Archive 1: 2012-2016

157: Become a “Cool” Business, Provide a Superior Customer Experience and Compete in the Internet Age with D. Anthony Miles

Dr. D Anthony Miles from MDICorpVEntures.com has 20 years of industry experience in branding, followup marketing and customer service and can tell you how to get that blind customer loyalty despite the growing competition.

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: We're here with Dr. D. Anthony Miles, he's a PHD and entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Miles Development Industries Corporation, a consulting practice and venture capital acquisition firm. Dr. D. Anthony Miles is an award winning professor, a researcher, a leading expert who provides expert testimony, he's a radio talk show host, and executive producer of Game On Business Talk Radio Show. He's nationally known and has a new book out. He's a best selling author of Risk Factors and Business Models: Understanding the Five Forces of Entrepreneurial Risk, I'm super excited to talk about that. How are things today Dr. D?

D. Anthony Miles: Great, thank you for having me today Robert. I really appreciate it.

Robert Plank: Cool. I'm glad you're here. Can we talk about how you're different, just to start us off? Sure, there's lots of PHDs and lots of people who say here's what you should do in business, but what makes you stand out as opposed to everyone else?

D. Anthony Miles: I think what makes me stand out from a lot of academics is I have over 20 years of industry experience to back up my academic work. I would say I'm active in the business world. I'm always doing things, I'm always doing partnerships, I'm working on different ventures. I would say that I have more of a duality to my skills and experiences because of what I do outside of the academic world as well as what I do in the academic world. I'm also a statistician, so I'm always working on statistical things and looking at different things. That's what gives me an edge over, say someone who's just a professor.

Robert Plank: Okay. Yeah. Either someone who's over educated or has the experience but not the education, not the way to express it and make it easy for others.

D. Anthony Miles: Absolutely. I think nowadays colleges and universities are looking for people with an industry experience as well as academic. You probably went to college like I did and you most likely taken a class from a person who's never had a real job, only works out of the TA and then they're trying to tell you about business strategy or they're trying to tell you about industry things.

Robert Plank: Oh yeah.

D. Anthony Miles: Sometimes I think business students need a little bit more from there professors. They need someone who's actually been out in the jungle, who's actually had to learn the school of hard knocks as well as the school of education, all of the above critical.

Robert Plank: That's cool. Yeah, me in college, I was a computer science major and that's an area, that's a field where in the real world things change drastically with computers, with programming languages and Facebook. Computers get faster and all of this and when you're dealing with a professor who's in his ivory tower, still kind of teaching the same thing he taught 30 years ago really doesn't cut it as opposed to someone who had the same duality as you. Those are my favorite kind of teachers because they would know what to say but then they would go off on a little bit of a tangent or use a real example or a case study. I thought, "Okay, great. This is really reinforcing the long term, the ever green academic stuff," but also the nooks and crannies, being in the trenches, being in the jungle as you put it.

D. Anthony Miles: Oh, absolutely. One of the critical factors as why I won an award as an adjunct professor. The reason that I was strategic and how I taught my students is I could always relate something from my experience. I worked in retail, I use to be a loan officer, I actually used to be a collector. You can't be a good loan officer unless you're a good collector. I was out there in the jungle. I re-pod a car, we have to talk at another show about that.

Robert Plank: It sounds like you've done a little bit of everything.

D. Anthony Miles: I would say I'm a little seasoned. What taught my students in a classroom is I would say, "The five forces, it may sound good as a theoretical model but in the actual business practice you really don't do business that way." You really need professors like that, you really do. I brought realism to my classroom teaching, that gave me an edge. It was so bad how students were trying to find out what I was teaching before the semester started. They wanted to know what classes I was teaching, what time.

When students see that you have a passion about what you're teaching and you bring a knowledge there. Again, if you go back to the academic, he has the knowledge yeah. He's a academic but he's not a practitioner. I would say both schools of thought are needed. You need the practitioner side, you also need the academic side. One without the other is one dimensional but you want to have both of those. Absolutely.

Robert Plank: Okay. You have both of those. You mentioned this thing called the five forces, what is that exactly?

D. Anthony Miles: There's a common business theory and every business student, anyone who has a BDA or MBA knows this, the Michael Porter model of the five forces of the industry. That's what's commonly been taught in most MBA programs and business schools. It's the basic framework of how you look at the industry. Do you want me to go through that, I could tell you really quick?

Robert Plank: Yeah, real quick's good.

D. Anthony Miles: Threat of substitutes, threat of new people coming into the marketplace, the threat of the customer, power of the customer and industry, power of supplier, I believe of something like that. Basically what I would tell my students was that that model came out in the 80s when I was a student. You have to understand something, that model came out before the internet, before globalization. The model is, I wouldn't say it's strictly outdated, but it needs to be updated because the industry is never that firmly or that neatly aligned. Here's a new emerging thing in industry right now, have you heard of a term called showcasing?

Robert Plank: No. No I haven't.

D. Anthony Miles: Marketing, that's an emerging term, showcasing, what that means is, I know I've done this and everybody has done this. You ever go out to a store and you whip out your smart phone and you go to a store, you see what they're charging for a particular item, let's say a bookstore. You go out to, let's say a common retailer. You go in there and you see what the book costs, you whip out your smart phone, you go onto the Amazon.com app and you go price that book to see what the basic pricing of the book is. Then you may also find that the book may be, you may find it cheaper used, it may be you look at the condition of it, say, just like new or like new. It may be a fourth of the cost that's in the retailer, what they're selling the book for. Now you have new smart customers.

The smart customers are not like the customers that your parents were. Now customers are smarter, customers have more information at their access. Your smartphone is like a mini computer. Anytime you go out into a retail establishment, like a bookstore, and you price the item and what you're interested in, you can price shop and price compare. Then you say, "Why don't I just buy it on Amazon right now? I was going to spend 30 bucks on a book, I can get the book for 10 bucks." I seen people do that. When Porter built his model, Michael Porter the Harvard professor, that was unheard of when he built the five forces of the industry. Those are the kinds of things I'm talking about.

Customers are showcasing now because now, remember that model was built before smart phones, built before the internet. Not only customers are smarter now, customers have power. A customer doesn't have to rely on you to tell them that the price is, they can price shop you. That could be for cars, that could be for any other item, that could be for appliances. Now we're living in the age of the smart customers are in power or consumers rather or in power. They don't have to accept your pricing. Not only are you competing with your main competitors, you're competing with people on best selling items on Amazon.com. That model does not have that in the five forces. You with me?

Robert Plank: Yeah. Just to make sure that we're on the same page here, there's this one example. There's the five forces which are from the 80s and things but then now there's all these new changes in technology and things like that. The example that you used is for example, one of the new forces I guess, is showcasing where someone can take their smartphone to a book store, find a book they want, scan it, order on Amazon for half the price and get it shipped home to them in a day or two. Things have changed but are there new rules or are there a new set of five factors? Is there some kind of response that us, as business owners, can now move in a new direction as the rest of everything else has changed?

D. Anthony Miles: Yeah. You have new frameworks and new models. I don't want to get all academic on you, I'll just say this to answer your question, competition is maybe four tier now when it used to be three tier. Not only are you competing locally or regionally or by a state or whatever, now you're competing globally and global also means the internet. You're competing with people all over the world. People not necessarily compete on price. That used to be the other thing, "I'll match their price." It's not about price now. Warren Buffet had said this, "Price is what you pay, value is what you get." The same people that want value aren't the same people that are concerned about price. We have a totally whole new ball game.

I'll give you a great example of this. I'll use Wal Mart as an example. What if you went and bought a laptop at Wal Mart? Wal Mart is considered a low price retailer, correct?

Robert Plank: Right.

D. Anthony Miles: Okay. The people that buy laptops from Wal Mart are concerned about price. What do you get when you buy a laptop from Wal Mart? You get no technical support, you get no help in terms of selecting item that you're interested in buying. Let's flip that around. That's a person that shops on price. The person that shops on value will go to a retailer who specializes in computers and they want value for their money. They don't care about the price. The guy that goes to say, let me give you an example, Best Buy or a place like that. You get more technical support from Best Buy when you buy a laptop than you would, say Wal Mart. People will say, "I spend extra money because I'm getting value, I get technical support. I get a 1-800 number. I can go back to the store and if the computer doesn't work, they'll do a charge back and I can just go get another one off the shelf." Can't do that with Wal Mart. You probably could but I'm just showing you the differences between the two. Most people shop on value and most people shop on price but you never see people shop on value and price. That's why some people go to Wal Mart and some people go to Best Buy. That make sense to you Robert?

Robert Plank: Yeah. Some people shop based on value, some people shop based on price. Is what you're saying that the people who are shopping based on price, there's no keeping most of them in general because of these new technologies, because of the price wars and things like that?

D. Anthony Miles: Absolutely.

Robert Plank: We're going to lose a big chunk of those people. To make up for that we give the people who are looking for value more of what they want?

D. Anthony Miles: Absolutely. Let's say you know someone and this where, I guess, Porter's theory comes in with switching costs. Say, let's say cell phones in particular. Why do people buy Apple's products? Apple's products are good, I have to give that to them. You have something called composition loyalty, which means you make people buy your products so they don't switch. They don't care about the price or the value, they're going to be loyal. It's almost like blind loyalty.

A lot of people, it would take, if you have all your platforms, all your devices set up with Apple, you got the Apple laptop or you got the Apple iPhone, all the other devices. What if you want a regular PC, you don't want a Mac? That's going to cost you money to switch. Those are called switching costs. For you to go switch from a Apple laptop or whatever, all your things on there, all your items, and all of your files on there, for you to go switch to a regular PC that uses a Microsoft platform you're going to have a lot of switching costs. That's one of the things that Porter does talk about is switching costs. People, if it's going to cost you more money to switch products then people are going to say, "I can't afford that switching cost so I'm just going to stay with Apple and that's what I been using. I'm just going to stay with them." Switching costs can be a factor.

As a person is doing business out in the business world or having customers, you want to make sure that your customers are loyal to you in a way that maybe it's not about price, maybe it's about value. You call them every month. You have someone on your staff, like think of a car lot when you buy a new car. That salesman sell you that car, he tries to keep up with you at least once a month or once every 6 months, ask how you're doing because he knows 5 years from now you're going to be looking for another car or if you have children. You may have to buy your daughter a car who's getting ready to go off to college. Salesmen try to keep in contact with you so it's about the relationship. You're not a good salesman or a good business person if you sell something to somebody once. If you can sell them something more than once, you're an excellent business man or excellent business person rather.

Just because you sell somebody something once, that does not end the relationship. It's what you do before the sale and what you do after the sale. That's why they call it relationship. That's what you want to do if you're a business owner. You want to build a relationship. Yeah, your prices might be higher but what do you give them for their money? You give them value. Something breaks down, they bring it to your shop, you fix it, give it back to them. People don't forget that. That's what makes people stay with their particular retailer, their particular person they do business with because you provide a sense of security. When they buy something from you, they don't have to worry about it. It's part of your brand, does that make sense?

Robert Plank: Yeah. It makes tons of sense. It makes me think of a few different experiences I've had with different establishments who did that very well. One example that comes to mind when I bought a car a few years ago, the dealership offered something like free oil change. I think it might of been forever even, for your oil change. You take the car in and as you're waiting for you car to get done, you walk around the lot, you might want to pay for a car wash and things like that. I remember kind of pretty, I don't know what the word is even, but it made the gears in my brain start turning as I was realizing that they had this one little schtick of, "You can bring your car in as much as you want however many miles to get your oil changed."

Even things like my dentist is really good at the follow up, the email follow up and stuff like that. I go to a dentist, it cost the same and it's more or less the same service as any dentist in town but this dentist is pretty good about letting me know when appointments are coming up and things like that. What really impressed me recently in the past week is I recently had a birthday and my dentist sent an email. I'm sure it was on an automatic sequence but still, it was cool that my dentist had somehow, somewhere figured out my birthday. I don't even remember when they discovered my birthday but they put it in some kind of a system, some kind of a database so that on my birthday that would send out an email saying, "Happy birthday." There might of been some other businesses that might have sent me some kind of a message like that but if there were, it was only 1 or 2.

Just the way that you described that with things like... Just have some kind of afterwards support. Then, like you said, even before the sale, have just those little touches in there to build up that momentum so at least people will know who you are. Would you say, is that the attack plan more or less against the big retailers? Retailer could even be Amazon but, I guess, the advantage to an Amazon or a Wal Mart is that they're competing on price but they don't have the, I don't know what you'd call it. They don't have the time to give that extra care.

D. Anthony Miles: Support.

Robert Plank: Yeah.

D. Anthony Miles: The customer support. There you go, right, the customer support.

Robert Plank: They can't support all of those customers. They're all doing it on volume so their weakness is they can't support those customers. Now the plan of attack is to play your own game and support that smaller pool of customers that a Wal Mart or an Amazon wouldn't be able to support. Is that right?

D. Anthony Miles: That's an excellent point, Robert. Excellent point. You also have to remember this, and because of customers being in power with smartphones, I know I heard Bill Parcells say this, or I heard someone else say this, the coach that used to be with the Jets. He said, "Customers don't marry products, they date them." What does that mean? That means that if you don't give the customer the proper support, they're going to jump ship. It maybe involve switching costs and it may not involve switching costs. The guy who can maintain a higher customer support level is the guy who wins.

You made another excellent point we talked about Amazon. Yeah Amazon is a huge retailer. If I was competing against Amazon I would say, "Okay, what would make people come to me as opposed to them?" You raised an excellent point. I would say my customer support is stronger. My customer called my 1-800 number, I get somebody on the phone. If he called Amazon, and I've seen this, you may get some guy in India who doesn't know nothing about your product but he's just doing caller support. Just the things like that that makes people want to go do business with you because you have a stronger customer support mechanism. It's like I go back to this all the time, customers don't marry products, they date them. When you are no longer, and I don't want to get too technical on marketing and all that, but when you don't put the customer first everything else goes to hell.

Yeah, they'll buy from Amazon but Amazon might be second choice. What if they go on to your establishment or you store and look for it first and they say, "You don't have what I'm looking for," stop them before they leave out of the store. You go, "Hey, I can order and have it FedExed here tomorrow. I'll let you know. Let's do business. I want to take care of you, I can have it here tomorrow." How could Amazon compete against that? Amazon is trying. I don't know if you've seen this Robert, Amazon has some type of relationship with some of the retailers. I've seen this done with bookstores, where you order the book and then the retailer might have the book, say a Barnes and Noble, and you go over to order the book, you pay for it and everything and they'll say, "Okay, it's located at the Barnes and Noble on Main Street. Barnes and Noble will hold the book, you go pick it up." Amazon is concerned about that, they're trying to make an adjustment to their customer service model. That's a little bit scary but you can still compete against it.

The thing you compete against is what is your customer support mechanism or infrastructure look like? That's what people look for. I'm not going say, you don't have to pamper people, you just have to take care of them. If you take care of your customer, you don't have to worry about your competition. I think Mark Cuban said that. That make sense?

Robert Plank: Yeah. Compete in the area where Amazon can't, at least not yet, at least until they figure out the artificial intelligence. Then when they do, there will be some other open area where we can adapt and kind of play our own chess move against them.

D. Anthony Miles: Absolutely. Think about this, I don't know if you ever been into the Apple store or you been into the Microsoft store, have you seen those establishments in your area?

Robert Plank: I've been in an Apple store maybe four or five times but never a Microsoft store.

D. Anthony Miles: We have them here. I been in both of them and I'm going to tell you there's a difference. What's the difference? The Apple store is cool. You see cool little products. You remember that store, The Sharper Image, in the mall that used to have those neat gadgets?

Robert Plank: Oh yeah.

D. Anthony Miles: You remember that store?

Robert Plank: Yeah.

D. Anthony Miles: That's what Apple is. Apple is the cool store where all the kids want to hang out, but you go into the Microsoft store it's just a different ambiance there. It's like, they got the surface, they got the laptop but it's just not the same ambiance. You see more people in the Apple store than you do the Microsoft store. The ambiance is just different. It's not the same. Microsoft products, I guess maybe they're still working on it, they just don't move people to go to their store. It's like, yeah everybody has laptops. You go to Circuit City, go to what's the other retailer? Best Buy, but okay, you got laptops, do you have the cool stuff? Microsoft, they're not there yet with it. They just not there yet. Like I said, there's a total difference between the two.

I was actually going to get staff together and research the both of the retailers and do a article about it but I put that one later. It's just a different, different kind of feel to both of the stores. It's just totally different. Microsoft products don't seem cool to the consumers. It's something they're missing that they're not there yet. They just don't have... It's just not the same as when you go into the Apple store. Those are the kinds of things that people look at. Are you the guy with the cool store? Are you the guy that has the products that people like and want to play with them? Apple was very strategic in doing that. The Apple store is a really really massive stroke in a retail environment added to their platform.

Robert Plank: Would you say that with the companies that you work with, online and offline ones, would you say that the number one mistake, if there was a number one mistake, is it that people don't have a cool store or is it something even bigger? Is there a real low hanging fruit that all these entrepreneurs and stores should be pursuing?

D. Anthony Miles: It took years for Apple to build up their brand and come up with the cool store. However, what you could do in terms of what you're selling to the public is, and it goes back to this Robert, what's your customer service mechanism? How are you perceived to the customer? You know you heard of the five P's of marketing, right? You have a fifth P called presence, how you look to the customer. What does your presence look like to that customer? Does that customer say, "Hey, this guy has this, this guy has that, he has all the ancillary products that help with the sale?" What you want to do is you want to always measure yourself to whoever your competitors are and you either want to outperform them or you want to take characteristics like Sam Walton used to do. He would shop his competitors and he would borrow ideas that worked for them and he would incorporate those into his Wal Mart store.

You can do the same thing, you just have to find out what works and see if you can incorporate it into your store or your business and try to maximize it. You should always benchmark other retailers that are either a direct competitor to you or some that are not a competitor of yours. You have ideas all over the place, you just have to manage those ideas. Some work, some don't. You want to make sure that you take ideas from other stores or other people and incorporate them into yours and then definitely will build up your customer support mechanism. That's the goal is to build up your customer support infrastructure mechanism.

Robert Plank: That's interesting. That seems like that's what Microsoft is trying to do with the Apple store but as you said, they're falling short and maybe not copying just the right parts, which is weird. For example, Microsoft has a whole gaming system and Apple doesn't, talk about having a cool store, put some more video games in there. That makes a lot of sense there because instead of trying to reinvent everything from scratch, you just look at what seems to be working and what's not and incorporate those ideas in and see where they go.

