813: Every Entrepreneur’s Dream: Reach More People, Generate, and Unlock More Profits with John Meese

Robert Plank 0:02 Hey, welcome back to the podcast. We're here with returning guest, John Meese, who is the author of the excellent book survive and thrive, how to build a profitable business in any economy. I think we see like five copies of the book on screen, there's there's one for holding, there was like three behind you. And the thing they need know about John is he is the CEO of CO work in case the co founder of notable he is the dean of Platform University from Michael Hyatt. And he wrote this book where what you need to know, to survive in any economy, including the COVID, economy, the posts, COVID, economy, the post lambda economy, wherever you find yourself in. And so we're going to be talking about this book. So John, glad to have you back.

Speaker 2 0:43 Thank you so much, Robert, I appreciate you having me. And, you know, it's fun to come back, honestly. And I will say one thing has changed since I was back, actually. So you mentioned the Drina Platform University. That's not true anymore, because we actually sold plot from university. And so that was like my last act behind the scenes of Dean. And so this book is part of that the next arrow thing, so I still actually go back to plot from university as a guest. Teacher from time to time, like I did just last week. But that's, that's how we first connected. So we are now

Robert Plank 1:14 off to bigger and better things. And, and that's something that that I tried to kind of tap into about, like people like you who are, I don't know, if I calling it like a business guy is the right term, but they're the people that they seem to always be, you know, building something up or selling a business or like acquiring a business. And that it's really, it's inspiring, because there's, there's kind of that tendency to sink in, and should be like a contractor or be like a person with the skill who happens to be running a business. And you always hear about, like, the place where you should be is instead be someone who runs a business, who then hires the people that like, you know, have the skills, and it's kind of, it's kind of a hard thing to to tap into. And to always be kind of on the move on. So congratulations on your, your advancement in the in the business world and pulling this thing off. But sometimes coming back as a, I don't know if it's like a professor emeritus or something along those lines. But congratulations with that. And so where we last left off, was I think we were a few months into COVID. And you opened up a co working facility at the what you could say is the worst possible time and you think you're over 58 days, and you had to shut down. So to catch us up what the heck happened there? Well,

Speaker 2 2:26 I mean, all that happened. And then COVID-19 was eradicated and the world opened up and everything was back to normal. Jake Asik Kidding, kidding, kidding. All kidding aside. So yeah, so we were closed for a total of 48 days in the co working space. And but I'm still in it right now. We're talking, you know, a year and a half later, and I'm still in the co working space and still up and running, and doing much better than before. But I you know, but I spent some of that time where I really, you know, dug in to recognize that. First of all, there was a real and there is a real health crisis going on all over the world with COVID-19. And that's something that I can both recognize and recognize that I don't have any skill set that really is useful in that arena. I also recognize that there's this economic crisis going on all over the world where people's livelihoods are being changed, where their job is changing, or their business is changing, or their world was changing. And they need some sorts of security and semblance of sanity. And so I took that on as my job essentially last year. And so I started by locking myself in a room and writing the first draft of my book as a way to just kind of document the things I had learned about building businesses because at this point, I built three businesses from scratch, and bootstrapping those and like, what worked, what didn't work and all that kind of stuff. That's where I started. But then I finished that I thought, You know what, this is going to be a playbook that's really going to help people all over the world that needs to be stronger than just my story. And so that's when I started my podcast where I went in a in a month period of time, I recorded 30 interviews with different business mentors about what they were doing in their current business, what what they learned from their history of building businesses. So people like Michael Hyatt Ray Edwards, Philip Stutz, Mike McCalla wits Rabbi Daniel Lapin many other incredible entrepreneurs. And I took those interviews and I transcribed them and I just took out the best parts that and distill that down. And then I combined that with my books and I read the rough draft but I combined their stories in my book and realized there was a pattern that showed up over and over again, no matter what industry you were in. And so the book is really about the pattern of like, forget my story. Forget Michael Hyatt story Robert Lapin story this is your story of how you build a thriving business and that's what the book is based on.

