118: Focus Until You Succeed: Perseverance, Forward Motion, Relationships, and The Invisible Organization with Mitch Russo

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank. Show Episode 118, focus until you succeed, perseverance, forward motion, relationships and the invisible organization. Hey, everyone, it's Robert Plank. And as we're getting started up here, be sure to go to Robert plank.com. Forward slash iTunes to subscribe, rate and review the Show. Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Robert Plank show, where we talk about making money. My guest today is Mitch Russo. Now, Mitch Russo has worked with Chet Holmes. He worked with Tony Robbins. He has a new book called The Invisible organization. So Mitch, welcome to the show today.

Mitch Russo 0:41 Thank you, Robert, great to be here.

Robert Plank 0:43 I'm glad to have you. So could you tell us about yourself and what it is that you do?

Mitch Russo 0:47 Sure, so I'll give you a little bit of background first, so you know who I am. I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I had a rock band up into the age of 17, and I probably learned more about business in my rock band than than any other single thing as a kid, we booked, you know, we put gigs all over New York City. We we probably were the highest paid bands under 18 years old in the entire state. For a little while we were booking back in 1977 we were getting $500 a gig, which, in today's dollars, is actually ridiculous, especially for 18 year old. Yeah, exactly. We were so young we weren't even able to drive our own van. We had to hire somebody to help us get to a gig because we were too young to drive. So it was but I learned so much about marketing, about sales, about positioning, even about quality. I mean, it was really an incredible experience. Then I went on to I moved to Massachusetts to take a job with a computer company, and I ended up in sales. And I did a lot of cool stuff when I got to Massachusetts. But probably one of the most memorable things I did is I started a software company, and I started it literally, as they say, it was a garage operation. I started it literally above my garage in the one room that nobody knew what to do within my house. So my neighbor and I got together and we built a company out of an idea that I had, and that grew to 100 people, and we had moved the company five times over the course of the nine years, until we eventually sold it for eight figures to Sage PLC in the UK. And man, what an incredible experience that was. Again, there's no better way to learn than to make all of the mistakes that we made, and have to fix them or die. You know, it's correct your mistakes or die. So you just got to step up and make it happen. And, and, I mean, and there were nights that that we would be looking at the payroll and thinking, my partner, I'd look at each other go, you know, we don't have enough money in the account to cover payroll, and so the two of us go into our wallet, and we started making the rounds at cash machines and taking money off of our credit cards to make payroll. I mean, it was that bad at one point, but later, I mean, you know, everything went right, and we were able to finally make things happen. You know, you know the story of the hero's journey? Robert, yeah. Joseph Campbell, exactly. So there were so many points in time when we were on the brink of failure and we didn't quite know what to do, and then we just persevered, you know, we just kept going, and we then, boom, it just happened, and it worked. So that was a great experience. And I finished up with that I after I sold the company, I then went and worked for the people who bought usage, and I ended up running the entire US division for sage. And I was actually completely done at the age of 44 with millions of dollars in my pocket, and theoretically able to retire if I wanted to, but I couldn't I absolutely would be bored out of my mind. So I started investing in other people's startups, and I started working with the venture capital community, and I started building a portfolio of companies that I invested in and and friends that I made throughout the entire process. And that went on until I got a call from a buddy of mine, Chet Holmes. Now, Chet and I had been friends since my time slips days, and he said to me, Mitch, I need some help. It's time for you to get back into the business game. And I said, Hmm, okay, what do you what do you need? And next thing I know, I'm building a sales force for him. And over six courses, six weeks, I tripled the sales force, and we were now doubling revenue. And after about three months, he said, Look, I got to have you, you know, I got to have you as my president. And so I said, okay, and I joined the company, and then within 90 days of becoming per. President of of chet's company, we began negotiation with Tony Robbins, and this was an ongoing process. We were on a late night phone call every week for four or five months, planning what the company was going to look like, planning how we were going to roll out into the marketplace, planning exactly what we were going to sell, and then, you know, going through a legal agreement and negotiating all the points of a legal agreement, until finally, everything came to a head in Las Vegas in November of 2008 and that was the ultimate business mastery, some success event, the ubms, and that's where we recorded over 50 hours of content, packaged it up, and that single event ended up generating over $20 million in revenue by selling the packaged videos with workbooks and coaching. So that was quite an experience, and we were growing at quite a pace. I mean, we had started at a relatively just about as a startup, but we were generating over 25 million a year at the point when Chet, my partner in the business, got sick, and unfortunately, he passed away several months later. So when Chet died, you know, the family who, of course, didn't know what to do, and they maybe thought maybe they should just sell the company and and so really, I didn't fit there any longer. I mean, my friend was gone, and I asked Tony what he thought, and Tony told me to to do what I needed to do, which is what I would have expected of Tony. And so I decided to leave. And the first thing I did when I left the company is I called a couple of friends and said, Hey, I just want to let you know I'm going to be leaving BBI and I'm going to be on my own. And you know, I just want you to know where I am. If you have anything interesting you want to talk to me about, or want to show me or get me involved and let me know. So I called Jay Abraham and and Jay and I had known each other for many years, and worked together on several projects together, and and I said to Jay. I said, Jay, I just want to let you know I'm out of here. And he said to me, Mitch, you cannot let what you know go to waste. You have to find a way to take what you know, and you got to teach it to others. And Tony used to say the same thing to me all the time. And so I said, Okay, all right, Jay, I'm gonna do something. I don't know what I'm gonna do yet, but I'm gonna do something. And that became the beginning of me writing my book, The Invisible organization,