D. Anthony Miles: Absolutely. A lot of the things that happen between those two companies are based on their corporate philosophy and their corporate culture. Microsoft tends to be an adapter. What that means in terms of innovation, there's two types of innovations, you have adaptation and you have creation. When you are a adapter, you take things that are already there and you just improve on them. Apple is more of a innovator or more of a creative company than Microsoft. Microsoft is an adapter and you say Apple is more of a creative or creator type of store or creative innovation. They always doing radical things like case in point, who invented the iPad? Who invented the iPod? Who invented the iPhone? Those all innovations made by Apple.

Let me give you a great example of this, you have the iPod, so what does Microsoft do? Microsoft went and started, what, Zune tunes? Remember that device?

Robert Plank: Yeah, I remember the Zune, yeah.

D. Anthony Miles: Yeah, Zune tunes just didn't catch on with people. That's a core difference between the two companies. Microsoft tends to be an adapter, Apple tends to be a creative innovative type of company. Apple tends to create things, Microsoft tends to take things and try to improve on them, sometimes it works for them, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes when you create something it just doesn't work. Remember Newton? Sometimes he could be too ahead of the market. Not one strategy works all the time, it depends on the situation.

If you want to look at Apple or you want to look at Microsoft, go, "Okay. Do I need to take a creative innovation strategy or do I need to take an adapter strategy? Like take something that has some weaknesses and improve it and put it up on the umbrella of my business." You got to keep your ears to the ground and take a strategy that may work in different contexts in a way you need to work in terms of building your business or making your business more successful.

Robert Plank: All that makes a lot of sense that, yeah, sometimes you're in adapter mode and sometimes that you're in creator mode. It sounds like today we covered a lot of little things and a lot of ways of thinking about stuff and for businesses to problem solve their way out of wherever they're stuck and things like that. I understand that you have a book and a website where someone can get all this stuff in one place and take the book and use it for their business and turn it around or make it better and adjust the time. Is that right? You have this book for people?

D. Anthony Miles: Yes. I have a book out called, Risk Factors and Business Models: The Five Forces of Entrepreneurial Risk. In my book I looked at business failure and I looked at some of the things that cause business failure. My book is one of the few on the market that's strategically focused on risk and what causes businesses to fail. I did research in over 500 small businesses and ventures. I conducted statistical or empirical research on it. I think that my will be helpful to your listeners because you don't want to make the mistakes that people do when they start a business. Case in point, start a commodity type of business, a business that can't compete in the market place because the level of competition is so high, your business would not make a dent in the marketplace. Those are some of the things that I talk about in my book.

I'm also working on a new book called, How To Get Away With Murder In Marketing but I'll save that for the next time we get on the show or do another interview. I'd love to come back.

Robert Plank: Oh man, I'm excited for that one. That's the future book and the current book is Risk Factors and Business Models and where can people pick up a copy of that?

D. Anthony Miles: Sure. You can pick up my book on Amazon.com. It's funny, right? Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and pretty much established online retailers, you can probably find it there. I do have a clip of my book on my website www.MDICorpVentures.com. I also have some things that I published on my Research Gate page. I have a lot of people that, you can download some of my articles and presentations for free. If you type in my name D. Anthony Miles and go to Research Gate, I have some neat things up there. I've actually done research on Hispanic owned businesses, female owned businesses, I did a national marketing study on businesses that were doing some work with the SPI. Like I said, I have some presentation and workshops that I've done. All that's free for your listeners if they're interested. My treat.

Robert Plank: Awesome. They can get all that free stuff at DAnthonyMiles.com? Is that the place for those?

D. Anthony Miles: I don't know, I've had my website redone. If they want to get the free stuff, they can go to Research Gate. Just type in my name D. Anthony Miles at Research Gate. If you Google my name and see Research Gate, that's where you want to go. ResearchGate.com. I have about 40 items on there, whatever you're interested in. I actually got some research I did with another professor, on workplace bullying, that type of stuff. I got some neat stuff and it's all free. All free.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Free is good and what's also good is as you're talking about emprically done and peer reviewed and stuff like that but it's also on these practical subjects.

D. Anthony Miles: Absolutely.

Robert Plank: MDICorpVentures.com and DAnthonyMiles.com. Then Google search D. Anthony Miles and find the entry with you and your Research Gate content. Before we go Dr. D, what is this D stand for in D. Anthony Miles?

D. Anthony Miles: Oh, it's my first name Derek. Only my mother and my ex-wife call me by my first name.

Robert Plank: Oh, okay. You're saying, I'm a big time business owner and professor, I'm not going to be Derek, right? Got to be Anthony, got to have a strong name, right?

D. Anthony Miles: If you notice something Robert, most CEOs have the initial then their middle name and their last name like H.R. Ross Perot. I did that because I want to reinvent my identity in the business world so I use my first initial, my middle name and my last name.

Robert Plank: Nice. That way your initials spell DAM anyway.

D. Anthony Miles: Yeah. That's the down side.

Robert Plank: When you're passionate you can say, man I'll build you a great DAM business, right?

D. Anthony Miles: Yeah, there you go. I got to use that as some of the marketing.

Robert Plank: Yeah. You work with what you have, right? Cool. Lots of great stuff today Dr. D. Once again, DAnthonyMiles.com, MDICorpVentures.com. I appreciate you so much and I appreciate you hopping on and sharing all these knowledge bombs with us today.

D. Anthony Miles: Thank you so much for having me Robert. I really appreciate it. I love sharing my knowledge with your listeners. I think they'll pick some things from me and I think I can help them out a lot. I really enjoyed it, thank you so much.[/showhide]

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156: Listen, Focus, Balance, Pivot: Get It All Done and Pursue Your Entrepreneurial Dreams with Audrey Bell-Kearney

Focus now and expand your brain later. Audrey Bell-Kearney from HerTube.tv shares her unique story with us and tells us how she created a marketed a line of plus sized dolls and created her own content distribution network.

• HerTube.tv
• Dasia Doll
• "What's Your Big Idea?" Book
• Talk Business With Audrey

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: Audrey Bell-Kearney is the founder and CEO of HerTube Media Network, which is a media marketing production distribution and consulting firm that curates and produces digital content for clients and helps them get exposure for their business. Now, Audrey sounds like a pretty amazing woman. She created a plus-sized fashion doll. She has a weekly radio show. She has a documentary. She has all kind of cool stuff. How are things today Audrey?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Hey, everything is wonderful today. It's a beautiful day down here in Georgia. How about with yourself?

Robert Plank: Super beautiful in California. About to take a walk a little bit later, but in the meantime, just enjoying the entrepreneurial journey and all that good stuff.

As we get rocking and rolling here, what would you say makes you stand out from the crowd? What makes Audrey Bell-Kearney special?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: I think, for me, it's my ability to be a good listener to people and help them clarify what they're doing, help them clarify the journey that they're on because I find that- and I didn't know I was a good listener until I actually went to a job interview one time, at Comcast as a matter of fact, and the interview person asked me, "What do you think your greatest skill is?" And I said, "Listening," and she said "You are the only person that answered that question correctly." She said, "It's rare that I find somebody who say, 'listening.'" I would say that listening and helping people pretty much clarify what they want to do with themselves, with their business, with their lives, and things like that.

Robert Plank: Would you say that this whole thing about being a good listener, is this just something that comes naturally to you or do you see other people kind of messing up? Is it just a matter of just slowing down, being 100% present? What's the trick to being a good listener?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: I think being 100% present and really being concerned about what someone is saying to you, because a lot of times people are talking and you're not listening. For me, if someone comes to me with a problem, I'm present. I'm there. When I'm there, I get to be able to find out exactly what it is they're going through.

My mind is so weird because it starts planning out, while they're talking to me, it starts planning out the solution right away. I didn't really recognize this until people started saying to me, "Oh my God! You're so good at this. You're so good at this." It was just something that came natural for me. It's kind of like I'm a listener, and then I play it out. I can figure it out in a picture in my head, like this is what you should be doing.

I remember there was a gentleman who told me I was a clairaudient and I never knew what that meant. He said, "Clairaudients are people that listen. They learn by listening. They learn by hearing what people are saying." He said to me, "They're really to the point. They really don't like to beat around the bush. Get right to the point."

It was so funny because I said, "Oh my God. That must be what the problem is with my daughter and my husband because they like to tell a story, and they want to tell you a long story. For me, I'm like, "Okay, what's the point? Let's get to the point."

I think it's something that I was pretty much born with, didn't recognize it for a long time, but people kept telling me, "You're so good at that."

Robert Plank: I mean, if you're good at it, just go ahead and play to your strength. I appreciate that and I think that the average person probably doesn't pay that much attention. I think about in a lot of the conversations that I have, a lot of people either tell me just what they think I want to hear, or it turns out they only listened to the very last sentence I said, or they kind of tuned in the first few seconds and then they kind of tuned out. I like how you explained that, that kind of like, as they're talking, you're just kind of taking it in and you're already formulating a solution for them, as opposed to just kind of going through the motions there.

It's cool that- I see this all the time. Let me know if you experience this or not, but whenever I have someone who's outside of my business looking in, or I look at someone else's business as an outsider, they're are all kinds of things that are right in front of their face that they're completely missing. Do you see these kinds of things happening?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: All the time. All the time. I talk to women all the time. We do mastermind groups, and a lot of times you can't see what's right in front of you. Even myself, even me, I have to go to my coach, and walk through things, and talk with people, and I do my mastermind. A lot of times it's right in front of your face and they can't see it. Then, once they talk it out to somebody, then they can see it. It's declared for them. With me, I find that when they start talking, it's automatic with me. I have to turn it off sometime because I get so excited about what I hear and what I'm seeing, I just want to jump in and start blurting it out. Yeah, that's pretty common with a lot of people, even with myself.

Robert Plank: Okay, so you're a good listener. What has that listening got you? What have you done recently that kind of has you excited?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: What has me really excited these days, and it's pretty easy to get me excited because I get a lot of ideas. I'm working on a new series called Campus Crimes. It's so funny because we did our casting last week for the show. We cast about, I want to say, 22 people for the series. It's an Internet TV web series. I think just meeting new talent and young people who want to get their names out there. They want to be actors and actresses.

My daughter is a actor as well. My daughter had said to me that Friday morning, she said, "You want to know what really pissed me off?" I said, "What?" She says, "When I go on a audition, and I come home, and you guys say, "How did it go?" She said, "I don't know how it went. Every time you say that it just drives me crazy." So I said, "Okay."

The next day, I was casting. There was a gentleman who came. He said, "You know, I really want to do this. This is all I want to do." He said, "My wife has really been supportive. She's holding everything down for me." He said, "I'm out of work right now, but I really want to focus on my career." He said, "When I go home, she always say to me, 'Hey babe, how did it go?'"

It was so funny because my daughter conversation the day before gave me the opportunity to say to him, "You know what? When you go home and you see your wife, you tell her it went well and you got a part in it," because he say, "I get parts but I'm a extra. I never get a speaking part." I said, "You tell her you got a speaking part."

That makes me excited. It makes me excited that I could help people bring their dreams to life and be in this creative space right now, in this whole video space right now. That's got me excited. It keeps me up at night.

Robert Plank: Nice. It sounds like you're helping other people out or giving them a better experience when they go home with the little things, right? You picked up that, when other people go in for auditions and they don't know how it went, at least now you're saying, "Okay, right off the bat, I'm telling you if you're getting it."

Audrey Bell-Kearney: I only said it to him, because he said what my daughter had said to me, "I go home and she says to me, 'How did it go?'" Nobody else said that. I told no one else that day that they got the part except for him, because I just felt like, "Okay, here's a guy who really wants to do what he loves." You know when you want to do something that you love, you pretty much make huge sacrifices. I could tell he was making sacrifices. I could tell he was passionate about having this whole actor career. I wanted to make his day, so I said to him, "When you go home, you tell your wife not only did you get the part, but you got a speaking part," and he was like, "Oh my God! Thank you so much!"

By the time he got outside, I got a message on my phone. He had found me on Facebook and he put up a video thanking God. Just be patient. Just believe in yourself. I was like, "Wow! That's pretty cool."

Robert Plank: That's awesome. This Campus Crimes Internet TV web series, what is that? Why did you make it?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: I've been a business owner now for 20 years, 18 years full-time working from home. When I invented the dolls, I call that my real business. I invented the dolls in 1999, so the dolls are turning 18 years old next year. I was sitting here and I said, "Man, I really need to create something for HerTube," which is my TV network, HerTube TV, "I really need to create something that's going to stand out."

I'm sitting in my office and I'm looking at my doll. I haven't gotten her manufactured, probably in about 7 or 8 years, but I said, "You know what? I'm going to get a limited edition manufactured. She's got on the outfit that my daughter wore to the prom. My daughter wore the exact same kind of dress to the prom. I loved the dress so much I had it made for the doll. I sent the samples to Hong Kong and I said, "You know what? We might be able to do a story around her." Her name is Dasia. "Maybe I need to do a story around Dasia," and the more I thought about it, the more it kept coming to me.

Maybe she's in college now. Let's make her want to be a FBI. I came up with this whole story of mine about these 3 friends who meet in college. Dasia's from the inner city. I grew up in Newark. I was born in Georgia, but I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, which is pretty tough. You've got to be pretty tough to live in Newark, New Jersey.

I kind of thought about my life: pretty smart girl, book smart, street smart, can hold her own. I said, "You know what? I'm going to make Dasia like that," but because there's so much crime in inner cities, I wanted her to be studying to be a FBI. I created the story around her and she wants to be an FBI. She meet up with 2 friends. I'm here in Georgia now. One of her friends is Macie and she is a beautiful white girl who lives in Savannah. She was raised on a farm. All she cares about is keeping the Earth and the planet safe and clean. Then there's Terri who is raised in Los Angeles. Her family is rich. She's a black girl. She wants to find money. She loves fashion and she wants to be a fashion model.

They meet up on campus and because Dasia is training to be a FBI, the police and the campus police are always coming to her when something's missing, for her to help crack it. She may be hacking a computer. She may be tracking somebody down, you know, just solving cases. That's pretty much the gist of how I came about with the story line.

Robert Plank: Cool, so am I understanding you right in that, so you have an Internet TV station, and you have this show called Campus Crimes. Is it live action? Is it that these plots, and these stories are being acted out, but then there's also the doll version of Dasia. Is that right?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Dasia is actually a doll. The show is actually a real version of Dasia. Dasia is a limited edition that I'm putting out because she's turning 18. In the doll world, there are a lot of people who knew Dasia when we had her out there actively selling her and promoting her. She hasn't been out now for some years. Because she's turning 18, we're doing a limited edition line. I decided to spin it and turning her into a real person, so we cast real people to play the role of Dasia and her friends.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. What's the deal with these dolls anyway? I know that we mentioned it a little bit as we were ramping up. I didn't realize that some of these different things connected.

Eighteen years ago, the thing that started all of this off, what was the idea here? I guess these are plus-sized dolls and you have the African American one and the white one. I mean, how did all this doll stuff start?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: I was working at Verizon in 1999 and hated every second of it. Verizon had- I didn't like it. It was a customer service position, but I was also trying to figure out my next move. I said, "You know, I want to do a business. I want to do something." I had just retained a representative for Primerica Financial Services. I was in the back of the room recruiting my friend to Primerica. I said to her, "You know, I was at work and I had this idea for this doll," and she said, "Yeah? What kind of doll?" I said, "Like a fat fashion doll. You ever seen one?" And she said, "No, I never saw a fat fashion doll," she said, "but I collect dolls." She said, "You've got to stop by my house and look at my collection." I said, "Okay."

The weekend, I went to her house and when I got to her house, she had just got this really beautiful doll by Mattel. She paid $250 for the doll. I'm looking at the doll. I said, "People pay this kind of money for a doll?" She's like, "Yeah, it's a collectible doll," so we took that and we started running. She said, "Listen, I want to know, can I be the vice president?" I was like, "Sure," so we founded a company called Big Beautiful Dolls and we just hit the ground running.

For 6 months, we looked in every corner of the world trying to find a doll manufacturer, and we came across the one guy down in Maryland who had his own doll company. I reached out to him. We drove to Maryland because at that time, I was still living in New Jersey. We drove to Maryland and we spent 8 hours in his warehouse. He told us everything we needed to do to launch this company, including giving us the name of a sculptor. He said he could manufacture the doll. He said, "I can manufacture it for you," he said, "but it's going to be really expensive to get the molds." He said, "You've got to think about that," He said, "but the first thing you've got to do, you have to actually get your doll sculpted."

I came home and I looked online. I pulled up some plus-sized women. I sent a picture of myself because I'm a plus-sized woman as well. I sent that to the doll sculptor. You know, what was kind of funny about that whole situation, she lived in Kincheloe, Michigan and she said to me, she says, "Well, I thanked Percy for sending you to me," she say, "and it's a good time for you, but it's a bad time for me." I sat there like, "Okay." I didn't understand what she meant and I said, "Why do you say that?" She said, "Well, I can't charge you what I'd normally charge you because I'm going through an estate settlement right now."

She said, "My son just learned how to fly a plane and he was graduating. His father came to visit us, and he took his father up in the plane to show him that he could fly, and the wind blew the plane into a tree and they both passed away." I was like, "Oh my God!" That was such a sad story. I was like, "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that." She said, "Me too," she said, "so right now, this is going to give me some kind of break from thinking about that whole thing and I just can't charge you what I would normally charge," which was great for us, but it was sad for her.

That's pretty much how the dolls got started, so for 5 years, I ran that company, running up and down the east coast doing doll shows, talking to people, getting written up in magazines, doing press and all that kind of stuff.

Robert Plank: Awesome, and there's a lot of interesting things in there. I mean, one thing that I liked about that whole story there is that, first of all, you had your friend, the one that jumped on being the vice president, who is just as excited about it as you are. I think that what was also cool was that instead of just looking at this as some kind of dream, you broke it down, or you at least did the research and figured out what were the smaller steps that you had to do. Right? You had to figure out what the doll would look like, have it go to the designer, have it go to the manufacturer.

