Archive for September, 2016

Jeff Barnes: Hey, Robert. Things are great. How are you?

Robert Plank: Super fantastic. I feel like I should say it's magical or wonderful or whatever the proper Disney term is, but I have to admit I know almost nothing about Disney despite living in California.

Jeff Barnes: We're doing the interview on a Monday, so let's just go with "happy, magical Monday."

Robert Plank: Perfect. Happy, magical Monday. I'm going to start using that one every Monday.

Jeff Barnes: Exactly.

Robert Plank: Is there one of those for like every day of the week or am I just stuck with the one day of the week?

Jeff Barnes: "Magical Monday" is pretty popular. "Have a terrific Tigger Tuesday" is another one that you'll hear every now and then. I like "wonderful Wednesday," which sort of goes back to the Wonderful World of Disney. Yeah, I mean, if you're really, really deep, you've got one for every single day of the week. I typically stick with "magical Monday" and then trust the rest of the days to take care of themselves.

Robert Plank: Okay. Yeah, they'll all fall line after that.

Jeff Barnes: Exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool. It seems like there is this whole crazy, like subculture that's really cool, brands called ... this Walt Disney stuff that you happen to be in the middle of, so can you tell us about that and about yourself and all that good stuff?

Jeff Barnes: Sure. 33 million people a year in the United States alone, Robert, go to Walt Disney or Disneyland and, within that pocket of 33 million, there are people who are just fanatics and obsessed and cannot get enough of it. Within Southern California, there is a love and a passion for Disneyland as a local park that beats almost anything I've ever seen to include love for a sports team, love for one's city, town, community, you name it, and part of that is the 61-year history of the park here in Southern California. I think a lot of it has to do with, in Southern California, everybody's from everywhere and there isn't any central place in Southern California, to include downtown Los Angeles, and so, over the years, Disneyland has sort of evolved into the public square for Southern California, and it really is the one place that all of us share together and, sort of like a narrative thread, it becomes the 1 place that sort of holds us all together as well.

Robert Plank: What's pretty crazy about all this Disney stuff, because it's seems like there's no dark side to it, there's no one, anyone like saying anything bad about Disney the same way that like a sports team or any kind of usual theme park like your Great America or your Magic Mountain or something like that?

Jeff Barnes: Disney is not perfect and they certainly have made their mistakes over the years, but, by and large, people are in because they love it and it is something very special and very magical and it really echoes back to I think a connection that starts in childhood. As I have gone around Southern California and really around the country in the past year promoting the wisdom of Walt, I meet people. Their family moved to Southern California in 1956 and all they could think about was, "Wow, we're going to get to go to Disneyland," or you meet someone else and their dad worked on the construction crew that helped build the park in 1954 and then you meet other individuals, their first date was at Disneyland and then, fast forward to now, you've got an entire generation that grew up with Disney in their home by way of the video cassettes, whether it was the classic films, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, you name it. They have that sort emotional connection and, now, they're bringing up and raising their own children and they just keep coming back over and over and over again.

Robert Plank: What did Disney do right that no one else seemed to do right? Was it a lot of little things? Was it good marketing? What was it?

Jeff Barnes: First of all, the whole idea for Disneyland started when Walt took his 2 young daughters, Diane and Sharon, to what was a local amusement park in Griffith Park near the studio in Burbank and, as they were riding a merry-go-round, he's sitting on this park bench and he begins to dream of a place where parents and children could have fun together. It took him some 15 years before he began to actually take action on that particular idea and that particular dream, but it sort of grew into this thing that no one had ever seen or heard of before which, ultimately, became a theme park.

As he began to talk to other amusement park operators and they heard he was going to spend all of this money on this theme park and all of this money on landscaping, he was going to have a single entrance in by way of Main Street and a single exit out, and they thought he was absolutely nuts. They literally thought he had lost his mind, but as Walt was going around to all of these amusement parks around the country and around the world, he was really learning what not to do because he genuinely sensed that the American people in 1955 were ready for something new and radically different in outdoor entertainment. He knew what we wanted before we even knew what we wanted.

You talked to a single person who was there on opening day, they'll tell you 2 things. One, they'd never seen anything like it anywhere in the world and then, secondly, they had never walked into a public place that was so impeccably clean, which I think is fascinating because, when he went home on that Saturday in the 1940s, having spent the afternoon with his daughters and he said to his wife, "Lilly, honey, we're going to build an amusement park," she thought he was nuts and said, "Oh, Walt, no, we, we don't want of those. Why, why those places are filthy." He kept it impeccably clean really as a promise to Lilly who never believed in his dream.

For me, the whole core idea is he's got this vision. He has this dream and he has enough courage to actually take action on it even when everybody around him thinks that he is nuts, thinks that it's crazy and thinks that it will never work.

Robert Plank: How did that work out, because, as you're describing that to me about this really smart guy who goes around and sees, like you said, sees what's not working everywhere else and has a better solution and goes and has all this attention to detail? I can't help but think about all these like Las Vegas casinos where they just pour in all kinds of money, have this huge vision and then it would just completely flop. I mean what's the difference there?

Jeff Barnes: Walt was very attentive to quality. When they opened the park, it was in fact a failure. July 17th, 1955, which we celebrate some 61 years later as Disneyland's birthday, was actually a day Walt never really wanted to remember again because everything that could go wrong actually did go wrong. The press, which had predicted it was never going to work to begin with, when they saw the disaster that was that black Sunday, they were labeling it "Walt's nightmare," or "Walt's folly," but he took responsibility for every single thing that didn't work and he ignored the elements like, for example, there was like a 105-degree heatwave the day that they opened the park. There wasn't anything he could about that. He couldn't change it, and so he focused on what he could control and changed it and fixed it and upgraded it, and the things that were out of his control he simply ignored them and moved on.

Over time, it just grew into the dream that he had always envisioned that it ultimately would be. Again, it took time. He didn't just step up from that bench and get to work on it immediately, and it wasn't an immediate, overnight success. He had to stay true to that dream and true to that vision and stay attentive to it and focused on it until it ultimately became what we know it to be today.

Robert Plank: With all that, how did he make it all function, because I mean it's 1 thing to say, okay, he has ... He focuses in all of these things or he controls what he can't control, but I mean I can't even imagine like a park like Disneyland how much it costs to run it every day, how many people have to be involved? I mean, what's the secret there?

Jeff Barnes: He built a phenomenal organization. He had people who were willing to literally go through walls for him because he had this insatiable, contagious vision, and that was true for Micky Mouse back in 1928, it was true for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was the world's first full-length animated feature film in 1938 and, now, it's true all over again when it comes times to build Disneyland. Even though Walt liked to control things, he wasn't a micro manager, and so he empowered his team to help make his dream come true.

I think, first of all, he was smart enough to hire people better than himself. This was true when it came to artists and animators and it became true when it came time to build Disneyland and, ultimately, when it came time to run Disneyland. He hired a gentleman out of Texas who had done training in the aerospace industry, and he said, "Look, we're going to build something very unique, very special and very different here. I need you to be responsible for the training," and, ultimately, this would come to be known of as Disney University. The training really only consisted of 2 core elements. First of all, Walt said, "I don't want to deliver the same, you know, shoddy service that I get everywhere else," and then, secondly, he empowered that trainer and, ultimately, every single cast member to create happiness.

People ask me all the time, "What's the secret? What's the magic? How do they get the pixie dust?" as if it's more difficult than it actually is. Walt's mantra was "treat people the way you want to be treated and empower the folks that you hire to actually make that happen." That is still true even till today. We'll go to Disneyland for dinner and someone, for whatever reason, stuff happens and our reservation gets lost. Rather than going through policies and procedures and managers, the cast member on the spot is empowered to say, "Hey, we're really sorry about that. We're seating you 5 minutes later than scheduled. Um, pick an appetizer. Pick a dessert anywhere off the menu. It's on us."

I think there's a real business lesson there. Hire the right people and then trust them to do exactly what you need them to do.

Robert Plank: I've heard of little tidbits like that. As I keep saying, I'm not a very knowledgeable Disney guy, but I've heard something maybe like a couple of years ago about something like there are these little touches on like, for example, Main Street where there ... I guess there's no garbage cans or like, the cast members, there's something where they have to pick up any piece of garbage or something like that just to make sure it's super clean. Is that a real thing?

Jeff Barnes: Walt paid attention to people and he figured that, on average, will walk about 30 steps before we have to get rid of the trash that's in our hands, and so they made sure that there was a trashcan themed to the environment because they don't want to break up the narrative or the story. There's a trashcan approximately every 30 feet in Disneyland. They make sure that the restrooms are cleaned spotlessly every half hour, and then, when it comes to cast member training, like Walt never wanted to be called anything but Walt. He didn't want to be called Walt Disney. He didn't want to be called Mr. Disney. He only ever wanted to be called Walt.

He really was, Robert, the very first undercover boss, if you will. He'd get up on a Saturday morning and he would walk every inch of that park, making sure that it was ready for the guests, and then he would stand in line just like everyone else and would experience the attraction just like you and I were experiencing them, always taking notes and encouraging his leads and his executives and his cast members to enjoy the experience so that it was something that we would go home as guests and rave about.

Even today, when Disney hires executives, whether it's a CEO, a president, a vice president, one of the first things that he'd do is set them loose in the theme park and they have to go around and pick trash.

Robert Plank: Nice. That's pretty cool. It sounds like, as far as Walt's attitude, he was very, very ... trying to look through things from the point of view of that customer even to the point where ... I mean, just knowing to clean the bathrooms every half an hour and not every 2 hours, not every 20 minutes, knowing that it's 30 steps to every ... before you need to get rid of the trash, not 40, not 50. It sounds like that's a pretty good eye for detail without getting too bogged down in the details I guess.

Jeff Barnes: Yeah. There's this great story. He was working with one of his Imagineers who helped build the park, a fellow by name of John Hench. They were up at the studio and finishing out what would become the very first attraction installed at Disneyland, which was the old frontierland stagecoach line, and John could not the leather strapped on that stagecoach right to Walt's liking and, finally, in frustration, John threw the leather strap up in the air and said, "Walt, it's a stupid leather strap. No one is ever going to notice. No one is ever going to care," and Walt stopped him and said, "John, you're underestimating people, but he will notice. They will care. Every time they come to Disneyland, they're going to see something that they've never seen before, and that's what's going to keep bringing them back over and over and over again." Some 61 years later, some 650 million of us have come back over and over and over again.

Robert Plank: I'll hear a little bit about something like that. Every now and then, I'll just see some list on the Internet or something that'll say like, "Did you know there were these hidden whatevers in the, you know, on the ground or these hidden things and whatever?" I think that's pretty cool that there's always some kind of Easter egg to find on any return trip.

Jeff Barnes: Yep.

Robert Plank: Let's talk about you a little bit. It sounds like you have a lot of, I mean, so much knowledge, so many stories about Disneyland and Walt Disney. What got you into all of this stuff?

Jeff Barnes: I actually grew up in Florida, and I can remember I was 10 years old and we took a family vacation to Walt Disney World in 1974. I knew, Robert, the second that I stepped on the Main Street, I was just blown away. I was like, "Wow. This place is super, super cool." As I grew up, whether it was middle school or high school, if we were going back to Walt Disney World either as a family, band trip, Boy Scouts, you name it, I was typically the kid who was most looking forward to it. I was typically the kid who was counting down the days until we were back at Disney World.

It actually wasn't until 1988 when I was a grad student up in the Bay Area of California that I made my first trip to Southern California and my first trip to Disneyland and, truth be told, I write about this in the book, I hated it. It wasn't what I remembered from Florida and I think, worst of all, we got up on a Sunday morning in August and took our time getting there, arriving on Main Street at 10:30-11:00 in the morning. Back in 1988, the big, new E ticket attraction was Star Tours. We walked down Main Street. We turned right into Tomorrowland.

The good news is we were in the right place for the ride, but, unfortunately, in the wrong place for the line, and so a cast member directed us back to the start of Main Street, and it wasn't until 3 hours later that I had finally experienced my first Disneyland attraction and, of course, by that point, it's the middle of the afternoon, it's hot, it's crowded. By the end of the day, I was done. If you had told me, "Look, you're going to fall in love with this place. You're going to end up teaching a college course on its history. You're going to write a bestselling book about Disneyland," I would have said that you're absolutely crazy.

Fast forward 3 years later, I was bringing a group of young people back down and we were going to Disneyland again. By that point, I'd lived in California long enough to know, wow, these people are really into this thing called Disneyland. I must have missed something. That's when the historian in me came out. I started doing the reading and the research, and that's when I discovered, just like you and me, Walt wasn't born successful. He certainly didn't start out as a success. In fact, he went bankrupt in Kansas City at the ripe old age of 21 and, even when it came to Disneyland, he didn't just speak the magic words and his magic kingdom would appear out of an orange grove in Anaheim. He faced all sorts of adversity and all sorts of obstacles to make his dream come true.

It was in learning that story that I came to realize, wow, that is the ultimate example for each of us in terms of how to make our own dreams come true, and so I brought those young people back and I fell in love with it and I've been in love with it ever since.

Robert Plank: Yeah, it sounds like there's all kinds of little life lessons and business lessons and all kinds of little things that I'm picking up from you when anything about Walt Disney or abuot Disney in general kind of comes up. I understand that you have, like you mentioned, this bestselling book out called The Wisdom of Walt. Is that right?

Jeff Barnes: Correct.

Robert Plank: Can you tell us about that a little bit?

Jeff Barnes: I can. To back up a little bit, I am dean of students success at California Baptist University in Riverside California, which is about 33 miles from Main Street, USA. We've lived here for about 5 years now. My wife and I, we've been to the park 350-plus times in the last 60 months. Again, we really, really, really love it. Along the way, early on, I had this idea of, wow, our college students don't know anything about Walt and they don't know anything about the history of the park. They just think it's always been here because, in terms of their lifetime, it always has been, so I started dreaming of a course that would teach students about Walt and about Disneyland, but, most importantly and most significantly, we'd use Walt and use Disneyland as a vehicle to inspire and motivate those students to see their own dreams come true.

I sat on that idea for a while because I didn't want to be the faculty member who lost his job for pitching such a Mickey Mouse idea. Finally, I got the courage to go in and talk to the chair of our history and government department and, because he had worked as a cast member 30 years earlier, which I didn't know, the idea of teaching a course on the history of Disneyland, he loved it, and so, for the next year, we did the curriculum and the syllabus, the textbooks, guest lectures, field trips, you name it, and I gave the very first lecture on what had become my dream course, the history of Disneyland and then, Robert, the very next day, I was actually diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Robert Plank: Oh, no.

Jeff Barnes: The neurosurgeon said, "It's life-threatening, It's got to come out. Today is Friday. I want you back for surgery on Tuesday even if it's not cancerous," and I'll tell you now, fortunately, it was not, but, because of the evasiveness of the surgery, even if it's not cancerous, you're going to be out of work anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks. 6 to 8 weeks means I'm not going to get to teach my class. 6 to 8 weeks means my dream of doing a college course on the history of Disneyland dies, and I realized Disneyland tells great stories, but I also believe that it's challenging us to live a great story. All of us have conflict in our life. The conflict is there for a reason. It's enabling us to live a better and greater story. The bigger the dragon, the better your story.