Robert Plank 7:31 cool. So I mean lot, lots of stuff to get from where you were to where you are now. And I'm hearing a lot of like, like, repeat lessons, right? Like, there was the the perseverance part of it. Like, when you and your friend went, or your business partner went to all the ATM machine, just to, just to get to that point, get to the breakthrough point, there is the, like, the forward motion, right, where you could have quit and you kept going. And then what I'm hearing a lot of to where, like, all these relationships you built, like, you know, like Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes and Jay Abraham where, you know, it started a long time ago, but then after a while, kind of, kind of paid off. So, you know, with all that like, is there like, is there a big secret to all this? Do you have a big secret from having all these successes? There's something like, aside from those three things, that's just been been responsible for getting you where you are, you

Mitch Russo 8:20 know, I wish I had something super profound to tell you, but it's very simple. It you know, you never actually fail until you stop doing what you're doing. Until you give up, you never actually fail. And in my life, the lesson that I've learned is that it's best to focus on something until you succeed, and I generally don't stop until I do

Robert Plank 8:45 is that, does that help? Yeah. And it's like, what is that quote or something where it's like, if it's not working, change your your methods, not the goal, or something like that.

Mitch Russo 8:53 Yeah, yeah. I mean, we could. We ended up pivoting, you know, time after time, but we never lost sight of what the end goal was, and we never stopped pursuing it. And you know, no matter what, I never do in because there's just, I mean, unless the world changes in such a dramatic way, and it never does. I mean, business is business, people still have the same motivation every day, and that's why your products are always out there doing so well, because people want to be in business and and when, now, when I work with with private clients, you know, I see that in their eyes. I see that when I work with them, I hear it in their voice, you know, they're discouraged and they want to stop, and I don't let that happen with my clients. And we make it, we push through, and we make it so that they end up getting what they want, because success comes not, you know, in a flash, and not by luck. It comes from a lot of hard work. And you know this from your own experience, it takes a long time to be successful, but it looks easy. I mean, you could look at me now and go, Oh, wow, look at all the stuff he did. And, you know, but I mean, it's taken me a long time to get here, and you know that,

Robert Plank 9:58 oh, yeah, only. Takes 20 years to become an overnight success. So, I mean, is there, is there a trick, or is there a secret to knowing? Like, the difference between, between, like you said, like having a push forward versus an idea just that just won't work. Like, I mean, if a company invented cell phones at the wrong period in time, it just wouldn't work, no matter how good an idea if someone had invented tablets at the wrong time, no matter what, it wouldn't have worked. So how do you know the difference between you're just kind of hitting your head against the wall in this thing that's never going to happen, versus you just need to get through the rough patch. Like, how do you know the difference?

