Archive for August, 2016

Robert Plank: I am super excited to introduce to you today, Mr. Damon Nailer, he serves as an author, motivational speaker, talk show host, music producer, songwriter, recording artist, and business owner. Lots of cool stuff, how are things in your neck of the woods Damon?

Damon Nailer: Everything is going well Robert I can't complain, just enduring some hot weather but besides that everything is dandy, I can't complain.

Robert Plank: I see you're in Louisiana, we have some hot weather here in California but I prefer the hot.

Damon Nailer: Well here it is extremely hot we have been having triple digit temperatures so its been pretty hot but like you said you prefer the hot out there but here, with the humidity, its just awful sometimes.

Robert Plank: It just kills you, so all the more reason to stay inside and make some money. Tell me about yourself, tell me what it is that you do, and how you got started and your story and all of that.

Damon Nailer: Well I do so much but most importantly I'm a music producer, a speaker, and an author and a business owner. I own a janitorial service and I do that as well. But I've just released an inspirational E-Book entitled "A Greater Taste of Success" and it's the second addition in my inspirational books. The first one was "The Great Taste of Success" and so this is the second edition. I've also just released a non-fictional book, that's actually a book about Revelation in the bible and we kind of talk about that, analyze and interpret and teach the content found in that book. I'm also a speaker so I do different motivational speeches, I do seminars, I do workshops, ministry opportunities for us to talk in religious institutions. I just speak in a variety of settings and like I said last but not least; I also own a janitorial service. We clean different buildings here in my city and so I just do all of those things.

Robert Plank: It sounds like a lot of fun, but how do you keep all of that straight? How do you do the authoring and the speaking and janitorial stuff and then the motivation and the music? How do you do all of that?

Damon Nailer: I always tell people to balance it out, I just consider myself part time in all of those things besides being a father, husband, and christian, those things are full time. But everything else is part time, and I I'm able to juggle my schedule and make the time to do it. I know with the writing and with the music, I basically do it as I'm inspired, as the inspiration comes and I'm able to write down a lot of information and i basically keep everything as I do my research and as I'm feeling inspired. Then when its time to create a project or do a book, I've already complied all the information and that's why it makes it easier for me to do different projects and to put together different books because I'm always studying, always compiling information, always being inspired and I just gather everything, and when its time we just put it all together. That's basically how I do it, just being part time with everything, and whatever it slowing the most, that's the direction I go in.

Robert Plank: That's cool and would you say that just the fact that you have so many things happening at once and you kind of have to go at a super fast pace or else you fall behind. Would you say that, that helps your creative process a lot?

Damon Nailer: Yes it does, it does because I experience so much on a day to day basis. I'm constantly meeting people and connecting with a variety of people, such as yourself, with a variety of great people. I love it, I just love the fact that its spontaneous, you never know, its unpredictable. It goes from day to day its exciting and its an interesting journey, and as a result I love it, its so flexible, and you never know what's going to happen, and I love it.

Robert Plank: I like it too and that's an awesome way of looking at it, just any day, that anything could happen, depending on what strikes, right?

Damon Nailer: Yes, exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool so, about your motivation and your mindset and everything, a lot of people talk about those kinds of subjects, what makes you special in that area?

Damon Nailer: What makes me special is my variety of experiences and also I'm a former educator and I have an advantage there because one of the things that they taught us in college, in preparing us to become teachers is that; you have to motivate your students and in each lesson you have to literally create what was called a motivation. That's what would lead an inspire the students to get them prepared and opened to learning and because of my experience in a variety of settings, I know how to motivate, I've had to motivate myself in each of the settings, and basically one advantage I have as well is that I started each of the things that I'm doing. I didn't just buy from someone else or walk into something that someone else started, I had to start it and when you are the trend setting and the originator; you have to be motivated and because I'm motivated, its easy for me to inspire and motivate others because I'm already motivated.

One thing that I've realized that a lot of people did not is that motivation is internal and if its already in you, all you have to do is release it and with me having that understanding, its just a pleasant gift and its consistent and I just love motivating and inspiring people and because of my various experiences I'm able to do it and I believe I have that edge and that advantage, opposed to many others.

Robert Plank: I like that, so what you're saying is; if you're completely lacking in the motivation, it cannot be taught but most of us have it within us, it just needs to be unlocked.

Damon Nailer: Yes, we all have it within us and that's what I try to help people to understand; the key to finding your motivation is actually finding your passion. You say " well how do I find my passion?" You find your purpose. Once you find that, then you will automatically be motivated and that is what has happened to me, I've discovered what I call my " Diamond to give things" and I actually teach a workshop to help people find their diamond or their gift or gifts, if they have more than one, they're multi talented, multi faceted. Once you find that, and you tap into that, you begin to operate in it, then motivation is just automatic. For instance, if you look at athletes, you look at recording artists or whomever, once they find that that is their gift, it doesn't take a whole lot of motivation.

Can you imagine it doesn't take LeBron James much motivation to go play basketball, it doesn't take the recording artist, Katy Perry, it doesn't take much motivation to go into the studio and record. Why? It is because they have found their passion, they have found what they were created and purposed to do, and with it automatically comes that energy and inspiration and that desire and passion to do it.

Robert Plank: I like it, it just flows.

Damon Nailer: Yes, it does, it really does. I mean it becomes first nature, I know that other people say that is is second nature but for me its first nature. Especially doing this, I love to do this, I could do this all day and just knowing I'm on a talk show and I'm talking to someone, I'm sharing and inspiring people, that in itself motivates me. I could have all kinds of things going on in my life and I have had all sorts of things going on in my life, but you give me the opportunity to share and inspire and educate people, all of those things are pushed to the back burner and people's inspiration and motivation becomes the priority and I'm able to do it.

Robert Plank: I love it, so you're saying that we all have, that thing and that its different for every person, but we all have that thing that not only were we born to do it but we probably do it for free.

Damon Nailer: Exactly, you're just leading right into some great things, my philosophy is that; all men are created with a skill and a mission to fulfill. What I do with my gift seminar or gift workshop, I'm just going to give some examples here, some free information, its really powerful though. I have four questions that I tell people that "if you can ask yourself four things then you can find something that fits each of these categories, then you will find your diamond and gift". The first question is "What are you good at doing?" You have to be brutally honest, you have to be objective, the more objective you are, the more accurate you'll be at finding your gift. The second question is "What are you passionate about doing?" Some people are passionate about things, but they're not really good at them. For instance, American Idol, that's a prime example. A lot of those people are passionate about singing, but they're not good at it, somebody has deceived them and didn't want to hurt their feelings and so here we are; passionate but not skilled.

The third question is "What do you do that affects others" or "What do you do that others receive satisfaction and fulfillment as you do it?" That deals with effectiveness. The last question is "What can you do for free and still receive full satisfaction from it? What can you do as a volunteer and still receive full satisfaction?" If you can find something that fits all four of those categories, then you will find your diamond and gift, because I've done some other things that I haven't mentioned, but in most cases, I couldn't do the volunteerism as far as doing it for free, and then I lacked the passion for it, somewhere along the line. As a result I had to get rid of those things out of my life, and now I'm only really doing the things that fit those four categories, and that's what you want to do. Once you find that, I'm telling you, you will be automatically motivated.

Robert Plank: I like it, so what you're good at, what you're passionate about, something where others receive satisfaction, and then something that you would do for free. I like how that last little bit at the end you said that you can always go back and reassess, I think that helps so much because I think that a lot of us will look at two out of the four or three out of the four and say "All right well, I'm good at this I enjoy doing that, people get value from it, I'm just going to go and start off in this direction" Then sometimes five or ten years later we end up way down a path and we just ended up compromising one thing after another, maybe it was for family reasons or for money reasons, we end up in a place that we don't want to go. The way that I like that you laid that out is; even if you think that maybe you've gotten off track, or maybe you need to course correct, you can just run it through those four questions and get the instant answer.

Damon Nailer: That's it, now what happens sometimes, I'm glad you mentioned that, sometimes for income you may have to start something or create something possibly where you can employ others to do it and just be able to have the income to invest in your passion and if you're not able to start something where you can employ others and you have to employ yourself, then I always say "Just pursue your passion to some capacity. You may have to do it as supplemental income or you might have to do it as volunteering, as long as you are making enough income to sustain yourself, to sustain your family and to sustain whatever it is that you're trying to do." My thing is that I always like to inspire and emphasize to people to pursue their passion in some capacity, if you just have to do it for thirty minutes, a week or a few hours a week, just do it to some capacity because its therapeutic. It literally helps you with what you're going through in life, its just that gift that keeps on giving and that's why we're created.

We have to just find that and in some kind of way use it, because in blessing others, it also is going to bless you.

Robert Plank: I like that, even if you only have three minutes to do it, just a little bit of that everyday, its so simple but so powerful.

Damon Nailer: Yes, I mean that little bit of time, it makes the difference because Robert, what would happen is that so many people on a day to day basis is that they're going and putting in eight, ten, twelve, or sometimes even sixteen hours in a career and even in gifts that they have but its not their diamond and gift things and so because of it they're not fulfilled still. There's something inside of them, tugging at them, pulling at them, to go into another direction, but like you stated earlier because of their financial situation they bite the bullet, they suck it up and they go put in those grievous and long and boring hours just to make the money at the cost of their passion. That's what I'm saying, find some kind of way to pursue that passion and it will help you to get through with your normal job.

That is what would happen to me when I was teaching, like I said that was one of my gift things, but at the end I began to lose that passion and what kept me stimulated and kept me with the ability to endure it until I was able to leave it was the fact that I was still pursuing my passion, which at that time was the music. I was still recording and doing music while I was teaching and that's what really helped is that I stayed motivated and I stayed positive because I was able to pursue my passion to some capacity.

Robert Plank: I mean lets talk about that, lets talk a little bit about your teaching days when you had to balance the teaching part of it and then the musical side, does this all come naturally to you, like did you have all this multitasking and such, did you have it all figured out, or were there some obstacles you had to overcome to get to this point?

Damon Nailer: Well I think the multi tasking actually came automatically with me being multi faceted, some kind of guide just helped me to figure it out and be able to prioritize and multi task effectively but no it really wasn't a big strain. A big strain as I was saying earlier, is I'm inspired, I just write and I just started to produce the music and it kind of made me work ahead and so at those times I would just find some kind of time to devote to the music and it really wasn't too bad. It wasn't hard, I even taught year around several times, I did summer school as well as the regular school sessions and so still in all I made the time to dedicate myself to the music and I was able to sacrifice, sometimes it might mean sacrificing sleep, sometimes it might mean sacrificing some fun things and whatever it takes to pursue that passion to some capacity.

I just tried to encourage people to do so but yes it wasn't really that hard, it wasn't a contradictory where it was going into another direction and spreading me thin, I was able to do both effectively and even now with the additional titles, I'm able to do it all effectively.

Robert Plank: I like that, you made the time to make it happen and I mean I'm sure you hear that cheesy stuff all the time about how "everyone only has twenty four hours in a day" or "if you need something done ask a busy person" and I have friends where that's happened over and over again where they were spread too thin and they couldn't get a lot done but as soon as their life got busy, they had an unexpected child or they got laid off from their job. Some big dramatic event kind of forced them to be this kind of person that they always could have been but because maybe their life was kind of safe or kind of cushioned, there were no real stakes, they didn't have a reason to excel and once these things happened, which a lot of people would have looked at as a bad thing, they would say "oh my gosh I have this new kid, I have all these expenses, all this time is locked up." But I think that all of us entrepreneurs see all that adversity as kind of fuel to do better.

Damon Nailer: Yes and that's what actually happens, sometimes to push a person out of that nest like the eagle does its eaglets, that's what has to happen. As you said its something traumatic, something dramatic that really pushes you because to be an entrepreneur it takes faith and you have to walk and believe in something that sometimes has not yet materialized and you have to go in that direction believing that, that is going to happen. Sometimes, as you were saying, because people are stuck in a rut and just that comfort zone, that predictability knowing that "okay I get paid here, I get paid this much every month or every two weeks" however often they're paid, and its a security but once that is upset or is shifted or is compromised, all of a sudden now you have to make moves.

You have to do things that you wouldn't normally do, now you're literally flowing on adrenaline and adrenaline really gives you superhuman strength and that's what happens to some people but there are others who it doesn't take just all the opposition and they're able to launch out and do it, I guess people consider that risky, but at the same time those people have the fate where their back is not up against the wall but they're just going to step out and do it anyway. Either way it goes, as long as it gets done.

Robert Plank: Whatever gets you there right?

Damon Nailer: That's it.

Robert Plank: Well cool so as we're winding down today's call, do you see a number one mistake or a common repeat thing that people are making over and over when it comes to any area of improving their lives, what's the mistake that keeps creeping up over and over again?

Damon Nailer: I think its consistency, I would say that is the greatest issue, the greatest stumbling block, the greatest hindrance, is consistency. Many people are great at starting, but they don't get the ability or the mindset of being able to consistently do it on a day to day or weekly or monthly basis and that's really what makes the difference between the average, the good, and the great. You have to be able to do it consistently, you have to be able to do it on a whim and just all the time and that's where people fall off. Many people start businesses, they continue for a year or a few years, but to be consistent in what you're doing, that's very important and I believe that is the greatest obstacle to some people. It comes with the motivation again, being able to motivate yourself on a day to day, month to month, weekly basis, to do what you need to do and that's what it boils down to, being consistent.

Robert Plank: I like it, be a finisher not a dabbler.

Damon Nailer: Yes, that's it.

Robert Plank: Well cool, I don't want to keep you too long Damon, and I like everything you've had to say here and I mean I'm looking at your website, looking at all you have here; your Cds, and your books. Where should people go to find out more about you and what it is that you do?

Damon Nailer: They can go to daril.org that's my most comprehensive site and it has all of my information concerning the books, them music, my speaking engagements, the web seminars. Its all there, www.daril.org.

Robert Plank: And could you restate one more time the name of that new book that just came out of yours?

Damon Nailer: "The Greater Taste of Success" and that's available at my website daril.org and then the other one is Revelation; write and reveal, that's available on Amazon and Barns and Nobles and any major book sites there.

Robert Plank: Awesome, everywhere on the internet. Well cool I really appreciate having you here, I like your message, I liked all the knowledge bombs that you dropped so I'm really glad you came here, I think everyone should check out Daril.org and get all your books because you're an awesome guy.

Damon Nailer: Thanks so much Robert, you're an awesome guy and we appreciate what you're doing, really having a platform to help entrepreneurs and help aspiring entrepreneurs and so keep on keeping on and we just appreciate the opportunity thank you so much.

Robert Plank: Our guest today is Dr. Rachna Jain. She's the founder and owner of Profitable Popularity. She's the industry leader in helping people gain exposure online and teaching them to monetize that popularity. It sounds like lots of cool stuff. I'm super excited. Welcome to the show.

Rachna Jain: Oh thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.

Robert Plank: We were just talking before the show that we've both spoken at the same event and I know that you've used Backup Creator and Webinar Crusher. That's all about me, but I'm more curious about you and what you do. Where's your website and what is it that you do that makes you different and special?

Rachna Jain: Yes, my website is profitablepopularity.com. Really that website and my whole business model grew out of the idea that a lot of people were building these huge followings in social media or trying to, but they didn't actually have a business model that they could make money from or be profitable. My whole goal is to really help people to become more well-known, but also to help them become more profitable and build a sustainable business at the same time. I tend to work with people who you consider to be thought leaders or visionary entrepreneurs, people who have a message and a purpose, and they are needing some help creating the business structures to be able to build an online business and gain attention and be able to make money from it.

Robert Plank: I like that, and I think that what I see a lot happen with a lot of these people with social media is they either get too far down the rabbit hole or it ends up taking up all kinds of time, or they end up doing all these little tasks that seem like they're just a waste just to get a number appearing. Wasn't there like a service a few years where you could get your Twitter score or something like that?

Rachna Jain: Yeah, there absolutely were and they still are services like Cloud and Empire Cred. They're always ranking you on on how much engagement you could get, and you get points for it. I don't know if you can redeem the points for anything, but yeah-

Robert Plank: It feels good.

Rachna Jain: Exactly, it feels good. I think that there's still a lot of focus. I think people have the false assumption that just because they're very visible, they'll automatically become very profitable. That is a mistake. I've had people come to me and they say things like, "Well I want to have 10,000 Facebook fans." I'll say, "Okay, so what are you going to do with 10,000 Facebook fans?" They really have no idea. They really are pursuing the number more than actually what the meaning of that could be for their business. I think that there's still a lot of desire to be seen and recognized and lauded and applauded and all those things without people really understanding that that's not all it takes to build a business.

Robert Plank: What do they have to do? How do they get from being the person who chases the number to someone whose social media activity actually pays off?

Rachna Jain: Absolutely. I use a model that I've developed. It's called the M6 model. It really relies on the idea of having an understanding of a very specific market, building a very strong message, and then building a business model that can support getting that message out. There's more steps to it, but those are the first three steps. I've been working online since 1998 and social media didn't even exist then. When social media began to become a force that it is today, you begin to see a lot of people using social media as a way to talk to everyone at the same time. What I began to observe about 2008 and that's continuing even today is this concept of microfragmentation where people are selecting into smaller and smaller groups. At first, we were all excited that we could even find each other online. Now, you find that the groups are becoming more and more targeted and more and more specific. Our messaging has to change too where we're not really looking to talk to everyone; we're looking to talk to just one person in a very specific group.

There's a lot of work that has to be done around that because again, people get seduced or they get swayed by the idea that because they can talk to 10,000 people at once that they really ought to try to do that. That tends to be the least effective way.

Robert Plank: I've seen along with you the way that the social media stuff has evolved. Maybe you can clear up what's the right way to go about it as far as talking to everyone or talking to a few, or maybe there's a right way or maybe everyone has their own unique way. When you mentioned the things that you're mentioning, I'm thinking about Old Spice or Dollar Shaving Club. A lot of people, it seems like they want to replicate that. They want to repeat the magic. Then on the other extreme of that what I've noticed a lot of is, I can't remember if it was Coca-Cola or Head & Shoulders but there's been some companies and I've seen them do things like, for example, on Facebook they'll post the same message but in different languages and target it to each of their audiences. They'll post the English message and then post it in Spanish but only to the Spanish-speaking crowd. I thought that was interesting segmentation.

Rachna Jain: Ot absolutely really is interesting. The thing about it though, for a big brand like Coke or any of the large brands, they do it as a way of constantly raising awareness. My guess is they don't need to tie it to income-earned or result obtained as tightly as us small business owners do. I really think that when you're looking to build an audience online, I think that the idea is to really be as targeted as you can, as specific as possible. You want to definitely talk about what is interesting to that group or those people. If you're building it on your personal profile, you obviously want to also be a real person. You don't just want to be constantly talking about work all the time, but you want to share about what's important to you. I think that the key in really getting noticed at this point, and examples you gave about Dollar Shave Club and all the people like that, they're really really good at telling stories and they're really good at telling stories that interrupt and gather attention.

Anyone can build a powerful story out of their life and business if they know how. Being able to interrupt attention and stop the mindless Facebook scrolling by grabbing someone's attention and being able to tell a good story that's compelling. I think that that sort of skillset is within the reach of entrepreneurs of all sizes.

Robert Plank: That's cool. By you breaking it down even in just those two terms, have a story and have an interrupt. That way, it can help people make sense of the things that they're seeing on social media that are getting them to pay attention and then figuring out a way to replicate it for themselves. Could you walk us through a little bit about that? Could just tell us about maybe a client you've had or something like that where their social media just maybe wasn't very effective and then you went in and added in their own story and their own pattern interrupt to make it better?