Robert Plank 4:41 And I feel like I read through the book today and it's a pretty quick read and I feel like the so that makes sense now because like it sometimes jumps into like Mike McCalla wits little chunk or like Michael Hyatt kind of chunk and there's there's lots of little lessons like something that sticks with me is the like Michael Hyatt had this habit of Thinking 16 weeks ahead and saying like, well, like, what's all what are all the expenditures we're going to have? And what things are we expecting, and there was like a thing about with the goal setting, there's like the MTO. Like, well, instead of just setting a goal, set your minimum goal, like just to get by your target goal, and then your, like your stretch goal, or what, yeah, your outrageous goal. But I feel like it was like, the last third or so is, is kind of like, like that, like that part, like the being prepared for the future and being organized and having a helpful business. But then I feel like maybe the first or like maybe like the middle third or so like that. I think the big idea, at least from what I got to this was this, this idea of like, you're not just selling a product you're selling like this whole, this whole universe and like your product, it can be like a part of it. But you might have like eight or so products that are like fit together. And you kept kind of going back to this idea of like the woman's department store, like you're not you're selling a dress, or you're not just selling shoes, like that can be the thing that gets people in there. But it's like this whole kind of package. And ideally, there should be a package that kind of gets people where they need to go. And the products are just the pieces that get them there. And so kind of like I guess the lesson I got from all that was that it's okay to pivot. And it's okay to maybe throw out parts of your business. But like, don't be married to just like one concept or one product and be more more focused on like, what's the where are you going to get people and then that makes it less painful to kind of change up your business and let it evolve and adapt over time. Because you're still just getting those people to where they need to go, whether it's like the nice outfit for work or to get their, you know, their online platform or things like that. Yeah,

Speaker 2 6:48 well, first of all, that's a great distillation of some of the key concepts from the book. And so I'm glad that those stuck, and I'm glad you enjoyed the book. And then I would say Yeah, so the way that books are organized, that it's actually the first part of it is marketing. And then the middle third is sales. And the third, third is finance. Because the reality is, I actually had all the finance stuff first because a lot of entrepreneurs don't manage their financials, well in terms of like cashflow management, or, you know, Profit First or anything like that. I had at the beginning when I first wrote the book, but I realized it doesn't really matter how well you manage your money if there's nothing to manage. And so instead, I moved that stuff, all the organization stuff to the back and focus then on like, let's focus on marketing and sales and growing your business. So you have money to worry about. But then yeah, you're exactly right. Everything I come back to in business in this book, and elsewhere, I teach comes back to this idea that business is built on creating a real solution to a real problem for real people. That's entrepreneurship, plain and simple. Now, of course, that solution is probably a product. But the businesses that did that do the best in any economy, even when COVID-19 or government restrictions or controversy in your industry throws everything around. The businesses that do the best are the ones that stay focused on the fact that they're not in business to sell a product, they're in business to sell a solution. And it may be that the solution needs to shift based on how people's needs change. Because as a customer or real life human being as their life changes along with you, their needs change. And so they have different problems, they need different solutions. And so the businesses that did really well during the you know, 2020 and during it really well during 2008. And during 2001 and every other crisis that has happened will happen are the businesses that stay focused on that on the fact that they're they're in business to create a real solution to a real problem for real people. And

Robert Plank 8:35 that's one of those like ideas that I feel like I needed to like maybe like write write on a piece of paper or write on like a whiteboard somewhere and just like always be like coming back to him and thinking because it's it's easy to get second guessed yourself, and it's easy to get caught up in like the technology. Like I think you you said at one point that that didn't you own a theme theme company like a WordPress company of some kind. And it's so easy to think about like, oh my gosh, like what's, what's my next theme? Or am I going to do with this with like, the Gutenberg blocks or this change in WordPress? And it's like, it's like, okay, those things are important. But then there's the bigger picture, which are the people and especially with WordPress, specifically over the years. I mean, there's been so much of just like people's needs changing their all the time, right? Like some people want to host their own WordPress site, or maybe we host it for them or maybe they want like all these these packages all on one or like all these extra extra add ons or like yearly theme maintenance packages, and it's really easy to like, just really like second guess yourself as far as like, what these people need and what you're going to create for them. Yeah,