Mitch Russo 10:36 Okay, I have a story about an entrepreneur who who went through this so I have a friend who, at a young age achieved notoriety because he invented a cable drive mechanism for bicycles, and he was featured on news programs all over the country. And this cable system was quite innovative. It didn't require gears and sprockets. All he did was use friction and a special shape of a hub, and he was able to create this very simple power transport system using cables. So he he went to try and market it to bicycle companies, and nobody wanted it. And the bicycle companies at first thought it was a cool idea, but he they realized that it would really make no impact to the end product. Sure, it might be cable driven instead of gear driven, but it didn't seem to change the end result of, you know, riding a bike. And so he continued to do this, but he didn't stop. And then finally he said, well, well, they don't want it. Maybe I'll just start my own company, and maybe I'll, I'll just build a bicycle company. So he went and he spent all of his life savings and poured it into building this company, and he built a manufacturing plant, and he sold like, like 60 bicycles total, and shut the company down. And he never recovered from that. So, so here's the way I look at it. I think at some point when the market tells you distinctly, no, this is not good, then you don't necessarily have to give up, but you do have to at least pivot. You do have to find another way. So here's a pivot he could have tried. So he could have tried to figure out where else his patented cable drive system could have an application in another industry, but he never did this. He just accepted the fact that he just, he just persevered to death, if you will. So it's hard to know, but you got to get feedback from the market, and you got to keep trying things. And that's when you finally know, hey, if it's not going to work, you just keep trying it and trying something else.

Robert Plank 12:47 And I like that way of thinking, and especially how there was a little, a little piece in, in there, in the beginning, near the beginning of that story, how well, it didn't catch on, because even though it was a really cool invention, it didn't actually help anyone, right? Like, if only, like, that invention had made it where you could ride the bike twice as fast, or it it cost way less, or something like that, that would have been like an improvement in in someone's experience of using the bike. But it seems like it was just like it was kind of on the right track, but not quite there, I guess, right? Yeah,

Mitch Russo 13:18 it was a solution looking for a problem and and it was cool. I mean, it was innovative and clever. But to build a life around a solution without solving a problem is just going to lead you down to that path. I mean, and by the way, there's lots of people who start that way and end up that way, but they don't, they don't get to the point of realizing, hey, you know something, I've created, something of which there is no need for in the marketplace. Or, I mean, there are some people who create stuff that's too advanced for the current marketplace, you know? I mean, if you would have invented the internet in 1985 no one would have gotten it. No, there wasn't the systems in place to support it. So, yeah. I mean, it might have been a great idea, but it wasn't. The time of it was completely wrong. I

Robert Plank 14:06 like that. I like that way of thinking. Yeah. I mean, the things only through my head when you're mentioning that are, like, you know, stuff like Twitter, where it's super goofy, took a while to catch on, and so he kind of pushed through a while and, like, kind of saw people were using it. But then, and I think Twitter, in fact, only kind of caught him because they started hooking it up with all the the mobile app like the the mobile apps and stuff like that. Like, if cell phones had taken a little longer to develop, maybe Twitter wouldn't have caught on. But then, on the other hand, he kind of had to push through those, those tough years to actually give it a chance and see if people were using it. But you know, if five more years have gone on, 10 more years have gone on and it was just not picking up, then I guess that that's time to quit. Then Sure,

Mitch Russo 14:47 and let's talk about Twitter just for a second. Because I think it's, I think it's, it's educational, at least, to take a look. And now Twitter is considered kind of a failure when it comes to the market, because it doesn't. Really have. I mean, it's not Facebook. So anything that's not Facebook is kind of a failure, but, but the problem with Twitter is that it just hasn't been adding a lot of new users. It hasn't been getting a lot more usage. And so what the what is the problem with Twitter? Well, the problem with Twitter is that they haven't found their pivot yet. They they will. They're not giving up. I mean, they might be sold before they before they can but they need to find their pivot. Now, I wrote the CEO of Twitter, and I said, here is what I think you should do. I think you should stream live events. And I think because people love to interact with each other during live events, why don't you stream concerts? Why don't you let people tweet throughout the entire process of watching that concert streaming through your network and let them pay $1 for that or something. I mean, of course, I never got a response from my suggestion. But, I mean, that's the kind of pivots that you got to keep thinking about when things are failing. And