Rachna Jain: I work a lot with people who are coming onto the internet from professional services. I have a background in psychology so it's not surprising that I get a lot of psychologists and therapists who want to work with me and they're looking to build an online following for some of their clinical expertise, but they're looking to bring it to a larger audience. They're a perfect example. They come online and they talk about a lot of things in very jargon-y ways, things that only other therapists would actually know or understand. There's one client that I'm actually working with now who is seeking to develop an online training course and some coaching. We're still working out what she's going to offer, but what she's really looking to is she's really looking to help women have more self-esteem. The way that she had began talking about it online, doing Facebook Live videos for example, is she was just starting with, "Hi, I'm a therapist and I've worked with women. Are you very depressed? Do you have any confidence?" She would go on and on about without even finding a way to engage people originally.

Then as we began to look at her videos, and we're still working on some of the messaging in her story, but we began to talk about, "You starting off with an introduction about yourself is not what's going to grab people. What's going to grab people is something that is like a feeling that you've taken a slice or a cut out of their daily life. It would be something like, 'Oh, did you look in the mirror this morning and absolutely hate how you looked? Did you get sick of feeling that way, or are you sick of feeling that way?' Then being able to go into some story about how she can help." Really direct language, something that really lets you put yourself in the conversation that your potential client is already having, and being able to build a story about that and how you can help.

Robert Plank: There's some cool things in there. Aside from just posting the content you post with the intent of solving a problem, the whole thing of stopping them and asking a question. That seems like an easy way to uncover that interrupting question without having to spend all day or all month trying to figure out, "Are you ___________ almost? Do you hate your appearance in the mirror? Are you tired? Are you stressed out?" It seems like just right there alone saying, "Are you ____________?" just seems like an easy way to create some social content.

Rachna Jain: I think it absolutely does. Of course there's different things you can do like in Facebook Live versus an ad on Facebook. You just have to be aware of what your message is and the content is based on the mechanism that you're using to get people to watch or take action. I think asking a question is a really good interrupt. I think also using surprise or things that people don't think go together, something like, "What I learned about sleep from staying up all night," or, "What I learned about being a good mother even though I don't have kids." Just things that people would feel interested in like, "Wow, what does somebody who doesn't have kids know about being a mother?" Or, "What can you learn about sleep from not sleeping?" Anything that creates some interest or some intrigue I think is another really easy way, and a good way to do it is to take opposites and say, "If I tie these two opposites together, do I come up with anything that's worth talking about?"

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. It just gets that curiosity going. As you were explaining, something that I think I've noticed just in the last couple of months ago and I'm not sure if it was always there or not, but it seems like what I've noticed very recently is that a lot of people are posting on Twitter and they're posting on Facebook with the intent of impressing their peers not their customers. You mentioned doctors and psychologists. A lot of people like you said, they'll mention the jargon or they'll mention their credentials. I look at it and I'm not really sure why some of these things are being posted. Are you seeing that? Maybe like psychologists might be posting things to impress other psychologists as opposed to actually help people?

Rachna Jain: I think it's actually less conscious than that. I think what everyone's trying to do when they do that is they're trying to build credibility which is actually a very positive and useful thing. I think it's just the difference between the way that you get credibility in the offline world has historically been "Where did you go to school?" "What kind of education do you have? "What kind of job do you have?" "How much money do you make?" "What kind of car do you drive?" All those kinds of things that are status symbols or could be credibility symbols. I think online for all of us, it's just our picture and whatever we say about ourselves. Nobody necessarily is going to see the car that you drive or where you live or anything like that. I think that people use some of those same mechanisms that they would use offline. They try to bring them online, and the challenge becomes exactly what you raised. People feel like, "Well why is relevant or why do I care?" I really care more about your information than I care that you graduated in x, y, z, year with this degree.

Robert Plank: The question is, "Why do I care?" I like that because one thing that I've been thinking about when I try my own social media or I have a couple coaching clients who are starting to get into this kind of stuff, one thing that comes to mind is one of our favorite people is a doctor. Being a doctor, there's that paradox there where like you said, if he gets too much about the credentials then he's out of touch in the Ivory Tower but then he sometimes tries to do some kind of aggressive marketing. This doctor has a procedure where it involves taking the blood and reinjecting it and stuff like that, so he branded himself as the Vampire Doctor but then he gets to the point where it's almost like a little too shady. It's this doctor who's doing important stuff. Is the answer just to put it through the filter of "why do I care?", or do you have any other insights about that? Like how to avoid either being too out of touch or too much like the convenience store or the shady back alley?

Rachna Jain: Exactly. I think that in that case, what you're really looking at is you're looking for subtle ways to credentialize yourself. You obviously can say that, "I'm a doctor of such-and-such," or, "I've studied here." You don't need to spend 20 minutes talking about that, but then I think through the course of your presentation, the way that you present yourself speaks volumes about who you are and how you are. Then I think any time you can use real life examples, like you asked me at the beginning if I could talk about a client. I'm not sure if that's exactly what you meant, but it was a way to credentialize me also because just the fact that I have clients who pay me makes me more of an expert. If I were a physician and I was going to talk about what I did, I'd really focus a lot more on the outcomes and the benefits. If I were doing this blood reinjection thing, I might shy away from that a little bit and save that for a little bit later in the process. I definitely would credentialize myself.

This is something that these celebrities use, this is something that the top athletes use. It's the same mechanism that helps so-and-so place in the Olympics or anything like that. Any time you can credentialize yourself, you can use these subtle ways of saying "other people trust me and you should too," like social proof. Any time you can tie it to some kind of news story or current event, it gives people a hook that they can tap into and they can immediately understand, and they're more likely to pay attention because that's something that's equally relevant going on.

Robert Plank: I like the real world case study stuff anyway because that's more interesting as opposed to just talking about some abstract concepts. Hooking me into a story is a lot more fun for me.

Rachna Jain: Yeah, absolutely. Stories are our oldest form of oral communication. There's a long history that we're all oriented to pay attention to stories.

Robert Plank: Oh yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me, and that resonates a lot with me too. As we're winding this down in the last five minutes or so of this, aside from everything that we've covered already what's the number one mistake you're seeing people making on social media? Like you see all kinds of people going wrong with this.

Rachna Jain: I think again, that sense of gathering people who are just numbers rather than interested fans or followers. I think talking too much about themselves, using their social media as a broadcast platform rather than a dialoguing or connecting platform. I think that as a business, you also just want to be really careful at how you present yourself around topics that are really charged. This whole election thing that's going on, there's people who are feeling the need to express their distinct opinions politically one way or the other and it's causing them some challenges within their community. It's not that they shouldn't have their opinions, but I use Facebook as a hybrid. I use it for social and for business, so I'm always aware of how what I say personally is going to have impact on my brand or my business also.

I think that there's times where people who run business, they forget that people are paying attention to everything and whatever you say or do as an individual person, it does have impact on how people perceive your brand. To have an awareness of that, like if you're just using it for social interaction that's completely fine but if you're thinking it's going to become a platform by which you build your business brand and make contacts and get clients and things like that as well, you just need to be aware of how some of your personal opinions may be taken. In the normal course of my work, I never talk to be about their politics. It wouldn't be something that I would lead with on social media either, for example.

Robert Plank: It seems like especially with the political stuff, it's easy to get attention that way but maybe it's the wrong kind of attention.

Rachna Jain: Yeah, and you just have to think. I'm certain that there's clients that I have and we have different political views, but it's not relevant to the work we do so it never comes up. I would hate that I have a really good relationship with a client of mine, they see something that I posted on Facebook that they disagree with, and it creates a rupture in our working relationship just because I was so passionate about something. I'm not saying that's right for everyone. I'm just saying that that's how I navigate the line for myself.

Robert Plank: Yeah, that gets kind of scary because every now and then, there's always some celebrity like Gilbert Godfrey or someone who just says one little remark and then loses all kinds of business and clients.

Rachna Jain: Absolutely, and loses all kinds of credibility. It's like one small action, people lose big endorsements, they lose status, they lose all kinds of things. It's just something that I think that is important to consider if you're planning to use a social media for business.

Robert Plank: Double-edged sword sounds like.

Rachna Jain: Yeah, I think so.

Robert Plank: Cool. As we're winding this down, social media stuff's always changing. Do you have a really cool, cutting edge strategy or tool or website that you're using to do all this social marketing?

Rachna Jain: Actually, I really do things the old-fashioned way because I'm really about strategy and not tools. The tools come and go, but if you really are clear on what your strategy is you can find the tools to make that happen. One thing though I think is a really big deal that most people want to pay attention to right now is the huge rise in visual marketing. Even if you have blog posts, find ways to turn them into images and memes and infographics. I've been actually recently just putting a lot of stuff up on Slideshare again. Really looking at ways to turn your message into multiple formats and get it in front of people who can consume it easily. Look at how you can turn written content into visuals and be able to put them on Instagram and Pinterest and Slideshare, and a bunch of other sites like that.

Robert Plank: As opposed to just that boring old text.

Rachna Jain: Correct, as opposed to just that.

Robert Plank: With the Twitter stuff, I've been having fun with Giphy with the animated GIFs but maybe a little too much fun.

Rachna Jain: Exactly. Again, moderation in all things but yes, things like Giphy also can work really really well.

Robert Plank: It gets attention. If most people are not using that attention-getting tool, then I'm fine using it.

Rachna Jain: Absolutely.

Robert Plank: I like everything you have to say and I like your message, and you had lots of really good advice. Could you tell everyone where to go and find you and your blog and your coaching and your books and all that good stuff?

Rachna Jain: Sure. You can visit me online at my website which is ProfitablePopularity.com.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Nice and simple, gets you there. Profitable Popularity, and then it looks like everything is available from there. Awesome. ProfitablePopularity.com. Dr. Rachna Jain, I'm super glad that you came here and you shared a lot of stuff. The number one thing I like about what you shared with us is just that you didn't say, "Okay, it all relies on this one super fancy tool that's cutting edge, just came out." It's just the strategy and just little things that you notice. For example, if the trend now is visual marketing and images, instead of relying on some fancy-schmancy tool to do it just do it yourself and model what's working.

Rachna Jain: Yes.

Robert Plank: Thanks for being on the show and sharing your insights on social media. It was a pleasure having you.

Rachna Jain: Thanks so much, Robert.

Robert Plank: My guest today is Kory Livingstone. He's going to be talking to us about finding the right business coach and he seems like a pretty cool guy. He plays piano, does vocals, has a party band, The Fabulous Mercurys, so I can't wait to hear what cool business knowledge he plans on dropping. Welcome to the show, Kory.

Kory Livingstone: Thank you for having me, nice to be here.

Robert Plank: I'm glad to have you here. I really like when people put some or a lot of their personality into the things they have to say as opposed to just people saying I'm a business coach, I'm a turnaround coach and they don't really have much to say. I really like how the things that you have to say you've mixed them and combined them with your musician and the other business stuff you have to say as well.

Kory Livingstone: Yeah, my core is a musician, but don't be fooled, oh, he's only a musician. My book which is Quiet Determination: Unlocking the Gates to Unlimited Success is based on the lessons that I learned while studying music. In order to be successful in music there's a mindset, there's things you have to do in order to be successful in music. Successful in music, successful in life is the theme of the book. These are the lessons that I learned while I was studying music and I apply them to everything I do in life. It's like a hammer. You can use a hammer to hammer in this type of nail, that type of nail, a screwdriver for this, that, all these things. These are the tools that are used in different situations. Whether you're building a house or a swimming pool or a garage or a wall or an addition, they all use the same hammer, the same tool.

Just because you're a musician it doesn't mean the tools you use to be successful to become a musician are not applicable to tools you have to use to be a successful lawyer, a doctor, a mechanic, a maintenance man, it doesn't matter. You have to have certain tools or I should say a mindset to be successful in life, period. What I have discovered when I wrote my book all these tools... Actually, it's a mindset and you've got to have a certain mindset to be successful. Coaching you have to have a mindset to be coached, to be coachable.

All the big businesses, all the big businesses right around the world they work on developing the talent within their own ranks either through seminars, conferences, take a course. This is coaching. It may come across as a seminar, whatever word you want to use, but the bottom-line is that it's coaching. They're trying to promote within their ranks, so they can really do... Everybody has talent. It's potential. Some of us use some of our talent, some of us use a lot of our talent, some of us use very little of our potential talent. It's there, so it's just

a matter of getting it out of you and that's what a coach does.

Robert Plank: That's cool. It seems like there's a lot of parallels and a lot of lessons that you learn from this area of being a musician that you now apply it in other areas is what you're saying.

Kory Livingstone: Exactly, just as I had a music teacher, but really a music coach. Athletes, professional athletes have coaches. That's where a lot of people go wrong and think oh, gee, I'm not an athlete, so how can I have a coach, I don't need a coach. No, coaching goes right across, right across all walks of life, financial, even leadership. There's certain... Coaching is just an amalgamation of a whole bunch of different things; consulting, psychology, leadership, management, training, counseling. Now you don't have... This sounds like gee, in order to be a coach I should be a psychologist or something like that. No. Yes, psychologists are coaches, but you don't have to be a certified psychologist to be a good coach.

Just look at any professional sports team. None of those coaches are what you would say qualified psychiatrists. They have grown up in the game, they've worked in the game, they know how to communicate with other people. They know how to get the best out of you that they can provided that you're coachable. You probably heard that particularly in professional sports. You've heard the phrase oh, so and so's not coachable. He's come in here, he thinks he knows it all. You know what the coach does? He lets so and so ride the bench for a game or two. This is a team sport, we're doing it my way, not your way and if you don't want to learn our system I don't care how... Great, you became number one draft choice and all that stuff, but you're not fitting in, you're going to ride the pine for awhile and then you'll gradually ...

Robert Plank: Put him in his place, take him down a peg or two.

Kory Livingstone: Yeah, down a peg or two. If you're not coachable... You're good, but you're only probably half as good as you're going to be by the time you hit your peak of your career. Young guys come in what 19, 20. They're still wet behind the ears. They've got 5 years of learning to do before they even start getting much better than they are. The time they become veterans... That's why they're veterans because they've been there for awhile and they know their stuff.

Robert Plank: Oh, yeah, and all that reminds me, when I was a kid I played baseball for about three years and then I was in school band for about five years. Year to year if we had a good music instructor that made a huge difference. That wasn't all the difference, but if we had an instructor who just half-assed it and didn't really take things too seriously then that would tank that whole music group for the whole year. If we had someone who knew how to challenge us and who knew how to manage us and who to arrange who where and knew how to get those

diamonds in the rough to come out that made a huge difference.

The other thing that that reminds me of is that on one extreme there were the other kids who the music talent came naturally. The other extreme a lot of them just didn't even care and didn't even try. I think most of us including me were in the middle where we weren't naturally gifted musicians. Just because we put aside, for example, an hour a day to practice because the music coach knew what areas to focus on that helped us all. I see a lot of parallels to what you're saying. Some people just don't try or some people come in with the attitude that they know everything, they've got the whole world figured out. That hurts them as well, so there's the two pieces of it. There's the instructor side, the coach side, and then there's whatever it is that they unlock within you.

Kory Livingstone: Exactly, and you bring up that about having the proper music instructor. There's two types. There's the kind of coach who will say do this, do that, practice page one, practice page two, page three, so on and so forth. They don't really take the time to go in and look at what your strengths are and what they are not and help you develop what your strengths are.

They've got to sit down, look at your strengths, look at your weaknesses and say let's look at... This is what you probably found with a good band teacher. They probably took the time to try and get to know you to see what your strengths were and what your weaknesses... Let's work on this, Robert. I think you should probably try working on that. You're doing this fine. It's just that little bit of communication because you have to connect with people. I'm sure you saw from the people who you've learned from, you learn more so from the people who made or at least tried to make a personal connection with you.

Robert Plank: Oh, yeah, instead of just giving you the same old cookie cutter, boring stuff everyone else does. What you're saying is as it relates to either being a business coach or getting a business coach that if you can find that coach who instead of just giving you the same steps they give to 10 other coaching clients they actually look at your business. They look at what you've done and haven't done and look at your strengths and weaknesses and from all that figure out the best course of action for you to take.

Kory Livingstone: Yeah, a good coach will ask you a lot of questions which again may surprise many of your listeners. I'm supposed to be getting information, aren't I? He's just asking me questions. Yeah, no, he's asking you questions for a purpose because in the end you really have the answers. They're all within you. If you need to find out a certain formula, let's say whatever it is. Obviously, he couldn't... You don't know what the formula is. Let's just say... I'm going to be very, very simple. I need to formulate how to make this certain type of glue let's say. Now the coach just may happen to have that formula. Oh, yeah, I work in glue, I can give you that. That may just be a certain thing or you may ask where I can I find this type of person. The coach may know, but it'd be better for you and even if the coach doesn't have to he'll say where do you think we could go to find this formula for glue, so he's again asking ...

It's all about accountability. You as the coachee must be 110% accountable which means yes, the coach will guide you. Okay, I think you can find that information on this glue recipe on the Internet. Have a look on there and see if you can find it, it should be there. Or they might say I have a contact, you can phone this guy and he might give you some information, but that's going to be a very small portion, 1 or 2%. The job of a coach is to guide you, to ask questions, to find out where you're going, so you'll by answering these questions you will give yourself your own answers. That's what a coach is going to do.

People are surprised that they... You may not have the answers in your own head, but you will know where to go to find the answers. The coach will show you or guide you where to go to find the answers. When all is said and done and you and your coach finally part ways you will have all these abilities. You'll have this awareness of how to solve particular problems, so that's the basic concept or the basic structure of good coaching.

Basically, a coach needs to find out as much as they can about the client in order to coach them, asking questions. They have to maintain communication. They should build a rapport that they really are interested in you. They will help you clarify your own statements maybe about your goal. By this time next year I want to be rich, that's your goal. A coach will ask what do you mean by rich? Lots of money in the bank. What's lots of money in the bank? Give me a figure, $10,000, $1 million. They help you take away these generalities that a lot of people have and get you specific, specific goals. A year from now I'm going to have $1 million in the bank, so that's clarifying that goal and then you go a little bit further.

Each question that the coach asks it helps the coach understand what your real problem is because you may think you have a problem which we're going to call problem A, but after asking a lot of questions the coach will make it clear to you that it's not problem A you have, it's problem B, just giving it another name. It's problem B and C. Problem A, what you think is a problem number A that is not a problem. Because of the questions he's asked he's been able to clarify more.

Then a coach will help you understand exactly what you're doing much better

and encourage you to think much deeper than what you're going because most people when they go to a coach they have a general idea or I would like, I want to, but they haven't got it down in black and white. It's not down in writing. The biggest thing that a coach will do is keep you focused on what you're doing. A coach will again ask you questions that came out of leftfield. A good coach will get a feel where you're going and where your weaknesses, where your strengths are, but he'll ask questions just out of leftfield. It all pertained to what you're doing, of course. You may have an answer for it and you may not. If you do that's great, if you don't there's another area where you have to explore.

The bottom-line of a coach, he keeps you accountable, you are accountable for your success. The coach is going to guide you. It's not going to be done for you. I don't know about you, but, Robert, I've gone to many seminars because we're always learning. It could be... Let's say I've gone to a seminar about giving speech... I'll say keynote speaking, but how to deliver a great keynote speech. They take you... They'll tell you about this and they tell you you have to do this. Let's say there's 25 steps to do a keynote speech and they tell you exactly what they are. Oh, yeah, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that. You feel confident in your ability, but what they end up with is this. It's going to take you... This is how they try and scare you. Yeah, it'll take probably you 6 or 7 months to get it done just how we laid it out.

On the other hand, you can get it done for you for a big amount of money. It'll be done in 2 or 3 weeks and there you are, there's your keynote speech. What accountability have you done? You've taken no accountability for that speech. Do you know that speech? No, you're going to memorize it. Do you understand that speech? No, because someone else has written it for you and you've memorized it. Are you living that speech? No, you're just reciting that speech.

Bottom-line, you've taken no accountability and you may or may not believe half the things that are in that talk because it was done for you. Even though it follows the 25 points, but had you taken the time and been accountable and gone through each of the 25 points and built it up you would know exactly what you are talking about. That's what a coach does. You have to do this. A coach is not going to sit down and say here's the template. There you go, off you go. You are still not accountable. This is why a lot of people who have failed dreams... That's why there's a lot of people with failed dreams because they've tried to take the easy way out.

