the British empire. I want to learn about his conviction and get out there into the quantum field of what might be happening.
It’s a person who has committed to something so directly and empowered that nothing can shake him from his mission. I’m not promising this but if I can arrange a little lunch for you and Albert, would that be okay?
Let’s do itanddo the quantum field thing.
My next question is what is it that you’re doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
Show up with so much love that everybody feels it.
You’re being very modest. You’ve done quite a bit of world-changing already with your appearance in the very powerful movies that you’ve appeared in and the messages that you have for others. You are already a world-changer. As the representative of earthlings here, we thank you. Thank you, John, for your time. I can’t let you go without you telling us a little bit about this incredible gift that you promised my readers. What is that?
There’s an eBook that we finished. It’s called 4 Steps to a Million-Dollar Business. I’ve taken some of the stuff that I teach my $100,000 a day clients. We’ve put some great stuff for small business owners. Whether you’re new, starting up or already in motion, if you want to get some of the ways that I think about growing businesses and I’ve helped over 15,000 businesses, we’ll give it to you for free.
Readers, if you’d be interested in getting this incredible gift, all you got to do is go to YourFirstThousandClients.com. At the very bottom of John’s show page, you will see a link to that gift. John, this has been so much fun. Thank you for taking your time. Your $100,000 a day type of time is very valuable. On behalf of everybody, this was a great lesson and teaching. I hope everybody takes what we talked about and goes to the next step. Thank you, John.
Thank you, Mitch.
Important Links: * ClientFol.io * NeuroGym Program * 4 Steps to a Million-Dollar Business
About John Assaraf
John has built 5 multimillion dollar companies, written 2 New York Times Bestselling books and featured in 8 movies, including the blockbuster hit “The Secret” and “Quest For Success” with Richard Branson and the Dalai Lama.
Today, he is founder and CEO of NeuroGym, a company dedicated to using the most advanced technologies and evidence based brain training methods to help individuals unleash their fullest potential and maximize their results.
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Success doesn’t come overnight. It’s a process, and sometimes you need the one thing, the edge to push you over the top. Sometimes, you need the help of your community to get there. Mitch Russo talks all about businesses success with the co-founder of ProduKtive, Geoff Woods. Geoff and Mitch discuss how Geoff came up with the concept that became The ONE Thing. We hear how they built a community that helps push others to succeed. Geoff shares insights on creating revenue streams, redesigning business models and creating better products. Tune in and learn how inspiring a community can make for a successful business.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Geoff Woods And The ONE Thing Your Business Needs To Succeed Our goal is to help you be a better leader, inspire more people, create the passion your community wants and profit from the experience. Readers, I want to hear from you. Tell me what you want, who you are interested in hearing from and what action do you take from every amazing guest we speak with? If you are a coach, you may want to check out my latest SaaS platform for coaches, which boosts productivity, saves time on your session admin, all for $20 a month. Check it out.
Go to GetClientFolio.com. He is starting as a medical device salesman. He decided to start a podcast and attract better people. Knowing that you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, he then figured out how to turn that content into cash and then discovered an opportunity to do so on a much bigger scale.
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Welcome, Geoff Woods, to the show.
Mitch, thanks so much for having me.
Let’s go back to the beginning and tell us a little bit more about how this whole thing came about for you.
I found myself in medical device sales, which was a great job. I woke up every day, running through hospitals. I got to sell a device that saved lives. It was a dream job. I felt what a lot of your readers feel, which you finish the workday and deep down, you know you are meant for more. The problem is I had these amazing golden handcuffs on.
I didn’t have a compelling reason to make a change. Two things happened in my life that changed all that. First, a colleague of mine had a stroke at 35 years old. My wife and I had bought a house in Orange County. We had our first child. My wife decides to become a stay-at-home mom and I’m standing in my kitchen wondering if what happened to my colleague had happened to me, what happens to my family? Which was extremely unsettling.
My company needed to make a change to our commission structure to remain competitive in the marketplace. The consequence was I lost 40% of my income overnight. For anybody who has ever had a big pay cut or job loss, it can rock you to your core. That was where I was. All of a sudden, I’m going, “What am I going to do?” I’m watching us hemorrhage cash month after month. The bank accounts are almost at zero.
I’m introduced to this quote from Jim Rome, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” It made an impression on me to the point where I grabbed the pen and a piece of paper. I asked the question, “Who are the five people I spend the most time with?” I made the list. As I reflected on the list, I realized I have five amazing friends, but I have zero amazing mentors.
It is interesting that you bring this up in the way you did because we have a lot in common. I started my life as an engineer. I went into sales. I became the third top salesperson in the entire state of Massachusetts. When all of a sudden, my boss, the company that I worked for, decided to change the commission plan. All of a sudden, I went from earning $36,000 a month at the age of 26 down to $6,000 a month. I had saved quite a bit of money, but I knew in my heart that I could no longer ever be under the control of another human being.
You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
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In this case, if I wanted to make my own way, I had to find a way to do so. That is the origin story of how I got to figure out which of the five different companies I started would succeed. Like you, I looked for that mentor in the beginning as well. It is an incredible pathway that you took. It is so illustrative of how great entrepreneurs must proceed if they are going to be successful because we can’t do it alone.
No one succeeds alone. The truth is you are going to make mistakes. The question is how do you fail forward as fast as possible and not fail unnecessarily? You don’t have to make all the mistakes you can learn from other people’s mistakes. When you have the right mentorship, you collapse time because you get to start where they finished.
You get to apply their lessons without having to feel their pain, which is the same thing. I love that analogy. Like you, I spent quite a bit of time up-leveling my relationships. Possibly my strongest was with my friend Chet Holmes, who you know and our partner, Tony Robbins, which changed my life in ways I couldn’t even begin to tell you because it was so dramatic. From there, everything else changed as well. That is what happens. You also met someone incredibly influential along this pathway. Who is that?
Fast forward, it’s our national sales meeting. I walk into this ballroom. There are 1,500 chairs. On every chair was a copy of a book called The ONE Thing. I picked it up and I went, “This looks interesting.” Jay Papasan who is one of the co-authors of the book walked out on stage as our keynote speaker. For the next hour, he is blowing my mind. He is sharing how his co-author Gary Keller started a company called Keller Williams. It is the largest real estate company in the world and how he lived his life by these principles and scaled it to what it is. The whole time I’m sitting in the audience going, “What would my life look like if a guy like Jay or Gary were one of my five?” I couldn’t even comprehend.
Jay finished speaking. He gets a standing ovation. When 1,500 people sat down, I found myself still standing. It was one of these defining moments where your mind is telling you to do one thing, but your heart is pulling you in a different direction. My mind was saying, “Sit down.” There was something deep inside of me that was compelling me to run down the ballroom. Before you know it, I’m in an all-out sprint down the ballroom and I almost tackled Jay. I had to be the first person to speak to him and that began our relationship.
What I was unaware of was it the one thing that had already become one of the highest rated business books of all time. That created a problem because Gary Keller’s One Thing was running Keller Williams. Jay’s One Thing is writing books with Gary. They had actively been searching for someone whose one thing would be the one thing and that became my opportunity. On November 1st, 2015, the three of us co-founded this company on a mission to help people better invest their time so they achieve extraordinary results.
I mentioned to you that I listened to the book. I prefer to listen to books because I can absorb them faster and more completely because when I read, my mind drifts, but when I’m listening, I have to pay attention. That is what I love about audiobooks. When I listened to this book, the first thing I thought of is by the second chapter, it was a very interesting story, but I was waiting for him to get the one thing that is so simple.
You almost don’t need a whole book to describe the process. The stories are so beautifully written about how that one thing process has changed, in this case, Gary’s life. You met Jay and you put together a business around the one thing process. That is great. I am sure we can chat a lot about the business, not on this show though. This is a show about community and tribes. Let’s talk about that. How, where and why did this community form?
It was on the roadmap from Inception. They asked me to cast a vision for the organization in terms of what I thought this might look like. Based on benchmark marking lots of other companies, I figured, you’ve got an intellectual property at the center. You have an email list. Ultimately, you are going to build a content strategy, whether those are podcasts, webinars or social, you’ll pick what avenue is right. How do we go about creating a community? It’s not just about customers, it’s about community.
Peloton is a great example of this. What makes that company so remarkable is not just the product or the number of customers that they have, it’s the engagement of their community. That was something right off the bat that we said, “We want to create a community of ambitious professionals who are dissatisfied with the status quo and are unwilling to accept the idea that to succeed professionally, you have to sacrifice your personal life. You can thrive professionally and personally.” That was on the roadmap from day one.
ONE Thing: Just because it’s a proven model for the industry does not mean it’s the right fit for your business. When I think about a tribe, I think about it from two perspectives. I believe that the person who leads a tribe should have a manifesto, vision, mission and purpose. Using that manifesto, the emotional tone of the community changes because without one, you are just a group of people. You need that passion to exclude those who don’t belong as well as become a magnet for those who do. Tell me about that.
It’s something we have figured out along the way. We didn’t have that level of clarity at the beginning, but it was, “Let’s take one step at a time.” What is interesting is that Gary wrote the book while they wrote the book for the small business owner, it was written to the slant of the people in the cubicles because from the idea of a Blue Ocean strategy, they didn’t want to write to the corner office. They wanted to write to the masses. It’s that ambitious professional. For a book that was written for a very narrow group of people, it’s going to help everyone.
Before you know it, you have stay-at-home moms reaching out, telling us how to live a better life with their children. You’ve got executives, employees and mid-managers. We struggled because for a book about One Thing, we felt the pull to try to serve everyone. We understood the number one live productivity is the live at everything matters equally. In this case, you cannot treat everyone like they matter equally when it comes to prioritizing the design of your product, which is how it got narrowed down to the ambitious professional.
We are not designing a curriculum or solutions for the person who is happy with the status quo. There is no judgment with that, that is not who we serve. We want to serve that person that wants more, knows they are destined for more and very specifically is unwilling to sacrifice their personal life for professional success.
You know exactly who you are trying to attract, which is perfect for the beginning of a community. How do you transition a reader who reads the book? I assume that was your key lead source in the beginning into a community member.
When I stepped in, there was a book. It was already very successful. They had already built an email list, which is massively important. They were doing a free monthly webinar. There were no paid solutions. The first thing I did is I asked the question, where do they need help most? It’s the survey. We got a very consistent theme, which is they needed help with time blocking and battling distractions.
Time blocking is the act of blocking time with yourself to do whatever is most important. While we’ve all done it, most of us struggle with the idea of protecting those time blocks and battling those distractions. I pre-sold a solution. I didn’t have it yet. I said, “We are going to come up with a program.” We called it a Time Blocking Mastery. “We will help you identify one thing. We will help you time block it and we will help you turn it into a power habit that sticks.”
We were transparent about the fact that we did not know what the curriculum looked like, but we were going to design it for this early group of people we called our founding members. People had to apply to be founding members and pay in advance. I learned a very powerful lesson on this because we said it was $1,000 to apply. We said we would cap it at 100 people. Between you, me and every other person who is reading this, I didn’t think we’d get 100 people.
Two hundred five people put their credit cards down. This was in the first 60 days of the business. When we have zero revenue, we have expenses and I had to refund $105,000 for a startup business, which was very painful. I learned a lesson, which is that your values aren’t your values unless they cost you something. Our word meant something to us.
We stuck to the hundred. We delivered. We created a great product, but after probably six months of driving this product, we realized we had a problem. We are in the business of saving people time. We are in the business of helping people better invest it so that they can achieve extraordinary results but we had a flaw in our business model.
It's not just about customers. It's about community.
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We were selling a one-time product, which meant that every month we had to sell all over again to cover our expenses, which if all you do on your email list is sell, you undermine the trust with your people. That was when we realized very quickly, we had to make a change. We shifted away from that type of model and shifted toward building community through a continuity program, which is still alive and well.
Take a step back here and let’s unpack some of the things you did wrong as you reached that point. As it has been for me always, there is always a long list. Let’s talk about mistakes. Where would you say are some of the glaring ones that are instrumental to those who are reading?
Every single one of us, when we start a business, look at other similar businesses and ask how did they do it. If you are trying to build an online community, you have probably studied internet marketing. That’s what we did as well. What does it look like to go from book to online training? We benchmark to the best of the best and looked at the proven models for how to scale that. Here is the lesson. Just because it’s a proven model for the industry does not mean it’s the right fit for your business.
We followed the proven models of doing Facebook ads, drive traffic to a website that captures the email that gets them to sign up for a webinar where you offer value, but you make an ethical offer. You follow up via email to maximize conversion. When they convert, you have upsells and down sells. Super standard, but we never once, at the beginning asked, “Are we saving people time when we do this? Are we helping them better invest their time and achieve extraordinary results?” We didn’t do that.
I remember the first sales webinar we ever did, we made more money in a day than we had ever made at that point. I remember ending the webinar, looking at my partner, Jay and saying, “We can never do that again.” It was not aligned with our brand. I remember when the day came when we had to completely abandon that model. We shut down all Facebook ads. We completely stopped long sales campaigns on our list. Wondering what tanked the company. Shockingly, revenue went up.
Where did people come from after you turned off all of your lead generation systems?
Fortunately, our book is very popular. We get a lot of organic traffic to the site through the book. Also, our SEO is pretty strong at this point. I had launched our podcast, which has a pretty large audience.
As instructive as this could be, if you are starting a community and you are listening to a speaker, take a look at how this book played such a significant role in the process. The book is the manifesto.
We call it the lead domino that when you knock it down, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary.
The passion behind this comes from seeing the person who wrote it and the results that they have achieved. We start with a concept or in this case, a cause or mission, we then follow our instincts and make it work for us and others notice and then follow. It sounds like you did a great job. Let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of stuff. You got all these people and you have them in your community. How often do you communicate with your community?
ONE Thing: What scales for a hundred members is different than what scales for a thousand. When you hit a thousand, you hit an achievement and you have to redesign the model. There is a weekly email.
How often do you have two-way communication with your community?
We are in the process of redesigning what that offer is to bring even more value. If I gave you the 20%, meaning the 20% things we do that have driven 80% of the results, there is a weekly newsletter for our community members. Once a month, we do a live group coaching call that everybody can attend that is interactive. Throughout the year, we will do challenges. We are in the middle of helping 2,000 people to form their next power habit.
They will make achieving their number one goal in 2022 possible. There is also an engaged Facebook group where we have built a community where we have elevated community members to positions of authority. They don’t have to come to my team or me. We have community members that have been on this journey for years that have achieved extraordinary things that are able to step in and be an authority.
What you described are some of the concepts that I talked about in my book, Power Tribes, which is how to create a tribe and elevate that tribe. Give them the chance to ascend inside of the environment that you have created. You did an incredible job with that. It is instrumental to the growth of a community. You can’t do it all yourself. You can’t have one person forever be that leader without having a level below you that handles in a much more intimate way. The folks who need that one-on-one support are so well done. What about the tools? What tools do you use software-wise to do this? What other ways do you use software to re-enhance the experience for the community and to make it so that you can scale this beyond 5,000 or 10,000 people?
There is what we have done and there is what we will be doing. We are at a redesign point. The initial setup was ActiveCampaign as an email service provider, Kajabi as an LMS and Stripe as a payment processor and Facebook as an online community. That has allowed us to scale to multiple seven figures in revenue. Going from getting your first 100 members, what scales for 100 members is different than what was a scale for 1,000. When you hit about 1,000, you started to hit the ceiling of achievement and you have to redesign the model.
There is another ceiling at 10,000, which when we look at between our individual members and corporate members, that is right about where we are. This is where we are having to do some heavy-duty research in terms of high-level LMSs or an LXP, Learning Experience Platform, possibly a custom build. That is where we are going next.
For those who are starting, it sounds like LMS, CRM system and Facebook group could about be everything you need to get maybe to your first 1,000 members pretty easily.
That is all you need for 1,000 members, whether or not getting to 1,000 is easy or not, I can’t say for you. It is not easy for us.
It is not easy for anybody. I know that as well. Once they become a member and you have immersed them in their community, you had started to say earlier, when you first began, there was nothing else. Now that you have some experience here, show us the pathway so that when someone begins inside the $1,000 a year, is that still available? Is that still what you are selling?
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It is $299.
They pay $299, and they immersed themselves in this community for a year, which sounds amazing. Where do they go next after their year is up?
We started as an online training company for individuals. All along the while, we are getting companies that are reaching out saying, “Can you come to speak at our event?” The impact is our number one core value for our business. I would always circle back 60 to 90 days after a keynote or workshop and ask, “What have you done with it?”
The answer was often, “Nothing,” which drove me crazy. Accountability is a core value of ours as well. I view it as our fault. Therefore, I ask, “What are we going to do about it?” That started morphing into corporate training and consulting. You mere that pathway which with when we speak to our individual members and we ask them, “You have achieved so much for the past years, what is your biggest challenge?”
There was a unified answer. “I want to live this, but my company does not support this way of thinking.” What we realized is if our mission is to truly change the way the world views time to where they wake up and do it as an investment and hold it accountable to delivering a return personally and professionally, we cannot realize our mission if we do not focus on the organization.
All of a sudden B2B became our one thing with a minor in B2C. The whole goal is whether you are an individual who is signing up as a customer yourself. The goal is how do you start living this and become a practice leader so you can empower other people to live this in your organization. At an organizational level, we have tools for how you create clarity and alignment across an entire company so that everybody can go on a mission to better invest their time.
The way you did it, which I love, is that you stopped and asked questions. A lot of people don’t. A lot of people will build a community and feedback is incidental, but you have deliberately stopped and set up a system and a series of questions that guide you into your future. Isn’t that interesting in a way if you think about it? Here, the people who pay you are telling you what to sell them next.
You have a career as a great salesperson. A great salesperson does not push their agenda. They ask questions to understand the customer’s problem and then they show how their product can solve that problem if it solves that problem. You don’t make an offer. You don’t talk about your product until you are clear on what the problem is. The only way you can do that is by asking questions.
It is so important to make sure that you don’t skip this step. It sounds simple. When I first started TimeSlips Corporation, which was my first software company, we blew our entire marketing budget on two ads and PC magazines. That was over $6,000 at the time and we made 5 sales of $99 each. We were miserable at that point. We didn’t know what we did wrong.
The man who sold us the ad said it would work, so we listened to him. It’s how smart we were at the time. About six weeks later, he stopped by and gave us a big fat envelope, 5,000 bingo leads. Remember the cardboard inserts in the magazines where you circle the number? I’m looking at this and said, “What are these for?”
ONE Thing: Who knows if you can sell something or when you’re going to be able to sell something? Get on the phone and ask, “Hello, how are you?” Build a moat around your customers. He goes, “You can throw them away, but I have to give them to you.” We had run out of money at that point. I decided to call every single person that I could get ahold of who had filled out that card. I asked them, “Why did you circle that number?” In that process, I sold another 30 or 40 copies, which again was no big deal, but more importantly, that is who I figured out who my ideal audience was.
I went from advertising broadly to specializing in advertising into my target market at the time were lawyers. That was how we built a $10 million-plus company and then prepared it to be sold. Asking questions is so important. I have to stress this because it’s a step that is almost too simple to conceptualize unless you build a business around it and you did, which is amazing.
When I think about the corporate side of our business, which is the lion’s share, I think about some of the organizations, one came up with one of the vaccines for COVID. When COVID hit, I had already been working with some of the senior leadership doing workshops. I remember connecting with one of them. I called all our past customers and did what I call the Adele script. You called them and I asked, “Hello, how are you?” That was the conversation. I was genuinely curious. The world changed. “What are you focusing on? What is your biggest problem?”
They shared that the CEO had come out with a mandate. They have thousands of highly paid sales reps that need to go to the market, but cannot go to the market, they didn’t have a plan and they weren’t clear what to do. I knew what their problem was. I didn’t have a quote package like, “This is the gold plan.” I knew what their problem was and how to solve it. Before you know it, we facilitated a series of workshops that helped them lay the foundation for their future go-to-market strategy in terms of what their workforce would look like. It wasn’t something I was pushing. They had a problem. I had a solution. There we go.
It started with, “Hello, how are you?” That is brilliant. It is simple, but it changes everything.
I have to give credit where credit is due. I got that from Gary because Gary got on a webinar for 200,000 Keller Williams agents who could not sell real estate at the beginning of the pandemic and said, “Go build a protective moat around your database. Who knows if you can sell something or when you are going to be able to sell something? Get on the phone and ask hello, ‘How are you?’ Build a moat around your customers.” I listened and I executed it.
Real estate has exploded at this point. Geoff, this has been incredible. As I do with every interview, I’ve learned so much from you and I appreciate you spending the time with us. I understand that you have something that you would like to share with our readers.
If you head on over to The1Thing.com. First and foremost, I would benchmark our site in terms of what does it look like? If you search for free resources, you can download a free resource there. If I can only point you to one, what percentage of the audience would you say has a significant other if you had to guess?
Maybe 50% or more.
This is not just about professional success. This is about thriving professionally and personally. If you are reading this show, my hypothesis is you naturally are wired to think about business. Isn’t this very well may be your sport, which may also mean that you are not naturally as wired to focus on the personal side, we have something called a Kick Ass Guide to Your Couples Goal Setting Retreat.
It’s not just about professional success. It’s about thriving.
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I would strongly recommend you download that. This is a way for you to take proven business principles, to sit down with the people that matter most to you and ask powerful questions so you can grow together. There are a lot of other resources on there. I’m specifically sharing this because I think this is what might bring the most value to you. It has nothing to do with me.
I also wanted to ask one other question and this is more about your philosophy. Once you have achieved what you have and built this company and it is running and successful, what is next for you?
I ask this question a lot. I’m fortunate that when I wake up, I feel like I’m living my purpose every day. Growth is my number one core value, I cannot see another place where I can grow faster and make a bigger impact than doing what I’m doing. I’m also a partner in the business. For me, this is about scaling this to as big as we can go. I’m not always going to be the person at the helm, driving the organization. I’ve already replaced myself running the operations, but I see my life is dedicated to sharing this message.
When one is on a mission, it changes everything about life. When one has a job or one starts a business, one can become wealthy, but when one is on a mission, everything is fulfilled at the same time, which I love. Geoff, thank you so much for your time. It was great chatting with you. Readers, you know where to find us. Go to TheTribeBuilders.com and in particular, Geoff Woods’s page and everything is there. I look forward to chatting with you again soon.
Thank you.
Important Links: * GetClientFolio.com * Geoff Woods * The ONE Thing * Peloton * Power Tribes * ActiveCampaign * Kajabi * Stripe * TimeSlips Corporation * Couples Goal Setting Retreat * TheTribeBuilders.com * https://The1Thing.com/free-resources-v2/
About Geoff Woods
Geoff Woods is the Co-Founder & President of ProduKtive®, the training company behind The ONE Thing, and the host of The ONE Thing podcast, which is in the top 5% of all podcasts in the world. Geoff is an advisor to executives ranging from small businesses to the Fortune 500, helping them design the future of work, and create cultures where people are clear on what matters most so they achieve extraordinary results. Geoff is a keynote speaker and consultant.
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Millions of young ladies worldwide are not getting paid enough to support their families. Many even get exploited with sex trafficking. This global issue must be stopped, but the answer to that is not as easy as it seems. You can’t just boycott certain brands. In this episode, learn how Dawn Manske is helping to solve the problem with her social enterprise, Made for Freedom. Dawn sits down with Mitch Russo as she shares how she’s empowering women through Dignified Employment in the fight against human trafficking. Learn what you can do to help spread awareness on this issue and become a social entrepreneur that impacts the world.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Made For Freedom: Fighting Sex Trafficking Around The World With Dawn Manske *I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized that I had been spending about 30 minutes per session on admin. This resulted in me wasting a ton of time with five different applications open on my screens while in the middle of a session, trying to keep track of everything and then moving all my notes into an email to send my client. This got old quickly. I started looking for professional coaching software but I couldn’t find anything that I liked, would work for me, wasn’t too hard to learn, and wasn’t too expensive.*
*I did what all great entrepreneurs should do. I found a problem that needed to be solved and I solved it. I am inviting you to check it out. It’s called GetClientFolio.com*. You can go there and give it a spin for $1 and see why some people say it’s some of the best coaching administration software they have ever used.**
*Onto my guest and her incredible story. My guest found her first opportunity in China. Excited about a new opportunity, she quickly realized that her passion for human trafficking had overwhelmed and changed her mission quite dramatically. She decided to do something about it. An entrepreneur at heart, she decided to start her company made for freedom. Sales started to explode and she realized that this was a way to help young women escape the ravages of sex trafficking. She’s here with us to share how she did it. Welcome, Dawn Manske*, to the show.**
Thank you so much. It is great to be here.
*It’s my pleasure. Tell us how this all got started for you.*
I was in China and lived there for ten years, which was not anticipated but it was an amazing part of my life. I would tell people that I’m part Chinese. Looking at me, you wouldn’t know it but I am very Chinese and in some of my behaviors. While I was there, I was introduced to a couple of the things that I have learned that are incredibly powerful when you talk about vulnerabilities. I talk a lot about the Five Key Components of Exploitation because we all need to get a little better understanding of what exploitation looks like. January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month in our country. There are some people that know quite a bit, and there are some people that just want to know more.
*Going back to that time when you first arrived in China, did you already know this or have this as part of your mission or did this show up in your life, and then you realized you needed to do something about it?*
The fight against human trafficking and exploitation happened probably ten years later but while I was in China, I was exposed firsthand to some of the vulnerabilities. I was going with friends to visit orphanages. I spent time and love on little children that had been abandoned by their families. Going into these orphanages, seeing that 80% to 90% of the children were girls because of devaluation of the girl child.
We all need to get a little better understanding of what exploitation looks like.
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Later living in another city in China, I noticed all of these street children that were begging, and they were always hanging out in the same parts of town. A friend of mine who had come to start a school for kids like that started explaining to me that these kids came from very poor regions of China and were brought to the big city with promises that they would make a lot of money, get great jobs and be able to support their families.
This extreme poverty led the families to allow their kids to be taken from them to another city, thinking that would change their lives for the better. When in reality, it was human trafficking and these kids were being exploited. If you fast forward several years, I was back in the United States in graduate school, then I saw a video. It was put out by IJM.
It was an undercover reporter that went into the back streets of Cambodia asking for the youngest girls he could find. It turned my stomach, broke my heart, and that was when I realized, “This is way bigger than the kids that I met on the street corner in Beijing.” I’ve got to know those kids. I love those kids. I had great relationships with them.
This is a huge thing. This is happening everywhere. Fast forward a couple more years, I was reacquainted with an incredibly handsome young man and I married him. While we were visiting some friends, I saw these sandals. The story on these sandals explained the young ladies who made the sandals were provided a good job, making the sandals, and because of those jobs, they were able to continue their education, which provided incredibly more opportunities for them in their country. That was when social enterprise struck home for me. I started thinking, “A business strategy that’s addressing a global issue.”
For my wedding with this incredibly handsome young man, I received a pair of these sandals from him. He didn’t catch the hint. His friend did. He’s learned how to understand the hints more since then. I’ve got a pair of these sandals as a wedding gift from him and another friend of mine who I had met originally in China was teaching in Thailand, I had gotten a pair of these fisherman pants in Thailand during a vacation. I couldn’t find them in the United States. I love these pants. They are super comfortable. I said, “Could you bring me some of these pants for the wedding?” She said, “Sure.” She brought me several pairs of pants. What do you think I was wearing the next day when I left for my honeymoon?
*Pants and sandals.*
I’m wearing my new pants, new sandals, and a TSA agent comments on my pants. She says, “I love your pants. Where did you get them?” When was the last time a TSA agent asked you about your clothing?
*In my case, never.*
Sex Trafficking: Children from poor families in China were brought into the city with promises of making a lot of money. When in reality, it was human trafficking, and these kids were being exploited. It’s rare. I get on the plane and the flight attendant says, “Where did you get those? Those are so cool.” This was the beginning of months still, if I have some of my fisherman pants, I wear them and people comment on them because they are very unique, different, and look very comfortable. I get some stranger in the hospital asking me where I bought the pants. I’m trying to go buy ice cream and someone says, “Where did you get your pants?”
I had a woman chase me literally through a parking lot to ask me about the pants. I’m like, “It takes me a little while to catch onto things but there is something here. I’m not the only one that likes these pants. I could start importing these pants.” This is justice in the fabric of who I am. I don’t want to start selling pants for the sake of selling pants. I have two degrees in Education and one in Theology. I love helping people. I love being about something that’s bigger than me. Selling pants was not going to do that for me.
I remembered the social enterprise and that concept of using business strategy in an effort to make an impact, then this thing that had been weighing on me for years and trying to figure out, “How can I do something to fight this horrible atrocity, called human trafficking?” I thought, “If these pants could be the foundation of a business that could help fight this horrible thing in our world, then I could get excited about selling pants.” We started selling pants. I went on a research trip so that I could get a better understanding of what leads to exploitation and what are things are needed as a survivor comes out of that situation.
I met all sorts of other groups and organizations that were working with survivors, making products, jewelry, scarves, and bags. Where we ended up is it’s not really about the pants. It’s about providing those jobs and dignified employment that prevents exploitation. One of those things that I learned about clearly in China, it fights the poverty and stigma that comes when you are a female in a culture that devalues you just because of who you are. It became all about dignified employment, even though I love the pants.