Robert Plank 15:57 even recently, they've kind of sort of tied in the periscope. So they're, they're definitely trying new things and seeing what will catch on Right exactly. And even, like, you kind of mentioned me, like, um, you know, I put out WordPress plugins, and it's the same kind of thought process, like, I'll put out a backup plug and a membership plugin like stuff like that, and, and I'll kind of put it out as, first of all, like, a thing that I need, and a thing that other people need, but mostly just something that I need that does not exist. And so that way, even if it's a failure, I still get something out of it. But then also, like all I'll kind of see these projects through, you know, the number of years they have to, you know, go through. But it's not, I'm not just putting all my eggs in one basket, right? I have this plug in and that plug in, because I know that, I know that there are things I need, and people might end up kind of picking them up, and they'll get traction. And then I can go back later and connect the dots and say, Okay, now I can combine all these things. And now you get this plug in, you're gonna want these other plugins, or you get them all in a in a package together. So I think there's, there's just something to that. Like, when we're we're mentioning all, all these examples. It's just like there's something to just having like these experiments, I guess, is what, what we're kind of, kind of talking about these experiments, and just kind of see what people use, how people use them, and then, like you said, get to the the point where maybe a pivot, and then there's the real money from there.

Mitch Russo 17:19 Well, exactly. And the other thing that you're doing is you're building a portfolio of products. And so one product, and I'm just going to use just make believe numbers, so if one product generates 10 or $20,000 a year, and you say, well, that's fine. I mean, it was worth doing it, even if it's not, you know, a retirement fortune, that we can generate another one and then another one, and before you know it, you have six products generating 20k a year, and then maybe the seventh one will be a big hit, you see. So you'd not you never stop because something isn't working, but you can find a way to pivot within that. And that simply means, if that doesn't work, something like it will work. What was the brilliance of that first idea? What problem were you trying to solve that you found the solution to? And who else has that problem? You know, when we first created time slips, it was a pop up time tracking tool that we thought, oh, everybody's gonna need this. Everybody needs to keep track of time. And so like idiots, we advertised in PC Magazine and spent an entire all of our savings for marketing went into two ads in PC Magazine, and we got, you know, six orders for $100 in order. I mean, clearly it not everybody needed it. But here was the cool thing about that, I was able to take the 500 bingo leads, which, I don't know if you ever heard that term before, it's, it's, it's the, know, the cards that just to sit inside of magazines where you could circle the number of the ads that you were interested in. Have you ever seen those before, I think, a long time ago. But yeah, right. So what they would do is, you know, people would read the magazine, and instead of sending away for information from everyone, they would take it and they would just circle the number of the ad and and most of those leads were worthless, but I got 500 of those leads, and I called every single one on the phone and I said, Why did you circle that ad? What would interested you about, about the product? And I found out that a third of the people who had circled my ad were lawyers. I said, Hmm, lawyers seem to be attracted to this. Maybe I should market directly to lawyers, and that's how my product eventually took off. I found my market. I didn't know what it was. At first I thought it was everybody, which, you know, clearly I was inexperienced, but that's what I thought. But then I finally honed in on what would eventually become my, my true target market. And over the course of 18 months, I went from being completely unknown to being the number one selling product for lawyers when it came to keeping track of their time.

Robert Plank 19:52 And that's really cool. And in that case, it was almost like the market found you.

Mitch Russo 19:56 Well, you might say that, but. But you know, we uncovered a need. We know we had a cool solution to a problem, but we didn't quite know who needed the solution. We knew it was a problem that people had. We didn't know exactly who needed it. So even though I say it was a mistake to have run that ad in PC Magazine, if I hadn't have done it, I would have never found my true calling, my true market and and so sometimes you do need, I mean, screwing up is what gets you to learn what, how you get onto the right path.

Robert Plank 20:31 Oh, yeah. I mean, like, yeah. And if it's almost like, if you're too lucky, or if everything you do works out right away, it's almost a bad thing, because the one time that something goes wrong, you're not going to know how to react. It's like, it's almost like, as entrepreneurs, we kind of have to get toughened up or something that's