What I also like is that that manufacturer was very helpful, right? A lot of people just want to say, "Just give me money," or, "give me this lump sum and I'll figure it out," but he was very helpful, it sounds like, in educating you and getting you kind of brought up to speed to the point where when it came time to buy from him, then you were a more educated buyer, right? That way, you could come- like, he told you all the stuff you had to figure out and then what you would have to come back to him with. That way, it just seems like an easier transaction, and more of a long-term thing, where it seems like everyone involved, number 1, was super excited to get it done, and then number 2, was very clear about what the prerequisites were in order to move to that next step in the process.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: That is absolutely the truth. His name is Percy Sutton. His company is called Integrity Toys. He was so instrumental in helping us get this off the ground, and not a lot of people are like that. There's so many coaches out there. There's so many mentors and all these different people. It's very rare to find somebody who will take the time to sit with you for 8 hours. We sat for 8 hours, all we had was water, because we were like the student in the classroom and we wanted to get it done.

He sat there with us and he told us. We met his team. He walked us through the process, so for him to sit there and do that, I will forever be grateful because of him I would not have gotten the doll done as quick as I got it done because it took us 6 months to go from an idea out of my head to actual physical product in December. The doll was actually sent to us, the prototypes were sent to us in December. Him being that person to help us get to that level, that was something. That was priceless for me.

Robert Plank: Awesome! When you look back and you look at the creation of the dolls, your Internet TV station, and your web series, and things like that, and you look at what you've done right, what do you think it is that you've done right that a lot of people aren't doing out there?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Being focused. I've got to tell you, Robert. That is the one thing that I will tell anybody. I had a coach, probably back in 2006, and he said to me, he said, "Audrey, you need to just pick one focus," and I was like, "I'm a wonder woman. I can do it all. I can do all the things. I can do 10 things." He kept telling me, "You need to pick one thing because that's why you're not hitting the level of success that you want to hit, because you're all over the place." He said, "Your site is beautiful." I had just paid $1,500 for a new site. He said, "The site is beautiful," he said, "but nobody knows what you do." I kept saying to myself, "but it's right there!" It was clear to me, so I didn't listen.

What I would say is, listen to the people that know more than you. Be focused. Pick something and be focused. Now, I'm not saying that you can't expand your brand later, but right now, pick one thing. That's the one thing that was pretty tough for me about being an entrepreneur because I have so many great ideas most of the time. Sometimes, somebody have to smack me side my head and say, "Hey, listen, focus."

When I realized that that was a big key for me. When I started HerTube, I said, "Okay, what's my focus going to be?" What I did was, even though I have several different subsidies to the company, I have people in place to handle those subsidies. I handle the basic overall operations of the company, the marketing, and the expansion of the company. I have a person that handles the production, and I have a person that handles the content curation and stuff. Even though I have all these ideas, and each one of those can be separate businesses by themselves. I would say focus is the main thing for anybody.

Robert Plank: I like that. I think that's a really powerful message for a lot of people listening, especially because I think about the times that I told myself that I could have the split focus, or that I could have the multi-tasking, and when I think back on it, I realize that, okay, let's say if I had to switch careers between three different businesses. In your head, you think, "Okay, I'll just put in 33%, 33%, and 33%," but as far as the having to switch gears and remember stuff and all that, at least for me, it was more like 10%, 10%, 10%, or maybe even 5% in each of those things.

I think that is so huge. Once people get past that initial crunch time, for example, you mentioned that there was that 6 month period when you were probably not sleeping a lot, or doing all the stuff to get that idea to the prototype phase, or to get it finished. There's, for sure, the crunch time period when you're figuring things out, but then after that time, when you're looking more long-term, then it becomes time to kind of take yourself out of the business. It sounds like you've kind of had that similar path, where you say, "All right, well, there was that period of time when I was super overworked, but then in the long-term, I need to have the focus to not be burned out, and then I'll go and look and see who can fill what gaps for me.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: You know, it took some learning because with the doll company, I didn't know that. That was my first real business. My partner and I, we were running. We were grinding it out. Then she moved to Texas because her husband works for Fox Television, so they moved to Texas. I was in New Jersey by myself and at the time, my boyfriend who is now my husband for the last 13 years, he became my partner sort of. We just did the highway thing, up and down the highway. I had to find some balance because I was really burning out.

I remember my daughter was about 9 or 10 years old at the time and her teacher sent me a notice home and said, "Hey listen, you need to come in so we can talk." I go into the school and I said, "Yes?" She said, "You know, your daughter grades are slipping." I'm like, "Why?" She said, "You work all the time," and I was like, "Oh my God!" Which I was. I was working and I was doing a business. I had to find some balance.

What I did was, when she was home I gave her all of my attention. She went to bed about 8:00 at night, so when she would go to bed, I would start all over again and I would work to probably like 2:00 in the morning. At 3:00 in the morning, because I quit my job at Verizon, my husband and I would go and sling papers. We had a paper route at 3:00 in the morning. We would sling papers until about 5:00 in the morning, come back home. I'll lay back down for about a hour and get my daughter up around 7:00 for school. She would go to school and I would start my day all over again.

You can get burned out but when you're focused and you're passionate about what you do, you don't feel like you're getting burned out until it hits you. Then all of a sudden, you're like, "Bam! I'm tired. I'm drained. There's nothing else I can do." I learned over the years that I have to take time for myself when I get like that because, I don't know if I'm a type A, but I know that when I'm into something, I'm into it. I've learned that when my mind says, "Okay, you're just looking at the screen. You're not really seeing anything," it's time to take a break.

Robert Plank: Yeah, and I think we've all been there. Does this same thing happen to you, where like, I'll be in that exact mindset you just described, where nothing's working. I'm super, just like, staring at the computer screen, can't really make any progress. I take a break. I do something unrelated, away from the computer. I come back and in 5 minutes, I've figured it out. Do you have the same kind of experience?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: I do, but mine is a little bit longer. It might take me a couple of hours and it only happens to me late in the evening. I'm a morning person so I'm at my best in the morning. If I'm working on something, I want to get it done, so I work all way through to the evening, and then I kind of lose it. I start to drain down, but if I step away for about 2 hours, normally that's like 10:00 at night, I want to go back and start working. It's like, "Oh man! Now, I've got it. Now I can go back," but I won't go back. I say, "You know what? I'm going to go to bed now and start again fresh in the morning."

Normally, it happens to me at night time, like around 7:00, when I guess most people should be shutting down, I'm tired. I'll take a break for a couple of hours and then I'm fresh again. I don't start again because I know if I start again, I'll be working until the morning, which is really going to mess up my day for the next day.

Robert Plank: Nice, but it sounds like that's a good problem to have, right? You think about the typical employee and they're dreading to go to work, and they take their time to get into the office. If you're holding yourself back from using the computer until 12 hours later, that sounds like a pretty good place to be. Right?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Oh, absolutely. I could tell you, when I used to work at one company, I would go into work, Robert, and straight break out in hives. I remember, I went in one day and I broke out in hives. They thought I had eaten something and I was having an allergic reaction, but it was just I hated being there. I was out of work for 3 days, sitting home all day with Calamine lotion all over me because I just broke out in hives. I just hated to be there.

Robert Plank: Oh man, so now, you figured out a better path for yourself. I mean, I really like everything that you explained. Today, it's even easier for people to do that kind of thing with Alibaba Manufacturers and Amazon FBA, and with Youtube and Vimeo, and all this kind of stuff. Am I right about this? All the things that you've done as far as making the plus-sized dolls, making your TV show, and all that stuff, you had to go through it the hard way, right? It's a lot easier these days, isn't it?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: When I tell you it is so- and I'm so excited because I think it is so funny you say that part. When we started in 1999, I had to build my own website with FrontPage from Microsoft. That's just to give you a idea of where we were. FrontPage was a website building software from Microsoft. Because we didn't have any money, I had to learn how to build my site. I learned how to build a site using Microsoft.

I was just sitting here thinking there's probably a couple days where I was like, "Man, when we launched those dolls, there was no social media." I'm really excited. The doll is going to be a limited edition of 3,700. We're doing a pre-sell of the doll. There was no social media. It was me going to doll shows up and down the highway. Now, fast forward to today. I can't wait to see how this is going to play out on social media and all across the web, because there was no social media. I don't even think Youtube had came out yet. I know Youtube wasn't out in face, but none of those guys were out. By the time they came out, we had pretty much halted production. I think that was right around 2005. I think Youtube and all those guys were just coming out.

I was saying to my husband, I said, "Man, I want to see how this is going to work out with pre-selling the dolls using social media when there was no social media when I started." Now, with this whole Internet TV thing, man, I'm loving every second of it. I'm on Roku. I just got a partnership with Amazon for their video program. We're going to be on Apple, so it's a great place to be. Technology is really opening up doors for a lot of new entrepreneurs and making things a lot better. It's a lot easier. It's still a lot of work, but you just have a lot more resources at your fingertips these days.

Robert Plank: Nice. It sounds like no one's going to push the button for you. You still have to take those steps, but you can get a lot wider reach instantly from your house, as opposed to getting in the car and having to drive around.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Absolutely. That's the thing. You still have to push the button, Robert. You still have to take yourself seriously. I still talk to a lot of women who want to start a business. Even my husband, my husband makes this really good chopped barbecue. He says to me he wants to do it as a business, and he knows that if he tells me that, he has to do the necessary steps. I say to him all the time, "I can't run the barbecue business so you're going to have to do the necessary steps." He doesn't want to do that part. You still have to push the button on your dream if you want it to be a business, if you want it to come true.

Robert Plank: Nice. If you think about it, if it was that easy, if all you had to do was just think it and it would happen, then it would be super crowded. It's almost like, the fact that you have to pursue that dream, take all those steps, and manage all that, it kind of weeds out a lot of the weak people who otherwise would have been your competitors.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Absolutely, because it's a lot of work. Once you say, "Yeah, I'm going to do this," you have to keep going. I've been doing HerTube for 3 years now. October will be 3 years and people are still amazed. My first year, I had to figure out exactly what it was. The second year, I had to tell people what it was because they still didn't understand it. Now, the third year, I know what it is, a lot of people know what it is, but now it's just about making great content. With that type of focus and that type of clarity, you can move forward along with the work.

Robert Plank: There's the work, or the grinding stage, and then the period of looking back and reflecting and figuring out, "Well, how do I get this out here more?" Or "How do I explain this better?" All that kind of look back at all the random stuff you did and kind of connect the dots.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Absolutely. I was in an investment meeting last year with some investors. I worked on an accelerated program called Launchpad 2X, and they put me in front of some investors and I thought, "They're going to get it because I'm going to tell them, 'Listen, just think about a hybrid. It's a hybrid between Netflix and Youtube,'" and they didn't get it. I'm like, "Really?"

It took me a year just to kind of crack down on, "What are you?" I just started to say, "I'm an Internet TV Network Woman, so think of me as an NBC on the Internet for women." Then people got it. "Oh, okay. Okay, good." It took a year for me, because I'm thinking in my head, "It sounds pretty simple. Don't you get it?" They didn't get it, so you have to really get your message down pat for people to understand it. People started to get it, like, "Oh, that's really cool." Then I started getting, "Man, that's really cool. Wow! How did you come up with that idea?" I tell the story about how I came up with that idea, but yeah that's really important for anybody who has a business. Your message has to be clear so people can understand you.

Robert Plank: It makes a lot of sense, and it might take a few years or a few iterations to get that down pat. Could you tell us about all these different things, about HerTube, Campus Crimes, Big Beautiful Dolls, and all this kind of stuff, especially HerTube TV in particular? This is a network for women on the Internet. What kind of things do you air on this?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: What we did was, when I first had the idea for the company, I was at a film festival. I had just moved to Georgia and I was at a film festival. I had written some books so I knew about self-publishing and how to distribute this stuff online. At that time, I had already produced a documentary that sells on Amazon right now along with one of my books.

I was at this film festival and I was sitting in the front. They were doing a workshop on distribution. The people that were presenting the workshop, they were telling the filmmakers, "Yeah, we can get you distribution, but you probably won't see any kind of royalties for 15 years." I'm thinking, "15 years?"

Robert Plank: Oh, no, no.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: That was crazy!

Robert Plank: I might be dead by then, right? In 15 years, you never know.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Exactly! I was like, "Are they serious?" I thought they were joking at first, but they were serious. They were saying, "We've got to put a lot of money in packaging," and all this stuff. I'm thinking, "I know how to distribute stuff on Amazon, CreateSpace, FastPencil, Lulu, and all these different places. It can't be that much different for a film." I sat there and I thought about it.

On my way home, I said, "Okay, how can I help these filmmakers do this better? How can I show them that, man, you're really getting robbed?" HerTube was the idea that came to me. What was interesting about HerTube, because I am a woman in business, it started out as a way for me to help filmmakers get their stuff out there. Probably the next year, I became a panelist at a film festival here in Gwinett County. I became this panelist, then talking with people about distribution. They loved it, but what hit me was, "This could be a great platform for women who are in business also," I said, "because it's like a marketing tool."

I started to lean that way, you know, leaving the filmmakers and kind of going to the women in business because I was a woman in business and I was always looking for a way to market my business. Well, the women in business said to me, "Yeah, we don't want to be making that many videos. We don't want to be in front of the camera." I was like, "Huh? Really?" I kind of had to pivot. I said, "Okay, now, who am I talking to?"

I went back to talking to filmmakers. Filmmakers are a little funny too, Robert, because everybody wants a Oscar. Everybody wants to be in the movie theaters. Everybody wants to be all over the world instantly, but not this way because they didn't understand the platform. I started getting really stressed out, saying, "Okay, this is stressing me out."

On our Roku channel, we have 500 videos produced by 19 women, so we said, "Okay, now we have this working for us on Roku." There's not a lot of income coming in there because the ad-serving company that we have, they just don't pay a lot of money. I had to think, "Okay, how am I going to make this where it's going to make some money, you know, bring in revenue for the company?" That's when we launched our online platform called HerTube.TV.

We launched that and I said, "Okay, we need to have our own content as well as content produced by other people." That's how Campus Crimes came about. We had a whole list of shows. Campus Crimes was the one, after I thought about how to incorporate the doll, that's when I took it back to my team and said, "Listen, this is what I want to do."

What's funny is, when you make up your mind about doing stuff, everything and everybody kind of falls into place. When I made up my mind that I was going to do Campus Crimes, a friend moved from Jersey. He was a cinematographer. He was like, "Listen, I'm going to work for you to get it done." I said, "Wow! That's so cool." Everything has kind of fallen in place. I think I have a great cast of people. I sat there last Saturday and I talked to those people and I think this is a really, really great cast. That's pretty much how HerTube, Campus Crimes, and all the dolls tie together.

Robert Plank: I'm looking at HerTube.TV right now. There's a couple of videos of just homemade stuff, but as far as the actual shows, there's Yoga shows, learning, shopping, and stuff like that. Even just seeing the still thumbnail screenshot, this is some professionally lit and shot stuff. Isn't it?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Oh yeah. A lot of the stuff is very professional because we have some of the real filmmakers. Some are filmmakers. I have some people who would want to do stuff at home. I have some people that started working with me and decided they wanted to be coaches. I had one young lady, she did a lot of cooking things on there. She was doing a lot of cooking videos at home, real nice stuff, and she realized, "I'm really good at being a coach," because people started calling her because she was talking about how to eat healthy.

Some stuff is homemade, some stuff is very professional, and some stuff is kind of like the lady I just talked about, that producer right there, the one you see now. She does a lot of training stuff. She's in a whole other country. What's cool about her is she said, "Hey, listen, can I partner with you? Can I distribute my content on your network?" I said, "Absolutely."

We come up with these great plans to partner with people and bring that content to life and help distribute. I'm almost like a marketer for other people at the same time. That's why the whole description was I'm a marketer, distributor, curator, producer, and all that kind of stuff, because that's what we do.

Robert Plank: Awesome! It's not just you. You're helping everyone else out. HerTube, is that at HerTube.TV? Is that the best place for people to go?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Yes, if you want to check out HerTube, just go to www.HerTube.TV. If you want to check out Dasia, you can go to DasiaDoll.com. She's there for pre-order right now. I only have 3,700 of her coming in. I'm believing I'm going to sell-out those pretty quick because I haven't even mentioned it to the doll world yet. There are a lot of people out there who followed her when she first came out. This is the first time I'm making it public, Robert. I haven't made it really public to anybody, so the first time, on your show that's public.

What happens is, when you go to see Dasia, when she comes back. You can pre-order her now, when you come back, she's going to come to me and I'm going to sign her and I'm going to have the 3 main cast members sign her, and send it off to the people who order it. Check her out. She's going to be 18 and the dress that she wore, if you go to DasiaDoll.com, my daughter is standing right next to her in that same dress. My daughter's a lot smaller now. She grew up. She's a beautiful young woman. She lost a lot of weight. She's acting and all that stuff, but that's the dress she wore to the prom.

Robert Plank: Nice. This is amazing that this has been around for as long as it has been, and even some people who were little girls when the first one came out, are now full grown and might have, even, kids of their own to get it. That's pretty awesome.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Yeah, my daughter was 9 when I started. She's 25 now.

Robert Plank: Oh man. Time flies.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: It does.

Robert Plank: Time flies so fast that you never know if your plane might get blown into a tree, or things might not work out in one way or another. Time is short and we have to kind of step it up and be entrepreneurs, do what needs to be done, do it quickly, and do it so that we can get that knocked out and move to the next thing.

Two websites there: DasiaDoll.com and HerTube.TV. Thanks for being on the show, Audrey, and telling us not only about your cool story, but giving us lots of little nuggets and all kinds of business advice. I really appreciated having you on today.

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Thank you so much for having me. It was really a pleasure. It's always nice to be on the other side of the microphone and the TV camera.

Robert Plank: Yeah. It kind of makes the scenery different, right? Breaks up the day, makes it so you're not just doing the same old thing every day, right?

Audrey Bell-Kearney: Yes it does. Yes it does.[/showhide]

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155: Crowdfunding: Get Funded Today on Kickstarter and Indiegogo with Zach Smith

Could you use some extra money to scale your online business? Do you want to test the marketplace demand for your physical product? If so, Kickstarter and Indiegogo are your tools and Zach Smith from Funded Today is your guide to raising capital for your business using crowdfunding.

• Funded Today
• Crowdfunding Success Matrix
• Funded Today Blog
• Crowdfunding Cashback Network

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: Zach Smith is going to talk to us today about crowdsourcing. Now Zach is a serial entrepreneur, never having had a real job his entire life. He is always starting, selling, running, and managing businesses. Zach loves helping others turn their dreams, ideas, and inspirations into successful companies, and this passion lead to his creation of Funded Today LLC, which is America's most successful crowdfunding firm, and the largest provider of crowdfunding marketing services worldwide. I'm excited. Can we talk about it? So you guys strap yourselves in. Zach, how are things today?