This brain tumor happened to be the biggest dragon that I'd ever faced in my life. We put the surgery off for 2 and a half months, which, trust me, the neurosurgeon was not happy about in any way, shape or form. The idea that I would risk my life so I could teach a stupid college course about an amusement park seemed completely ridiculous to him. Again, I was in that instant that it became my passion because, again, 33 million people a year go to Disneyland or Disney World and rather than it being a place to escape, rather than it being the place where dreams come true, I genuinely believe we can make it the example, the example that it's showing us how to make our own dreams come true.

We taught the course. We had the surgery. I'm healthier now than ever. Because of the popularity of the class, we wanted to make the material accessible to as many people as possible, and so we turned it into what has, fortunately, become a bestselling book, The Wisdom of Walt: Leadership Lessons from the Happiest Place on Earth.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Yeah, I don't know about you, but like whenever I ... I don't know, when I'm looking for something new to read, I always come across like the business stuff and it's always just like, oh, here is more of the same stuff, yet another story about Steve Jobs or something. If I'm just looking for like some kind of creativity or guidance, the same kind of deal. I'm like, "Okay. Great. What's Oprah recommending?" or, "What's the, you know, the latest, latest Chicken Soup book."

I like this book. I like the idea of it in that, like you said, there's business stuff in it, there's life lessons in it, and it's all kind of disguised behind the entertainment factor. Right? There's all kinds of reasons to check this book out. You also get all these amazing, wonderful side-effects, byproducts from it.

Jeff Barnes: Robert, I didn't want to write another Disney business book because there's already great ones out there and I didn't really think the marketplace needed another one. Walt most wanted to be remembered as a storyteller. He built the park for the purpose of telling stories. I wanted to write a personal development book that told Walt's story, that tells the story of Disneyland, that explains the stories that we experienced when we're at the park, connect it to some of my stories and then, hopefully and ultimately, connect it to your own story as a source of motivation and a source of inspiration to see your own dreams come true.

I'm really proud of the fact that I managed to write the book that I truly dreamed of writing. A year later, I mean, I get 2 or 3 emails a week from readers thanking me for having written The Wisdom of Walt and they're working on this dream or they're working on that dream because the book did exactly what we set out for it to do.

Robert Plank: Awesome, so there's a bunch of layers to it, and just like how we can go back to Disneyland again and again and see something new, people can read your book over and over and get new thing from it.

Jeff Barnes: Yes. One of the favorite features for readers is every chapter has what I call a souvenir stuff. If you think about when you're on vacation or if you're at Disneyland, you always go into the stores and you want to bring something home, you want to take something back that reminds you of your trip to the park. Every chapter has a souvenir stuff, and those are your take-home lesson. These are the points that I want you to remember from whatever the lesson in that particular chapter was. It plays out sort of like a workbook. Whether we're talking about how the park teaches us to focus or how it challenges us to live a great story or how we can do a better job taking care of the teams that we're working with or we're working for, there's places to apply all of that again to your own life, your own dream, your own family and your own business.

Robert Plank: Awesome. That sounds amazing. Where can people go to find the book and to find out all about you and everything else that you're doing?

Jeff Barnes: Sure. Like all good books, it's available on Amazon these days. You can get hardcover, softcover, Kindle eBook, as well as an audio book. If you're looking for a personally signed hard copy, you can also find me at TheWisdomOfWalt.com. I also travel the country doing inspirational, motivational speeches. We also have leadership training programs as part of The Wisdom of Walt as well.

Robert Plank: Awesome, so all kinds of good stuff. I really like everything that you had to say here today, Jeff, not just the Disneyland stuff in general, but your story and your scary brain tumor thing and just everything that you've done to I guess get your knowledge out and get the word out from not just ... A lot of people have idea that they don't implement, but you have the course, the book, the speaking, all kinds of cool stuff, so TheWisdomOfWalt.com..

Thanks for being on the show, Jeff.

Jeff Barnes: Thank you, Robert.

Tony DiLorenzo: Excellent, Robert. Thank you.

Alisa DiLorenzo: We're doing great today. Glad to be joining you.

Robert Plank: Cool. I think we're going to have a lot of fun today. Could you guys tell me, I know I mentioned a little bit, but can you tell me what it is that you guys do and what makes both of you different and special?

Alisa DiLorenzo: Oh my gosh. Well Tony and I are tasked. We know our mission is to transform a million marriages around the world. That is something that we've discovered over the last few years and we do that through a variety of ways. We do it through the podcast, the One Extraordinary Marriage Show. We do through it, you mentioned, the books that we've written. We've written books such as the 7 Days of Sex Challenge. We talk about trust, we talk about communication, we talk about all those topics that everybody wants to talk about but nobody is. We peel back all the layers for couples out there to go, you know what? You can have a conversation about this and the world isn't going to fall off its axis.

Robert Plank: Interesting. You guys get right to the good stuff.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Absolutely.

Tony DiLorenzo: Yeah. I mean, our fist show that we ever did was called the 60 Days of Sex Challenge.

Robert Plank: Nice. That's a great place to start off, right?

Tony DiLorenzo: Let's start big or go home.

Robert Plank: Hit the ground running. Kind of along those lines, I mean, what has you guys excited lately in this topic. Tell me something I haven't heard before.

Tony DiLorenzo: Wow. What are we excited about lately? Man, we're excited about just impacting people's lives. As One Extraordinary Marriage has grown over the last 6 and a half years, our reach has just taken off. From the early days of the podcast where we would hear from folks here in the United States. I remember and Alisa does too, when we heard from somebody from Alaska and it was like, "Oh my gosh. We have somebody listening in Alaska." Now we have listeners in 160 countries around the world.

Right now, what gets me excited and what gets me out of bed are the folks who come, hear us, start to implement, they're intentional about their marriage, and they take action, ad they have these amazing testimonies. They come and they're like, "You guys wouldn't believe what we did. We were listening to you share this. We picked up your book, connect like you did when you first met. We started asking each other questions. We started getting deep. We started being transparent with each other. Guess what? We had the best sex we've ever had in our 10 years of marriage." If that doesn't get me excited to wake up in the morning and impact more lives, I don't know what will.

Robert Plank: You guys are teaching what you know, it sounds like.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Well we are because our marriage the first 11 years was really nothing to write home about.

Tony DiLorenzo: Nope.

Alisa DiLorenzo: The fact that we're still together and we actually, as of this recording, are just under 2 months away from our 20th wedding anniversary. We look back at those first 11 years that were rocked with pornography, rocked with crazy financial debt with more zeros than I care to count about, rocked with the loss of our second child. All of these things tear marriages apart and we found ourselves at that 11 year mark going, "Which way to we go?" The reason the very first show that we ever recorded was the 60 Days of Sex Challenge is because that's what we decided to do in hopes that something would shift in our marriage, otherwise we were going to end up as roommates. As a result of that shift, I mean, our marriage, I get to tell people all the time that my marriage coming up on 20 years is better than it's ever been.

Robert Plank: What changed?

Alisa DiLorenzo: We got intentional.

Tony DiLorenzo: Yeah.

Alisa DiLorenzo: We stopped taking each other for granted. We realized that this relationship between the two of us had to be the first relationship that we work on every day instead of the last relationship.

Tony DiLorenzo: If you want to see anything grow and flourish, you need to water it, right? If you want to see a rose plant grow, you don't just plant it and let the sun wither it away. You water it. You put fertilizer on it. You trim it. You cut it back in those seasons when it has to be cut back to see it bloom and blossom. It's the same thing that we had to learn in our own marriage and we teach others is that if you want to grow, you got to do something. Alisa and I had to do something.

Robert Plank: That makes sense. Am I getting the math here right? Was this 9 years ago or was this more recent that ...

Alisa DiLorenzo: 9 years ago.

Tony DiLorenzo: 9, yep.

Robert Plank: That you started the podcast?

Alisa DiLorenzo: We started the podcast 6 and a half years ago. We started our journey towards transforming our marriage 9 years ago. It as after we did that, we'd been invited to speak, to share our story, and after we did that, here we are. I'm standing up in front of a room full, I think it was 80 folks, give or take.

Tony DiLorenzo: 80 couples.

Alisa DiLorenzo: We're sharing our story and talking about how Tony threw out this idea that we would have sex for 60 days in a row. My immediate reaction the first time he proposed it was absolutely not. Our kids were 2 and 5 and the time. Are you kidding me? I'm covered in baby stuff all day long and art projects. The last thing I'm going to do is have sex with you all day.

Robert Plank: My thought when I first heard that was, of course it's the guy's idea.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Well a lot of people say that. It's not always the case.

Tony DiLorenzo: Hey, Robert. It was the Hail Mary pass. It really was. Where we were in our marriage at that point, it was the Hail Mary pass. I got to go after something that's so big, so crazy that it's either we win it or we lose it here. That's just where I was after 11 years of marriage. Our goal is hopefully that folks who find us don't have to do the Hail Mary pass. They're starting to listen, they're starting to gain wisdom and knowledge and taking action so they don't have to get to that point in their marriage.

Robert Plank: What's the secret? What's the shortcut? What's the Cliff Notes on this?

Alisa DiLorenzo: The Cliff Notes, I love not. We haven't used that phrase before, but that might show up on the One Extraordinary Marriage Show.

Robert Plank: Awesome. You're welcome.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Thank you. Thank you. That's why we love doing interviews because somebody always gives us a little bit more information or material for our own show. The Hail Mary, the secret sauce, is saying, you know what? What you did to get to the I do, what you did to get to the wedding day, you actually need to keep going and keep doing that for the next 50, 60 years. You don't spend all this time like, "Oh, I'll talk to you for hours. Oh, I'll take you on dates. Oh, we'll plan trips together and do all this kind of stuff." Then you have the fancy dress and the big party and everybody's like, "Yay! Kiss, kiss, kiss." Then the next day you're like, "Yeah, well, we've got the same last name. We're done." Right? I don't have to do anything anymore.

Those couples that say, you know what? The wedding is just he beginning of our lives together, the wedding is where we start investing, those are the couples that see transformation because they're not waiting around for something else to happen. They're saying, "I'm going to take responsibility for what I can do in the marriage and that's showing up to the best of my ability every single day."

Robert Plank: How do you get back to that point? You guys mentioned that, well it was one thing to say that but you guys had the kids to deal with and I'm sure your own responsibilities. How do you do that with all of the everyday stuff in the way?

Tony DiLorenzo: Man. Honestly, it's going to depend on where you are in your marriage, right? That's one of the most difficult tasks we face because so many people are in so many different places of their marriage, right? Some people have just grown apart. It's nothing more than life has gotten in the way and they haven't been intentional. Maybe for them, doing the 7 Days of Sex Challenge is the best thing they could do right now. They need to reconnect.

See, the 7 Days of Sex Challenge, everybody is like, "Ooh, it's sex." Right. We get it. Alisa and I having done our 60 Days of Sex Challenge and then eight 7 Days of Sex Challenges now, it's more than just sex. It really is. It's about that emotional connection. For some couples, that's what they need. They need to get back to basics. For other couples, they've gone through the ringer. They've been in the valley. They've been stuck in the valley and they're wondering, "When are we going to get out of this?" For those folks, a 7 Days of Sex Challenge may be something that they could do and yet it's not going to have the profound effect that it would have for the first couple. For them, they may do a 7 Days of Sex Challenge or maybe they would check out our course, He Zigs, She Zags. Get your communication on the path and parlay that with coaching with Alisa because they need more accountability. They need somebody to come up beside them and go, are you guys doing your work? Are you guys doing what you're saying? Because Alisa will hold them to task and hold them accountable to what they said they were going to do each and every week.

Robert Plank: Could you explain that a little bit? Is there a course someone can buy where it's not just the training but Alisa will actually follow and make sure they do what they say they'll do, or is that the coaching part of it?

Alisa DiLorenzo: That's the coaching part and we have a number of programs because over the last 6 and a half years, we've identified some very particular areas that we hear time and time again, couples are struggling with. Communication is one of the top ones. Trust. We created a program all wrapped around restoring trust in your marriage. Then we know that sexual intimacy is an issue as well. These are the 3 big ones. Then you have those folks that want to just do it themselves. They just want to get plugged into a program. Then you have other folks that are like, "You know what? We've tried and tried and tried to talk ourselves through this. We've tried to do programs, we've tried to do all this kind of stuff, and we can't do it by ourselves." A lot of those folks have heard about us either on podcasts like yours or even on our own show and they're like, "Wait a minute. I resonate with what she's saying. She sounds like me."

That's what I tell people all the time. I tell my clients, "Look. I'm not perfect. You listen to my show for more than one week, you'll hear Tony and I have incidences where we go back and forth and we still fight over things. What we figured out is how to shorten the challenging times in our marriage. They're still going to happen. We're human. He's not perfect, I'm not perfect.

Coming alongside a couple, what I do is I give them additional resources. I give them tools and I say, "You know what? I'm going to talk to you next week so you don't just revert back to your old behavior, what hasn't been working. I'm going to hold you accountable and we're going to keep equipping you until you have the marriage and the relationship as functioning at the level that you desire."

Robert Plank: Interesting. What kind of though process goes into some of the stuff? You said that there's those 3 areas, there's the communication and the trust and the sex areas, but how do you decide if you guys have an idea, if something should be a podcast episode or an audio program or a book, or do you just not care about the overlap when you say that you can restate the same things in different ways, I guess? What's the thought process with that?

Tony DiLorenzo: That's a good question. When it comes to the podcast, because I want to start it there because that's basically like our home base. For anybody who's listening, you want to go check it out, go to the One Extraordinary Marriage Show. Find that on iTunes, Stitcher Radio for you Android folks. When if comes to the show, that honestly has been something we've done for 6 and half years week in and week out. It is our life. It is what we deal with in our own lives with kids who are growing up with 2 adults that, like Alisa said, aren't perfect. We have blow-ups, we have mess-ups, and we also have successes. Throughout the week, we're always looking for cues and thinking of, how can we share what's going on or what we've heard or if there's reoccurring themes from folks that we're getting emails from?

You get it once, you're like, "Okay." Get it twice, "Hmm. Wonder what's up?" Get it a 3rd, 4th, 5th time, you better believe we're going to start doing some research, thinking about it, and then bringing it to a show. When it comes to a workshop or a course, we've found that, like Alisa said, the 3 main areas, so we dive deeper into those. Those are more hands-on. We do an audio and video sessions. We add cheat sheets, worksheets, so people can dive in deeper in those areas and pull it apart. That's where that comes up and yeah, is there going to be overlap? Sure thing. Some people will be able to listen to the podcast, all good. Other people, they need to pick up our books, 7 Days of Sex Challenge. Other people want to pick up our book The Trust Factor. For them, they need to go a little deeper. They need to write notes in their book and dissect it and then apply it to their own marriage.

Robert Plank: Okay. I mean, yeah, I like your thought process. It's almost like the podcast happens regardless, and then you might use some of these podcast episodes to kind of flesh out a bigger idea that ends up in a workshop or a book.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Absolutely. I mean, we are constantly interacting with folks who are telling us about their marriages. That's just ...