Mitch Russo 20:48 right. So, you know, it's since we're on this topic, I want to, I want to lead this into sort of what I'm doing now, because I think it's important. One of the, one of the things that happened to me at TimeSlips Corporation is that we sold a lot of software, and we used to give away 30 days of free support with every copy of the software we sold. And so what ended up happening is that when you know we first got into the retail stores, I mean, our product sold like crazy, and now our phone lines for support were getting overwhelmed, and I was sort of struggling to keep up in terms of hiring enough tech support people, of building the internal systems to make sure that those calls can get answered. And with all of that, you know now, I had customers, clients who were asking for individual attention, where we had to visit their office. I mean, you know, when you deal with lawyers, sometimes you got to go overboard and support because, you know, you don't want to get sued, and they're certainly litigious, as you know. So in this one situation, I had a woman who was the head of the the vice president of the technology division of the California Bar Association, and she was having a problem with my software. I said, Geez, I gotta get out there somehow. So I did something unexpected. I called a another client who happened to live in the area, and I said, Would you do me a favor and run over to this office and see if you could help this woman, she's having some difficulty. And she said, Oh yeah, sure. I'd love to. And I knew she was an expert in our software so, and I said, Well, whatever it is, don't worry. I'll, I'll take care of you. And she goes, Oh no, no for you, Mitch, it's a favor. I'd be happy to so she goes over there, and I'm like, on pins and needles. Now I don't know if I did the right thing. I mean, maybe that could explode in my face, but about four hours later, she called me back and she said, Oh yeah, she's all set. And I got to tell you, something super happened to me. I said, What was it? And she said, she gave me $100 bill. And all of a sudden, the light bulb went off in my head, and then she said to me, and by the way, if anybody else you know needs help, let me know, because I'm happy to help them. Then I realized, well, maybe I could build a network of people that I could send to other people's offices as consultants and get them to help my clients. And maybe these people calling themselves certified consultants would be interested in even building a profession around supporting my software. So that's how I designed and built the time slip certified consultant network. Now when I talked to the reason I said that disconnected to our earlier conversation is because I totally screwed it up. I did it simply by selling a test, and if you pass the test, you were certified. But at that point, I had about 60 of these people running around wreaking havoc with my clients, so I had to actually call every client that had a problem with one of my certified consultants and figure out how to make them happy while literally shutting down the entire program, and then re engineering it from scratch to make sure that the mistakes I uncovered would never happen again When I did that, and it took me, like five, six months to do it, and I relaunched the program. It was a incredible success, and it grew to 350 people paying us every year to be our third largest sales channel to support all of our customers. My tech support dropped by 20% my sales went up by a million dollars, and the program generated another million dollars for me that same year. That's amazing, isn't that amazing, by the way? And the reason I say it is that's what I do now. For clients, I build what I call power tribes for my clients, which are mobilizing their best clients as certified coaches or certified consultants, and with that, we're able to generate six and seven figures almost out of thin air.

Robert Plank 24:54 That's cool, and I mean, and let's talk about that. Let's talk about what it is that you're doing now and and this. Whole, like, this new idea you have about the invisible organization, sure.

Mitch Russo 25:04 Well, like I said, it started from having solved the problem on my own. I wrote about it on my blog post, and someone came to me and said, Would you do this for me? And I said, Sure. I yeah, be happy to and I didn't even really remember, I mean, I remembered done, having done it, of course, and I remembered all the stuff that went wrong and all the mistakes I made, but I didn't, you know, we didn't have the internet back then, so I literally was flying kind of blind on this, but we did it together, my client and I, and amazingly, it worked perfectly. I mean, they were blown away. We we launched their program from absolutely nothing. 10 weeks later, we launched their program, and it immediately generated six figures on their first launch. And now we're redoing the launch every quarter, and it's going to be generating between three and $500,000 per launch, and we're going to be now doing this ad infinitum every single quarter. So the way I do this is I it's a very, very much a done with you slash done for you program. So it's like, I'm a business consultant, and I work with my clients side by side, and together we craft all of the tools required to get people certified, and I have a lot of the tools that I give my clients in advance. So one of the things I do, and this is the most fun of the whole process, is we design a new business model around their company as to how they will use these multiple streams of income and generate them from their certified consultants, and more importantly, how the certified consultants will generate income from the services that we provide. So unlike standard certification, where you buy a certificate, you know like like digital marketers program. Are you familiar with them? Yeah, a little bit, yeah. So what happens is, if you qualify, you can buy a program to become certified in one of their disciplines. The only thing you need to qualify is a credit card. So, I mean, anybody can become quote, unquote certified. Well, with my clients, we don't do that. We only work with people we already know have an intimate working knowledge of the field of the field of business and their product. And then at that point, we do very intensive training. We bring them to 100% competency through the guidance of of building these courses that I had learned how to do and I built Tony Robbins virtual training environment with Tony, and he taught me so much about what it takes to build a virtual training environment. So we build those now from our clients and and these are, these are amazing, because once someone goes through the program, they totally know what they're doing, and then we put them into an apprenticeship to make sure that they can totally do what they just learned, and then we work out a way so that they can make money right out of the gate. And when they're making money, they will renew next year, they will attend our programs, and that's how we build multiple recurring streams of revenue, and