*To backtrack a little bit here, I want to introduce you to a gentleman named Yanik Silver. He has a book called the *Evolved Enterprise*, where he teaches and writes about the type of work that you do in other areas of the world, and has a group called the Mavericks*, which I am a member of. He leads trips all over the world to show people what these people like you are doing in foreign countries and helps organize either funding or some form of support for the work that these folks are doing. After the show, I will make that intro to Yanik for you because you two should meet. I never thought about human trafficking until I’ve got to Thailand.****
*The day I arrived in Thailand, I was on my way to Bhutan. We stopped in Bangkok, which was a three-night stopover, which was wonderful. In my hotel room, there was a sign that blew my mind and freaked me out. It said, “Please do not have sex with our children,” on a sign in the hotel room. I said, “What the hell is this?” That’s when the dots started to connect and I realized, “People must come here for that purpose.” I was horrified by the whole idea of all this. We toured Bangkok. Americans were a little bit of a bubble, as you can imagine, as we toured through these cities but you immersed yourself into the Chinese culture.*
*As you said, you are as much Chinese as you are. From St. Louis, you have that strain but more importantly, you are aware of the social dynamics in another country of which, as you know, most Americans are not. That’s very valuable and potentially profitable. Let’s shift gears for a moment and talk about the business because this is a business show. I know we have a lot of folks who would love to understand what it would take to mobilize a group of people in a foreign country to make something of value that they could sell in the United States. Let’s talk about how you did that.*
I appreciate your kind words. It is an incredibly difficult project and task to move forward as a social enterprise. People not understanding the social enterprise is a blending of the conventional nonprofit perspective on life and for-profit. You take the two of those and put them together. Some people still don’t understand what that’s all about.
Dignified employment prevents exploitation and fights poverty.
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What we do is partner with centers that are already doing that. I have visited almost all of the centers that we partner with. We have partnerships with about fifteen centers around the world, all of which are providing those resources that are needed. If it’s a vulnerable population and survivors of marginalization, they are providing training, job skills, and dignified employment.
When it’s a partner that is providing dignified employment for survivors of exploitation, as you can imagine, there are quite a few more things that are needed. Dealing with that trauma, therapy, counseling, the legal aspects that need to be addressed if you are going to prosecute those who were trafficked or the traffickers. There are all sorts of other things, maybe providing housing or a livelihood for someone who’s coming out of a completely different life, where they were dependent upon their trafficker.
Each center is a little bit different. All of them are providing dignified employment. The business side of this is not easy. We have chosen very specifically to only partner with centers working with the very vulnerable or those who have been exploited but in a much larger picture, as far as business goes, making a positive impact in our world, a huge component of that is looking at your supply chain.
There are so many business models that talk about giving back and how much good they are doing in our world but if you dig in, they are doing some good by giving back a small percentage of money. Here’s an example for you. I have a friend. Her mother is a friend of mine. My friend died from breast cancer. It’s a horrible situation. It’s a tragedy. Mom has a magazine and this group is selling products and proceeds from each sale go to research to fight breast cancer. I’m all about that. I want to help fight breast cancer. If we could see an end to this, it’s perfect.
I’m flipping through the magazine, a friend of mine has passed away. Her mom is bringing this in. I see a scarf. I like pink. I like scarves. I buy the scarf. It’s more than I would typically spend on a scarf but I buy the scarf. I order it. While I’m waiting over the next week or so, I’m looking through the magazine a little bit more, and then it has point I see the little tiny print that says, “0.05% is going to research.” Thank you for that. I was so livid. Everything in this magazine is talking about, “We are fighting breast cancer. Purchase one of these.”
At that point, I was also learning more about the fashion industry because I’m looking at getting these pants made. I see the exploitation that happens within the fashion industry, sweatshops, and Rana Plaza, the factory that collapsed in Bangladesh in 2014. Hundreds of people died and they were getting paid pennies an hour to make clothing.
I see this thing, “0.05%, are you kidding me? You are not telling me anything about the scarf. Where did the scarf get made? Did you source this in Bangladesh or another sweatshop and pay pennies on the dollar? You are charging me way more than any other scarf I have purchased because you are saying you are doing good things.”
In reality, there’s a tiny little piece of my money that’s going to help the issue. I don’t know where the scarf was made but it’s very possible it was made at a sweatshop. If their supply chain was sourced from a sweatshop in poverty wages, leading to generational poverty, then they are a much bigger part of the problem for exploitation than they are any solution to research for breast cancer.
Sex Trafficking: A social enterprise blends the conventional nonprofit perspective on life and the conventional for-profit. It isn’t easy to do, but you can take those two things and put them together. *What I understood is that number one you arere passionate about it but in my opinion, being passionate about something is power. Having that type of power gives you an edge over everybody else. There are many people in the world who work to make a living and either they are indifferent or hate their jobs, some like their jobs but they are not passionate. With that type of passion, as we know, you can move mountains.*
*I assume you don’t have an iPhone because it was made in China. It has been said that they are made in exploitation and in a company that hires children and pays them very low wages. Part of why I brought that up is because what I’m interested in is the trauma that these kids go through while being forced to work. Forget sex trafficking for a moment but just the raw trauma of having to show up at a factory and make things for 12 to 14 hours a day. I’m wondering why the host countries don’t care. Do they not believe that their children are their future? Do you have any insight as to why this is the way it is?*
There’s the perspective that a job paying something is better than not having a job, which is the reality. I had a woman ask me one time, “Where is the worst exploitation happening? Where are the sweatshops mostly?” “I’m not the expert on this but I have heard some horrible things about Bangladesh and the fashion industry.” She said, “I will never buy anything named Bangladesh again.”
I said, “That seems like a very easy solution but think about the young ladies who work in the garment industry. They are not getting paid well. If we could get convinced everybody to stop buying any fashion made in Bangladesh, what would happen? Those young ladies who are not making much, make nothing. I guarantee you, they ended up being exploited and sold for sex.”
It looks like there’s an easy answer but this is not an easy issue to tackle. There are no easy answers. The fact that there’s awareness and we are able to get on social media and say, “Tell me about your supply chain.” We can ask big companies. We can go on Twitter and say, “Nike, tell me about your supply chain. Who’s making these shoes? Apple, who’s making these phones?”
That accountability and the transparency that we are allowed with the internet increase the accountability but it also does lift that level of employment. I have read lots about Nike and they’ve got called out in serious ways but now they create almost little towns. They are still getting their products made but that accountability and people saying, “We want better supply chains,” has created that space where they are providing better jobs.
*It’s needed. There are two parts to this question. The first part is, I don’t want to pick on China in particular because I know there are many countries, why doesn’t the country itself try to stop this type of exploitation and why would they allow their own children, the future of their existence, to be exploited and traumatized in this way?*
Going back to a job is better than no job. That is true. The children are the future but in different cultures, they have very different perspectives on the value of people. China is the one that I can speak on with a little more understanding because of living there for many years. If you go back to Mao, who was saying, “Have more kids. The more kids we have, the more powerful we are. The more, the stronger.” You have too many people to feed. There are all sorts of things that feed into this but you’ve got this massive population. Many of them are living in extreme poverty and are incredibly vulnerable to the stereotypes, perceptions, and prejudice that are within their own country.
A huge component of a social enterprise is to look at your supply chain and how much you're really giving back.
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We have certain thoughts on people that come from a certain region of the world. We have certain perceptions about people who come from certain states in our own country. We all have biases and these preconceived notions but it is very India and China because of these massive populations, just trying to provide the basics for life can sometimes be overwhelming when you’ve got that many people.
You have a part of the population, a segment of the population. That’s fine. They are doing well and financially, they are stable but then you have a massive population that’s living in extreme poverty. No one is saying, “It’s good to exploit our children,” but they justify things by saying, “These are poor people. They don’t have any other options. This is still creating jobs.” I’m not sure exactly what they say. No one is saying, “Abuse my child.”
*I do get that and I realized in a way it was a naive question. It was important for you to share what you did about the fact that there is this thought process that goes on. Let’s shift gears for a minute. As a company owner, you have an obligation to your shareholders to make the most money and to have the highest levels of profit. Having the highest levels of profit and making the most money means that you must buy your materials at the lowest possible prices and sell them at the highest possible prices.*
*Where does that leave you when you are in a position where you might be able to buy a scarf for less money but you don’t like the environment that’s made in versus buying that scarf for more money? How do you make these decisions? Is it all based on your social conscience or the nuts and bolts of running a business and a P&L, for that matter?*
The P&L doesn’t end up as strong but generating as much money, revenue as I can for my shareholders is very conventional for-profit thinking. That’s not a social enterprise. Therefore, I don’t call myself a business owner. I call myself a social entrepreneur because I am using business strategies but I am not all about, “How much money can I make? How much revenue can we generate?”
Our purpose, goal, and the way we measure success or not is how many hours of dignified employment have we provided for those who are vulnerable and have been trafficked? It’s very contrary to the traditional business mindset. We have to make money. It’s all about the margins. It’s all about the P&L, “Get me better margins. I want to pay a lower price.”
There are elements of that. The more pieces I order, the less, I may have to pay per piece but am I paying the same price for a necklace? I’m going to go into a whole other thing. People would say, “Who are the competitors for Made For Freedom?” I would say, “In the fashion industry, we have a lot of competitors. The fashion industry is huge. We have a lifestyle brand because we carry bath and body, textiles, jewelry, and all sorts of things because we have found partners working with survivors that make those products. Our selection is huge.”
“Who are your competitors?” “Competition in the fashion world is pretty steep. A lot of fashion companies are paying the lowest price they can and looking for the biggest margins so they can generate the most revenue they can. If you are talking to social enterprise, companies that I would consider on the same playing field as us because I don’t think I’m on the same playing field as most jewelry companies or most fashion companies. We have a much bigger mission and goal. That’s making this world a better place using fashion, and Bath & Body to accomplish that.”
Sex Trafficking: The accountability and transparency that we are allowed with the internet increased the accountability, but it also does lift the level of employment. *Economics would support that because buyers are now more discriminated about where they spend their money than ever before. As we talk about segments of the population, for those who can afford nice things, there is an element of, “If I’m going to buy that, will I then be doing good with my money or am I buying something that will be donated two years later or thrown away?”*
*What happens here is that you have raised the consciousness of buyers by offering products with a purpose and made with a mission. I love that element of what you are doing. I feel as if we could probably go on for hours about this. I applaud what you are doing. I love a pair of pants someday. If you ever go find a source for those, I will be one of your first customers and for everyone in my family as well. At this point, I would like to transition to a little bit more about you.*
I had last thought about the business thing. Are you familiar with B corp?
*Yes.*
That is a huge game-changer in the social enterprise realm. It says, “We have to look at a profit but we also have to look at people and our planet.” Wrapping that conversation about generating as much profit as possible. It’s not just about that.
*What we are talking about is the difference between social profit and financial profit. Both are valuable. Some people would say that social profit is more valuable than financial profits. The only difference is you must make a profit to keep even a B corp running and without some profit, there’s no point because then nothing is self-sustaining. Profit is always a component but it’s how that profit is generated. That is important to not everyone but to many people.*
*This goes back to what I was about to do, which was to get into your values just a little bit. We do that with some silly questions. I love them. They have been used for over 275 shows. Every answer is unique. Even if people use the same idea, the answer is different. I’m going to start with this question and see where it takes us.*
*Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with? It has to be one, although I know people cheat all the time and anyone who reads this show knows that. If you have two, I will take them. I like to go with one because this way you can get into why because the real question is who but it’s the why that makes it more interesting.*
I would have to say, Jesus. He is giving sacrificially and loving people well. That’s what drives my life because of my relationship with him but being able to take a walk in the park, have lunch and coffee would be pretty incredible.
We have to look at a profit, but we also have to look at people and our planet.
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*I can’t promise anything but if I can arrange that for you, do you mind if I hang out in the background and listen to that conversation?*
We would love it.
*A lot of people bring up Mr. J quite often. The reasons are fascinating and every reason is different. The most important thing is the wisdom of this man and who he was. It allows everyone to be creative about why. People love things and other people for reasons. There are so many different reasons that people follow Jesus Christ or a religious figure in general.*
*That, to me, is the most fascinating part. Thank you for sharing that. I’m about to ask you the grand finale question. This is what we call the change the world question. I have a feeling what your answer is going to be but I’m going to ask it anyway. What is it that you were doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?*
Sex Trafficking: Social entrepreneurs don’t care about money. They care about the hours of dignified employment they’ve provided for those who are vulnerable. Let me just summarize it with our tagline, “We are fighting human trafficking with style.”
*If this show ends up being read by one person who changes their trajectory in life and makes a single decision differently because of reading this, then it was worth it. There are things like world hunger. No one can fix world hunger. It is a problem that requires the collective brilliance, wealth of a country, and maybe an entire population or a civilization to change. By being more aware of it, we could change it a little bit every day. That’s what I think you are doing.*
*On behalf of all those people, I want to thank you for doing so and bringing awareness to a show like this because this is not typically what we talk about but it was fascinating to me how you did it. That’s why I invited you on as a guest. I know you have a cool free gift. Can you tell us a little bit about that?*
If you go to MadeForFreedom.com, you will see a banner up at the top and it says something about Red Flags. Download the free PDF for the Red Flags. This is something people want to know more about. People want to be better educated about this and hear stories about what’s going on. Something that’s important is to know what to look for. What are the risk factors? What are the red flags?
‘We are fighting human trafficking with style.’
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If you are out shopping, you see a young lady and you think something might be off because of the person she’s with her. She seems like she’s being controlled or something, are you aware? Do you know what to look for? What are the red flags? If there’s someone sitting next to you on a plane, how do you approach that? What are the risk factors?
The PDF also has some of the things that you can do to help get involved because I also find that people want to know more but then once you have a better understanding of this, many people want to do more and say, “What can I do to get more involved?” If people are interested, there’s a link on our page that says Go DEEP. That is about how you can get more involved and raise awareness with your group of friends and family, and how you can be part of the solution.
*It has been a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and spreading the word. Hopefully, we made a difference.*
Thank you so much for having me.
Important Links: * GetClientFolio.com * Dawn Manske * Evolved Enterprise * Mavericks * Red Flags * Go DEEP
About Dawn Manske The hidden camera captured a supposed ten-year-old Cambodian girl, who is likely six or seven years old, offering oral sex (a.k.a. “yum yum”) to a foreigner for $10.* This scenario embodies the world of slavery, shame, and abuse in which hundreds of thousands of women and children live every day.
The 10 years I spent living in China prior to seeing the video from this undercover investigation helped me understand the unbalance produced by the devaluation of the girl child and exposed me to poverty levels I had never seen before. Nothing I encountered in my travels, however, prepared me to watch a video exposing the darkest facets of the Cambodian sex trade. Watching this mini-documentary in 2007 my introduction to learning about sex trafficking. I was overwhelmed by the depravity and scope of the issue. As I continued to learn about trafficking over the next several years, I desperately wanted to see this horror and injustice come to an end, yet I had no idea what could be done from St. Louis, Missouri.
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The post Made For Freedom: Fighting Sex Trafficking Around The World With Dawn Manske appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Most companies exhaust all their resources just to create the right ads to generate even the smallest amount of sales. Persuasive copywriter, marketing coach, and Game of Conversions founder, Csaba Borzási, is here to help you unleash your sales pages’ true money-making potential. Csaba sits with Mitch Russo to talk about the lessons he learned from his journey into the minds of the top copywriters in the world. Csaba shares how he struggled to get his business off the ground at the beginning of his career and how he managed to create profitable marketing campaigns that actually make money through direct response copywriting. Stay tuned as Csaba helps us discover the essential fundamentals of the whole world of direct response marketing.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Why Your Sales Pages Don’t Convert And How To Change That With Csaba Borzási I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized I have been spending about 30 minutes per session on admin between my sessions. I had five applications open all at the same time. One for note taking, calendar, spreadsheet, browser, Zoom, all past session history scattered over two huge screens for each session that I had to close all that down and combine all those notes into a single email and send it to my client before I could start my next session.
This was getting to be quite a bit of a time drain after having 5, 6 active clients at the same time. I decided to get some professional coaching software. I couldn’t make anything work for me. I thought it was all too complex and expensive as well until I made a decision to do what all great entrepreneurs should do, which is when you find the problem that is unsolved, you solve it. That’s what I attempted to do.
A few years ago, I started this project and in 2021, I released ClientFol.io. It is a complete professional coaching platform, which you could use for only $20 a month and there’s no limitation on the number of clients, notes, accountability questions, goals. It even has a portal for your clients to log in and do a lot of this work on their own. You don’t have to spend your valuable time doing what I would call $10 an hour work. If you would like to get started and check it out, you can simply go to GetClientfolio.com, and test drive it for 14 days for $1. Give it a shot and see if you like it.
Onto my guest and his incredible story. Maybe you will identify with my guest’s journey as a new business owner. He had no idea why his ads, emails, and funnels were not working, no matter how many experts he hired to help him figure it out, the problem persisted. He was struggling. In a casual conversation with a more successful entrepreneur, he asked him what he thought the problem was.
After checking out my guest’s pages, he came right out with it. He said, “Your copy sucks.” He was right. It was the copy. My guest decided to do something that not many people would take the effort and time to do. This journey took him inside the minds of the top copywriters in the world. He’s here to share those lessons with us. Welcome, Csaba Borzási, to the show.
It’s great to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I love the intro.
Csaba, tell us how this all got started for you.
I was born and raised in a small town of 15,000 people in Transylvania, Romania. However, I am ethnically Hungarian. A Hungarian living in Romania in the Transylvania Region, which you all know from the movies, Dracula, and stuff like that. As you might imagine, the culture there is different compared to the culture in the States. This had pretty sophisticated and significant implications on my career as a freelance copywriter and as a business owner as well.
Sales Pages: If you’re in sales and you know that there are salespeople that you could model, if you’re not modeling them, then you’re just stabbing in the dark and you’ll be average and mediocre. But if you do model them and maybe even pay them to mentor you and train you, then you could become the best in the world. Since it was under communism for 50 plus years, most people realized that to survive, you have to be average and stay under the radar. You have to not try to be different, not try to build a personal brand because then the secret police will take you away. This thing created a big wound in our collective subconscious there. Even to this day, and my parents as well, they want to protect people and want people not to venture outside of the beaten path. This was an interesting challenge for me but it also had its own perks.
Living as you were in Transylvania, what made you make the decision to emerge from this communist thinking of which it makes perfect sense the way you described it, if you try to do anything significant, it’s scary. I can imagine how might be that way. What made you decide to go pass that and go beyond that? Were others influencing you at the time?
I was always a black sheep in my family. Both of my parents are engineers. They are good at systems and following different frameworks but I always felt like I wanted to do something more. Early on, even when I was a kid, I realized that, “I always loved reading. I love reading stuff that was different compared to what the school loved.” I was always interested in learning other stuff that they don’t teach at school. My mission early on became to get as close as possible to understanding how the world, including how the human mind works. This is the thing that started me down, this rabbit hole to study more about Psychology, Business, and Marketing.
That’s why when it came time to go to university, I wanted to apply for a Psychology degree but I applied to business because I felt like it would give me more chances to land the job. However, after a few years, I realized that it was okay but I didn’t enjoy it that much. I started a Psychology degree as well, and then I finished both. The cool thing about this part of Europe is that most degrees are free or they are super inexpensive. You can take almost as many as you would like.
You took advantage of the situation, which is brilliant. All along as you began this journey, you now emerged with a double degree business and psychology graduate. Where did you go next and what did you do?
I also wanted a PhD. I was always interested in becoming a scholar. I wanted to pursue a career in PhD and do something and learn more about Behavioral Economics. I applied to a few places. It was super competitive and I didn’t get in. I wasted half a year pursuing this dream, and then I realized I want to try my luck in the private sector. I’ve got hired at IBM as a sales support specialist, which was a great job but it was a back-office job. It was super safe. It has its own systems, processes, and everything.
After a few years, I realized that I want more. I wouldn’t take average or mediocre. I became a direct salesperson for a wealth management company, which had its own challenges but I left pretty early on because I realized that they were basically scamming people or ripping people off, and I didn’t like that. That was the specific moment in time when I realized that I want to become a copywriter like a direct response copywriter. Few of my friends have been doing this before. They told me cool things about it. When I’ve got started with copywriting, it sucked me in. It was exactly what I have been looking for throughout my life.
The journey that I talked about is this moment in time when you made this decision to study and double down on persuasive copy and copywriting. What made you decide to study 100 different writers, mail pieces or direct response pieces? What made you make that decision?
Always research. You have to become your market. You have to understand their pains, fears, hopes, and dreams.
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Like almost everyone else, I started by buying a few courses, reading a lot of books, started working on different projects for clients. I was always in the middle of the action in the trenches. I enjoyed that because I learned a lot but even after a few years, I realized that I’m learning about all these templates, formulas, copywriting hacks, and stuff like that but it’s not clicking. I’m still not getting the essence of it. I wanted to discover the essential fundamentals of the whole world of direct response marketing, not just copywriting.
At that time, I heard about people like Brian Kurtz, Jay Abraham, John Carlton, and a lot of high-quality A-list copywriters and marketers, who always talked about getting back to the roots and about people like John Caples, Gary Bencivenga, Eugene Schwartz, Gary Halbert, and Claude Hopkins who invented scientific advertising many years ago. I wanted to discover what the fuss is all about. That was the main idea behind doing this 100-Day Proven Sales Letter Breakdown Challenge. It was one of the best things that I have ever done.
First of all, you named all of my stars, all the people that I have read and followed for years. When I was learning how to develop film in photography school many years ago, after we practiced in class, fumbled through, and screwed up some of the reels and all this other stuff, the teacher said, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go into those.” They were closets that were completely 100% pitch black and the goal was to load the film in the dark. It took us a while. We’ve got one reel fully loaded in the dark.
If no one knows what I’m talking about, the film used to be cameras would film in them and now it’s coming back a little bit. To develop a film, you need to put it on a reel and that reel then gets immersed in a developer and process. It took me 45 minutes or so to get that one reel perfect. I came out and I was so proud of it. At that point, the teacher said, “Go back into the closet, unload that film, and reload it 100 times in the dark.” He said, “If you screw up once, you have to start over from the beginning, start the count over from 1 and go to 100.” I did that and it took me all night.
From that point on, I never ever fouled a roll, missed a roll or misload ever again because of that exercise. It reminded me of your 100-letter challenge because once you study some of the best-written pieces in the world, then you would study 100 of them in a row and you break them down, you are going to learn it. Not many people are committed the way you were when you did that to do what they are doing, the way may know they need to.
For example, if you are in sales and you know that there are salespeople that you could model, if you are not modeling them, then you are stabbing in the dark. You will be average and mediocre but if you do model them and maybe even pay them to mentor and train you, then you could become some of the best in the world as if it seems that was your path. Tell us a little bit more about the process. Tell us where we should begin when we are beginning to sit down and analyze or write a great piece of copy.
The biggest first step is always research. A lot of people overlook this. It seems to be like this enigmatic thing, “You have to become your market. You have to understand their pains, fears, hopes and dreams,” but what does that even mean in most cases? A lot of people overcomplicate this. You can research on a very high level and spend weeks or maybe even months. Some old-school copywriters used to spend months on research. In that way, you are going to understand your market way better.
In most cases, you don’t necessarily have to do that much research. You just have to understand what’s the urgent problem that your ideal customer avatar is having. What is their core number one desire? What are their beliefs? What are their false beliefs? That’s very important because most people have false beliefs when it comes to anything in the world. You also have to keep in mind that they have tried a lot of similar solutions before compared to what you are offering them. They have been burned and frustrated.
Sales Pages: You have to keep in mind that people have tried a lot of similar solutions before, compared to what you are offering them. So, what can you communicate so that they perceive your solution as something that’s different and that’s superior compared to anything else they’ve seen before? What can you do? What can you communicate so that they give you another chance and perceive your solution as something that’s different and superior compared to anything else they have seen before? Agora is good at this. They work in the financial newsletter industry and it is a super competitive market. People there are right-wing people and older in general. There is also a fantasy name for their avatar called Grandpa Kurt.
It’s very important to give them a big idea. To give them an idea that they can put new faith in. The whole purpose of research in my opinion is to gather all the information needed so that you can establish this new one belief in people so that they give you a chance. If you can do this properly and your whole sales argument works, it establishes this one belief. Once you establish this, the game is almost won because by then selling becomes superfluous.
I have never heard it broken down that simply and beautifully before. The whole idea is to identify their current belief, then shake that loose at some level by presenting an even better key idea, and then helping them to become a believer in that idea. From there, leading them down the pathway to start executing around that new idea that you have installed. Is that what you said?
Yes. One more thing I would like to add to this is the concept of transformation. Most people are buying transformations. They are not buying products, features, and even benefits. They are buying the transformation. Again, another great example is the weight loss industry. They are good at before and after transformations. That’s how that whole industry operates.
Having written copy for years as well but not at your level, the research part is almost a part where people would like to skip. They say, “This is my market. I know this market. You can’t teach me anything. There is no point in doing research because I’m not going to learn anything I didn’t learn before.” I would imagine that’s a big misconception. That’s why you have to do this research. You said it before, the research that we are doing here is to identify that core belief that they have.
This is one of the most important parts of it. What I have talked about is researching the customer avatar but you also have to research your competition and your own offer as well because what most people do is that they give people a mediocre offer. Again, a lot of people don’t know is that the most successful offers are not created product first, and then selling the product. They are created from the bottom up. Pre-selling the idea, verifying that idea, minimum viable product, and then building out the product, if it’s sold.
I am guilty of having built the product first. In the beginning, I talked about ClientFol.io, my SaaS platform. I created the product for myself, to be honest. I didn’t even know if anybody would care to use it but as soon as people started seeing it, they’ve got excited and asked me if they could. That’s when I realized, “I’m going to commercialize this. I’m going to put in the necessary work to turn it into a finely tuned platform for coaches.” You have mentioned that you had taken a look at my page, the ClientFol.io sales page, do you want to tell me a little bit about what you found?
I went to ClientFol.io. It’s a good page. it’s obvious that it wasn’t written by an amateur. The design looks good. It seems conversion-optimized from a UX, user experience perspective. We talked about research. I don’t know the specifics at this point. I don’t know the specific customer avatar, how it’s performing, and the heat maps, if you have heat maps on this. This is a little bit shooting in the dark but in most cases, when it comes to communicating a persuasive sales message, it doesn’t matter if it’s a sales page, video, Facebook ad or email campaign, the same things apply.
A lot of people totally over-complicate research when in fact, you just have to understand the urgent problem that your ideal avatar is having, what is their core number one desire?
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The biggest low hanging fruit on this page seems to be a lack of an underlying narrative. There are a lot of great sections that are great on their own but they seem to be random, at least to me. As you presented the story here on the show it made sense. It’s like an archetypical invention story. “I had this problem. I tried a lot of different solutions. Nothing worked, so then I invented something, and then now it’s my mission to share it with others because so many people have been asking for it.” That’s a great story template that works well.
What I felt when going through the page itself, and I’m not talking about the video was pretty good but the page itself seems a little random. We talked about the one belief. Here’s what you want to communicate. This new opportunity is the key to your number one desire and it’s only available through my unique mechanism. This is what you want to communicate with any sales message. The new opportunity can be this new software, too.
I’m not exactly sure what’s the number one desire for the target market that probably to grow their business and to have more confidence or something like that. It’s only attainable through my unique mechanism. This unique mechanism part, I felt like it was missing. This was a biggie. It seems to me that you are doing something differently. Why do we call it a unique mechanism instead of just a mechanism? A unique mechanism, we first do the system, process, framework or the methods behind your product or service that produces the result and it is proprietary. The best unique mechanisms are proprietary.
P90X Muscle Confusion, that’s a unique mechanism. It’s not about the benefits but it’s about how you get results for people. A great tip for most coaches, consultants, experts or authors, when they are working with clients they want to communicate on their own sales page, how their process is different. If I were to tell you my unique mechanism as a copywriter, for example, I would start with spending more time on research like we did because a lot of people skip this part. I would talk about gathering stories and a lot of voice of customer data so that we know how to talk in a way that the market talks.
I would talk about how my process works step by step, how I construct the sales argument, how I create the headline, the lead, and the big idea. This was one of the key things. One other thing that’s related to this that I felt was a little bit missing was the unique selling proposition. What’s the difference between a unique mechanism and a selling proposition? The unique mechanism relates to how you get the result and the unique selling proposition answers the following question of, “If I am coach consultant or expert, why should I try ClientFol.io rather than any other tool to help me grow my business?” A gentleman named Rosser Reeves came up with this in the ’60s.
You want to give them a compelling, quick, rationale for why this is different. I came up with something. It’s a little rough around the edges but as I was going through the page, I don’t know which benefit is the most important one because I don’t have that research. I feel like the answer to this question is that because ClientFol.io is the only client management app designed specifically for coaches, consultants and experts. That’s one.
You want to give them three. It’s super easy to use, works on any device and saves you from all the admin burden while running your business, so you can get better results for your clients and return the joy of helping them. As I opened up the page, I wanted to see the message behind this unique selling proposition communicated directly because I feel like the current headline might not do it justice.
I also want to make a point here, when anyone is ever giving you criticism or help, never interrupt them and give them reasons why you did something. Say thank you, keep listening and take notes, which is exactly what I’m doing now because this is gold. When you are working with somebody at Csaba’s level, you can get enormous benefits by being open and receiving this great information.