Robert Plank: I like that analogy a lot because it's like you said, there's all kinds of similarities you could connect to, to music, or in business, or in school, or anything. What you're describing there, the wrong way for coaches to go about it is almost like having you memorize just the facts and figures or just how to read music or just know how to hit the right notes and play the right times and things like that. There's no personalization, there's no repetition, there's no course correcting, stuff like that.

Kory Livingstone: Exactly, exactly. You have no skin in the game, no skin in the game whatsoever. Well ...

Robert Plank: Go ahead.

Kory Livingstone: No, go ahead, sorry.

Robert Plank: I was just going to say that makes me think about different mentors I had. I think about one of the favorite mentors I had, I came to him and like you described, I had a lot of big areas where I'm stuck, where I just didn't know what I didn't know, or I didn't know what strategy, or I didn't know if I should keep doing something or stop doing something. There were the little areas I was stuck where he could answer it in a minute or he could answer it by saying go look for this term. I think about when I first got a coach he told me to do just only a handful of things. He told me, for example, to raise my prices. That's one of those things where on my own I never would have knew to do that. It might have even taken me 10 years of just learning new things, doing some trial and error before I came to the person who had the big picture and looked at my business from the outside and just shortcut those 10 years for me.

Kory Livingstone: Yeah, yeah, that's really valuable. As adults see coaches... Adults learn different from children. Adult education... As adults we need to know why, why are we learning this? As kids you go to school and they tell you what you're going to learn. You're going to learn this, this, this, and this. I don't know about you, but the further I got along in school, in high school, I started asking myself what the hell do I need to study Latin for or what do I need to study this for. I want to be this, I want to be this. How does that relate to that? Now it may relate and it may not relate, but no one told me the reason for it. No one told me the reason.

As far as I could see it made no sense, so as an adult you have to know... When a coach is coaching you they'll explain or you'll ask... The coach had realized that you'll need to know why I'm doing this. A coach may say you need a business plan for the next... You need a business plan for the next year. You have to know this, you have to plan out every week, what you're going to do every single week and you may say... They will tell you so that you will not waste your time every day saying what will I do today. Your plan will be there, so it's already been planned. Today it says I must do this, therefore, you've not wasted a lot of time thinking about what can I do because you've already spent that time and you thought about it and it's right there, so you can get right to work and start getting results right away.

That's one example. Now also adults want to learn... They don't want to memorize. We've done our memorizing, we want to do. Task-orientated, give me a task to do. As your coach today I'm telling you to go out and find all of the suppliers that you can for this type of thing or this is what I want you to do. Whatever it happens to be, this is what I want you to do. That's a task. I don't want you to memorize where all of the people live that may be your target market. I don't want you to memorize where they live. I want you to go out and actually make a list, just make it a task. You have to do something. Now as adults... That's why we call ourselves adults because we make our own decisions, don't we?

Robert Plank: Yes.

Kory Livingstone: We like to plan. We don't want somebody telling us what to do. Do this, do that, like bossing. We want to be involved. Let's work on what I have to do, let's be involved, so the coach will get you involved in making decisions. That's why a good coach will not say do this, do that, do the other. Let's say what about you doing this, or have you tried looking at that, or what do you think of this, give me your opinion about this. The coach is guiding you, but expecting you... See this is where the coach is not giving you the answers and guiding you. I like this one here, this looks very good. Good, let's settle on that. The coach has guided you and you've made the decision, you've made the final decision. When we go to school as kids the teacher says do this, do that. You ask why and they say shut up and do it. Because I said, right. This is all part of the adult personality.

Now also another thing about adults when you're coaching them they have to be like I mentioned before coachable which means they're ready, interested in learning. If you're looking for a coach and you're a know it all don't waste your money. Keep going on like you're going and the results you had yesterday or the results you have today will be the results you have tomorrow which usually results again in a failed dream.

Adults also, they like to... This goes back to memorization. They don't want to learn, they want to solve problems. Things that keep us... We have a coach to solve a problem, we have a problem we need solved, so again that's a result. We'd rather solve... That's what we're paid for. Whatever job you do you are paid to solve problems. I'm an accountant, my job is to make sure that the money is accounted for. The boss says I need someone to account for the money. I'm a dentist, there's something wrong with my tooth, solve my problem. I'm a lawyer, I have a problem with... I need somebody sued. I'm a musician. Somebody feels stress, we try and make them feel happy with our music. Every job, the basis of every job is solving a problem and that's what adults like to do. Again ...

Robert Plank: I like that, so that way you're not just overloading someone with a bunch of facts and figures or overloading with the possibilities of all the things that they could do. You're not doing a bunch of stuff for them. Like you said you're the guide, but I think that that just now really hit home with me pretty hard that you're there to solve problems, the big problems, the small problems. Some problems need to be taken care of before the others, but I think that that right there is huge. You're not just there to learn or to teach something, you're knocking out those problems.

Kory Livingstone: You've got it. Garbage in, garbage out, regurgitate. Exactly right, hands on, roll up the sleeves, I got stuff to do. Yeah, you're so right. That's probably the most powerful thing a coach will do. Of course, again the coach is there if you go off track, pull you back on again.

Robert Plank: We're talking about all these things that bad coaches do and good coaches do. Can we relate that as we're winding this down to what it is you do and what makes you special and different?

Kory Livingstone: This is what... I love to direct people. You could call a coach... A coach is a teacher, but I try to change people's mindsets from what they do, what they normally do. My saying is how long are you going to keep doing what you're presently doing and putting off what you're really capable of doing. I like to draw people out and make them what they really can be, all that they can be. I like to look at their dreams because everybody has dreams and that's where I focus on, say tell me your dream and let's talk about your dream. Let's help make that dream... Let me help you make that dream a reality. That's what I drive at. It's great for a lot of young entrepreneurs because I wish I had someone like me in my corner when I was just starting out in business. It makes a lot of difference. It makes so much difference. I've experienced it one time in my life. That was in my music career. You probably don't know them, but they were called The Platters back in the ‘50s, Only You, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, things like that. They were ...

Robert Plank: I've heard Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, but I don't know that band exactly.

Kory Livingstone: They were a vocal group, four guys and one girl, The Platters. Look them up on the Internet, you'll see. One of them was called Ray Carroll and he moved up here to Canada for awhile and he had an agency here, a talent agency, and I met him. I went into his office and asked him if the agency can get me some work, blah, blah, blah. I was a young musician starting out. He hemmed and hawed and he said, okay... He took me out one night and we visited certain entertainment establishments around town. He showed me people... see people that he knew. We're going to go see this guy now and watch what he does. We're going to see this guy.

I learned so much, not about music, but about entertaining from him in a six-hour evening. It blew me away, the things that he pointed out, to see all these different people and what I should do, just that type of thing. He didn't say do this, do that. He just said you see this, you see that, you see that. Then your mind gets to working. I spent about 2 or 3 nights with him and the difference that made. I felt like a pro and I had only been in the business for about 10 months. I know that feeling and I want to pass that along to other people, so that's what I do. With my book, Quiet Determination: Unlocking the Gates to Unlimited Success, I share my mindset, I share the tools that I work with that have made me successful with other people. That's really what I'm all about.

Robert Plank: The way that you described that story it's almost like your friend, he had a lifetime of all these little insights and knowledge that took him however many decades to accumulate. Then he just distilled them down to a few... In any given situation, like you said he just pointed out things he was looking at, things that he was noticing and there's no amount of fact learning that can duplicate that.

Kory Livingstone: A hundred percent.

Robert Plank: Cool.

Kory Livingstone: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I'll tell you a story, how I got to write this book, the title of this book, Quiet Determination. About 10 years ago I was getting ready for a concert and a venue. It was a do it yourself venue. You had to bring in all your own lights and equipment. All they rented to you was the space. The concert was a Saturday night and I went in there Saturday morning. I set up the PA, I set up the lights, up and down on the ladder hanging curtains and I had a piano coming in and tuned. I had to get refreshments ready to sell at halftime, the CD, all that stuff ready. I gave the concert, it was a great concert and so on and so forth. About 2 weeks later I get this letter in the mail. Actually it was on a post-it, 3 by 3 yellow post- it note and it said, "Dear Kory, I've admired your persistent, quiet determination and attention to details. It's more than talent. It's a mature determination. I could do well to apply the same to my life. May God bless all of your efforts." You know who it was from?

Robert Plank: Who?

Kory Livingstone: The maintenance man of the venue, the custodian.

Robert Plank: That's awesome.

Kory Livingstone: It blew me away, it blew me away. Do well to apply the same to my... How astute is this guy, how astute. I didn't realize that I was doing this. This is what I did normally. I didn't go up and do all this work and then say look at all the work I did. It was a matter of fact like breathing. I breathe in, I breathe out. I don't think about it. If you stop doing it you're not going to breathe any longer, but you don't even think about that. All these things that I had to do were natural to me and that's with a quiet determination. He gave it to me. This guy was... He was a custodian, but he was a genius.

Robert Plank: I like that because... There's a lot of little insights with that and I think that the big one and the big common thread I'm hearing from you today is that there's all these skills that you've developed as a musician or as someone who sets up these performances and things like that. There's some amount of... The work ethic is a little bit of it. The mastery is a little bit of it. Getting so good at something where it almost becomes unconscious is a little bit of it. There's all these little things combined. What's really cool about this that I keep hearing over and over here is that the skills that you develop in one area such as music or presenting or things like that they always bleed out. They always can be applied into other areas as well.

Kory Livingstone: You got it, exactly, exactly. That's exactly what it is.

Robert Plank: The book is Quiet Determination and where can people find that and buy it?

Kory Livingstone: They can get it at Amazon.com, of course. They can get a digital copy or a hardback copy. If they want an autographed copy they can contact me by email. It's very simple, Kory@KoryLivingstone.com and I'll arrange to get a hardcopy sent to them and I'll autograph it for them. Now for the listeners of your show I got a special gift for them. I'm just in the process of doing it now. I'm doing an audio version of the book.

If they write me when it gets done I'll send them a free copy on an mp3 of Quiet Determination. I'll send that to them free just for the listeners, a special gift for the listeners of your show. It'll be ready probably in 2 or 3 months, but write me anytime. I put you on the list. When it's ready I'll send it out. If anybody... My website, it's just like my name. KoryLivingstone.com. Just type that in and I'll come up. My website will come up, my email will come up. You'll get it somehow. Just type in my name in the Internet and I will come

up.

Robert Plank: Awesome.

Kory Livingstone: It'll be easy to remember.

Robert Plank: Cool, so KoryLivingstone.com and the book is Quiet Determination.

Kory Livingstone: Yes.

Robert Plank: Awesome, thanks so much for being on the show, friend.

Kory Livingstone: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Robert. It's been great.

Robert Plank: Laurie Burton is an internationally recognized innovator and author who has helped thousands of people improve their ability to communicate effectively, thereby creating more success in business and in life. She is the author of Presenting You, and her techniques generate dramatic results in an amazingly short time, from one-on-one coaching, to seminars, and corporate groups, promoting the use of each individual's unique passion, energy, and animation. She encourages attendees to her workshops to be comfortable with themselves, creating more effective opportunities to lead, inspire, express, convince, and sell. That sounds like a great list. Welcome to the show, Laurie.

Laurie Burton: Oh my goodness, what a list!

Robert Plank: What a big promise to live up to!

Laurie Burton: Really!

Robert Plank: I'm really glad that you're here and that we're on the show. I'm really glad that we're on this topic because I'm sure you've come across people like this, but I'm not normally a very good speaker, communicator. I don't like dealing with people. I'd rather they just kind of leave me alone. Over time, I've realized that if I don't have these skills, I would be held back, so over time I've kind of forced myself- maybe not forced, but just kind of practiced and learned to be this better person, even though it doesn't come naturally. Does that make sense?

Laurie Burton: Oh, it's a perfect example of how so many people feel the same way, Robert. It's amazing, and that's what I'm here to do, is to encourage people and ask them to go out there and risk a little failure, but a lot of success. You've got to take chances in life.

Robert Plank: It makes a lot more sense to do it that way, and a lot more fun than just sitting at home wondering, "What if?" Right?

Laurie Burton: Yes! "What if," and being alone, shy and perhaps withdrawn, not a part of a group that you'd like to be a member of, being confident enough to speak for yourself, and stand up and say your name with confidence.

Robert Plank: Would you say that a lot of what you do, or the difference you make, is it mostly that confidence thing? What specifically separates you from everyone else out there who does something similar?

Laurie Burton: I talk a lot about you've got to have, number 1, energy. Where does our energetic core lie? How does it look? When we talk to people, when we present something, when we give a speech, where does that energy lie? Your energy speaks first before you've ever said a word. People are reading your energy level. That's what draws people in. That's really what is captivating. That's a part of charisma, so you've got to be aware of your energy and how it looks to others. We can practice it. I encourage folks to practice it in the mirror, this energy. Just look at that energy and freeze it. If it looks kind of boring and dull, bring it up and out and towards the mirror and hit that mirror with your energy. You know what I'm saying? It's so important.

Robert Plank: I kind of do. You're looking at yourself in the mirror. What exactly am I looking for? Is it like a posture?

Laurie Burton: Your whole body. Your whole body. It starts with your eyes. You can say your name. Say your name in the mirror. "Hi! I'm Laurie Burton!" Is there an energy that's projecting that out or is it, "Hi. I'm Laurie Burton." It's back. There is something I call the imaginary line. No matter where we are, even on a telephone conversation like we have now. I have to cross an imaginary line between you and me across the country, or I have to cross an imaginary line between my audience and myself. My job, as a speaker, is to project my energy out to that audience and keep them awake, keep them alive and energetic, and wanting to hear what I have to say.

Robert Plank: When someone does that, how do you keep the genuineness of it? How do you become this energetic person, but without coming across as fake?

Laurie Burton: You really have to practice your ability to project. I use an exercise called the "Yes" exercise. I have people do it in a small way, a medium way, and a big way, so that they get that feeling of saying, "Yes. Yes!" And then I can't say it on the phone. It's like somebody, your football team just made a touchdown, "YES!" People, the freak out a little because they're not used to expressing that big of emotion, but you've got to stretch that instrument. Your instrument is your body. We play this instrument every day with our face, our voice, our hands, everything. The body is a whole instrument. I like to think of it like that so that you've got to learn how to animate it. The meaning of the words have to be expressed through the emotions. If you say, "Hi! It's great to be here!" Not, "Hi, it's great to be here." You have to embody the meaning of the words.

Robert Plank: Who wants a sad stick-in-the-mud talking to them?

Laurie Burton: Right! Nowadays, have you ever noticed that people talk in question marks?

Robert Plank: Just really uncertain, right?

Laurie Burton: They'll say, "Hi, I'm Laurie Burton? I'm really glad to be here? I have some things I'd like to share with you?" Rather than, "Hi, I'm Laurie Burton. I'm so happy to be here." You hear the difference?

Robert Plank: Yeah, one is timid and the other is more assertive.

Laurie Burton: Yes, and owning who you are. Owning the ground you're standing on when you're presenting, owning saying your name, even if it's over the phone or at a presentation. It's taking that moment and making it your own. People are so afraid to take it over and own who they are and the ground they're standing on, and making that a part of them. It's what I call being comfortable in your own skin.

Robert Plank: Let's explore that. Tell me what I should do or say over the phone to experience this.

Laurie Burton: Your voice has a lot of energy in it.

Robert Plank: Yeah.

Laurie Burton: Yeah.

Robert Plank: That doesn't come naturally, but when I'm in speaker/phone/discussion mode, I'm like, "Okay." I turn that on.

Laurie Burton: Yeah, so do I.

Robert Plank: Cool, so we're alike there.

Laurie Burton: Yeah, you have to turn it on, turn it off. It becomes so a part of me, I can't speak for you, that it's the way I am when I'm out there, when I'm talking to people, when I'm in the spotlight so that it just goes on.

Robert Plank: What I'm asking is, you said you have your "Yes" exercise.

Laurie Burton: Yes.

Robert Plank: I'm fine doing it right now if you want.

Laurie Burton: Go ahead, please!

Robert Plank: Do you want me to do the small, medium, and big, and you want me to introduce myself, like say, "I'm Robert Plank," or something?

Laurie Burton: Yes!

Robert Plank: I start off saying it, when you say there's the small, is that just saying it normally?

Laurie Burton: Why don't you just do the yeses small, medium, and large?

Robert Plank: So I just say, "Yes," and that's it?

Laurie Burton: Let's start with your name though. Say your name and then say, "I'm going to do this 'Yes' exercise." Say your name and then say that. Then do the exercise.

Robert Plank: I say, "I'm Robert Plank," and then I say, "Yes," or what's the exact words?

Laurie Burton: Yeah, just say, "Yes. Yes! YE-" then the big one.

Robert Plank: Okay, so here's the small one. I'm Robert Plank. Yes. And then the medium. I'm Robert Plank. Yes! And the big one. I'm Robert Plank. YES! Is that kind of the idea?

Laurie Burton: Good. Good. How'd that feel? How did it feel?

Robert Plank: It felt like it let out some stress I think.

Laurie Burton: Yeah, it does that too but how did it feel in your body when you were doing it? Were you feeling embarrassed? Were you feeling really good about what you were doing?

Robert Plank: I felt maybe a little embarrassed, a little cheesy, and I had my hands in my fists and I was kind of pumping both fists. I didn't even realize it until I was doing it.

Laurie Burton: Yes! See, there's the secret. It's that there needs to be a connection in the words you speak and the gesture connected to it.

Robert Plank: You can't be some person slumped over in the chair talking super energetically. Something's not going to line up, I guess.

Laurie Burton: Right. It's what I call a split. Have you ever seen anybody talking in front of a group and their hands are in a fig leaf position. We all know what that is, I think, right?

Robert Plank: Yeah.

Laurie Burton: Protecting the important parts. That's the way people stand to just hold on, but it's not effective. They may be saying, "Hi everybody," but their hands are in front of their- in the fig leaf. "Hi everybody. It's nice to be here today." They're speaking pretty well, but their hands are in a fig leaf. That's a split between their neck and the rest of their body.

Robert Plank: I'm glad that you brought that up, the whole body language thing, because that was the kind of thing where I didn't think about it that much, even though- what do all the communications teachers say? Non-verbal communication is 90%, or something? I saw a picture of me a few years ago where I was on stage, and I was sitting at a panel. Everyone else sitting at the panel was almost like uptight, rigid, and nervous. I was leaned back, which I kind of liked. If you looked at the panel, I was the one relaxed person. What I didn't like, which I hadn't noticed until seeing a picture of myself, was I had both hands in my pockets. I looked it up later, and I guess subconsciously that means you're holding things back and not revealing enough, I guess.

Laurie Burton: It's like when we were kids, when we had a blankie that we held onto that made us feel good. Hands in our pockets are a way to hold on. Crossing your arms, the fig leaf with your hands, or behind, or any way that you hold on rather than just- Having your arms at your side is what I call neutral position. You work from there, but it feels terrible to people if they're so used, with the hands in their pocket. I have to train people to get used to that neutral position, and then you can move anywhere and gesture freely.

Robert Plank: It seems like we're starting to form kind of a cool, almost like a step-by-step process, right? It seems like at first people, maybe they're doing things that, or they're putting off things that are not good. It seems like the first step is to do your mirror exercise, your "Yes" exercise. Look at yourself in the mirror, see how you put yourself out there, see how you look and you feel. Then do that, you say your name and say, "Yes!" Small, medium, large. From there, you figure out the neutral position, right? You figure out where, if normally you have your hands or your arms in a weird kind of way, you just reset and get back to just the regular arms at your side thing.

Laurie Burton: Neutral, and then go from there. Yeah.