Speaker 2 9:40 well, if you're in the business of selling, let's just use that example. Let's say you're in the business of selling WordPress themes or WordPress plugins. Well, it's sort of like you know, you've probably heard the phrase, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You know, and it's sort of like if you're in the business of selling WordPress themes and plugins, you're gonna stay focused on selling WordPress themes and plugins, and if something goes wrong with the WordPress theme or plugin That's where all your focus goes. And you may miss the fact that all of your customers have shifted their business model. And so now their entire business is built off of social media and live streaming video on different social media platforms. And the fact that your WordPress theme has not really doesn't interact with that at all. So we had an essay focus on like, and notable What am I companies want to say focus on what our consumers doing, what do they need. And we discovered that there was like more and more people in different industries were growing their audience by focusing on creating really highly engaging short videos, some of it lives with it not on different platforms, and most WordPress themes that were built for like a blog, or maybe a podcast. At the best, they're like, oh, yeah, you could just kind of like embed that on your website. That's cool, if you want. But that's not really like take into account what people want people want is to engage with their audience. And so what we did was we rebuilt our flagship theme, notable press, which you can learn about it that will that press if you want, we've rebuilt that. So that when you're going live on Facebook, or YouTube, or Twitch, your entire homepage on your website, automatically updates to show your live video front and center with a live chat right there. And so now you can tell your subscribers, you can email them, and instead of saying, hey, go find me on Facebook, you can say go to my website.com. And you end the whole livestream experiences right there. So they're able to still be have their own brand, front and center, and all of your own tools to grow your email list and things like that. But you're also leveraging the benefit of the social media platforms. So you're, it's gonna, you're gonna get the best of both worlds. Because if you build everything on social media, well, that's a problem. Because the minute they have a board meeting or a new algorithm change, you might lose your whole business, you know, and so you need to have a home on the web that you control and own, but you sort of leverage those other platforms. And so that's why again, we had to stay focused on the fact that like, we don't sell WordPress themes, you know, we guess we sell WordPress themes. But that's not the solution we're creating the social recruiting is a content creation platform allows you to build to grow your audience, and to generate revenue from that. That's what that's the solution we're selling. These are just tools to help you get there.

Robert Plank 12:05 And like one with it that clicked with for me a couple of years ago was I had some podcast guests, and we were talking about the same thing, the subject of like, not being tied to a keyword. And he was like, well, it's like, if you're at a ballgame, in the end, the guy with like the hat and the big ol suspenders in the tray, and he's saying like peanuts, get your peanuts? Well, if you're saying, you know, get your WordPress themes, then you're just kind of barking out just this one keyword. And it's somehow it seems, it seems cheap, it seems like it's kind of a little bit of fly by night seems like I don't want to pay a lot of money for it versus if it's this whole kind of like thought through solution. And that seems a lot more valuable. And so as far as that, that specifically that solution that you mentioned, of like, okay, you live stream, and then your your theme and your website changes into whatever your live stream right now, like a couple of a couple of our houses went off for me there and like, like one from just from hearing that story. One is like, well, what is someone may be doing five clicks to do right? What is some what is a, an activity, that's just a pain in the butt? That could be automatic? Or could be one click? And then also what's something that they're doing right now, that's kind of like, too, too risky, or too putting their their eggs in one basket or something or just what's like, not not the best solution for them. And so that way, there's kind of like the marketing piece of saying, well, this isn't the best solution for you. And then as far as the taking action piece, you're like, well, instead of you having to do six or seven clicks and having to say well go and find the on this channel and change up my blog front page to be this what if at all, it all just happened? So it just makes me curious, like, how do you? How do you come across these aha, because I imagine that there's like months long of thinking involved in there's like a lot of like talking to your customers. But how do you come to these conclusions that for example, the WordPress site needs to change over when there's a live string, things like that. Yeah, well,