Sales Pages: Identify their current belief, then shake that loose at some level by presenting an even better key idea, and then help them become a believer in that idea. I wanted to externalize the process a little bit for anyone who’s reading this so that they could see it for themselves exactly what’s going on. You are right, by the way. Others, again, might relate to this is that the original page was written and laid out. It was published as the product came out last March of 2021. What ended up happening is that we had conversion issues and we brought in somebody who could potentially clean up, make or assist in making the copy better.
They did what they did and I helped a little bit but nothing dramatic until we brought in somebody else who made a lot of suggestions and a lot of key changes. That’s where the narrative got broken. We had too many cooks in this stew. That underlying story that I told at the beginning of the show was missing on the page now because one of the multiple people who were involved in this must have felt it, was not as compelling as I did when I wrote it.
That clarifies a lot of things. It’s so funny. When I was reading it, I felt like some of these in some places, this message seems like it has multiple personality disorders and it’s true, which brings me to another big point that I mentioned the underlying narrative. This is the biggest issue with the message. I have the most experienced in the world of long-form copywriting or long-form messages. That’s what I like the most.
A gentleman named Evaldo Albuquerque, who’s one of the most successful copywriters at Agora Financial. He single-handedly created the most winners in 2018, 2019 or something, and he’s Brazilian. His native tongue is not even English just like me but he came up with this great framework called The 16-Word Sales Letter.
One part of it is the one belief that we talked about. It’s exactly the same but the other is that he came up with ten questions that you have to basically go through when you want to persuade someone to do something. It’s super useful because you are shifting the whole perspective from your point of view to the customers. While asking these questions, you are preemptively answering all the objections in the right order. This is very important. Dan Kennedy also talked about this a lot. You have to do it in the right order. Otherwise, it creates disharmony in people.
The ten questions are super short by the way. The first is, “How is this unique?” That’s what the headline, the lead, the first few words or 100 words of the promotion basically answer. This is the unique selling proposition that we talked about. The second question is, “What’s in it for me?” That’s the place where you talk about the number 1 benefit or the top 3 benefits.
“How do I know this is real?” There, you immediately give proof points. Gary Bencivenga is another famous copywriter who is all about proof. You make a promise. Everybody can make promises. That’s how you identify average copy is that it’s hyped up. It’s all proof. I’m not saying your message hype up because it’s not at all but some immediate proof after the promise helps people move through the message.
The fourth question is, “What’s holding me back?” This relates to the false beliefs. How come people who are already successful coaches and consultants never tried something like this before? Is there something wrong with them? Probably not because the next question is, “Who’s to blame for past failures?” This is the common enemy. “It’s not your fault. You have been misled. You have been so busy trying to grow the business that you ended up working in your business instead of working on your business.” If you give them, some great elements here, it moves them through the slippery slope.
Most people are not buying products, they're not buying features. They are buying the transformation.
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The next question is, “Why now? I understand and I haven’t tried something like this before for various reasons but why should I give this a try now?” This is the place where you have to give them compelling reasons why they should do something now and why they cannot put this off anymore because their life is going to be terrible. This is where you can agitate the pain a little bit as well.
From here on out, we transitioned into the close itself because, at this point, they probably have this one belief already established. They know that this is different than they wanted but now you have to answer the questions of like, “Why should I trust you?” Give them more testimonials or proof. “How does this work? How do I order? How do I get started?” Also give them a crossroads close, which is like, “You have two options either you can continue on this path but then nothing will change, you are going to keep struggling or try this. It’s risk-free and you cannot lose.”
I love the fact that you kept bringing in the references to the people who you learned from. I worked briefly with a guy named Jon Benson. When I worked with him, one of his big things was the whole, “Who’s to blame for the past failure?” Jon did a great job of building the case quickly, removing blame for failure and converting it from a feeling of despair into a feeling of hope. I don’t know if there are others that do it better but he was a master in the work I did with him.
He is really good. He’s the so-called inventor of the Video Sales Letter. He places a big emphasis on the nightmare story and the emotional side of this. Other people like Clayton Makepeace, for example, another great copywriter was good at this, also John Carlton and Gary Halbert. This is something that a lot of people in the SaaS industry don’t have the courage to do because they feel like, “It’s B2B. What if it sounds a little too much? What if I alienate people?” The truth is that you have to be polarizing a little bit.
How do you get around the thought? One of my limiting beliefs is that, “Who wants to sit and read an entire long sales page?” That has stopped me many times from elaborating further. In fact, many times that feeling alone has led me to go back and chop out big sections of anything I write because I think, “I don’t feel like I want to sit down and read all this stuff.” Give me an idea of how you view that statement as a limiting belief.
A lot of people have this belief. The more physical products you sell, the more you have this belief in general. Online creators don’t have this because they are more used to long copy but the thing I do is, the more belief shifting you have to do, the longer your copy or sales letter has to be. Some people asked me, “How long should this be? Tell me the amount of words.” It depends on how many objections you have to answer, how much belief shifting you have to do, and how complex your product is.
In ClientFol.io‘s case, it’s a relatively complex product because it includes so many different things. On the other hand, it’s a very affordable product, which means that you don’t need that much copy. These two things balance each other out. For most people, I recommend that they still try something that feels almost uncomfortably long. Copywriting is salesmanship in print. This is what most people call it. It’s trying to simulate the one-on-one sales conversation.
If you think about great door-to-door salespeople like Gary Halbert was, for example, in the beginning. If you go to a prospect and you start to talk to them, sometimes the conversation might take an hour-long or half an hour long. You can’t sell them something in five minutes in most cases. Would you leave them there even though they have questions? Probably not.
Sales Pages: You want to communicate that this new opportunity is the key to their number one desire, and it’s only available through your unique mechanism. It’s a huge mistake because the people who are not going to buy anyway, they don’t care if it’s a long copy or short copy but a lot of people are losing tons of extra customers because those people didn’t get the answer to their objections or questions. This is important but for this to work, your copy has to be good, and not boring and not confusing because then long copy becomes a burden, then long copy doesn’t work.
The reason why most people think long copy doesn’t work is because their copy sucks. That’s the truth. If I were to create a sales letter or a long form article, 50 pages let’s say or something, and the headline would be something like, “Mitch Russo’s Top Ten Dirtiest Secrets That His Mother Doesn’t Even Know About,” you will probably read it. If it’s relevant to you as the target audience for that specific message, you would read it. That’s what you have to do with your sales messages as well but it’s hard because you have to do the research and other stuff.
It is hard. I hope you’ve learned as much as I have. To apply the ten questions and think about the research in advance, these are all so important. These are things that I, myself, could have done a better job on. If you are reading this, do those things, think about your own copy, and think about maybe even taking a fresh approach after reading this and seeing what changes once you do.
Csaba, we are at a point where we get to talk a little bit about you instead of copy. The way we do that is by asking a couple of questions. At least two and some people have called them silly questions. That’s fine with me because the bottom line is we get to know the person this way. Part of what I want to do is make sure people know you. The first question is a reflection of your values. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
There are so many people who come to mind but I would say, Winston Churchill. First of all, he was a great orator. He was a prolific writer. He was a wartime leader who had tons of character flaws as well but he’s the man who mobilized the entire English language and sent people into battle. He was great at establishing the common enemy. He was great at shifting beliefs as we talked about. He was a great copywriter also, someone who was so good at many things. I would be interested in having a conversation with him and just learning.
What an interesting conversation that would be. He was quite a flawed character. In fact, he was the eleventh choice to be the chancellor. He was not initially chosen. In fact, he was way down the list but by the time that choice was made, the war had already started and it was critical. The time was dire and he stepped in and saved England. He did an incredible job. There would be so much to learn from him. Thank you for sharing that. That makes a lot of sense.
One more thing, he was a very interesting character. This is a great marketing and copywriting lesson as well. If you have someone, a character, who’s very good at something but has no flaws, no internal conflict, only outside conflict, then it’s a boring story. The thing that makes the story especially interesting is how he was so good at cultivating his own cult of personality while also dealing with his own internal issues and the external war. If you study storytelling, there’s always like the internal and the external journey that our character goes through.
Thanks again for bringing him up. This is what we call the grand finale question. It’s the change the world question. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
When anyone is giving you criticism or help, never interrupt them and give them reasons why you did something, just say thank you and keep listening and taking notes.
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I would like to help more people become better communicators and be better at creating persuasive messages without being sleazy. Imagine how much more efficient the world would be if anyone would be able to persuasively convey a helpful message and the emphasis on helpful and ethical that can help someone else. Again, it’s shifting the beliefs of stubborn people, for example, how much more efficient the world would be.
It’s a great mission. Helping people learn to communicate better is an incredible mission and it would serve everyone, whether it’s selling or helping others understand your point of view. We have a lack of that in the society now. People are very close-minded and polarized. Better communication skills would allow us to open up the society a little bit better and hear what people need. Maybe once you understand what people need, it would be easier to relate to that and communicate as well. Now, we get to what I think of as an awesome free gift. This is something that you have perfected over time and used many times yourself. Tell us a little bit about what this is.
I want to give the audience of this show something I call the secret copy recipe, which is the recipe behind these 100 Proven Sales Letter Breakdown. I learned tons of things about doing these things. I also created daily breakdown videos of these letters. I didn’t just passively break those down but instead, every single day I turned on the camera and analyzed it. I tried to teach it back so that I learn even more.
Everything is on YouTube. There’s a free playlist. It’s 100 hours of content but the problem with this is that it might be too much for people. Most people ask, “What’s the top ten things? What are the top five things?” This is what I created. It’s a cool cheat sheet that includes the most important elements. They are very similar to all the elements that we talked about on this show.
I’m super confident that if you take this and apply it to your own marketing, you are going to see blockbuster results with this because you are getting what I consider to be the ultimate persuasive message formula that you can customize to your own offer. You can use it for a sales page, an email campaign, a Facebook ad, and a YouTube ad, it doesn’t matter. It’s going to help you. You are also getting a pre-flight checklist that reveals instantly gaping holes in your copy. You can fix a lot of the things that I talked about during the show itself.
I want to mention that I have been on your list, getting your emails, and downloaded the copywriting secrets gift that you are offering. It’s interesting because I’m a very big 80/20 guy. I would rather invest 20% of the work and get 80% of the result than try and invest a lot more time to get the incremental difference, and it delivers. There are some great tips and elements of what you are sharing.
As you talked about here, the ten questions and more that will help somebody in a few minutes to see the potential holes or flaws in what they have written. I would highly suggest that you go check that out. Csaba, this has been a fantastic conversation. I want to thank you for choosing my sales page to breakdown because it was helpful to me. I appreciate it.
Thank you. It was my pleasure.
Important Links: * GetClientFolio.com * Csaba Borzási * Agora * The 16-Word Sales Letter * 100-Day Proven Sales Letter Breakdown Challenge – YouTube * Video Sales Letter
About Csaba Borzási Hi, I’m Csaba, and online entrepreneurs hire me to engineer profitable marketing funnels and persuasive sales messages…
Because most are struggling with “leaky” funnels, low conversion rates, and weak copy.
So I help them identify & fix their biggest leaks and upgrade their conversion systems.
Bottom line: I help them create consistent cash flow while impacting more people around them.
However, that wasn’t always the case…
For years, I struggled to get my business off the ground and create profitable marketing campaigns that actually make money, but was getting nowhere and I was at the end of my rope.
Then I decided to go all-in and master the timeless fundamentals of the “ultimate persuasive skill”, direct response copywriting…
Going as far as breaking down 100 proven sales letters in 100 days to uncover the master secrets of the most elite copywriters of all time.
(while documenting my process through daily YouTube videos).
Today, I help ambitious online businesses convert more casual leads into high-AOV customers and plug the holes in their “leaky” funnels.
In fact, I recently created a FREE cheat sheet that reveals the “Secret Recipe” behind these mega-successful ads…
Including how YOU can apply the same principles to your own marketing for BLOCKBUSTER response… in just 15 minutes!
Here’s your chance to get the most powerful marketing and copywriting secrets of all time (stolen directly from decades of multi-million dollar promotions)!
Even a single one of these proven formulas can make your marketing wickedly effective, almost overnight.
Just tell me where to send your FREE cheat sheet today and I’ll hook you up ASAP.
PLUS, you’ll also get my mega-popular “39 Proven Headline Formulas”…
Along with a free subscription to my weekly newsletter breaking down each one of these 100 legendary ads in an in-depth video essay…
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The post Why Your Sales Pages Don’t Convert And How To Change That With Csaba Borzási appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Scalar energy was first discovered and harnessed by Nikola Tesla. It’s a technology far superior to that of electricity, and yet, barely anyone has touched it. That is until the founder of Scalar Light, Tom Paladino, arrived in the energy space. Tom has researched for over 20 years on scalar energy and believes that it’s the solution to human health. Learn how he started his business just like every other entrepreneur out there. Discover his business model and how it differentiates itself from everyone in the market. Join Mitch Russo as he talks to Tom about the study of scalar energy and how you can harness it. Experience the power of light energy today!
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Listen to the podcast here: Understanding The Power Of Scalar Energy To Human Health With Tom Paladino Welcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in and extract wisdom you can use to grow your business. I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized that I had been spending about 30 minutes per session on admin because I had five applications open all at the same time.
I got tired of spending all this extra time, particularly during my peak cognitive periods where I could do the most work helping others. Instead, I searched for software to help me manage my coaching clients. I couldn’t find any that allowed me to do what I wanted to do. I did what all great entrepreneurs should do when they find a problem that cannot be solved.
I solved it myself and created a software platform for coaches. It’s called ClientFol.io, and it does everything you need and nothing you don’t, and allows you to simply access all of your client records on one screen, admin them after you conduct them in five minutes, and then move on to your next client. Go to ClientFol.io, and check it out.
Onto my guest and his incredible story. Studying the work of Nikola Tesla, my guest was introduced to scalar energy. Tesla spoke of the spores in the universe, and when he died, many of his future inventions died with him too. Yet the seeds were sown, a discovery was made, and a man was inspired to take this to the world. That’s where this story begins. Welcome, Tom Paladino, to the show.
Thank you for the invitation.
It’s my pleasure. It’s great to have you here. You and I have crossed paths over the years and I’m glad we finally get a chance to do a deep dive into what you do. Tell me a little bit about how this all started for you.
I am working with scalar energy but some people call it zero-point energy. It was first discovered and harnessed by Nikola Tesla. The energy that I’m working with is not electricity or magnetism. It’s scalar energy. With that in mind, I believe it offers great prospects to mankind. It’s a technology far superior to that of electricity. I’m a scalar energy researcher. I began my career when I was a youngster and started to read about Nikola Tesla. Tesla was the impetus behind my career and I marveled at what he could do. To this day, he’s unmatched and unparalleled. We will speak about Tesla and how he more or less shaped my academic career.
Like you, I became fascinated with Thomas Alva Edison. I studied all of his work and read all of his books. I ran the library out of books on Thomas Edison and then shifted to broader topics about electromagnetism and electricity. This was in the 1960s. I can relate to having that hunger and discovery process that drives us. How old were you when you made the connection between what you’re doing now, which is using scalar energy to heal others, provide nutritional support, and some of the other things that your products do? How did all that start?
Always look at your predecessors and thank them for giving you the foundation of your learning.
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It started with Tesla. Tesla alluded to the fact that scalar energy could be used to improve human health. As early as the age of 8 or 9, I knew that this was therapeutic energy and that scalar energy would be used for therapy. Although he did not focus on that particular avenue, I took that up on my own. Nonetheless, you always look at your predecessors and thank them for giving you that learning. If Edison was your foundation, so be it. We stand upon the shoulders of these great scientists, men and women. The answer to the question, I was enthralled with Tesla to the point at the age of 8 or 9. I knew that energy could be used to enhance human health. I’ve been on that path ever since.
When did you first use it to do so?
I started to use it in 1993. It was a 30-year period of theory and I finally met an American inventor. The name was Galen Hieronymus. I was able to buy Hieronymus instruments. That was my foothold. It’s the ability to buy these instruments and start using them back in ’93 and ’94 for healing purposes. The results were demonstrable and immediate. I knew I was onto something. Even a novice like myself working with these high-tech instruments can have such great results.
I’m going to ask you to go a little bit deeper with this.
Galen Hieronymus headed a prolific career. By trading, he was an electrical engineer but he also saw the merit of this other type of energy, scalar energy. Galen was the man. There was a time in his life that the Food and Drug Administration worked with him. He worked with NASA and the US Army because they saw the benefit of this new technology. Sadly, nobody was there to continue with the work of Galen Hieronymus. I continue with his work but I’m focusing on health.
He passed away in 1988. There’s quite a body of work. The more important element of this that I’m fascinated with is how did you find out about this? Before you answer, when someone is on a quest and driven to do something, the universe tends to conspire around him to assist. I bet at some level that information was brought to you. Help us understand how that process happened to you.
I was an avid reader. I was in the library one day reading about the Hieronymus family. Something went off in my mind and I said, “I have to go meet them.” I got on the plane, flew to Georgia, and met with them. That’s part of my career. It’s the entrepreneur or the person that’s willing to get on a plane, go and meet people, and discuss matters. Through that dialogue, I developed a career working with scalar energy because I was working with that small group of experts, from reading a book to having that push from God and the Holy Spirit to the point of getting on a plane and meeting with the Hieronymus family. They took me in as their understudy. I assumed that position for years. That was rather fortuitous.
It’s wonderful that you took the initiative. That’s what this world is about. Words, thoughts, and behavior by themselves mean almost nothing. Taking action is what changes people’s lives. Clearly, you are an action taker. You did that. Let’s get into the business. When you first got started, purchased the instrument, and set up shop or whatever that you want to call that, who was your first subject?
My family. They were willing disciples at that time. I had great success with them, but it took me close to 25 years to develop a business model.
Scalar Energy: It can take you 20 years to come up with a business model and say that you have to commercialize this. You have to bring it to the general public. Otherwise, you’ll just be an obscure researcher. This is not uncommon. For many people, it takes decades sometimes to sort out and uncover the profitable formulas that work for a company no matter what product you have. You could have a soup product and either a small restaurant locally or you could turn that into an international business. It’s the talent or drive of the entrepreneur that makes that happen. You started with your family, saw results, got excited and wanted to share that with others. How did you start?
I did share with others but this is a new technology and approach. I thought about starting a business right away because I had to fund myself. I didn’t have the money, wherewithal and knowledge. For twenty years, I perfected my approach. Imagine you have to play this back in ’93 and ’94. It took me twenty years to say, “I have to go to the next step, commercialize this, and bring this out to the general public. Otherwise, I’ll just be an obscure researcher.” I started a website and I had to build and scale it.
How did I do that? It’s by radio shows, traveling and speaking at seminars, and email marketing. You name it. I’ve had to do that. As an entrepreneur and the sole owner of this enterprise, it’s on me. Nobody else gets up in the morning. I have to decide that tempo. I’m happy about that. I don’t begrudge that. Those of you who are business owners, I can relate to your struggles. There are highs and lows. You have to temper that and find your way through it. Some days are better days than others. If you keep at it, you will always succeed.
I want to add one thing to what you said. That’s true at every level but there is a factor here that’s important to remember. I’m sure you will agree with me. When you discover something isn’t working, instead of quitting, which is a failure, you pivot into something else and try that. Iteration is one of the most important elements of a successful company. As an airline flies from one location to the other, it’s constantly course-correcting, and so are we as a business. Let’s talk about some of your course corrections. When you started and got your first paying customer, what year was that?
It’s 2008.
This is important. I’m so glad you’re sharing this. I appreciate your honesty and frankness about this because you have been working on this for over a decade before you had your first paying customer. Did that come about by design or did someone come to you one day and ask you for help? You tell the story. How did that happen?
You can go from reading a book to getting a push from God to get on a plane and pursue your career.
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I had to support myself throughout my life. Keep in mind, this is groundbreaking research. You’re not going to get any grants from academia. This has never been done before so I had to support myself. There came a time in my life when I said, “I’m getting older. You simply have to take a chance.” I wasn’t happy in my position. I left and started from scratch. This was an upstart business. This is from scratch. It took time for me to build a model. I’m happy I did it. I had the wherewithal to do it, grow and scale. If I project in the next ten years, we will scale significantly. Like any business owner, I had to be prudent with my money and time, and allocate both.
In the beginning, we’re faced with a lot of difficult questions that we need to answer. Maybe the first question that many entrepreneurs struggle with is, “What do I charge?” How did you decide on your pricing in the beginning?
I wanted it to be fair and reasonable but there has to be an exchange. Nothing is free. Only God’s sunshine is free. Only God doesn’t need payback. In this role with limited resources, you need to charge and some type of fee schedule. I looked at costs, what people could afford, and what I would consider to be fair. I have monthly sessions so said to myself, “I simply want to be able to support this healing ministry. I don’t want to in any way break anybody’s bank.”
I set it up so that my costs would be hopefully significantly lower than a car payment or their electrical bill. Everybody is on a month-by-month projection. If you can make your monthly bills, you come out in the black. I said to myself, “Maybe $100 a month would be fine with people.” That model has proven to be true. You can’t ask thousands of dollars. I would never do that. Put yourself in between the water bill and the electrical bill. That’s reasonable and people honor that.
The other thing about it is that it’s inexpensive enough for people to stay on the subscription, but it’s also expensive enough to question every single month. The real question is, “Does it work?” Let’s talk about that because that’s the biggie. Why do some people get great results and others have no effect at all?
Everybody feels the benefits because I’m working with energy, and energy is fundamental. If you’re working with light energy, it does have the desired effect. It’s always, in this case, beneficial. Some people sense that and others do not sense that. Some people are much more sensitive. Some people say, “I feel great. I can’t go without this.” Others say, “I feel okay but it hasn’t been a life change.”
There are so many permutations here. We can’t account for that. That’s why I always start people off with a free session. I say, “You and decide if this is of merit.” That’s a business model. If you start somebody off with a free session, they realize that you’re honest and upfront. That person can adjudicate whether this is of merit or not.
I’ve built several companies in my life, and the one that I’m most well-known for is having built a company with Tony Robbins called Business Breakthroughs International. Before that, I built a software company, which my readers know. I grew that to 250,000 clients and then we sold that business for many millions of dollars. The most important thing that I learned is that sometimes pricing becomes the first decision, and that’s when people don’t know what they’re buying. When we started TimeSlips Corporation, time and billing software was in the thousands of dollars per year. We started at flat sale $99.
Scalar Energy: If you’re going to scale, you have to find the right people to surround yourself with. And, when you’re surrounded by them, don’t ever be embarrassed by saying, you don’t know. We raised prices as we went on, but that became an attention-grabbing moment to break into an industry. It’s outsiders coming into an industry and offering something at a low price that has high performance. I could say it has high performance. You could say your product does but ultimately, it’s customers who tell that story. When I announced you at the beginning of the show, I talked about ClientFol.io, which is my SaaS platform for coaches.
I initially offered a fourteen-day free trial and found that a lot of people signed up but few people tried it. When we moved to a $1 trial, we had far fewer sign-ups but high uptake after the $1 period was over. The basic example and the idea behind this is something you mentioned earlier. I’ll paraphrase, “If you don’t pay, you don’t pay attention.” That for me has held up as a way of thinking about how to start a business and a subscription model. As time has gone on, what did you have to do for infrastructure? You have your email responders, lists and everything else. What other infrastructure did you need to put in place to scale this business?
I work with professionals. Don’t ever be embarrassed by saying you don’t know. There are some IT directors that I work with and some people in marketing that know a lot more about IT marketing than I do. You surround yourself with people who are specific to a career-specific to a function-specific to a job task. That’s what I’ve done. We have such a beautiful team. They are self-directed and professional. They know what they need to do because I’m a researcher.
I spend most of my time in a laboratory. I don’t have time to market and look at email marketing and statistics. I don’t have time necessarily to answer the phone and take an order from a client saying, “You have to structure your business.” If you’re going to scale and you’re not going to be a one-woman or one-man show, you have to find the right people. I will toot my horn. I have found the right people. I treat them well. We have a great team because of that.
That’s what the job of the CEO is. On my LinkedIn page, before I got all fancy and changed the banners and everything, it used to say that the only job of the CEO is to create and communicate. You’re a perfect example of that from what you said. I respect the years that you put into building your company and learning your craft. I don’t mean the scalar energy craft. I’m talking about the management of the business.
The way that you’ve structured your company all comes from the decades of experience doing this. Let’s talk a little bit about scalar energy from the perspective of those who receive it. My earlier question before the show is, “Where is the antenna? Where do you transmit from?” Give us an understanding of how people get these scalar energy waves and how someone can be affected by your computer in your workshop.
Keep in mind, scalar energy is not electricity. It’s a different type of energy. I have an international clientele and we work with people by way of a photograph. People email me a photograph that has their signature. Any photograph carries a light signature. I take a person’s photograph and place it inside my instrument. Consider what I’m saying. I have a global village and the ability to work with anybody in the world by way of their photograph. I don’t have to worry about shipping and any physical product. I work in nonphysical services. I send energy through a photograph. That’s the new science of scalar energy.
If you’re an entrepreneur out there, you’re going to see how this new service working in a non-physical capacity is so much easier. Imagine if I had to deliver. I service by GPS. It won’t work. The margins would not be there. I could not possibly work that way. Imagine if every store owner could deliver a product or a service by way of a photograph. That is my edge. That allows me to scale. If I had to worry about inventory, I could not do this. If I had to worry about shipping costs or setting up distribution points, forget it. That takes millions of dollars. With the fact that I work in a new era working with nonphysical energy and I can deliver my service through a photograph, I can scale rather quickly.
As an entrepreneur, you will struggle. There will be highs and lows, and you have to temper that. Keep at it, and you'll succeed.
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Let’s get a little bit deeper into this for those who are not familiar. As a reminder, we’re talking to the incredible Tom Paladino, who started a scalar energy business, has scaled that scalar energy business over these years, and is now delivering to thousands of people all over the world. The expenses related to delivering your service incrementally sound like it’s about zero. Is that fair?
It’s all IT. Everything is from a computer uploader for the photographs to the staff. It’s able to work with people and explain the process to the laboratory. That’s always expanding. I am scaling by increments and I’m fortunate enough to do that. Whereas in some businesses, you have a hub or a significant outlay of cash. A lot of businesses cannot make that outlay of cash to grow. Thank God I can grow in increments.
What’s nice about the business is that for every new customer you add, you don’t have to spend an extra $5 to deliver. It’s all part of your existing infrastructure, which periodically must expand to meet the need. You have found this natural form of energy and exploited it. They use that word in a positive way to help others. What stops other people from going into your business?
I welcome them. It’s a poorly understood subject. Scalar energy is a new science. Unless you have that foundation and understanding, you will not succeed. This has taken me years to study and perfect the instruments alone. It has taken me 30 years to perfect the instruments and I’m not finished. How many people want to spend 30 years looking at science, perfecting instruments, and not having any feedback or remuneration during those years? Nobody. Hardly anybody wants to devote 30 years of their time to new science and technology without being compensated. I don’t say this to be snide. I don’t see anybody on the horizon who wants to do what I’ve done.
You’re the pioneer. You’ve been able to harness this and use it. Maybe you will tell us a story or two about some of the people who you’ve helped in the dramatic examples of its use. My question now goes a little bit to a higher level. How could this be used to fix the world? How can we change the world with the work you’ve done? You don’t have to tell me in detail because we’re going to get to that question later. What I’m asking is, are there divisions of the US government that are interested in this? Is that something that you could share with us about the types of outreach you typically receive from organizations that are not simply a customer wanting some help?
Per se, I’ve not had any government directly approach me. People in academia are interested. I’m going to cut to the chase. This is new energy and technology. It is pennies on the dollar. In other words, if this is free energy from the stars, then it will change and in many ways disrupt our energy spectrum and the military-industrial complex. It’s free energy. In working with free energy, you’re going to have friends and enemies.
Where has that shown up for you?
For the most part, we’re a grassroots group. People love what we’re doing. When I move to the next phase of energy generation and provide energy for homes and factories, that becomes a threat to the power structure. I’m sure there will be a significant backlash.
On the other hand, if it’s properly handled, it might make them much more successful than they are if they were able to work with you directly to harnesses and provide it as a service to millions of customers all over the country.
Nikola Tesla had free energy towers or scalar energy towers. He was demonstrating how we could illuminate a light bulb hundreds of miles away without wires. That’s a wireless transmission of energy. The powers years ago did not like that because they wanted to control the energy. It’s free energy from the stars. You cannot control stars. Stars are for the taking.
If you were to create a scalar energy receiver/converter so I could plug my toaster into it and have toast, what would it take to do that based on what your knowledge is?
God is going to have to give me the wisdom. I see that in the foreseeable future within the next years to be able to power some of our appliances around with scalar energy. What will that look like? You won’t have a cord or hook up to the electromagnetic grid. You will simply capture this energy in your room and home, and use that ambient energy to power a toaster, a radio or a jacuzzi.
Scalar Energy: People will be able to power their appliances with scalar energy within the next ten years. It will all be ambient energy. What that would consist of is a device that receives and converts this free energy from the stars. This is fascinating. Tell us a little bit about some of the folks who have experienced this and the results that they have gotten.