Robert Plank 28:19 that's cool. And I think that, you know what I've been hearing a lot from you, Mitch, like, as far as the stories that you're telling, is that there's a lot of like, like, the little details and a little bit of of course correction, right? So, as opposed to just saying, like, you said, like, some people offer certification, and it's kind of like, when, when you send, when you send in to, like, buy a doctorate, right, for like, 500 bucks or something. It's like, okay, here's here's the money. Thanks, you're certified and so instead, and that would be great for just like, a little one off sale, but then that's not a real long term business. And it sounds like with everything you do, you make sure that you understand, like, what like, when someone buys from you, there's a clear reason, like, why they're buying from you, what they're gonna get from you, and then what that will lead to afterwards. So they now, they get certified go to the apprenticeship to make sure that they're 100% there. But then now they have their own, their own kind of business. So I think that's pretty cool.

Mitch Russo 29:13 Yeah. I mean, if you think of everything as a progression, and by the way, you do a great job of this, I really love the way you guys do this, but you got to think of business as, okay, well, you could sell somebody something, and you can make some money, but what will they need next? And where should they go next, if they're successful with the last thing you sold them? And as long as you keep that in mind as you begin this, this path of product creation and of leading people through how to create something of value that you know how to do, then you're going to be successful, and you can have a sustained income from helping others all the time. That's how I see it.

Robert Plank 29:54 So what will they need next? That's that's pretty good advice, just in general.

Mitch Russo 29:59 Exactly. Exactly. And in my case, you know, when I when I enter a with a business contract with a client, I don't just sell them some consulting services, you know, pay me some money and I'll talk to you or work with you for three months until your program launches. When you sign a contract with me, we are together for a minimum of three years. And the reason I want it to be long term is because there is going to be a series of changes. As your tribe grows and develops, there will be problems and questions that come up that I know I can answer for you, that if I left you alone, you might choose the wrong path and and and destroy what we've just spent so much time and money to build. So my goal is to guide my clients to the point so that this isn't just a little itty bitty seven figure program. At the end of three years, it's generating three to $5 million consistently, year after year, and it does so I'll go ahead. No. So I say. So my end goal here is not to build a one shot sale. It's to build a lifetime relationship with everyone i i come in contact with, well, oh,

Robert Plank 31:11 cool. And kind of along those lines of what you're just mentioning about how, you know, like some, like some of these companies, they they're at a certain point, and then as they they mature, or the their size changes, they have different set of needs. And I understand that you have a book called The Invisible organization, which is all about getting companies to go virtual. Is that right?

Mitch Russo 31:30 Yes, yes. And the book that I wrote is really I have poured at the time I wrote it, I poured everything that I learned about building Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes business breakthroughs as a virtual company. We had 300 people attached to the company, and I ran the whole thing from my spare bedroom, and I traveled all over the world. I'm an award winning photographer as well. So I would sneak away and I'd be in Iceland or Jordan or Morocco, or or any of the places that I used to that I do travel to all over the world, and I could still run the company from a laptop, which, which is just so thrilling to me, but not just a little solo company. I'm talking about a full blown $25 million in sales a year, company with 300 people.

Robert Plank 32:19 Crazy. So how's it done? From, from just, from, just you and your spare root room?