Zach Smith: Doing real well. Thanks for having me on your show today, Robert.

Robert Plank: Cool, I'm glad you're here, because this is a new topic that I don't know much about, but I've seen it kind of take off. I've seen it get popularity. So crowdfunding, what the heck is it?

Zach Smith: So crowdfunding is basically a way to raise money, that over the last few years has become extremely popular. There's a lot of different types of crowdfunding, but we'll just cut out all of that. The part of crowdfunding that we focusing on is called rewards-based crowdfunding, and that means that people essential preorder new ideas on sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. So let's say I've invented a cool new watch, and this watch does all kinds of fancy features. I might have a prototype of just one such watch. Well I film a video, I talk about this watch, I talk about how I want to bring it into mass production, and I tell people for $250 you can preorder this watch that I have on my wrist, and I'll make one for you just like the one I have here, and then people pay $250 to get this watch. There's no catches, there's no strings attached. You don't have to give up any equity in your business, and people do this to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. Funded Today, like you mentioned in your intro, has done that more so than anybody else in the world for thousands of different inventors now.

Robert Plank: Awesome. So you're the guy to talk to. I've seen every now and then... Before the show started recording we were talking a little like, Indiegogo and Kickstarter, people have used that to bankroll movies and TV shows and stuff like that. Plus on the practical side, every now and then I'll see something. I'll see someone will invent a camera that allows them to talk to their pets and dispense pet food remotely.

Zach Smith: I saw that one, yeah.

Robert Plank: Yeah, that's the most... That's the one that comes to mind the most when I think of crowdfunding and Kickstarter type of stuff, but it's also practical enough, something like a multimillion dollar movie and stuff like that. Using the watch example, someone says "I'm going to design the watch." So what are the steps then? I guess they sign up for a site like Kickstarter, they make a webpage. I guess maybe they can make a prototype or a graphic, and then people can preorder the watch. So the thing that I was curious about as you were explaining it, let's say that you, Zach Smith, say you can preorder this watch for $200. I preorder the watch and then what happens, because I've seen some of these say we need a hundred backers or something like that. What happens if they don't get adequate funding for that project?

Zach Smith: Yeah, great question. As an entrepreneur, you want to know how much it's going to cost you to build this watch, so let's say that your MOQ, your minimum order quantity, is 1000 watches. You've talked to manufacturers, you've talked to suppliers, and we can help with all this stuff as well. We can help with almost anything, and because we've done this so many times, anybody who needs help with, oh I don't know how to prototype, okay great. Oh I don't know how to make a view. I don't know how to do a design. We can help with all those different things, but let's assume you've got all that covered, and now you've talked to all those people. You've done all that stuff. Getting the extra prototypes made is going to cost $10,000. Ordering 1000 of these watches, let's say it's $20 for each watch. That's $20,000. You add up all your total costs, and that's what you want to set for your goal.

Kickstarter has what's called all-or-nothing funding, so on Kickstarter, that means if you set a goal for let's say $100,000, that means that's what it's going to cost you to bring this watch into existence. That's factoring in all the product you have to buy, all your costs of goods sold, whatever overhead you have, all your prototypes, and whatever it's going to cost to deliver and ship the finished product off to all your preorder backers. That's what you set your goal for. On Kickstarter if you do not hit that $100,000 goal, let's say you're $99,999, that means you don't get any of your money, and so it's very important that you set a goal as low as you possibly can so so that you can get funded, but then as high as necessary so that when you do get funded, if you don't get whatever you need, you can still deliver it to your backers.

Kickstarter, I say particularly, that particular website, is a paradoxical vehicle in the sense that you might set a goal for $100,000, and until you get to $100,000 you might not get a lot of excitement and a lot of traction. Once you hit $100,000 the crowd engages and says "Oh wow, this is great. This is funded. This is going to happen" and then they get behind it and the momentum rolls, and it's like a snowball going down a hill. That's why I recommend setting a low enough goal that you can get funded really quickly so you can show that you're successful to get that paradox of success to happen, and then you will really become successful. But again, you want to be careful, because if you set your goal too low and you only end up raising $50,000 when you actually needed $100,000, that's a bit of a problem. So I always recommend setting your minimum viable goal so that you can create your product, but not setting a goal so high that it's impossible to real, or it looks just so daunting to people and it takes many weeks or a month or so before it gets funded, and then you don't ever get the momentum that's so exciting about crowdfunding.

Robert Plank: Right.

Zach Smith: Does that make sense?

Robert Plank: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. If I were to go to your Kickstarter page, and you have this watch, and it says we need $1,000,000 raised and we've raised $100, I could look at that and say there's 0% chance this is going to go through, but if you said we need $50,000 and the thermometer was at 60 or 70, I'm like, well great, they passed their goal. I can buy this and I'll be guaranteed to get it.

Zach Smith: Exactly, yep. That's exactly right.

Robert Plank: Let's say someone set up a Kickstarter, they calculate their MOQ and stuff like that. As far as setting the goal and all that, do you recommend that your clients have any wiggle room, or is it just set the goal based on the costs, and then hopefully the Kickstarter will overfill, or whatever the term is?

Zach Smith: I think that's a great question you asked. I think it's very` important to add some wiggle room. Good examples of not having enough wiggle room are the Coolest Cooler, one of the most funded projects of all time. They didn't factor in that it was going to cost a lot more when they went through all kinds of different change orders, and because of that they still have 50, 60% of their coolers that 3 or 4 or 5 years later, they still haven't been able to ship out, however long it's been. That's just because they didn't... Even though they raised $12 or $13 million, I forget the total number. That still wasn't enough to deliver to their thousands of backers because of fancy and how amazing they ended up making the cooler. If you have a little bit of wiggle room, you avoid those issues.

Robert Plank: I looked up the Coolest Cooler while you were talking, and I've seen this recently, but I didn't know that was the name. It looks like they had 62,000 backers pledge $13.2 million dollars.

Zach Smith: Yeah.

Robert Plank: Crazy, the amount of money some of these types of sites raise.

Zach Smith: He's a good guy, too. People make him out to be like he screwed everybody out of things. I think he just kind of made some common mistakes of an entrepreneur. He didn't set his margins right, he quite know what he should have charged, and he was way more successful than he ever planned. A lot of people don't know, but he ran his first project and he raised $125,000. But guess what his goal was? $250,000. So guess what? He had to cancel it. He didn't get any of that money. He relaunches, and look what happens. $13 million later, he doesn't know what to do with himself, and he wasn't ready for it to become that successful. Interestingly enough, one of the most successful crowdfunding projects of all time on paper, it has been one of the most unsuccessful crowdfunding projects of all time in practice.

Robert Plank: Oh no! Have you seen this happen over and over again, or does it go right more than it goes wrong?

Zach Smith: I'd say it goes right more than it goes wrong. We've worked with lots of creators, and I've worked with a few creators. I love Jon Richards and Jacob Durham. They're a couple guys out of Utah, where I'm from. These guys have done four or five crowdfunding projects now, and they've all been successful. They usually fulfill on time, if not earlier, and because of that they just got done running a product called NOMATIC. It's a bag that has all kinds of different features. It's pretty amazing. Nomatic raised over a million dollars. This is from two guys that came to me two or three years ago wanting to raise $10 or $20 thousand for a wallet. We ended up raising $171,000 for the wallet, then we raised money for a notebook, then we raised money for a laptop stand, and then they did really well on their own with this NOMATIC and brought us on at the end, and we did pretty well raising the money for their bag as well. You can have stories like that where you keep coming back to crowdfunding because your backers love you, you build up that customer lifetime value, and everything new you invent, everybody wants to be a part of, because you've created that tribe, as Seth Godin likes to call it.

Robert Plank: Nice. So is that the secret to getting a campaign to... By the way, what's the term for if a campaign completes or whatever?

Zach Smith: Yeah, funded is what we like to call it. That's why our company name is Funded. Funded Today.

Robert Plank: Today, not tomorrow, because tomorrow is too long to wait, right?

Zach Smith: Well, we got Funded Tomorrow too, when you raise enough money with us, we take you over to Indiegogo inDemand, and we raise you more money tomorrow, too.

Robert Plank: Oh nice. So it's today and tomorrow.

Zach Smith: Yes sir.

Robert Plank: That means you cover all the bases. Is there a secret to getting a project funded? Is it a matter of building up these followers? Is there any amount of outside traffic involved? What's low hanging fruit there?

Zach Smith: Yeah, the secret is... And again, there's no secrets really. I mean, it's obviously a secret I guess, because not everyone can do it, but the secret is putting in the work. It's hard work. In order to get really successful on Kickstarter particularly, and I'm talking about Kickstarter generally, but I mean crowdfunding holistically, because Indiegogo is the same sort of thing, but everybody is a little more familiar with Kickstarter. Indiegogo has a couple different things than Kickstarter. For example, in Indiegogo you can choose flexible funding and you can keep all of the money that you raise. You can set a goal of 50 grand, but if you only raise 48 grand, you get to keep it all. Indiegogo likes that. I'm kind of torn on it, because if you don't get the money you need, how are going to go and get the extra money so you can make sure you fulfilled your backers.

Robert Plank: Right.

Zach Smith: But maybe if you get close enough, you can get a little bit of capital or self-fund a bit and deliver. It seems to work for Indiegogo, but I'm kind of 50/50. I like the idea of setting a fixed goal. The other reason I like that too, total divergent here, is because if you can't raise the money you need, it probably means you don't have that good of an idea, right? Or you haven't marketed it right.

Robert Plank: Right.

Zach Smith: So if you can't raise the amount of money, you probably shouldn't bring the product into existence, because that means the market doesn't want it. That's a whole other topic. In terms of what you do to raise money, You need to start out just like you would in any other business, just like they teach you if you're going to be an insurance agent or salesman or something. Start with your friends and family and tell your friends and family, "Hey Robert, I've got this amazing idea. It's this cool watch. Here's what it does, and I'm going to be launching it on September 22, 2016 at 11 o' clock AM Eastern Standard Time. Can I count on you to give me $200 at that time to back this?" "Oh yes, for sure I'll do it!" Right?

Everybody has friends on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Contact every single one of those people privately. Build up the spreadsheet. Use a Google Spreadsheet. Use a Google sheet or a Google doc. Write them all down, commit them all, get their names, emails, phone numbers, and don't just let them tell you it's cool, it's a great idea, because everybody is going to tell you that. Really ask if they'd pay money for it. If they wouldn't pay money for it, say "Be honest with me. If you really can't buy this from me, why, why not?" You'll kind of get a good idea if you have a good idea or not. There's it all from your friends and family. Once you have them committed, try to get 200 or more. The reason why is because the day you launch, if you have 200 or more of your friends and family, there's a good chance that you'll pop to the top of Kickstarter, and when you pop to the top of Kickstarter's popular and magic rankings, you get millions of eyeballs on your page. When you get millions of eyeballs on your page, if your idea truly resonates, you could have what we like to call a supernova, which is a good product and good marketing. Factored into Kickstarter's algorithm, that results in millions of eyeballs and thousands of pledges on a product. All you had to do was sign up a few friends and family.

Robert Plank: Nice. That's cool, so you have your launch team or whatever you could call it, which is your close friends and family, and they all buy right when the thing opens, get it ranked, and then get noticed and going on from there. Is there a way, or do you know off-hand, is there a way to... I'm even kind of afraid to ask this, but is there a way to pay people to buy your Kickstarter, or is that too black hat for them?

Zach Smith: That's a good question. To gain the system, I see what you're saying. I don't recommend doing that. Kickstarter is really good too at... They have what they call an integrity team. They look at a lot of things like that. The other reason I don't recommend it, even though it is a good idea and we've thought about it, but we ultimately decided not to, because if you don't have a good product, paying people to buy it isn't a good idea because no one is going to buy it when it ranks in popular anyway. You want people that actually want your product, and you want legitimate people seeing it and ready to buy.

Let's say you don't have that many friends and family. Let's say you maybe don't want to do the work. That's why a lot of people come to Funded Today, because we have a network of thousands and thousands of people, and we can tell those thousands and thousands of people about your product, build you up an email list, get them ready to go, and tell them the day you launch, and then they will back your project. Or while doing that, we'll let you know if you have a good idea or a bad idea before you even launch. Hey, nobody wants this. We can't anybody to sign up or opt in. You probably shouldn't go any further, and you won't waste the rest of your life chasing an idea that people don't want. Does that make sense?

Robert Plank: Oh yeah. That way they can move on to something that does make money.

Zach Smith: Exactly. So many people chase their dreams without ever taking action. Crowdfunding has made it so that you can quickly chase your dreams, figure out if it's right or not. If it's wrong just a little bit, you can pivot, or if it's completely wrong, you can move onto something entirely different and make money, and create a good job or create a life you want to live. Sometimes it's not your first idea, it's your second. Not your second idea, might be your third or fourth idea. We have guys that come to us the fourth time, and finally we're raising them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where their first, second, third ideas were complete failures, we didn't raise them any money, even knowing everything that we know and having access to everything that we have access to.

Robert Plank: Right, so it's like they had to go through those failures and get those ideas out of their system to get to the good stuff that people actually wanted.

Zach Smith: Exactly. We call it product validation, and Kickstarter provides the best possible way to validate an idea than I've ever seen. You have everything there.

Robert Plank: Right. It sounds like it puts the funding people need with their businesses within reach, whereas before they would have to... Like in the 90s they'd have to go to some venture capital meetings or -

Zach Smith: Oh, you're so right.

Robert Plank: They'd have to to go on Shark Tank, or there's always all the stories about people who spend 30 years just making $0 trying to get on the shelf at Walmart, and after 30 years they finally get it, and now they have to come up with 10 million units and they just totally go bankrupt. It's like your reward for 30 years of waiting was bankruptcy.

Zach Smith: Your pitch you just said there is exactly the pitch why I believe crowdfunding is the new economy. We are literally branding a new economy. You no longer have to have a rich dad, rich family, rich uncle, venture capitalists, angels. You can literally bring an idea for the crowd, get your friends and family involved, and let the crowd decide if you've got a winner or not.

Robert Plank: Nice.

Zach Smith: It's powerful.

Robert Plank: That's some internet democracy right there. We mentioned a couple of platforms like Kickstarter, and there's Indiegogo. Are those the top dogs, or are there any others?

Zach Smith: There's others, but I'm the biggest in the world, and I don't know who they are.

Robert Plank: So why bother, right?

Zach Smith: Exactly. 80/20 is what I preach quite a bit, and you want to be on Kickstarter if you're raising money, and after you want to go to Indiegogo inDemand. That's the process.

Robert Plank: So why is that? Why Kickstarter first, and then Indiegogo?

Zach Smith: I love Kickstarter. I love Indiegogo. I love Indiegogo a hundred times more than I love Kickstarter. They're just such a good company, so many nice people, but for some reason their platform just doesn't convert as good as Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a lot bigger, so Kickstarter has a lot more traffic, and so if you have a good idea, going on Kickstarter you're going to raise more money, but Indiegogo is going to treat you way nicer. So if you want to be treated nice, have amazing customer support, all kinds of help, all the bells and whistles, everything for you, and maybe you don't have the best product ever but it's good, Indiegogo is going to be your best bet.

Robert Plank: I'm trying to figure out if I'm understanding you right. When you say Kickstarter then Indiegogo, do you mean launch your product on Kickstarter and then once that's done, launch it on Indiegogo, or are you saying -

Zach Smith: Yes, that's correct.

Robert Plank: Okay. So you can take the same offer and do the Kickstarter launch first and then the Indiegogo launch.

Zach Smith: Yeah, so what you do is you launch a Kickstarter project, and then once your Kickstarter project is over, you go to what's called Indiegogo inDemand, and Indiegogo inDemand is simply a way for you to continue to take preorders while you are in that final protyping manufacturing fulfilling stage for your Kickstarter. You set your shipping date back a couple months, you charge a few bucks more for your price, because obviously people didn't take action on Kickstarter so they have to pay a little bit more, and then you continue to raise money for your product, and you get it closer and closer to what you're going to charge for retail pricing instead of the early bird pricing, so it gives you even more time to validate, more time to raise money, and more time to cover your overhead as you go about building your new business.

Robert Plank: Nice.

Zach Smith: It's pretty powerful, and Indiegogo is way better than Kickstarter at that.

Robert Plank: That all sounds like a kind of cool strategy.

Zach Smith: It's amazing.

Robert Plank: So if someone is either on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and they calculate all their costs, and they list their product, and they have their initial sales, and they get a bunch of backers, and let's say that the project gets funded. Is there a way to back out? Like you said in that once situation where the cooler raised $13 million, he was totally overwhelmed. If Ryan had decided that he just didn't want to deal with it, is there a way to just hit a cancel button and refund everybody, or is that not a thing?

Zach Smith: Yeah, you absolutely can. Now Kickstarter is going to charge their fee, and Kickstarter and Indiegogo both charge 5%, and so you're not going to get that back. Kickstarter is not a store, so when you back a project on a crowdfunding site, even though I call it a preorder because that's an easy way to understand, you're not preordering, you're preordering the idea should it come into existence. Like I said, most of the time they come into existence, and they're usually pretty good. Sometimes they don't happen, or they don't materialize, or other unforeseen costs happen, just like when you invest in a normal product and it doesn't work out. Kickstarter is not a store. They are a place for people to try to bring new invention and new innovation to life. I've seen a lot of creators refund, but you usually won't get back all of your money because Kickstarter takes their fees. Obviously the creator probably spent a lot of money trying to build out the product or do whatever they could to try to make it happen, and so if they were to not ultimately fulfill, you'd be out whatever money that is.

Now that's one thing we created to mitigate that because sometimes the risks to back a project, especially if the project seems really crazy or really tacky or intense, it's like wow, how are they going to really pull this off? Like Oculus Rift, it just sold for several billion dollars to Facebook. It was one of the first crowdfunding projects ever. They took three or four years to deliver, and I think they're finally delivering. They ultimately delivered, but look how long you had to wait. What we've done to mitigate some of that risk, because we've created something that we call the Cashback Network. The Cashback Network is a place where you can go and back projects and get 10% cashback on everything that you back.

Robert Plank: Now how does that work? How are you able to pull that off?