Speaker 2 14:03 I think you started when you mentioned just talking to your customers, that's the probably the easiest way is find out what are they actually trying to do? Like, don't talk to them and try to convince them your products, the best transfer, what are they trying to accomplish? But I would say that, you know, I believe empathy is one of the most powerful skills in business, but you can cultivate it. Empathy isn't just an on and off switch. It's not like you're an empathetic person or you're not, it's more like it's a skill you can cultivate. And empathy is your ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, and to think and feel like they think and feel. And so you want to get to that point where you remember first of all, this is why I always say business is a is creating a real solution to a real problem for real people. I say the word real three times because it's so easy in business to get focused on how many followers do I have? How many subscribers do I have? How many customers will have what's my monthly recurring revenue, what's my conversion rate, and to forget that every single one of those is a human being with a soul with hopes with dreams with ambitions, with sleepless nights with sickness what Never. And so you've got to stay focused on the fact that these are real human beings, and then focus on what are they trying to actually accomplish. Now, this is an oversimplification. But the broad the three broad categories of how your business can help someone is that you're either trying to help them become healthier, wealthier or happier, which one of those is it and then work backwards from there. Amazon did a great, great job of this when they first came on the scene where Jeff Bezos recognized where everybody thought that they were in business selling products online. That's what people thought they were doing right there was this e commerce boom, like, we're selling products online, that Jeff said, No, we're not. We're getting products to people. And so he started looking at how can we remove barriers of getting products to people? So one of those was, and we take this for granted now, because everybody does it. But at the time, every single website in the world, if you wanted to buy something, you had to enter all of your information, name, address, credit card information at every single time. And so he said, What if we just create an account center where you could save it? And then they could just click a one click Checkout? What if you just with one click, you could buy a product? And everyone's like, that's crazy to it's complicated, he said, but it gets us closer to the goal. And so they did it, and they dominate it. And then he said, Okay, what's the next thing? Well, whatever is provides a product online, we're not in the business of selling products online, we're in the business of getting products to people. And it takes two weeks to ship a product. We did ship it in two days, everyone said, That's crazy. That's insane. He's like, That's what people need, it gets us closer to our goal. And so he made it happen. And so that's a great example of where he built his massive business. Jeff Bezos built this massive business, he's literally totally taken him to space now, based on staying focused on the real solution they offer as a company.

Robert Plank 16:38 But and so how do you arrive at those solutions? Because you mentioned there's like, there's the empathy aspect. And then we've also like mentioned, like, there's like the reducing the the hassle of the sales, right? Reduce the having to enter credit card information every single time. But like, is there a, is there a repeatable way to get to the magic every single time because it just seems like, you know, throughout history, like Steve Jobs thought of this and Elon Musk thought of this, like, how do we get these Steve Jobs? Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos types of ideas almost on demand.

Speaker 2 17:09 That's an interesting, fascinating question. I don't have like a formulaic system that I teach there. But I would tell you, what I would do is what I do right now is just literally go through. This isn't mental exercise. But literally like click, wipe your brain, clear your mind, you are brand new, you know, and go to your website or your app and walk through the process of purchasing and using your product. And just make notes every time you pause. It doesn't have to be bad. Every time you pause, just be like, Why did I pause? I didn't know what to do next. Why was that? It seems you can remove one of those barriers every time something takes you an extra second, see if you can read one of those barriers, I would it's literally just like walk you through your own customer experiences the first part of it. For me, I also like to, you know, focus on results. by dialing into product offerings to having three core products, you can have more products than that. But this is when we can VAs dramatically simplify the customer purchasing process is having a gateway product, a continuity flog product and the flagship product. Now a gateway product, the goal of the gateway product is actually not to make a bunch of money. The goal of the gateway product is to be a painless purchase, so that your customer can take a risk. Because they're following you they like you they're thinking about maybe want trusting you and you tell them hey, why don't you just spend $5 and buy this product or $50, depending on your target customer, whatever a low payments purchases for them, where that gets them in the door, or they become a customer. And then you can blow their socks off by wowing them with transformation. And they go, Wow, you just earned my trust. And now maybe they're thinking about your flagship product, which is maybe the 500 or 1000 or 2000 or $10,000 product, again, depending upon your target market and demographics. But that flagship product is sort of like you communicate right away, this is the epitome of the full transformation of what we offer. And even though 95% or more of your customers will never buy that flagship product, if they see it and they know it exists. It gives them it gives them something to aspire to. And so it gives them a reason to engage with you and your brand your customer. Now the continuity product or the subscription product is just a way to keep automatic customer engagement month after month after month. You don't have to keep selling them tubes of toothpaste or razors. We can get them so that they're automatically staying being customers month after month is the glue that holds everything together. If you just have a gateway product, a continuity product and a flagship product, you can build an incredibly successful profitable business. But if you build more you can have more products than that. But the goal is if you have more products than that make sure you don't confuse people on which product is your gateway product so they know where to begin. which product is your continuity products. They know how to stay engaged with you day after day, month after month, or which product is your flagship products they know what full transformation looks like. Does that help us?