I’ve been bragging. We received reports from Tanzania. We’re working with people around the world by way of their photographs. We are working with an HIV/AIDS clinic in Tanzania, Africa. Everybody that we have worked with since 2017 is now HIV-negative. Nobody in the clinic is suffering from HIV. They have no viral load. They’re all healthy. No one has any symptoms. They’re essentially closing down the HIV/AIDS clinic in this particular town. By sending scalar intelligence into a photograph, I can prove in my laboratory that I can break apart or transmute the HIV virus.
Could this be done with any virus?
Yes.
Is there a different “recipe” or formula for every different virus?
I’ll explain how this works quickly. If I take a magnified photograph of the herpes virus and place this magnified photograph of herpes in an instrument, the instrument looks at the molecular bonds of the herpes virus and then breaks apart those bonds. All I need is a photograph of a microbe to destroy it.
If you were to take the Coronavirus if there is such a thing, and there has been some controversy over whether or not anyone is isolated for the literal Coronavirus as it has been described as COVID-19, and you’re able to upload the entire population of Facebook into your system, could you press a button and eliminate COVID-19?
Yes. We have missionaries from around the world that are sending us collages of people. I received 3,000 photographs from Uganda. We’re working with people around the world by way of their photographs and we’re having great success.
I can’t imagine anyone reading this and not being excited about this process, particularly if they have never heard about it before. We’re going to move to the next level with some questions about you that we do with all of our guests. Readers enjoy this and find it interesting. We will get more about even offering, if it’s okay with you, a free gift to readers about getting a chance to try this for themselves. Let’s start with the first question. The first question is what I ask every single show. I know the answer before I ask it but I’ll ask it anyway. Who, in all of space and time, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
I always say if Nikola Tesla was alive, I would be his willing assistant. His mind and what he achieved are unparalleled. What I’ve learned from him just from his notes is unmatched. He has opened up an entirely new vista to the world. This is a new way of living that Tesla envisioned. Of any person or scientist, I would love to sit down with Tesla.
That makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, there were dark forces against him that destroyed much of his research before it had the chance of being exposed to the human population. I did not to the extent you have, but I’ve studied Nikola Tesla’s life as well. I’ve been fascinated by him and the free energy movement for the last several decades. I bought all the stupid things in the back of magazines for free home generators, the plans and the toroidal energy-generation systems.
If you're going to scale and you're not going to be a one-woman or one-man show, you have to find the right people.
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I don’t say I’ve ever built one but I have read many of these different things. It has always fascinated me how this one man has ignited so much creativity in others and potentially, in your case, the chance to change the world, which is the grand finale question. That is simply this. What is it that you’re doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
Scalar energy is a new technology. It’s going to replace the existing military-industrial complex. Scalar energy is free and clean energy. It’s much more versatile than electricity. You can do so many things with scalar energy that you cannot achieve with electrical energy. I’ve always said that the advent of scalar energy will mark a threshold in mankind. It’s a technology like none other. Scalar energy will have a greater impact than that of the computer.
If that were to happen, and it could happen in a productive and powerful way for humanity, it would be an incredible thing and that would change the world. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Before I let you go, tell us a little bit about how you’re offering this free gift to my readers.
Our website allows anybody in the world to email a photograph. We work with people, animals, or pets by way of their photographs. The website is ScalarLight.com. Visit the website and simply upload and email us your photograph. We will hopefully convince you over fifteen days that this is of merit and your health will improve in some fashion.
Readers, take a look, go over to ScalarLight.com, upload your photo, and see for yourself. If this works for you, potentially it could change everything. Go ahead and take a look at that. Tom, thank you so much for your time. This was fascinating. I would love to continue the conversation and hopefully, we get a chance to speak again soon.
Thank you.
Important Links: * ClientFol.io * ScalarLight.com * TimeSlips Corporation * LinkedIn – Mitch Russo
About Tom Paladino Tom Paladino is a researcher and humanitarian seeking to make a difference in the world by providing people with the education and tools to restore optimal health, and by helping enhance their quality of life.
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Business owners always have a business plan or strategy that aligns with their business goals. But implementing business plans could be a hard task, and without proper execution, it will get them further away from their business goals. In this episode, Josh Fonger, CEO of WTS Enterprises (Work The System), discusses how they help business owners systematize their business with a simple yet effective approach to business success. This simple task is just by having a good system and documents. Listen to have a deep dive knowledge on how to work this out!
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Listen to the podcast here: Systemize Your Business Towards Freedom And Profits With Josh Fonger I have something special for all of my coaches and the audience. If you’re a long-time reader, you knew that I talked about this before. It’s called ClientFol.io. It’s my system that I had built to automate my coaching practice, take better notes, make sure my clients are performing at the highest level and get the results that I promised. This system is unlike any other coaching software you’ve ever seen.
It takes care of session notes and hallmarks, but we also provide a client portal so your clients can log in and get all of this information from the time they spent with you. It’s only $20 a month. You can even try it for $1, so go to GetClientFolio.com and give it a whirl. Now, onto my guest and his incredible story. Some of us see things differently. That’s why this guest and I have this incredible common bond because we’re systems.
As an electrical engineer specializing in Computer Science, I build stuff for a living and I use a system to make sure what I build works, so does my guest, except he does it from a different perspective. He studied with the master of system building, Sam Carpenter. When Sam retired, his best student became the teacher.
Based on Sam’s book, Work The System, my guest bought the company and took his concepts even further with time and refinements that have produced a jewel of a systems approach, which you’re going to hear about that can benefit any business out there, including yours. Welcome to the show, Josh Fonger.
I’m glad to be here. Thanks, Mitch.
Josh, go into some detail. How did this all get started for you?
Probably like most of your guests, it wasn’t on purpose. My background is in real estate development. I had my undergraduate in Architecture. I wanted to be an architect. I got my Master’s in Business and thought that I would go on and work in commercial real estate. In 2008, that changed for me because I lost my job, as with all my friends who got laid off at the time. I had to figure out something else to do with my skills and ended up that was not real estate. After applying for jobs around the world, the only thing that landed for me was to be a consultant with a boutique firm, helping flooring store owners.
At the time, I did not want the job and be a consultant. I wrote my thesis paper about why you should not hire a consultant. I wasn’t that interested in doing it, but I fell in love with it. I loved the challenge of solving complex problems. I loved working with business owners in helping them grow their leaders or pillars in their community and solving this problem. It became something I got addicted to. As I was flying from company to company around the country, I got to a point where I was getting burned out from flying and being away from my family.
Love the challenge of solving complex problems.
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I was starting to see that the problems I was solving with these companies, whether it was cultural change, financial model, inventory management or sales management, wherever we were training the company, I eventually noticed that the problem would come back. Once that person I trained left, the problem would come back or once enough time went by, they would have the same recurring problems come back again. What I was doing wasn’t working long-term and that’s when I met Sam Carpenter.
I met him in Bend, Oregon. I was living up there and went out for coffee. He was at the phase in his career where he didn’t need work and the money, but he wanted to get his book out there and make sure people learn from his mistakes and major success of going from 100-hour workweeks down to 2-hour work weeks and how did he grow his income by 20 times while he did that. I was intrigued by this methodology. It’s called Work The System Method. What I realized was the piece I was missing in my consulting was I wasn’t documenting the systems of the business.
We were teaching them and hoping that they would remember it. That wasn’t a good way to go about it. After working with him for years, we’ve gone in and come up with a methodology to help any business, whether it’s big or small, to think differently about business, document the essentials of their business and then allow those systems to improve with time because people come and go but the systems, business and infrastructure are going to stay. Ultimately, that’s where the freedom and value of creation come in all business.
That’s a very common process. We’ve seen over the years when you train people and Tony used to say this all the time. People come back every year to the same training because although he changes their state while in that room when they leave, they don’t have a process. Tony gives them a process, but generally, people don’t follow it and 6 months or 1 year later, they’re back for a recharge.
In my opinion, it’s not just learning. It’s all experience being with Tony Robbins, but it’s because he didn’t implement a full-blown system to keep people in that state all the time. All of us as coaches have the same thing in common and that is how we get our clients to not just benefit from the work we’ve done with them but to keep those benefits over time. Your story is fascinating because everybody has been there.
Think about it. How many of us got either fired, quit a job in disgust, hated our lives, go searching for jobs, can’t find anything and then the one thing that comes along, we’re not even that thrilled with, yet it leads to and opens up a world that we never imagined? I’m certainly glad you took that pathway and I’m sure you and your family are as well. For everybody reading, they want to know, what is it that you do that they can do? What is your process they can implement to change and improve their own business?
I love talking about the simple steps for you to understand as I go through them but more challenging to put into practice in real life. There are a few key pillars. The first one is you need to change your mindset and this can be done in an instant. We call it the systems mindset. For Sam Carpenter, this happened in a dream state one night after not getting enough sleep for years where instead of reacting to his business, taking things as they came to him and trying to solve the problems in real-time, it’s to see your business and life as separate pieces.
In the book, he details how he had this dream of a table. On this table were the separate pieces of his business like the sales over here, how they hired was over there and how they would deposit the checks in another place. He realized that his business was built of these separate little systems. If he took each of these pieces, which were not very difficult to solve individually, he documented, systemized and put them back together, he could have a perfect business.
Systematize Business: That’s really where a lot of the friction and inefficiency is in businesses is when owners say yes to too many ideas and they dilute what really is going to be their direction. The first step in our methodology is you need to see that you’re in control of your business, above your business and get a different vantage point where instead of you being the operator where you’re there, you being the owner where you’re above looking down on the actual work that’s happening, identifying the separate pieces and separating them enough, so you have a chance of having others come in and help you with those pieces. The first piece is having that systems mindset. The second core piece is you need to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. You need to write it down.
Oftentimes, I’ve talked to owners and they say, “We know where we’re going and everyone knows how we’re going to get there,” but they haven’t taken the time to write it down in a succinct enough way where their team can look at it, buy into it and be a part of making that happen whatever their day-to-day work is. We call it a strategic objective. Other people out there have books written about how to write these documents. The main thing is you need to do it and take some time.
The reason owners don’t do this is that they like to be nimble, be flexible, have gut reactions and change course. If you’re an owner, operator, solopreneur of one person and you always want to be that way, that’s fine. If you want to move beyond you being your entire company, you have to get organized, be consistent and go in a straight direction for some time or at least your business does. As you step away, your business can continue to go on that trajectory.
It sounds like what you’re saying is you sit down and think about your goals for your business and write them down. Other people might call that a business plan in a more detailed way. Some might simply call it your goals and objectives, where you set some goals, put some timeframes in place and attach a few tasks to each like, “One of my goals is to get to $1 million by the end of 2021. I want to get there because I want to advertise more on Facebook or add another product to my product mix. I want to acquire another company that has revenue already.” Is that what you’re talking about?
There are some elements there that would overlap. When I work with a company, they have some documents like this over the years that they’ve put together. The difference is this would be a strategy for the operation of the business forever for the next years. This document is still going to hold. It’s a little bit higher level and it’s going to identify your core product or core customer on how you do what you do and how your team is going to work to make that happen. It’s not you. It’s your company. It’s describing that North Star and how your company is going to get that place.
That doesn’t necessarily need to be you. It’s separate from you. You want yourself and everyone in your company to follow this plan. As an entrepreneur, you can have other plans for other companies, but this one business is all about this one thing. Having some clarity there, we try not to make it short-term. Short-term goal setting and having those tasks to get there is great, but this would be broader, higher, and hopefully more strategic.
Whenever something comes your way where you might have an opportunity to buy another company or to partner with somebody to allow you to open up a new product or service, you will then take that idea, run it by your strategic objective and say, “This doesn’t fit. This takes us off-course by 5 or 10 degrees.” A lot of the friction and inefficiency in businesses is when owners say yes to too many ideas and dilute what is going to be their direction. They try to do too many things. We want to simplify your business as much as we can so it can scale complicated things. That’s a big part of the strategic objective.
We create the simplest version of our future with definitive objectives and goals as a start. What’s the next step?
If you want to move beyond you being your entire company, you have to actually get organized.
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Once you have that strategy, you’re going to have people ideally growing and who are going to be involved in making that strategy happen. That’s where the principles come in. Some people would say values but we call them operating principles or guidelines for decision-making. As you are building up your team, you and everyone on your team want to align by the same ways of thinking. Not just generic terms like customer service and integrity but also describe what that looks like and means in your business.
Every person will bring their history, baggage, and ideas about what these words mean. Therefore, it’s going to cause friction and dilution. What we want to do is in our business, this is what these values mean and how they play themselves out so that everyone’s bought in and you have a smooth reaction. Also, it prevents the need to procedurize and document every nook and cranny of your business because a lot of the little things will be solved with a principle.
If somebody calls you on the phone on your written working procedure, you don’t need to write down, “This is how to be friendly. Smile. After that, do this and shake their hand.” You don’t have to add in all of the other nuances because the principle covers those soft skills that you want to be part of the culture of the business.
You had read my book. In this book, Power Tribes, we talk about creating a culture. One of the things that we have found to be extremely valuable is not to have people memorize anything but to align their values. We call that the Code of Ethics. The values that we’re aligning are the values of the CEO.
It’s not your values as the coach. It’s your clients’ values, the company owner or the owners of the company. Their values are what must be aligned with those who work for them. That eliminates detailed work and tries to document the smallest and silliest little steps. That makes a lot of sense. I like the fact that you incorporate it into your systemized process. What’s next?
As you’re repeating back to me, this is not something new. Why it works is because people have figured this out before. You can read a lot of business books and come to the same conclusion. This is a key element. The next element is what sets us apart as a differentiator and how we fix companies as part of the working procedure.
Once we have the mindset, strategy, and principles, we go through in each person and department what they do daily, weekly, and monthly. We start to identify all those separate things and figure out ways to systemize, document and be consistent with them. How are you going to be more efficient, effective and improve the quality of something, unless you’ve taken the time to write it out or record it so that others can scrutinize it and so that you can use it for training, cross-training and all the other benefits or quality control that happened through documented systems?
The quote that Sam coined years ago was, “The difference between small struggling businesses and large successful companies is that the small ones never document their systems and large ones do.” They documented systems so that they could improve efficiency, quality, training, cross-training and delegation, but the small companies don’t do it. We try to encourage those small companies to start somewhere. The way to get there is to get these systems documented.
Systematize Business: You’re going to be more efficient, effective, and improve the quality of something, if you’ve taken the time to write it out or record it so that others can scrutinize it. We’re going to help coach, train, teach and give you ways to do that. A lot of times, it starts with the owner who is working way too many hours and wearing way too many hats. We will start to extract what they do into a documented form so they can finally free themselves up and be the leader that the company doesn’t currently have because they’re an operator and doing all the work. That’s the big shift.
Josh, I want to tell you about a little trick I learned from my ex-partner, Chet Holmes. When Chet and I were working together, he had this idea that I thought was pretty smart. He said, “The problem we had is we had 1 or 2 positions that people would come and work for a couple of months or maybe even close to a year and then they’d quit. We had to start all over again training them.” Chad had this idea, which I loved. He said, “Why don’t we pay them to document their job and we’ll call it a job book?” This was before we had learning management systems, but now, you record a bunch of videos.
Back then, we would take a new person and say, “We’re about to train you on your entire job function. We want you to document it as we go along and create procedural maps so that others can follow it. The way we use the position is that when we add people under you, you won’t have to train them as much as we’re training you.” They would love the idea of getting a $1,000 bonus a month later for having done that. It sounds like this is a similar process that you’re talking about but more modern.
That’s exactly what it is. This concept is not that modern. This is a 1,000-year-old concept. It’s about being dedicated. The culture in training, what’s done for you and all the services that we do are focused on this because we know it’s not always the most fun thing to do. It’s not one of those things where you do it and the next week you have doubled the sales where you have massive results. The results are slow, steady and exponential.
No one in your field can compete with you because you’ve taken the time to build the infrastructure. The hardest thing is getting the people to all engage long enough to see the transformation and success because the first couple of procedures are not going to do that much, so you say, “I’m going to go on to something more fun.” What you described is tactically one of the things that we do.
Give me an example of some of the clients you’ve worked with. Tell us a couple of war stories. What was the worst client you ever walked into and had to pick them up, shake them out and get them all straightened out? Add some color to this process.
There are a lot of directions we could go with that one. We work with a variety of clients, whether they own a hair salon or they have a SaaS company. One particular person called me. They had a nuclear power plant repair company and would be these $500 to $1 million jobs. They would repair nuclear power plants, which I don’t know anything about the industry. He said, “Josh, I don’t want mindset shift. I want strategy and all this stuff. I want one procedure written. Can you help me with one procedure?” I said, “Sure.”
We’re following the golden rule, “He who has the gold makes the rules.” He wanted this one procedure. I said, “I’ll be here with you.” The one procedure he wanted was how to bid on these jobs. Once we broke out the bidding process, we realized that there are a lot of processes involved in bidding out. These are complicated and risky jobs. He was the only person who knew how to do it. Even though they had 40 employees, he was the guy who’d been at the jobs.
It's the implementation of something very simple which is going to allow your business to scale.
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After flying out there and dissecting every single thing that came into bidding out one of these jobs, we realized there were 100 different components to it. It was 95% of those components where somebody else immediately could do and not him. He never took the time to document those little aspects and then hand them off. After we took that very complicated process and segmented it into sub-tasks, he realized that he didn’t need a bit on these projects anymore. He could do the final check at the very end to make sure nothing was haywire.
He said, “Let’s do the whole work system method, do the rest of the company, take this philosophy and go company-wide.” It took a single win in solving that biggest problem for us to help him see that. Often the case, documenting the systems of your company might not sound very sexy, but there is a problem that’s been recurring and you wish it would go away. If you took some time to solve that one, it’s going to free you up to say, “There are other ones we want to solve too.”
You have a defined process and it sounds like it’s been in use for many years. I would like to know how you would contrast this to other business systems like EOS and Gino Wickman’s book, Traction, like the Gazelle system and Empire system. How is this different than those?
There are a ton of systems out there. We get most often compared with the book, The E-Myth because the book is very similar to Sam’s book. Sam’s book might go into a little more detail on documenting systems. One good news is that any one of these methods has been tried and true. That’s at least a step in the right direction. The big difference between us is that they’re often for larger companies and have more complicated implementation than ours. Ours is much simpler. The biggest differentiator is simplicity.
I had one client where I did a workshop with them and I said, “What else is there? Let’s implement this and see how easy it is.” It’s the implementation of something very simple, which is going to allow it to scale, not putting some complicated philosophy that has so many different bells, whistles and new things to change. Owners are okay with change, but the further down you get from the owner, the less likely they are to enjoy change, shifts and ambiguity in gray areas.
We try to say, “This is very simple. Everyone can get it and be involved in making this happen. You don’t need to be a $5 million business to do this. You can be doing $50,000 a year and start doing this.” One of my clients was a pre-revenue and he’s used this methodology that’s always doing $100,000 a month. It can start right where you’re at. That would be the easiest or the biggest differentiator.
That is a great differentiator because you could pick up the book or watch your videos and get a feel right away for what needs to be done even before you start. One of the things that I run into when I implement certification systems within companies is the fact that the owners and team members below the owners get it, but the staff does not. We learned this the hard way in the beginning when we started coaching and consulting on certification. Later, we started introducing a series of training classes for the other people in the company that was going to indirectly be involved with the certified coaches or consultants that were about to onboard. That changed everything.
Many people thanked us for making this available because they realized that they were going to be lost once this new thing started and they didn’t even understand it other than what the owners told them. I agree with you. It’s important to do that. The easiest way for someone to get started should be step one: putting a list of your goals and objectives together and potentially what you are going to do to make them happen. Would you say that would be the best starting place of all?
Systematize Business: The hardest thing is getting the people to all engage long enough, to see the transformation and see the success. That’s one way to do it. For people who buy-in, I would list out the things you do daily and weekly and then pick a couple of those that could easily be transferred, if they were documented and start there. Document those particular systems, hand them off and you’re going to say, “I saved myself 1 hour or 2 hours a week. I should keep doing this.” That’s where I started. Keep it very simple, practical, pragmatic and then you can move on to the broader need for the strategy. That’s what helps people get it.
To follow back on what you said about the team, one of the reasons people like to work with us is that once the owner gets the idea and understands the strategy, all of our work is with the lowest level staff on up to mid-management. They’re the ones that are close to the action and doing the daily tasks. Once the owner believes and leads with this strategy, the loaner doesn’t have to do any of the documentation.
The lowest level staff who has documented their systems is getting approved by their middle management. They are then working the system and the owner is giving them the resources, time and technology to make it happen. We don’t want the owner to top-down and tell everyone what to do. They might, at first, if it’s a small company because the owner might have it all in their head. Ultimately, the owner does not generate what allows us to grow, scale, and provide freedom. It’s generated from those who are doing the task, learning, enjoying, improving, monitoring and policing their systems. That’s what we want to happen.
Let this be the beginning of your systemized future. Everyone who begins this process of implementation will benefit greatly from listening to Josh and I talk about it. That’s a good place to start. What we’re going to do is we’re going to transition to the next part of the show. This is the part of the show in which we get to know you a little bit better.
I have a couple of questions. Some of my long-term readers know that I ask every single guest these questions because sometimes the answers are very revealing. Here’s the first one. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
Jesus Christ would be the person that I would spend my time with. For a lot of the same reasons that your guests say before, I’m a Christian, so meeting God in the flesh would be a pretty awesome thing and getting a chance to ask questions about election and predestination. I can get some healing for my family. Some of my kids have chronic illnesses. It’s several things. I tried to cram as much as I could during that hour. That would be a pretty awesome thing. Also, I will find out when he’s coming back.
I could see you sitting on that park bench and asking him a question. About a few minutes later, you’re saying, “Excuse me, Jesus. Can you talk a little faster? We only have an hour.”
That’s funny because when my kids hear me walking around the house, they go, “I can tell dad is here.” It’s because I’m usually listening or watching something, but it’s usually a 2X to 3X speed. That’s my speed.
People come and go, but the systems are going to stay.
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This is for the next change the world question. What is it that you’re doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
I’m doing it but a fraction of what I want to be doing. Your book, Power Tribes, was a big help in me realizing what I have, what I know and what I’ve experienced over the last years of doing this consulting, which changes lives and families. It allows owners of companies, which are leaders, to get that time and money back to do good and impact the world.
I’m just one guy. I’ve been spending the last few years focusing on certifying, coaching and training as many consultants as possible around the world and in as many languages as possible, knowing that it’s a massive impact that we can make in the world. You don’t have to look very far to see the need in the world for those in leadership and those who have access to time, money and mental space to make a difference. The fraction of a good thing I’m trying to do is to get that message out there, help as many as I can and therefore, they can have an exponential impact.
We did talk a little bit about the free giveaway. Tell me what you have in mind for our readers.
For a limited time, this book, Work The System, which you can get on Amazon, a copy is still available on our website, WTSEnterprises.com, for a free download. Sam Carpenter doesn’t need the money and wants people to have an impact, so one of the things he wants is for you to get the book, take the first step and change your life as he did. Go to WTSEnterprises.com. We have other tools, gifts and things along the way on the website. You can start with the book.
If you download this book and get some value, it would be nice to send Josh a little note and let him know what the book has done for you because that’s the only way we, as authors, get feedback. Josh mentioned my book and I hope he wrote a review on Amazon. Do the same thing for Josh as well. If you liked the book, go on Amazon and write a review but more importantly, take something away and put it to use.
One of the most gratifying things an author of a business book can ever hear is, “I bought your book, read it and changed my business for the better because of the information in your book.” I want you to do the same. Get Work The System. I knew Sam before Josh did many years ago. Sam and I had some great conversations together, but Sam didn’t like me because I was friends with Jay Abraham and he had a beef with Jay at some point. I don’t even know what it’s about, but all I know is, “I can’t talk to you. You’re friends with Jay Abraham.” I said, “Sorry.”
I’ve been to Jay’s house. That’s resolved, but there’s probably more to the story.
Josh, this has been a pleasure. I’m so glad we got a chance to do this show, learn more about the system and encourage a few folks to get involved. Thank you again for showing up and sharing what you know. It’s very important to us all. I can’t wait until we get a chance to talk again soon.
Thanks so much, Mitch. I appreciate it.
Important Links: * ClientFol.io * Josh Fonger * Work The System * Sam Carpenter * Power Tribes * Traction * The E-Myth * Amazon – Work the System * WTSEnterprises.com
About Josh Fonger Josh Fonger is a consultant, coach, and speaker. Developing and implementing systematic solutions to complex business problems, he is the sole worldwide licensing agent for the Work the System Method, based on Sam Carpenter’s book Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, now in its fourth edition.
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With the many changes in today’s rapidly growing and evolving digital economy, one event has stood out: the rise of the crypto coin. Centric is unique among cryptocurrencies with its self-regulatory features and its use of two coins to stabilize its economy. In this episode, Mitch Russo talks to the CEO of Centric Foundation, Joel Clelland, about the burgeoning digital economy. Joel shares his insights on where the crypto space is headed from here and why projects like Centric are the way of the future for crypto. Tune in for more great insights about the crypto world in this special episode with Joel.
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Listen to the podcast here: Crypto Coin Adoption: Discussing The Merits Of Cryptocurrency With Joel Clelland I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized I have been spending about 30 minutes on admin between my coaching sessions. The reason was because I had a screen open for note-taking, calendar, spreadsheet, browser and Zoom. All past session history is scattered over two huge monitors. It was wasting a lot of time.
I decided to go looking for some coach management software that would do everything for me and at the same time, allow me to use some of my advanced coaching systems that I have developed over the years with my clients, but I found nothing that did that. I decided to do what all good entrepreneurs should do when they find a problem that hasn’t been solved. I solved it. I built my own coaching platform from scratch.
When my friends and other coaches started to say, “Mitch, can we use that too?” I said, “Sure. Maybe I should turn this into a business.” I did and it’s called ClientFol.io. You could use it too. Believe it or not, you could try it for $1. Go to GetClientFolio.com and sign up for a trial. You get full access for fourteen days. If you like it and you stay signed on, it’s only $20 a month. You could coach how many clients for $20 a month? Forget it. There’s no limitation. Give it a try, see if you like it and let me know what you think. Now, onto my guest and his incredible story.
Over the years, my guest has been involved in many different corporate efforts, both as a leader in a diverse range of companies, but he knew that something was missing. He kept searching for that missing piece like many of us tend to do. He discovered something like many of us did. He discovered crypto and then he became particularly enamored with a particular coin. He made a connection with the company and they did something amazing.
They offered him his dream job, the President and CEO of the company for this new coin. He is with us to tell us all about how a new coin is brought into the ecosystem, how it’s scaled and what the business models look like. More importantly, no matter whether it’s a coin, software product or shoe store, everything you’re about to read is useful in your own world and market. Welcome, Joel Clelland to the show.
Thank you, Mitch. I’m glad to be here.
It’s my pleasure. This has been an exciting journey. You and I have been on a little journey before the show. Joel is getting me set up so that I can use his coin in my own transactions and I’m very excited about it. Before we go there, give us some background. How did this all get started for you?
I was in traditional financial services for a number of years and I also have a background in education. One of the things that you and I have both seen in the financial space is that there’s somewhat of a pushback from traditional finance with regard to crypto. Some companies don’t even touch it with a 10-foot pole due to compliance.
A lot of people, depending on what licenses they hold, they can’t even talk about it with their clients. I have always wanted to be vulnerable with my clients, share everything with them and fully disclose to them what’s available to them in the market. This is something that’s emerging and it has been for a little over a decade now. Now that I have moved into this 21st-century financial sector, I can have those conversations.
It’s similar to the cannabis business. People have been smoking weed for 5,000 years or longer. Who knows? It became the gateway drug to hard narcotics in the ’50s and ’60s. It was banned and all that. Now, it’s finally starting to come back into adoption slowly and even becoming mainstream for some people as well. With crypto, the adoption rate has been a little bit more aggressive, particularly in 2020.
Crypto Coin: One of the things that we have seen in the financial space is pushback from traditional finance regarding crypto. Some companies don’t even touch it with a 10-foot pole due to compliance. The government said, “We’re going to tax the hell out of it, but we’re not going to ban it. We are the government. Our job is to extract money from our citizens. Crypto is great. We can extract even more money because you’re going to make a lot of profit. That means you’re going to be sharing a lot of that profit with us, Uncle Sam and his merry gang of comrades.” The bottom line here is that we now have this new world of crypto. You are brought on board to take what I’ll call an unknown coin and turn it into a true financial investment/instrument. How do you do that?
The wonderful part about this is I wasn’t the first. I had a predecessor and founding team that developed and designed Centric. When I came aboard, it was to become a mouthpiece. One of the things that we have seen in the space is that most projects are not very forward-facing. It’s hard to get to know the team. Most of the CEOs are pretty quiet. They are known to an extent inside the industry but not outside the industry.
One of the things we wanted to do is we wanted to flip that 180 degrees, become more forward-facing and focus on education. People like CZ from Binance said that most of the world is still not in crypto. It’s because they don’t understand it. It’s new and an adoption. Although it is more aggressive these days, we still have a few years before it’s fully mainstream.
I don’t disagree. There are a lot of coins out there. Pick the numbers. Are there 20,000 coins?
It’s not quite. It’s over 14,000 for sure.
I bought a silly coin called SHIB. I didn’t put much money into it, maybe a couple of thousand dollars. That little investment has grown to almost $18,000 in a short period of time. If you’re wondering what the power of crypto is for unknown coins, there’s an example. Like many Americans, I have a tiny share of Ethereum and Bitcoin as well compared to others.