Zach Smith: Because we work with tons of projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Any project that's in our network, we simply give a kickback of what we're charging to all of our backers to mitigate their risk for backing.

Robert Plank: Nice.

Zach Smith: It's a win-win-win for everybody. The backers love it because their risk is mitigated, and they get a deal, and like I said, it's not too risky. Most people deliver. Literally every client Funded Today has ever worked with has delivered a product. We have a lot that haven't delivered yet, but all signs point that they're going to deliver. We have a pretty good track record, and since we work with lots of the big projects, I think it's safe to say probably 80, 90% of projects you back are going to deliver. They might be slower because obviously these are new businesses, and when they get injected with tons of capital, sometimes it's a bit confusing or crazy, but there's a lot of good stories too. Literally my entire wardrobe is from projects that we've raised money for. It's pretty cool.

Robert Plank: Awesome. With all that stuff, is there any kind of legal risk? If there is a Kickstarter or something, and someone buys it, and let's say that it's late or it's inferior or it catches on fire or something. Is there any kind of protection on Kickstarter's end for that?

Zach Smith: Yeah. There's a lot of legal risk. If a project doesn't deliver, I've seen quite a feel backers combine together and form class actions. I saw a case that I was reading yesterday about... I can't remember what project it was for, but a bunch of backers got together I believe in the state of Washington, and they ended up winning, and I believe they got trouble damages, so if you try to screw the backers and you don't even make any attempt at actually delivering, you're going to pay the price. There's some pretty good laws in place to help that out, and fortunately Kickstarter does a good job with their integrity team. We have our own internal integrity team to make sure the projects we're working with are going to legitimately deliver.

We like to require a prototype, so we'll look at and review a prototype of any product that comes our way to make sure it does what they say it's going to do so that we know they're going to be able to do it. Now will they be able to do it en masse? That's always the question, but generally if they get a prototype down, there's a good chance they know how to build it out massively as well. But there is a risk. If you don't deliver, if you're trying to screw people, people will take action, and fortunately the Kickstarter ecosystem is pretty good at finding those before, and Kickstarter does a great job at suspending them. We've worked with probably 5 to 10 projects that have been suspended because they were doing different things. They were either reselling products, not inventing something new, or probably blatantly trying to rip off money, but Kickstarter has pretty good ways of catching that, even after they start raising lots of money, so you definitely have to have a legitimate idea and have plans for how you're actually going to go about fulfilling or you could be in trouble, even if it's five years down the road.

Robert Plank: Fair enough. It is a little scary, but I guess it's no more risky than anything else on the internet as far as physical products and stuff, right?

Zach Smith: Yeah, I mean the risk is... And again, Kickstarter has something called the prototype category, so any product you back in the design category, you can look at all of the prototypes and see what you think can this really happen. You're kind of an investor in a way. I don't think Kickstarter calls their backers investors, but in a way you're kind of an investor, but your investment is being able to get the product before anybody else, and saying that you helped bring something into existence, and having the joy of helping an entrepreneur realize the American dream or something, right?

Robert Plank: Yeah. Thanks for clearing that up too a few minutes ago, because I didn't even realize that Kickstarter and Indiegogo are investing site, that they're not stores. This whole time I was thinking that people go and they just click and buy their little doodads here and there, but it's making a lot more sense to me now. The find a project, they read all the stuff, and if they believe in not only getting the item, but also in the person who's making it, then they can provide that support in that way.

Zach Smith: Exactly, yeah. That's right.

Robert Plank: I've seen a lot of the... I don't know what you'd call... The prototypes, physical products, e-commerce kind of stuff where they're making an item, and I've also seen some of these weird Indiegogos where people say like, help me pay my hospital bills, or pay me $5000 for me to go to a cabin and write a book. Have you seen those? What's your thoughts on those?

Zach Smith: Those are more on a site called GoFundMe. Maybe there's some of those on Indiegogo, I'm not quite sure. We don't work with projects like that. I love charity, don't get me wrong, but I believe you got to have a product that stands strong, and then leverage those profits from the product to go ahead and do charitable good. So look at Facebook. Facebook makes most of their money from Facebook, but look at all the cool stuff they're doing. Same with Google. Google makes 80, 85% of all their revenue from Google search, but look at all the amazing stuff Google is trying to do on the charity end. Don't create a charity and ask people to throw money at it. Create an amazing product and then use the money from that amazing product to go ahead and do charitable good. People don't want to give money to those kind of things. And there's so many. Use a site like GoFundMe and get your friends and family involved in something like that. I don't think the crowd is going to go crazy. But then again there's always the one that raises a million bucks and every talks about. Look at this guy, he wanted to start a lawn mowing business, and everybody loved his story so much that he made a million bucks. There is those stories, but those are one in a million, and that's just the nature of virality.

Robert Plank: That makes sense. I'm sure that someone out there has made it work, but for the average person not very likely, not very practical as opposed to creating something that provides value. Even that you mentioned Facebook making the drones that provide internet to Africa and stuff like that. The amount of money that Facebook and Google pour into the charity stuff, they would never have raised that amount of money just asking. The only reason they can provide that amount of money is because they built their own company, and then they choose to allocate those funds. That's cool. As we're winding this town, let's talk about Funded Today, because that's come up a couple times, and it sounds like you guys provide an all-in-one solution, and all the stuff in there that makes Kickstarter campaigns a lot safer, more reliable, and likely to succeed. So can you tell us about Funded Today and what it is?

Zach Smith: Yeah, so Funded Today is an all-in-one crowdfunding marketing agency. We can do everything. If you have an idea in your head and that's all, come talk to us. If you've got everything ready and a video make and a page designed and you're ready to push go but you don't know how to make money or you don't know how to launch, contact us. We'll chat with you. If you're all the way into your project and you haven't raised any money yet and you think you maybe have a good product, we have something called the crowdfunding success matrix. You can link to this in your podcast if you want, but it's basically just a little matrix, just like you see in business school.

There's four quadrants. Outer darkness, black hole, shooting stars, and supernovas. You might be a shooting star, where you launch well, all your friends and family liked it, they backed it, other people backed it, but then your marketing died off, so it's just like a shooting star. It's fleeting, it goes away. We can turn a shooting star into a supernova, and a supernova is a good product with good marketing. A shooting star is a good product with bad marketing. A black hole is a bad product with good marketing. You're just throwing money in and it's getting sucked away. Outer darkness is where you definitely don't want to be. That's a bad product and bad marketing. If you have a shooting star, my most recent example that I love sharing is a guy named Timo Heino from Finland with a product called SpineGym. He came to us when he had 41 backers, probably his friends and family, and $8047 raised. If you look up his project on Indiegogo inDemand now, I believe we're at $1,300,000. We raised him $463,000 on his Kickstarter, so 463 minus 8,000 over $450,000 raised for this product that was pretty much dead in the water. It had a little bit of a shooting star and then it died.

At any stage of the crowdfunding process we can help you raise money, it just depends on where you're at. Worst case, we'll validate your product, and we'll tell you, look, we've raised millions and millions of dollars and we did the exact same thing we've done for all these products that we've raised millions of dollars for, but for your product it didn't work. So chances are you've got a bad product and you probably need to pivot or tweak or disband, and here's some things we recommend. Or you know what? You've got a terrible idea. Nobody wants it, and as hard as this is for you to accept, it's time for you to move onto something new or go get another job, because this one's not going to do it for you.

Or best case, we turn into a supernova and we do what we've done for the $80 million plus we've raised for hundred of good Kickstarter projects, and everybody's happy. Those are my favorite. We have a lot of them right now. We have the second most project on Kickstarter running live right now. It's called Flag, a really cool idea for photo sharing, and we have probably 5 to 10 more in the top 20 on Kickstarter, and tons on Indiegogo inDemand. We're Indiegogo's number one partner, we're Kickstarter's number one source of traffic aside from Youtube and Google. We even pass up Reddit most of the time. We're doing big things, and we're working with big companies. We've worked with lots of big names. We worked with the guy that invented Furbee. We've worked with Samsung. We've worked with the Coolest Cooler guy on quite a few things. Baubax Travel Jacket, the fifth most funded project of all time. That's Funded Today. Hiral Sanghavi is a good friend of mine. I could name drop all day with all the random stuff we've done, but we're doing big things and it's exciting, it's fun. It's great to see these new ideas get brought into existence when you get to be a part of it.

Robert Plank: Nice. Who knows, maybe someday you'll be bigger than Kickstarter and you can start your own, right?

Zach Smith: I don't know. We've thought about it, you know?

Robert Plank: I'm looking at the site, and you guys have like $80 million total in funds raised in all kinds of cool stuff. What's the website? What's the address to get to you and your company.

Zach Smith: It's funded.today. We also own fundedtoday.com, but I think that just redirects to funded.today and the reason we do that is because we get your project funded today. Pretty easy to remember, but it's not a dot com domain name. A lot of people mix that up. We went with something kind of weird with all those neat domain extensions.

Robert Plank: But weird stands out.

Zach Smith: Hey, exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool, so funded.today and before I let you go, do you have off the top of your head a super weird and crazy successful project that you've backed with Funded Today?

Zach Smith: That is a great question. Let me scan our site real quick. I'm going to do what you do.

Robert Plank: Cool.

Zach Smith: So we'll just go to Funded Today. If you go to the Get More Pledges page, you can scroll down and see a ton of the testimonials. We try to get a video testimonial from every client too, so we have lots and lots of video testimonials. People are slow to give them, but they all eventually come in. I think we've got 30 or so on the site. Let me find one that I really enjoyed. You know, I like the BetterBack. The BetterBack comes to mind. I use it almost every day. It's sitting on my desk right now. It's a product invented by Katherine Krug. It raised $1,193,776. It's an apparatus you wear for 15 to 20 minutes a day. It helps you maintain perfect posture. In fact, I'm not wearing it right now as I'm doing this interview, and I lean back, deep in my chair, horrible posture. Katherine would be ashamed of me. I should probably be wearing my BetterBack. It's a cool product that I don't think anybody has ever heard of or seen. I really love it, and it's very well made too. It was better than you even expected when you backed it.

Robert Plank: I'm scrolling through, and I'm seeing the BetterBack. People are selling wallets and clothing items and shoes and sunglasses, all kinds of stuff. It's crazy the amount of money that people are raising with some of these sites, especially when they use Kickstarter plus Indiegogo plus Funded Today and all these other tools that are out there. So look at all the great ideas that people have and all the money flying around. I think that anyone would be silly not to use crowdfunding to fund their physical projects and things like that. So once again, that webpage is funded.today, and thanks a bunch Zach for stopping by and telling us all about the exciting world of crowdfunding.

Zach Smith: Thanks Robert. I appreciate it. Glad to be on.[/showhide]

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143: Success is An Inside Job: Create and Promote Your Itty Bitty Book with Suzy Prudden

Suzy Prudden from IttyBittyPublishing.com has been on Oprah and is responsible for many books becoming bestsellers. She tells us that your book is a business BUILDER, not a business card, and that you can create an "itty bitty" book in just 15 pages to market yourself.

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: We're here with Suzy Prudden who is a legend. She is an internationally acclaimed speaker and seminar leader. A New York Times best selling author from before the internet. A fitness expert, a body and mind pioneer. Hypnotherapist, success coach, radio host, publisher. She's been on Oprah, Good Morning America, and the Today Show. It sounds like there's nothing she can't do. How are things today, Suzy?

Suzy Prudden: Robert, they are fabulous. They just keep getting better. The older I get the better they get.

Robert Plank: That's what I like to hear. Everyday is the best day of your life because every day is better than before, right?

Suzy Prudden: Yes. I had a friend of mine say to me one time we were are a party. I said to him "I'm having the best time ever." With annoyance, he said "You always say that." I looked at him and I said "Yeah, I do." Then he realized that it was the best time ever. It didn't mean that the other days weren't any good, it just meant that this was the best. If every day is a best day, you're having a best life.

Robert Plank: That sounds like an amazing message. Can you tell me- You sound like an interesting person- Can you tell me about yourself and what it is you do? And what makes you different? Besides the obvious. Where to begin?

Suzy Prudden: Do we have an hour? Do we have three hours? Basically, I started my career when I was 22 in 1965. What happened was, my mother told me I couldn't date the boy I was dating, so I ran away and married him. That was when I was 19 and then I had to support him because he went back to school. At 22, then I decided to have a baby. Nothing made any sense, you have to realize.

I started a fitness school because my mother was the nation's foremost fitness authority. I became extremely successful and I've written nine books on fitness, two books on body/mind. I've done television, I had my own show on NBC in New York as fitness reporter for the Today Show. Had an amazing career. In '81, I divorced him. In '83, I sold my business and I retired at the age of 40. Then I had to figure out what to do with my life, but I didn't know who I was so I became a workshop junkie. Then I started making up new thoughts, programs, and body/mind programs. I just kept making stuff up and it kept working. Then I became a hypnotherapist and a body/mind technologist.

Everything kept leading me forward to the place where I am now, which is taking all of my skills and helping entrepreneurs create seven figure businesses starting with writing a small book which we call Itty Bitty Books. Which started with when my sister took my name off of a book that we were writing. When I saw that my name wasn't there, it meant that I didn't have to write the book anymore, but I could have authors write books and that's what I'm doing now.

An author writes an Itty Bitty book, which is the 15 steps to whatever their expertise is. Then we help them create a business which will help them make between six and seven figures within three to five years. It's exciting.

Robert Plank: It sounds like it. That's a pretty crazy story. I love how one thing kind of lead to the next logical step as opposed to not necessarily drifting around, but one kind of thing ran its course then it transitioned you into whatever this next stage was.

Suzy Prudden: Then I forgot to mention that eight months after doing Oprah, I ended up homeless because I didn't pay attention to my money. I spent it all. I took ten months- I never lived in my car, but it was a very educational experience. I knew it would change my life and it did. This was in the '90s, 1990. It caused me to have a different viewpoint on life and the importance of paying attention, of being present. The secret tells everybody you can ... There's a genie out there, wish for something and it will come to you. Yes, that's true and only if you take action. If you sit back and wait for it, it's not going to happen.

I am an action oriented person. I get an idea and I act on it and that's why I'm successful.

Robert Plank: I like it.

Suzy Prudden: That's why my authors are successful. The authors that I have that take action and do what I tell them make a lot of money.

Robert Plank: Imagine that.

Suzy Prudden: Exactly.

Robert Plank: They realize that they are an expert in a certain area, but their skills might be limited. They go to you as the expert, listen to what an expert says to do, it works. Pretty simple.

Suzy Prudden: Very simple. I have three coaches. I spent the morning with one coach- I'm so excited about the stuff that I'm doing with this particular coach. I believe in coaches. When I lost everything, I didn't have a coach. I didn't have a team. I was kind of winging it. I was successful, but I wasn't strategically successful. It was hit or miss. Now I am strategically successful. I have a team. I have coaches. I have people who keep me on track, who support me. I'm going to tell you something funny. I actually have someone who comes in once or twice a month and cleans my desk because I hate to do that. I'm looking at my desk right now and it's piled high with books, and tapes, and files. She's coming tomorrow and we're going to spend the whole morning cleaning my desk because I will not do it.

A lot of entrepreneurs believe they have to do everything themselves and they don't. I don't clean my house, I have somebody clean it. I change the cat box because it's kind of awful if you don't, but I do have someone who cleans my house. I have someone who cleans my desk. I have someone who makes my appointments because I don't have time because I'm doing the appointments. I'm out there getting authors, I don't have time to then hound people to say "You gave me your card, do you want to talk to me?" I have someone else do it.

Entrepreneurs, it is extremely important that you delegate because if you don't, you can't run your business in a way that's going to garner you the kind of income that you want. You'll be working. If you are an entrepreneur and you do everything yourself, you really just created yourself a job that has more hours than if you worked for somebody else.

Robert Plank: You just end up overworked and burned out. How do you tell the ... How do you, first of all, get the right people on your team, and how do you know when to do something yourself and when to delegate it? Like you said that you know to somewhat delegate cleaning of the desk, but then something simple you know to clean the cat box. How do you figure out those two things? Who to have and which to do yourself?

Suzy Prudden: It's very simple how I figured it out. I won't clean my desk. I have not been able to clean my desk since my very first career, that was in 1965. I have not changed. I am not going to change, I'm 73 years old today- Day before yesterday, a few days ago.

Robert Plank: Happy birthday.

Suzy Prudden: I won't do it. Thank you. I won't do it. If you have something that you won't do and you keep waiting to do it, it's not going to get done so just pick someone to do it. When it comes to the cat box, I could wait for my housekeeper to come, but that could be one or two weeks because she doesn't come every day. She comes once every week or once every two weeks depending how much time I'm spending in my house and how messy I make it. If I wait two days to clean the cat box, it stinks and I don't like the smell so I clean it. It's that simple.

Robert Plank: Why make it more complicated than it has to be?

Suzy Prudden: I do my dishes too because I don't like leaving them in the sink. The night before my housekeeper comes, I don't do my dishes because she's going to do them the next morning. That's strategic. That's so simple, it's ridiculous. I also have someone who makes my calls. She just had surgery this week, so she can't make my calls. I'm finding time to make those calls because she can't. That's just common sense. You've got to bring in a lot of common sense to business. You have to pick up the phone. If you're in business you have to pick up the phone. You cannot not pick up the phone, the money's in the phone.

When I'm talking to people, I find out what they need and then I strategize with them to help them get it. And because I'm a hypnotherapist, if someone has a phone phobia, I just hypnotize them to stop it.

I have a wonderful new company which is able to help people get in front of people, it's called Itty Bitty Publishing. You can go online and take a look at it, www.ittybittypublishing.com, Itty Bitty Publishing. We take experts and help them write a 15 step book on whatever their expertise is. Then we have a business builder program, that we just started recently, to help them turn their itty bitty book into a business that will give them six or seven figures depending on where they are in the moment. Some people are not at six figures, so we help them get to six figures. Some people are already at six figures, so why not make multiple six figures? If you're at multiple six figures, why not then make a million? It's all doable. It's all strategic. You have to keep it simple, but you need help.

How do I choose the people to work? If they're good at their job, I keep them. If they're not, I let them go.

Robert Plank: Once again, super simple advice. Why make it anymore complicated than it has to be? I guess you have these people that you work with and you have somewhat of a period of time when you're just trying them out and seeing how well they do.