Robert Plank 19:50 It does and it gives it gives us a lot to think about so gate gateway product continuity product flagship product and you're making me think about you know guys like Grant Cardona is like Cardona university or, you know, high as Platform University you were mentioning before. And and yeah, that's, that's huge just getting people like the thing to move up to and aspire to. And that the whole idea also of the gateway product, they kind of, I guess the way that hits me is to maybe not be super married to our products. And it's really easy to say, well, I put all this work, and I'm making these videos, and I'm just gonna, you know, the products most important thing and, and you're making me think of, you know, in the book, you mentioned a little bit about that co working space and how you did things like you filled up like the bookshelf with a bunch of, you know, like business books and things like that. And so the coworking idea in general makes me think of, like, I've talked to co working people on this podcast before, and a lot of them are just like obsessed with giving away things for free, because the co working spaces just to get them in the door, you know, and also, some of these co working people will say, like, oh, yeah, try us out for a week and just come in and take bring in your backpack. And you can work here for a week, and you'll love it so much that you want to stay in. And then also, I imagine that like, for some people, the co working spaces, maybe like a, like an incubator of sorts, or a way to like figure out joint ventures or podcasting or live events or things like that. And so yeah, the the whole even just the idea of the gateway product in general, you know, some people talk about having like the self liquidating offer, or the tripwire or things like that, but it's a lot later, you know, it's like that, but it seems seems like your, your idea is kind of like, it's slightly bigger than all that, it's like you said, well, like blow them away, and get them to, to do like to do more things with you. And so and then also makes me think of, okay, so with the continuity product, you're coming out of Platform University, and I know, we keep mentioning that, but there's, I've seen so many of these kind of continuity forever, content based non auto ship, non ecommerce sites really fail, right? They'll they'll start with like big aspirations, and they'll, they'll load up so much content in there that you'll join, and you'll never be able to get through at all. So you'll just have to stay and keep paying every month. And you'll you won't notice the bill on your credit card. And it seems like they all crash and burn pretty quickly. So like, what do you think that you were doing? Right? Or what do you think like Platform University was doing right? As far as this continuity site where so many other people mess it up?