The bottom line is that everybody should have some of the top ten cryptos in their portfolio. That’s so mainstream that there are now ETFs and financial instruments for crypto on the stock market. That’s how we know it’s pretty much mainstream. That’s how we know it will never be banned. That’s how we know that it gets deeper into the fabric of the economy because it has now permeated the investment world too.
I believe it was MassMutual. They dropped $100 million into Bitcoin. They are a $1 trillion company. When they did that, a conservative mutual insurance company, I thought, “The tide is changing.”
For all the people who said, “Those people are crazy. They are being irresponsible,” now looking backward and scaling up, what does that $100 million worth? It’s probably worth 3, 4 or 5 times that. None of their other assets have performed anywhere near that level. I remember my dad taught me a very interesting thing. He goes, “Don’t tell me about the profit you made before you sold. Tell me about the profit you made after you sold.”
I used to call my dad and say, “Dad, that stock we were talking about is up 13%.” He goes, “So what?” I said, “I could sell it and keep 13%.” He goes, “You could. Is that what you’re going to do?” I would say, “I don’t know. Maybe I should.” He goes, “Maybe you should hold it too.” Dad’s advice back then still holds. I like to do two things. I like to buy crypto and hold it, but then you are introducing this whole other topic to me.
Others are familiar with it in all that stuff. What I want to know now is you had this new coin. You walked into this company. You’re now the President of the company. How do you scale that coin? How do you find people to adopt it? How do you get people to say, “We’re going to make it part of our ecosystem and, in turn, make it more valuable?”
Most of the world is still not in crypto because they don't understand it. It's new and in adoption. We still have a few years before it's fully mainstream.
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There are a handful of things that we’re doing and that projects are doing. We’re getting out into the community and talking about the coin, whether that’s doing marketing events or which is hit-and-miss, is getting influencers talking about your coin. I have done interviews with you. One of the things that are characteristic of the industry is developing a strong community.
When I came aboard in March 2021, we were around 20,000 holders globally. Now, we’re north of 56,000. We’re still scaling globally. The two social platforms that are the most active these days are Twitter and Telegram. For people who are either into crypto or want to learn about projects, connecting with those groups in both Telegram and Twitter is invaluable.
That’s one aspect of it. You make it more popular and get more people to talk about it. Hopefully, somebody will want to acquire some of those coins as well, but there’s a different strategy that we chatted about privately that I would like to hear more about. How do we get this into the financial ecosystem?
It’s two-fold. Money should be transactional. Otherwise, it’s not money. It’s just an investment or asset like we were talking about. Centric has gotten onboarded with three different cryptocurrency payment gateways. We have several companies that are already accepting Centric through the payment gateways. For companies, whether eComm or traditional commerce, that have WordPress websites, you can accept Centric. That’s one side of it.
The other side of it is the retail investor. The retail investor has to be able to get your coin or token. If they can’t get it from a trusted exchange, you’re dead in the water. When we went live on exchange in July 2020 and started adding more exchanges, that was something that lit a fire onto the community because now they had more places where they could access Centric.
Let’s go back a step. In order for anybody who has a coin to get it to be traded, they need a platform. They could create their own platform or exchange, but the best way to do it is to get it on an existing platform that already has customers. For example, if you have MetaMask as your wallet and you can’t buy a coin in your current wallet, then you say, “I have to go set up a whole other wallet now. I have to sign up for another service. I have another security code to keep track of and all this other stuff.”
If it turns out that you have a wallet on Coinbase, MetaMask, Binance or any of these places and your coin is now there, then it’s two clicks away in your account. There are more passwords, more memory and all these other things that you have to do. There’s this other thing and this is part of what makes Bitcoin so special. I want to regress and talk a little bit about the “Bitcoin revolution.”
Anyone reading the blog might have read the name, Michael Saylor. He is the CEO of MicroStrategy. It’s a nice little $100 million software company that made a decision in 2019 that he was going to take a percentage of his company’s funds and invest them in Bitcoin. He did something interesting. He said, “Anybody who doesn’t want to be part of MicroStrategy because of this decision, I am going to wait 30 days before I do it so you could leave. You could sell your stock and leave.” Some people did, but then he went on and started to invest in Bitcoin.
Behind the scenes in every different way possible, he invested more into Bitcoin. He even took out a $1 billion loan to buy Bitcoin. Some people will say, “That’s a pretty stupid, risky thing to do,” but he had criteria for doing it. This was before he made his first purchase in 2019. These were the three things that he cared about. The three questions he would ask are, “Can it be hacked? Can it be stolen? Will it be banned?” He waited until he could say no to hacking and stealing, “Will it be banned? No, it will not be banned.”
He got to the point where he was able to now make a sound decision. The first Bitcoin he purchased was maybe $11,000 or $13,000. It wasn’t like he got in at the bottom or something like that. What he has done since is he has shared his vision for Bitcoin. One of the most important things about Bitcoin is two things. 1) It’s decentralized. 2) It’s scarce.
Crypto Coin: The most important thing about Bitcoin is two things. Number one, it’s decentralized, and number two, it’s scarce. Coins that have an unlimited number of coins have no scarcity. You can make coffee beans a currency if you want. Coins that have scarcity are more valuable because ultimately, the fewer they are or the more people that hold them, the more valuable each coin becomes. You knew this when you came into the company and you addressed this with an interesting business model. Can you describe that?
We have two tokens instead of one because we believe that the largest issue with global adoption is volatility. If crypto is to be an instrument used to be a medium of exchange, we got to solve it. What Centric is working to do is to use two tokens to create that stability, one that’s traded and one that’s not.
You have an interesting system. You have stated publicly that if your token reaches $1, something happens.
We call that protocol consensus. When our traded token, Centric Swap CNS, reaches $1 and stabilizes, we believe that there’s a possibility that there will be a period of time where it moves up and down as it’s doing now. When it stabilizes at $1, we’ll be at what we call protocol consensus. That’s going to unlock all the Layer-2 utility of the second token and thereby creating an entire Centric economy.
Does the price of $1 mean that the coin has a limited distribution at that point?
It would be unlimited. The fact that we picked up another cryptocurrency payment gateway that’s utilizing the traded token leads us to believe that’s the case. It has unlimited uses, not just for personal use and investment use, but in the economy and even for governments. Governments are getting to the point where they want to utilize blockchain technology only. There are a couple of countries in the world that are already moving that way.
Why would your coin be more successful than another altcoin because of the way you have designed the business model?
There are two things to add to that. One is that during this phase, we call this the adoption phase. Centric is truly an investment opportunity because Centric Swap CNS is trading for less than $1. It’s on sale. It’s designed to be $1. The in-network token, for users who take advantage of it, which most of them do, provides hourly yields. It’s possible to not just take advantage of the growth of Centric Swap, but if it’s parked inside of Centric Rise, they are receiving hourly yields that never stop.
What you’re doing is you are modeling, in a sense, the economic system of the United States. It used to be this way. Now, it doesn’t work that way anymore. I’m sure you remember when it did. You put money in the bank. The bank gets to loan out your money so they can make money on your money and pays you a usage fee called interest. They usually pay that monthly at that time.
In your world, you are asking your users to lend us your crypto and then we will do something with it. Whatever we do with it, it will be so valuable that we’ll be able to pay you interest on an hourly basis. That makes a lot of sense and that’s pretty cool, but the question is, is this a Ponzi scheme? In other words, what are you doing with that crypto once you borrow it from your users that would make you this extra money to pay this amount?
The Ponzi scheme question is a good one because some projects maybe fit that bill. What is a Ponzi scheme? It’s promising nothing for something. You give us this money and we give whatever it is, X, Y or Z. In the Centric system, the actual protocol itself has been running flawlessly since February of 2020, every single hour giving users money.
Money should be transactional. Otherwise, it's not money. It's just an investment or an asset.
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One of the things we talked about was this is unique staking because in the world of staking, most of the time, users have to lock up their tokens for a period of time to gain the rewards. There are no lockups in the Centric ecosystem. Users can move their money in and out of the ecosystem on demand. That’s a good selling point and it has been working.
In my understanding of a Ponzi scheme is that new investors, money is used to pay old investors their so-called interest.
That would be more like a staking platform, which Centric protocol is not. There are some platforms that are actual staking platforms. One of our partners has a platform that they are developing a proof of hold concept, where it works similarly to that. Whoever holds the longest gains the most, that’s not the concept in Centric protocol.
In your system, when I lend the company my coins and they pay me interest on my coins, what is the company doing with those coins to earn enough money to pay me that interest?
This might be a good time to enter the concepts of decentralized and centralized because users of the Centric network can take their tokens and hold them anywhere that’s compatible with Centric. Do we like using the native Centric Wallet? Yes, but users don’t have to use the native Centric Wallet and they can gain Centric Rise hourly yields anywhere. They could have their CNR staked in a platform other than a Centric platform. They could be holding their CNR tokens in a compatible wallet that’s not a Centric Wallet and they are still enjoying those hourly yields. In a sense, it’s not lending the tokens to Centric. It’s deciding, “I want to capitalize on the Centric network and so I’m putting some money here.”
Let’s bring this back down and I hope you appreciate me trying to simplify this. Here is where I’m going. Let’s say there was a US dollar token. For all effective purposes, the way the government would explain it to the population is that, “You have paper dollars. Paper dollars are obsolete. What we want to do now is give you electronic dollars. We’re going to call that you USD as the symbol and that’s our coin. It will work exactly like the dollar would normally work.”
Digital dollars don’t go up and down in value. Natively, they may go down in value because of inflation, distribution and excess amounts. Now I say, “There’s this company that says if I deposit my US dollars there, they will pay me every hour interest on my US dollars. That means that if I put in $1,000 into this account, I may get $1 an hour by having it in that account.” I’m the bank. I’ll say, “Everybody, put your money here. I’ll give you $1 an hour.” I have 50,000 people putting their $1,000 into my new bank. I have to come up with $50,000 an hour to pay them. How do I do that?
The great thing is that’s all based on what’s happening in the market.There’s a relationship between the in-network token and then the traded token, which is valued by the market. We use the term immutable. Immutable means that it can’t be changed. Centric Foundation calculates these price blocks or hourly yields every single month and then deploys them to the blockchain where they can’t be edited. Centric Foundation has its tokens, which we use for operating expenses.
Centric Foundation’s primary focus is the global adoption of Centric as a currency. The users, in a fully decentralized way, can choose to move their tokens in and out of the network on demand.The protocol is paying them if they take advantage of it. The other caveat is that to get away from US dollars to get back to the token side is that they are yielding more Centric tokens every year.
In our physical world, the money would have to go to work to pay me the interest. Banks take that money and that gets called fractional lending. They take your $1 and lend it ten times to people.
Crypto Coin: There are people all throughout the world who don’t have access to traditional finance, we call them the unbanked, and some numbers are as high as 2 billion people globally. They can get that from the central banks.
In your world, the interest is paid from the reserves of the company for the purposes of getting more people to use it. It’s not as if any work is being done by the coins themselves. The protocol says, “If you stake or lend your coins to the organization, we will then make new coins and give them to you.”
The protocol will make new coins.
That’s what I mean by day.
The day is more the system.
We get into the issue of scarcity. Why would the price go up if there is no scarcity?
With every hour of growth, there’s also an hourly burn. The other side of the economic model is that to keep the ecosystem balanced, a certain portion of Centric Rise CNR tokens that are being held in quarantine, not in user wallets, is burned away equal to the amount of the growth in all CNR tokens globally.
Is that wallet or reserve a fixed amount?
It’s yes and no. Every month, the yield for the month for Centric Rise CNR is hard-coded to the chain, and then it’s reversed by hours. Whatever that hourly amount is, which is fixed for the month, that portion is burnt from the CNR in quarantine. That’s why I say yes and no.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate as well because it doesn’t matter if they are burnt. The organization flips a switch and creates more of them.
That’s not the focus at Centric. Since the beginning of 2020, there’s no intention to print more Centric Rise. Centric Rise CNR, which is the non-traded token, that is a deflationary global supply, which is going down. We started with $1 billion. We’re down to around $891 or so million and it’s burning every hour. The base supply of the non-traded token is shrinking and CNS has an elastic supply. We don’t use the term unlimited because the only people who can print CNS are the users. This goes back to autonomy. A fully decentralized network is that the users have the power to print CNS.
The largest issue with global adoption is volatility. If crypto is to be an instrument used as a medium of exchange, we've got to solve that.
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I’m going to go down this rabbit hole a little bit deeper. We’re going to go back to the discussion of the US dollar. Back when there was a gold standard, the idea was that it took a lot of work to dig gold out of the ground. Gold had value based on the amount of work it took to create it. Bitcoin modeled that when it was created by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Whoever he or she or they are, some say it was the CIA who created it. Maybe it was the Russians. Who knows? The point is that now, what we’re getting into here is that the non-traded core token, the CNR, the Centric Rise is fixed at $1 billion. It’s burning every day, every hour. It’s going to be less and less. Here’s a crazy question. When does the burning stop?
The yields and the burn never stops. It just slows down.
Those who get in early can get a faster rate of token awards or higher yields. Those who come later will get less. Here’s the interesting thing. Because there are less and less of those CNR coins, they intrinsically will become more and more valuable. There are thousands of them, but I don’t know any other crypto that says, “When it hits $1, we trigger this event.” First of all, why did you do that? What is exactly that event about the conversation we are having?
The way I would describe the event is a period of time. There’s a period when Centric Swap CNS stabilizes at the dollar. It could go up or down. We believe that event will probably be several months, at least. Once the market says, “That’s a stablecoin, isn’t it?” We can say, “Yes, it is but if you read our documents, it’s a synthetic stablecoin. It’s not backed by US dollars, dollar equivalents or other cryptos. It has been valued fully by the market at a dollar.” Now that our stable is backing the Centric network with Centric Rise CNR tokens backed fully by CNS stablecoins, then we are going to have this economy that’s based just on CNR. The transacting in CNR is going to be preferred because who doesn’t like a dollar that gains purchasing power every hour?
That’s a very unique twist. Do other coins do that too or is that exclusive to your own?
That’s one of the things that sets us apart. There are 3 or 4 other projects that are doing something similar, just not in the same way. There are a handful of other dual-token projects or two-token projects that have other focuses in their mission. Centric is truly unique. It drew me to the project as a retail investor.
It’s how you started with the company. You first became a retail investor because you got excited about the possibilities. You became acquainted with the founders or the owners and then you were offered the position. I know we have shared a lot of great information with this audience. If you’re reading and you’re confused, I’m with you. I understand why you’re confused.
After spending time with Joel before the show, I find this to be a fascinating opportunity. I find that there are layers of understanding that you can uncover for yourself as you go deeper into this process. Before we get too deep into the next part of the show, when someone says, “I like what Mitch and Joel were talking about. I might want to look into this Centric thing,” where should they go to do that?
The best resource for new users or people who are looking at the network is our official website at Centric.com. We have a number of learning resources. I would click on the learn tab and start with the Basics page. That goes through the protocol. For people who want to have that deeper dive, they can read through the Whitepaper. You’ll probably end up reading the whitepaper a number of times because it’s a treasure chest.
Crypto Coin: A Ponzi scheme is something that promises nothing for something. Folks, don’t be afraid. We all have to start somewhere in learning something. If you never did anything or never heard of crypto before this show, then I doubt you’re still reading anyway. If you do and you have some experience and you have done things like you bought some coins and held them, go deeper. It’s worth understanding this because this is the new world. This is where we are. I shouldn’t even say it’s the new world. It’s the only world. It’s the real world.
Michael Saylor, who I admire immensely, not so much because he made a lot of money which he did, I admire him because he has conceptualized crypto and Bitcoin in a way that I don’t think others have. Michael Saylor says and I agree with him that this can be and should be the foundation for an entire civilization. Why? It is truly an asset that you can own. You don’t have to pay interest on it and fees around it.
If you buy real estate, you think, “I bought this building. It’s mine.” It’s not really because you’re paying property taxes every year. You might have to pay to improve it and do all these other things. If you think of any asset that you would buy, it is not just the asset. It is the maintenance of the asset. The other thing that he said exactly was, “Anybody today with a $50 cell phone can hold all of the money that they could ever imagine on that phone and never be charged to do so.” That reference is a revolution.
Something that gets me passionate is the fact that there are people throughout the world who don’t have access to traditional finance. We call them the unbanked. Some numbers are as high as two billion people globally. They might not be able to have access to a high-level advisor like you and me or even have bank accounts, but can they get smartphones anywhere? What I agree with Michael Saylor on that is that this is going to create new civilizations and a new equalizing point for humanity.
Folks, if you’re interested in this and intrigued by our conversation, certainly look into Centric but also look into Michael Saylor. He has some incredible videos on YouTube. He did an interview on the Tucker Carlson Show at TuckerCarlson.com. I’m not promoting the network or his show. He did a one-hour interview that you can get for either free or for $1 sign-up. This interview was one of the most fascinating discussions I had ever listened to on the future of cryptology, cryptocurrency and digital assets. Please go listen to that.
Joel, we’re going to transition to the part of the show, which is fun and everybody seems to like it. It’s these two silly questions that I always ask, but they are not silly at all. It’s how we get to know you a little bit better. Here is the first question. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
Bryce Paul and his associate Aaron “PizzaMind” Malone wrote a book called Crypto Revolution and they have the Crypto 101 Podcast. These are two young men and I say young men because they are younger than the two of us. They have an interesting perspective with regard to what we’re talking about here. I enjoy an hour with him. If PizzaMind is available, he could hang out with us too.
The bottom line is that this is a conversation you could have. With maybe one email as the President of a coin operation company, you could reach out and do that. I would encourage you to do it. I bet you would have fun doing it.
That sounds like a nice little activity.
Here is the second question. This is the grand finale, the change-the-world question. What is it that you’re doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?
Who doesn't like a dollar that gains purchasing power every hour?
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My wife and I are planning to set up a family foundation to give back to our favorite causes. She lost her six-year-old nephew to brain cancer. Pediatric brain tumor research is important to us. There are a number of causes that are important to us and we want to set up that foundation as soon as possible. We believe that’s going to happen probably within the next few years.
Do you have a name for it?
It would be Joel and Peggy Clelland Foundation. It would be our names, but that’s not going to be the focus. The focus is going to be the good work and supporting the good work of others because there are so many amazing people out there that are already doing the work. They just need help and we want to be that help.
Before I let you go, I know you have a free gift for our audience and it’s pretty cool. Tell us about the gift.
One of the things that we do not normally do at Centric is giving away tokens. We’ll give away other people’s tokens but not Centric. What we do have is we have an online store with one of our partners, CipherVolt. They are a crypto fashion brand. It’s CipherVolt.com. Centric has its own little store there where they have clothing items. Far back there, there’s one of the prints. Whoever the winner is or whoever you decide and the team decides is going to get the gift up to $100 in the Centric Store.
This isn’t a free gift for everybody. It’s a free gift for one person who I get to select. Here’s what we tend to do. We make something available to every reader because I was brought up in a world where there are no losers.
I know something I can give away to every reader of yours. Every member of your reading audience can set up a free Centric Wallet.
Tell us why that’s a gift.
During our visit, you asked about the best way to learn about Centric. It’s really at Centric.com. It’s an amazing resource. The ongoing blog series is incredible. The native Centric Wallet is also an amazing gift because it does a number of things. Once you get inside the wallet, you see the total global deflationary supply of CNR.
That token that is becoming scarcer is highlighted in the wallet, along with the market share of that wallet. If you have $1,000 or $100 in that wallet, it shows you your market share, which is going up every hour. That’s the other part of it that’s exciting for users. I’m not saying you have to put any tokens in the wallet, but the nice thing about it is the balance display is very engaging.
Crypto Revolution: YOUR GUIDE TO THE FUTURE OF MONEY I took a quick look and this looks interesting.
Let me know if anybody wants any other freebies. I’m not in the business of giving everything away. I haven’t opened the foundation yet.
Joel, if somebody is excited about finding out more or even talking to you, is that something that you would entertain?
Definitely.
How would they get in touch with you?
I’m @RealClelland on Twitter. That’s the best way to get a hold of me. @CentricRise is the official Twitter for Centric. I directed everybody to Centric.com and if you go at the bottom, it has our Telegram channel. Those are very engaging. My LinkedIn profile, you can go ahead and include that in the description notes.
Readers, this is an invitation to dive deep into the crypto world with a person who is at the helm of hopefully, one of the next major tokens of the future. Take this opportunity. Don’t waste it. Get involved and learn as much as you can. This is what it’s about these days. Some of us that are older don’t like new things and I’m the opposite. I love new things. I’m a shiny objects guy. This is the shiniest object on my desktop. I want to learn a lot about it and I hope you do too. Joel, thank you so much for your interview, time and gifts as well as the education.
It’s my pleasure.
Folks, take advantage of this. This is worthwhile. Joel, I’ll talk to you again soon.
I’m looking forward to it.
Important Links: * ClientFol.io * GetClientFolio.com * Centric * Binance * SHIB * MassMutual * MicroStrategy * Centric Wallet * Whitepaper * Michael Saylor Orange Pills Tucker Carlson The Amazing FULL Interview – YouTube * TuckerCarlson.com * Crypto Revolution * Crypto 101 Podcast * CipherVolt.com * Centric Store * @RealClelland – Twitter * @CentricRise – Twitter * Telegram – Centric * LinkedIn – Joel Clelland * Centric.com/basics * https://CipherVolt.com/search?q=centric
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A community doesn’t happen overnight. It takes dedication and communication from its members. In this episode, we take a look at what it takes to build a community as Mitch Russo talks to experience designer, trainer, and adventurer, Jan Keck. We listen as Jan discusses community-building, effective strategies, and why community is important. Listen and learn how Jan built a community by communicating and sharing meaningful conversations and experiences.
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Listen to the podcast here: Building A Powerful Community Through Deep Conversations With Jan Keck If you’re a coach, you may want to check out my newest SaaS platform for coaches, which boosts productivity and saves time on your session admin. It’s just $20 a month. Go to GetClientFolio.com. Onto my guest and his incredible story. Starting a community with a card deck to help his friends connect on a camping trip, he has been facilitating community conversations for many years. His work has been featured on CNBC, Huffington Post, Breakfast TV and many others. He helps people effectively communicate on Zoom but his real passion is building the deep connectors community. Welcome, Jan Keck, to the show.
Thanks so much, Mitch. I’m excited about our conversation.
I like to start the show with my understanding of the definition of a tribe. Here’s how I see tribes. I have spoken to many tribe builders and there’s a common theme. The first is that most tribe builders have a manifesto. That manifesto might be short, long but it’s a vision, a mission with a purpose. I’ll be asking you at some point in the show to share that with us because we both know that a passion is one that drives people to you and excludes those you don’t want because that passion is polarizing. Why don’t we start by having you figure out in this moment in time in one quick second what is your vision, mission and purpose?
From the beginning, I called myself a community builder for not that long but I feel like I’ve been a community addict. I’ve been part of different communities my whole life. Only looking back, I realized all of the parts had brought me here. One main thing about my work is I have a button somewhere. If I could find it, it’s in a drawer somewhere that says, “I’m going to small talk detox.”
One of the big things and big values of my community and work that I do is that we try to have deeper meaningful conversations. We don’t like to talk about the weather and sports for too long because I often feel that’s where you get stuck. I would say that’s probably one of the biggest values in my community. I created some kind of manifesto on our website.
The community of people that I’m bringing together like they’re all also community builders. They’re all creating meaningful experiences. They’re bringing people together. One thing that I love to use to track the progress and the impact that we’re making is collecting love notes. I started this a couple of years ago, where I have a folder on my desktop. Whenever I see a comment, an email or a message that says something great about an experience that I created or somebody that I work with, even testimonials, they all go into this one folder.
In our community, we use that to track our progress. There are different milestones that I’m hoping everybody will hit. We’ll celebrate that more than making a lot of money or getting a lot of people to sign up. If the experience is meaningful for the people who do show up then they will let you know. The two things that I would say are the big values in my community.
We try to have more deep, meaningful conversations. We don't like to talk about the weather and sports for too long, because that's where you often get stuck.
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Speaking of your community, tell us the story of the camping trip and how you got the whole idea of trying to create deep and meaningful conversations.
I grew up in Germany and then I moved to Canada. I’m now in Toronto for many years. I didn’t know a single person. In Germany, I was very connected. I was always part of different communities. I came here and I had to start from scratch. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a plan of how to meet people and how to make friends, which is something that is a lot more challenging. I realized as an adult than it is as kids. It took me almost six years until I attended a weekend retreat where I could say, “I finally found my people. I found my tribe.” It was that weekend that I heard for the first time, “Your vibe attracts your tribe.”
That became my mantra. I realized that weekend I could drop all the BS. I could be myself and still feel like I’m accepted and I belonged with that group of people. After that experience, I was like, “I made 30 new friends in 48 hours. What happened?” I tried to re-engineer what the community builders did at that event. First of all, we were outside of the city, like North of Toronto.
I did not have cell phone reception. I knew that not being distracted by technology was definitely helping. The main things are we came together because we all shared the same values and we had similar goals and then we had to step outside of our comfort zone. That was through the conversations that we had of being vulnerable and sharing things that we might not have shared with anyone else before. It happened because it was in Canadian winter and we did this team building activity where we had to climb this rope structure.
It was minus 10 degrees Celsius. It was below freezing and challenging but we supported each other. All of those things combined led to us connecting on a very different level compared to all of the people that I meet at a networking event and exchange business cards with. We’re LinkedIn connections and Facebook friends. That weekend, I found the real genuine connections that still to this day are some of the most meaningful friendships that I’ve made in Canada.
That’s such a great beginning. What year was that?
That was 2014, 2015.
This moment in time happened when this realization that, “I have all these new friends.” I created this relationship almost faster than maybe you’ve ever done before. It was because of the structure of this group and the disconnection from the internet, the web and the technology which is fantastic. Let’s fast forward here. We’re in November of 2021. You have built a sizeable group of people who followed you. How many people do you have following you now?
There are probably around 1,000 people that facilitate connections. I call them the Deep Connectors. There’s also a larger community of people who appreciate meaningful conversations. What came out of that weekend retreat was me creating a card deck that has deep questions on the back of each card to help people get to the vulnerable shares a lot quicker.
Building Community: We came together because we all shared the same values, had similar goals, and had to step outside of our comfort zone. I’ve sold about 2,500 decks and they’ve been going all around the world. I even had one person take it to Antarctica. I can say that they ended up on each continent of the world. He brought them back though because it was like an adventure trip. They’ve been used all over the place to facilitate more meaningful dinner conversations, workshops and all kinds of experiences.
Realistically, if you were to think about the core mission of your tribe, is it simply to help people create deeper connections? Is there more to it than that?
If we go a little bit deeper with what does it mean to have a deep connection with someone, it comes all back to not feeling lonely and creating a bigger sense of belonging. I often say that my mission is to help people feel less alone. The reason why I created the cards, the experiences and when I do training, I always approach it with how can I make sure that the people who show up feel a little bit less lonely by the end of it. In other words, feel more connected with this greater sense of belonging within a community.
Let’s go and talk a little bit about evolution. You said you started in 2014 with this realization. How did you attract your first group of members in? What was that then? Maybe you didn’t know what it was at first. Tell me a little bit about that formation experience.
In the beginning because I attended that weekend retreat, that opened my eyes to the types of experiences that fill me up, where I can be myself and I am more open to connecting with other people. I attended a few more of those types of experiences that same year. I feel like I grew my personal community quickly as I was creating the cards and started to create my own experiences. The very first thing was a camping trip and I only took six people with me. It was seven with me. The goal was to get outside into nature, a way where we don’t even have reception so we can turn off our phones.
The cards were literally a tool to help people connect on the car ride because I knew once we’re out there, it’s going to be easy. We’re going to be sitting in canoes and a campfire. I’ll be able to facilitate it but I can’t be in each car as we’re driving up there. It’s 3 to 4 hours from the city until we arrive. That’s why I said, “I need to create a tool that helps them get started because most of them didn’t know each other.”
It turns out that looking back, each one of those people that came on that first camping trip ended up leading their own community or building something where they’re in a way a community builder or a tribe builder themselves, which was not an accident. Again, going back to your vibe attracts your tribe, the people that I reached out to and were open to join this experience were attracted by something. Those are the people that I love being around and the ones that are also bringing people together.
What does it mean to have a deep connection with someone? It all comes back to not feeling lonely and creating a bigger sense of belonging.
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Clearly, you had something very magnetic because it pulled people in. At that point, you’re codified what it was that happened for you. That’s a very big step. It’s a step that I would recommend to anybody who’s reading our conversation. Think about taking as well because this show is all about helping others create and build tribes and communities.
As a reminder, this conversation is between Mitch and Jan. Jan has this incredible community, which he has built carefully and slowly over time. He’s going to be and has been sharing some incredible and valuable lessons for you as you begin to build and grow yours. Let’s get into a little bit about the nuts and bolts of this because it’s fun to have a community but if we don’t make money eventually then we can’t support it. Tell us a little bit about your plan that has already started for you that helps you monetize this group.
I love sharing the things that I’m learning and doing a lot of experiments. Even before COVID, I started to bring people together and share, “Here’s something that I’ve learned that worked well that I used to do at my events.” With the pandemic starting, a lot of the in-person things that I’ve been doing, I couldn’t do anymore. I was quite hesitant to do anything in virtual space because we can’t turn technology off anymore. We have to use technology to connect with each other and I thought, “We’re not going to be able to be present.