Tony DiLorenzo: Nature of the beast.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Really. People find out what we do and they're like, "Oh, let me tell you what's going on in my relationship." Which is great and we love having that interaction, be it with our listeners or with just people we meet anywhere. From that, we're able to go, "Okay, where are the needs?" Right? We know what the needs are in our own marriage. A lot of times the shows come straight out of, "Oh, Tony and I had this issue this past week." We know we did, but there's at least one other couple out there that's facing it. Let's bring these topics to the light. Then going across all of our platforms, because we're on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all over, iTunes and Stitcher and whatnot. Taking it across the platforms allows us to reach people wherever they're at. They don't just have to come and find our website. We're out there, audio, video, tweets, and whatnot because we know that if you're having a crisis in your marriage, you're looking and we need to be where you're looking.

Tony DiLorenzo: Right.

Robert Plank: It makes a lot of sense. Be everywhere because otherwise, I mean, they're going to find someone else, if not, you guys, right?

Alisa DiLorenzo: True.

Robert Plank: Have you come across any of that? Have you come across having any difficulties differentiating yourselves or have you come across anyone else kind of doing something similar to you or even maybe someone who's kind of trying to ride your coattails, anything like that?

Tony DiLorenzo: No. You know what? We, having gone into the podcasting world when we did, we really were able to carve out our own niche. That has helped. Sure, have there been people who've like, "Hey, look what Tony and Alisa are doing so we're going to do the same thing." Sure. Go for it, man. Honestly, if you can touch marriages, by all means go for it. I know a lot of folks in the marriage niche. I try to reach out to many of them. I have some good friends in them so we do a lot of programs together or courses. If they're doing an online conference, we're usually speaking at them. In all honesty, it's a big world. Go after it. We're going to just continue to do what we know we do best and we're going to just continue to reach those couples and know that we're going to reach a million and we're going to reach more than that before our time comes to an end.

Robert Plank: Nice. Fair enough. Yeah, I'm scrolling through and I'm seeing you guys having all these TV appearances on all kinds of cool stuff like that.

Tony DiLorenzo: Yeah. Yeah, those are fun too because, especially here locally in San Diego, we've been featured on CW6 a few times now.

Alisa DiLorenzo: We've been on ESPN Radio.

Tony DiLorenzo: Right and they're all so great. For us it's, where can we reach people where they're at, right? I mean, not everybody's online. Not everybody's searching because their marriage is in a tough spot. Sometimes their just right there on CW6 and they want to get some fun, quick ideas about how to romance their spouse on Valentine's Day.

Robert Plank: Do you have any of those? You have either a really common problem everyone has that everyone should be aware that they can fix in their marriage or do you have just some really fun, quick tips anyone can use? Besides the 60 Days of Sex, besides the 7 Days of Sex, of course.

Tony DiLorenzo: Yeah. Yeah, here's a fun one that we found that a lot of couples, both male and female, husband and wife, have a hard time knowing how to initiate sex. It's something that we all think should just come naturally and yet we have difficulties with it. What does that look like? For a lot of us, media has really screwed us up at times and what that looks like, a typical 30 minute sitcom. If there's a sex scene happening would be a scantily clad woman coming in with high heels, maybe lingerie and the guy is in the bathroom shaving and she comes up behind him. Honestly, man, I've been married almost 20 years. I cannot think of a time when Alisa has come into our bedroom or our bathroom like that.

For most of us, we don't know what initiating looks like so we came up with a resource on how to initiate. If folks are interested, they can go to OneExtraordinaryMarriage.com/initiate and then get our free download there and it will help them to understand, okay, what does this look like for you? What does this look like for me? It gets that conversation started.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Just to add onto that, that's really where most couples need to have the resources, right? They need to know what the first step is, right? With this list of top 10 ways to initiate sex tonight or today, because we talk about daytime sex a lot, it's just that first step. It's getting them over the hurdle of saying, okay, you know what? Maybe we can talk about this. Just because we've never talked about it doesn't mean we can't. It just means we need to take the first step and that's really where One Extraordinary Marriage comes through for so many people is giving them that first step.

Robert Plank: Well cool. It sounds like, hearing about that and just hearing about all the little things that you guys do that all add up to a lot, it sounds like you guys take this subject that either some people just don't want to talk about it or some people think it's not fun, and it sounds like, especially the way you guys talk, it sounds like you've taken this thing and you kind of made it fun and brought it to light again.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Absolutely. I mean, Tony and I both grew up in homes where sex wasn't talked about, where it wasn't kind of the birds and the bees was the one and only conversation that either one of us had with our parents and that was about it. We realize, you know what? There are a lot of folks out there, that was their experience too and nobody said this is, we give all of this book learning but nobody says this is how you have to deal with a spouse. This is how you have to deal with a husband or a wife and these are the challenges you're going to face. How do you talk about finances? How do you talk about sex? How do you get on the same page in regard to the kids? We just said, you know what? We looked for it and couldn't find it, and so we said, you know what? Somebody's got to step into this space. If it's not out there and we know we need it, we're going to step into that space and that's really how One Extraordinary Marriage started and what it's grown into is a resource for couples literally around the world who are like, "We've never had that conversation. Well Tony and Alisa just did. Let's do it ourselves. Let's see what happens when we do it."

Robert Plank: That's awesome. I think that anyone at any niche can kind of takeaway from that, not just in the save your marriage niche. If there's something out there where you have a problem and you can't find the solution that you guys have just made the solution that you wish existed.

Tony DiLorenzo: Exactly. For anybody who's out there, it takes time. You know what I mean? One Extraordinary Marriage didn't grow to where we are today overnight. Everybody likes to look at us now and go, "Oh my gosh. That was an overnight success." No. It's taken hard work. It's taken years of just learning our craft and our trade and who we serve and continuously coming to our podcast, coming to our site, reaching new people, each and everyday.

Robert Plank: Kind of along those lines. I'm looking at the stuff that you guys have setup. I know that you guys have the podcast, you have these courses, you have all these freebies. Do you have something upcoming or some kind of cool project or some kind of cool area you're excited to get into soon?

Alisa DiLorenzo: Right now we're working on building out some individual group coaching programs. We've done a lot of stuff in the past where it's been targeted for both husband and wife to work on together and what we're looking at right now, what we've come to recognize over the last, probably 3 to 6 months, there are a lot of times that either a husband needs to work in an area or work on himself or a wife needs to work on herself because the fact of the matter is that a relationship is only as healthy as the two people in the relationship. We're in the process right now designing some group coaching programs that will be coming out probably September, October. We're still working on the release date for those of just equipping husbands and wives with the tools that they need to be the best version of themselves in their marriages.

Robert Plank: I like it. Mostly the husband, but not just the husband, right? I know that he's usually wrong.

Alisa DiLorenzo: No. Not at all. My couples, they will tell you and we hear this time and time again when I'm doing individual coaching with couples is that one of the things that surprises them is the fact that I'm able to just come in and really be that 30,000 foot view. It's not all his fault, it's not all her fault. It takes 2 people, with whatever's going on in your relationship, it takes both of you to have gotten there and takes both of you to get to the next level. It's not, the husband has to do all the work or the wife has to do all the work. You both have to work to get to extraordinary.

Robert Plank: Interesting. I like that way of thinking and I like all the stuff that you guys have built and what's cool about this niche, especially that you guys are in is that there's always some kind of new area, right? There's always some kind of new thing that couples need to be working on. It's not just something where someone has back pain, they take a pill, it's over with. There's always new ways to improve, I guess, right?

Tony DiLorenzo: There are many layers. It's just the way to think about it. Think of an onion. We're all so complex and there are many layers. Some people just live on the surface. All their lives, that's where they've lived and now they're married and they're like, "Oh my gosh. I can't live here anymore. I need to go deeper. How do I do that? How do I communicate in my emotional intimacy with my spouse?" Sexual intimacy, financial intimacy, spiritual intimacy. There are many different areas that we come in from and we look at it from different places and continue to just keep going around and looking at it and going, okay, how about this? How about that? How about this? Are you thinking about this?

Nothing is too small. We'll take and we'll dissect little areas and go, "Did you guys think about this?" It's amazing what can happen because that can actually have freedom for somebody. Somebody can break free of their thought process or where they've been or how they grew up, and that's what we just continue to go after.

Robert Plank: That's awesome and what's cool about what you guys have setup is if someone kind of has the personality of, they kind of want to go all-in, they could load up the truck with all your stuff, but even if someone is just kind of curious, like you said, just of solving a little problem now, they can just tune into one episode of the podcast or they can just grab one of the cheat sheets. That's pretty cool that people can just kind of pick and choose where they want to start with you guys and how deep they want to go with you guys, too.

Tony DiLorenzo: Right, exactly. I mean, I'm thinking about, you talk about that. We did a show and we have an article on it called The Ecotone Sound and Sleep Machine. Here is something that we introduced into our own marriage and it's a sound machine that we have in our bedroom that has like 10 different sounds and you can pick it up on Amazon for 99 bucks. We loved it because it allowed us, for us anyways, as our kids were getting older, it drowned out the sound in our room when we were having sex.

Alisa DiLorenzo: It's audio responsive so the louder you get the louder it gets.

Robert Plank: How funny.

Alisa DiLorenzo: Yeah, it's a nice thing.

Robert Plank: What'll they think of next?

Tony DiLorenzo: Right. You talk about just something simple. Something simple as that, Robert, can honestly shift a marriage like you would not believe and we've had testimonies after testimonies about that little machine that people were like, I had no clue. Well, Alisa and I didn't either and we got it, we tested it, we shared it, and now there are other couples and the one family who are like, "We use it all the time. Love it." There you go.

Robert Plank: Nice. They say we've somehow lived for decades without this and how do we even go one day without that thing, right?

Alisa DiLorenzo: That's kind of how we feel about it, yeah.

Robert Plank: Funny. Along those lines, along the lines of the things that you recommend and people finding out about you and buying from you, where can people tune into the podcast, get your videos, get your products, where should they go to find out all that stuff?

Tony DiLorenzo: Sure. Come to our hub, guys. OneExtraordinaryMarriage.com and you'll find everything there. You'll find the articles, you'll find the podcast. If you're on iTunes or you're on your iPhone, go to the podcast app. Just type in One Extraordinary Marriage Show. Subscribe right there and you can start listening. Our store is there. You can learn more about our products, our programs, and who Alisa and I are all about.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Well, I'm really glad that both of you, I got a 2 for 1 deal. I have both of you were able to stop by the show. I always like covering all those weird, random topics and it was really great hearing, not only about how you guys got your start and you were able to spread this message using the internet that you wouldn't have been able to without the internet and the thing is, on this show, a lot of time we talk to self-employed entrepreneurs. This is great for them too because if their marriage is in trouble then everything else suffers. A really great message you guys have. Could you tell us one last time, make sure everyone has it, that URL again.

Tony DiLorenzo: Yeah. It's OneExtraordinaryMarriage.com.

Robert Plank: Perfect. Thanks for being on the show, Tony and Alisa.

Alisa DiLorenzo: You're welcome. Thank you for having us.

Tony DiLorenzo: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Robert.

Sasha Laghonh: Hi Robert, thank you for having me.

Robert Plank: Can you tell me about what it is that you do, what makes you special?

Sasha Laghonh: What makes me special? Well, I have two parallel career paths. My initial career path has to do with business, I have a Bachelors from Austen University with business and also an MBA in Global Management. I started out along my corporate career path where I do a lot of business development and research in the market. That is how I work corporate contracts, helping out executives streamline their business plans and help them with their corporate strategy. On the other side, I also initially started out Sasha Talks where I was selling special counselling services. You're doing the readings and it's more metaphysical work and then a common person would say, well those two interests are really polarizing, because one is really rational and judgmental and the other one is really fluid and it cannot be measured. It got to the point where Sasha Talks started growing at a faster rate than I had anticipated, that I had merged my business consulting businesses onto Sasha Talks, so I could standardize the audience and I wouldn't be chasing two different worlds at the same time.

Robert Plank: Okay, so how did any of this come to be? I know you said that you have this business background and you have this website. How did you get your counselling clients and things like that?

Sasha Laghonh: Sasha Talks was already a part of our ID in theory by the time 2008 came along. When the economy started going down, a lot of my corporate opportunities started getting down sized because of budgets. I told myself, what are some skill sets that I haven't fully capitalized upon. That's when Sasha Talks was launched and I went out, I was doing radio shows, pod casting and at the same time, I was employed by third party websites where you get to defend your services. Whether people are paying you by the minute or buying small packages to talk to you on the phone, or for online chat. At that time I was pressed in between 5 consistent platforms, which are websites owned by private owners. That was providing a form of income, but it got to a point where I said that, if I am going to be helping other people off of third party website, why can I not do that through my own.

At that time I slowly started marketing Sasha Talks and it picked up momentum through Blog Talk radio, BBS radio and basically building a lot of speaking engagements where you're marketing yourself out there. You're giving people samples of your work. You don't have to work for free, but you also have to encourage people to invest their resources in you. Slowly that picked up momentum and I've gotten this far because of word of mouth. The best compliment you can get is a referral. If people have tried you out and they've paid you for your service, they'll share the good news with other people, but if you have bad news, it will travel faster. You have to be mindful of what type of publicity are you attracting. Even though you cannot control the perception of the audience, at the end of the day keep at it and be consistent in what you're offering.

Robert Plank: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. I like a couple of things about that. I like that, first of all, when you saw the economic downturn and you saw people getting down sized, you said, well I have the skill, you're a good speaker or you can feel out someone's business. Now I'm going to change things up a little bit so that now I can replace these business clients that I'm using. The other thing that I like too, is your use of these third party websites. You said, word of mouth and then get traffic from having a Blog Talk radio show. Is there anything else that you look for as far as the traffic you send to your website?

Sasha Laghonh: Other than that, also when I ran Sasha Talks, I think Sasha Talks is composed of three different blogs up to date. The latest blog highlights all of the guests that I host on the platform. Initially the blog had to do with love and relationships because for some reason, a lot of women and men, men usually don't talk about it out loud, have this interest in exploring their love lives and they want to have that looked into. It's usually love and relationships, career and sometimes they want to know a little bit about their life path. Exploring about what goes on within themselves when it comes to the social services. Of course there is a grey area, because those readings fall under the entertainment realm. I'm not delivering a science, it's not a formula, there's so many different spiritualists out there that focus on different types of services, so I have to make that clear. Around the business aspect of it, before I started doing professional coaching, I was doing academic coaching. It gave me an opportunity to slowly merge different types of coaching that I'm doing and complement that with Sasha Talks. It's not completely entertainment, it's an entertainment platform, but it's also a very hands on practical tool that people could apply in their lives if they choose to.

Robert Plank: That sounds pretty cool and that sounds like something that can help a lot of people. Can you kind of walk us through, say someone, they hear about you from some other website or word of mouth and they say, okay, I want to hire Sasha to figure out my career path or something. What's the process someone goes through once they hear from you, they go to the website, what are the steps they take?