Speaker 2 22:23 Well, you you kind of just give it away, because what you were just quoting, were all of like, the wrong reasons to start a continuity site is if you're all focused on the product and saying, like, okay, we're just gonna give them so much content, there's no way they can finish it until, say, members forever, and then eventually, they're going to just forget that they have subscriptions. And like, we're just going to like, basically take their money, like, I mean, like they agreed to give you the money. But instead, if you come back to the focus of business being transformation, the question has to be, how are you creating a continuity product that has so much value that's giving them so much value and a monthly basis is making their life better, that's making them they're healthier, wealthier, happier, that they can't imagine doing without it. Now, you also got to know that there are seasons in everyone's life, so you're never going to create the perfect product. So that like you're going to have customer state for literally ever, because even a customer who may love your business may recognize Okay, right now, I'm in a season where I can't spending time on this. And so I'm going to cancel. So my what I would teach is, first of all, what the cognitive product. Whatever the delivery mechanism may be digital or physical, it's you got the goal of it is to keep someone engaged with your business, and they can be highly lucrative. But what I would say is, go again, coming back to those three, the businesses that I've seen platform diversity included, the businesses that I've seen being the most profitable and successful, have all three, not gender, not trying to build their whole empire on this one subscription product. That's the glue that holds everyone together, so that they can recommend their flagship program, or that so that they can get in, they can use the gateway products get people in, because the other thing is today, people have subscription fatigue. And we all have like 20 things we're subscribed to everything's a subscription now. And so because of that, it's actually kind of hard to sell a subscription product right out of the gate. It's easier if you sell someone a gateway product, it's just a one time purchase, that gives them so much value that they want. They recognize that you've earned their trust. I mean, it's literally just like any other relationship in life, if you've got a friend who just is constantly asking for things, but not giving you anything in return, well, eventually you stop texting or calling them and you just let them kind of fade from your life. Like you don't spend time with them. Because relationships are meant to be a mix of give and take. we all we all owe each other something. And that's the same way in between is true in business. If you have a friend who's always just taking from you like it's subscription marketer who's not really giving you value in return, then they're they're not welcome in your life. And so don't be that person. Don't be that you know, entrepreneur instead focus on how you can create something that's so valuable they can't do without it.

Robert Plank 24:59 And this it's Seems like the like a theme of our conversation is going back to the empathy. But also like, for some reason my brain keeps thinking like, it's more like a reverse logic. Like it like it's tempting or like the the natural way of thinking is like, Okay, I'll make this thing and they'll give me money, but then kind of the reverse is like, what do they want? And if they were going to give me like, $100, what could it make that would give them like $300 back or $500? Back or the equivalent because like you said, sometimes it's, it's about health, or it's about being smarter, right, not just about return on my money, depending on like, what the niches and things like that, but it's just, that's, that's what's kind of like the second mile concept in your book, like with Chick fil A, and things like that. And there's like the dropbox thing where like, you know, they give you this amount for free. And then the more that you recommend to the friends, and it grows based on that, and so there's all kinds of like, different approaches, but it's like, what it keeps coming back to for me is like, what do they want, and maybe like reverse engineer the offer of what they want. And then and then the like things like the price and all that kind of works itself out, because then it's just a matter of when it's more like the multiplier or their percentage, and you're not driving yourself crazy with all the second guessing. And, and somehow it hurts my brain to think about this. But I think that these are all like, they're really deep concepts that we all need to be focusing on that it's so easy to ignore or forget about, because we just get caught up in all this day to day chaos, especially during COVID times. Yeah,

Speaker 2 26:29 yeah, that's true. And I think and the reality is, like you're saying, like, it feels like backwards, but it's actually like business that's backwards like that, at some point, we decided that we need to focus on like conversion, optimization and marketing hacks. And I'm not opposed to conversion optimization. It's just like, why? Well, because our business is helping people making the world a better place. Entrepreneurship is beautiful. It's where all of the progress in our world comes from. I'm a huge fan of entrepreneurship. And I'm a huge fan of entrepreneurs making money. But the the paradox here is that to be successful, as an entrepreneur, you need to be more focused on serving people and making money to be able to make money. It's like this. It's this paradox, a twist. And but if I could just share one story I learned recently, which I think since I wrote the book, which I think really illustrates this. There's an indigenous community. And I wish I knew what country was in I don't remember offhand. But there's this indigenous community where there was an anthropologist went to go study them, and she went to go live in their village. And when she got there, she moved to this little hut. And then throughout the day, people kept coming and bringing stuff to her, like someone bring her a basket of fruit, someone else would bring her, you know, like a small table, they made someone else brought the butter, a goat, and she's just like, What is going on here? And so she has a local guide, and she asks them, she's like, What do I do with all of this? And she and he said, Well, you have to give them something in return. And she was like, Okay, so like, if someone gave me a basket of fruit, did, I need to give them something of like, equal value, and he said, Only if you never want to see them ever again. And you're telling them that you don't want them in your life. And she was like, wait, what. And he said, You have to give them back something. And this is how all human societies work, they just have a great illustration of it here. That you have to give them back something that is either worth more or less than what they gave you. Because if they give you a basket of apples, and you give them back a goat that's worth more than a basket of apples, well, then now they owe you. And so there's a reason for you to have a relationship. If they gave you a goat, and you give them back a small table that's worth less than a goat, well, then now you owe them. And so there's a reason for you to have a relationship. Human relationships are built on the fact that we need each other. And so this little community, this little village had this built into ingrained in their culture. But I think it's true to global scale, that in business, the reason why customers keep buying from us is because they feel like what we're giving them is so valuable that they owe us. And the reason why we get paid for that is because we've we've created value in their life, because we need each other, we owe each other something. And so we just have to remember the human dynamic of entrepreneurship, because it's so easy to get lost in the numbers and the data and the likes and the shares. And then you know, notifications, and just forget that these are we're talking about real human beings and their side of this who need our help.