Mitch Russo 32:24 Well, well, first of all, I mean, like anything else, it takes some planning. It takes I work with mind maps. I love mind mapping, and so I tend to do a bit of over planning. Every single thing that I do. So I work with a client. We the first thing I do is I start building mind maps of the entire business model and process that shows every step of the way, what's supposed to happen and and what should happen if what we expect doesn't happen. So we're prepared with contingency plans across the board. So when you start with good plans and great thinking, the next thing you need are good people to execute. So I surround myself with the best people that I can. And that's one of the great secrets of building a virtual organization. Because I know other really smart people who want the same lifestyle as I do, who want great money, who want to be able to work from home or from wherever they tend to be. I mean, my, my VP of sales, spent two months a year in Hawaii and ran the entire sales division and didn't miss a you know, didn't miss a beat because, because we were a virtual organization, you know, she showed up for her sales meetings every day, or did her training every every day. I mean, nothing was nothing was lost by the process. In fact, Stanford University did a study, a landmark study called does working from home work, and in that study, it showed that 13% productivity increases across the board were possible for people who would be working from home. And if you interview these people, whether they're low end telephone sales people or high end executives, what we really find out is that they're even more productive working from home than working at a company. They save hours driving a car, burning gasoline and wearing out an automobile, and they save frustration, that life sucking commute that most people hate. You don't have that commute. I certainly don't. Why should half the world have to get into a car every morning and battle traffic in rain and sleet and snow and have accidents and spend money on gas and eat out for lunches that are unhealthy when you could have a life building a virtual company. That's what the book is about.

Robert Plank 34:45 And that's cool. And, I mean, yeah, in this day and age with that, you know, Wi Fi and the internet being so fast, like there's no reason for anyone to deal with a commute. And even, like my mother used to wake up at four o'clock in the morning every day just to get. On the road by five or six just to drive to sometimes three, four hours in traffic, just to start the day at eight o'clock or nine o'clock once you got to work. And, I mean, I mean ridiculous, and yeah, and just to save like, that amount of time every day. I mean that that's the dream, and especially that particular person that you mentioned living in Hawaii. I mean that that's the life right there, right? You you have your passion. You do what you love, you do the work stuff. You earn the money, but you're also living on the beach every day. Pretty cool,

Mitch Russo 35:27 exactly. And by the way, you know, without disclosing names or numbers, that person made over $500,000 that particular year that they were in Hawaii. So I mean, their productivity actually went up. I mean, they were happier people, and they did a better job. And, you know, let's take it down to the, you know, to the base level. Next time you get on the phone to make an airline reservation, I know that you don't get on the phone a lot. You do it over the web, but if you ever call Southwest Airlines or JetBlue, ask the person on the other end of the phone how they like working from home, because their entire call center is home based nice, 1000s and 1000s of people that could have been, you know, dragged into the city to sit in a miserable call center every day are now working from home, where they could eat the food that they like, walk the dog when they will, like one woman I interviewed, got rid of a second car. They didn't need it anymore. And now, you know, she's there to make dinner for her husband, and then after dinner, she goes back into the den and and gets on the phone with customers and helps them with reservations. And she loved it, and

Robert Plank 36:38 that's cool. And so it's it sounds like all these people who are working virtually, they don't have to, they don't have to give up anything, and if anything, they're gaining something. And that's always the thing. You always think like, Oh, if they're, if they're working from home, they must not be motivated, or they must be getting paid less. But it seems like, I mean, why would you pay someone less if, if you're a company and you're paying someone to work from home. Why would you pay them less if you're saving money on on their office space, on their parking spot, on all that stuff? Like it sounds like it's Win, win for everybody. So is this? So this book is for people who, who want to to transform their company into a virtual company. Or who is this for exactly

Mitch Russo 37:18 it? That is exactly who it's for. If you go to invisible organization.com, it's the book site, and it will say exactly who it's for. It's for CEOs who are running companies and who understand that saving money on things like real estate insurance, heat, air conditioning, telephone lines, internet service contracts, etc, etc, etc. If you're, if you're a CEO and you want to save that money, buy this book and see exactly how it's done. Cool.

Robert Plank 37:49 Well, I like, I like the idea for that book. I think that's a pretty good, good message. And are there any other websites where people should go other than invisible organization.com, to find out more about you. Mitch,

Mitch Russo 37:59 yeah, actually, the main website for me is simply Mitch Russo, M, I, T, C, H, r, u, s, s, o.com, all my stuff is there, all my other training programs and business stuff is there? Awesome?

Robert Plank 38:14 So Mitch russo.com, and invisible organization.com. Man, we talked about all kinds of cool stuff. It was such a pleasure having you on. Thanks

Mitch Russo 38:22 for being here. My pleasure. Robert, you.