Suzy Prudden: Yeah. You really have to look at if it's a fit, it's a fit. If it's not, it's not. Usually it takes about three months to know for sure. Be very careful hiring friends, very careful. Don't hire family.

Robert Plank: Good advice.

Suzy Prudden: My business partner happens to be my sister, but I can't do what she does and she can't do what I do. It's a perfect combination.

Robert Plank: Your sister is a partner, not an employee of yours.

Suzy Prudden: Not an employee. She was an employee in my other company, I had to fire her. It's much easier for her to be a partner.

Robert Plank: I like the idea of this itty bitty book and this 15 steps. I'm looking at the site and there's 15 steps to weight loss, 15 steps to traveling, cool stuff like that. Could you walk us through a case study of one of these clients you had, one of the books you-

Suzy Prudden: I'll give you my favorite. I have two favorites right now. Anthony who wrote a book the Little Black Book of Sales. I met him at a conference last year when we were only a year old, our company is only a year old. We have over a hundred authors so far. I met Anthony at a conference, I talked about Itty Bitty at lunch. He said "Let me have an application." He signed up a lunch, I never saw him before, he got the concept, he wrote the book, and he said to us over and over it changed his life. His book- He signed the contract in March. His book came out in June of last year. He's probably close to half a million dollars. Because of it, he uses his book as ... He's a sales coach for the automotive industry for car dealerships. He goes into car dealerships, he'll give a presentation. They hire him for a year to help their salesmen. He's gotten contracts anywhere from $18,000 for the year to $54,000 for the year. They send him to Dubai this year to speak for two weeks. He's probably close to half a million dollars because he has an itty bitty book. It's positioned him as an expert in his field and creates him as an automatic authority. That's one favorite.

The other one is [Cat Bonback 00:14:05] who wrote the book on marijuana. This is one of my favorite stories. When I spoke to her last year, last summer. I think it was in August. I met her at a conference. When I called her and spoke to her, I said "What do you do?" And she said "Well, I'm a full blooded gypsy." I went "Okay." She said "I'm a disabled vet." I said "Okay." She said "I'm a spiritual coach." I said "Okay." "And I'm a marijuana dispenser." I said "Okay." She lives up in Washington state. I said "What do you want to write about?" She said "I don't know, spiritual coaching?" I said "Cat, what's the low hanging fruit?" She said "I don't know." I said "It's pot." She said "Really?" She told me later she was afraid to tell me that she was a marijuana dispenser, but she took a chance.

I said "Yes. How about you write the book, you're amazing marijuana book, 15 ways to use cannabis for healing?" She said "How did you do that?" I said "That's what I do. Your next book is going to be 15 ways to talk to your children about cannabis. Your next book is going to be how to use edibles correctly. You're going to create a coaching program and you're going to teach people how to teach people how to use cannabis so they use it wisely. Go find out if cannabis coach is available," it wasn't. I said "How about the cannabis coach," it was. I said "buy it." I said "Buy the cannabis, US cannabis coach, national cannabis coach, and cannabis coaching certification program." She did. Then she said "What about Mary Jane?" I said "I had forgotten Mary Jane was a term for marijuana." She said "I want to do Mary Jane parties. I want to do them like Tupperware parties where we sell cannabis paraphernalia at parties." I said "Go buy Mary Jane parties." She did.

She started teaching her cannabis coaching certification program this past March. She was in a conference recently where she sold 61 places in her cannabis coaching certification program. In one day they made $92,000. That's a nice day.

I just got off the phone with her this morning. She's going to be doing one in Los Angeles either late this year or early next year. I told her she had to raise the prices because my coach told me I had to raise my prices, so I told her she had to raise her prices. Instead of $1,500 to become a cannabis coach, it's now $2,500 to become a cannabis coach.

Now she will take this business and there will be 50 cannabis coaches who are doing Mary Jane parties. They have to be licensed through her, they have to be certified through her, she gets money. They do the parties, she hooks them up with all the vendors. The vendors make money, the coaches make money, and she makes override.

Robert Plank: That's crazy. Your model works in just about any niche it sounds like.

When I'm hearing about the Itty Bitty Book and the 15 steps, how big of a book are we talking about? 15 steps comes out to how many pages in this model?

Suzy Prudden: Every chapter is one page.

Robert Plank: Super short.

Suzy Prudden: It's an itty bitty book. Here's how to look at it. Dummies came out in the '80s and they were the quintessential what you need to know book, but they're 350 pages. You have to read a Dummies book with a yellow highlighter. Itty Bitty Books are the yellow highlights. What we've done is taken the information that people need and simplified it so succinctly that it takes 20 minutes to read an itty bitty book and you can mark the pages you need to reference. On page one of each chapter, it's the information. Page two of each chapter is a bullet point to more information that you can then send them your website, "To reach more about this go to here." Then you can have a white paper on your website or a workshop that you're doing. You're sending people from your Itty Bitty Book back and forth to your website, to your book, to your website, to your book. You're constantly creating streams of income from your Itty Bitty Book to your website, from your website to your webinar, to your seminars, to your products (whatever it is you're selling). Or you can send them to somebody else, or some other information, depending on what the information is that they need.

Yes, it's an Itty Bitty Book so you can handle it, but it's much bigger if you choose to go further. In other words, you don't have to weed through a lot of information to get to the piece you need. You get the piece you need and then if you want to expand on it, it has a link. If it's a digital it goes right to their thing. It's paperback, on Amazon then you have to put the information into your computer. All the Itty Bitty Books are on Amazon and they're on the digitals.

We've done nine best selling campaigns so far and we have nine best sellers so far. We have another best seller- A best seller campaign every month. Every Itty Bitty author has the opportunity to become a best selling author. It's so exciting, I get speechless with excitement because it's giving so many people an opportunity to do so much more with what they had in the past. Now they have a further reach. They're all of a sudden international because they have a book on Amazon. That can operate on a lead generator to their business. We also have a whole thing on our website where we have a directory for anyone around the world can sign up in our directory. We send them leads when people click on their information and put in their information that they want to talk to this person about whatever product or whatever service, like Anthony has sales. If someone wants to learn from Anthony, they can contact Anthony. Then we send Anthony the lead. It's very exciting.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. I'm looking at your directory right now and I'm looking at Anthony's listing and that kind of stuff. What I like about the way that you've laid it out is that these people that you come in contact with who have a really good idea, they can get the book done quickly while also excited about it. Maybe before they met you, they've been struggling. Maybe some of them have half a book made and they thought it had to be 300 pages.

Suzy Prudden: So many of them have been writing their books for the last eight years. This is what we do. When you say yes and you give us some money, because we are a pay to play house, we send you a how to write an Itty Bitty Book book. We send you an Itty Bitty Book and we send you the template. If you read the how to write the Itty Bitty Book and you write it the way we tell you to write it, and you use the template, we've had people write their books in two afternoons. We also send you an agreement at that time. Then we have a long conversation about the agreement so you have a legitimate publishing agreement where you own the copyrights, we own the publishing rights. It's your material, you can do what you want with it, you just can't do it in the Itty Bitty format. It opens the door for you to do more.

Then we also have on our site, you'll see there's a thing there that says "Tell your story." Let's say you have a story. You can write your story, you'll send it to us, we'll put it up. We'll send your link to your story and we won't charge you. We'll put it up on our website. We will send you the link to your story so you send your story now to everybody you know. You ask them "Please send my story to every-" Then you have them link back to you. It's a way for you to get your stuff out there, it's not an Itty Bitty it's like a page. People have stories they want to tell.

I have a wonderful story that I tell about ... I can't tell it now, it's too long. It's about an experience I had during the days where I didn't have my own home. It's a great story. It takes three minutes to tell on stage, it would take a page and a half to tell in a written. It's not nearly as compelling written as it is when I speak it. I could put that story up, send it to everybody. People go "What a great story, I think I'll send this out to my friends." Then they contact Suzy if you want to write a story. I've got an opportunity for a million people to write their stories on my website.

Robert Plank: Cool. Why make it anymore complicated than it has to be?

Suzy Prudden: It's not complicated, that's correct. Then I can send them to, if they want a website like my website, it's a phenomenal website. There's an opportunity for them to contact my web person and say "I want to talk to you about a website." She's amazing and not at all expensive. I would highly recommend speaking to her. She's totally amazing. I don't know how this happened, I honestly don't. It's like magic happened when my sister showed me that cover, and after my ego got up off the floor because she took my name off it, I saw it as a multi million dollar business. Now working with my coach who is in Myrtle Beach and I'm in California. I go there, not every day, not every week. We talk mostly on the phone. I probably go there like three times a year. My company is growing exponentially. I saw that that would happen when I was at a conference last May in Las Vegas. I went "Whoa, this is the company that's going to grow my business." And it is.

Robert Plank: I don't want to keep you for too long. As we're winding this down, could you tell us out of all the clients you deal with and the people you work with to make their Itty Bitty Book and to get their coaching programs set up and stuff like that- What's the big number one mistake you see all these people making over and over again?

Suzy Prudden: Not finishing their books.

Robert Plank: Pretty simple. You're saying that these people who maybe if they've tried publishing in the past, or if they've gone through all the run around and all that stuff. What they should do is instead of trying to make it complicated, get an Itty Bitty Book, hire you for coaching, and make one of these 15 page things that has all their knowledge compressed and simplified so that people who want to know about whatever topic. About websites, or about marijuana type of stuff, they don't have to read the 600 page manual. They just get the condensed cliff notes version.

Suzy Prudden: Get the condensed version that will give them more information if they want it. If you've got an idea- I don't take every idea. I will tell you ... I don't take every idea that comes to me because know that some ideas would not fit into this format. That it would not serve the person. I only want to work with people that I know that I can help them really expand their careers. I will work with people to massage it into something that will expand their careers, but if I see that this book would not do that, I won't take them as an author. That's doing them a favor.

Robert Plank: That's cool. I've noticed especially lately as books have had the ... Since books are now on Kindle and a lot of books have had these internet resources where they say on such and such page, if you want to know more about that go over to this website. I like that a lot more as a reader because now it's more of a choose my own adventure. Now I don't have to only go with one chapter, I can pick- I can get the whole big picture really quickly. On let's say Chapter four or page four, if I want to go and take that deeper, now I have the choice to but I'm not forced to.

Suzy Prudden: It's up to you. The other thing, I had an idea just a second ago. You very often hear people say your book is your business card. It is not. It is absolutely not your business card. Your book is your business builder. We tell our authors to have business cards that are ... Just a second, what's the word that I'm looking for ... They're like bookmarks. Your bookmark is your business card, your book is your business builder. I don't like it when people give me a book that I don't want. I am very respectful of books, so I don't throw it away. Now I have to find it a home because it's cluttering up mine. I don't want it. Give me a business card, don't give me a book. I'm clear about that because people have tried to ... Please don't give me your book. But it's a good book, I'm sure it is. Please don't give it to me. If I want it, I'll buy it.

Robert Plank: I like that mentality behind that where it seems almost like everyone has it backwards. The average person says "I'm Robert or I'm Suzy, I do this stuff. Let me make a book about that." What you're saying is it's better to have this book that solves a problem so people are actually looking to solve that problem, looking for that book. They get it, they solve the problem as opposed to just reading it for the heck of it.

Suzy Prudden: People won't read it. I've been to seminars where the author, the seminar person, has done what I have done in 2006. Which was buy 2000 of my book, now I have to sell 2000 books. You end up giving them away. I walk into a seminar and especially with compilation books, and I'll see on every seat is a book. That author doesn't know what to do with them so he gives them away thinking it gives him credibility. In my mind, and I'm a snob because I was a best seller before the internet, that's when you actually had to buy the book. You don't have to buy books anymore to be a best seller. You can do a campaign on Amazon, be a best seller. You don't have to sell a lot of books to do that. If you want to be a best seller on the New York Times now you hire a company, you pay them $135,000 and they'll make you a best seller. When I was a best seller, you had to go into the book store and buy the book. I'm a snob.

You want to use your book, as I've always said, as a business builder. You don't want to put it on every chair in your seminar because what if somebody doesn't want it. Now they have to do something with it.

Robert Plank: How bad would that look or how bad does that look if all the books laid on all the chairs, and after you give your talk and everyone's on break all the books are left in the chairs. That sounds like a disaster.

Suzy Prudden: It's a little embarrassing. There are places where speakers speak where the person who hired them to speak wants to give the books to their participants. That's a whole different thing. Then that speaker sells the books to the person who is putting on the talk. That person gives them as a gift. It's different than if you "Take my book. Take my book. Take my book.." I don't want to take your book. I know it's a good book, but I'm not interest in your topic. Don't give it to me. Give me your business card.

Robert Plank: There is a much better way. I really like your thinking Suzy. I like your business model and your structure, your template. Could you tell us about where people can find Itty Bitty Publishing along with any other websites you want to mention here?

Suzy Prudden: The best way to do it is go to IttyBittyPublishing.com and get all the information. For your listeners, if you want to send in your stories, send in the story. Robert, why don't you send us a story? We'll put it up.

Robert Plank: About what? What do you want?

Suzy Prudden: You. How did you start this? How did you start doing these interviews? What's the story behind your interviews? How has it helped your career? How has it helped other people's careers? You see what happens then is you send it out and other people want to contact you and be interviewed by you. Now your business grows.

Robert Plank: Simple but it sounds very effective.

Suzy Prudden: Very effective and then you'll be part of the Itty Bitty family.

Robert Plank: IttyBittyPublishing.com. Thanks for being on the show, Suzy. Thanks for sharing your unique but clever, and at the same time simple, insight on how everyone can get that book finished that might have been on their back for five or ten years. Then also some of these cool strategies for getting these books sold. Getting it all promoted. Thanks for stopping by.

Suzy Prudden: Thank you for the opportunity.[/showhide]

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142: Creativity is Your Biggest Resource: Get Published, Find Your Flow State, and Prevent Burnout with Spiritual Business Life Coach Tracee Sioux

We all tell ourselves three lies: that we don't have time, that we're low on money or priorities, and that we're not good enough. Luckily, nothing could be further from the truth and Tracee Sioux from TraceeSioux.com stops by to set us straight. She tells us how her strategy of content creation (books, CDs, and workbooks) and an online platform (site, social media, and newsletter) has helped her and others build a list and land public speaking gigs.

She has some great advice for aspiring and successful writers including:

1. write at the same time every day
2. structure, deadline, and smaller pieces (you can't force your creativity)
3. take time off to recharge

And more!

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: Today we have Tracee Sioux. Tracee's work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, forbes.com, today.com, and many online, regional publications.

She won the Utah State Newspaper Association Best Photograph Award and the Utah State School Board Association Award for exceptional journalism and she's a featured essayist on PunditMoms, Mothers of Intention. How women and social media are revolutionizing politics in America. How are things today, Tracee?

Tracee Sioux: They're fantastic. How are you?

Robert Plank: I am better than ever. What are we talking about today? What is it that you do? What are you good at? What makes you stand out? All that good stuff.

Tracee Sioux: Okay. Well, I'm a spiritual business and life coach, and an author, and I own a publishing company called Sioux Ink, Soul Purpose Publishing. I help other authors publish their work that feels like their soul calling. That's pretty fun. I love it. What am I good at? Words. I love words, I love design, I love art. I really just get to play all day. It's pretty awesome.

Robert Plank: That's what we're all looking for right? The dream job that's not a job.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. I believe you have to create your own dream job that's not a job. I help a lot of people do that through my business and life coaching. Yeah, I don't know that this ever was a profession, but it is now because I made it.

Robert Plank: Cool. Even if it did exist, why go the same path as everyone else. Why do the same, old, boring stuff? You've got to be your own person. You say you help people find the book that's within them or whatever. Could you walk us through a case study of someone like that who maybe they just needed some help and you helped them out?

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. I have a pretty full-service operation from concept to finish in terms of basically making a person a personality or an expert in their field. I have one client I've been working with for about 4 or 5 ... This is going to be the 5th year. When we started, she had a dream. She wanted to be a healer.

She was a massage therapist. She wanted to have digital products. She wanted to make a name for herself in the industry, and make money doing what she was gifted with which was energy healing. The first step we did was create a online platform. Websites, social media, newsletter, get the branding together, make sure that all of her marketing materials had all of her right information on it.

That was the first year. We established a platform. Then, we began creating content. We did a project over this year where she created basically 2 major content. One, books and CDs and that sort of thing. Audio books on Amazon, eBooks on Amazon, print books, work books, teaching program that we created this year. We're going to launch by Thanksgiving. We're going to launch her book and CD mediation set.

Then next year it's going to be publicity, publicity, publicity, publicity. It's gone through the whole entire process of getting a hold of her dream. What does she really want to do? What does she want that to look like? That's from a soul-deep level. I often find that people think they know what they want, but if you get deeper, it's something else that they're afraid to do.

We work to get what is that? What do you want it to say? What do you want it to look like? Who are you? Is this going to make you happy? Is this going to make you money? Let's put a business model around it so that you can make money at it. We start from there and then we begin to build a platform so that people will begin to know who they are. Social media, blogging, website.

Then we begin to create a significant amount of content that's good enough to be made into a book or a product, an audio product or a video product, that they can sell online at speaking engagements, which leads to, of course, more speaking engagements, more radio shows, more media, more press because now you've got this book that you can say, "Hey, I'm an expert in my field. I've written this book or I have this whole program or class."

Then you sell stuff at the back of the room. You sell it online, and you begin to really grow your tribe that way. My company does all of those things and along the way, there's a lot of spiritual business and life coaching.

What I work on with people a lot, especially ... Oh my gosh, entrepreneurs are so bad at this, is not being a workaholic, not letting your business eat your life. Making sure that you do have enough time to be this hyperproductive. It's a lot of work, but it doesn't have to take all your time and energy. There are ways to manage things and make priorities for yourself that matter.

You'll notice I didn't say, "And in one year, we created the whole entire website, all the branding, all the content, and the book," because that would just overwhelm any person and make them crazy and set them up for failure. We took it one step at a time so that it could be reasonably accomplished, very good quality, and still fairly quickly.

Robert Plank: Dang, so when you were saying that you do start to finish, you weren't kidding.

Tracee Sioux: I'm not kidding.

Robert Plank: It sounds like there's almost a lot like 3 or 4 parts to it right? There's the book part and then that leads to the speaking part, and then even like a little bit before that there's the getting deep down into their what they really want to say part and then there's all the content in between, I guess.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah, and the platform building is really important too. When people say, "What should I spend my money on?" You should spend it on your website. You should spend it on looking like an expert, looking like a professional. If you're going to just slap up a WIX page, people visit those pages and check out whether you're credible.