Robert Plank: Then, depending on what you want to express when you talk, now you figure out those new mannerisms, I guess.

Laurie Burton: The mannerisms, excuse me, are a result of the words you speak. You can't just say, "I'll gesture like this there," because it won't be connected to the words. If you say, I love-" both hands are in front of me right now. My fingers are out and I'm gesturing outward. I love- If you've ever seen great singers or performers, when they gesture, the words come through their fingers as they gesture out. That's the secret. There's a whole, it all connects.

Have you ever seen people that just gesture so much with their hands? They're constantly going, and they're not connected to anything. It's distracting. Lots of people do that.

Robert Plank: Oh yeah! All I remember, even 5 minutes later, is just the gesturing, none of what they actually said.

Laurie Burton: Right. Pacing is the leg version of the arms. They'll pace back and forth. Too much pacing. I want people to move, but I don't want them to pace. It's got to evolve. It comes from- the meaning comes out your mouth, through your eyes, and then your arms, your hands, and everything.

Robert Plank: I like that. It's one of those things where at first listen, it seems kind of hokey, but when I think back to when I was a kid and we would play baseball, and learn to hit a baseball. They'd always say, "Swing the bat, but don't just hit the ball and stop."

Laurie Burton: No.

Robert Plank: "Pull it all the way through and swing it through the ball." I never took Karate, but in Karate, you always hear, "Punch something, and punch through it," so kind of along those lines.

Laurie Burton: Perfect.

Robert Plank: You're talking about, yeah talk but then also move and not over-dramatically gesticulate randomly because you're nervous. Even though, when were talking or whatever, you and I are talking but we're also kind of moving around and gesturing, and that gets picked up back in the audio even though no one actually sees it.

Laurie Burton: Yes, it's a completion of the meaning, the things you're saying. It's an extension. Your arm is extended, and it keeps flowing into the audience, and then just goes, keeps going. It's like the sound of a bell. You can think of it that way. The bell rings, but it keeps going, and then it disappears.

Robert Plank: I like that. There's after effects.

Laurie Burton: Yes. Yes. People never think of their personalities, after effects, and the way they speak, but it really is. People who are really good, they leave you with an impression, and that's the after the bell rings.

Robert Plank: That's cool. That's kind of trippy.

Laurie Burton: Yeah, it is.

Robert Plank: Let's talk about you for a few minutes. We're talking about all these cool things about how to speak better, how to overcome all the little trip-ups everyone goes across. What is it exactly that you do? Do you help anyone? Do you help speakers?

Laurie Burton: Anyone. Anyone. People say, "Let's figure out who this applies to." A lot of it has been corporate work, but there's also been individual days, or 2 days, with an individual working on the way they present themselves. A CEO of a company perhaps, or somebody who's going to be making a speech and wants to work on how they look up there. "Tell me how I'm doing," kind of thing. We go through a whole day of breaking down everything from head-to-toe. A lot of people are hung up on parts of their body that they're not happy with, so they walk out on that stage. Let's just say for instance, a woman who's overweight. She's worried about how they're going to see her heaviness, so that colors her speech. She doesn't have the ultimate freedom to express herself because she's worried about her weight.

I cover all the way down, from head to toe, asking people to look in the mirror and tell me what they love about their face, what they don't like. If they say, "I don't like it," I'll say, "Well, are you willing to get a nose job?" They'll say, "No," then the question is, "Then let's make friends with it. Can you make friends with it? We've got to make friends with our heaviness, our weight, or our noses, or whatever it is, in order to make that great presentation.

Robert Plank: Would you say that when you're helping these people out, is there a certain percentage of, if you broke down all the little things that there were to be fixed in the average person's speech and delivery, would you say that most of the things that need to be fixed, are they real things or is the majority just things they need to just get over and forget about, basically?

Laurie Burton: A combination of both.

Robert Plank: Would you say, is it equal or is one more than the other?

Laurie Burton: I think a lot of it is skill and the ability to really express yourself in a positive way, and one that impacts people, inspires people. That's the most important thing, for me.

Robert Plank: Okay. You'll just, on a case-by-case basis, look at what jumps out at you, look at the low-hanging fruit and just correct all the things that need correcting.

Laurie Burton: Go in and work on them, and then ultimately, I've got to check on their body and how they feel about it, gotta check there. Got to, yeah.

Robert Plank: Cool. I always think about my own way of talking and the way that I normally talk, or even the way I talked as a kid. I would always just talk like, "blablablah," like a mile a minute, so fast that I would slur my words, repeat things like "like" because I'm in California.

Laurie Burton: Oh, you are in California.

Robert Plank: Yeah.

Laurie Burton: I messed that up.

Robert Plank: It's sunny and hot over here.

Laurie Burton: Oh yes. I'm in California too.

Robert Plank: Oh cool. We're neighbors then, basically.

Laurie Burton: Yes. Where are you?

Robert Plank: I'm over by Stockton Modesto.

Laurie Burton: Oh okay.

Robert Plank: Are you southern-

Laurie Burton: I'm in LA. Yeah.

Robert Plank: Everyone's always in LA. We're close enough.

I would always talk so dang fast, and trip over my words, say half a sentence, then go over and rock it in another sentence. Every time I talk, I have to remember. I keep thinking to myself, "Twenty percent slower than I normally would." That way, because I know my weakness is to go too fast. I just say, "Okay, even though, coming out of my own mouth, it feels to me like I'm talking too slowly, but then when I hear that later on, it sounds about just right." It seems like from everything you've been saying, look at yourself in the mirror, how you look at how someone else speaks. It's almost like the way that you think things are going out, or the way that you think you're presenting to the world is totally different than what everyone else sees.

Laurie Burton: Oh my, good. Yes. Absolutely. Good point. That speaking very quickly is a way to get off the spot. If I had people who come out, they take center stage, and as they're walking onto the stage or they're making a presentation, they'll say, "Hi I'm Laurie Burton I'm really glad to be here it's great to be here what fun we're going to have." They walk off, that very important moment of introduction. What usually causes fits is I have them walk across the stage looking at the audience and not saying a thing.

Robert Plank: Nice.

Laurie Burton: By that time, the audience is going, "What's going on with that person? They're not- what?" They take center stage and then they say, "Hello. I'm Laurie Burton. It's great to be here." You already got that audience going, "Hmmm." You've got to have the energy, though, too.

Robert Plank: It sounds like there's the energy part of it, but then there's the ownership part of it. It's almost like people seem to think, or maybe it seems like if you have a lot of energy, that means that you're super fast and rushed, but you can have a lot of energy and still have a slow enough pace, I guess.

Laurie Burton: Absolutely. Absolutely. The pace has to do more with just who you are and how you go about it, but it's also a support mechanism for your speech and for getting people interested and holding their interest. You're going to lose your audience half of the time anyway because people's minds just do that. They wander off. Then they come back. It's a part of the business.

Robert Plank: Right, but it's up to you to-

Laurie Burton: Pull them back.

Robert Plank: Yeah, pull them back and be entertaining enough where you know you're going to lose them half the time and they come back, but if you're super boring you'll lose them the whole time.

Laurie Burton: Oh yes! We've all seen those, haven't we?

Robert Plank: Right.

Laurie Burton: Yep. The current program we're working on is called Personality Workout. How many people do you know that might need a personality workout, Robert?

Robert Plank: Most of them.

Laurie Burton: See? I love those answers. I know. I agree, a lot of people could use a personality workout. It involves digging in there and finding those positive parts of your personality and bringing them to the surface.

Robert Plank: Sounds scary and painful.

Laurie Burton: You're not going to get through it without going through some, dumping some bad habits and realizing, it takes some depth. It really does.

Robert Plank: I noticed that with me. I keep mentioning, I'm not the best speaker. It doesn't come naturally, but if I get to the point where I feel almost over-confident about my skills and things or I go too long without going back to the fundamentals, then I end up backsliding a little bit, back to the person I don't want to be. It's almost like, not only is there the breaking down and building up, but I noticed, at least with me, I have to keep on keeping the muscles strong, right?

Laurie Burton: Yes, absolutely. You're constantly checking in. You have to check in with yourself and with the audience. It could be just one-on-one, but the person you're speaking with is your audience. You're talking to your boss, you're talking to somebody you're dating, or whatever it is, it's your job to express yourself honestly, with animation, energy, truthfulness, love, and all those good things come through you. All those positive, wonderful qualities.

Robert Plank: A lot of stuff to think about, and normally we'd think, "Oh, it's just talking. It's the most natural thing," but there's all these things that we're giving off, or not giving off, that we just have to look at ourselves a little bit and we can fix them.

As we're winding down today's call, Laurie, could you share with us, what's the number one mistake you see people making, as far as their speaking, their stage-presence, their body language? What's the mistake you see over and over again?

Laurie Burton: They want to get off the spot. They don't want to be recognized. They don't want that. Attention causes tension.

Robert Plank: I like that.

Laurie Burton: I do too. Lots of people don't love being on the spot.

Robert Plank: What's the solution?

Laurie Burton: Owning it. Taking, saying, "Okay. This is how it feels. I'm going to acknowledge the tension." There's lots of things. That's a whole other program there. It's acknowledging the tension, coming to terms with it, and then looking in that mirror. You've got to own that and know that you deserve these things that you're doing for yourself, and confidently take them in and try them on, and see how they fit.

Robert Plank: I like that analogy. That's cool. Try different things on. I also like that exercise that you- I keep thinking back to that. Actually, like you said earlier about how you told someone to walk on stage and just say nothing, just look around, and not quite size them up but just that dreaded dead silence, just let it out.

Laurie Burton: People, they can't stand it. You know why? Because they don't deserve it. They feel like, "I'm taking up their time." But I, me, Laurie Burton, I deserve that, and I take that.

Robert Plank: I love it. That's awesome.

Laurie Burton: Yeah.

Robert Plank: Laurie, you shared a lot of really great stuff today. I like everything you have to say, not only good advice but lots of little cool exercises that anyone can try out on their own, at home or anything like that. If they're at the point where they say, "Okay, I like what Laurie had to say. I want to hire her as a coach. I want to check out her blog and her books." Where can they go and find out more about you?

Laurie Burton: They can go to LaurieBurtonTraining.com. I also have my book there. It's on Amazon as well. It's called Presenting You.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Presenting You, LaurieBurtonTraining.com. Hopefully, it will become a number one best seller, selling 10 billion copies.

Laurie Burton: Yes. From your lips to God's ears.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Cool. I appreciate you Laurie. I appreciate this subject that might be painful for a lot of people, or might seem too simplistic, but it seems like everyone needs to be a better speaker, and everyone needs to know how to correct these things that might just kind of creep up, or might just be these nervous tics. If they do, they can deliver their message better, get a lot of attention better, have a better life in every area.

Laurie Burton: Yes. Absolutely. I appreciate your taking part today too and trying out some exercises. Very nice.

Robert Plank: Yeah, why just learn when it's more fun to participate, right?

Laurie Burton: Yes, yes! Thank you.

Robert Plank: Thank you Laurie for being on the show. Have a great one.

Laurie Burton: Okay. Thank you. You too. Bye bye.

Robert Plank: Ajay Prasad is formerly a marketer for a few Fortune 10 companies and he now owns GMR Web Team, GMR Transcription, and his brand new business, RepuGen. Ajay has focused his career on helping SMB's maximize revenue and reach through the internet. Ajay, I'm Robert. Nice to meet you.

Ajay Prasad: Very nice to meet you, Robert. I'm happy to be here.

Robert Plank: Awesome. I'm happy, too. What I want to know is, what is it that you do and how are you different from everyone else out there?

Ajay Prasad: What we do is essentially we help small- and medium-size businesses maximize their sales from the internet. A lot of the business is now coming from the internet, so that's what we do. We are different from your typical digital marketing agency is, number one, we are a full service agency. We have all the pieces in one place. We are not a one-trick pony. We are very strategy-focused. We judge yourself based on what kind of return we are bringing for our clients.

For our client, it doesn't take them to ... We don't do all these mumbo jumbo about ranking and where you are. We just look at it, say, "What kind of money you are making from the internet or how many views you are getting?" Then, we see if we can improve it. We come up with a plan, we tell them what the budget will be, and if they are struck with us, that means they are happy, they are getting a positive return on investment. We don't lose too many clients, which tells me we must be doing something right.

Robert Plank: That tells you you are providing good service, right?

Ajay Prasad: Yes.

Robert Plank: That's cool, and I like that because I don't work with a ton of small businesses. I work with a few, and what I always hear a lot is that, for example, I see that you guys work with dentists and urgent care doctors and things like that. What I hear from some of these doctors, the dentists especially and the chiropractors especially, is that they get these robocalls all day long from these kind of, like you said, the other one-trick pony kind of agencies. All they do is say, "Do you want to have a better Yelp review?" I'm thinking, okay, a Yelp review is nice but what about the rest of it? What about a website, social media, stuff like that?

Ajay Prasad: Yes. That is where we always tell them that one thing is not going to do anything for you. These days, now, to get business from the internet, of course you have to be found. You need to be found. Then, you need to have a really stellar reputation online, where the Yelp review comes in definitely, and the other things, and once you have these, then of course you have to be able to convert. That's what it takes for someone to contact you. After that, your service comes in. Really, most of the small businesses ... I always say that if the majority of business is coming from new customers, then you need to look inside and see what you are doing wrong, because the majority of customers should be getting really from referrals, especially for small businesses.

As you do a good job ... Everything needs to be a peace offering. You cannot just say, "I'll get you this. I'll get you that." Unless you look at all the pieces of business together, it will not work. Because my experience is with larger companies, where we always knew that the operations is as important as marketing, and finance is as important as operations and marketing. We become more of a consultant to our client, not just bring them customers.

In face, today I'm meeting with one of my clients where it looks like we are not getting the positive return on our investment in four months. That's the discussion we are going to have, is go over the numbers, really look at the metrics to see if it is making sense. One of the things that are not making sense for me is the value of sales.

Until we understand, until the company understands, what's the value of sales, how do you know if your marketing is effective or not? We get to that level. You cannot just take one piece and do it. You cannot say, don't do paid advertising. Everything has a place, and the reason people say, "You don't do it," is because they don't know generally speaking.

What we do is we say, "Given your business, what should be the right strategy for marketing?" We tell them. Of course, there are businesses where we say, "You know what? Social media is not very critical for you." Which is very rare nowadays, obviously. There are businesses we say, "Don't even worry about SEO, because it's so comparative, all the element keywords. It will take forever, so let's figure out how to do better advertising and get a positive return on investment for you."

Again, marketing has to be customized. Every business is very unique. That's what we always say. Our campaign needs to be consistent with the business.

Robert Plank: I like that. It seems like from what you just said is there's a couple of levels to it. You could say the worst, most basic level, would be, like you said, the one-trick ponies. All they want to do is just show, "Well, look, you can rank high for this keyword." The next step up is some kind of an agency that they do everything. It seems like the next level about that is that they do everything, but they look at what's already there, and they look at what's worth doing, and they look at the competition, and they say, "Even though we could do these ten or twenty things, maybe we'll just do five."

It sounds like the next level even above that, it sounds like where you're at, is you do all that, but also once the ball is rolling, then you'll course correct. You don't set up the website and then say, "Have fun," and walk away. You actually, like you said, "The leads aren't coming in," or, "There's not enough repeat customers," so now you go and fix things over time.

Ajay Prasad: Correct, correct. I've always said that web is no different from brick and mortar. It's not like you set up a store, and you put a sign in it and everything, and you are done. You have to keep on improving. You have to tweak the product that you are selling. You need to be trying different kinds of marketing campaigns to maximize it. This is no different. For example, we are a Google Premier Partner. All it means is, we have jumped through many hoops and Google recognizes us as experts in Google AdWords.

For all of our clients ... We manage over a million dollars right now for our clients' budget, and we are checking it three or four times a day to see, what's the trend, what's working. These are not the kind of thing that you set it up and you are done. You have to keep on looking. You have to keep on improving. That's all marketing.

When I was in corporate America, for big companies, it's not like we had a campaign, say TV advertising, and it was successful, so we said, okay, it's done. No, we just had to keep on doing the same advertising, right?

Robert Plank: Right. If it worked, why not repeat it or even try to make it better, right?

Ajay Prasad: Exactly. At some point, any advertising, you'll see that there is a life cycle. After some point, it starts to become less and less effective. Then you have to go and change it. Even the large corporations, like Coca-Cola and all, you will see that their team keeps on changing, right? That's what marketing is all about. If you see the business is declining, you have to make some changes to keep that momentum going.

Robert Plank: Yeah. Imagine if every year for the Superbowl you'd see the exact same commercials. That's no fun.

Ajay Prasad: That's exactly my point.

Robert Plank: Cool. Could you give me a good example of some business that you came across where they maybe had a lot of missed opportunities and then you went in and you worked your magic, and you made their business super awesome?

Ajay Prasad: Yes. Since you talked about Urgent Care ... By the way, we have many, many clients. A few very large companies are our client. When I am saying large, I am saying a couple of hundred million dollars. The largest one would probably be a couple of billion dollars. We have a lot of these small businesses that are struggling. Urgent care is a very good example. This urgent care center came to us for marketing. This was about a year and a half back.

Basically, they were very honest, and they said, "Listen. Our sales have been dropping, and now we earning a loss, and if in six months we can not turn it around, we have to close it." Their lease was running out so they said, "We are not going to renew the lease if we can't become profitable." We did analysis, and we could see that there were a lot of searches, that people are searching. That is true. Urgent care is one thing that you can even afford not to do digital marketing.

That's the first thing people do is go on the internet when they have a cut or an injury. They're looking for urgent care. We saw that there were a lot of searches for them. Of course, their website was outdated. They were not getting found there. Other thing that popped up was that their Yelp rating was 1.2. There were seven reviews. Just seven. The last one was one year old, but if you just went on their Yelp and you saw 1.2 rating.

My first question was, "Is this the correct number? If this is correct, I don't think I can do anything. I can get people to come to your website with my activity, but after that they will not come to you because who wants to go to a place where everyone is saying it's horrible?"

Robert Plank: Right.

Ajay Prasad: Of course, the owner got really upset with me. She was like, "What do you mean? We have been there for twenty-five years. We have all these loyal customers." I said, "Yeah. Someone who does not know you, how would they know?" What we did is, of course we redid the website. That was a simple thing. Because this is local marketing, it becomes really easy.

We started with some ... We did both a CO and some paid advertising, so quickly start getting people on their website. Then we instituted a program, ongoing program to improve their reputation. What happens, people do not medically write reviews just because they had a great experience. The people who had bad experience are more likely to write a review because they are pissed off.

We created a manual process, which later on I automated, which became RepuGen. We created a process for them where we printed a card and the front desk was to ask everyone when they are leaving, "How was your experience?" If they said, "Very good," or in their judgement, they were happy, then give them a card. Request them to write a review. Literally, fast forward three months, their review was 3.0.

They were already in black, the whole operation. Now one year down the road, their number of patient count has doubled. Half of the patient is now coming from internet, which was not even there before. They have a hundred plus reviews. Their average is over 4.0, because our process is such that if you are unhappy, then we just ask you, "What happened?" Then we say, "We will contact you," and someone contacts that if you are unhappy. If you are happy, then we ask you to write a review. As simple as that.

Now, one year later, they are super profitable. Obviously, they went and they renewed their lease for another ten years and it's a huge success story. This was a chain, so they had two other urgent care centers. They had similar problem. Not as bad as this one, so of course now we are doing all three of them and it's a very profitable operation. This gives you a very good example how literally in three months, a business which was contemplating closing turned around and became a very successful operation. Right now, that is probably one of the most profitable urgent care center in the city.

Robert Plank: Awesome. That's cool that in just a few months, it seems like before, they were probably working really hard and missing out on a lot of things, and now, just because you were able to plug in just a handful of strategies, now it turned the whole thing around.