If you’re looking at me or you’re checking emails, it’s going to be hard to have this meaningful interaction. I did a lot of experiments. I try to recreate a virtual group hug. I did like virtual eye-gazing experiments. I hosted lots of events, facilitating conversations and breakout rooms. The more I learned, the more I realized I needed more people to know about this. I need more people to know that the breakout room is the most powerful feature on Zoom.
You have to start using it, which spring of 2020, most people had never heard of. I started hosting workshops and sharing all of the knowledge I’ve been acquiring from what I’ve been learning. Although I wasn’t that much ahead and I was maybe a few steps ahead, I had a lot of people sign up for these workshops. I always would ask them at the end, “Now, we’ve covered this. Which topics are you interested in next? What other challenges are you having?”
I kept building workshop after workshop and turned that into a five-week Virtual Facilitator Training. I’m basically teaching people how to create these, what I call, magical human moments on Zoom, where the participants almost forget that they’re looking at the screen because at the moment, they feel connected in the conversations that they’re having that almost recreates the magic that we had in-person. We will not ever be able to do it exactly. There’s nothing that beats face-to-face but we can get pretty close. I started creating educational content. That was the first thing I did.
Building Community: The more we focus on making sure people connect with each other and feel heard and seen before we get into the content, the more likely they will participate, share ideas, and collaborate. What I’m picking up here is you were very open to learning from your group. I mentioned at the beginning of the show that I publish a software product for coaches. I built it for myself, to be honest, because I couldn’t find anything to speed up the admin cycle that I go through with every session. As I got it working and I’m starting to use it, others asked if they could use it too.
The real evolution came when I received suggestions from other subscribers who said, “If it did this, it would be great.” or “If it did that and it would be great.” My reaction was, “These are great. I worked with my programming team and we got those implemented.” This is part of what is an iteration cycle that all businesses go through.
Even Federal Express, which you may know the story, didn’t start as a packaged delivery service. It started as a way of cashing checks between banks overnight instead of taking seven days to clear a check. It was the core of that idea, the hub and spoke system, that made the future of FedEx, which we now see very possible.
This process of constantly iterating, accepting feedback, implementing and changing is incredible. The other thing that I also want to point out is that the fact that you’ve now built a facilitator training program is a big deal. What’s happening here is you are engaging others to spread the word for you and, at the same time, helping many people use your technology in a sense to facilitate better human connection. Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of this. How do you communicate directly with your tribe? Let’s start with the ones that are already in the tribe. How do you do that?
A few years ago, I started at Mighty Networks which I’m sure you’ve heard about. That’s where I hosted the life cohort. At the end of the first training, I would create a membership for them to stay connected and keep learning. I would bring in more other guest experts in groups. The Mighty Networks have become the hub for all of the training that I’m doing and the membership community that is attached to that. I would say that most people probably still read my emails.
I sent out an email about me moving with my family to Germany. I shared that story of how I came here, the lessons I’ve learned and now I’m going back. I had 30 people respond and reply to that email. There was no question in the email.
I shared honestly and probably a bit vulnerability because there are lots connected to the idea of, am I moving back? Is this a step backward? Is what I’ve tried to do in Canada a failure and now I have to go back or is this moving forward? I shared a bit of that story and it connected with people that they felt the need to respond. There’s no Facebook post that I would do where I would get that many responses. Email seems to be the thing that works for my audience and I would have never known until I tried it.
Let’s switch gears here. How do we get people who want to sign up for your email list, start to learn more about you and what your community is about?
Breakout rooms are actually the most powerful feature on Zoom.
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When I was first learning about breakout rooms, I created a lot of free content as well from Zoom cheat sheets and posted those things in Facebook groups. I invested a lot into my YouTube channel as well. Sharing different tips, from tech tips around Zoom or facilitation tips and it turns out that there are a few communities of facilitators and community builders that loved that content.
I would share it or sometimes somebody else would share it because they find it before I posted. That would always get a conversation started. They would subscribe to my YouTube channel. I would have different live events happening. There’s no real strategy behind it yet. All I know is that when you create good content, people like to talk about it. I would say that even now, for my facilitator training, probably 40% are referrals. I don’t do any paid marketing. It’s mostly talking to my existing audience, a couple of maybe engaged Facebook groups and then everybody talking about it.
Part of the problem that community builders have is how to make people aware of what they’re doing. Clearly, once you have them in your world, email works better for you. To get them into your world, you say you’re not using paid media of any sort. Are you posting on social regularly? Do you have social media posting tools that you find useful? Where do you sit when it comes to attracting new people?
I’m probably not the best person to give you any tips that you can execute. The one thing I’ve learned is for myself. In my YouTube channel, I said I was going to release a video every week. I probably would do that for 2 to 3 weeks and then miss one and feel horrible that I missed what I promised to people. What I’ve started doing is I put in space in my week that when I feel inspired, I can move things around and I’ll execute.
Often that looks like, “Zoom released an update that would be a cool feature to talk about.” I would move my tasks to the next day and sit down, learn about it, record a video live, stream it on YouTube then post it on my blog, share it to different groups and get it out there as quickly as possible before it becomes a lot of work.
The same thing with the email that I sent out that got many replies. I literally sat down and said, “This morning, I have to send an email, which is going to be about me leaving.” The only thought I had was, what’s the difference between moving back versus moving forward. I sat down and typed it. As soon as it was done, I hit send. It’s out there. It probably has a bunch of spelling mistakes in it. I may be not the best thing to follow.
I had one person once reach out to me who said, “You’ve been hacked. Your email had many spelling mistakes in it.” I replied, “That is how you know that it is from me because I want to get things out as quickly as possible without making them perfect.” That’s also a little bit of what I’ve been recovering from. It’s working and optimizing. It will never be perfect. Therefore, it will never be shared. I do have projects that happened in secret because I never thought it was ready. I’m flipping the script and instead of waiting long, I’ll try to get it out right away. It’s been working well because people realize that there’s a real person there. It’s not like a copywriter that writes it for me.
Jan, where would you identify the place for others to start? What tips would you have for someone getting started building a community?
I would start with a small group or maybe even one-on-one conversations. Before I created my five-week training, as I started to get a little bit of momentum with the workshops, I did a little survey for the people who’ve signed up for any of my workshops saying, “I’m thinking of creating this virtual facilitator training. Can you take like a couple of minutes to fill out the survey?”
Building Community: When creating a sense of community, creating a sense of trust will be like creating ripple effects throughout everything else that you’re going to be doing with that group. Where I asked them what topics are you interested in? What challenges are you having? If you overcome these challenges, what does your business look like? What does it look like for your participants? As a gift, I would offer them a free call with me. I had 80 people fill out that survey, which I did not expect.
I was very happy that not 80 people booked a call because I did twenty-minute calls that would’ve taken a long time, but I had at least 30 calls. Not only do I learn much about my audience and what they want rather than thinking my head what I think they want, which is often realizing from previous businesses. Two different things. Having lots of conversations with people helped me crystallize, “What do you need? Let me create that.” Plus, that helped me start to build relationships with people.
They started to trust me that like, “This guy scheduled a call and was not selling me anything,” because at that time, I didn’t have anything to sell either. I literally was there to ask questions and listen. Whenever you want to start a community, getting to know the people that you want to have in there is going to be important. Building relationships is important and then inviting them for the next step if it’s a good fit.
That’s quite brilliant. The reason I say it that way is that ultimately, you’d end up there anyway, you couldn’t do it any other way. You would have to get to know deeply know the people that you’re about to start a community with. There’s probably nothing better than inviting people to connect with you and then have a genuine, real conversation with 5 or 10 or, in your case, 30 people.
This helps you define your direction as well, which sounds like it did, which is perfect. From there, once you have had 30 phone calls with 30 individuals, you’ve collected a lot of data. You’ve got a feel for each individual but more importantly, what I would think is that you found common ground. What is it that’s common among these 30 people that I can help and facilitate? What can I bring to the table that would make a difference? That’s a great tip. Jan, I understand that you have something for our readers. Can you tell us a little bit about what your free gift is?
This is something that I created before COVID. I’m updating this 2021, which is a Connection Guide. I originally created in mind for anybody who’s leading a team or anybody who’s bringing a group of people together. I realized, especially in a more corporate environment, that there is a big emphasis on being effective and getting things done.
When you have a meeting or when you bring people together, you jump right away into the content. The more we talk about the content, the more effective this meeting will be but I disagree with that. I think the more we focus on making sure people connect with each other and they feel heard and seen before we get into the content, the more likely they will participate, share ideas and collaborate with each other.
Whenever you want to start a community, really getting to know the people you want to have in there will be really important.
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I created this guide with different activity ideas that you can do in the first 5 minutes or 15 minutes when you bring people together, a meeting, or a Zoom call. That helps create a bit of a sense of community, especially if it’s the same people that come together all the time. You want to create a sense of community and a sense of trust. That will be creating ripple effects throughout everything else that you’re going to be doing with that group.
One of the things I’m wondering about is your reaction to what has happened in 2020 in America with this polarization. Maybe it’s just me or others who see this too. I have a feeling everybody sees it. This incredible polarization between groups of people. What are we missing here? What would you suggest as a way to either find a way to reduce that polarization or heal the wounds of the people who feel marginalized here?
That is maybe one of the biggest issues that impact everything. There’s probably no topic where I’m feeling more connected to each other. Understanding and trusting each other would not be helpful. A lot of it has to do with making sure people feel seen and heard. I even learned this as I was preparing to be a parent. This applies to adults too. If a kid is yelling or an adult is yelling especially if they’re repeating the same thing over and over again, it’s because they still haven’t felt heard.
Although you hear it, the sound goes into your ears, they don’t feel like you’ve heard it. They don’t feel like you’ve understood what they said or what they wanted to share. In my training, I love to teach listening skills. How can we listen? First of all, with the goal to understand what the other person says but even more so understand how they feel and reflect that back. That is something that doesn’t happen.
That’s not something that comes naturally for most people. Even for myself, I have to meditate. I’m trying to focus on it. As soon as you realize over your mind is wandering off, you have to bring yourself back and focus on what the other person is sharing and not thinking in your head about what you might share next.
That’s one skill that could help everyone feel a little bit more connected to each other. The words that are coming out of people’s mouths are not the actual message. If we go the levels deeper and that’s kind of what happens when you have the more vulnerable conversations, we realize, “We all want the same things. We’re not that different from each other.” Although it might be hard to find the similarities, they are there if we dig deep enough.
It’s a beautiful way of describing the one thing that I believe is common among us all is we basically all want the same thing. When we react the way we see people reacting, it’s because they don’t feel that they’re going to get it any other way. What you offer is a way to help them get what they want by simply knowing how to listen and communicate. Jan, you are a community builder and a tribe builder. I want to thank you for spending time with me and with this audience, helping us become better at what we do too. Thank you, Jan. We’ll talk again soon.
Thanks much for your time.
Important Links: * GetClientFolio.com * Jan Keck * Virtual Facilitator Training * Mighty Networks * YouTube – Jan Keck’s Channel * Connection Guide
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If you want to be free and own your time, you have to work on your business. In this episode, you’ll discover the journey of a CEO to life, profitability and happiness. Host Mitch Russo’s guest is Leo Popik, the founder & CEO of Leading Peers. Leo shares with Mitch how he went from influential politician to successful CEO. But it didn’t start out smooth. Leo struggled getting his first clients in the first few months. Join in the conversation to discover how Leo created an efficient client creation process. You wouldn’t want to miss this episode.
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Listen to the podcast here: From Zero Clients To A Life Of Profitablity And Happiness With Leo Popik Welcome to this moment in time when you get to chill out, tune in and extract wisdom that you can use to grow your business with Your First Thousand Clients. I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. I’ve been a coach for many years, and I realized that I had been spending about 30 minutes between sessions trying to get the paperwork done to send off homework, and notes, and accountability questions, all this stuff to my clients. I started looking for a solution to that problem. I couldn’t find one that worked for me. I couldn’t find one that was under $100 a month for use. I did what all great entrepreneurs should do when they find problems that haven’t been solved. I decided to solve it and built my own.
It’s called ClientFolio. I want to offer you a $1, 14-day trial where you could give it a test drive. It takes fourteen minutes to learn and $1 to try. I guarantee you will fall in love because it will make your life easier. It will up-level your sessions. It will help you get more from your clients, help them achieve more and love you even more than they do now. Go to GetClientFolio.com and check it out.
Now onto my guest and his incredible story. From Argentina at 10 and then back again at 15, my guests discovered that people were his most passionate focus. Back in the US again for a Harvard education. He graduated with a PhD in Political Science and then a Master’s in Arts degree. Back to Argentina with the goal of improving the state economy, he joined the national government in a prominent position and went on to form a political party.
Despite the loss, he disputed that loss in his own country and became a little bit famous in the process. He discovered his real place in passion is in creating great experiences for visitors in his country. He started a city tour bus business and surpassed $2 million in revenue. He also realized that experience was no longer fulfilling in the way he thought it would be.
Time after time, business after business, my guest had discovered that his true power had to do with leading others. That led him to create a new company called Leading Peers. He brings us the gift of mastering the art of addressing critical challenges, building trust, and getting through them. Welcome, Leo Popik, to the show.
I’m thrilled to be here with you.
I’m thrilled to have you. I don’t think I’ve had anybody come back and forth to America so many times, and I hope you’re still happy to be here.
It is my third stint. I’ve never been happier not only in the States, but I’ve never been happier in my life, but it was challenging the first few years in this third stint. After I progressively got through this pandemic, which was extremely challenging, things got better. I’m happy to be here. This time it’s indefinitely. The plan is to stay here. We love South Florida with my wife and our children. No plans to leave.
I’m a fan as well of the Florida experience. For everyone reading, Florida is our happy place for Leo and me. You’re welcome to join us. Let’s go back to the beginning. How this all started for you? Why don’t you tell us the story?
My journey is that I grew up in Brazil. I didn’t even move to Argentina until I was seven, but my parents were Argentinian. We were raised in Spanish at home and then Portuguese in the playground, and no word of English ever came to my ears until my parents knew at the age of 8 or 9 that we were going to move to the States. They got us a tutor, but we didn’t pay any attention to her. At the age of ten, we moved to the States. We went to live in a city in the United States we had never heard of in St. Louis, Missouri. We did make a stop at Disney. My parents were very strategic about selling the move to the States. Here we were in the Midwest growing up, and we stayed there for over five years, and I became a full-fledged American.
My first great friend for life, girlfriend, sporting competition, my first everything happened in America. I was halfway through high school when my parents broke my heart and said we were moving back to Argentina. I didn’t want that to happen at all. By then, I was dreaming of college and life in the States, but it was something that just had to happen. We moved back. I finished high school there. My parents said, “You couldn’t go to college in the States.”
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I resigned myself to go through college in Argentina but just kept aspiring to come back. I knew if I aspired high enough, they would eventually help me pay or somehow make it work for graduate school education in the States. I did work extremely hard through my college years. Academically, I was a great student. At that point, I was very focused.
I even took a trip to the States to visit all the top universities I ever dreamt of. I spent a couple of weeks going around and talking to professors, and putting my sight on a PhD at Harvard was the way to get my parents onboard, “This kid wants to do this.” I didn’t know if I would ever come back to Argentina, but sure enough, I did get into the PhD at Harvard. I did leave Argentina to go to Boston. I was only 22 when that happened.
Not much life experienced. I had always been entrepreneurial. I’d started every activity a kid can start to make some money. I had also started a nonprofit and done a lot of work in that area for about 5 or 6 years, helping the other kids my age become very active participants in their own life. I had no streetwise experience building a business or having employment of any kind.
All of a sudden, I was in the Ivory Tower at Harvard, freezing as those long winters came by, feeling very alone. I started to miss Argentina. Very much counter to what I thought would happen. Finally, it got to where I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be there. I did get through the program, graduated in 1998. I eventually went back to Argentina.
The only thing worthwhile for me to do in this country, which was so behind the United States in so many ways, but it’s where my family was, the friends that I had made in high school and college, was to give myself to help other people. To give myself to public life, become a public servant, whether a political office or a high governmental office of some sort.
I try to pursue that track. I put my whole mind and soul into that life. That life gave me some pretty nice highs to my twenties. I got to report to the chief cabinet minister in the government. I got to meet with the president on more than one occasion. I felt great about starting a political party and having followers, but the more the years progressed, the lowlier I felt.
The less I felt that I could reconcile that life with having a great family and personal life, which are things that I had enjoyed as a kid growing up, being the son of a man in Corporate America who had an international career and was always able to make time for family and personal life. I was being squeezed out of everything I enjoyed. I spend my weekends and evenings working away in politics. Something was just in a state of crisis.
When I hit 30, I just knew I couldn’t take this anymore. I had to do something different. I had to make a big change in my life. The only thing that occurred to me is, “I needed to start a business. I need to make money so that I can have a better quality of life. Maybe I won’t need to work as hard in politics, but I’ll continue to give myself to the country, to the people.” I thought it was going to be easy. After you dream of being president of your country, you think of starting a small business. It’s something that’s going to be a breeze, a walk in the park. I had all those thoughts. I was coming from Harvard, a great education in my great university.
I thought this has going to be a breeze. A few months into it, I was so frustrated. We didn’t have a client. Nobody was ringing our phone or knocking on our office door. I kept going out every week to visit every one of the people that I thought would bring us business, literally visit them face to face, hand out a flyer, and explain to them why we were the best city tour company in Buenos Aires and nothing was happening. We were running out of money. I was about to fail in the first venture I had ever failed. Not only that, it was a horrible failure. We hadn’t even come close. We didn’t even have one client.
One day, one of the craziest ideas came. We were thinking of a way to get the concierge of the five-star hotels to step outside the hotel because they were always busy talking to their guests. They were always speaking to 2 or 3 different guests at any given time. When we stepped in, we didn’t know how long we would have their attention. We had to give them the spiel quickly in the wrong order. They were looking away while we were talking to them.
They were looking at who was behind us going through because those guests were the people they were supposed to serve. We thought, “What can we do to get them out of here and have a conversation?” We came up with the idea of bringing them on a sailboat and saying, “How would you like to have an afternoon in a sailboat? We will treat you for everything. The reason we want you to do this is that we want your guests to be able to do this. Why not? You try it first.”
Profitability And Happiness: Build a business you can scale and use to have a more significant impact and a sense of pride and fulfillment. When we got them out on the sailboat, in the middle of the Plata River, and there was nobody around, and all we had to do was just talk and have some wine and cheese. We got to listen to what they needed from us. They just basically spelled it out. They said, “You’ve been talking about all the great reasons why our guests are going to love your city tourists, but you haven’t said what’s in it for me.”
I learned one of the most fundamental lessons in business. If you want to have people serving you, bringing you clients, you have to identify, “What is it that I can do for those who are going to refer me to clients. What is it for them?” The world doesn’t revolve around us, the entrepreneurs. It revolves around the people we’re trying to serve and everybody involved in the client creation process.
If you don’t have a great client creation process, you don’t have a business. You’ll never get off the ground. We asked them, “What do you need?” They said, “We get commissions.” We thought, “How does that work?” We started to listen to what they had to say. Before we knew it, we said, “We agree to that. Let’s do it.” A week later, we had our first city tours.
We knocked it out of the park because we’d been waiting for that moment desperately. It’s against everything I thought would happen. I thought it was going to be this politician with a side business. I was just going to sit as president of the side business. My business partner said, “You have to go and be the tour guide.” I learned another very important lesson in business, which is when you start your bootstrapping, you’ve got to do whatever it takes.
I went out as a city tour guide. I’d only read a few books on how to explain the city, but I had been a politician in the city. I knew the city pretty well. By showing it around to some American tourists staying at the Four Seasons Buenos Aires, they came back and said, “This kid is amazing. He is passionate about his city and everything in his country’s history,” which I was, “We had a great time with him. I highly recommend him.” I was now stuck as the city tour guide in the company. My partner said, “Nobody’s going to do it better than you. You’ve got so much at stake as the president of the company. You’re going to put it all on the line every time you go out there.”
I was stuck in this role for like a year and a half, just going out and guiding city tours. I would take them to the governmental palace that I had been in charge of at the age of 26. I was now in my early 30s as a city tour guide showing them the building from the outside. It was crazy. I ended up leaving politics all together because I couldn’t do both. I couldn’t until I met my wife. When I met my wife, I said, “If I want to take this woman out on dates every night and not lose the woman of my dreams, I have to let go of 1 of the 2 things.”
Politics was not going to pay the bills, the dinners, or the dates. That’s why I quit politics and did the business. When I finally had that relationship, the business, and everything was flourishing, I said, “This is it. This is the dream.” I now only need to find a way to serve people because my idealistic self wanted to serve society and the planet. I said, “That’s the only challenge left. If I find a way to do that, then I’m going to have a great life.” The rest is history.
I have to make come to some comments about this because it’s so parallel to what we all go through as entrepreneurs. When I started my first software company back in 1985, we sold software, but we didn’t even know how to sell software. We didn’t have any mechanism for getting the word out. We stumbled around for months trying to figure it out. We went to trade shows. We ran ads.
We spent 60% of our entire budget on two ads that completely failed. Similar to your story, this is where it’s somewhat the parallel components of what our two experiences are very interesting, I hope to readers as well, what it came down to is when I finally found out that my $6,000 worth of magazine ads had failed, the salesperson brought me a big envelope full of punch cards.
The punch cards used to be what stuck in every magazine where you would encircle the number you wanted more information on from any of the ads in the magazine. He said to me, “I’m sorry. I know it didn’t work. We let you down, but I have to give these to you anyway. They’re probably worthless.” I had no choice. What I did was I called every single one of them and asked them, “Why did you circle the number? What was in our ad that was interesting to you?”
Like you, I found out what was important to them. Once I understood that I was able to reposition the marketing and the product that allowed us to skyrocket the company almost from that point forward. These are great lessons. I want to start by thanking you for sharing them. More importantly, let’s talk a little bit before we go into what Leading Peers is about. Let’s talk a little about this position of being stuck in success and what that feels like. Maybe even how you found your way out, because many of us are in that same position. We start a business. What we end up with is a glorified job.
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I was in this glorified job now as a city tour guide, carrying this big title of president of the company. At the same time, we started having so many tours that our staff of guides that I had helped put together, interview, and so on was starting to get work as well. The more time progressed, the more I wanted to do less guiding and more of building a business that would be able to scale and that I would be able to enjoy having greater impact and just a greater sense of pride and fulfillment in what I was doing in my life. It’s nothing against being a city tour guide. It’s just not what I had envisioned for myself. I’d always thought of myself as an entrepreneur, somebody who would create a great organization or change a society somehow. It wasn’t what I aspired to.
The way I started to think of how do I remove myself from this is finding different services that we could offer that would allow us to start to get the wheel going on the sales on things that I could do that would be able to scale. I started randomly with a corporate client. Randomly because a woman who did a city tour like a normal client said, “I’m here from South Africa. I’m bringing a group of people from my company in South Africa to Argentina, will you organize the trip for us?” By saying yes and trying it out, we realized that it was a much more scalable type of service and business division if we did incentive trips for corporations. My first venture out of that cage doing the city tours was starting to find incentive travel clients.
That became the focus. The second thing is trying to remove myself from having to do all of the city tours, which I did. The third thing was starting to connect with people that could bring us the incentive travel clients. I traveled to the States in 2006. I came here with my fiancé at that time, now my wife. I started to see where the trade shows were.
I was starting to research with my business partner, who could represent us here, like a sales rep that could bring us the leads. Finding the right partnerships to bring in the right types of leads in the right type of service for your company, recalibrating what you originally thought your business was going to do and allowing your business to pivot, change in a direction that allows you to be the company’s owner and CEO, and not just have a job in a company.
When we finally were able to start to get that wheel going, business just started to take off. That’s when we could see a big future in corporate events. In 2008, I left my partnership with my good friend, Eduardo, to launch this business with my wife. I was the only executive in the ownership tandem, the married tandem, so that my wife could support us at home.
We had three kids and moved from Argentina to Brazil. That business was fully dedicated to international corporate events. From the get-go, I was very dedicated to finding people that could lead the events in different places, so I wouldn’t have to travel around all the time. By 2013, I had stopped running events. I was never again in charge of running in international corporate events, which by the way, if you’ve never done it, you don’t sleep much at all.
You probably sleep an average of 3 or 4 hours a night. They go on for a week. Stuff happens every day that you don’t expect. It’s an all-encompassing thing where you can’t take your focus off of what you’re doing ever. I was a dad of three. I was a husband. I had stuff happening in my life, just like every human being. I was now in my 40s, and that wasn’t a comfortable life for me to be in.
In 2013, I stopped doing that and just started to lead a team. That was fine and dandy until the business started to have growing fixed costs. We started hiring people in more countries and cities. At one point, we had full-time employees in ten countries. We had employees in more than one city in many countries like Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil.
Managing full-time employees in twelve different cities throughout 2010 where remote work was not the common norm, it’s certainly not in our industry, which was a people industry where everybody liked to be together in an office, was very complicated. To add to my challenge, we moved to the States. When that happened, we thought it was going to be an easy-breezy immigration process. Little did we know that the change of political climate in America would make that green card process a very painstaking three-year-long after we arrived process where we couldn’t travel out of the country for any given moment.
Our lawyer, at times, came in and said, “You now have a window. If you want to travel, do it because a month from now, I need you back. I don’t know when you’ll be able to get out.” That was a very challenging process to get through, but that’s where you learn that you have to always be working on your business if you want to be free and own your time. At that point, that’s when I was most challenged. That’s what led me to the organization. I’ve now started Leading Peers.
The parallels are incredible because we’ve all been through this. I bet many people reading this episode have been through this too. You don’t have an accent, no hint of an accent. I’m curious. How did that happen? How did you accomplish that?
Profitability And Happiness: Keep your employees aligned with the company’s mission, values, and strategy. A part of it is that I grew up with two languages right off the gate. I was raised with Spanish at home and played in the playground in Portuguese. That gave me a lot of practice of just doing different accents from birth. The other thing that happened when I moved in 2010, I didn’t come to South Florida, which is full of Hispanics. I went to a suburb in Western St. Louis that had no Hispanics in my school. I was the only Hispanic in the entire school. When I mentioned the people that I had come from Argentina, my friends would sometimes ask about Australia. They never heard of the country. I had to work hard to assimilate, to not be the odd kid out.
This has been the story of my life, which I’ve always been that odd kid out, trying to fit in. At the age of four, I moved within Brazil and started in a new city at seven. I moved to Argentina, and I was seen as Brazilian. At the age of ten, I was seen as the Argentinian. When I went back to Argentina at the age of fifteen, they said, “Here’s the American kid.” I had the look of the American kid. It’s been the story of my life always to be the outsider coming in. I’ve always been inspired by people who try to include the outsider because of my personal story.
Let’s get into what I think of as your true superpower, which is mastering the art of addressing critical challenges, building trust, and getting through them. For historical purposes, did your First Thousand Clients come with your tour company, or did it come later?
It came with the tour company. This was a business-to-consumer company, and all of the guests staying at these hotels were just there on vacation. They have free time. They would sign up to do the tours. We ended up having 40,000 individual customers. Since most of the parties had 2 or 3 people, we ended up serving as end-users, over 100,000 individuals over the years I had that city to our company. All these people would try to keep my email, or they’d try to keep the company’s information. They would sometimes say, “I have a friend going into your city.” It was crazy with the number of different clients whose business could come once we got it off the ground.
Let’s go back to Leading Peers. What is the purpose of the organization, and why did you start this company?
I’d like to tell it from the standpoint of my story because I’ve built my story up to the moment where I’m already living in the States, having trouble getting my green card. I realize that managing my remote team requires me to step it up and learn a lot of stuff I didn’t know. I was challenged during this period. I have never been as challenged as a professional as between 2017 and 2019. I had to run full-time employees in ten countries remotely, who are in different places, keep them aligned with the company’s mission and values and our strategy and everything. I couldn’t go and visit them. Even the new employees I had never seen them face to face. I’m being challenged like never before.
Our clients are saying, “You’re coming to my big event in Mexico or Brazil.” I’m saying, “I can’t go, but you’ll be taken care of very well.” I’m starting to lose all the joy out of what I do, which is being close to the people and stakeholders. I love my team, my clients, vendors and I couldn’t see any of them. I started to feel that loneliness and isolation. What did I do? I run out of books to read on how to create a company. I’ve run out of anything that has ever helped me get to this point. I decided to join Vistage International.
I ended up in a great group of entrepreneurs, all of them in South Florida. I started to realize they’ve all got some interesting challenges themselves. I was not alone. That was a great feeling. To be able to share with them, “My biggest issue right now is cashflow.” I’m a Latin-American kid who doesn’t even have a green card. Nobody’s going to give me a bank loan. The SBAs can’t even do it. I’m not even a permanent resident.
How do I get funding? I’ve been funding the growth of my business in two ways, reinvesting profits and increasingly through vendor arrangements where they allow me to have an increasing amount of money in an account with them that they’re funding me. This is getting extremely, increasingly uncomfortable on both counts, particularly the vendor payments, because what happens if the business has a bad run.
What happens if they all say, “I won’t do another service unless you pay up the balance of what you owe us?” Where does that put us from a reputational standpoint? Where does that put us with the team? I’m starting to feel the stress and the anxiety of all that. I’m able to open up and confide, which I had never done because all of my conversations had been in the industry that I was in. Within the industry, I didn’t want to be completely vulnerable.