Sasha Laghonh: If they've gotten the contact tapes, there's a drop down for requesting a certain type of service and I will follow up with them, usually they hear back from me within 2 to 3 days max. Usually I try to do it within 24 hours. Then I ask them a couple of preliminary questions, to gauge their interest and if they happen to be the right clientele that I work with. I will only work with people who are ready to take action in their life, they're serious about it and they're not just fooling around because they're bored and they're just sending out requests to find out what services are available.

Even though a lot of people have money out there and they're willing to pay you, I'm not only out there for the money, but I want the satisfaction that they're making the right investment. When they walk away, they can say that working with Sasha was worthwhile, because I learned a lot and now I'm applying what she shared with me. Sometimes people are under the impression as, I hate my job, I want this to happen, how come I don't have love in my life, let me go to a coach or spiritualist, pay them and overnight they're going to fix my life. The fixing can only be done by the client. I can only provide you with the ingredients and the tools of how to go about fixing it, or how to find your perfect career opportunity. Or how to have a healthy relationship, how to attract money, how to build a business. Those are things that can be taught to a degree, but if the person doesn't want to apply it, it doesn't mean a thing to me and they'll be out of money.

Robert Plank: Basically, you have this initial meeting to figure out if they're coachable, and if they're someone that you'll actually feel fulfilled with by meeting with them I guess.

Sasha Laghonh: Yes, because I'm looking for results. Initially, when I started out, I think I was a bit more hopeful, but you are more invested in your clients' well being, but I would find clients that didn't care that much. They thought that I could just go to one person, have a one time meeting, pay them, and they'll fix my life problems. It doesn't quite work that way. It's more of an engagement, and it's a two way street. I am there to help you and there to coach you. At the end of the day, once they walk away, I want to make sure that they're able to sustain the level of success that they want once they achieve it.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense, you can only kind of show them the way. You have this first meeting and then if you decide that they want to move forward, then what's the next step.

Sasha Laghonh: Once we decide that we'll be working together, then I give them a handful of questions and then we start our sessions, whether it's on Skype, chat or phone and then I work them through, what are their challenges and stuff that they want to learn new stuff about.

Typically, when clients come to me, lately the questions that I get have to do with entrepreneurship. How do I take the first step? Part of it that I usually drill into them, is that plan ahead of time. You can't go to work on a Monday morning if you're working corporate and thinking, I hate my job, I'm going to run out and just start a business. All that requires planning and a process. There's the other hand where I meet people where they plan so much to become an entrepreneur, but they haven't put any of the plan into action. It says they haven't taken any steps to move away from being dependent on, whether it's corporate America or any third party that's providing them with an income. You have to learn how to strike a balance, but also have to explain to people that want to make a change of why it's necessary to take action. I know a lot of people who will plan, but they will not take any action.

Robert Plank: What's the fix for that?

Sasha Laghonh: Typically, I ask them what is holding them back and what are the emotional blocks within them? It could be anxiety and fear, because you can understand anxiety, if you're getting paid bi-weekly, you're going to go from getting paid bi-weekly to whenever you make your first sale. The goal that entrepreneurship has to do with, not only working for yourself, but having the passion that will drive you to the point of creating consistent form of income. Unless they could answer those health questions, I cannot help them. It's one of those things, you could give a person who needs help, all of the resources out there in the world, but if they're not ready to take that leap of faith, it's as they haven't done anything yet. They need to feel emotionally secure to say, I'm going to take a leap of faith and no matter what happens, or what the outcome is, I can live with it.

Robert Plank: How does someone get to that point?

Sasha Laghonh: I feel that some of my clients get to that point with time. Not just time heals, because I think time accommodates. Once somebody brings your attention of what is holding you back, what do you fear and if some of you know how to plan and you have a contingency plan and you have the right support telling you, you have a good idea. This is the time to take those steps. If you have the wrong people surrounding you, whether its friends or family, or people who care for you, and you want to be an entrepreneur but your idea, I don't like to say, it sucks, a lot of people will hold their true opinions back and kind of set up a person to fail. They don't want to be that messenger. People are entitled to their opinions, it doesn't meant the potential entrepreneur has to agree with them, but you need someone to give you objective and honest feedback. At the end of the day, I don't have anything vested in there. I'm not investing money in them, I'm investing tools in them and I want them to do well.

Robert Plank: Would you say that that's a big part of what you do? Being that objective person and maybe not being mean on purpose, but also not just telling them what they want to hear?

Sasha Laghonh: Right and I will say my strategy is tough love, but I'm not someone who's loud, vulgar or into yelling or any of that. I do bring alternative perspective, where I ask them all these questions that say, what are you going to do if this, this doesn't work out? What is your backup plan if you get rejected for funding, do you have a business plan? Do you even know the market that you're selling to? All of these questions that they should be able to have an idea. Sometimes people are in love with the idea of starting a business, but they have no clue where to begin, which is okay. They have to do their own homework and paying a stranger can only get you so far, but on a bad day, let's say if you're working for yourself and the economy goes bust, and we can't afford all of the talent around you, you still need to know how to run your own home. You still need to know how to run your own business. Somebody has to come in and say, have you thought about these things? Of course, with everything that we do in our life, no matter how many years you've been working for yourself, there's always something new that we learn in the process. You can't depend on other people forever.

Robert Plank: Right. That makes a lot of sense. Out of everything we've talked about today, or maybe there's something else, but you have all these coaching clients and some of them are uncertain about transitioning out of a day job, or some of them have these missing pieces in their business. Do you see a common problem or like a number one problem that you keep seeing over and over with these coaching and consulting clients that you have?

Sasha Laghonh: One of my pet peeves is that usually they pay too much attention to what everybody else is doing that they jump on the bandwagon without even questioning, do I need to do what my competitor's doing, do I need to do what my friend is doing. My family member told me it works out perfect for them, so I should do it too. I want individuals to question things that they're exposed to. Question information that comes your way, question the source. People may mean well, but at the end of the day, if you're putting up your own resources and your own money and you run dry, you don't want to be standing there alone in bankruptcy court, blaming everybody else. I would say, just be accountable for the financial decisions you make, be accountable for the people that you bring into your professional path. We don't get to control who comes in or leaves, but be responsible for those who become part of your business. At the end of the day, you're the one putting the food on the table.

Robert Plank: I like that and yeah, I like that whole message. I think that it's really easy to get bullied and get pushed around by someone else's opinions that it's easy for them to make because it doesn't affect them, but it sure as heck affects you.

Sasha Laghonh: Yes, and even though it is a business, you should bring your passion and your energy into it, but keep your emotions in check. Sometimes people get so emotional, whether for better or worse, that we forget to be rational when you have to make these decisions. They get caught up in the moment and then they might realize, somebody goes to the bank and they end up walking out with a larger loan than they need and later in time they realize that I didn't need all that money and I don't have the resources to pay it back. Or they get excited with a friend doing business that they're not well equipped to navigate through the friendship when the times get rough, because this is getting in the way. There's so many different variables about balancing the rational and the emotional aspects of running a business and living your life day to day.

Robert Plank: Interesting, it sounds like a big part of this, it seems like there are a lot of things that can trip people up, but having that objective person to talk to and listen to, sounds like it's super important. I like the way that you explain your coaching, that you don't just necessarily tell someone what to do, but you kind of ask all the right questions and get them to think things through about their life and about their business.

Sasha Laghonh: Yes and I want people to know that even if they go seek out a coach, a spiritualist, whichever type of professional, to know that they are qualified to grant you guidance. To always question your source, it doesn't mean that it's a one way type of communication that they come to me. They could ask me questions about what my thoughts are, but at the end of the day, I always tell them, it's not what Sasha will do or what your friend will do, or what your family member will do, you are the one making the decisions and you have to live with the ramifications. You have to feel comfortable in your own skin. If you feel you're getting bullied by people, then chances are high that you need to change the type of people you are seeking information from, or doing business with. You're working for yourself and if you don't feel comfortable in your own home per se, then something is wrong.

Robert Plank: Oh yeah, it's hard to disagree with that one. Kind of along those lines as far as people who, if someone out there they want to make a change, they want to fix things, they want to get a coach, they want to read about what you have to say and they want to find out all about Sasha, where can they go and where should they go to find out all that information?

Sasha Laghonh: Sure, they're welcome to go to SashaTalks.com. Even thought they don't need a session or a package of sessions, because I'm not in the business of keeping people to become a forever client. I'm there just to help them and I always treat each client as if we are not meant to meet again, this is what I'm parting with so they know how to proceed forward. If they need a critique for their business or something, I am available again at SashaTalks.com.

Robert Plank: Awesome, so thanks for not only sharing what you have to say about people helping themselves, but I also like the little behind the scenes bit about how you kind of adapted yourself and kind of adjusted a coaching business so that it would continue to grow, even when the whole outside world changed on you. Pretty cool stuff, SashaTalks.com. Thanks for being on the show Sasha.

Sasha Laghonh: Thank you Robert, for having me.

Rodney Hughes: Hey, thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Robert Plank: Cool, and I'm happy that you are here. Could you tell me about what it is that you do, and what makes you different and special?

Rodney Hughes: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For the last decade, what I've been focused on is I create sales and marketing solutions for various different organizations. I've worked with the Federal Government, non-profit organizations. I've worked with many different private sector organizations and what I do is I pretty much go in, figure out where the gaps are in the business and create strategies to solve that. Whether it be online sales and marketing solutions or whether it's in-person sales and marketing solutions.

Robert Plank: Could you give us an example of that?

Rodney Hughes: Yeah, yeah. As an example, I'll give you my most recent one. There's a gentleman that I'm working with, that I just got finished working with actually, who owns a ... He has a barbecue company. He does barbecue sauces and things of that nature. One of the things we did for him is we created a lead generation website for him, so that he can start collecting the contact information of the people that are interested in what he's offering, as far as sauces and things of that nature. We're helping him and we helped create a strategy that we're trying to get him to have at least 5,000 new subscribers over the course of the next 2 years, so that he can have a basis for driving online sales.

Robert Plank: Awesome so you're making the whole website for him, an opt-in for him, traffic and all that good stuff?

Rodney Hughes: Yeah, all that type of stuff. Then also helping him come up with online and offline strategies to actually drive that forward.

Robert Plank: Like what?

Rodney Hughes: Say it again?

Robert Plank: Like what? What strategies are you using to get those 5,000 subscribers coming in?

Rodney Hughes: This particular gentleman, he goes to various flea markets and various different retail locations. While he's out, what I mentioned to him was that it's one thing to get that immediate dollar, right? Which you definitely always want to drive sales but the reality is that sometimes situations come up, either people didn't feel like buying right there in that moment or maybe they might want to buy a little bit later or whatever, and so what we did was we said, "Listen. When you have people and you're giving out samples, hey offer this irresistible offer right here that's going to intrigue them and make them want to actually jump on your list.

Then, once a week, you want to actually give a recipe of the week or just ... " I tried to teach him how to also do a little bit of video blogging as well, so that he can have other ways of actually engaging with these people once they get on his list. He's building his list primarily through when he's giving samples to people, he has an irresistible offer that he shares with them. They decide whether or not they want to jump on his list at that time.

Robert Plank: Interesting. Are you seeing, with these businesses that you're helping out such as like this barbecue man and stuff like that, are you seeing the pieces that are missing for a lot of these businesses, is it the really simple stuff? Or is it more like advanced and complicated stuff?

Rodney Hughes: 9 times out of 10, it's really the simple stuff. I'll tell you like I told him. It surprises me, just think about this for a second, think about how many businesses that you've been to personally, okay, over the last year that you had a really, really great experience. Maybe it was a new restaurant like have you gone to a new restaurant lately, that you really, really liked?

Robert Plank: In the past few months, yeah.

Rodney Hughes: While you were at that restaurant, at any time throughout that ... From the moment that you walked in that restaurant, did they try to get to actually engage with you and get you to opt-in to some type of either coupon service or anything along those lines?

Robert Plank: Opting in no but, if they had, I for sure would have opted in.

Rodney Hughes: Got it. I want you to really think about this for a second, okay? The average American comes in contact with, it's estimated, comes in contact with somewhere between 5 to 7,000 ads every single day. That might be shooting it a little bit short if they're in a huge market like Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles or somewhere like that. If they're coming in contact ... If the average American is coming in contact with that many ads, what that means is that, simultaneously, they're coming in contact with 5,000 to 7,000 different promises every day.

Because they're coming in contact with all of that, all of these promises, all of these offers and all of ... Just all the stuff, what ends up happening is it creates an environment where the average person is trying to block out a whole bunch of different stuff, right? As a business owner, if you do a good enough job, think about all the things that you have to do, that restaurant had to do to actually even become a blip on your radar to where they were even able to get you to come in and try their actual food. Now, they did all this work. They probably invested thousands of dollars in advertising.

Then when you come in there, you have an amazing experience but then, when you leave, they didn't even ask to connect with you. Now what ends up happening is, as a business owner, that forces that business owner to have to borrow on other people's lines of communication. That's really all you're doing when you're advertising. When you advertise it on the Superbowl, you paid millions of dollars because you're trying to borrow the Superbowl's actual line of communication with their end users, right? When you advertise on the radio, when you advertise anywhere, you're paying to borrow on the line of communication. Now you've done all this work to get a person to come into your establishment, and you're not even attempting to connect with them so that you can own your own line of communication.

Robert Plank: Interesting.

Rodney Hughes: That is what we call, and I'm not trying to be rude here, but it will, in business, that is penny wise and dollar foolish. What you're doing is you're doing a lot of work upfront to get them to come through the door so that you can make that immediate sale, but what about all the other sales, right? Is it possible that restaurant that you went to, that you would want to go back sometime, right?

Robert Plank: If I liked it, for sure.

Rodney Hughes: Yeah, if you liked it, yeah, you would want to go back. Guess what? Is it also possible that you're distracted with all kinds of stuff, stuff going on at the job, stuff going on in your family, stuff, just regular day-to-day habitual things that you do every day. Is it possible that you might not ... It might not cross your mind to go back there? If they would have been connected with you and would have found creative ways to stay in communication with you, you might have would have thought to yourself, oh man. It's been a minute since I went there, maybe I should go back.

Robert Plank: Would you say that with these businesses that you're helping out, is this one of the first things you look for? Some way for them to capture some leads and follow up.

Rodney Hughes: From my ... No, well yes and no. When I look at a business or when my company, as a whole, looks at a business, me and my team, what ends up happening is I train my entire team ... I guess you could say our unique selling proposition is that we help companies explode their sales performance in 90 days or less, okay? The way that we do that is we really focus on identifying 4 key things. Number one is how well do they handle obscurity, right? Here's the reality. If you're in a place of obscurity as a business, then you can have the greatest product in the world but I can't do business with you if I don't know you exist. Very first thing I look at, with any organization, is how well are they at overcoming obscurity?

The second thing is I look for missed opportunities. Where are you missing opportunities? This particular scenario that I just explained to you, that was a missed opportunity. Those are missed opportunities where he's not trying to connect, where he wasn't previously connecting with people who showed interest in what it is he had to offer. That's why we created strategies to take advantage of that, and to actually effectively address that situation, okay?