Ajay Prasad: The interesting thing is, for example, putting this reputation development process, they also started to get feedback from the customer who were not happy, right? If the customer is not happy, they tell you what happened. When we automated the system, the RepuGen, that's what it does. Now that when people are not happy, you find out, so you also improve your operation. They learn a lot of thing from our system that they also made changed in their operation that made them even stronger.

Robert Plank: I like that. It's not just a matter of following up with the happy customers to balance out the bad reviews with some good ones, but it's also if you keep getting all the reviews saying that, like, "The place isn't clean enough," or "The secretary's mean," or something, or "They don't follow up enough," they can correct that.

Ajay Prasad: In fact, the funny thing is that there was that problem. They had to fire one of the front desk person because she was mean. In fact, everyone complained about, so they just simply went and changed that. That made a big difference in their happiness.

Robert Plank: That's cool, because that's one of those things that, just a few years ago, before all of this stuff, they might not have even known. It might've been for the past twenty years this was their problem. Right?

Ajay Prasad: Correct, correct, correct. The people were thrilled with their doctors. The front desk was the problem

Robert Plank: Such an easy thing to fix, right?

Ajay Prasad: Yeah. Exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool. I really like stuff like that. For example, I really like that, like when there's a house for sale near me, they almost all have a website, now, on the actual sign. It's usually 123MainStreet.com. It's what's printed right on the sign. Super easy to get to. It seems like the dentists seem to be the most savvy, I guess, with this kind of thing.

I really like ... When I was a kid what was cool about the dentist was they would have you write yourself a postcard for six months from now. You totally forget that you sent that, but six months later, a thing comes in the postcard, and you recognize your own handwriting, and I'm sure that was just part of the process to get customers back.

I like that now that there's all this technology, the dentist I go to now, what I do is I have my appointment. Again, from six months ago, I forget that there's an appointment coming up and then I think that a system sends me a text message, and that emails me, and even the email itself says either I can click a link to reschedule, I can click a link to say I agree with the appointment time, do not contact me again, or I can say I agree but also email me again the day before. I love that. I wish more businesses would do that.

Ajay Prasad: Yeah. Exactly right. Either, for attention you want to do that, and then of course, for every dentist, you have to have a stellar review online. Otherwise, again, if I see 1.2 rating not just on Yelp, but on other review sites, or you have Vitals, and all those medical-related site, and if I go there, and someone is saying, "And I went there and I came out with a bloody mouth," guess what? You are not going. It is so important to have a stellar review now to get new customers. Your typical process now is when people find you, they go and find about you before they contact you.

Robert Plank: Oh, yeah, and that's so true about any kind of dentist or doctor kind of thing. The reviews are so huge because if there's a Wal-Mart, or a Target, or a Taco Bell nearby that has two stars, fine, I'll still go there, but if there's a doctor who's three stars, I don't trust that.

Ajay Prasad: Every local business. That's what I said. The chains is a different story, just like you said. Every local business needs to have a very stellar online reputation. There's no way around it. For medical professionals, it's even critical. I know some hospitals which has horrible ratings, so I don't even know how people go there.

Robert Plank: They have no choice. It's what's nearby, I guess, right?

Ajay Prasad: Yeah.

Robert Plank: I really like what that kind of leads us to, because always the fear, right? Everyone's fear is that if they have a mom and pop business or something with only ten employees, and then the big retail chain comes to town ... Maybe they own a deli or an Italian restaurant, and then Olive Garden come to town, or a Subway comes to town, everyone's always worried that the big franchise is going to push me out. It sounds like, with this online stuff, with the social media, with the reviews, the big chains don't really do that. This is how everyone can get ahead.

Ajay Prasad: Exactly. You are a hundred percent there. That's why I always say that regional marketing is so critical for small businesses. You can really have your customer loyalty and keep on making improvement, and not losing your existing customer, and then keep on adding new customers. It is totally irrelevant if you have competition.

I always tell my clients that, "Listen. The competition, worry about it but first thing you have to worry about is internity. If you are doing everything right, you can go against any company. I don't care how big they are." Again, it's the local and even individuals ... I work for a restaurant chain. One of my jobs was, I was VP of strategy for a big restaurant chain. It's a billion dollar corporation. I know that the customers have an affinity for local ... If they had their own preference, they would go to that local mom and pop restaurant instead of this chain. That's the first inclination. You can build your customer relationship.

When you go to a new place, then obviously review is how they will go. If I don't have a way to check review of a restaurant, then I will end up going to a chain because I know what to expect.

Robert Plank: Right. The chain is the default decision. If you can't decide, you just go to the chain.

I don't want to keep you too long and as we're winding this down, could you tell us as far as all the business that you helped and worked on, what's the number one mistake you see them all making?

Ajay Prasad: I think that the number one mistake that they all make is that they are way too focused on outside instead of looking inside. Every business needs to understand why they are in business, why they are different from their competition. Small businesses, generally speaking, don't do that, which is the biggest mistake. I have always said that if you are a small business, you need to know why.

If someone has been in business for twenty-five years, like this urgent care, it's easy, right? You can talk about how we have been serving the locality for twenty-five years. If you are an accountant, whatever you are, why? One of the things that will happen is, if you look internally, then you will start to focus on who your ideal customer is. Small business have a tendency to take any customer. I made that mistake, frankly, when I started my own business, is to go and, "I'll take any customer," then later on I was spending way too much time on the wrong customers.

Every small business has to figure out who their ideal customer is. Once you have that figured out, who your ideal customer is, then you start to focus on getting those customers, because that is the only way you will grow, you will keep customers. You need me to know who that is and very few businesses I run into have that.

The two biggest mistake that they tend to focus too much on, "Oh, so-and-so is doing this. So-and-so is doing that. Oh, they have this happen." I always say that what you do has going to be the biggest impact on your business rather than what happens outside.

Robert Plank: The other thing about that is it seems like that anyone who's in the business, if someone owns a restaurant or owns an urgent care, a lot of times it seems like they're too close to it and they need someone like you to look at their business from the outside, from a regular person's perspective, to figure out their weaknesses and figure out their strengths that they should be doing more of.

Ajay Prasad: Yeah. It's even just asking questions. I can tell you that many business owners, when I start asking them questions, it just makes them think, and like, "Wow, okay." That's the thing. The small businesses really are so busy surviving that they are always working on the business. They are in the business, not on the business. You need to take some time off so that you can work on the business so that you can see what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong, and make adjustments.

It is very hard, but getting an outside company like us, it's very automatic for us, right? We start asking, "Okay, how do you differentiate yourself? What is the problem?" Just like we did with urgent care. It never occurred to them that no one will, even if someone referred ... I told them that, "Listen. When people even refer and they say go to that urgent care, they are going to check you up on the internet. They see your review and they are not going to come.

It never even occurred to them that not having a plan to get ongoing reviews is hurting their business. That's the only thing. You have to be looking at what is working, what's not working. Like I said, if you had this internal focus, number one, to see where you can make improvement ... I always say, you will seldom make home-runs. All you have to do is hit regular singles and doubles and you will see that you are winning. Then, of course, every business should know who is their ideal customer. That will really help them focus their marketing.

Robert Plank: Two really good pieces of advice. Focus inside and then differentiate and get your ideal customer. I really like everything you had to say, and I want to send people your way. Can you let everyone know, Ajay, where can people find out more about you, and what it is you do, and maybe even hire you?

Ajay Prasad: Sure. There are two websites that they should check. My digital agency marketing website is GMRWebTeam.com. It's just like it sounds. GMR is Gloria Mary Rachel, and it's web as in website, and team is in football team that you have, dot com. That will give you an idea of our approach even to digital marketing. The other one that we have created, like a software service for generating ongoing reviews, which also helps you see what your customer, if there are any flaws, is called RepuGen.

This is a software that essentially automates the whole manual process that I had created for our businesses to generate more reviews and get the feedback. The reason I created software, frankly, was the execution level was so spotty. Some of my clients did an excellent job of manually doing it, some of them not so excellent, not very good. This software just takes the fright out of asking people how happy you are or getting any feedback. The system does everything, and now you can just contact customers who are unhappy to address their issue. These two sites, I will say that they should go and check me out.

Robert Plank: Awesome. The GMR Web Team looks like a great website, a great service, and the RepuGen looks like a great software as a service. I'm really glad that you came on the show, Ajay, and I'm really happy that you shared the things you did. I was really impressed. Learned a lot so thanks for coming on.

Robert Plank: Our guest today is Donald P. Mazella. Donald P. Mazella is a political and lifestyle expert who's been seen on MSNBC, Bloomberg, and in the Wall Street Journal. He is the COO of Information Strategies Inc, a company that helps business managers improve profits. He currently oversees a prints and internet publication network centered around Small Business Digest, with more than 3.2 million opt-in small business readers and healthcare industry stakeholders.

Cool. Donald, I'm Robert. Nice to meet you.

Donald Mazzella: Good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Robert Plank: No problem. Tell me about yourself. Tell me about what you do?

Donald Mazzella: Basically, right now we've just put together a book, 97 Experts on How to Grow a Small Business, which will appear in September. We're expanding. Small Business Digest has been around since 2000. It's had it's ups and downs. Right now it's in expansion mode. We've been helping small business managers, as you say, add profits. Ultimately, how you do that covers 3 main areas: You grow your business, you grow your profit line, or you sell your business. It ironic, in today's world a majority of small business owners above the age of 50 wil tell you all they want to do is get out. Exit strategies are now becoming very important.

Robert Plank: That's what you do, compared to everyone else? You're all about the exit strategy?

Donald Mazzella: We tell our audience in our stories. I should also say, most of our stories come from other entrepreneurs, or from stakeholders in the area. We've had Marcus Lemonis on the program, JD Powers, John Scully. We generally look for the people who've been successful and ask them how they've been successful, how they exited. We try to get them to provide 1 or 2 nuggets of information that our audience can use, whether it's on our radio program, whether it's in our newsletters, or in our e-zine, or now in the book. We just try to get them to talk to our audience because who knows better how to do things than people who have done it. Interestingly enough, sometimes we get someone who failed because sometimes you learn more from failure than you do from success.

Robert Plank: Oh, yeah. When things don't go the right way, and they have to readjust and change direction. Could you talk about an example from your book? One of these big failures that jumps out at you?

Donald Mazzella: Can I talk a success strategy because it happens to come to mind because everybody has a business card, but as one of our experts said, "You're business card should be one of your most effective marketing tools." She goes into detail. She actually has a test that's included in the book on what your business card can do, and how to do it. For instance, your name of your company. It should be immediately recognizable, or distinctive. If it can be both, it's great. That's one. Now to give you one about failure. 53% of all the people we've talked to over the years, we've kept a running tally, have told us the biggest single factore in failure is financing, not having enough financing. That's number 1. Ironically, number 2, and which is reason we labeled the book recalculation, is the fact that the industry was changing, they didn't realize it. I thought that was fairly interesting. Then the 3rd reason they said for failure was the fact they picked the wrong people. Those are the 3 major reasons for failure.

It's consistent throughout the book, and through the years we've been on the air. If you asked them, "What's the success?" They'll tell you, Number 1, they picked the right people. Number 2, they happened to have the right service or product at the right time. Number 3, which I found interesting, a lot of them said luck. They happened to do it right.

Robert Plank: Luck in terms of they put out enough things, they had enough projects going, that one thing ended up taking off, right?

Donald Mazzella: Yeah, correct. I always use the story ... Are you familiar that the man who created Xerox was going to Rochester in a snowstorm, and he got a taxi-driver. Since they were making slow progress he told him what he was doing. The taxi-driver said, "Well, my sister and I want to invest." They invested a then unheard of sum of $25,000.00. They became multi-millionaires, if not billionaires, because of that. What is that? Luck? Listening to the right person? I always use that story because I consider it luck when you hear something and act on it, or when you hit a situation and act on it.

Robert Plank: Decisiveness.

Donald Mazzella: Absolutely.

Robert Plank: Cool. I like books like that. I like stuff like the Chicken Soup kind of books, where you can just get different perspectives, or different ideas. I really like stuff, for example, they can grow rich or they've just taken all the sum total of every one of success and failures, and drew some conclusions that are the common threads, from all these people from different eras in time, different ages, different industries, all that good stuff.

Donald Mazzella: I hate to disagree with the host, but I disagree in one way. All of these books, that's one of the reasons why we wrote this book, they distill it down to simple procedures. I believe in small business, or any business, are made up of a series of decisions, no one of which alone can topple you. If you look at Kodak, on the big side, or for that matter, Yahoo. Yahoo had the world, and what happened? It sold the world for $4 billion. I think life and small business is a series of decisions, one leading into the other, one leading in to it. That's why if you read the Chicken Soup for the Soul books on happiness etc ... I happen to have read them all because I was involved in a court case involving Chicken Soup. It's a formula to it. At the end it's like a formula you had for tomato soup. It fills you for a while, but leaves you strangely unsatisfied.

Robert Plank: Okay. What you're saying is that these Chicken Soup kind of books, there's not really much behind it, but what you have in this recalculating book is everyone has their own story and you can draw your own conclusions, but there's some real lessons behind it, then?

Donald Mazzella: I wish I could have said it as succinctly as you did. I'm not denigrating these. These books, I wish I had a Chicken Soup franchise. You and I could retire easily on it. That's what I believe. I believe that small business leaders, or managers, face decisions every day, some large, some small. The worst part about it is they usually don't have anybody to talk to to help them make that decision. That's the difference. You can have an overall philosophy. If you're a gambler, sometimes gamblers all have a system. At some point you have to make a decision that's outside of these peramiters. That, to me, is what separates many successful small businesses. It's one of the questions I ask our people when I assign a story. I ask the reporter, have you asked what they consider the decision that made or break them? If they haven't asked them I have them go back. It's amazing, people say, "You know, I never thougth of it that way. Let me go and look at it." Then they say that, and say, "But, if I hadn't of made that decision I would have had to do that." We're meeting a little bit, but that's how I feel about it.

Robert Plank: You're saying it's like the butterfly effect in a lot of ways then, right? Like, some small decision that you had to make, and it's a good reason that you did make it so long ago, led to this whole path of all these other things.

Donald Mazzella: Absolutely. In the case of Kodak, what decisions they made? They were not going after the digital camera marketplace. I mean, that was a big decision. Kodak holds all of the patents on digital photography, or did, and then sold them off. Company up the street ... Just had an article cross my desk today: Where do you put your second store? Oftentime people think about the first store. They don't think as much about the second store. They say, "Gee, that's a good location, a lot of traffic, etc." Yes, but the demographics of the surrounding neighborhood are not. Those are the kind of decisions that once you're committed to that area, then you have to do a lot of other decisions in order to make it work. Maybe sometimes you can make it work. There are other times when no matter what you do you're ending up with a poor location. Am I making myself clear on that point?

Robert Plank: Yeah. Could you impact that a little bit? Could you tell me about in your book, someone's decision, one where no decision was the right decision, I guess you're saying?

Donald Mazzella: Oh, yeah. That's a really good question. The answer, in our book, we talk about how you make a decision, and not make a decision. I'm going to look at the list of contributors, got a hundred of them, see which one probably ... Oh. The one that comes to mind, they're talking about a lot of companies, over 50% of companies still do not use social media. As one of our contributors points out, "The decision not to do social media has ramifications far beyond." One example, if you're not using social media, if you're not signing up people for your newsletter, if you're not doing the thousand things that are required, the perception of your customer is going to change. The problem all of these big box stores, Talbots, everybody else is having ... Ironically, as you know, Walmart is now thinking of buying Jet.com because it recognized that not having a social presence that is respected, and used by the consumers, is hurting it's brick and mortor business. Walmart is doing what many big companies do. They're going out and buying the expertise. That's the case. As Bob Haymon points out, the one single non-decision that he has seen, that's really hurt, has been the smaller companies not embracing social media.

Robert Plank: With all this decisions, and especially things like that, like some old-school company or some huge company they might hear, "We should do this," or "We should do that." How do you sort that out from all the noise? How do you know if this thing that comes across you, and you think, okay, I need to have social media, how do you know if that's a real thing that you need to be going after? How do you know if that's something that you should just ignore, and focus on something more important?

Donald Mazzella: That's a good question. I wish I had a simplified answer. We divide the book into 5 parts: Leadership, Marketing, Operations, Technology, Human Capital, and Finance. In doing so, we did it because we found that the average small business owner uses a combination of them every day. Depending on the company, and depending on the individual, they go in various orders. There are some people who are technically trained that operations and technology is, they make the decisions based on that 1st, and then 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Someone else, a marketer, does it in a reverse, marketing first and then the others. In order to make any decision you have to make the one column, a right column and left column, and decide after that ... Most people do it mentally, I don't know about you, but I do it. When they finally put it all together, they then look at it, and say, "Ah, this is my decision. This is why I'm going forward." In the end, it's usually based on the bias of the individual, which we talk about in the book.

Robert Plank: You have the book broken down into these 5 sections. Is what you're saying that someone could look at your book, and they could narrow down if they want to focus just on to marketing, or just on finance? They could narrow down which section. They could read one of these stories from one of these experts, and then if they decide that, "Okay, that's my weak spot. My weak spot is I need better marketing," then they could make a list of pros and cons, and decide if that is something that they should do or not.

Donald Mazzella: You said it better than me again. You're good at it. The answer is yes. Within that sales and marketing section there are how-to articles on how to do it. If you decide you want social media, for instance, there's 3 or 4 stories of contributions on social media from some of the top names. Operations, the intersting thing about operations is, as I'm sure you're aware, it's a lot easier to start a company today than it was 5 years ago. Most of the heavy lifting, you don't have to create a financial package, it's available. You don't have to create an inventory management system. You can all tie it into your e-commerce site, so that you have an instant inventory, instant distribution, etc. the world has changed radically. As someone said, I wish I'd said it, is, "All you have to do is come up with the idea and the product. The rest is available via technology." I really think that's the case.

Robert Plank: I think so too. It's a lot more civilized. Like you said, even 5, 10, years ago, if someone were to start a business, even just to have a cash register, a point of sale machine, would have been thousands of dollars. They would have had to get a merchant account, or get some custom coding. Now, there's the little paypal little doohickey. Now there's a stripe little thing that just plugs into any iPad. It seems a lot more civilized, and a lot more streamlined. A really exciting time. I really like your idea for this book just because you hear all these stories, even something that might not directly relate to someone's business. There's like Kodak, or Xerox. I can read some story. It's almost like I'm just reading it for entertainment, but then I might see some similarities, or some differences with like my business or their business. Just because my marketing, studying, student brain is turned off, and I'm just reading some other business story just for fun, I can pick up little nuggets just because, I don't know, I was in a better mode, if that makes sense?

Donald Mazzella: Absolutely. I agree.

Robert Plank: Cool. I don't want to keep you too long. As we're winding down this call, could you share with us what you see out of all these stories, out of all these business' successes and failures and decisions? Out of all this stuff, what would you say is the number 1 mistake you see everyone making these days?

Donald Mazzella: Poor choice in personnel.

Robert Plank: Cool. Poor choice in personnel. They're not sure, at all, where to begin. They're not sure, at all, where the problem is, where to correct that. You're saying that's the common weak spot for everybody?

Donald Mazzella: That, and obviously make sure you have enough financing. If you think you need 50,000, you probably need 100,000. If you need 5,000, you need 10,000. That is the thing. Be prepared to work hard. Many people think that owning a small business is easy. It's a 24 by 7 requirement. It's interesting, as you know, the sons and daughters of small business owners do not want to go into the business because they grew up knowing that their parents, and usually the 2, devoted more time to the business than to them. Though very interesting, there are more businesses available for sale today than at any time in the last 10 years. The main reason, people will tell you, "We have no one to give it to."

Robert Plank: Aw, man, it's sad, but also a big opportunity for the right people who want to pick up those businesses.

Donald Mazzella: Yes, but there's also opportunity. It's interesting, what we complain about immigrants, but immigrants are the ones that seem to want to take the chance more and more. Most Dunkin Donuts are Pakistani owned. A lot of dry cleaning stores are Greek owned here in New Jersey. It's really a funny thing how they ... Foreign born are wanting to take the chance that our own children don't seem to want to take.