I didn’t want to share the things that I was worried about because if I did, I would have to say, “I’m losing sleep at night, quite literally. I’m having trouble getting back to sleep, thinking about these worst-case scenarios of what could happen.” The more you go through business, the bigger the stakes are because you’ve dedicated more time to building it.
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You’ve dedicated more effort, blood, sweat and tears. You have more people that depend on you. The feeling that you can’t let everybody down in yourself, in your family, keeps mounting. Having this group became very valuable to me, and then the pandemic came. I knew a lot of businesses were affected, but none were more affected than international travel businesses, particularly corporate ones and event-related ones. Those were shut down 100%, so much so that international corporate events are still down to this day, November 2021, by over 99%. The business was completely wiped off the face of the Earth. We had to lay off everybody, and we had to shut down all the offices we were renting, and it was gut-wrenching.
The only saving grace was that the entire industry was going through the same thing, and the entire world knew about it. People were going through much more life-threatening things than we were having to just suffer as business owners and workers. At that moment, where I felt most vulnerable, I didn’t have the income to provide for my family.
I had reinvested all the profits in my business to keep it growing. The business had grown. We started from nothing, and the business went from $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, $5 million, $7 million, $9 million, $11 million to $12 million of revenue. I was the only owner. That was a lot for me to handle and to wrap my head around. All of a sudden, that was zero.
There was no coming back to what it had been before in the foreseeable future. There was no certainty about how this pandemic would work out. We still don’t know how the pandemic is going to finish work itself out. Although it’s increasingly looking positive and everybody’s increasingly optimistic that it’ll happen soon. When the pandemic came, how could I continue to pay for any of the advisory services we were getting, like Vistage in the situation of not having any money to put food on the table? How could I do that? At that moment, it hit me. Like with your software for coaches, through your pain, you said, “What is the solution I wish was out there, and you created your solution.”
I said, “What is the business community? What is that CEO and business owner space? I wish I could join, but I can’t find it.” I know that YPO, the Young President’s Organization, is there, but you have to do millions of revenue, which I didn’t anymore. You have to be young. I’m 48. You have to be 44 or younger. I knew EO was out there, but you have to do a million of revenue or more, and I had zero revenue.
You had to pay up the $4,000 enrollment, chapter and national fee. When you added all those up, it had to be $10,000-plus before you even walked into a meeting, training, event or anything at a moment where I didn’t have a single dollar that was superfluous in my bank account. I had everything accounted for. It still needed funding to get through the following few months.
Your vision then was, where someone like me can go under these circumstances at this time? Like you said, “Nowhere, so I’m going to create it.” That is the beginning of your company. Tell us what it is that you do. What do the people who pay you now get from this company and share that with the readers? They can maybe practice a little bit more about what it is that you teach.
The number one thing that I had found invaluable I wanted to recreate this is having a peer board. That’s a board of people who are peers of yours as a business owner and CEO that you can get together with on a monthly basis and have a conversation about what is happening. What are your critical issues and challenges so that they can weigh in and say, “This is what I would do. This is what I’ve gone through. I don’t have a solution for you, but call me, and we’ll have lunch. I’m here for you just to listen to you and something might come up? We could come up with ideas of what you could do. I could go through my Rolodex and see if I know somebody who could help you?”
I wanted to recreate the peer board idea. In the middle of that pandemic, it had to start with a virtual Zoom meeting. I knew how powerful in person was for these kinds of communities because you want it to be able to connect in between monthly meetings and have lunch, or build a personal relationship and have your spouses meet and just create a friendship. I was reconciling that we would start with that monthly virtual Zoom meeting but would eventually grow into a community where these peer boards would meet in person.
If people couldn’t attend in person, we needed to create a way for them to participate through Zoom. That’s the central pillar of what we are about. It’s creating that safe space where you can be completely vulnerable. You can trust that these people around the room, which are never more than a few, we never have more than eight members in a group, are all in different industries, you can truly open up.
There’s a lot of industry-specific forums and communities out there, but you’re never going to have the same level of trust and vulnerability when you’re talking to people who don’t know any of your employees, clients and vendors. You can share what’s going on. That was the central thing, getting the dynamics within that group to help people bring out what was truly happening with them. I learned a lot from my own Vistage experience as a member and what it took.
Profitability And Happiness: You need a board of people who are your peers as a business owner and CEO you can get together with monthly. It was hard to get me to open up, and I’m a person who loves interacting with other people, but I had a hard time taking off that armor of things are going great. That was the game face I had to put on for several years I was growing my business. We were selling the large corporations, Fortune 500, organizing the international corporate events for Pfizer, Bank of America and American Express.
We were the preferred supplier of many of these companies. Being in the billions and being some of the largest corporations in the world, they expected us to have everything figured out. Not just the compliance bits, but also to have unlimited money so that they would never have to worry about that. It wasn’t our reality coming from South America and building it from the ground up and not having any endowment or inheritance to build it with, but just having to build it as we go.
A lot of what I had to do was not posturing, but keeping the reality of what was happening away from the surface and talking about what was great. McCann Erickson says, “The truth well told.” We would always tell the client the truth, but we would always tell it well, so if there were something that would make us look bad, we would leave that bit out.
If they said, “Have you done events in this country before? If we were new?” If our team had, we would say, “Our team has done events in this country.” We were telling the truth, but we were telling it well told. It was always a question of how do I phrase it? How do I put it? When I walked into the Vistage, the thought of opening up and saying, “This is what I’m scared about. This is what’s keeping me up at night. This is what is not allowing me to fall back asleep when I got up in the middle of the night, that was very difficult for me to do.” I eventually learned from the example of some of the members of my group.
I realized, “This is the only way this is going to have any value to me.” When I thought of designing Leading Peers, that was the thing I needed to bring in, create that level of safety for people to be themselves. We all know business owners are very resourceful people. Many of them have alpha personalities. Many of them are used to show how successful they are or they’re perceived as very successful.
How do you get them to change that, be very human and realize that they don’t know everything? They do feel scared, threatened by different things and that there are a lot of things that they don’t grasp and are not good at. How do you get them talking about those things? By addressing those challenges, they will be able to reach the next level of impact of success and growth.
The 1st thing that we do is create that peer board experience. The 2nd thing that we do is provide one-on-one business mentoring for these business owners. Everything we do is done by people who have been entrepreneurs themselves. We don’t just provide a coach. We provide a coach who’s been a business owner to work one-on-one with you as a mentor. We don’t just provide a group facilitator for the peer boards. We provide a facilitator who’s been a business owner and a CEO.
When you interact with our staff in these two different spaces, you know that our staff has walked in your shoes and gets you. That was a departure that I wanted to bring to leading peers from what I witnessed in Vistage. Vistage had a lot of people who had had successful corporate careers, but had never owned a business, had never been CEOs. I wanted to be very faithful to our members and to say, “We are all equals. We are all peers.” Even in our staff, “We are all on this journey of growth together. We, the staff learning from you as much as you’re going to be learning from us.”
There are some great lessons here. What I understand is that you’re providing a space that is peer group-wise to others in leadership positions. The goal is to get them to feel safe because they’re on common ground. They’re with others that have been where they are, maybe even worse and more. That is an incredible and important key. The lesson I’m getting from this is that you can do this on your own. You can utilize the idea of helping people feel safe in your presence as a coach by simply opening up, being real and honest.
What you’re doing is very valuable. You have an opportunity here to take what you’ve done and turn it into something very large in the future because we all need that. It is now time to move on to the next part of this show, which I’m excited about because I’d love to hear your answers. I know that you did take a peek at the questions beforehand.
Some do, some don’t. I’m expecting some great answers from you. Here we go. We use this question to get to know you a little bit better. Feel free to be completely honest, real and share with us what you think. Who in all of the space in time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
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My answer was not easy because the two people I’ve respected most throughout my life have been Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. These people gave all of their lives and sacrificed for the inclusion of the people in their society, India and South Africa, respectively, who were completely left out and disenfranchised. They couldn’t vote. They weren’t respected. They could be held as slaves. There was no dignity in the way that they were treated. Having been the outsider my whole life, I felt like those who fight for those excluded are the real heroes of our lives. They’re the ones that remind humanity that we’re all brothers and sisters.
If I have to pick one person, I’m going to go with Jesus, even though I’m not a very active religious person. For most of my life, I haven’t been religious at all. I was raised by a Jewish dad and a Catholic mom, and I was allowed to pick. I ended up being Catholic. My older brother never picked a religion. That’s how free we were. I haven’t been an active, practicing Catholic for most of my life. Having found at a very young age the teachings of Jesus, it doesn’t matter what religion you have, but the teachings of loving one another as we love ourselves, to love God, to think that we are all brothers and sisters in this world, and serving a greater good, that affected me, big time.
You have no idea. As I was growing up, the sense that there was something we needed to do, that there was a sense of real significance in our existence. It wasn’t some random thing that just happened out of evolution. There was some design in our being here, in this planet, in sharing this planet. That idea and the thought that life had a purpose, also that it didn’t end in a sad way, but that there was an eternal life afterward if you had been a great person in this life, gave me so much meaning and a sense of comfort that it changed my life completely.
That’s a great illustration. I appreciate you sharing that. It fulfills the goal of the question. We get to know you a little bit better here, and you are a person who cares about others. I can see that both in the way you made your pathway to Florida, the family and business that you’ve built. Here is the grand finale, the change the world question. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world literally?
What I am doing, and I want to continue to do it for the foreseeable future, is helping the leaders of the free world. I think the business leaders as the people who create the most freedom. They choose the life of freedom. They are their own bosses. They choose to create things that are new and are different and solve societal problems. They choose to earn the love and loyalty of clients by doing great work that serves society.
They choose to compete, which means putting themselves out there to a high standard of excellence in everything that they do. They choose to create jobs because there’s no other way to grow their businesses unless they just want to work for themselves. They choose all of these things, and they have to choose personal growth and professional growth. If not, they just cannot achieve what they set out to do.
In doing that, they remind us all that we are all free. We can all leave our jobs and do that. We can all choose to work at different companies because we don’t live in a world of limited competition or oligopolies. We have a lot of choices. We can pick the right company and culture in which to work, work, and the right boss and the right environment to do that.
If I can serve those people powerfully, I can allow them to find more clarity on what they’re trying to achieve and give meaning to what they’re trying to achieve by aligning that with their purpose and giving them resources. By that, I mean tools, ideas, strategies, connections, relationships and all of these resources that can take them forward on this journey so that they never feel completely alone, which I did.
They never feel discouraged, which I did. They never feel like it starts to be pointless and meaningless, which I did. If I give them everything, I lacked when I was down and out. The only thing that kept me going was the love of my family, my great and very supporting wife, and just the belief that challenges are part of the journey. It was grueling, at times, very sad. I cried many times as I got through it.
If I can give them that safety net, that best in class support system, and be that go-to community for those growth-seeking business owners and CEOs, I will throw them, through their leadership, to be helping the change. First, we are in this beautiful place of South Florida and Florida in general, the country, and then hopefully have an impact beyond this country and throughout the world. That’s what I most want to do.
You are changing the world with your work and the things you’re doing. I know that everyone reading this episode so far has realized that there’s a lot to this process, which you have unpacked and codified, and which people will probably want to find out more. Tell us how people can get something from your organization that will assist them in this process. I know you have an incredible giveaway. You called it Five Blind Spots. Tell us a little bit about what that is and where they can go to get it.
Profitability And Happiness: There are ways to avoid blind spots and to be able to see past them. When I look back at the things that I got wrong, and I was able to codify them into Five Blind Spots that I had as a CEO. Those blind spots I’m not going to mention it here because I want people to read the piece, but my work is how do you avoid them? The good news is there are ways to avoid those blind spots and to be able to see past them.
What I found working with other CEOs in Vistage and now in Leading Peers is these are very common to most small business owners and entrepreneurs, and even midsize business owners and entrepreneurs. If we’re able to see them for what they are and equip ourselves to get through them, we will be able to lead better companies, and we will have more satisfaction in the process.
That’s what I created. I created an eBook called The Five Most Dangerous CEO Blind Spots and How to Avoid Them. To get this giveaway, all you have to do is go to our website, www.LeadingPeers.com. As soon as you go into the website, you’re going to get this pop-up that says, “Do you want that piece?” All you have to do is download it from there and you have it right away. It’s a free giveaway. It’s available to anybody.
This is going to stay there for quite some time because it’s the flagship thing that we have for our members as they join. It’s something for them to realize that these are common. When people hear my presentation on the topic, I’ve had so many CEOs reach out and say, “This is what I’m going through.” I’m like, “You’re going through it because we all are.” It’s like being new to a job when you’re 22. There are things that are common to everyone and everybody who’s been in the position.
Since you’ve been talking about it, I did go and sign it up, download this. It’s interesting because this is everything we talked about on the show. This is a summary of what your life has been in tackling the major obstacles that you and all of us as entrepreneurs have gone through. If you’re under 40 or 30 and in business, you need to see this because this potentially could save you. What took Leo and I may be a decade or more to figure out. Go down and grab that. You could also go to YourFirstThousandClients.com go to the Leo Popik’s show page.
They’re at the bottom of that show page will be a link directly to this as well. Leo, it has been such a pleasure getting to know you. I appreciate the time and conversation. Readers, I hope it brought you some of the wisdom that has certainly brought to me. Please let us know if you enjoyed this episode and reach back out and let us know what it was that you got from it. That’s always useful to me. Thank you again, Leo. We will talk again soon, I’m sure.
I want to acknowledge you for the work that you do have. I’ve listened to your show for some time now since we got to know each other. It’s amazing how there are bits of wisdom in every single one of those episodes, which is why I felt honored to be a part of it. Thank you for the work that you’re doing.
My pleasure.
Important Links: * GetClientFolio.com * Leading Peers * Vistage International * The Five Most Dangerous CEO Blind Spots and How to Avoid Them
About Leo Popik I serve an innovative community of CEOs working together to overcome challenges, seize opportunities, and test ideas and strategies to achieve goals and grow as leaders.
Over the past 20 years, I have served as the CEO of four companies, growing them from zero to seven or even eight figures in revenue. My experience has taught me what works and the pitfalls to avoid as the Chief Executive.
If you’ve never been in that role, it’s hard to understand. The gap between upside and downside is so enormous that the pull to focus on the job nonstop can be relentless.
Many CEOs feel they’re alone and are battling a loss of inspiration. They are in a rut and want out.
Many CEOs have hit a wall and are struggling to grow their business. They’re frustrated and confused.
Most CEOs struggle to have the relationships they long for with their spouses, children, and loved ones.
CEOs must stay ahead of a rapidly changing business landscape, face stiff competition, and balance their personal and professional lives.
The consequences of whether a CEO succeeds or fails affects everyone: the officeholder, the people in their inner circle, and every employee, customer, and supplier. Failure as CEO crushes the hopes and dreams of many. That burden is always heavy and can make hard times excruciatingly difficult.
Leading Peers is a community of CEOs. We provide peer advisory boards, one-on-one mentoring, expert training, collaboration forums, and more. We are a safe space for each member to bring their entire self, share challenges and opportunities, and work with other members to achieve goals and grow personally and professionally.
The post From Zero Clients To A Life Of Profitablity And Happiness With Leo Popik appeared first on Mitch Russo.
Building tribes can benefit everyone, especially when it comes to business. Someone in the tribe wants to sell their business, who will they go to first? Some stranger or their tribe? It’s important to let your tribe build trusting relationships by themselves. That is what Mandi Ellefson did with her tribes. Mandi is the founder of Hands-Off CEO. Discover how she created a tribe with a hands-off approach and the benefits it offers. Learn how building a tribe can further help you in your development and growth. Join your host Mitch Russo as he gets Mandi to tell you why tribes are important to business and yourself and how you can start writing your tribe manifesto today!
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Listen to the podcast here: When Tribes Mean Business With Mandi Ellefson *Welcome to the show. Our goal is to help you be a better leader, inspire more people to create the passion your community wants and profit from experience. I want to hear from you. Tell me what you want, who are you interested in hearing from and what actions do you take from each of these incredible guests that we speak with?*
*Our guest started out, like many of us, a bit overworked and disorganized and way too much to do on her own. As her small business continues to grow, she tried everything until one day she realized what was missing. She discovered that a simple system of organization and delegation may be the solution. She tried several different strategies until she discovered a methodology that completely solved her problem and rapidly and almost effortlessly scaled her company from that point on.*
*She wasn’t done. In fact, others saw what she was doing and asked how they could do it too. That became the beginning of her rapidly growing tribe, a dedicated group of people who believe as she does that CEOs and company owners can be hands-off and work less. Mandi Ellefson*, welcome to the show.**
Thanks for having me, Mitch.
*My pleasure. Mandi, tell us the story about what brought you to the point of building your community.*
I was doing, like many consultants, working one-on-one with clients and you get to a certain point where your head’s about to explode. You can only work with so many clients in a one-on-one way. This was a real challenge for me because I also saw a lot of coaching programs out there that threw a bunch of people in a group and said, “This is good for my scalability,” but fingers crossed, let’s hope that it works out for our clients. The reality is there are a lot of junk programs out there. It declines in quality.
Building a tribe is all about the added value where people could communicate and build each other up.
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This is something I was resisting for a long time. What I did is I looked at what can I do to be able to build a tribe. I call it a tribe. We have a tribe of Hands-Off CEO Tribe and our Scale to Freedom Tribe. I looked at it and said, “How can I make this add more value to what we’re already doing in a way that will allow us to scale?” More than anything, I started this tribe because I saw this added value where clients could communicate with each other and be able to build each other up. There’s this community that’s like outside of me.
I started that a few years ago. I was nervous about doing it because the whole point of a tribe is for it to grow beyond you, which means you have to let go of some control. It also means that you have to set a vision. At the time, I was working with a mentor who helped me be able to craft who’s in and who’s out. How I started this was getting those people together. It was amazing because we had clients that were sharing with me who had been working with me for years one-on-one said that, “I liked this even better.”
That’s when I knew like, “We’ve got something going here.” It took a real commitment to keep building that. As we continued to build it, what happened is that people came to us for our consulting and for our expertise to be able to help them scale their company but they stayed for the tribe. It became a nice value add for our clients.
*Mandi, as you probably realized, I reject a lot of people who simply want to promote their business because this isn’t necessarily about business. More importantly, what we’re looking for is people who are dedicated community builders. That is the distinction. What I loved about what you said is that there’s one element of this which is you are helping your clients be more hands-off, hence the name of your company.*
*The part that resonates with me and with anyone who’s reading this is that you had this realization that the community might be as important or maybe possibly at a different level, more important than a particular client per se because the client relationship is great. What we don’t get from a client relationship are the insights of others. There’s where the tribe mentality and the power of a great culture, which you’ve created, permeate the whole group.*
*It sounds like everybody’s happy to help each other, pull each other up by the bootstraps, share their wins, ideas and techniques all without worrying that, “Mandi’s not going to like this for some reason.” At this point, you’re not even leading it anymore. It’s more or less taken on a life of its own. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t need a leader but a great community has a culture that supports that.*
Business With Tribes: The whole point of a tribe is for it to grow beyond you, which means you have to let go of some control. But it also means that you really have to set a vision. You know that’s working when you have other people within the group that meets outside of it. They go and meet in person, they connect. One person will go and help someone else and say, “I noticed you have this problem.” No one’s getting paid for it. These are high-level CEOs. They’re choosing to spend time and invest in these relationships. That’s when you know that you’ve got this momentum building. I agree with you.
*Here’s some insight, for any CEO’s reading, once again, your value both your clients and to the people who you work with can be greatly enhanced by thinking the way Mandi has thought about her business. Thinking about pulling your own clients into this group called your tribe, which you can call anything you like. There are paid versions of this at some level. They’re called masterminds. What you’ve done is you kept this fairly loosely structured so that people can get together and meet any time they want, which is a beautiful thing, in my opinion.*
There are some loose structures too but there are also set times where we meet. We get together for retreats in person as well. There is room for it to grow organically, with interactions within the tribe. We also have very strict requirements for people coming in and that’s why it’s valuable. A lot of those group programs pretend like they’re tribes but they’re not. What happens is they’re going to take anybody in with a pulse. I’m looking at this as like the guardian of our tribe that we’ve built. I want to know how is this person going to be adding value to the tribe. Is this person going to say, “If they helped me, maybe I will.” That attitude doesn’t belong there.
Also, the other part of it too is that the whole point of a tribe is to have like-minded people who are at your level or around your level. Maybe a little below that will give you some ideas for, “I’ve been there. I remember what that was like,” and above you because you can say, “This is where I’m going to.” Every person, having something to add, even the newest, even the people who have maybe the smallest businesses within that but having a minimum standard. The minimum standard, the tribe would not be what it is if we let anybody in. It was about the growth of the company.
Here’s the thing, in years past, we could have grown a lot faster if we would have done that. It takes integrity to what you’re building. That vision is what creates the container for this tribe to be in. It creates something very different because I know that I’ve talked to other people who are creating group programs for agencies, for example.
We work primarily with agencies and consultants, consulting agencies we call them. One of the things he said is like, “We’ve tried putting together a mastermind or a group but what happens is that their competitors have nobody wants to share anything.” I’m like, “I haven’t found that at all. It looks like nobody’s competing. We help each one of them create a different offer that looks completely different from the rest. They’re collaborating and sharing resources. They’re saying, “This is working for me.” What this looks like is we have other experts within the tribe teaching different pieces of it so that we can all benefit from what they’re bringing. I learned a lot from our clients.
The whole point of a tribe is to have like-minded people who are at your level. Don't just let anybody in.
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*In my life and all the companies that I’ve built throughout my years, I have done one thing that freaks most people out and is somewhat unusual. It sounds like you do this too. I would reach out to my competitors and take them to dinner at trade shows. I don’t even talk about business. I just want to get to know them. I want to get to know them because they’re genuinely interesting people who’ve taken a risk themselves to create their business.*
*By the time I sold Timeslips Corporation, we were having dinners with twenty different competitors all at the same table at the city where we were meeting. Everybody would go for their wallet. They’re like, “I’m paying.” It was because it was such a fun evening and so much we got from each other. When I sold my company, I got more and faster congratulations from my competitors than from anybody else.*
*They were genuinely happy for me. When you build a relationship with the people who you think of as your adversaries, all of those dissolves, all those feelings go away. Like you were saying about the agency owners, everybody’s a competitor, the fact of the matter is none of them are. You know this. It was super cool.*
The other added benefit of what you were talking about is building those relationships. Now you have acquisition merger partners. They might want to buy your company. You might be able to look at them and say, “I want to buy your company.” You’re going to get the very best opportunities before they go on the market. They’re going to want to sell to you because they like you and they trust you.
*In fact, we bought one of our competitors out of that group. We rolled that into our offerings. Later, what that did is it increased the value of my company when we sold it to Sage later. You’re right. It’s an almost invisible strategy because nobody would think it should work but it is wonderful. I love how you encourage that in your own tribe as well. Let’s switch gears here. As a leader of your tribe, how many people are in your tribe now?*
Around twenty.
Business With Tribes: Building relationships helps you get acquisition merger partners. You’re going to get the very best opportunities before they go on the market. *It’s small. This is another thing, we talked to people that have hundreds some thousands of people but when you have a tribe this small, it becomes very intimate. Tell us a little bit more about the dynamics of a twenty-person tribe*.
There are two different tribes. There’s the CEO tribe. Something that’s innovative that we do is we put together a tribe of our operators, the CEOs are second in command. We have a tribe that we’re training and developing to run the company without the CEO. They have this group. We have COOs and some project manager-level people in there, vast difference.
There are leadership opportunities within that to be able to coach the people who are earlier. It’s a safe place for them to be building those leadership skills. They are learning how to run the company. That’s one tribe that we would do. That’s something that we include as part of our Scale to Freedom program. What we’ve seen from that is that the mass resignation that we’re running into, we’re seeing a very small percentage of those people who turn over. Almost none of them are quitting because they are being invested in.
*I want to add to what you said. In the news, we have people resigning because the powers that be want to dictate how we act, particularly when it comes to our health circumstances. What I’m saying is when you teach your tribe members to create a culture like the one you’ve created then there’s much more of a reason for them to want to stay and become part of this. It’s not a mandate anymore. It’s more an invitation to stay included with who we are and what we’re doing. I’m not one to change the meaning of words. That’s not my goal here. It’s simply to share the ideas that you said in a way that others who are not deep into it might relate to as well.*
We need to create tribes of our team. We needed to be able to create that in a way that they want to stick around, where they’re getting developed, where they’re getting that mentorship within a tribe like that. In the bigger perspective, building a tribe for our clients adds a lot of value. Something else that we’re doing is we’re building a tribe for our partners. We have a specific tribe that we’re building around there in a way that adds value to them. That right there leads to more growth for everyone.
*Let’s talk about the management aspect of this. You said you have two tribes. You probably have two separate communication channels, one for each. How does that work? Is it as simple as sending out emails or do you have a group? Do you have a place online where they meet and can have a community online? How do you manage that?*
When managing a tribe, be able to create an experience where there's engagement and not just a bunch of noise.
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I can’t talk too much to the tech. I’ll say a little bit because my team handles all that. What we do is we have a Slack channel. We used to be on Facebook. We’ve had to transition over because we don’t want our platform to be controlled. We want to have access to our own. We want to be at a place where there is positivity and not a lot of messages that are going to do.
That right there is a challenge. We’re building that back up because I remember even the first time when we started adding that channel in Facebook, it took some time to build that up, to build the interaction that people communicate and talk. We’re back to square one a bit. We started this by moving over to Slack. I know from experience that you have to stick with it and build the community within that and find reasons for people to be there. There’s a balance. Particularly for our clients, their CEOs were busy. How do you be able to create an experience where there’s an engagement but there’s not a bunch of noise.
*Mandi, for those of us who are not yet at the place where you are with an active running tribe, you’ve spoken a lot about the benefits to the members. Let’s talk about the benefits to you. Share some of what they bring to you, it could be monetary or philosophical, whatever way you feel you benefit. We’d love to hear about it.*
One of our tribe members made a referral for someone who wants to buy our company. I’m not going to sell it. Also, on the side of that, that’s a licensing deal that we want to be licensing out a piece of what we’re doing and then helping them build a seven-figure company out of it. That’s one very relevant one. There’s loyalty to the brand.
They give us referrals. They are constantly sharing wins and we’re creating case studies. We have many case studies, more than we possibly could even put up on our website. Part of our tribe, the environment in that safe place of sharing both wins. Here’s the thing, there’s success shaming in our society. Where do you go where you can talk about this without hearing people like, “Wouldn’t that be nice if I had a company like that?” That’s the attitude that you hear so much. This is an environment where you could be like, “I made a six-figure sale. I’m amazing.” You can be that energy.
When COVID first started, it’s a challenging environment to be in business. Being able to have a tribe there where we’re like putting a little circle of abundance around us, where we’re thinking in a specific way and we’re taking specific actions. Even that responsibility of the leadership required me to up my game in a big way. It was a big transformation for me.
Business With Tribes: If you want to set the culture and the intention that your clients are ridiculously successful in any market condition. You’ve got to own that and really embody that. *Let’s talk about that. That’s interesting. If there’s ever been a reason to create a tribe that allows you and helps you up your own skill levels and be on top of your game, it’s a slam dunk. Explain how you did that and what have you changed about yourself and the way you work even since your tribe has been in place.*
The thing is that to be able to lead a high-level group of people, you have to be high-level and continue to grow. Especially if you want to continue to grow the kind of people that are in your tribe. I want to be doing that. What that looks like is that, if I want to set the culture and the intention that our clients are ridiculously successful in any market condition, I’ve got to own that and I’ve got to be that. What that looks like is that’s fully embodying the movement that you’re creating. I am always aspiring to fully embody the hands-off CEO.
*This is a very big deal. For most people, they build a company, they generate what they hoped they would, they run it and then they start to go to sleep. They start thinking, “This is running on its own. Maybe I’ll take a fishing trip.” What you’re doing is completely different and your community is pushing you to be a better person and leader and create a better business in the same vein that you’re promoting that they do.*
We’ve seen tremendous growth in our business since then. While many companies are struggling, our clients are doing better than ever. Our company is also doing better than ever. We’re seeing a tremendous amount of growth. There’s real pride in that if I’m going to be honest with it. I know that we’ve changed a lot of people’s lives that their businesses otherwise might’ve gone even worse than they would be staying with this company that is eroding away their life.
Ten years later, they look at this and hate everything about it. We want to help people create companies that leave a lasting legacy, that creates much wealth for them, that they have the freedom to be able to say, “That’s not a choice I’m going to make for my health. I don’t want to live in this state anymore.” That’s one reason why I moved to Southern Utah. I could have that freedom to make choices for myself and my family. If you don’t have the wealth in your company to do that, your options are limited and your freedom is taken away. I’m very passionate about people having that freedom.
*The term freedom has even more meaning to me anyway than it ever has before. I’m glad that you brought that up. Mandi, we have people reading this who don’t have a tribe but have been thinking about it for quite some time and potentially would love to have one. What would you advise somebody who is thinking of and wanting to start a tribe? What would be the very first thing they should do to take the next step in creating their own community?*
Build a tribe so that you can up your own skill level and be on top of your game.