Robert Plank 29:01 Best huge that's like really deep to think about that. Yeah, it's it's never it never, there's never quite the equilibrium. But that's a good thing. Because there's always the the continuing, like relationships there. And also what I'm kind of getting is that, you know, things like they exact numbers and exact conversions. Like there's a time and a place for that. It's like how you said you put the financial stuff near the end, right? You put the profit first ideas near the end, because that that is a thing to be visited at times, but you know, maybe 10% or 20% of the time, not not 90% of the time, it's easy to get off track and easy to it's easy to like forget about the big picture and why you got into entrepreneurship in the first place. And, and even like, you know, before we started recording this call you and I were talking about, like, you know, on, like teaching entrepreneurship to kids. But like, you can't teach only entrepreneurship to kids, right? Like even I still sometimes have to send kids to school and sometimes it's easy to say like well Well, you know, school was just based on a teaching kids like the nine to five lifestyle. And the reason why like the bell goes off at school is because it's like the bell going off at the factory. But what like, why not teach both things, right? And why not say, well in this in this situation, you know, structure and having assignments and being being given work and completing tasks, sometimes you do have to do that. And other times you have to be the big dreamer. But like, maybe the lesson is be adaptable. And if the situation calls for this strategy, do that. And if the situation calls for that strategy, do this other thing. And so yeah, there's, it's, I feel like, man, it's like a whole, like, lifestyle philosophy, discussion we've been having as far as like, sometimes the big picture is sometimes the nitty gritty details. So in order to just not leave our listeners and viewers so completely lost and more confused than they, when they started, like, what would you say that of like your book and, you know, surviving through COVID? Like, could you distill? Like, what's the number one most important thing that we all need to be focusing on? Especially the next, like, 12 months moving forward? What would you say? Oh,

Speaker 2 31:08 that's a great question. Okay, so here's a big one, if you're sorry, that to throw more big complicated things in there, but this is a big one, the age of information is over. What, that's crazy. I mean, it's like it's sort of like at one point in time, the Stone Age existed, right? People had like stone axes, they weren't that sharp, they broke often, but they didn't know any better. They thought that was the best technology around. And then somebody discovered that you could forge bronze and the Bronze Age began. And if you were running a business using stone age technology, you are now relevant and out of date, right? Well, that similar shift is going on right now we've just gone from the age of information to the age of insight, where during the Age of Information, every our world was characterized by the fact that we have access to all the information to the world. And so most of the successful businesses over the last 50 years, were focused on this idea of getting people access to information to resources to products all over the world. But now we have access to everything, and we're overwhelmed, and we're drowning in it. And so what people are looking for as not more things, or more data, or more stuff, or more access, or it what people are looking for is insight, which is information that has been distilled and filtered down by expertise. And so if you can position your business, you know, not as, like, just use some everyday examples. Don't position your business as the dry cleaner that gets you access to dry cleaning services, position your business as the authority on dressing your best and being at work. And so yeah, you happen to do use dry cleaning services is one of the ways to keep people looking their best at work, but focus on the insight of like, how can you distill all the complexity that we're all down to the one transformation you offer someone, if you're in an information product business, like if you're a coach, or a blogger, or a podcast, or YouTube or anything like that, then you to focus less on giving people access to ideas. And because people don't want at this point, people are overwhelmed. They don't want 100 tips and tricks. They want the three that matter. And so you owe it you need to set yourself up as the authority in your industry. We used to always say like, you know, the Rolodex you've probably heard that 100 times like, you know, and the Rolodex like, you know, when someone slips to the Rolodex or looking for the plumber, the lawyer than what are they looking for when they see your name? But lately, I've just been saying like, Who are you gonna call? Ghostbusters, right? Be the Ghostbusters of your industry, where when someone says they have this problem, and they go like, Man, I want to know what to do about my health. And I want to know what to do about managing my money, or I want to know what to do about looking great at professionally work, where you're the person and your business is the business that they think of. And that's what's going to be a shift that's just begun. According to the World Economic Forum, not just Johnny's, that shift has just begun, it's going to continue to happen over the next five to 10 years, where it's going to be dramatic and shift a lot of industries.