Robert Plank: It's interesting how it's evolved that way, but if they're willing to fill that slot, then more power to them.

Donald Mazzella: Absolutely.

Robert Plank: Great. I really like the idea of your book. I really like the things that you have to say. Could you tell us where people can find that book, and maybe even anything else you have to offer?

Donald Mazzella: It will be available September 15th, on Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. Our publisher is BrickTowerPress.com. It will be available there. There's also a e-reader available. All of that will be available September 15th.

Robert Plank: The book is called Recalculating? Is that right?

Donald Mazzella: Recaculating, 97 Experts Driving Small Business Success.

Robert Plank: Awesome. September 15th, Recaculating, Donald Mazzella. I can't wait to read a copy for myself.

Donald Mazzella: I'm glad. I hope I peaked the audiences interest.

Robert Plank: Yep. I like everything you have to say, great insights. I can't wait. Recalculating, and I'll check it out as soon as it's out.

Donald Mazzella: Have a good day.

Robert Plank: Today's guest is Joshua Belanger. He was a once struggling professional wrestler delivering pizzas and is now recognized as one of the leading experts with trading options and alternative investment opportunities to generate passive income. That's a mouthful but I'm super glad to have you on the show Joshua.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. You need to shorten that, but thanks. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to rock the mic for the next 20 minutes.

Robert Plank: Awesome. What is it that you do?

Joshua Belanger: Listening to that, and listening to it a few different times I think the way that I've shortened it down is that I help investors get over the 2 biggest obstacles I've seen over the last 12 years. What are those obstacles or hurdles? Fear and greed, so that's what I look to help them with.

Robert Plank: Isn't that the stereotypes, like the Gordon Gekko you're supposed to be? You're supposed to play to your strengths and stuff like that?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. Right. No one's successful at being fearful or also greedy, so it's about keeping yourself in check. When it comes to the marketplace you can get both of those sides of it pretty good. That's not a real good way to explain it but, fear and greed is really what controls the marketplaces, but you can't provide proper expectations on being fearful and greedy. That's what I look to sum up for people to be able to help them become successful.

Robert Plank: You're saying that can take over if you don't manage it well?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah, that happens for most people. Why do most people lose money? It's because they are either too fearful and also are too greedy, meaning that they don't, if all the greedy side they're not getting out of positions because they think, "Man, if I would've just had Amazon and I bought that IPO in 1995 I would've been up 2000%." No. It doesn't work that way, and the same thing on the fearful side of it when the financial crisis is going on, and the S&P 500 is at 666 and you're like, "Oh well, the world's going to hell in a handbasket." You could think that way but at that point you've got to say, "Maybe I should buy some stuff here."

Robert Plank: That's like the weirdest thing because I haven't done stock trading in a couple years but when I did do it I was surprised at just how a number would take over, and then even I went through a stage where I would do some paper trading and be like, on certain days, say the price is this, and I played around with that, and the same psychological stuff like you're mentioning, like the fear and agreed, it still messed me up even though it wasn't real money, it was just numbers on even a piece of paper, but it's crazy how much, you have no idea how much all that dark stuff comes in until you're playing with your stock trading stuff.

Joshua Belanger: All that dark stuff is all the stuff in your head. You're looking at stuff and you're making your own interpretation but there's millions of dollars traded every day, back and forth, and not back-and-forth meaning one side to another, but there's a buy and sell. The wonderful thing about the marketplace is that there's no other opportunity out there like the financial markets, meaning that you don't like Apple, so you could take the other side of the trade by selling it. You could sell short, say "Hey, Apple's overvalued here." You can't do that in anything. You can't go to a piece of real estate and, "Hey dude. You just sold your house for how much money," and like a new buyer, "I'm going to short that house."

You can't go to Vegas with an edge and say, "Hey I want to take the other side of the trade." They'll take the other side of the trade, but with their edge, but you can't be Vegas. The only opportunity is in the financial markets with that, and that's the most, it's transparent, and it's at your fingertips, and it's a wonderful thing.

Robert Plank: But also kind of scary. I want to know about your story and this whole, because you can't just say, well, you used to be a wrestler and delivering pizzas, and now you're doing this. That's too good to pass up, right? I'm curious, how did you get from there to here?

Joshua Belanger: Oh man, that was a while ago. I started wrestling when I was 14, 15 years old and I stopped when I was just about 19 years old. In that time I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I was working at a pizza place, and I went to school. I went to a junior college for a week and at that time I worked at this pizza place for a while. I had an opportunity to become a manager and the guy that I looked up to, and I worked for, Rod, he taught me a lot about business, and sitting in business 101 class I'm like, I already know this stuff and this is not my route.

Before then he had told me, and just in conversation he's like, "Man, if I wasn't doing this it'd be cool to be a stockbroker." That was my a-ha moment. My a-ha moment is because wow, man, stockbrokers. They probably make a ton of money.

Robert Plank: That sounds like a cool profession.

Joshua Belanger: It sounds like a cool profession so I watched movies like Boiler Room at that time, and I'm like, "Whoa. This is pretty awesome. Let me jump on this horse," and a couple doors down from where I worked at the pizza place there was an Edward Jones office and a guy named Russ. He ordered pizza pretty often. I went in there one day and I said, "Hey. 19 years old. I'd like to become a stockbroker," and he said, "Okay. Do you have a book of business?" "No." "Do you have a series 7?" "No." He knew I didn't have the stuff but he was like, hey, you know, and then he explained to me-

Robert Plank: Then he asked did you watch Boiler Room and that was like you're hired, right?

Joshua Belanger: He told me, he said to me, "These are the things you have to get to." I live in Chicago now but I grew up outside Chicago. I grew up on the Wisconsin Illinois state line so that's about a 45 minute car drive, and an hour and 20 minute train ride, so he said to me, "I used to work on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile exchange." There's a couple different exchanges in Chicago. That's one of them. That's a futures exchange, and that would be your best opportunity. You would be able to get your foot in the door and see where you want to go, and he was right, but he said to me, "I haven't worked there in a while. I don't know anybody, but that's my advice."

I'm like, "Okay, cool." That's all I needed so I went, like I said this was 13, 14 years ago, so I went online, we had the interwebs then. They were still starting out but I went on. I went to CME's website and I even, I didn't know much about it because I didn't realize until I was down there that there's a Chicago Board of Options Exchange, and the Chicago Board of Trade, so I'm only looking at the CME because that's what he told me, but I called every firm in there. I went through the directory 2 times, got an opportunity to interview, didn't get the job the first time. They called me back a few months later and they gave me a job as a runner, which only means I had my foot in the door, but I was making little money.

I joke that the janitor was actually more valuable than me because you're kind of like a grunt. As a runner you're a grunt, and a runner, only my job, in those days that is what's known as the open outcry system. You see all movies, like the Eddie Murphy movie where they're in the pit and their yelling, it looks like they're yelling but they're actually really trading. There's a art to it.

Robert Plank: With the yellow coats and stuff?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. I forget the movie. I think it's trading money or something.

Robert Plank: Trading Places.

Joshua Belanger: Trading Places. Yeah. That movie, that's when things were really buzzing. When I got there it was buzzing but not as much is that, and also that's a movie, but that's a different story. A runner actually would go and have to fight through those crowds to get the tickets from the traders who are in the pit there, and usually some of them, if they're bigger, they had a clerk which was essentially an assistant. I would have to to fight through there, get in, get all these tickets from who I need to get tickets from, and the tickets are these trading cards because that's how they traded, and I recorded it, take those and within 15 minutes, because it all had happened, get them time stamped at the clearing firm. That's why I had to fight it.

They don't just let you in. They don't say, "Hey, Josh. Oh my God. You're the runner? You got to get the Bill over there? Come on through." No. They push you out of the way. They elbow you and they know that your new. They don't make it easy. You get in their way. They yell at you. It was a pretty fun experience. It was pretty fun.

Robert Plank: You had to earn your stuff, sounds like.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. You have to break in. I loved the opportunity. I miss it. It was a unique experience. I would never trade it for anything.

Robert Plank: Cool. That's how you got your foot in the door. Obviously you don't do that now, so what is it that you do now?

Joshua Belanger: That's how I got my foot in the door and then from there I can summarize my whole background. It could take a while but I took different opportunities. I leveraged that and eventually I became a stockbroker, realized that's not what I wanted to do, and I was fortunate enough to have that experience of being on the floor to realize, "Man. I got my series 7 now. I thought I knew everything and here I've become a stockbroker. I'm making 600 calls a day. Man, and all I'm doing is just pitching product. Man, this is like a sales job."

When I would ask about, "Hey, this client asked me, or this person asked me about the market, what I thought about it." My senior broker would say to me, "Your opinion doesn't matter. Just go open accounts," and I'm like, "Wow." I would ask questions like, "Hey. What do you think of Martin?" He was like, "Kid. Just go open accounts. It doesn't matter." I'm like, "Wow. This is not as fun as I thought it was going to be."

I had different opportunities. I have a lot of experience in different aspects of the financial industry, but in 2008 I was working at a trade desk, and I really wanted to do something on my own. I was starting to manage money on the side and I also wanted to start the website because how I got gravitated towards, specifically options is what I teach, or what I primary focus in on, but to be honest with everyone and to help them understand, options are only a product. Stocks are a product. Options are a product. Features are a product. It's just understanding how to use them all at once, or how to use them to be successful.

Having just one product and saying all I want is just to, okay, for instance. All I want to do is eat chicken. Well, okay. What about steak, and what about this? You can enjoy all those things but why do you just have to have chicken?

Robert Plank: It gets old fast.

Joshua Belanger: It gets old fast. It's not the best example. If the first thing I could come up with. Anyways, they're all products and they all work together. In all actuality stocks are easier and that's why most people gravitate towards it. I work in different aspects of the financial industry and there's a lot of restrictions, and there's a lot of things I didn't like. I didn't like a lot of the regulations, the restrictions, and all I was supposed to do was to sell products and gather assets. I thought I could do more for people. I thought I could do more and provide more because that's all I asked. Every time I asked to do something more I was always shut down. No. You can't do that. No. You shouldn't do that. No.

Robert Plank: Right. Don't be creative. You're a machine. Keep making phone calls.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. Don't be a machine. There is a stock called Rick's Cabaret. The ticker symbol, stock symbol's R-I-C-K. It's a strip club. I thought it'd be cool if I could pitch those in open clients. I'm like, "Hey man. This stock is relatively new. It's a strip club. You could own a strip club." That was just a unique story. Compliance department shut that down pretty quickly.

Robert Plank: Oh man, but now that you're on your own, now you're free to do all that, right?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. I don't focus on stocks. Stocks are just a byproduct of the everyday, the typical investor like you and I, which are known as retail, I'm not a professional. I'm not on the professional side anymore. Retail investors, the most opportunity for them is using leveraged instruments like options, like futures, and to really use a lot less of their capital to make a lot more. The traditional approach to investing is to have 80 to 90% in stocks, and the rest of it in cash. Well, that doesn't work. Maybe 30 years ago whatever person said that and that was the outcome, yeah. People still rehash that information because the financial industry is all about taking your money and collecting fees. That's it.

There's zero edge with the access to technology, with the access to information, all those things that may have made others so-called market wizards successful is out the door. They're past. They're gone. The market's so much more efficient, so much more effective. The edge is gone for anybody. The playing field, what I mean by that, is as level as possible, and somebody like Robert, and me, and anybody can actually do better than professionals because we don't have those restrictions. It's just about learning your craft, or actually wanting to do it as well.

Robert Plank: It reminds me of, we keep mentioning all these 80s and 90s movies and stuff, and it reminds me of how when people used to go on an airplane and they would call a travel agent. Now you just use the computer. It sounds like that's a similar thing now, right? You used to call your stockbroker but now it makes more sense to learn a little bit, and then go online and do it yourself instead.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. In those days you didn't have direct access to the marketplace so you had to go through a broker. There was a part of it too, you're like, "Oh, I've got a broker." You call him on your phone on the golf club, and yes, you feel important, and at that time there was different opportunities. Maybe a hedge fund manager did have access to certain information that the street didn't have, but that doesn't exist anymore.

The only way that these hedge fund managers, because they underperform, they underperform. Mutual funds underperform. 90% of them underperform every year. There collecting fees to give alpha but they underperform. The reason why is because the markets so efficient and there's no edge for them. You're in the hole right when they take their fees, and there are so many other types of hidden fees and everything else. It's a money machine.

There's a book called, it's an old book, it's from like the 1930s, but something about the yachts. I can't think of it, but anyways, brokers. Why do these hedge fund managers have the most money? They're not the smartest people. They don't even produce that much alpha, alpha meaning return, but they collect their fees. Fees paid out is a third of our GDP, the financial industry. It's just such a money generating system that's protected by these firms because that's their interest, is keeping your money in a 401(k) plan, keeping your money and an IRA, keeping your money away from you as far as you can so they can collect their little fees.

It might not sound like a lot but over a time frame for you, and also for them with millions of people, it becomes trillions of trillions of dollars every year that they look to do that, and they don't have to do anything.

Robert Plank: Sounds like a little corrupt system in a way. Along those-

Joshua Belanger: Yeah.

Robert Plank: Oh, go ahead.

Joshua Belanger: I don't want to say it's corrupt. It's naiveness. It's people who don't want to take control of their money. There's a little bit, it's tough. It's tough because they're not doing anything. They're doing what they're saying, and then there's some people that actually want to do good. It's just you have restrictions when it comes to the financial markets. You have restrictions with firms who don't want you to do this because the risk department. It's just easier to put people into products. It becomes accountability of you and your money, and you knowing what to do with it. That's a long discussion on its own, but it's not as plain cut of pointing the finger at them. The easiest way to stop it is to take your money back.

Robert Plank: That makes sense. If people want to invest in a strip club or whatever, the equivalent is that in the research they want to buy some options and whatever, they can make their own decision. They can have their own control.

Joshua Belanger: You can have your own control with your money and how you invested into the marketplace. The first step is like, okay Josh. I don't want to stop, the fees that you pay over 10, 20, or 10, 15, 20, 25 years, that 2% fee, that compounds. I could show you a graph to what we have. We're talking about thousands of dollars. On a $50,000 account we're talking about thousands of dollars, many of thousands of dollars, that you lose that could go into your pocket over that time frame. The first step is just taking your money back.

Now you don't have to go into options. You're wanting to get your blue belt in investing. This is like a little dojo. Investing's like a dojo. If you want your white belt and to do it yourself, and what I would refer that as is, if you want to learn just a little bit to be able to defend yourself and protect yourself, you go and you start taking classes. The first thing you could do taking your money back is, you take your money back, and you could put it into, it makes me cringe to say this Robert, it makes me cringe. You could put your money into a vanguard fund like the ET, are not ETF, but that's another way to do it, but of Vanguard, low-cost index fund with the S&P 500, and that would save you many of thousands of dollars a year just doing that, and you're just going to get the market return.

Because again, 90% of investors, or 90% of professionals, do not beat that index. If that's the case, why are you trying to bat, you have the 10% and you are able to get that 10% that are doing it, because you're not going to in and out of different mutual funds. Just let the market give you what it gives you and just ride that out.

Now if you want to take it to the next step and you want to start managing money more actively, then yeah, then you can start learning how to do that with options and things of that sort, and being more engaged, but the first step is just to do that.

Robert Plank: Cool. It sounds like there's, I don't want to keep you too long, but there's a lot of really cool steps people can take to basically get the power back, get the control back, don't let the fear and the greed take you over. Even if they don't know much at all just yet they can put it into a vanguard or an ETF, like an index fund or something, and then eventually work their way up to options. I want to talk a little bit about you have this program called OptionSIZZLE. Can you tell us what that's about?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah, optionSIZZLE's my website. That's what I started in the financials crisis, great time to do that, but that's when I started, and that was a whole medium of being able to teach people how to use options successfully. When I was in the financial industry and I was making my cold calls, I would talk about options, and I would try to use options, and compliance department would say nope, and also clients would say, man, options are to0, fill in the blank. I don't know much about options.

It started to become a recurring thing that, and even my own lack of success with the options in the beginning, because I lost $2000, which was my whole account at the time, on one trade, making mistakes people do normally starting out with options. Even though I had this series 7 license, which is a industry license which said I'm a professional, and I knew, and I could operate in the financial industry, it didn't teach me how to become successful at managing my own money or even using these instruments, so that's where I started to take it to the next level and really focus in on it, and get to where I'm at now of being in a place to use them and also help those that are looking to do the same.

Robert Plank: This optionSIZZLE, is it a blog? Is it a membership site? What is this exactly?

Joshua Belanger: That's the real estate. That's my domain. That's the area and when you go there you'll be enticed with a bunch of little articles, which are little daily emails that I send out. The whole point of that is to captivate you, to get in and start being engaged in. We have different products that I offer. I wrote this book called Fearless Investing With Options, and it really is the book that I wish I had when I first started, when I first started using options, or even studying for my series 7, because so many options books are just very vanilla. They don't even teach you a foundation to be successful. They give you insight but not anything that is actionable to be able to implement.

That's kind of the first process and I have other products in there as well that we offer to help that. It's almost I have a choose your own adventure approach, where somebody comes in and we provide something to them, and if they want to continue up with working with us, and we start on a low investment opportunity where they buy a book or report. If they want to continue on with the process then yeah, you get more information, which is more value, as you continue to go through the journey with us.

Robert Plank: They can try out and the more they get hooked, the more they can get.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. I approach this as if you went to a karate class or a martial art class. You just don't get your black belt in one day. Everyone's ahead of you. You come in on day one, you're going to lose. There's nothing you can do. You may get lucky but you don't know anything, and you have to start at that, and you have to start working your way up. Now if you want to get that black belt, everyone's different. Maybe someone wants to get a green belt. Maybe someone wants to learn this one thing, which I would say that's not how you're going to become successful, but that's not my opportunity to tell them all you need is to learn that.

If you want to learn how to become a black belt I can certainly help you do that. If you want to learn that, then yeah, you have this, but that's where I let the things fall into place of where they, what they want, and how they want to approach it.

Robert Plank: I like that. I like that. From what it sounds like, your thought process behind, first of all your journey from point A to point B, and the way that you've explained the way that you trade and the way that you teach others, it sounds like, usually the 2 extremes of people who go through are either just try to flood you with all of the facts and figures, and then that's not helpful at all, right? It sounds like some of the textbooks that you read, and then the other extreme is someone saying, what you have to do it exactly this way.

I think what's cool about the way you've explained all this is maybe there's 4 or 5 different paths. Maybe there's a couple different places someone wants to end up and you give them the strategy to put different things together, and get to that specific place they want to get to.

Joshua Belanger: Yes. Some people just want trade ideas and it drives me up the wall because it's not just about the trade ideas, it's about the logic, but for so long, I know that you focus in on membership stuff, and I actually deviated from that. I had a membership. I had a recurring, and I deviated from it because I'm like, well, I want to teach people how to become masters, but not everyone wants to become a master.

Robert Plank: Some people just dabble, right?

Joshua Belanger: Some people just dabble, and it really took me to this experience where I was at this store, the grocery store, and they actually have a very nice wine collection, and they have really solid wine people there that really know, will supposedly they know, they could tell a hell of a story.

Robert Plank: They sound convincing.

Joshua Belanger: It's just not like any kind of wine place where you like, "Oh, is this good?" They'll tell you, like I bought this $100 bottle of wine. It was the most expensive bottle I've ever bought. I bought it because he told me about Giuseppe and his last harvest, and he told me the story, and I'm like "Okay. Giuseppe passed away on his last harvest and this is his bottle. Oh my God. I'm done."

Robert Plank: It was like he died as he was putting the cork in the last one.