The third thing that I look for is, I look for what's already working in the business. I try to ... We try to enhance that. If you're knocking it out the park, selling a whole bunch of different sauces, how can we enhance that? How can we get people to buy more sauces or how can we get people to buy other complementary products or whatever?

Then the fourth thing that we look for is we look at where is the business wasting time and wasting effort? At the end of the day, there's no difference between your business and Microsoft. There's no difference between Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway. At the end of the day, every single business has 24 hours to get things done. If you're investing a lot of time, energy and resources into things that are not working, that are not getting you the results that you really need to get done, you're better off just eliminating those things. When we couple all 4 of those things together and take a look at an organization, it allows us to create a sales and marketing solution that can really drive things forward and do it in a very fast manner.

Robert Plank: Cool so it's customized to them, then?

Rodney Hughes: Yes.

Robert Plank: Just to make sure that I got your 4 points right. You look at these 4 things. Number one, how they handle obscurity. Number 2, the missed opportunities. Number 3, what's already working that you can enhance and then number 4, where they're wasting the time and effort.

Rodney Hughes: Correct.

Robert Plank: I mean something that you mentioned a few minutes ago, a little bit off-handedly, is with this particular case study that you're mentioning, you get .. In this case, what he was doing was he was going to these events, he was getting people on a list and sending them offers. You mentioned really quick that you had some creative ways to get people back to the business. Do you have any cool, just creative things you've been doing lately, that are maybe not the usual stuff, in order to help someone's business?

Rodney Hughes: Got it. I mean it really varies because something that is not usual in one industry might be completely usual in another industry, right? It's not usual to have an opt-in type of situation for a company that sells barbecue sauce. I think that sometimes business owners, they are trying to be super-unique with things and I think you can be unique sometimes just by looking at what's working in other industries. As an example, let's say the drive-through window, right? The drive-through window actually, at restaurants, actually came from the banking industry.

They got that from the banking industry and it allowed them to be very effective. The drive-through concept was not a new concept but it was new to an industry. They were able to implement it. Now, it's just almost a common way of doing business now for fast food industries. What I usually do is I look at other industries, see what's working very well and see is there any way that we can make that work for a particular business in a particular situation?

Robert Plank: I like that and that's pretty powerful. That makes me think of ... I mean I wish more businesses had drive-throughs, right? Or even I remember a few years ago, I was playing around with Domino's Pizza's website. I think I might have bought a Domino's Pizza one time and then, at some point, I ended up on their text blast list. I know for sure that I didn't unsubscribe from it but I might have just stopped getting the messages. I stopped buying from them, but I thought it was cool that they would not only be building this list of all these SMS subscribers but they would go and send a message right before lunch.

Rodney Hughes: Yeah.

Robert Plank: That's a cool thing. In any other industry that's not doing that, that seems like a pretty easy way to find the low hanging fruit there.

Rodney Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, I think that ... See, here's the deal. One of the ways that I like ... In my book, the very first principle that I mention in my book is the 10 principles of selling domination. It says, "You're only in one business. You're in the money getting business and never forget that." The reason why I say that, the reason why that's the leading principle, is because the problem that a lot of people have is, number one, they have no earthly idea what business they're in, okay? Every single business, there's only one business on God's green earth.

Hey, guess what? Wells Fargo is in the exact same business as Walmart. Walmart is in the exact same business I'm in. I'm in the exact same business you're in and so on and so on and so on. We're in the money getting business and that's not about being greedy. It's about focus, right? What people ... If you don't understand that you're in the money getting business, then your focus isn't going to be right. If you understand that you're in the money getting business, now you maybe in a different industry, there are many different industries, many different products, many different services.

If you understand that you're in the money getting business, the reason why that will help you tremendously is because then you'll get to understand like, "Okay. If we're all in the same business, then I might easily be able to see what's going on in an industry that I know nothing about but that is working ... I see is working very well. I might be able to get something from that and make it work in my industry." At the end of the day, the goal is always the same which is to find people that you can serve, help and collect money in exchange for serving and helping them. Does that make sense?

Robert Plank: Yeah, it does. I think that's some pretty dang good advice because I think that, when I was younger, I would not really pay a lot of attention to other businesses. I think that once I started looking at these other businesses that seemed to be doing well and saying, "Okay. Here's what they're doing to get people in." I can guesstimate, "Okay they get this number of people in per day and they're probably making this amount of money." It helps to, instead of in the past I would write these other businesses off, to look at it from an outsider's perspective, almost like a reverse engineering perspective and just look at what it is that they're doing. It seems like if they keep doing it, it must be working for them.

Rodney Hughes: Yes, exactly.

Robert Plank: Would you say that, with all these businesses you helped, would you say that their big mistake is that they're not looking ... They're not comparing themselves to other businesses? Or would you say that there's an even bigger thing they're all missing out on?

Rodney Hughes: It's not so much about comparing yourself to other businesses. I think the biggest thing, some of the biggest things that people miss out on is that they ... I think sometimes people want this to be very difficult, okay? What I mean by that is there's a lot of things that are very, very simple but it doesn't mean that it's easy but it is simple, right? If, at the end of the day, if you understand that if you have a great product, service or solution, which I urge everyone to represent great products, services and solutions, but if you're not doing everything you possibly can every single day to get out and let people know about what it is that you're doing, you're not setting yourself up for success.

See, here's the thing. A lot of people, in business, a lot of people that I encounter in business, let's put it that way, a lot of people that I encounter in business, they fall in love with the business so much that they don't focus on the things that actually make the business work. What I mean by that is let's say you're a baker, right? First off, like I said, there's only one business in God's green earth. If you think you're in the baking business, then you're not going to perform nearly as high as another baker down the street that understands that they're in the money getting business.

This is, listen, this is 100% proven. Let's use McDonald's as an example. McDonald's is in the money getting business. If you look at just how they operate, it doesn't take long for you to understand that they understand they're in the money getting business. If I was in a room full of a million people and I asked a million people to raise your hand and say, "How many of you know who McDonald's is?" Almost everybody, if not everybody, would put their hands up. Would you agree?

Robert Plank: Yes, I would.

Rodney Hughes: If I was in that same room, right after I asked that question, and I say, "Hey. How many of you have had a better hamburger than McDonald's?" I'm almost sure that 100% of everybody would raise their hand and say, "Hey. I've had a better hamburger somewhere else." Would you agree with that?

Robert Plank: Yes, I would.

Rodney Hughes: Then I say, right after that I say, "Now let me ask you something. How many of those places that you had the better hamburger at can say 90 billion served?"

Robert Plank: None.

Rodney Hughes: Nobody's hands would go up.

Robert Plank: Interesting. What you're saying is you're seeing a lot of people who, they fall in love with the business or they ... You used the baker example. You could have a baker who they love baking but they ignore the business side of it. Or they don't focus on making it a machine or a system that just works really smoothly, keeps bringing people in and keeps making money. That's a huge problem you're saying.

Rodney Hughes: Exactly, exactly. There are too many people that have really, really great products and they invest a considerable amount of time into making sure the product, the service or solution is great. I'm not against that. I'm totally for that. I want you to have ... Represent great stuff because it really does help. I want you to focus on understanding business, you understand? You're good at what you do which is either if you're a chiropractor, you're good at doing chiropractic stuff, right? If you're an accountant, maybe you're great at crunching numbers and that's great.

I want you to be great at that but don't neglect being the business. The business is what's going to differentiate you. The business is what's going to ultimately lead to your great success. Doesn't it suck to have a great product, service or solution, you look down the street and you're getting your head beat in by somebody who has a far less superior product, service or solution in the exact same market that you're in?

Robert Plank: I mean that's a blow to the ego there.

Rodney Hughes: You see what I'm saying?

Robert Plank: Yeah.

Rodney Hughes: Guess what? If the person down the street understands hey, I'm in the money getting business. Then they're probably going to have way better sales results than you have, if you think that you're in whatever other business you think you're in.

Robert Plank: Cool so it sounds like that people, if they want, they can have the best of everything, right? They can have a good business that everyone knows about and they can be good at whatever skill it is that they're in.

Rodney Hughes: Absolutely, absolutely. I totally believe that you can be great at both things. I just feel that it's just a matter of focus and intention, you know what I mean?

Robert Plank: Oh yeah.

Rodney Hughes: If you neglect ... See, that's the thing. A lot of people neglect the business side of things. They neglect the marketing, they don't want to do that. They're just like, "Man I just want to bake." In that baker scenario, they're just like, "Man I just like cooking, period." If that's the case, then maybe that should just be ... If you're not willing to do the things to make the business grow big enough to where it would be happy for you, everybody doesn't want to be a millionaire, billionaire, whatever, right? If you're not willing to learn what it takes to get to the level of success that you desire from a business standpoint, then maybe that should just be a hobby and you should just get a job.

Robert Plank: I mean kind of harsh advice but I mean I think that a lot of people need to hear that.

Rodney Hughes: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm not trying to be harsh. I'm just trying to call it how I see it.

Robert Plank: Be real, yeah.

Rodney Hughes: If you're not willing ... That's just like if you want to lose weight, you're not willing to work out and change up how you eat, well then you can't out work a bad diet. I mean I don't know what else to say to you. You can buy as many gym memberships as you want.

Robert Plank: I mean I agree with you there. I think that this is really important. I think that this is something that every business owner needs to hear, especially if they're maybe making things a little too hard on themselves. It doesn't have to be that way. Can you tell us about your website, your coaching, your book and all that cool stuff?

Rodney Hughes: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you ... My website is MarketingSS.com. I have a book called Selling Domination: Your Blueprint for Selling More and Generating an Extraordinary Income. It's a fantastic book. It's a short read. I wrote this book because I wrote the book that I wish I would have been able to have when I first got started in business. I want it to be a quick read that is really packed with value. Anybody that's in business, doesn't matter whether you're entrepreneur, business owner, sales professional, no matter what, this is a great book for somebody to have. Even if you're not even in business, because selling is such an integral part of success, period.

I don't care what field that you decide to go into, this would be a great book to have. If you wanted to pick up a copy of that, you can get it at www.sellingdominationbook.com. If you want more free just information from me directly, you like the way that I look at business and like to learn more, if you go to my regular website, marketingss and that's Sam Sam. It's short for Marketing Synergy Solutions. If you go to marketingss.com, you go to my video blog session section, you'll see I have tons of content that you can have access to. There you go.

Robert Plank: Awesome so lots of cool stuff, SellingDominationBook.com and MarketingSS.com. Rodney, thanks for being on the show and thanks for sharing what you had to share with us. I appreciate everything you have to say.

Rodney Hughes: Thanks for having me on the show. I hope that I was able to give some great value and I look forward to connecting with you in the future.

Robert Plank: Looking forward to that too, thanks a bunch.

Kyra, welcome to the show. Tell us about yourself and what makes you different and special.

Kyra Reed: I've been in the industry 12 years now. I was very fortunate to have my first client in my agency in LA. The Roxy Theater on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in West Hollywood ... Legendary club, family owned ... I was able to at the very beginning of social media, go in and really help them save, not only the business, but the entire Sunset Strip. It was featured in "The New York Times," "TechCrunch," "Entrepreneur Magazine" and on and on. Lots of national publications ...

Became one of the biggest case studies around music and social media to date ... That gave me a tremendous amount of insight. I had a lot of freedom to really play and explore and check out this new emerging technology. Really see what works, what doesn't because I've been there since the very beginning.

That led me and my business partner to develop a process that we call "The Social System," where we help companies, actually, in our 5-point system accomplish everything that they need in their social strategy. No one has anything like it. Whether you're a solo-preneur or a Fortune 500 company, it scales. It's usable. It's simple, and it encompasses everything that you need. That's what makes me different.

Robert Plank: Cool. What are the 5 points of that system, or is that a secret?

Kyra Reed: No. We're happy to talk about it. It is something that we developed because we wanted to create some standards in this industry. Everybody seems to be an expert or a guru. The industry itself, can't decide on what are the specific processes that we should all agree with.

What we came up with is very simple 5 steps. They boil down to this. Number 1, first thing you have to know is who are you? You got to look at your branding and your messaging. That has to come first. Second, who are you talking to? How do you look at your customers and really understand them from a social perspective, which means, how are they feeling when they come through that door? What is their emotional state? What is your promise to them and the needs that they have? This is a very different way of looking at your customers.

Next is, what are you saying? That's your content strategy. We can't put your content strategy together until we know who you are and what you're saying. Thing is, most people want to come in, and they want to get right into that content strategy or right into growth strategy. It's impossible to do that effectively and authentically, which you must do when you're working in social media, unless we know who are you and who are you talking to.

Who are you? Who are you talking to? What are you saying? How are you selling? Selling on social media is absolutely possible. You can do it very successfully, but again, you've got to know who are you, who are you talking to, and what are you saying, before you can get into the sell.

The last piece of it is, actually, growth and maintenance. That's where your policies come in. Which platform should you be on? How are you going to grow your community? All of those things people want to start with, but they're not important. They're not something you can really focus on, until you know, who are you, who are you talking to, what are you saying, how are you selling.

Robert Plank: I like how that's all broken down. Like you said, it has everything you need, but it's simple and you can just easily look at it and see. See if someone's starting over with the social media or looking at what's working and what's not working. You mentioned a couple of minutes ago that the way you got your start was by fixing and helping out The Roxy Theater's marketing effort. How long ago was this? Was this marketing, in general, or were you helping with their social side of things?

Kyra Reed: Yeah. It was social-specific. I started working with them 10 years ago in November. At that time, the Sunset Strip was really pretty much the has been. I worked in the music industry and my friends would say, "Don't think I'm going to to go The Roxy, just because you're working with them. That place sucks."

It had gone from this club in the '60s and '70s and '80s ... It was just the be all, end all. They were launching all these great bands to nobody wanted to go. They were really close to closing their doors. It was when Tower Records shut down. The owner had this epiphany, "Oh my gosh, I'm next if I don't get my act together, but we don't have any money to do a re-branding and re-marketing."

I met him right at that time and I said, "Look, let's shake it up. Let's take down your website and put up a blog." Now, that sounds like no big deal, but we were the very first ever to do that. Now, every music venue has a blog as their website. We were the first. We got ridiculed for it, actually.

I got the owner on Twitter. I got him on Facebook. I think we were number 1,900 on Twitter. We'd completely revolutionized the way that the whole club process was done because we went from having what we called a "velvet rope mentality," where we kept everybody out.

We took those ropes down. We invited the whole world into the club. We made friends with everybody. We gave away tickets. We started the Tweet Crawl. The very first ever Tweet Crawl. We brought the entire community of the Sunset Strip together. The first time in 40, 50, 60 years that that entire street was working together as opposed to these siloed businesses. What we did is we took all of these principles on social media, authenticity, transparency, community and we looked at how can we integrate these into what we're doing every day?

As a result, not only The Roxy but Nic Adler, the owner of The Roxy became a real social media pioneer. For several years, he was on the speaking circuit. Everybody wanted to know, "What had The Roxy done? What had the Sunset Strip done to save itself." We did it with no budget. We did it all with social media, using community, using the ability to communicate with customers and really be on top of customer service.