Robert Plank 33:54 That's powerful. And you hear about things like like Bill Gates, at some point said, get in front of the wave, right? Like every three to five years, things get disrupted, and instead of waiting for the wave to happen, and then trying to play catch up, why not get in front of it. So what you're saying is, is less information, less of ideas, more insights, and more solutions and more of, okay, here's the person I'm thinking of, here's the person I'm going to call. So these are all things that we need to be deeply and longingly thinking about so that way we can get to where we need to go in our business, and the book is survive and thrive. And so where should people go to to get this book to find out about you to find out about your course give us some some URL, some next steps or some short insight, some solutions, right? So

Speaker 2 34:39 if you go to survive and thrive book.com Of course, you'll find links there to where you can find the book on Amazon, audible Barnes and Noble you know, bookshop and all the other wonderful places you can buy books, but you will also see an opportunity there where after you order the book, you can put your email address in and download the cheat sheet. So this is the playbook the one page You should have everything we talked about and everything in the book that talks about how to apply this to your business. So I would just go there and start there, because that's a good place to start in terms of the fill in the blank playbook. I'm calling it a cheat sheet, but it's a playbook. The fill in the blank playbook walks you through, you know, clarifying your reel per year, the real people you help the real problem they have the real solution that you offer, how that relates to your marketing strategy, or your product strategy, all on a one page plan. So go to survive and thrive book.com, and you can get that resource for free.

Robert Plank 35:28 Fantastic. So survive and thrive. book.com Google right now, while the podcast is still playing, don't be one of those people that writes Yeah, now we have double time. But don't write it down and come back to it later. Do it while we're still on the podcast, at least get the browser tab open that way you can get to it because chances are in the next 15 seconds, some other distraction will pop up and

Speaker 2 35:48 some other piece of information, you'll get a notification and yeah, so that's something

Robert Plank 35:53 else in the noise and who needs that? Will that really get you to where you need to go? Will that really build your business? Well, I don't think so. But what will get your business to the next step and to the next crisis, or, you know, the next breakthrough is survive and thrive. book.com I personally I'm going to get it so you listening in podcast land, we're going to together technically survive and thrive book.com Go there and get the playbook cheat sheet whatever it makes sense for you to call this one pager, survive and thrive book.com. And as we completely finally wrap up, I guess in a good way, right? We left them with a lot of information, but also wanting more a little bit of that disparity that we talked about where we delivered so much now. Now you're just good. It's never going to end you're always going to be thinking about man, what what do I do next to survive and thrive? So any final final parting words here, John, before we wrap up this whole conversation, and as people go to survive and thrive? book.com Thank

Speaker 2 36:47 you so much, Robert. The final thing I would just say is keep up the good work. And by that that's easy to say it's what it says at the bottom of every one of my emails that I send out, keep up the good work. But I want you to think about that. Just really just dwell on that. What is the good work that you do? What is the work that you do that actually is where you drive results? I don't mean refreshing LinkedIn or scrolling through Instagram. I mean, like what is the work you do that actually drives results in your business and that makes the world a better place. Do more of that. Keep that up and do less of the rest?