Joshua Belanger: Almost. I'm like, man, I can just visualize Giuseppe on his rocking chair overlooking the harvest. This is his last harvest. I have the bottle and he's passed away. I'm like, how else would you want to go? I'm doing this for Giuseppe. Done. Let's do this, and then I get home and I had buyers remorse. I'm like, but it was one of the best bottles of wine I've ever had.

Anyways, but the guys there, they can tell you a good story. They can tell you about the regions and everything else. It really took me to this one time I went in, and my girlfriend Nicole, she's not crazy about the stories, but she was like, "Listen. We just got to go in because I have want to get wine. I don't want to hear stories. I just want to get a bottle of wine and let's go."

I went in on my own one-time and I was feeling the same way, so the guy that we knew, he was like, "Hey. How's it going?" I'm like, "Oh, I'm doing good," and I asked him, "Hey. I just need a bottle of wine under 15 bucks." He starts talking about all this, and it really took me to that point because I'm like, man. I just want the bottle of wine. I don't need to know everything about the bottle of wine, and it was my a-ha moment of maybe that's how other people feel. Maybe they just don't want to know everything that I know about options, the in-depth analysis, and the time involved. Maybe they just want to see, hey. Does this guy, if he has a couple good picks maybe I'll just follow him.

Now I look at it as giving them broccoli that's wrapped in bacon almost. I can still teach them how to trade options successfully with giving them picks. This was a little bit of a longer rant, but yeah. That's how people are. I'm still learning. I still, every day I'm learning. I might be further ahead. It doesn't make me better than anybody else. I know I have experience, which is what it is, but every day I'm still trying to get better. Every day I'm still getting after it, learning, all those things.

Just because you get to a black belt in a martial art doesn't mean your learning stops either. You continue to try to keep learning, and that's the same way with investing, and really just business and anything, life. It's just getting better every day.

Robert Plank: Yeah, you take too long of a break, get too comfortable, you backslide.

Joshua Belanger: That's where you start to cut corners.

Robert Plank: Yeah.

Joshua Belanger: That's where you lose your discipline.

Robert Plank: Scarier place to be. As we're winding down this call could you tell us, what's the big number one mistake you see people anywhere making their mistakes with their money, or with trading, or with anything in that category?

Joshua Belanger: Well, I think it's just proper expectations. When it comes to business, and just thinking about business and different things as well, it's just the expectations are not there. What I mean specifically is if you bought, I made the little joke about buying Amazon when it was, well, I don't know if I made the joke earlier. Some people think like, "Oh man. If I just would've bought Amazon's IPO when it came out in May," I think it was 1995, "and would've held it to this day, $5000 would be worth over $1 million."

That's one stock out of how many that's out there? It doesn't work that way, and there's no way that you would be able to hold that investment for that long. That doesn't work. Your fear and greed-

Robert Plank: The money would've burned a hole in your pocket. The 2008 crash would've done whatever, all that stuff, right?

Joshua Belanger: It's not smart as is. It's not smart. You've got to take your wins when you can. People talk about managing risk but they don't talk about the other side of managing risk, which is taking your wins, and taking that risk off the table. What I mean specifically, I had this business that I just sold. I started it 3 years ago, made some passive income. It was Amazon based. It was just a different type of investment. I'm threw some money at it, made some money, and for me I made money on it, I wanted to lock it up.

Could it keep going? Sure, but I rather take my money and find something else to put it in, and keep going. I don't care if I had the opportunity to buy Amazon stock. I would've never held it, and that's not how you can approach things and life, because that's an outlier. That's a rare event. That doesn't happen, and you can't approach it, so it's really about expectations and managing risk, and taking, when you manage risk it's not about the loss side. It's about the win side. It's about taking that win, and yeah, you hear about people who turned down Google's offer and look at them now.

Yeah, look at them, but there's not anyone else behind them. There's only one. You only hear about them because what about the other hundred or thousand people? They were lucky. They took the risk. That's big risk. Good for them, but when you're starting out your cushion for risk is very limited. Now when you get bigger, yeah. You can take on bigger risk and so forth, but it's just being able to quantify that risk and understanding it. With people in the marketplace, they put too much money at risk.

It's what we were talking about earlier with the traditional approach of 80% invested. When the market goes down, which it does, and will, those positions, they sell them at the worst case because they get margin called. With what we can do now, with being able to teach somebody like you or anybody, is that you can use 30% of your capital and still make those same returns, and have 70% in cash.

Why do you have cash? Well, because that's your lifeline. That's the only thing that you have. So what, you're not essentially making money on it, and you could make money, but you can't do that. You have to keep that in a safe place. You have to keep it because even if you're using 30%, when things happen, positions go against you, you have to be able to have that money to be able to buy yourself duration, buy yourself some time.

When things are great, things are great. When things are bad you have to be able to have something in the reserve tank to be able to buffer that, just to be able to buy yourself some duration. The same thing in business. I think it's the same thing in investing as well. A lot of people say trading, I say active. I don't do day trading. There's people who do day trading. That's fine for them. I've never been successful at it. I know very few people who have been successful. My approach isn't about day trading. My approach is about just being more active with your money and more engaged.

You don't have to change your computer every day and Johnny Mr. Market. You can be successful, make above average returns than the market provides, and you don't have to be chained to your computer.

Robert Plank: That's the dream because I know that that was a real problem with me, and I think that it comes full circle. Like at the beginning you said it comes back to fear and greed, and I think that I couldn't help but check that portfolio, check the numbers every couple of minutes, and it just emotionally messed me up. Especially if it dropped a tiny bit, I be like, "Oh my gosh. I got to panic sell," and if it jumped a bunch, I'm like "I got to buy some more," and then if I sold it and it kept going up I just, it was such a roller coaster. It sounds like you have-

Joshua Belanger: It's too many variables. That's why.

Robert Plank: Yeah, and it was just all on checks to.

Joshua Belanger: The way that I try to do that now, and we can do that with options, I read some of the information about yourself and how you like to create systems, that's the way that I now approach teaching people, to take those variables out of it, to manage risk before entry so you're stopping out. You didn't have an idea area of where things could go, proper expectations, so you're panicking, and you're selling at really the wrong time, and then also when it goes against you you're like, "Oh, man. Where do I sell it? Do I sell here or do I sell there?" Well, to create consistency you have to have consistency and a consistent plan, and to be able to execute that.

That's where a lot of people fail in investing because it's all variable, meaning that it's like calling audibles. Maybe I'll do it here. Maybe I'll do it there. Maybe I'll sell high. The market is random so to get consistent results you have to have a consistent approach and be able to execute on that. That's where I have started to really form into the fact of I'm going to help you become a machine, and I'm going to teach you exactly the things to be mechanical, to be systemized, and where you can use options to reduce your risk, create better returns, and have an approach that is going to help you take away that fear and greed.

Really the fear and greed is because you don't know what to do.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense, especially planning your eggs ahead of time just sounds awesome, and also that the marketplace is random, and if you're also random, it's just a big mess. At least if the marketplace itself is random and you are somewhat structured, and ordered, and systematized, at least you can make sense, and you can get what you want out of it sounds like.

Joshua Belanger: Absolutely, and it's also eliminating opinions because no one knows. There's no such thing as a good stock picker. There's no such thing. Your probability of being right is 50% when you pick stocks. With options we can skew that probability of success even greater. There's a trade-off, which everything in life has a trade-off. You don't make as much money, but there's no such thing as unlimited profit potential. It's like a drug. It's like the crack of Wall Street. Going back to the Amazon thing, like oh I would've, no. There's no such thing as that.

If you're so scared that the market's going to go to zero or that this stock is going to go to zero, go bankrupt, then you can't have the other spectrum and think the same thing. Well, it could do that but I'm only going to buy stocks or options because I think that Apple's going to go to 200. There's actually expectations, that we could look at option pricing right now, that gives us an expectation of what the markets priced in. We're talking about billions of dollars that say that's not going to happen, or what the probability of that's going to happen, and we can quantify that. That's how we eliminate that opinion, how we eliminate the fear and the greed because we can provide the expectations, the predetermined outcomes, of okay. I knew that this had a 75% chance of winning, however there was a 25% chance that it wasn't going to win, but because I knew that that 25% chance was there, I already accounted for that loss because I knew that could happen.

It happened here but I know that I got that out of the way, and I'm going to keep going. Continue to be consistent because the odds, the numbers are, it's the same way how Vegas works. It's the same exact way.

Robert Plank: Better than going in 50-50, right? At least you somewhat hedged your bets.

Joshua Belanger: 50-50 bets are fine but you have to be consistent on when you take profits and manage risk as well, because you start to get variable data, and that kind of skew will really hurt you on doing that. A lot of people, they take a big loss and they go, because they didn't size correctly their position and they have a big loss, and they go, "Ah, man. I'm going to take a break." No. You got to keep going. You can't just take a break. You got to keep going because now you dramatically skew the numbers against you.

For some reason when it comes to investing we approach it like, oh my God. We don't know what to do, but everything else in life we take so much data, and we go by it, but in the marketplace it's like no. So-and-so knows more than I do. No, they don't. They don't know more than you because it's random.

Robert Plank: That makes sense to me. I really like everything that you shared with us today. I really like your message. Could you state for us one more time your website and your books, and anything that you want people to check out?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. I don't have a strong call to action to several websites. You can only go to OptionSizzle.com, and that's where you'll be able to find more information about me, and if you're interested in, if you just want to take your money back, and we have a report on how you can do that. Take your money back and you have control over it, or if you want to take the next step, and you want to learn more about how you can make more money after you have that control.

It's a big step. A lot of people are very reluctant because they don't have the confidence in being able to do it themselves. There's still this fact of like, man. What happens if I do worse? That's the problem. People are so scared that they're going to do worse that they go, "Josh, I hear you. I know that I'm going to lose money or I'm getting ripped off, but I'd rather get ripped off this much then lose more by doing it myself."

Well, we could show you how to do that in a very simple process. I know it's a shrug of a shoulder, but that's how people really feel. There's a lot on the line. There's a lot of pressure on them, but we can go from there and you can visit OptionSizzle.com and you could see the book that I wrote, which can be a great introduction to learning how to be successful with options, and even for those who " know options" this is a good reeducation of maybe some techniques in a process that you didn't really know.

Robert Plank: That maybe they skipped over or something.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. Correct.

Robert Plank: Cool, so optionSIZZLE. Everything is there. That's where the magic begins, where dreams happen. Josh, thanks for being on the show. I appreciated all of the witty banter and all the cool tangents you went on. We covered a lot of cool stuff. I'm really glad you're here, so OptionSizzle.com is the place to go.

Robert Plank: Jon Haver has been building online businesses for the past 7 years and just recently left his day job to pursue online entrepreneurship full time. His current focus is turning Amazon Affiliate sites into FBA businesses and has generated a 500% ROI. I don't know about you guys but I'm super excited. How are things today, Jon?

Jon Haver: Things are great, it's a nice sunny day here and just looking out over some water at my [inaudible 00:00:42] office setup and it's fantastic.

Robert Plank: Just living the dream. Cool. I understand that you're going to be telling us today about affiliate sites and about Amazon FBA, so could you get us all caught up and tell us about what exactly is it that you do?

Jon Haver: Sure. I think like probably a lot of people I started out online just kind of as little bit of a hobby. Instead of playing computer games I was building a business, building up websites. Got more serious about it when my son was being born a few years ago and the model I picked at the time was building up authority sites, content-driven authority sites that make money by driving people to Amazon or other sites, but primarily Amazon Associates was my main passive income portfolio sort of income stream. One of the sites that I picked up -- like probably most people on the podcast had been hearing about -- FBA and how great it is. I, again, probably like most people, always had the struggle of chasing after too many shiny objects, so I always swore to myself that I wasn't going to jump into FBA until I had a competitive advantage. Then when I was looking through analyzing some of my sites in my affiliate portfolio, one of the sites I noticed was driving a lot of sales of a product that I was pretty sure was private labeled. I just flipped that model and said, "Instead of sending traffic to Amazon to a non-discreet product, I would send traffic to Amazon to a product that I was importing." I used an Amazon affiliate site to drive the growth of my FBA business that I started.

Robert Plank: I like a lot of what you just said there and a lot of your thought process as far as you look at the portfolio you have, you look at the competitive advantage you have because, I don't know about you but a lot of the people that I chit chat with and my peers and people like that, they'll build up a site -- like you said, like an authority site for example -- and they'll just kind of dabble a little bit and play around. They'll get a little bit of traction but it seems like, especially with stuff like Amazon and Amazon Associates and FBA and Kindle and pretty much any hot, high traffic marketplace, there's always the slap. I think what I see a lot of are people, after trying enough experiments they luck out into something good, but then they get slapped down a little bit and then they just completely give up. I really like what you just shared there how you had this site that was linking to some affiliate products and getting like 5%, 15%, and then you said, "Okay, well the traffic's going from A to B anyway so I might as well just cut out the middle man," so you get more money from the same traffic. Is that right?

Jon Haver: Exactly. With Amazon Associates, when the account's big enough you're getting 8%. My goal was to turn as many 8%'s into still make that 8% but also make -- whether it's 30% margin or 40% margin on my physical goods -- so turn as many 8%'s into 38%'s.

Robert Plank: Cool, so how comfortable are you with sharing some numbers or niches? How detailed do you want to go into this case study?

Jon Haver: Sure, I'm happy to share numbers. Because there was a sale I can't share much details about the ... I can share that it was kind of a fashion clothing product, so I can share that, but as far as the numbers, I share tons and tons of details about it at my website, authoritywebsiteincome, and happy to share all the numbers here. For my site, I started in September. I tried to come analyze it from a standpoint of if I was starting flat in September and just bought the site that I owned at fair market value, the website that I acquired plus then I went out and bought another website because I figured if one website was good in this space then two should be even better. It was a total investment including investing into the product of $50,000. Definitely not chump change. $50,000 investment I do an affiliate site plus physical goods, and then 8 months later I was able to sell that, plus the earnings, and generate a $350,000 cash into my bank account essentially between the prop for the months that it was operating, as well as the ticket price. That was a pretty sweet return, that sort of validating a model that I think is pretty interesting.

Robert Plank: That is cool. The numbers that you're sharing, it's like crazy real estate numbers almost. I'm really curious about that. I'm curious about how you located a site to buy for that amount and was that your budget? What kind of criteria were you looking for, because sometimes I'll look on, say like Flippa or something, and they'll have site for $100, $200, $500. Could you tell us about how you acquired that site in the first place?

Jon Haver: The site that I acquired in the first place was actually from the individual that I ended up partnering with on another business where he goes and actually builds these affiliate sites for other to people to buy. That's at Brand Builders. That site had come to me through my audience, but if I were to go out, as I have since then, to kind of try to rinse and repeat this model, the metrics that I'm looking at is I'd like a site that's doing about at least $2,000 a month of fairly focused sales on Amazon. $2,000 a month income of fairly focused sales, meaning if you have a general health site that's selling products, in a ton of different products, it's not going to have the focused energy that you need to be able to drive the sales of whatever product that you import. The high level metrics that I'm after are $2,000 plus a month in income, and then selling a lot of one specific product that we can definitely private label. If it's doing that then I'm pretty comfortable with moving forward.

Robert Plank: Would you say that's kind of your business model now is you find these sites where they're selling Amazon Affiliate links and you say, "Okay, my criteria, 2K a month at least, focused sales," and then do you also look for something in their library that you can convert into an FBA product?

Jon Haver: Yeah, that's exactly it. The focused sales of a product that I have a good chance of being able to convert. I'm still testing this model out. I've done it once successfully. The second time I went to do this the site had a substantial drop in earnings so it went down to 25% of the expected earnings. That really sucked. That's still a slow process on building that site up. I'm doing a similar model on some other sites, so is it my model? It's definitely a very big focus area for my business right now.

Robert Plank: That's really cool because I don't do any buying and selling of websites, but just from when you hear people talk about this kind of thing, they're always looking for the built-in weakness or the built-in untapped opportunity, so that's a pretty easy opportunity to spot there. I'm glad that you brought up -- I'm kind of glad -- one of the sites you bought kind of dropped in income, and that's something that I'm always kind of concerned about, just from casually looking at some of these sites for sale. They show these earnings but how do I know that they don't have some kind of outside traffic or they're just propping up the numbers in order to get a sale? Could you talk about that a little bit?

Jon Haver: Yeah. I wish I knew more. I fully trust the person that we bought the site from. It's one of these things where the earnings per visit -- the traffic has performed as expected -- it's just been the earnings per visitor has been substantially less than what had been planned. There were some challenges with link tracking at the start but we think we got all that sorted. It's unfortunately but it does seem to happen sometimes. I've so far been unsuccessful at really being able to pinpoint what the heck happened, what was the difference. The clicks seem to be the same, it's just the traffic is converting so much worse. Maybe it was a market shift that I just didn't detect and he was able to detect before he sold and that's why he sold. I wish I knew more right now. It's kind of one of those things. Ideally you don't have losers but if you're going to be investing in anything, some are going to be successes, some are not going to be as big a success.

Robert Plank: A little bit of a gamble. It's almost like you bought a house and then the next day or the next month they built a Walmart down the street and plummeted the value, right?

Jon Haver: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool. You went and you found the site that had a couple of criteria that you wanted and you bought it for 50K and you went ahead and turned around and sold it for 350K, and then you have this new site that's a little bit more of a fixer upper. What are your plans moving forward as far this whole site flipping thing?

Jon Haver: I'm continuing to be in the market for Amazon Associate sites and continuing to look for opportunities to try and really build, especially now that I've been full time, really build my team to be as world class as possible in both the Amazon Associate sites -- I've got a lot of experience in that space -- and then continue to build up my skillset in the Amazon FBA space. I think that model gives me a lot of flexibility and robustness from potential Amazon slaps, in whatever form that takes, whether it's an associate company shut down or a seller account getting suspended. I think my ability to drive off Amazon traffic is a sort of a strong selling point for this model.

Robert Plank: Do you have any plans for any other ways to monetize aside from associates and FBA?

Jon Haver: Yep. With the traffic there's a few benefits to this strategy, but we're starting to send them through ... I'm still involved in the [OneWeb 00:11:22] business that we sold that still has a ton of traffic, and we're starting to send people through an email capture sequence to get them onto our email before we send them off to Amazon, and in exchange for that they get a small coupon which drives up our conversions once they do get to Amazon, while at the same time we're collecting up to a hundred email opt-ins a day. We're looking to monetize that audience with other offers.

Robert Plank: That's cool. Any retargeting, any social media stuff?

Jon Haver: There's certainly opportunity there, it was just prioritized low on the stuff that I was going after quickly. I think especially now that we're getting a bit more of a funnel set up there's a lot of opportunity to get our retargeting and some other paid traffic opportunities.

Robert Plank: Only so much time in the day, right?

Jon Haver: Yeah, exactly, especially with the kind of potential sale. My ideal of this whole business was pull the build it, sell it, repeat model off, and try and get this ... One of the challenges with an online business is there's such high profit margins in them the challenge is in the ability to reinvest at a predictable and similar rate of return. Pay traffic you can certainly do that, and that's not the world that I've unfortunately played in to some extent. That was the model that I'm trying to find, and with it being a sale I just hadn't pursued those opportunities yet.

Robert Plank: Okay, fair enough. If someone is looking to kind of replicate what it is that you're doing -- I know you mentioned that first site, you lucked into it because you had a contact -- if someone was looking to kind of follow in your footsteps and take a couple of steps to go from locate an undervalued online property and buy it and turn it around and sell it, what do they do? If they look at some kind of marketplace and they see, for example, like a fashion or clothing site, how do you differentiate all these things for sale with what they should grab?