Give people what they wanted ... Communicate with them. Use our great photos. Use the access we had with artists, and it changed everything.

Robert Plank: All this happened 10 years ago, and it sounds like you guys were the pioneers for a lot of this stuff. If none of this existed, how did you come across these ideas? Was it a matter of trying out these experiments, or was it seeing what the need was? How did you come up with all this?

Kyra Reed: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- It was a course of 5 years. We started 10 years ago, and we worked really hard at it for about 5 years. Then it kind of went on auto-pilot. The way that I came to these conclusions ... I was living in Portland. I was managing bands, and I was hired by a band manager who said, "I need you to figure out this blogging thing." It was a brand new word, brand new idea. They'd just broke in a band called "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah." It was the first band to ever break on a blog.

I started digging around and doing research. I saw this really interesting thing that music blogs were promoting their competition. They were reposting their competition's work, and everybody was happy to do it. Then I was fortunate enough to come across a documentary called "Revolution OS." "Revolution OS" talked about open source and how the idea of open source ideology, where we have this open sharing of information, that it's going to change everything.

It's going to change how people relate to each other. It's going to change how business is done. It's going to put consumers in the driver's seat. I saw this happening. Gosh, that was 2 years even before I met up with The Roxy. This is 12 years ago. Shortly after that, I picked up a book called "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson. It all came together for me, exactly what was going to be happening and that it was going to be fueled by people's desires to connect and the fact that technology was going to make that happen. How that was going to change business ...

I applied those very abstract, vague ideas to company that I was fortunate ... Unlike my business partner, who was working at Live Nation and Ticketmaster at the time, she had to prove every single thing that she did based on a dollar. Which was really great because she was one of the first to actually be able to prove that social could make money ...

I had the freedom to play. I had the freedom to really experiment with community and what does that mean? How authentic and how transparent can you be? What do you need to keep to yourself? What do you need to share? What's being risky? What is really going to ... There are a lot of really interesting stories that I have from that time, and one of my favorites is when we had a concert at The Roxy.

The act was late, and so, people had to wait outside longer. They had problems with sound check, and it really wasn't The Roxy's fault. At the time, "The LAist" used to love to pick on The Roxy. Everybody loved to pick on The Roxy. It was like low-hanging fruit. It was an easy target. Of course they came back, and they wrote a horrible review and ripped the Roxy to shreds.

Based on this idea of authenticity, Nic went ahead, and he left this long comment explaining everything that happened. At the end of it, he said, "You know. We're here, and we are really trying. We know we have messed up with our public, and we are really trying. I want to hear from you guys because we're going to do everything we can to make this a better experience for you."

He put his phone number in the comment and said, "Call me and let me know if you have problems with The Roxy. We're going to fix it right away."

Robert Plank: Interesting.

Kyra Reed: That was the last negative review we ever had.

Robert Plank: That's cool, and I love little stories like that because it's one thing for you to say, "Here are the mechanics. Here are the steps" and stuff like that. I always like the little stories where you do something random and crazy, to not just get attention, make more money as well.

Kyra Reed: I'll tell you another really quick story to demonstrate because I think a lot of people do not understand the power of social. A lot of people just think, "Well, you know, I have to do this to promote my company. It's because it's where everybody is. It's just what I have to do." The power of social when you use it right ...

That's how we started with The Roxy. It was everybody's favorite whipping horse, right? Seven years later, "The Voice" ... The TV show "The Voice" ... Adam Levine starts reviewing a woman who did a Michelle Branch song. He says, "You know, Michelle Branch ... I played with her at The Roxy, and The Roxy sucks. They didn't give me a dressing room," and he looked right at the camera and said something really nasty about The Roxy.

They air on the East Coast ahead of the West Coast. Nic, the owner of The Roxy, his phone started blowing up about all these tweets about The Roxy. He got on, saw a real quick YouTube video about what was said and was shocked. He immediately got in touch with the Yahoo music editor, had them redo the marquee at The Roxy and tweeted, "Adam Levine? Come on? Really?"

That was it. Once it hit the West Coast feed, his response to the Yahoo music editor went out. It said, "Look. You were our house band for a long time. You know that it's not our fault. The lead band chooses who gets the dressing room, not us. We love you, man." It was with a photo of the marquee on The Roxy that said, "Adam Levine, your dressing room is ready." That was it.

"TMZ," "Hollywood Reporter," "Vanity Fair" ... Everybody picked that story up, and our community came to our rescue so seriously that it changed the face of The Roxy because our community loves and supports that venue so much now because of all the work that we did that we don't have to do much. Nobody could attack The Roxy. We went from being the favorite whipping boy in L.A. to the golden child of the music scene there.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool, and the best part of that is that you guys were able to react within an hour or 2. You were able to react very quickly.

Kyra Reed: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- This is why you've got to get out there and build your audience because when you do, your audience is going to protect you. They're going to come and rally around you, and they're going to spread the word for you. Then when you can leverage and see what you can do, and you can keep an eye on who's tweeting about you, who's talking about you ... You can respond with levity. You cannot buy that kind of press and marketing. You just can't.

Robert Plank: I've noticed that some brands are really good about doing that. A few of the airlines and stuff like Taco Bell ... I noticed that all day long, they have, for sure, a team of some kind just responding every couple of minutes to whoever's tweeting them with whatever kind of problem. They're super responsive in that way.

Kyra Reed: Yes, and I'll tell you ... Southwest Airlines ... I just had a horrible experience with them, but man, they were on it. I've tweeted about it. They got to me immediately and made me feel like, "All right. Some things didn't work, but they cared. They care about their customers. They don't want people walking away feeling crappy about interacting with this brand." I have brands that won't do that, and it makes me want to leave them.

Robert Plank: Is this what you do? Is this primarily what you do? You go to these brands who may be could be marketing better on social, and you just whip them into shape, I guess?

Kyra Reed: I wish that more brands would let me do it, to be honest with you. Social is still something that is relegated to the back burner. It's an add-on. People don't understand the real value and power that it has, and they're scared of it because it requires making a transition from old-school marketing, which was one-way communication. "I decide, based on whatever focus group or arbitrary thing I want to say what my public is going to hear from me. I don't want to answer questions. I don't want to reveal too much, and I don't want to get involved."

That's really, truly the viewpoint of a lot of businesses. "I don't need social media. We're doing just fine without it." The reality is you could be doing a thousand times better because every brand gets checked out on Facebook. Every brand is getting reviewed by hundreds of people a day, whether they know it or not. How you interact with the public says so much to consumers these days.

People want to kind of pin it under PR. They want to pin it under marketing. They don't really understand that social is its own beast. It's its own dynamic, and it has the power to completely change a company. It has the power to affect sales and PR, marketing, customer service, product development, everything, even HR. There's a lot of untapped resource. The result is a lot of people entering the market that don't know what they're doing, so a lot of people say it doesn't work.

"Eh, social doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's a waste of time. It's waste of money. It's too noisy." It's noisy with a lot of people that don't understand how to use it. There's still a lot of untapped potential there for a lot of brands, and I do. I wish that more brands would hand over the keys to me and let me just turn them over.

Robert Plank: You start doing your thing and playing around, right?

Kyra Reed: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Robert Plank: Along those lines, what are your thoughts ... The thing I'm still trying to come to terms with, I guess with all this social media marketing stuff, is how do you reconcile the promotional part of it ... The tweeting the links versus everyone wants to be silly and go viral and be like the Old Spice guy. What are your thoughts in that whole area?

Kyra Reed: That's advertising. That's where you craft very a specific persona for a product release ... Oreo does that really well. Doritos does it really well. These brands ... They can get away with it because they're enormous brands, and their target market is Millennials. There's also a lot of inauthenticity that goes along with it. Smaller brands ... They actually really need to ... Go back to that 5-point system.

Who are you? Who are you authentically? You've got to show up as who you really are. They way you do that is by talking about your values. If you go in, just trying to push sales, you're going to lose people. If you go in, and you say, "Look, let's take a example of ..." A really easy one ... A company that makes baby gear that's an eco-company, right? This company is going to talk about the fact that, "Look, we value sustainable products. We value fair-trade products. Let's feature some of our vendors. Where we get the products from ... Let's take some product shots from our manufacturing facility. Let's really talk about why these products are really important to have around your baby and in your home."

If you really look at what your values are as a brand, you have so much to talk about that your customers want to hear. The brands go off on this other track, where they don't realize that that is the most important thing. We want to know about the companies that we're buying from. If they tell us what is important to them, and we find resonance with that, you've just made a loyal customer. You've just created trust, and trust is so hard to get with consumers these days.

If you're open about why you do what you do and what's important to you, you're going to draw the right customer, and they're immediately going to have trust for you. That's how we are as humans. If you and I meet, and we say, "Oh, we have the same religion," or "We have the same location" or the same profession ... We find these things very important, these principles of how we live and make our decisions in kind. It's inevitable. You have trust between each other now.

Who are you? Then you've got to understand really your customers. If you know what your customers need from you on an emotional level ... I don't mean emotional support, but I mean if somebody comes to you and they're frustrated, or they're angry, or they're fearful about something ... They're looking to your product to satisfy or change that for them, and you can say, "Hey, we understand that that's what you're here for. This is ... What we promised to you, we're going to give you."

That's amazing content. It also builds trust. It also gives people the reason why they need to choose you. Rather than just going for the sale, you've got to give people reasons why. That's what they want to know. They don't care what you did ... Ate for dinner ... They don't care about your employees' birthdays. They care about why you're in business and what you're going to do for them. Talk about that.

Robert Plank: Interesting ... The values and the reasons why ... That even makes me think of ... I think a day or two ago, I was just randomly sitting around my house, and I was randomly thinking, "Well, what would happen if ... Say my car was parked in a parking lot, and maybe someone opened the door on it and just dinged it. Just for whatever random reason ... I was just having this weird, random thought. I ended up doing some kind of search on my phone, and what showed up in the results was some kind of blog post by some kind of car, I guess ... People who repair cars, the little scratches and dings ...

Kyra Reed: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Robert Plank: It was just this little random story about someone went to some restaurant. The car was dinged up. They waited for the person who had clearly parked next to them and waited for them to come out.

Kyra Reed: Oh, gosh.

Robert Plank: It was like, "Who knows if this story was true?" They just told this blog post about this family ... Car got dinged ... They thought it would be not a big thing to worry about. They almost drove off. Then they did the insurance stuff, and then, it turned into ... Then they went to this little repair guy who just lives in this area, and they were ... The insurance covered it, and they just told this story. That just sticks out to me as you're explaining that just from a couple days ago, where I just randomly just had a weird thought, right? Landed on this blog post from this local business owner, who just told this random story and gave this helpful content that, "Okay, now. I've got it filed away."

All I need to do to find that person again is do that same sort of search, which somebody might actually be making that search if they're trying to solve that problem, I guess.

Kyra Reed: That's right. Now, if that happens to you, you've got that in your mind. You know exactly where you're going to go.

Robert Plank: Yeah. That's a pretty good first impression for me to make with this random, local business that I never even would have heard of otherwise.

Kyra Reed: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- This is the great thing about social. These things happen all the time. You never know where business is going to come from, and Nic used to call these "breadcrumbs." You spread them out throughout the internet, little marks that you leave behind. Positive reviews ... Little stories, blog posts, being on different social networks, engaging with people, leaving comments in people's posts ...

All of these things ... You never know who's going to see it. Do you know that 900 million people a day log into Facebook? That's almost 3 times the size of the United States.

Robert Plank: Crazy. It sounds like matter of just all these little things that on their own wouldn't mean much, but added up mean a lot.

Kyra Reed: Yes. Exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool. I like that most of the things that we're talking about here all lead back to the 5 things. Who are you? Who are you talking to? What are you saying? How are you selling, and then the growth and maintenance ... Along those lines, could you tell us, Kyra, about your agency and your websites and your books and all that cool stuff about you.

Kyra Reed: Sure. The agency is called "Made to Order." The Website is MTOAgency.com. You can find me at @KyraReed. You can find us on Instagram at social media for entrepreneurs. We have just released 2 new programs. One is for people who are struggling with self-promotion. There's a lot of fear around self-promotion, especially for women to step out and talk about themselves.

I've been working with a lot of female business owners, and what I realize is they need 2 things. They need a very simple plan that they can get their feet wet and start to see results. They need something to replace the fear. This program does both. It's called "Self-Promotion Mastery." Then we also have a program called, "Power to THRIVE Mastermind," and this is a 12-week course, where we take you through those 5 steps so that, by the end, you have a solid brand. You know who your customers are.

You know how to communicate with them. You have a content strategy. You have a sales strategy. You have your growth strategy. You know how to execute on all of them, and you'll be seeing results very quickly, like you never expected. Social will change your entire business.

Robert Plank: Awesome. I've already heard from you those lots of little tidbits about ... You saved a whole street basically, right?

Kyra Reed: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Yep.

Robert Plank: Because of social media.

Kyra Reed: Yep.

Robert Plank: Awesome.

Kyra Reed: A very famous street. Actually, we've done it twice. We did it with Sunset Strip and Main Street in Santa Monica.

Robert Plank: Cool. It works over and over again. It wasn't just-

Kyra Reed: Yep.

Robert Plank: Wasn't just a fluke ...

Kyra Reed: Nope.

Robert Plank: That social media stuff is here to stay. There's something to that.

Kyra Reed: Yes, it is. Yep.

Robert Plank: Cool. Thanks for stopping by and sharing all your great insights, Kyra.

Ben has helped AARP launch one of the world's biggest magazines with 32 million circulation, and he's a trained, or he's trained top business leaders at Stanford University, and supported the ALS Association in improving healthcare and quality of life for thousands of people with Lou Gehrig's Disease after almost dying 4 times in 72 hours on a hike in India. We're going to have to talk about that for sure. Ben received a gift, a fire inside to make a bigger impact. Today, he teaches entrepreneurs, visionaries, organizations, and leaders how to communicate with more influence by using more empathy, story, and thought leadership. Lots of cool stuff. Welcome to the show, Ben.

Ben Gioia: Thank you so much, Robert. It's a pleasure to be here, thank you for asking me.

Robert Plank: Awesome. I mean, yeah, I'm glad you stopped by. Can you kind of tell us, I mean, there's that little bit of bio there, but can you kind of tell us in your own words what it is you do, what's kind of driving you right now, and what makes you special?

Ben Gioia: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much. Gosh. Yeah, I'm going to, I guess, start this off, kick this off with a little bit about that story in India. Basically, I had this incredible hike, 72 hours, where I almost died 4 times, and it was ... My bus going, almost going off the road as we're going up a windy mountain curve. I mean, literally, the back of the bus was like skittering the edge and almost sliding off. The second time was running from a fire. It hadn't rained where we were in about 4 months, and literally, my guide turned to me at one point because he heard some agitated yelling, I couldn't understand it in English, off in the distance, and he said over his shoulder, "Run," and I said, "Run?" He went running off down the path.