You should spend money on marketing and branding. Then it pays off in the end if you really do my plan. If you really follow through, miracle things can happen.

Robert Plank: Along those lines, as far as the building of the platform and making the content and stuff like that, one thing that I'm kind of curious about is ... I don't know. It's one of those things like if I write all these blog posts or I write a book myself and stuff like that, it's almost like it takes so much time.

I'm worried that I won't finish as opposed to anytime I've tried to do a shortcut, like I've tried to throw money at the problem and have someone else write the book like me, it doesn't sound like me. You're already laughing, but if I get it transcribed, I have a lot of cleanup to do. What are your thoughts on all that stuff?

Tracee Sioux: Blogs, I think, are different than a book right, unless you're making a blog compilation book. If you're reusing content, that's great, and it can come in a different format. What I tend to do is ... Oh gosh, that's a big question. You want to give yourself deadlines and you want to give yourself enough time.

For instance, this client that I recently told you about, she did sections of 11 ... It was like an 11-day meditation with chunks over the year. For 12 months, that's what she did. By the end of the year, we have 132 of those. That's a lot of content. That's enough for a book, like a journal, workbook meditation thing.

Then she's going to read those aloud and create an audio book. There's going to be several products brought up from that. She's going to get a book, she's going to get an audio book, and then we're going to get an email class that goes annually and delivers automatically through email. Thee ways to market that content.

She didn't sit down and write a book because she's just not the type of person who really could do that on a realistic ... It would just be too overwhelming to her. Often when I'm going to write a book, I make a goal like 1 chapter a day. Just write it. One chapter a day, it doesn't matter how good it is. It doesn't matter how bad it is, just get the one chapter a day on the page.

Then further down the process, it's one chapter a day of editing. Then you have broken it down into pieces that allow you to, every day, be like, "Hey, I did good. I did my one chapter today. I edited it or I proofread it or I wrote it." It's not like taking on this ginormous, intimidating, scary project.

Then also, I strongly suggest that people hire professionals. If you are publishing a book, you need a professional editor and you need a professional designer. For one thing, Amazon won't publish work that sucks. They won't publish work with excessive, grammatical errors. They won't publish work that has bad formatting, bad covers. They're a legit retailer which means they have a legitimate expectation for quality.

Also, if your name is going on a book and you're the writer, you need another set of eyes to look at that, give you suggestions, give you creative feedback, and fix whatever mistakes are in there. I've been writing as a professional for 20 years, but I have people edit my work before it goes out there.

Robert Plank: We all make mistakes. It's almost like if I'm looking at anything that I write, then I tend to skip over it because I think, "Oh well I've already seen this because I wrote it." It's like just having the other set of eyes helps so much, I think.

Tracee Sioux: Oh it's true. It's called, "Refrigerator blindness." When you open the fridge and you're like, "Where is the ketchup? Where is the ketchup? Where is the ketchup? Where is the ketchup?" It's right in front of your face.

Robert Plank: It was there the whole time.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah, and when you're writing, I don't care how good you are at writing, that's going to happen right? You're going to see it so just even when I proofread for myself, even before I get it to an editor, I've gone through 3 rounds of proofreading. Then by the time I get it ... One of the steps that I do when I'm proofreading is I take a break for a couple days.

I'll proofread it, I'll take a break, then I'll come back to it and I see new stuff. Then if you put it in different form, that's why you want to proofread a proof, a print proof, of your book because the second that it's on the page and it's not on a computer screen, you're seeing it totally differently and you're going to pick out even more mistakes.

Then by the time you get it to the third eyes, hopefully you've got most of it, but you won't have caught all of it, especially the third eyes are so important ... Or, third eye. Second pair of eyes is so important when looking at content, and flow, and structure. You may have a lot of really great ideas, but they're not put in a way that the reader can really grasp it.

One of the things that I'm constantly getting on my clients with is they're experts in their field. They have an incredible bounty of knowledge. They want to start where they're at. You can't do that if you're writing for an average reader.

You can't do that. My energy-worker client, she has this vast knowledge and she's just aching to deliver that vast knowledge. What I've really worked on with her, especially in the last content that we created, is not everyone's at your level. In fact, almost no one is. Let's break it down to what I call, "Kindergarten level," so that the beginning person in this can understand what you're talking about.

I have another client. Huge, spiritual, brilliant mind and he's writing a memoir spiritual scholarship piece. Same thing with him. I'm like, "Okay, I get what you're saying because I've done a lot of study in this and I understand the context, and I understand theology because it's also one of my hobbies. If you don't have that background, no one's going to understand what you're saying. We have to break it down."

An editor, a publisher, they're excellent resources to help you do that so that when someone picks up your book they're not like, "What? What? What is going on? What does that even mean? I don't understand that."

Robert Plank: Isn't it called, "The curse of knowledge" or something like that? I think that's an actual term. You know so much, it's like you have to stretch yourself to make it like 5-year-old level.

Tracee Sioux: It is a huge stretch for them and that's one of the things that I can do to serve them well, even in their marketing and their blogging. If you're just surfing the web and you're interested in spirituality or energy work, or whatever it is you're interested in.

I have one client who's doing Airbnb Investing. If you're just interested in it and you're not an expert in it, basically your target audience if you're the expert, the idea is that you know more than they do. You can't give them the information that you know now, you have to give them the information that you learned before.

That's really hard for people. It really is. One of my talents is to break that down for the average person. I have 20 years of journalism experience. What they teach you to do in journalism is write at an 8th grade level because that is the average reader's reading level. The average person walking around, that's their reading level.

The idea is to break complex ideas down into layman, approachable language which is one of my gifts. It comes in handy enormously with everything. With content, with branding, with writing books, with publishing books, with making eCourses, with the whole thing. If you are an expert in your field and you publicly want to be an expert in your field, that's critical.

Robert Plank: Thinking about all that kind of stuff, when any kind of writing's involved, I think a lot of people either get burned out or stuck or frustrated. Do you find yourself, even with all these years of journalism experience, do you sometimes get stuck in your writing mode?

Tracee Sioux: I never have writer's block, ever.

Robert Plank: Wow. I've got to hear the secret on this one then.

Tracee Sioux: The secret is that I've trained myself to get into flow. Flow is ... It's a state of being that you get into to where you're really just receiving information and letting your body serve as a conduit for it. If you think of these creative geniuses out in the universe and they're like, "Ooo, we found an open portal. Let's give her all these awesome ideas."

If you train yourself to do that ... In journalism, oh my gosh, you can't even believe how many blogs I've written about carpet cleaning, and tomato seeds, and pipe fittings, and newsletters. I have done this for a living for so long that I trained myself so that I can enjoy myself while I did all of that less-than-awesome work to just get in a flow and let it come through me so that I could have a good time.

If you are a writer, or a painter, or a dancer, you know what that feeling is. Even if you're writing computer code, you know what the feeling is because that's why you keep coming back to the work. That's why you love it is because you're reaching the state of flow. If you have writer's block, your job is not to make yourself, "Okay, now I'm going to push through." Your job is to learn how to get into flow instantly.

Some of the ways that you can do that is write at the same time every single day. Then your body, your brain, and the universe is trained to deliver at the same time every day. This is just what we do. It's a habit. We don't write when we feel like it, we write at 9 AM, after the kids go to school or whatever your plan is.

I believe that the structure is the key to creativity. Putting structure around your work with deadlines, with goals, breaking that down to smaller pieces and deciding, "Okay, I'm going to get into flow at this time every day."

That said, I do take periods of time off because if you are a creative person and you are pumping energy out of you to such a degree that you're like, "Oh my gosh, I just wrote a book."

I wrote a book in 2 days once and I was so flipping high and vibrating so fast when I did that, after I did that, it was like this incredible spiritual high, but it was also overwhelming. I had to bring myself down form that back to planet Earth back to walking through the planet with the mortal humans.

I had to go away for a little while and take a little vacation, and regroup, and get some grounding time. When you are an artist or a creator or an innovator, you have these bursts of energy. I believe burst working. I am a creative.

That's how I work. Most of the people I know that are creatives work that way. I will sit down ... This weekend I put together 2 books from content that I had already created. I sat down for the weekend and I did it. I was like, "Awesome, great."

I can't do that every day. I can't write a book in 2 days every day. There has to be some space between those kinds of huge, ginormous energy expenditures, or else you will burn out. We see artists all the time who burn out and they try to ground themselves with drugs or alcohol. They go a little off the rails. They get a little bonkersville. A lot of that is because they're not resting between their bursts of energy.

Robert Plank: It sounds like what I'm hearing from all of this is just like you can't force it. I'm glad you brought up the computer programming thing because I hadn't even made that connection. I'm a computer programmer and I get stuck the same ways. Any kind of writing, like I'm writing a blog post, book, whatever, it's the same kind of being stuck in the programming kind of thing.

It's like I can get jazzed up and I can have those long sprints where I get those things done, but you're right. If I try to sustain that every single day then it would just be this burn out that I don't think I would even see coming.

It would just kind of sneak up on me and next thing you know, now it's like all this extra work just to get back to that place that you could have gotten back to easier ... more easily if you'd just had a little better system right?

Tracee Sioux: Oh absolutely. I have burned myself out. I released a book called The Year of Yes in 2014. Man, for 6 months I worked my tail off like you would not believe. Guess what happened 6 months after that? For the 6 months after that book came out, I was exhausted, I got Leaky Gut Syndrome, I mean I was a mess. I finally went away with my kids to Mexico for a month to try and recover.

Burn out's a real thing. It is a biological response because that energy's flowing through you. If you're like in the zone and you're programming and you don't take a break until you finally break, you're going to pay for that later. If you say, "Okay, today I'm writing one chapter," or "Today I'm programming this piece." Then you're like, "Okay, and now I'm going to go hang out with my kids or go ride my bike or take a kickboxing class."

If you create the rest and you create the structure and the regouping period in that, just take a freaking nap man. A nap will change everything. A nap is a huge cure for creativity block and getting stuck. I think it's really important that you ... Here's how I think about it. I think about my creativity as my biggest resource. It is the thing that I make my money on. It's how I express myself, it's what I need for my sanity.

It is something I protect as the most valuable thing that I have. To protect that, I need to not burn it out. I need to make sure that I'm taking care of my body. I need to make sure that I'm keeping to reasonable schedules. I need to make sure I have a social life, that I have a relationship with my kids.

If I don't have those things, if I'm not getting enough rest, if I'm eating like crap, if I'm just working all the time, I'm going to burn out and then what have I lost? My most valuable resource.

Robert Plank: Interesting. I hadn't thought about that. It's like treating creativity like anything else. Normally we would think of it as some abstract concept, but you could think of creativity in the same way that you think of your blood sugar or your cholesterol or something like that right?

Tracee Sioux: Even your house. It's the most expensive thing that I own and I don't go around trashing it because it's the most expensive thing that I own.

Robert Plank: Without that, everything else falls apart.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah, without that, I've got no place to live and then what am I going to do? My phone and my MAC are huge resources because that's how I make a living. I don't go tossing my computer across the floor. I make sure that it stays in good condition and I handle it with care. You're creativity is the same thing. Even a child or a baby, you don't go throwing those thing around because they're highly valuable to you.

If you think of your creativity as the way you make a living, the way you live your life, the way that feeds your soul, the thing that is so valuable that without it you couldn't do those things, you're going to want to protect that. You're going to want to take care of that. You're going to want to nurture that.

Everything that you do that's self-care is going towards that, is going towards protecting and enhancing your creativity. I consider getting a massage like a business practice. Touch is critical and meditation is critical, and what better way to do that than getting an awesome massage. I consider that time, work time. It's like this is for my business. This is for my family. This is for my abundance to get this massage.

Same with kickboxing. I get so many great ideas when I'm kickboxing. It's great for my body, it's great for my brain. I consider that something like fundamentally critical that I do for my own success.

Robert Plank: Would you say that with your client that you help out, would you say that the ... Is there one big thing that stops all these people, that holds them all back? If there is, would you say, is it this burn out thing, is it the lack of having a life? Is it lack of structure? What would you say is holding back all these people that you're helping out?

Tracee Sioux: There are 3 things. There are 3 lies that your ego will tell you to keep you where you're at, to keep you stuck. My clients and everyone I've ever met, has one or all or some variation of these 3. Time, "I don't have enough time. I am too busy. I'll do that later. Some day I'll write that. Some day I'm going to do that."

Money, "I don't have enough money." We're the richest country in the entire world in the history of the world and I don't know a single person who is like, "Yeah, I've got enough money." It's like some kind of mental ... It's like a collective mental health problem that we all think that we're totally broke.

What I find with a lot of people, and this isn't true for everyone, sometimes people just really don't have enough money. For most people, they have money, but they're spending it wrongly if this is their priority.

If you have money, and you've got an iPad and a closet full of designer clothes, but you don't have enough money to write your book or hire a publisher or a coach, it's not that you don't have enough money, it's that you're spending your money in a way that does not support what you try to do.

"I don't have enough money, I don't have enough time," and the last one is, "I'm not good enough. Who am I? I need another certification. Who's going to read my book? No one cares what I have to say? My parents told me I would amount to nothing or my spouse doesn't think I'm good at this."

Those are the 3 things I see over and over and over and over. As we work together, that piece gets less and less strong because they have more and more experience to prove that that's wrong. At the beginning, I've got to tell you, I considered it a ginormous success when one of my clients went and visited her sick mother for 10 days.

The only way I could get her to do it is say, "This is an entrepreneurial experiment. What happens if you remove yourself from your business and actually let the people who work for you do the work?" She made more money.

Of course she did but she didn't believe that that was going to happen prior to the experiment because she had always believed, "I don't have enough time, and if I don't do this for myself, and not really allow the people who work for me to actually do their jobs, then my whole business is going to fall apart. This big catastrophe is going to happen. No one's going to call me anymore. Everybody's going to be mad."

I'm like, "Okay, it's 10 days. You could go on vacation, that's what they do. They go on vacation. You will pay these people. Let them do their job." When she came back, what she discovered was that her employees really, really, really appreciated being allowed to do their job and not have her getting all up in it and micromanaging it.

It's changed the way that she works. She works less. She makes more money. She's happier. That was a huge struggle for her, huge, enormous struggle for her.

Robert Plank: What I'm hearing, not only from that story, but from this whole call is that it seems like we all kind of wish that in a perfect world, that we could kind of turn on the switch, flip the switch, and always be in that flow state 24 hours a day and just be a workaholic, but it sounds like for you, what's really important is that time spent away from the computer, away from the business to get that clarity, the focus, the "Aha" moments, all that cool stuff.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. Think about yourself. When you're programming, do you get your best ideas while you're doing it?

Robert Plank: Usually what happens is I'm stuck for 8 hours. I take a 10-minute-break and then I instantly figure out what's been blocking me for 8 hours.

Tracee Sioux: Now you know that, right? If you got stuck and then 5 minutes later you were like, "I'm going to go take a nap or take a walk around the block," your insight would happen faster, which would make you more productive right? You wouldn't have wasted that 8 hours. Long, lone, long time ago I realized that if I did not try to finish a deadline at 11 PM, I could wake up the next morning at 6:00 and I could jam that sucker out in 45 minutes. It would feel great and it would be good work.

I had already tired my brain out by 11 PM and I could sit there for 5 hours and just stare at that computer and not be able to create a coherent thought. If you know this, if you're like, "Hey, every time I run, I get great ideas," or "Every time I take a nap, I wake up and I know the answer." If I sleep on it ... That's why people say, "I'm going to sleep on it," that's actually extremely great advice.

When you sleep on it, your brain and your soul does all this stuff in there and then when you wake up you're like, "Oh, I don't know why I didn't think about that yesterday, but that's a great idea." Just do it before you waste the 8 hours. Just make it a part of your system.

Robert Plank: That's good advice and that's been a hard lesson. That's been kind of a slow road for me over the last few years to slowly retrain myself. As you said, it's not an overnight thing and it's almost like a blow to the ego almost.

It's like I tell myself, "But I have to put in these 8 hours of so-called hard work," when if it can all just be solved in 10 minutes, it's almost like ... You know what I'm saying? It's almost a blow to the ego that I thought it was supposed to take me 8 hours of suffering but then it turns out there's a 10-minute shortcut.

Tracee Sioux: Right. You're exactly right that it's the ego because in our culture our egos are trained to think that if we're busy we're going to get richer. Totally untrue. If we work all the time, then we're cooler and make more money, which is also totally untrue. If we get the Doctorate degree that we're going to make more money and get higher positions. Also totally untrue.

The facts do not bear these things out. We live in a culture that makes it really easy for the ego to make you feel guilty for finishing your work and going to the pool at 2:00 or taking a month off to go travel with your kids. I took my kids to New York City this summer and it took me about a week to stop feeling anxiety and guilt about getting away with it.

Like not having my business go to crap during this period of time was some kind of miracle. The thing is I have set my business up like that on purpose with intention. I've set up ... I've worked my tail off before. I work my tail off after. I met with clients over Skype. My business did not suffer one single bit. My family benefited. I benefited.

It took me a minute of doing it that I was like, "I can't believe I'm getting away with this. Is this even allowed in America? Should I be doing something?" It's training and it's ego. Ego loves to use that and it is a little bit of a challenge to get the ego to hush up so that you can enjoy the time that you're taking.

Robert Plank: What the heck else are you doing all this for?

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. That's kind of where I was at when I started taking these month-long vacations with my kids. Why am I an entrepreneur? I'm an entrepreneur so that I have the freedom to be able to spend with my family. I'm an entrepreneur and I don't have to go to an office every day. Well, why, why, why is that important to me? It's so that I can travel and go have some adventures right?

Robert Plank: Right. Work hard and play hard.

Tracee Sioux: Work hard and play hard. If that's not why you're working, we might want to have a conversation about why the heck you're working.

Robert Plank: That's a great place to kind of transition a little bit into if someone is out there and they need help. They realize that they need that extra set of eyes, or the third set of eyes, or the third set of the third eye. Even just someone to help them get to where they need to go, can you tell us about you and your websites and your coaching and your services and all that cool stuff?