Jon Haver: It's tricky. That's what I've been discovering to be the biggest hurdle of this model is the good websites that fit the model for sale. A great marketplace for sites like this is Empire Flippers. Flippa you got to be able to weed through a lot of crap there. FE International's great as well but usually a bit of a higher price point, so Empire Flippers for kind of a under 20K investment into a site. That's definitely the place I would say. FE International again, really good. As far as does it meet the right criteria, I talk a lot about that on my website where I try and provide exactly, "Here's what I did, here's what I look for, here's what I'm doing now." To kind of help your audience on what you're looking for, it's just a product that you can ... If there's a website that's focused on selling a specific product and that product is available to be sourced on Alibaba, then that's kind of the key.

Robert Plank: Okay. When you do your research do you keep a spreadsheet or do you just look around until something interests you?

Jon Haver: Look around until something interests me and then I definitely have, I'm a bit of a spreadsheet nut and I definitely have a ton of spreadsheets that I fire things into to determine the potential profit of that conversion.

Robert Plank: Eyeball it just to find something that captures the interest and then the spreadsheets for the deeper research.

Jon Haver: Yeah, definitely.

Robert Plank: How do you know when to cut something loose or should you cut something loose as opposed to keeping the profits going, and how did you decide, "Okay, I'm going to price this at $350,000?"

Jon Haver: The 350 was the monthly sales, the net profit plus the sale price. The marketplaces are reasonably well developed for determining what the multiple is. The reason that I decided to sell as quickly as I did -- even though if I had held it for another 6 months I would have been making the money plus increasing my own multiple -- was that I believed the steepest -- if you plotted the rate of return versus time -- with this business strategy that steepest rate of return is in the initial conversion to FBA. The dream scenario is that there's always deals that are coming that I can reinvest the money into and I'm keeping that money on the steepest part of the curve.

Robert Plank: Okay, so you're just rolling full steam ahead then?

Jon Haver: Yeah, that would be the ideal scenario. That was not quite what I view it that way because of the deal flow and sites don't always perform as we expect them to perform but I'm continuing to work through those bugs so that we are continuing to go full steam ahead.

Robert Plank: Awesome. A few years ago I heard about some guy and he kind of did something similar to what you're doing and it just blew me away in the thought process. I think it was some kind of situation where this person, I think he had bought a website that sold a WordPress theme and then he went and hired some employees to fix it up. Then it got to the point where he was trying to sell it for something like $50,000 or some kind of precise number and then people were trying to low ball him and trying to buy it for like 20 grand or 30 grand. He was super annoyed because there was this property that's worth X number of dollars, and even if someone tries to undercut him 10%, 20%, that's like if someone tries to buy your house for 20% below what it's worth. It's kind of like a cool, unexplored area that I really like where instead of starting this whole thing from scratch, and everyone teaches about Amazon or FBA or associates or whatever, "Use this page bill, use this software," and so you're just finding something that's already been built up and making it better.

Jon Haver: We're certainly starting because our biggest bottleneck right now is the deal flow on the front end. I come from building a website passive income portfolio background. We're building sites with intent of once they have enough traction of converting them to the FBA business. We're trying to do both to get those sites on the front end, both building and buying.

Robert Plank: Right, so that way it's all very scientific. As we're winding down this call, could you tell us what you see, like the number one mistake all these website buyers and sellers making?

Jon Haver: It's the same mistake across, whether it's Amazon FBA someone's committing themself to, whether it's building up an affiliate site or investing in a site, a lot of people that move into this space -- and I'm absolutely guilty of this when I started as well -- it's a combination of both moving too slow and not fully committing to being successful at the process. A lot of people, and myself included, it was like, "Oh, this is kind of cool," and kind of half commit to it and then don't really through, don't do everything that's needed to be successful. As a result of that they're not successful and then they say -- and myself included, I'm not throwing stones here -- say, "See, it didn't work. Told you." Versus somebody that really just commits that this is going to be successful no matter what and they set up the processes to be successful. Those are the ones -- whether it's FBA or building an affiliate site or buying websites, they seem to be the ones that make an online business successful.

Robert Plank: It's like that say, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." I like that about your message and that kind of comes full circle because you were telling us at the beginning that you were kind of doing this and that and kind of taking your time, but then once your son was born then that really pushed you into action to do everything that needed to be done.

Jon Haver: Yeah, absolutely.

Robert Plank: Cool, I really like everything you have to say. You seem like a smart guy, you have a lot of great advice, I like your message. Could you tell everyone where they could find out more about you and sign up for your list and buy from you and all that good stuff?

Jon Haver: Sure, there's two main places to see me. My main site where I talk about all the different things that I have going on is at AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com, and then the second place is if you're interested in what I just talked about from buying an affiliate site and then building it, converting it into an FBA business. A lot of people were interested in what we were doing, and then I partnered with a guy that I ended up actually buying the site that I just talked about from the case study in, and we now build affiliate sites for four people, and that's at BrandBuilders.io.

Robert Plank: Awesome, so Jon Haver, Amazon FBA, lots of cool stuff. I'm super impressed, so everyone go check out that website right now and thanks for being on the show Jon.

Jon Haver: No problem, thank you. Thanks for having your podcast.

Robert Plank: Today's guest is David Barnett. He's the author of How to Sell My Own Business, a Guide to Selling Your Own Business Privately and Not Pay a Broker's Commission. David, welcome to the show.

David Barnett: Thanks, Robert, for having me. It's great to be on with you today.

Robert Plank: I'm happy to be talking to you. How to sell your own business, how do you do it?

David Barnett: The book comes about because of my experience as a business broker. I spent 4 years working full time as a business broker helping people sell businesses and acting as an intermediary. I learned a lot along the way. 1 of the things, of course, that I learned is the majority of business owners would like to sell their business 1 day, but don't want to pay the huge fee associated with using a qualified business broker.

When I left that industry, for a couple of reasons, I started thinking about my time as a broker. I realized, "You know what? There's a market and an opportunity to help people do this themselves without using a broker, which is what the majority of business owners want to do anyway."

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense. Is it true? Somewhere I've heard some kind of statistic that 95% of the wealth is created by someone selling a business? Is that right?

David Barnett: I'm not sure about that, but I know that over 80% of businesses that change hands do so privately, without the use of a broker. People are out there doing these deals anyway. What I kept coming across, as a broker and then later just working as a consultant helping people buy and sell businesses on their own, is that there's a lot of bad advice out there and a lot of people out there who don't quite know what they're doing. 1 of the things that I used to say to people when I was a broker is, "Hey, I'm an expert. I can help you do this successfully." because it is a complex operation.

In my book, How to Sell My Own Business, I don't tell you everything you need to know to sell your own business. I tell you the process and I tell you what specific things that brokers normally do that the business owner does need professional advice to get done. You can get those things done on a fee-based service.

What most brokers do is they'll say, "Look, I'll sell your business for you and I'll package it up and present it to buyers and I'm going to charge you 10 or 12% of whatever we end up getting for you." You can get those expert tasks done sometimes for a couple thousand dollars each. If you're willing to pay as you go through the process and hire experts like you would hire a lawyer, or an accountant, you can end up at the end of the day pocketing all the proceeds of the sale and just having some expenses along the way as long as you know the process and you know how to get from start to finish.

Robert Plank: Instead of having someone do an all in 1 deal for you, you might have to do a little bit of hands on stuff yourself, a little bit of managing, but that way you just pay a flat fee instead of this percentage of what could be a huge amount of money.

David Barnett: Yeah. When I was a broker, I sold a couple million dollar businesses and had to present people with some commission invoices for, in 1 case, it was $98,000. That's a really big pill to swallow.

Robert Plank: Yeah, times 12%.

David Barnett: Yeah, my bill was $98,000. Why did I have to charge that kind of money when I was dealing with these people? It's quite simple. As a broker, I'm taking on all different listings. Not all of them will sell. All of them require my time. If I'm going to work full time and have 10 or 12 businesses that I'm trying to sell at any given time, over the course of the year, if I only sell 3 of them, I've got to charge those 3 sellers enough money to cover all of my time for my entire portfolio of companies.

Quite literally, what is happening, Robert, is the people who have good, profitable businesses that are what we would call "winners" have to actually subsidize the effort that goes into trying to sell losers.

Robert Plank: It almost sounds like you're being an actor. It's like do all these projects, not get paid, do all these basically auditions, or put in all this work and then 1 or 2 might pay off as a big payday. It sounds like what you prefer is to do things on a fee-based basis. That way you can have more of a predictable income.

David Barnett: From my own point of view, now that I'm no longer a broker, now that I am a fee-based service provider, what it means is that if I work with 6 different clients over the course of a month, at the end of the month, I'm issuing 6 different bills.

Each person is now just paying me for what I do for them. I'm not giving anybody any $100,000 invoices. I'm charging people a couple grand for the different things they might have me do. Let me give you an example. In my book, I explain why pricing is so important and the dangers of over-pricing, or under-pricing your business.

Many people will look at selling their business. They'll say, "Look, I'll put an asking price on it and if I can't get that amount, then eventually I'll come down." The danger with that strategy is that if you overprice a business, you will actually scare away what I call the reasonable buyers, the people that actually have an idea of what your business should be worth. If they see that you're asking double what it's worth, they're just going to assume that you're a nut.

They know that dealing with you is going to be a waste of their time. You're going to scare those people off. The people who actually have money, are financiable, have a good banking relationship, and a good credit score, who are qualified to run your business are going to be scared off. They think that you're unreasonable.

The people who won't be scared off, though, Robert, are the low-ballers, the guys who are going to offer half price on anything. What ends up happening is if you don't price the business right, you chase off those good characters, the people who might actually be legitimate buyers and you're left dealing with those other clowns who are going to try to get the lowest possible price. You don't know if they're going to be qualified at the bank. If you end up financing part of the transaction, you don't know if they're qualified to run the business, it's a bad story all around.

1 of the things that I do, for example, with my clients today is I do the evaluation and show them what their business will sell for based on what other similar businesses have sold for in their industries with the same sales level and cash flow so that they go into it with a realistic understanding of what the business is worth. Then I help them set the price. I also do what's called the packaging, which is to create the buyer facing documents so that they can make a creditable presentation to buyers when they come along.

That's another big mistake that a lot business owners make. They'll start sending out feelers within their network indicating that maybe they're interested in selling their business. They get someone in front of them who wants to buy. Then they're not ready to share their story. They don't have their financials prepared. They don't have a package of information to share.

They make this person wait, and wait, and wait. What ends up happening, like in any sales situation, is if you're not ready to act when the iron is hot, people cool off. That hot prospect then starts to look at other things. You lose their attention. There is a whole process here that people have to be prepared for before they meet that potential buyer.

Robert Plank: I like that and I like how it sounds like the advice you've given, the steps you take people through, it's a blend between you feeling out the company, and making judgement calls here and there. It sounds like a lot of it is backed by the data. It sounds like 1 possibility for someone is, like you said, go to that person that charges 10 or 12%, but that doesn't sound like a very good solution.

It sounds like the second possibility is for someone to try to do that themselves, but then it sounds like from the things you've listed there's all kinds of mine fields and all kinds of mistakes they could make. It sounds like you're the best blend of the 2 where you don't take this huge cut, but then you also do all the things that make sense that's in their best interest.

David Barnett: I'm obviously trying to position myself to be attractive to what I know is a big market, because I've got customers ever day. For some people, it's not for them. My book, though, is still for them. If you think, "This is a complex process. I think I'd like to hire a broker anyway." the first half of the book actually talks about why you would want to use a broker and how to identify a good one versus the people who are pretending to be business brokers.

There are a lot of intermediary types out there who will tell you that they can sell your business, but they don't actually know what they're doing. In my opinion, that's the worst possible place that you can end up being. I use all kinds of examples in my book of people that I've run across over my years in the business who thought that they were represented by a business broker who were actually dealing with someone that had no idea what they were doing.

There's an example in my book about a restaurant owner. The restaurant owner decided he wanted to sell. He hired a real estate agent to sell his restaurant. The real estate agent found 1 buyer after another. Nobody could seem to qualify for financing. The agent actually called me and asked me if I would help him send his buyers to the right place to get financing to buy this restaurant.

What I said to this agent was I said, "Look, you're asking me to give you my magic jelly beans basically. This is how I make my living." I said, "Mr. Real Estate Agent, why don't you send me your client and I'll do the deal and when the deal is done, I'll give you a referral fee." He absolutely refused. He said, "No, it's my deal, mine, mine, mine, mine. I want all my commission." I said, "Great. You go figure it out."

Here's the problem, Robert. Restaurants are a highly risky business category. Restaurants actually can't get financed anywhere. In almost every situation I've ever heard of if there's a restaurant that is a good, profitable business that has any amount of what we would call good will, there will be a certain amount of vendor financing involved.

A buyer will come along and they'll make a down payment and maybe they can borrow at the bank if there's some equipment there, or a building, or something like that. They'll never, ever be able to put the whole price together. The seller will always be required to do what we call "holding paper", or do some vendor financing.

Let's say that restaurant sold for a quarter of a million dollars. Maybe the buyer is able to put together half that money for closing day. The seller will receive payments maybe over 5, or 7 years. The problem with this situation is that neither the seller, nor the real estate agent knew that. They had probably met 3, or 4 perfectly reasonable, good, qualified buyers and they were ruining the deals for themselves because they didn't know what they were doing.

That's the kind of example that I point out when I say that, "If a business seller goes to the wrong kind of intermediary, it's the worst possible case. They'll actually end up saying, "No" to reasonable deals.

Robert Plank: It sounds like in cases like that where they might just take a deal out of desperation, or might be just that the process has been dragged on for so long, they'll just take anything it sounds like.

David Barnett: What usually ends up happening is this. Sellers reach a certain point of motivation where they decide they want to sell their business. Once that decision has been made, there's a clock that starts to run. The seller, now, they've made the decision, "I want to sell. I want it to be gone." The enthusiasm and the energy that used to be there to go into the business starts to wane.

When it starts to wane, the little things stop getting done. The polish comes off the business. You know what I'm saying? Eventually sales start to decline. With that, profitability starts to decline. If you don't sell the business quickly enough, the good will can start to erode. What happened in this particular case is something I've seen too many times. The owners actually closed the restaurant and ended up just trying to sell the building. They actually pulled the plug on all the value they had created over 20 years.

Any good will that existed in that business is now gone. The business no longer functions. Now they've got something that someone can finance, which is just simply a building. They're going to end up with less money in their pocket. It was because they hired the wrong kind of person.

Like I said, the first half of my book, I talk about how you identify a qualified business broker, what they should charge, what the fee structure should look like, the types of questions they should ask, how they should be coming about determining an asking price for your business. I've had a lot of feedback from people who said, "You know, I thought about doing it myself. I read your book and I realize I did want to use a broker and thanks to what I read in the book, I realized a couple people I met with probably would have been very dangerous for me to do business with."

Robert Plank: That's awesome. Yeah, it sounds to me like it's the kind of situation where it's like you take your car in to a mechanic. You don't have to know every little detail about your car, but maybe you should know a handful of things. That way you don't get ripped off.

David Barnett: Yeah. The most important thing you need to know is can I trust the mechanic.

Robert Plank: Yeah, and are they just totally screwing up, or do they know what they're talking about?

David Barnett: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool. You listed a couple of things so far. Can we unpack a couple of mistakes you see? We could go at both ends of it. What are the mistakes you see people trying to sell their business making and the mistakes that maybe some of these brokers are making?

David Barnett: People who are trying to sell their business, the number 1 mistake that I see them making is that they don't actually understand what it is that they're selling. That may sound silly at first. Let me give you an example. Let's say you have a dry cleaning business. You operate out of a building that you own. You're not actually talking about a business anymore. You're talking about a 2 businesses. You're talking about a dry cleaning business and you're talking about a commercial real estate business.

Just because your business happens to be the tenant of your commercial real estate business, doesn't discount the fact that there's 2 different businesses.

What'll happen is people will say, "Well, I own a dry cleaning business and I want to sell it to someone." If they insist on keeping the real estate combined with that, what ends up happening is now you need a buyer with deeper pockets who not only can make a down payment on the dry cleaning business, but can also make a down payment on the commercial property. The more money a buyer needs to have, the fewer potential buyers there are.

You can imagine, Robert, that out there in the world of people trying to buy a business there are obviously a lot more people with 50 grand in the bank than there are with 200,000 in the bank. If we separate those 2 things. This is 1 of the exercises I used to do with my sellers. I would say, "Look, let's look at offering the dry cleaning business for sale and you offer the building as an option to them. You say you can buy the dry cleaning business and you can buy the building if you want, but if you don't want to, I'll lease it to you on a 10 year contract with a lease."

Now what we've done is we've made the business to be bought much smaller and more affordable. Now there are more potential buyers, which means we can sell it more quickly. Once we get that dry cleaning business sold and we have the lease in place, we can now sell the piece of property to anyone who wants to collect rent. It's a completely different market, Robert, to people who want to buy commercial property.

What happens a lot of the time is that the seller will realize, "Hey, it takes a lot less energy to be a landlord than it does to run a dry cleaning business, so maybe I'll just keep the building for a few more years and create a passive income for myself collecting rent." What happens in a lot of cases is these buyers, after they've run the dry cleaning business for a couple years on their own, and they've got their own financial statements prepared for the time that they've owned the business, they can now go to the banker and qualify for a mortgage to buy the building.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. Yeah, that a good strategy.

David Barnett: Yeah. That's what I mean when I say that sellers don't know what they have to sell. The dry cleaner is in the business of understanding the dry cleaning business. He's not in the business of understanding how to sell businesses. A lot of these opportunities get missed because people will go out and do it on their own without any advice at all. They'll think that they need to sell everything as 1 package when in fact they don't.

I've actually helped people divide up businesses that were mixed together. I had a client who had an excavating business, but he was also doing recovery and towing at the same time. He was able to maintain all of the equipment in the same garage that he had on his property. He was out in the country. It made sense for him to have these 2 lines of work. It was 2 different groups of clients. When it came time to selling, there were very few people who were looking for an excavating and recovery business.

We split that business in 2. We sold the recovery business to another operator who had their own operation about 30 miles away. They were trying to grow geographically. It made good sense for them to buy that. Once he was left with purely an excavating business, he was able to find someone who wanted to get into that industry. Yeah, those are some of the common things.

On my web site, there's a free download called 12 things to do before you consider selling your business where I cover the top 12 areas that I've always seen people make mistakes.

Robert Plank: Great. Where can people get that?

David Barnett: It's easy to remember. It's HowToSellMyOwnBusiness.com which is the name of the book, How to Sell My Own Business." If someone wants to buy a PDF copy of the book for immediate download, they can get it at that web site, HowToSellMyOwnBusiness.com. You can also buy the book on Amazon, either as a paperback, or for Kindle.

Robert Plank: That's all great stuff. What I really like about the things that you've unpacked here today, David, is that there seems to be a lot of really cool strategies that have come about just from your years of experience and just from seeing all the different case studies. What I like the best was that last little strategy about cutting up the business and selling the parts like what Mit Romney did where you don't have to get all the way out. Selling a business might just be you sell part of the business off now and then get back in in a different way later or completely get out years from now.

I really like everything that you had to say. I really like where you have your book. Just to remind the listeners 1 more time what's that URL just to make sure everyone has it?

David Barnett: Sure. HowToSellMyOwnBusiness.com.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Everyone should go there and get that free report and check out the blog and get your book. They should just check out everything you have to offer.

David Barnett: Yeah. People who are interested either in buying or selling businesses, if you go to that web site, you'll also see a link to my You Tube channel. There's about 200 videos now. Almost all of them are about either buying and selling small businesses, or local investing.

I've got a few other books out too, Robert, that I had mentioned to you before on local investing and on franchise issues. Anything to do with buying, selling, financing, planning business is my area of expertise.

Robert Plank: Cool. It sounds like a topic, an area where a lot of people, it seems like they think they know, or they think they can figure it out themselves, but I like all of the little bits and pieces and all the strategy where you've taken something complicated and made it simple and distilled it for the rest of us. Thanks a bunch, David, for being on the show. I really appreciate the advice you have to share.

David Barnett: Thanks, Robert, for having me on. It's been a whole lot of fun.

Robert Plank: Same here.