Third time, we came upon a poisonous snake that I wouldn't have seen at all, just right in the path, tiny snake. My guide fortunately stopped me, and then ... The last time was running into a mountain lion, kind of stumbling upon a mountain lion. I think we were surprised, he or she was surprised, and fortunately, the mountain lion ran away; so, that was a wake-up call or a series of wake-up calls that just made me realize, "What an amazing gift this life is, my life. If I'm here on this Earth, and I'm functional and capable, I'm going to do good in the world;" so I started thinking about, "How could I do that?"

I pulled together talents, experience, all that kind of stuff, and that was the thing that brought Marketing With A Heart to the light; because I realized that there's so many people and good in the world, there's the whole idea of conscious business and transparency and ethical communication, all that stuff, and I realized that that needed to come into the marketing space as well. People felt good about their marketing, really would lead with value, be transparent, and really resonate and connect with the right audiences, so they could stop focusing so much on competition; and really focus on creativity and collaboration, and magnetizing the right people by speaking truthfully and honestly about themselves, who they served, what they do, and their secret sauce, and how that all makes it happen, so ...

Yeah, so did that for a bunch of years, and then Marketing With A Heart kind of morphed into Influence With A Heart, which is what that is today. I launched that just a few months ago, and it's been a rocket ship since I changed that. Influence With A Heart was what, I realized, made so much more sense for who I am and what I want to do in the world. Right after that happened, I got this 2-day training at Stanford. I wrote my second book, and I actually just got asked by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company to create content for a customer ... Like a front-line customer service program that would basically help the employees be more mindful, use more empathy, and they want to roll that out to 15,000 people, so ... Really, really excited about that possibility. I literally heard that, about that 2 days ago.

Robert Plank: Awesome. I mean, lots of cool things happening. As far as what it is that you do, I mean, you have the book, you have this writing ... I mean, what is your business exactly that you have? Coaching clients, do you have products, like what are the pieces to it?

Ben Gioia: Yeah. Yeah. I do have coaching clients, and I'm doing speaking gigs and then a couple of consulting gigs as well. The essence of what I do is really help people articulate their purpose much more excitingly and effectively than they ever have before, both in terms of what they're displaying to the world and in terms of themselves. Because when people get really, really clear on their purpose and are able to articulate it and get behind it, and get behind themselves, that it just, it changes the whole game. Articulating that purpose on a much higher level and then weaving that energy and even the direct articulation into their messaging, into how they're delivering their products, into how they're presenting themselves. When you're operating from a place of purpose, people really resonate with that. That comes through your face-to-face energy. It comes through your writing. It comes through you on video, through how you're presenting on video, so help get really super articulate with their message and then really also articulate their secret sauce, right?

We all have amazing history, amazing experience. Sure, not all of us died 4, all died 4 times in India, but that's not even the point, right? It's our story that ... It's the stories that we choose that we know are going to connect with other people, and that our great expressions are for. I help people also connect to that story, bring that out through their writing, through their communication, and kind of getting clear on that purpose and getting clear on that story. That's the articulation to the secret sauce. When you can get that together, your positioning as a thought leader just becomes so much more powerful, because you're not just an expert, but you're this unique expert with this unique offering, with this unique story or set of stories, and that's the stuff that really, really makes you, can make you resonate with the right audience and the right kind of people.

Robert Plank: Along those lines, could you share with us a little bit of maybe like a case study or something where you had one of these coaching clients, or maybe they had some good things to say, maybe they were onto something, and then you kind of ran them through your system and you were able to reposition them and articulate them better and share their secret sauce? Do you mind sharing a little bit of like a before-and-after with someone that you've gone through?

Ben Gioia: Yeah, I would be delighted to do that. Yeah, I have a couple of quick examples. One is, excuse me, have been working with a high-end boutique technology company here in the area that does customized apps, web apps, and websites also, but their apps are probably functioning things for hospitals, serving people with AIDS, all sorts of deep impact. What the CEO of this company really wanted to do was to do many more projects that were exciting to him, not only exciting, but really connected to his sense of purpose. We dug and dug and talked about stuff, and we realized something very, very simple and yet profound, that this person, what his secret sauce is that he speaks the language of tech and non-tech, so he can speak just as easily to a non-technical person as he's getting a contract together, or he can talk to programmers down in the trenches and really get the things done. While it sounds like such a simple articulation, so straightforward, it has really shifted both his energy around his business, and the people he's starting to attract.

Then another quick example is a health coach that I work with also here in the Bay Area. She does some, they have straightforward nutrition and health and mindfulness kind of things, and she also does a little bit more of what some people might consider some woo-woo healing techniques. I mean, she's legit, don't get me wrong, but a lot of people don't, are still learning about alternative non-Western ways to do stuff.

Robert Plank: Oh, yeah.

Ben Gioia: It took her years to figure out ... Thank you. It took her years to figure out how to express that. When we started working together, she still wasn't there, and what we realized was that she helps stressed out professionals and urbanites in the Bay Area in Silicon Valley be happier, healthier, and more aligned with their purpose. That was a huge, huge thing, because it wasn't just, "Oh, I'm a health coach," but it was, really gave her the ability to do the thing that she loves, that she's excellent at, and position that around the people that she wants to attract most.

Robert Plank: Along those lines, is there a little bit of a method to the madness? Like when you look at these businesses to help, do you eyeball it, or do you list out hundreds of things, or do you ask any deep probing questions? What goes to your head? What's the process between going from, you hear about their business, into what they should be doing instead?

Ben Gioia: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. I will check out their website, of course, and kind of do, I think, what many marketers would do when they were looking at somebody's content. Just basically go, "Okay, are they talking to one particular audience, or are they are connecting with the pains and emotions and fears and dreams and desires and all that stuff?" I look at that and get a sense of what it is, and then what I do is, I give them a questionnaire. I have a customized questionnaire that I use, and I ask them kind of like, "What's your purpose? What's your secret sauce?" I ask them in a more kind of one-to-one way to answer all of those questions, and those questions are geared toward the information that they should ostensibly be sharing through their marketing, through their communications, etc. What I often find, like 9 out of 10 times, is that what people say in that questionnaire to me is radically different than what they say on their websites and what they say on LinkedIn about themselves.

I think the reason for that is because there's the whole notion of what I should say, quote-unquote should say and how I should present myself, and how I should look to the public. Then those things are fine, but this is a human-to-human interaction all the time, even when we're on the web, right? The stuff that needs to come through is the human stuff, and my questionnaire helps people really, really get to that human stuff. After they do that and I review that, the questionnaire, I get back on the phone and I say, "Hey, your website says this, but you say this, and this sounds true, and you sound excited over here, so why don't we look at bringing more of you, your story, your amazing background, your secret sauce, into the mix, and really put you, or at least put your energy right out front?"

Robert Plank: Do you think there's a reason why the public-facing bio, I guess, and the public-facing stuff doesn't match up with the questionnaire? Is it a matter of people being too careful and afraid to look stupid, or was there more time to kind of think through their message between when they first put up the webpage versus when they came to you? What do you think is the reason for that kind of disconnect there?

Ben Gioia: Yeah, thank you. That's a great question, and I think it's a few things, different people, but the things that I see most often is because somebody put up a website a long time ago, didn't update it as their thinking and perspective changed. For some people, it's that putting themselves, putting their face out in the world, that there's still some hesitation around putting themselves out there, bringing their best and most badass self, whatever that looks like to them, out front. Because there's so much messaging, I think, that so many of us were raised with, around, "Be quiet. Don't make too much noise. Behave. Do things like everybody else is doing," or even the worst kind of messaging of like, "Oh, you won't be able to do that because you don't have the looks, the skills, the grades," all of that kind of stuff. I think there's so much embedded learning probably from when we were about 3, 3 to 5, that gets stuck in there. Then the other part of it, too, I think, is people spend so much time looking at what other people are doing, which is important, of course.

You want to see who else is in your market and outside of your market to have a comparison, but at the end of the day, you have to be yourself and you have to really put yourself and your best foot forward. I think the last part of it, and this comes up with some people, is that they're not super clear on their purpose, on their core purpose, and then when they're bringing that, or attempting to bring that out through their business and what they're offering, then messaging is a little behind because they're not totally aligned internally.

Robert Plank: I mean, that makes a lot of sense. What I'm hearing a lot of what you mention is, when you're looking at anyone's business, it sounds almost like the things you're looking for are like the emotional hot buttons, and a lot of people are missing the emotion in their websites, it sounds like.

Ben Gioia: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, that's true. They're not speaking to the experience of their ideal client or their audience. Right? I mean, it's so funny, because in a lot of ways it's like marketing and communications 101. Communicate to people in and around the things that they care deeply about, and show them that you have something for them in that context, a solution, a next step, whatever the case may be, and a lot of people end up talking about themselves, like, "I can do this. My product does this," but it's not customer, client or prospect-focused.

Robert Plank: It's not focused on, "What's in it for me?" Right?

Ben Gioia: Exactly. Exactly. Thank you, yeah.

Robert Plank: Would you say that if you were to look at, or think back about, the different clients and people you've worked with, is there a huge number 1 mistake, and would you say like maybe, is that the mistake that people are talking about themselves and not their clients, or is there an even bigger mistake, even bigger common thread you're seeing with all these people that you help out?

Ben Gioia: Yeah, yeah. Great question. I think a huge, huge one is talking too much about themselves, and another one, huge one, is not talking enough about themselves. The reason why I say that is because one of big things I teach is this idea of story, storytelling. I mean, storytelling is the oldest ... It's as old as human history. Before we had any kind of written communication, before people were drawing on walls and caves, they were telling each other stories. It was oral tradition, and that was the way to cultivate all that stuff around trust and connection to community, connection to tribe, and to safety, right? To have that circle be safe, and a lot of people today, they don't go enough into their story, right? They might talk a little bit about it, "I was CEO of such-and-such a company," but they don't actually say, okay, what did they do there? Not just the actions did they take, but what results did they bring, who did they bring it for, how did that create a transformation for the organization for an entire population of people? Whatever the case may be, right?

There's this funny balance of, yeah, absolutely you have to talk about your customer, their experience, etc., and, says me, and this is, I've proven this with a whole bunch of clients now, you have to talk about yourself, tell your story, and ask people to tell you stories. Right? Like you want to create empathy, and empathy that's going in both directions. Right? You want to see the world through this other person's eyes, and you want to give this other person the opportunity to see the world through your eyes.

Robert Plank: I mean, that sounds like some pretty interesting stuff there.

Ben Gioia: Yeah.

Robert Plank: I mean, with all this ... I mean, all these little things I think about here and there is, there ... I don't know, is there something kind of interesting you've been working on lately? I don't mean necessarily in terms of like, I know like you mentioned that, you had your new opportunities, like published stuff to different audiences, but just as far as like some kind of marketing technique or tool or just something like that. What's just the latest kind of cutting-edge thing you've been playing around with?

Ben Gioia: That's a great question. Yeah, gosh, it's ... One really interesting thing, and this is circumstantial, is getting ready to do a talk and actually a training. This training is going to be with an international audience, most of whom don't speak English, so I'm actually doing it with a translator. This is a really, really interesting exercise for me, because it's, how do I get super ultra crystal clear in everything that I'm saying, and chunk it down into really, really discreet packages of ideas, so I can say something, say a few sentences, pause, and allow the translator to understand what I say, translate it in her head, and then say it out to the audience in a way that they understand. Right? I'm looking at my language being really, really spare with the things that I'm saying, taking out colloquialisms, taking out jokes, all of those kinds of things. It's an interesting exercise in this really crystal clear communication, and it's also a really interesting exercise in being a presenter in this situation.

How do I maintain that energy, that high level of engaged energy in myself, when I have to pause and wait for the person to translate? Right? I have to be like, "Ya-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta," and then wait and hold that energy in myself, so the next thing I say is, "Ya-ta-ta-ta-ta."

Robert Plank: Interesting.

Ben Gioia: Yeah.

Robert Plank: I mean, yeah, it seems like kind of like a new adventure to kind of push you outside your comfort zone, because like you said, you need to kind of strip a lot away and use simple language, but also seem smart and have something good to say, but then the rhythm and the pacing's going to be weird, but then maybe you can use that to your advantage to kind of let things land, or pause to think, I guess.

Ben Gioia: Yeah, and thank you for saying that. It's interesting, too, because the audience is a whole bunch of super, super successful business people, six-figure kind of earners. This is not an audience of beginners. These are people who have been doing their thing for a whole bunch of years now, so there's that added dimension, for me, of, "Wow, I have to make this potent and insightful," and all of that stuff, and do all the things that I just mentioned before about keeping it super clear and spare.

Robert Plank: Right. I mean, yeah, sounds like a lot of stuff to kind of keep straight in your head, but once you figure it out, sounds like a lot of fun.

Ben Gioia: Yeah. I think so. I'm really, really, really looking forward to it.

Robert Plank: Well, cool. If anyone wants to know about you, Ben, no matter what language they speak, what country they're in, if they're newbies, they're advanced, where should they go to find out about you and your stuff that you sell, and your books, and everything like that?

Ben Gioia: Thank you, thank you. Yeah, so my website is influencewithaheart.com. Basically all the stuff is there, and you can also find my books on Amazon. Again, the beauty of Amazon is that it's also worldwide. I have 2 books now, Influence With A Heart, which is the new one, and the first one, which was the bestseller Marketing With A Heart, as well. I'd be delighted for anybody who's listening to this podcast to come check out my stuff. I think you'll get a whole lot out of it, and it'll really serve you and your business in a great way.

Robert Plank: Awesome. I think so too. That's Ben Gioia, influencewithaheart.com. Thanks for stopping by the show.

Ben Gioia: Thank you so much, Robert, and appreciate all the things you do. Like I said, the audience doesn't know this, but you and I met several years ago, and I really learned a ton of things from you back then, and was really inspired by the way you do your things, so thank you so much. It's nice to come full circle and be on your show.

Matt Powell: Hey I'm glad to be on. I appreciate it Robert.

Robert Plank: Heck yeah. I understand that you have a lot of things to say and you have a lot of hobbies and you have this martial arts stuff, so can you kind of tell me a little bit about who is Matt Powell and what it is that you do, and what makes you unique and special?

Matt Powell: I know what makes me unique and special. My mom might say something different. About 20 years ago, I started learning this strange martial art no one had ever heard of, and that lead me to spending time in Russia training at their schools in martial arts in the early 2000's, and then coming back over here and teaching over here. Over time, we built our own organization called Pramek. That's P-R-A-M-E-K. We have a website, pramek.com. That started off as just guys in a garage, and I built it online and then in real world into an international organization with teachers all over the world.

The whole time I was doing that, I was also working my way up the corporate ladder into the corporate board room. I was starting online businesses. I was doing everything that I could possibly do. I'm not one of those people that sit still for very long. Over time I've published five books that are on Amazon, hundreds of videos on youtube, two dozen instructional videos for sale in the martial art world, as well as teaching seminars around the world. I learned a lot from that side of teaching, and teaching all those people in the system that we developed and the way that it developed. There was also the lessons learned of being in the corporate world and being an entrepreneur.