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Think about how you’re going to monetize it because otherwise, it’s not worth putting your energy in it if I’m being quite honest. It takes energy and resources. I shared with you how I have to change and show up to be able to do that. That’s energy and lifeblood and I’m going to be paid for that. That’s something that if you are interested in building wealth for yourself, owning the energy that you need to put into place because it’s not just about your time, it’s also about your energy.
Thinking about your vision for what you want to create in the world, what is the change that you want to create in the world, then get that aligned with where your skills are. If you don’t have the skills, I might not build a tribe yet. I would build the skills first. I build the skills through running two different companies and working with clients one-on-one, fine-tuning our systems before we got to a point where somebody wanted to come into a tribe with me.
*I want to offer a different perspective too. I’ve spoken to many folks who have built tribes that have nothing to do with becoming wealthy or generating revenue. My advice answering my own question is what would be that first step, would be to crystallize what your purpose is. One good way to do that is the word manifesto. I would love for you who are in that place to write your manifesto. Write down what is it that you are passionate about. What hill would you stand on and die for if it were your cause? Once you have that then everything under that will fall in place.*
*Mandi already has that. It was unconscious for her to even bring it up because that’s how she’s wired. Many of us need to have a starting point. Particularly for a community that’s not focused on necessarily building a business. No matter what, if you’re going to build a community, you need a passion, purpose, mission and a manifesto is a great way to convey that.*
*Secondarily, even if it’s a nonprofit, you’re eventually going to have to ask for money because you’re going to have to run this thing and it’s going to have to be able to be self-sustaining. No one has the savings to build an unlimited size tribe forever. All of these lessons are very important but I’d start with the manifesto. What do you think, Mandi?*
I completely agree with that. I don’t think that every tribe you have has to be monetized by someone paying money because it could be a way that you’re giving back like I was sharing with one we have with our partners. It has a long-term game of being monetized. In that way, we know that we can invest our time and energy into it in a way that it’s worth people showing up for. The manifesto is fantastic and that’s something that I wish I would’ve written. It’s something that is good to revisit and up-level because as we are continuing to grow and develop, we want to keep pushing the edges of that.
Business With Tribes: If you don’t have the skills, don’t build a tribe yet. Build the skills first. Really fine-tune your systems before you get to a point where somebody actually wants to come into a tribe with you. When we were talking about me embodying the Hands-Off CEO, what that means year to year is getting to be a little bit different. What that meant when our company was at $200,000 a year is very different than what it looks like as a seven-figure company because we have different resources. I’ve changed. My vision’s changing. It’s constantly expanding. That manifesto was a great tool to be able to bring it to life.
What I would also encourage you and our readers to do is to think way bigger. Write it down and then go way bigger to the point where it scares you, to the point where you want to lean over to the garbage can and throw up. If your manifesto doesn’t scare you a little bit then you need to go back to the drawing table and make it a little bit bigger.
*If you haven’t gotten that feeling of wanting to find a garbage can quickly then you’re not thinking big enough. Mandi, another element of this is not just running a tribe day-to-day but projecting the future. A very big and important point. You have two futures to think about. I want you to tell me about them both. One, what is the future of your tribe? Two, what is the future of your company? I’d love to find out how those two futures seem to meld together at some point if they do.*
They go hand in hand with the business that we’ve chosen to create. I can’t imagine running our company without a tribe. I remember when I started it, I was scared. I was terrified to be able to do it because I knew what it would take of me personally to be able to create that container. Also, it’s vulnerable. The future of the tribe is I see it continuing to scale and grow and that the twenty people that are in there are going to be more of our tribe leaders that are elite. They will continue to get different support levels because they’re going to be supporting us in building the tribe.
That will continue to grow. We’ve been selling just one thing for a long time because that’s the fastest way to be able to create a seven-figure company, is to sell one big thing over and over again, build your systems clean for that. We’ve done that. We’ve been very successful doing that. We’re also expanding out to allow some of our systems to go to a market that isn’t quite ready for what we do yet. They’re not yet at the place where they’re ready to scale a multimillion-dollar company.
They need to be able to increase their prices and get to a $50,000 offer first. We’re going to be building a tribe for them, which is separate from our other tribe. It has to be. There might be some mixing may be at an in-person event but you can’t do too much mixing of that because then it devalues your whole tribe, what you’re building.
*It also means that there are two purposes on the table at the same time to the same person. A confused mind does not take action. That’s a brilliant strategy. Mandi, we’ve covered so much ground here. Before I let you go, I know you’re busy with the community and company. First of all, you have a fantastic tool that others can have for free. Include your company URL when you tell us about that as well.*
To be able to lead a high-level group of people, you have to be high level and continuously growing.
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For those who are interested more in our message, how to scale a multimillion-dollar consulting company that can run without you, a service company that can run without you, you can go to HandsOffCEO.com/Roadmap. This is the ultimate roadmap to scaling your consulting agency and how to get out of the day-to-day, how to be able to double your current pricing and five simple ways to be able to finance your growth without diminishing quality.
*It’s a fantastic offer. Mandi, if somebody wants to connect with you directly, how would they do that?*
If they want to connect with me personally, you can go to Mandi@HandsOffCEO.com. My team is the one who manages that email but I’ll get it eventually. I’d love to hear any comments that you have and any insights. If you want to have an opportunity to connect with me deeper, if you download that roadmap on the next page, it’ll give you an opportunity to come to one of our executive briefings. That’s a small group of people, where I ask about your business and get some ideas about what you’re doing. You can see the whole process for how to scale a consulting agency. That’s a good way if you want to have an interaction with me.
*That’s an incredible offer and I hope that everybody takes advantage of that. I don’t see why you wouldn’t. Mandi, thank you so much. Mandi, it was a pleasure and I can’t wait until we get a chance to talk again soon.*
Thank you so much for having me, Mitch.
*It’s my pleasure.*
Important Links: * Mandi Ellefson * HandsOffCEO.com/Roadmap * Mandi@HandsOffCEO.com
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Your LinkedIn profile not only acts as your online resume, but it’s also the story that you want to share. Discover how you can optimize it to its full potential so that you will show up in more searches. Join your host Mitch Russo as he talks to Donna Serdula on how you can build your LinkedIn profile. Donna is a LinkedIn profile writer and Founder of Vision Board Media. Learn some tips as Donna analyzes Mitch’s profile. Find out how you can build engagement so that you can get that job you always wanted.
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Listen to the podcast here: LinkedIn Optimization: The Best Way To Maximize LinkedIn Results With Donna Serdula I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized that I’ve been spending about 30 minutes per session on admin because I had all these applications open on five different browsers and screens. All I was doing was taking notes, calendar, spreadsheet, browser and Zoom. All these things were open. I would conduct my sessions and then I would have to move all of my notes into an email.
When I send that email the following week, I would have to find that email again, figure out what it was we talked about, and then open up all those screens. I said, “I’m going crazy here. It’s taking me too long to do the admin side of coaching.” This happens during your peak cognitive time of the day. Here you are at your peak. You are working with your clients and now you’ve got to take care of crappy $10-an-hour work.
Pick a background image that illustrates who you are, what you do, and how you help.
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I looked for professional software to help me. I downloaded and tried all these different products. Nothing worked for me. If it did, it was so complex. With hours of videos to learn it and hundreds of dollars a month, I said, “Enough, I’m going to write my software.” Having built software companies in the past, I thought to myself, “I could do this,” and I did.
I created a product called ClientFol.io for coaches. It’s $19.97 a month. It does everything a coach needs. It turns your sessions into joy and pleasure because it only takes five minutes to admin every session. All you got to do is go to www.GetClientFolio.com and you will be able to admin your sessions in five minutes or less as well. Now on to my guest and her incredible story.
Working for a tech company back in 2006, she struggled to fill the sales pipeline. After trying over and over again to discover ways to get more leads, something we all struggle with, she stumbled upon her own Google search, which returned only LinkedIn as the results. The light bulb went off and then she started to focus all of her efforts on uncovering the gold in LinkedIn and has since perfected the process to use the platform in a unique and productive way. She is here to show us how. Welcome, Donna Serdula to the show.
LinkedIn Optimization: Your LinkedIn profile should tell a story because people want to know more about you. You can control how others perceive you by deciding how you want to be presented. Mitch, thank you so much for having me.
It’s my pleasure. It’s a delight to have you, Donna. You certainly have accomplished a lot and we want to know all about it. Why don’t you go back to the beginning and tell us how this all got started for you?
I joined LinkedIn back in 2005. It was a long time ago. They promised the world tons of opportunities, leads and jobs hitting you left and right. I remember joining, copying and pasting my resume into the LinkedIn profile area because it looked a lot like a resume. LinkedIn was back then saying it’s your online resume. I copied this dry, dull, out-of-date, plagiarized resume into those fields. I leaned back and nothing happened. What a waste of time.
I’ve changed jobs. Thanks to LinkedIn. I found myself in a very doggy-dog, high-pressure type of sales environment and I’m feeling, “I have to build this territory and fill my pipeline.” I was doing a lot of cold calling, like 80 calls before noon every day. That was what forged my belief and understanding of LinkedIn. It was the cause of what I like to call my LinkedIn epiphany. As I was looking for people, calling people and networking, I was oftentimes looking them up. I wanted to know who it was that I was talking to and who I was meeting with.
Each and every time I would put a person’s name into the Google search engine, their LinkedIn profile would pop up and it was always as bad as mine was. That’s when I realized your LinkedIn profile should tell a story. People want to know more about you. This is your chance. You can control how others perceive you by deciding how do you want to be presented and then presenting yourself in that manner online. It was in 2009 that I realized that, “This is what I wanted to do. I wanted to help people because it’s hard to write about yourself.”
I want to go back to something you said before because you talked about being in a doggy-dog sales environment. That’s exactly what I created when we built Business Breakthroughs with Tony, Chet and I. Some people would complain about that environment and those are the people that left but the people who thrived in that environment were the best.
I wanted to bring that up because it’s negative in the sense that it is competitive and potentially stressful. If you are cut out for that environment, for heaven’s sake, you could do great. You can make a lot of money and excel. Frankly, that’s what employers are looking for, when I say employers, even though we were not an employer because people were paid on performance.
From that perspective, we had people that were making $300,000 and $400,000 a year because they were paid on their own performance. We had people who could barely make $2,000 a month. It’s individually based on skills and maybe charisma but at the same time, for the people who are not cut out for sales, it’s important for them to read this interview because they are able to use LinkedIn to find what is right for them.
Clearly, you are not a doggy-dog person and that’s fine. You don’t have to be. Honestly, I don’t know if I would survive in that environment anymore. I did it in my earlier years. What I love about what you are doing is you are taking something that is already there that potentially is completely free. You are helping people truly understand and optimize that experience. Would that be a good summary of what it is you are doing?
I like to think of us as empowering people to understand what they bring to the table, what their story is, help them articulate it and then present themselves in a way so they can collide with the right types of opportunity.
The other thing that you mentioned before is this whole, use my LinkedIn profile as a resume approach, which you still see plenty of those folks too. What we’re going to be doing is I’m going to be putting you in the Your First Thousand Clients Hot Seat. What we want to do is I want you to spill the beans, reveal the secret sauce and teach us all what we’re doing wrong and what we can do to take a profile from being dull and boring and supercharge it into a money magnet for our readers.
Why don’t we direct everyone to your LinkedIn profile? Go to Linkedin.com and type in Mitch Russo into the LinkedIn search box. Truthfully, Mitch, yours is a pretty strong profile. Let’s talk about some of the things that you are doing right and some things that you could do to improve it. When I pull up your profile, the very first thing I see is a background graphic.
Most people who are reading, at this point, maybe go back to your profile really quick and see if you have a background graphic. If your graphic is grayish or greenish, that’s the default and we don’t want to stick with the default. We want to reject the default at all costs with LinkedIn because the default is simply not good enough.
In this one, I see you, your brand colors and tagline, “Your Fast Track to Exponential Growth.” That does produce something inside of me. I’m like, “He is going to help me do better.” For me, I’m thinking as a business owner. To me, I feel like this does a good job of at least illustrating your brand and what you do. That’s an important thing.
For those of you who might be doing something different, find an image. You can find one on your website. You can go to Unsplash.com or any of the other image sites out there. Get something in there that illustrates who you are, what you do and how you help. The next thing I see is your profile picture and you are smiling. You look confident, well-adjusted and friendly. Those are good things. It might have been professionally taken. Was it professionally taken?
Yes.
That’s the other thing. Get a professional to take your headshot. If you want to come across as a success and you should because people do business with people who are successful, get a professionally taken headshot. If right out of the gate you simply cannot afford it, I would almost probably say you can if you check it out and call around.
If you truly can’t, then have a friend use their phone and take a picture of you well-lit. That’s going to be very important. Make it just your head. Don’t have your elbows, knees, ankles or feet in there. One of the reasons for that is when we look at the web or app, it’s so small. We want to see you. That’s one of the other things. The next thing is your headline, Mitch. Do you know what your headline is when you look at your profile?
In LinkedIn, you're given 220 characters for your headline. Try to cram your keywords, but also answer how you will help.
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I believe it says, “Your Fast Track to Exponential Growth.”
It’s right underneath your name. It’s Chief Executive Officer at Mindful Guidance, LLC. This is the default. This is what LinkedIn has pulled up for you. The default is always your current title and company. This right here is something that you can do to improve your profile. The headline one should compel a person to want to learn more, keep reading or click on your profile. It also should have your keywords in there because this is a sensitive place on your profile for the LinkedIn search. We want to make sure that your keywords are in there.
The other thing here is that this follows you around no matter where you are on LinkedIn. If you are in any way producing any type of activity, we’re going to see your picture, name and headline. The next part of this is in 220 characters. We need to be able to give a person that sense of who you are and what you do. In this situation, it gives us CEO of Mindful Guidance but I don’t know much more. This is something that you want to concentrate on.
What would you suggest as a headline for my profile and for readers who are probably having their own LinkedIn profile open and are looking at things like that? What do you think is best for a headline here?
In this situation, I will tell you that I have a free app under Free Resources that will walk you through. It will generate it for you, but we’re not going to generate it for you and me. Anyone who is reading this can go to Linkedin-Makeover.com, click on Free Resources and access the app. In this situation, we want to think about, “What does your target audience need to know about you? What is it that you are helping them do?”
If to you being a CEO is important, we can certainly keep CEO but maybe we want to say consultant, coach, entrepreneurial coach or maybe helping coaches fast-track their business to exponential growth. We might even put in certification programs, the other things that you are doing to help. We have 220 characters and we want to try to, in a very small area, cram your keywords but also how you are helping.
Check my headline.
“Accelerate your revenue through optimizing your revenue system through certification,” I quite like that. Who do you work with specifically? Is it mainly coaches and consultants or entrepreneurs?
It’s anybody who has intellectual property that they want to optimize revenue from. In other words, when I build a certification program, what I’m doing is I’m looking for the way that my clients can take their best customers and empower them to go into the field and make money using what it is that my client does. As an example, if you have a CRM program, if you are a SaaS platform or a coach with intellectual property, we will build a system that will train others on how to deploy your intellectual property to their clients, paying you a percentage of what it is that they do while they’re doing it.
LinkedIn Optimization: Your LinkedIn headline is very important. Use keywords in there because this is a really sensitive place for the LinkedIn search. Your headline will follow you around no matter where you are. I like this. The one thing that we might want to add would be getting that target audience in the beginning, coaches, consultants, entrepreneurs or business owners. It sounds like yours is a little bit bigger. It’s not as finite as I was thinking. “Accelerate your revenue through optimizing your revenue system through certification.” That’s fabulous. It’s a true benefit statement.
I did change it to, “Accelerate your business through optimizing your revenue systems through certification.” The word revenue isn’t in the same sentence twice.
I like that better. It makes it a little bit clear. There you have it. That right there is going to help. If there are certain other terms that you want to use, you can use a bullet and then add a few more keywords if you want to. This is quite strong and it does a very good job. If we keep going down, it looks like you’ve got your contact information in there. You could add your email and phone number if you would like for people to reach out to you. That, to me, is always an important aspect. A lot of times, people say to me, “I’ve been on LinkedIn for years and my phone never rings.” That’s because you don’t have your phone number.
To be clear, I do have all of my business websites and email addresses on there, but I don’t have a phone number. The reason is because there are a lot of companies that scrape these profiles. When I did have my phone number some time ago, to me, that was a problem. I chose not to do that.
As long as you have made that decision and you are not omitting it without the thought of why, I myself keep it out there. I’m willing to take some telemarketing calls, if people are calling me because they want to do business with me. For me, it’s a balance that I’m okay with.
It makes sense and I get that. Thank you for clarifying that. That’s great.
As we scroll down, you are open for business and you are providing services. That’s fabulous. That’s something that a lot of people aren’t using but if you are a business owner, you can certainly add that to your profile. You’ve done that. That’s a great job. If we keep going down, there’s the About section. Yours says, “If you are excited about making rapid progress but are not sure what steps to take to grow your business, then I can help you.”
With that said, there’s the See More. I do feel compelled to click See More there because I’m curious, “Is that it or is there more here?” I was correct. I hit the See More and I’m seeing a full write-up here. I read this prior to our interview and you did a good job. This is written conversationally. It’s a narrative. You do have a little bit of a bulleted list but to me, it doesn’t feel like you are doing it because you have nothing left to say and you are pasting something in there just to paste it.
To me, it’s easy to read. There are things that grab my eye. I’m seeing words in capital and a lot of dollar signs. It’s an easy-to-read About section. You did a fabulous job. Most people don’t do this kind of job. Most people are copying and pasting the top part of their resume. They may be putting in a very brief description. This is an area where you want to tell your story, who you are.
Don’t think of it in terms of, “These are all the places I’ve been.” That’s your trajectory that comes down lower in the Experience section. This is where you want to talk directly to your target audience. That’s something that we didn’t talk about when we first started looking at your profile but we want to be very strategic. We want to say, “Why are you on LinkedIn?” I understand that you are on LinkedIn because you want to educate people. You want to let people know who you are and what you do and you want more clients.
Donna, what’s the next step?
The next step is understanding why you are on it because some people are on it for a job search. Some are on it for sales and prospecting. Others are on it because they want to be seen as an expert. Some are doing it for reputation management. Understanding why, who that target audience is, what do they need to know about you and what are those keywords a person might be searching for if they’re looking for someone like you. Knowing that, then you can write this About section. You want to write it as a narrative in the first person.
When I say first person, I’m talking about saying, “I do this. Hello. My name is.” Not writing in a third-person bio because it doesn’t feel right. People know that this is you. We want this to sound warm and friendly. We want it to sound like you are talking to that person specifically and they feel that warmth and knowledge. They have a good sense of why you are doing this and why they should be listening to you.
To me, when I read this, I get it because you worked with Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes. You’ve done some massive growth at these other companies. We’re going to pay attention to you. That’s very impressive. This is the type of profile About section to aim for but it is hard to write about yourself. You did a good job there, Mitch.
Thank you. You mentioned getting a professional headshot taken and having it be economical to do so. I have found an app called Snappr. I know it’s an iOS app. I don’t know if it’s an Android app but I would assume it would be. You can hire a professional photographer for about $200 who will come to your location, do a professional headshot for you and give you all of the files that you want without any additional charges.
I used them for a complete rebranding project that I’m doing. Many people know the amazing Rey Perez, who is a professional branding superstar. He is redoing my brand and he advised me to use Snappr. I did it and the results were fantastic. Donna, if someone does need a headshot photographer for a couple of hundred bucks, for heaven’s sake, give them a try.
I like HeadshotCrew.com. It’s a similar idea. It’s a database, so you put in where you are located. There’s a ton of certified photographers that you can look up and use. I don’t know if they’re as affordable as the $200. One of these two will get you where you need to be. We want a profile picture that makes you look like money and success. We want it to be something that a person will immediately take that first glance and they’re immediately impressed. That’s what we’re after.
If we keep going down, I see you have a Featured section. Very few people have a Featured section. This is a great way of adding multimedia and links out from your profile. This is very important. I like how you have testimonials. That’s a fabulous use of the Featured section. You can also have links back straight to your website or podcast page. There are so many different ways of using this. For those who are reading, check to see if you have the Featured section and you are using it. It’s such a fabulous area and very few people do.
Moving down even further, I see the Activity section. I’m happy to see that you are sharing items on LinkedIn, which means that you are engaged and active. A lot of times, when I look at this, it says, “No activity in the past 90 days.” With LinkedIn, if a person wants to reach out to you and they’re looking at you on LinkedIn, they want to see the relevance and that you are active.
This is something to pay attention to. You can’t simply like every now and then. That doesn’t create enough activity to add this area to your profile. You need to like, comment and post on LinkedIn. This is something that’s a little bit beside just optimizing your profile but it’s an area of LinkedIn where it’s that activity that fuels the engagement, eyeballs and views. You are going to turn up more often in search because LinkedIn recognizes that you are active and a good search result listing to have. It is an important area to have on your profile.
Have a profile picture that makes you look like a success.
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Donna, one question. A lot of people like me will post on LinkedIn. For example, I post all of my podcast episodes and they get a couple of views, 15 or 20 usually but I have no engagement. How important is engagement? How would you build engagement on LinkedIn profiles?
Truthfully, engagement is the hallmark of LinkedIn and the activity. If you want to get more views, you need to get that engagement. It’s a one-to-one type of situation. How often do you go onto LinkedIn and simply scroll through and comment on other people’s posts?
Every day.
Every day you’re commenting on other people’s posts?
I’m not commenting on them every day but I’m certainly scrolling through. Occasionally, I comment on them but I’m on there all the time. Tell me what I could do to increase my own.
What I would suggest for you is this. When you go onto LinkedIn and you scroll through the LinkedIn feed, don’t just scroll and like. Make a concerted effort to join the conversation. What I would like for you to do is maybe think of some people who are active on LinkedIn, people who maybe are part of your tribe or you want to forge a stronger relationship with. Maybe there are ten business owners, coaches or people out there. Bookmark their posts and activity.
Don’t bookmark just their profile but go to their profile, click on See All of their Activity and bookmark that page. Once a week, go there, click all through all ten and see what they’ve done. Actively comment and engage in their activity. Once you start doing that, they will see it. They’re going to start to see your posts because LinkedIn likes to make that LinkedIn feed people you know talking about the things you care about. By you engaging with them, they are going to start engaging with you.
Are you done with the profile or is there more that you wanted to comment on that?
There is so much about the profile that we could talk about. I was looking here at your feed to make sure and you are using hashtags, which is fabulous. That was the other thing I was going to say. You may find that you might need to tweak your hashtags. If you are finding you are not getting a lot of engagement, it could be the hashtags that you are using as well.
Let me ask you a question about groups. LinkedIn has been woefully deficient in promoting and supporting LinkedIn Groups. What do you have to say about that? Is there a strategy that we could use to maybe get better engagement through the group process?
Back in the day, the LinkedIn Groups were such a thriving place to go. There were business and relationships to be had. It was fabulous and then there was almost like a death note that LinkedIn gave to them. To be honest with you, I still haven’t seen that engagement come back. Join groups to extend your network. When a person who is not paying for LinkedIn is searching LinkedIn, utilizing a keyword, they’re searching their 1st, 2nd and 3rd-degree network. Anyone outside of that network can’t see that profile.
If you want to use LinkedIn for search and get found, use the groups to extend your network because those group members are considered third-degree connections. That’s how I would use LinkedIn Groups at this point. If you can find a group that’s active, have at it but it’s very hard as a group administrator to have that active group.
It takes an awful lot of work. It’s more work than most people are willing to put into it. I wouldn’t worry too much about the LinkedIn Groups. If you want to find what’s going on in a certain area, explore the hashtags, follow hashtags, go in there, click on the hashtag once a day or once a week, read what people are posting and utilize the hashtag almost as a group.
Donna, I can’t thank you enough for a $5,000 consultation. If you are reading this conversation and you’ve been following along and updating your own LinkedIn profile, then this is the beginning of what Donna does. I would urge you to reach out to her and take a look at what she does. I will attest to the fact that my LinkedIn profile has played a large role in my success over the years. I didn’t get it to this stage or at this level by accident. It’s taken many iterations with the help of many people as well. This is one of those things where you can’t ignore it. It can’t be an afterthought. It is a billboard on the superhighway for you. Think about it from that perspective.
Donna, what we’re going to do is we’re going to transition to the second part of the show, which is where we get to know a little bit more about you. The way we do that is by asking some questions that, on the surface, don’t seem to be very important. In fact, maybe even silly but the readers and I have discovered over 300 episodes that these questions are quite revealing and can change the profile of how we see another person. Let’s start with the first one. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?
LinkedIn Optimization: When you go onto LinkedIn, don’t just scroll on your newsfeed. Try to really make a concerted effort to join the conversation. There are probably some people who would say find a celebrity, business leader or someone in that capacity but I would love to spend another one hour with my father who died in 2011.
Many of my guests have mentioned parents who have passed. The reason I like that answer so much is because it is an illustration of who we are. It’s how we got to be who we are. Like it or not, we carry the values of our family and parents with us every day. My dad was a hustler. He hustled and built candy stores all throughout New York City. On holidays, we would jump in the car, find an old door being thrown away, set up two sawhorses, turn it into a sidewalk shop and sell candy.
This is how I grew up. My sister and I grew up as entrepreneurs and it shaped who I am. I’m sure that if you had this conversation with your dad, it would be mostly his admiration of what you’ve accomplished as well. Thank you for sharing that. Here’s the second question. We like to call this the grand finale question. It’s the change-the-world question. What is it that you are doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?
I love what I do. I love working with professionals, executives and entrepreneurs and helping them tell their stories. I found that when we do it, even though we’re doing it one by one, it does have the power of changing maybe not the world but their life. It can magnify, empowering people to know what they do and what they bring to the table, shaping the way others perceive them. When we do it, we do it right. We found that people change jobs. They get promotions, start new companies, get better investors and awesome things happen.
One of the things I am working on and it’s a drop in the bucket of changing the world but over the years, we’ve worked with over 6,000 of these executives, professionals and entrepreneurs. I always asked, “What is a motivational quote? What is your secret to success?” We’ve asked that on all of our questionnaires. I’ve gone through all of these questionnaires. I’ve collected all of those quotes and their secrets to success. I’ve been able to boil it down into different keys. I plan on writing a book and publishing it to let other people see what our clients have done. Hopefully, that will empower others to be motivated, find inspiration and change their world.
Changing the world is a very personal thing. I remember it was the eve of Thanksgiving and I was on the phone with Tony Robbins. Tony said, “What are you doing for the holidays?” I said, “Tony, our family has a tradition. Every Thanksgiving, we go to a local church here up in Woodstock, New York, where my sister lives and we feed the membership of the church with about 300 people.” Tony said, “That’s wonderful, Mitch.”
I said, “Tony, what are you doing?” He goes, “We feed people too.” I said, “That’s wonderful. Do you do it locally at a church?” He goes, “No, we feed two million people at Thanksgiving throughout a network of institutions and churches.” The point I’m making is that everybody can change the world in their own way. Donna, you are changing the world and I want to thank you for doing so because it makes the world a better place.
Thank you, Mitch.
You are welcome. You have something that is a fantastic free giveaway because it will help anybody tune up their entire LinkedIn profile. What is your free giveaway?
It’s my LinkedIn Headline Generator App. It will tune up the entire profile but it will tune up the headline. The headline is super important, as I told you how important yours is. We want to make it such that it gets caught in the search engine that people see it. They feel compelled to read more and click. You’ll get more views, turn up higher and find more opportunities with a strong headline. It’s a generator. You go in and click a few boxes. Tell us who you are and what you are doing. It will generate a beautiful headline that you can copy and immediately paste into your profile and you will see results.
How do we get that generator?
Visit LinkedIn-Makeover.com. Click on Free Resources and you’ll see it in that drop list.
Engagement is really the hallmark of LinkedIn.
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Donna, what I would like to do at this point is talk a little bit about your show. You have an incredible podcast that people can access by going to www.DreamBigConversations.com. Tell us about the types of guests you bring on and what you discuss on your show.
Dream Big with Big Dreamers is the name of the podcast. In it, we talk to people who do dare to dream big and understand what gave them that ability. How are they dreaming big? What are they dreaming big about? What do their lives look like? How did they get to that point in their careers? When I interview my clients, I always find that I’m so inspired by who they are and what they’ve done. I want other people to hear these stories and not just read about their LinkedIn profiles.
Dream Big with Big Dreamers was built to let people see that there’s this world out there. The real reason why I created it is right before my father died, he had said to me that his one big regret in his life was that he didn’t dream big enough. That was something that always stuck with me. I married that regret with what I was seeing with my clients and I want to give people that ability to start dreaming big.
Readers, you can go to DreamBigConversations.com and access the show. I strongly suggest you tune in and see what Donna is up to. Donna, this has been delightful. I enjoyed our conversation. We only scratched the surface as to what you are capable of. I know that there’s so much more that you can help others with. Thank you for the time. I am excited about getting a chance to talk to you again soon.
Mitch, thank you so much.
Important Links: * ClientFol.io * Donna Serdula * Linkedin.com * Mitch Russo – LinkedIn * Unsplash.com * Mindful Guidance, LLC – Facebook * Linkedin-Makeover.com * Free Resources * Snappr * Rey Perez – LinkedIn * HeadshotCrew.com * LinkedIn Headline Generator App * www.DreamBigConversations.com
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