I decided about a year ago that I would start to take these and combine them into more of a, kind of do what Pramek did for martial art, pastless and Undo what do for the personal growth sector. I started to focus on taking the concept that worked so well for teaching people, everybody from the special forces to soccer mom, and starting applying it to personal growth. It's a very methodically laid out system based on what we saw work teaching people under the most stressful situations that they could apply towards personal growth, personal success, and the happiness side of the world, you might say.

Robert Plank: That's kind of interesting. Can you kind of tell me about this whole undo book and just basically, what are the steps, what's it about, how it all relates to the martial arts, the success and all that kind of stuff?

Matt Powell: We developed this learning system in martial art that we called the CLM. I developed it with a couple of PhDs that had PhDs in adult learning and psychology, because we found that the way that we were taught didn't translate to the way that people learned very well if they were learning mental and physical skills. We developed over time this learning system that now all these other schools and systems have adopted as their learning system. We found that people were learning skills faster than they were learning in other skills by using this.

I said okay. Let me look at ... It's all about the human brain. It's all about how the brain works, it's all about how the brain processes memories, how the brain forms habits. Let me take that over to the success side because whether you're learning to punch or whether you're learning to operate as an entrepreneur, you're going to develop physical and psychological habits to go along with success or failure. Life is a little like quicksand day to day. You can't unstick yourself until you stop moving and take stock of the situation around you. What Undo the book is is that Undo is ... We're undoing the past. It means that we're recognizing the why we fail, not what we fail at. A lot of people confuse that. They focus on the what they're failing at. People set goals, but then they don't consider if they're setting the right goals. They end up with a decent process to achieve goals, but they've set the wrong goals that weren't attainable. They kind of circle for a while.

What we do with Undo, is we try to break these cycles. We break that cycle. Then you're set up to where you can start setting goals because you've taken care of the underlying reasons why you're failing. Now you're able to start setting goals. What we do is then we have a workbook that goes along with Undo. It's a 40 page workbook that take you step-by-step through the whole process. It starts you at the goals that you had last year, the failures that you had last year, looking at those underlying reasons to why and not what, then setting up a process to fix that day to day so that you break that cycle of failure that's been going on, but there's the habits that you've picked up over time.

Then we do this long process of setting attainable goals all the way from the very beginning of free-writing out your goals to how you set your life on auto pilot using the book, to basically make goal achievement a habit. It's really about the book is kind of a, I don't want to say colloquial, but it's a very ... My editors hated it because I wrote it like I was speaking to somebody. I didn't write it like I was writing a book. Then the workbook follows along with it. Page by page, as you go through the book, you're going through the workbook at the same time. It's a very interesting process to kind of develop habits for people, to get out there and achieve the goals that they want to achiever.

Robert Plank: I love that. I think that ... Yeah, I know that over the years if I'm ever trying to get out of a funk or I'm always trying to switch to some kind of time management system, it's always like if the underlying foundation or whatever you want to call it, if that's still messed up, it doesn't even matter what I'm building towards, or what kind of system I'm using. It's like if the insides aren't right, then what's the point of anything. I like that. I like the Tim Ferris or the Matt Furey kind of stuff where it's like ... I don't know a thing about martial arts or any of that stuff, but I like the idea of breaking yourself down and then building yourself back up and having the discipline and the habits and the repetitions and all that kind of stuff. I like how, kind of like you mentioned there, that people kind of learn the stuff, but they also go through the work books so that way it kind of avoids the foo foo, hippy sort of feel good stuff. Is that right?

Matt Powell: Yeah. What we found ... Matt Furey. God I haven't talked to Matt in probably a decade. I used to talk to him back in the day, in martial art, I guess back in the mid 2000's. Tim has done some great systematic methodology to kind of exposing people methods so that other people can pick them up. I think ... I differ a little bit when you ask what makes you different is that you can have the best process in the world, but if you don't have the right goals, you're going to consistently get into a funk. You're going to go after 2016 with a 2015 mindset. A lot of times people have all these processes. That's why I did Undo because I saw that was happening in the martial art world. I traveled and taught thousands. Personally laying hands on what they were doing. I was seeing that these people, they've got this process but what they're trying to do, they never really thought through what they were trying to do at the end.

Steven Covey says, "I'm going to begin with the end in mind." Look at the goal and work backwards. Page by page and when you look at the reviews on Amazon, everybody says the same thing, like "Wow. This book actually works."

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. I'm kind of looking through the reviews and things here. Could you kind of tell us about how this all happened for you? Was there a point where ... Was there a period of time before you discovered all this martial arts stuff, was there a period of time when there were specific things that were really wrong in your life and then kind of stumbling on this made you the person you are now? Does that kind of thing happen?

Matt Powell: There's nothing ever really ... I know a lot of times people have some epic moment or they have some type of challenge in their life or obstacles that they can't over come, and then they overcome it and it becomes inspirational. I love those stories ... A friend of mine that is a martial art instructor. He was born with half a heart, and he had steel rods in his back, and he's out there doing incredible karate stuff. I never had anything like that. I learned through kind of trial by fire between the martial arts and doing executive protection and law enforcement, and being under extremely stressful situations and then teaching other people extremely stressful situations.

What made me switch from martial art and move in this direction was that I did have a situation that really ... It's still tough to talk about a little bit. I had a childhood friend of mine, and over the years he and my brother stayed in contact, but I hadn't stayed in contact with him. My brother called me up one day and he said, "You know, he's got cancer, and he loves what you're doing with martial art, you really ought to give him a call." I didn't realize that he had stage four rare cancer and he was dying. We spent hours upon hours on the phone just talking. He was a business owner, he was an entrepreneur. We would talk at night and he would pass out for 30 minutes because he was under so many medications. He would come back to and we would talk and talk.

He passed away one day, and a few years later I was driving to Florida to the beach house and I've done it successful at what I've done. I just kind of said, "Man, I'm tired of teaching people how to punch somebody in the nose. There's got to be more." I remember those conversations with Barry because he would say, "You know Matt, I feel like you could do more. If you just took these processes and taught somebody about business, or maybe you talk to a new college graduate and give them some processes, that way they're not learning this 10-15 years into their career, when they could have done better at the beginning." I got down to Florida and I just started ... I pulled out all the notes and pulled out the Glenfiddich and really had a heart to heart with myself.

One of the things that one of my teachers told me one time was, "Only you look in your mirror." I looked in the mirror and I thought, "You know, I can do more than this, and I can help more than just teaching people this over here." A bunch of books were started. That was a couple of years ago. Out of the books that were started, Undo was a bit of a composite of the different books that I'd started at the time. I never really had anything that was a big challenge or obstacle.

I put myself into a lot of challenging situation through the decisions I made in my career. But the biggest obstacle that I really ever overcame was to take what was 20 years of an identity as a world class martial art instructor and developer and teacher, and to have to make that internal switch to saying, "I'm going to do something different. I'm going to do 2016 or 2015 with that year's mindset. Not try to do it with 2010's mindset."

Robert Plank: It's kind of interesting. Could you kind of tell us about, aside from the book, what is it that you do now? Do you have products? Do you have a blog? Do you have a podcast? What are you up to these days?

Matt Powell: A couple of different things. I do security consulting as a day job. I've always kept a day job. I remember my primary teacher a long time ago said, "Always have a day job, because if you have to do your hobby to food on the table, you'll end up hating it, and you'll sell it out and you'll water it down." I've always kept a day job, and I've worked my way up the corporate ladder. Day job I do that. It allows me to go wherever I want. Live how I want. I really built my life around what my goals were, which was to have a very free life to be able to explore and do things. Then you have pastless and you have Pramek.

Pastless.net is the home of Undo. Yeah, you can go to pastless.net. We have the free eBook over at pastless. It's called Open In Case of Life. It's a concept that I've learned over 20 years traveling the world learning from different teachers. It's eight things that people said that really stuck with me. I put them in format that you can just, here it is. In case of you feel like you're not communicating correctly, in case you feel labeled, in case you're feeling anxious about the future, and here's the wisdom behind it. Then you can also pick up Undo over at amazon.com if you just type in Undo, I think it's like the second thing that pops up on amazon.

Then over at Pramek, that's a whole different animal because Pramek is ... It has four books that I've written about it. It has, I think we're at 201 videos on youtube, two dozen for sale instructional, and that's very martial arts, fitness, movement. Yeah, there's movement videos. How to increase your movement, get your range of motion. There's combat intimate videos. There's videos on how to develop habits. We've done a lot of different things with Pramek. That's pramek.com. P-R-A-M-E-K.COM.

Robert Plank: Cool. Do you ... I mean in all your writings and your adventures and talking ... What do you think is the place where everyone is going wrong? Is it that people aren't awake or they're not disciplined or they're not self aware or they're backsliding? What do you see where everyone is going wrong it seems?

Matt Powell: I think, if you're talking about people in general, I think everyone focuses on the what and not the why. That is one of the most ... There's two things that most people do wrong when it comes to achieving success for their life.

The first thing is you have to stop being right. If every time you interact with somebody, you're making assumptions on the way that the interactions going to go, then you're living in the past. Everything that's ever happened in the past is the way that your brain is designed. It's catching up. You want to be right. You want to show them that you're right. You don't really find out what they offer for your future, what they can bring you, how you can work with them ... That if you just stop being right and you start being in the moment and really taking a look at it and thinking about it and changing your anchor point for your thoughts to your future instead of right now or the past, you're going to start viewing people and situations and obstacles or whatever it is as moving you towards somewhere in the future. Then you're going to see how you can use that interaction to get there.

I think the second thing is is that we live in a transactional world. Physically, mentally, spiritually, it's right now, right now, right now. People focus on the what. The what is the thing that you can go and tell your spouse about. The what is the thing that you can go the bar and complain about. But if you focus on the what, then you're just kind of in this linear timeline of a bunch of whats that you failed at. If people take a book like Undo and go through the process to find their failure theme, they're going to find that most of their whats, they never even ... They are forced through a way that they develop their habits over time to consistently fail. You have to start looking at that why. Why did that happen? Why did that happen? Then you can really start to stop the whats from happening.

If you stop being right and look at the interactions that you have as how can they get me somewhere instead of how can I make sure that I'm the person that's coming ahead in this. Also to look at the why you failed through, like I said, a book like Undo instead of what you fail at, you're about 90% of the way to getting more successful than you've ever been.

Robert Plank: I love that message. Not only to stop being right, but to kind of live in the moment. I think that maybe 5-6 years ago someone quoted Dr. Phil to me. There was a situation where I was just kind of, I needed to change my thinking. He quoted Dr. Phil and said, "Would you rather be right or be happy?" Kind of along those lines, with these days with all the ... It's so easy to get distracted. The latest Facebook pop up, the phones blowing up, and even ...

Maybe 14 years ago or so, when I transitioned from high school to college, when there was the orientation day, they kind of had to ... There was something that they said that was along the lines of, "Well, when you're in high school mode, when you're in the high school mindset, you're only really paying attention about 30-30%." And he's like, "Well when you're trying to actually be an adult, being a grown up, you kind of have to be 80% there or higher." That was just kind of like all the things you've been talking about today. All these really simple concepts, but it's so simple and yet it seems like a lot of people are missing the boat and kind of need to readjust, right?

Matt Powell: I think that there's so many options out there, there's so many things that people ... I'm going to try Tony Robbins stuff for a little while. Oh, I didn't get to where I wanted to go, I'm going to go visit Zigler. Oh, didn't get there. I'm going to go to Tim Ferris. Oh, I didn't get it there ... That people are just constantly moving. I tell people if you really want to live in the now, and find out how far off you are from being in the now, take 30 minutes a day, get a book, and read it aloud.

What you'll find is that your brain is so all over the place, that you can barely read aloud. If you go to a zoo, if you go to a museum, you'll find that you don't even read the placards. You kind of skip around real quick and then you look back up because we just don't have attention spans anymore. We're taking in too much information and if you start to ...

That's what we found in martial art is that if I want to something, if I have one thing and that's the only thing that I'm going to try to do, and you have ten things that you're going to try to do, I'm going to win 90% of the time because I'm always focused on one thing. A lot of it is just kind of bringing it back to these useful skills of picking up a book and reading aloud. If you're in your office at work, and you need to read a report, close the door and read it aloud. Train your mind.

Meditation is great. I've been doing meditation for 20 years. I've done it all over the world. You can't sit in the office and meditate all day. What you can do is is you can focus the brain on things like reading aloud. You'll find that you start to, okay there's a whole lot going on in my mind right now. Let me just focus on this. Your communication skills get better. Your memory retention gets better. Your voice annunciation gets better. All by reading aloud. These are the types of little things that we found in the martial arts that we bring over. Then we teach people how to work under stress and duress, but reading aloud is one of them.

If I take somebody and I make you go out and I make you run and sprint and do everything as hard as you can, and I bring you back and your heart rate is really elevated and I make you read aloud, you'll be amazed how much that duplicates what happens in public speaking. You can train yourself for public speaking by reading aloud when you exercise. It's all about just focusing the mind, focusing on the why, not the what. Focusing on being in the moment, not trying to get ahead and assume the conversation. It's just that little bit of focus that ... Just something as simple ... Getting Undo and reading the whole book aloud and you'll find after a little bit of time, you've changed in a lot of ways.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. I love that messaged I think that I'm going to be doing that today. I'll read aloud. I hereby promise to you, Matt Powell, that at some point today I will read aloud 30 minutes to find out what all the fuss is about and to regain my focus and kind of reset and stuff.

Great. I like all the things that you have to share today. Not only just the ideas, but also just kind of these little exercises, these little step by step things. I think I mentioned earlier that there's a lot of self help mindset stuff out there that's just ideas, right? Just clutter, just more stuff to kind of gum up the gears, right? Kind of like you were saying a few minutes ago that a lot of people just kind of dabble and sample and just kind of get a little taste of all these little things, but they're kind of become a jack of all trades, master of none.

I really like all the stuff that you had to share with us today, and I think that as you were talking, I was kind of thinking to myself, "Well, all these ideas but how do I get more focused," so perfect. Little 30 minutes of reading something aloud. Could you tell us one more time to make sure that everyone knows where to find out about you, where to find your book, where to find your website, just one more time for us.

Matt Powell: You can go over to pastless.net. There you can get a free book, you can also get the link over to amazon. If you're on amazon once a day like everybody else is and you're a prime member, then just type in Undo. You'll find the book. If you're amazon prime, you can pick it up for $2.99. If you're not amazon prime, you can get the paperback or the ecopy. Both of them are under $10.

You can always hit me up if you're on Facebook. It's Facebook.com/iammattpowell. Instagram is the same thing. On Instagram it's iammattpowell. And twitter, iammattpowell. All of them are the same. Just remember iammattpowell for social media. I do my best to communicate through email or whatever. If people have questions about the book, if people have general questions about anything they want to contact me about, you can go to pastless.net or you can go to social media, and I'm definitely there to help out anybody that needs a little bit of a boost.

Robert Plank: It seems like we all need that. Maybe not everyday, but we all get to the point where we need a little bit of help. Cool. Thanks, Matt, for stopping by the show and sharing what it is you have to share. I appreciate you and I appreciate everything that you have to say. Thanks again for stopping by.

Matt Powell: Hey I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. You've got a great show.