Tracee Sioux: Sure, yeah. I'm very reachable at TraceeSioux.com. You can email me at yes@traceesioux.com. I'll get right back to you and we can schedule an appointment to have a chat about where you're at and what you want to do, and how I can help you with my services, whether that's for coaching and getting clear on what you want and mapping out a path, or whether it's you need a marketing platform to create the brand that you are or whether it's you're ready to publish a book and let's get on it.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Whatever they need you give them the whole package. Cool. I'm excited for anyone who's headed your way and thanks for coming on the show, Tracee, to share what you have to say about ... It sounds like we talked about everything right? All the life stuff, all of the important stuff. Thanks for coming by.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great fun.[/showhide]

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141: Hacking Success: Small Wins, Goal Setting and Business Tweaking with Scott Hansen

What does success look like to you? What if you had three wishes, how would your business change? What small wins could you experience in your business within the next 90 days or less? Scott Hansen from SuccessHackers.net and IWantMoreLeads.net tells us why he started his online presence, and how he's built up his podcast devoted to cracking the entrepreneurial code.

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: Our guest today is Scott Hansen. Scott is a high-performance coach, a sought-after speaker, and a podcast host. He coaches entrepreneurs on how to live a life of purpose and significance. He's the creator of the Ultimate Success System, a high-performance coaching program, teaching business owners how to attract more clients, generate more leads, and increase revenue, all while building a bigger bottom line. Scott's work has been featured on Inc.com, ABC, NBC, Fox, and Business Innovators, so we have a celebrity in the house. Welcome to the show, Scott.

Scott Hansen: Ha-ha. Thank you, Robert. Great to be here, man. I'm fired up.

Robert Plank: Cool. I am, too. Could you tell us about who are you, what it is you do, and maybe, I don't know, is there some kind of area where you're the number-1 top dog?

Scott Hansen: Wow, now you're really putting me on the spot. I think my wife would say that I'm the top dog, but I don't know about anybody else.

Robert Plank: As soon as you step outside, all bets are off.

Scott Hansen: Yeah, exactly right. No, as you said in the intro, over the last 2-1/2, almost 3 years, I was able to quit my corporate job and pursue something that I always had a passion for, which was coaching and teaching and training and speaking and breathing life into people, I call it. As you mentioned, I work with entrepreneurs in 3 facets, helping them generate the leads they can handle. I help them increase their overall client base and, obviously, increase their sales and productivity.

That's more of the tactics and strategy side of things. A business owner will come to me and say, "Scott, I feel stuck. How do I get to that next level?" We coach them through that. Then, of course, a lot of it I call it the 75/25. Twenty-five percent of any business is strategy and tactic. The other 75 is mindset. That's what keeps a lot of people stuck where they're at, so we work on both facets in my coaching program.

That's who I help. I think that one of the things that separates me from a lot of people that do what I do, I guess, is I really branded myself, I think, in a pretty good way. I've been hustling my butt off the last 2 years to build the Scott Hansen brand. Like you mentioned in the intro, I've been featured in some pretty cool places. I also write for Entrepreneur magazine and have one of the fastest-growing podcasts in the business space called Success Hackers that I think we're about downloaded in 65 or 68 countries. We're doing a lot of cool things, reaching a lot of great people and trying to help and serve as many people as I can to really play bigger in life and business.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Is that how you would say that you differentiate with everyone else, that you focus on the mindset as well as the action? How do you stand out from everyone else who does the coaching and fixing people's businesses and stuff like that.

Scott Hansen: Yeah. Listen, there's a lot of great people out there, so for me to say that I'm the world's best at X would be a lie, because I think we all have our own niches and we have our own greatness. I think for me, one of the things that I do with my program is when I do work with business owners, my, I call it market-dominating position, is what, as you said, it's what makes you stand out from everybody else that does what you do as a personal, as a business, etc. For me, what I do is I help small business owners find at least $10,000 in untapped revenue in their business without them spending $1.00 on advertising.

Right off there, as you can hear, I separate myself from everybody that says that I just coach people. I actually go in and find them a boatload of untapped potential in profits in their business, and I do it in a very Ninja-like way, but it really opens some people's eyes to say, "Wow, how did you do that?" Then my close, my hard close in my coaching program is pretty simple., "I just was able to find you XYZ amount of money. Would you like my help implementing that over the next 12 months?" That's my big close. That's how I separate myself. A lot of people can't do that or don't have the tools or the strategies to do that. That's how I separate myself.

Then, like I said, a lot of people do a lot of cool things, but one of the things that I said was, when I got started, "How do I separate myself from everybody else that does that?" I started the podcast, which I mentioned, and I have a best-selling book. I've been featured on some of the outlets that you mentioned and write for Entrepreneur and been in Inc., etc., etc. To continue to brand myself and build my brand is also something that I take very seriously as well.

Robert Plank: Cool. I like that. That kind of got my interest going, that whole thing where you go to someone's business and you find $10,000 of untapped. Could you give us an example of that, some time that you did that?

Scott Hansen: Yeah, I do it every day. I literally do it every day. In addition to that, what I do is ... I'm also writing a book, a second book, and I'm actually working on case studies. For example, I will approach a business owner, a chiropractor, a dentist, etc., plastic surgeon, and I'll say, "Listen, you know, I'm putting together some case studies for my book, and I would love your help. Would you like some help with that?" Once I tell them exactly what the program is and how it works, most people are like, "Yeah, I would love that. I'd love to help you with that." In addition, then I help them back, because I actually showcase exactly what I did and then we uncover a boatload of money for them.

As you know, with a lot of business owners, the old saying is they're very good at doing their business as a technician, so a very good baker is a very good baker, a very good chiropractor is a very good chiropractor. A lot of times these small business owners, they get into business because they're passionate about it, but they don't know how to generate leads on a consistent flow, which then, of course, turns into clients, which then turns into revenue, which then, hopefully, turns into greater profitability. They don't know that aspect of the business, the business-building. That's when I can come in and do that and help them out.

Robert Plank: Nice. What you're seeing mostly is then, it's like a E Myth kind of situation where they're good at their craft, but they're not actually business people?

Scott Hansen: Yeah, and I'm glad you referenced The E Myth. It's funny, I'm reading that for the second time as we speak, and even the second time around, I'm gathering a lot more information. For any of your listeners, of course, The E Myth by Michael Gerber is like the bible for small-business mindset strategies. I'm not talking about woo-woo strategies. I'm talking about real life tactical strategies and how to think of your business differently than you're thinking about it right now. Again, what I love about it is it's stuff that I apply not only in my own business, but also towards my clients. Yeah, so to answer your question, that's exactly what I was talking about.

Robert Plank: Yeah, that's one of my probably top 5 books, and I haven't read it in probably ... I only read it once 5 years ago, and all the time I see little things and I think I need to go back and kind of read it again. You mentioned all these outlets that you're on, especially Entrepreneur magazine. How did that come about? It's just a matter of asking or knowing the right people or did you leverage the podcast or something else? How did that happen?

Scott Hansen: Yeah, great question. I'm a big believer in that when you're dialed in, when you're in a space that you feel really passionate about and purposeful around, whether you're a lawyer, whether you're a gardener, whether you're a mailman, whether you're a chiropractor, whatever business you're in, if you feel really good about what you do and then you take the necessary steps to open yourself up to receiving great things, great things come your way.

What I mean by that ... I know that sounds a little bit kind of fluffy, but it's the truth. I'm a huge believer in law of attraction, that what you put out comes back to you, but you can't just sit in the couch and then just meditate and hope that a million dollars falls in your lap or a new client falls in. You've got to go out and hustle, but when you're in that space, when you're on the track, when you're on the right path and you do open yourself up for more opportunity, to meet new people, etc., that's when it happens.

Funny enough, when I first created my podcast, I was actually in partnership with another company and in about 90 days after that, they didn't want any more part of the podcast, but in that interim, they introduced me to an editor from Entrepreneur.com. Met the editor over line and we talked a little bit and they basically offered me a contributing-writer type situation, and that's how it all came to be.

From there, I've been able to leverage ... It's interesting, because I know a lot of people that use a lot of their stuff as lead-gen. Maybe being a little bit naïve or just wanting to add as much value as I possibly can, I never took that as, "Oh, great, I'm a contributing writer for Entrepreneur. I'm going to leverage the hell out of this for business and for lead-gen." I just wanted to, and I continue to want to just give, give, give and serve, serve, serve to the highest level. When I write content for Entrepreneur, it's not about, "Oh, I can't want to see how many leads I get from it." It's me pouring my stuff into the article to say, "If one person takes this article and has a breakthrough, that was worth the entire thing." That's how I came to be a contributing writer for Entrepreneur, and it's been just absolutely great.

Robert Plank: Nice. It's a matter of you look at extending your reach not just in the mindset of gimme, gimme, gimme, but let me extend my reach and use it to help more people?

Scott Hansen: Yeah. I try as much as I can. Listen, everybody likes money. I like nice things. I like nice clothes. I like to take my wife out to nice dinners. If you're not focused on revenue and money, then you shouldn't be in business. Let's not confuse that, but in addition to that, I believe that if you have a servant mentality where it's how can I serve today rather than what can I get today, it's a completely different shift. It was a completely different shift for me over the last 6 months, where it was if I go out every day and I want to serve someone so highly, whether that's the person in line for coffee, whether that's one of my clients, whether that's writing an article, I don't know what happens, but it's a mindset shift. When I came from a place of, "I don't care to get. I come from a place of serving," the getting naturally started to happen.

Robert Plank: I like it. As far as getting in the mindset of the giving, that's cool, too, because then you're not waiting for anything to happen. I don't know, anyone who has that scarce view or that kind of take-whatever-I-can-get kind of mindset, it's almost like they say, "Well, I'm going to write my article and then I have to wait around for the leads to come in, and I've got to do something else and wait for that." What's cool about the giving, it's like, "Well, who cares about that?" You can move a million miles a minute and look back later and see what that produced, I guess.

Scott Hansen: Yep, exactly.

Robert Plank: It's cool, because then it turns into almost like a when-it-rains-it-pours kind of situation, sort of like how things worked out with the entrepreneur writing gig and stuff like that. Sometimes there'll be weeks where just all this crazy stuff happens, and I say, "Dang, where was this 5 years ago? Where was this 10 years ago?" You said this all happened because of the podcast. Could you kind of tell us what led you to making the podcast and kind of what's your strategy with that?

Scott Hansen: Yeah, great question. It's kind of a funny story. When I first built the bridge, if you will, made the leap, jumped out of the plane, whatever term you want to call it, into entrepreneurship and the coaching and speaking and the pod, one of my mentors said to me ... He at the time, which is a few years ago, he had a podcast at the time for about 7 years, and I think he had a half a million followers and just super successful guy and very charismatic and very passionate about developing the mindset around entrepreneurship and being an entrepreneur and living life on your terms, etc.

He said, "You know, ..." He told me about his podcast. I'm like, "Oh, that sounds amazing." He goes, "Yeah, and I get so fired up because I scream into my computer and I'm talking about leadership and mindset and the right strategies and it's just me. This is insaneness to me, and I get so fired up and inspired and I get the chance to inspire people." I'm like, "Oh, my God, that sounds amazing. That's exactly what I want." He goes, "Yeah, you should do it yourself," and I'm like, "Great. What's a podcast?"

Robert Plank: Nice.

Scott Hansen: He goes, "What do you mean you don't know what a podcast is?" Hand to God, I did not know what a podcast was. He goes, "Dude, you got to be kidding me." I'm like, "No." Literally, 2-1/2 years ago, I didn't even know what a podcast was. I started it, and I started kind of doing the same thing and I got really fired up and it was just me, and I met a gentleman who over lunch, who owned a huge company, he's like, "You know, I heard your podcast." I'm like, "Oh, I didn't even know you listened or I didn't know you were even online."

He says, "Yeah, I clicked on one of your links to your Facebook post and you're really good at what you do." I'm like, "Oh, I appreciate it." He goes, "You know ..." I won't name the company, but he said, "Our company needs to be in the podcast game." I said, "You know, I'd be happy to consult you on that and give you some feedback." He goes, "No, I don't think you understand. We want you to be the voice, the face, and the name of the podcast." Sure enough, he and I worked out some kinks and moved ahead on the podcast, which now he's no longer part of, and it's just me.

I share that story with you, Robert, and the listeners to simply say 2-1/2 years ago, as stupid as this sounds, I didn't even know what a podcast was, and here we are in 2016 and the podcast has reached 65, now 68 countries and listened to by over 230,000 listeners a month. We just got picked up by iHeartRadio, which has 3.5 listeners a day. Just a lot of really cool things happening. I share that with anybody in your audience. I don't care if it's podcasting, creating a video, starting your own business, learning how to speak, don't worry about where you're at today. Today absolutely matters, but focus on where you could be in 2 years, because you're listening to a guy right now that I mentioned a few times I had no clue what a podcast was and now we've had some pretty good success, not in 12 years, not in 15, in 2-1/2 years.

Robert Plank: That's pretty encouraging. They don't have to wait a good chunk of their lifetime for it to pay off. You kind of joked about yourself a little bit that you didn't know what a podcast was 2 years ago, and I'm sure that there are people out there that know every little nook and cranny and detail about podcasting that don't have their own podcast. I'd rather be the guy that doesn't know a lot or doesn't know everything but takes a lot of action.

Scott Hansen: Yeah. The old saying is, "I'd rather be," what is it, "ignorance on fire versus knowledge on ice." I was always the ready, fire, aim guy. Just hurry up and get out there, make things happen, and there's something to be said about taking action rather than to wait, but I always find that there's a middle ground that is really the sweet spot. There are people that get out there and they just start making things happen.

Then there's the other extreme, people like you said earlier, that just wait and wait and wait and wait and they never get anything off the ground. If you can find the middle ground where you have a little bit of both, where you have some clarity, when you have some things in place and then you take some action and then you come back to the drawing board and maybe tweak it, and then you do it again and then you fall on your face and you do it again, I would rather be that person than the person that just gives it great lip service about starting their own business or learning how to speak or getting on stage or whatever versus the person that just, like I say, just goes after it.

Robert Plank: Interesting. It's best if I take the best of both worlds. You don't want to be a student all the time, but you also don't want to be a full-of-chaos, flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, no-plan kind of person.

Scott Hansen: Yeah, because I was that person that you just mentioned in the latter, which is just go crazy and go do it and do a million things. Even though that's cool when you have a lot of stuff going on, but at the end of the day ... This is even like a coaching moment for me as I'm on your show, and I teach this to all my clients. It's so funny. I just met with a guy the other day that has all these cool ... and I'm doing air quotes ... all these cool things that he wants to do and he wants to have the Internet TV show and he wants to line up sponsors and he's got media partners and he's got the right lighting and the right camera and the right mics, and he's got all these different things.

I asked him one simple question. I said, "That's all great. That's amazing." He said, "Yeah, I want to have these thought leaders on here in my city, and even if it's not my city, we do it over Zoom and we have ..." Just like a lot of people are doing now, but he goes, "I want to really make it perfect and it's going to be amazing and I have all the sponsorship." I said, "That great." I go, "Have you thought about ... I just have one question for you." I said, "What about traffic?"

He goes, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, that's all great that you have the greatest set and the greatest things and you sound great and you're taking all this coaching on how to be a better speaker and a better interviewer, etc., etc." I'm like, "What about traffic? Where is the traffic going to come from? Because if you have the best product in the world and no one knows you're out there, trust me when I tell you this, you will stop. You will be frustrated in less than 6 months, because it takes time and money." He was the same way.

I tell people all the time. I said, "Yeah, it's great that you want to build content and it's great you want to be on TV or on the Internet or do your own podcast or do your own this or do your own that, but before you do any of that, start with the end in mind." Most people don't want to go to this because deep down in their belly, they don't have a clue what the answer is, but I always tell people to reverse-engineer anything you do. I don't care what it is. Start with the end in mind. When it's all perfect ... Here's a coaching session for your listeners. When it's perfect in whatever you're trying to build, what does the end look like? Is it revenue? How much and how is it coming in?

Then you build from the back and move forward, and then you can do the nice lighting and the mics and the color and all whatever it is you're trying to build. Too many people, they get all excited about the sexiness, the appeal, the shiny objects, and the newness. Then what happens is they never think about the back end. The most important thing as a business owner is the obvious, revenue. You don't have any revenue, I don't care how great you are in front of the mic, I don't care how great you are in front of the TV camera. If you don't have people watching it or seeing the sponsorship for money, then you will fizzle in 6 months and then you're going to have to start from scratch.

Robert Plank: Kind of a scary thought, but also kind of a hard message that people need to hear, too. As you're describing it, it almost sounds like because there's no end goal, there's nothing that they're building towards. The procrastination creeps in, the fear of success creeps in, all that bad stuff and all the patting yourself on the back. I'm a computer programmer and I call that going down the rabbit hole. Right?

Scott Hansen: Yep.

Robert Plank: You say, "I just need to make a website. Oh, I got to figure out FTP." Oh, well which program you going to get? Oh, I'll upload WordPress. Okay, well, how do I unzip a zip file?" The next thing you know, it's like you've gone down this whole path of 200 different things. Then you're totally off track.

Scott Hansen: Exactly.

Robert Plank: Along those lines, would you say that what you just described there, is that the biggest mistake that you're seeing with your client or is there something even there?

Scott Hansen: Yeah, I think that that's part of it. I think that not having a plan on paper is part of the problem. Even though that sounds so obvious, "Well, yeah, I have a plan," it's funny. When I sit down with business owners that have been doing it for a long time, these aren't start-ups. These are people that have been doing it for 3, 4, 5, 10 years. I say, "What does success look like for you?" When I start working with a client, the very first thing that I will do, before we get into strategies and tactics and everything else, I will say, "You know what? What does success mean to you? Not to your husband or your wife or your kids or your mom or dad, what does it mean to you? If a genie were to literally come down and give you 3 wishes and those 3 wishes could materialize, what does your life, not your business, not your health, not your spirituality, what does your overall life look like from a success standpoint?"

"Well, I'm working 30 hours a week. I'm able to travel. I'm able to do things over Skype. I'm able to do this, this, and this. I have a team in place. I have virtual assistants." Okay, great. "Well, I don't have any of that yet, Scott." I'm like, "That's okay. That's okay. That's where we're building towards. Remember, I just said you're going to reverse-engineer it. Okay, so that's kind of the end goal. Now that you have what the vision looks like, then we continue to work backwards. In your mind right now, what is the dollar amount revenue you need to be produced on a monthly basis or a yearly basis in order to get the things you just described?" Then we spend some more time on that, and then we get crystal clear.

Then we continue to work backwards in the equation so that when we get to the tactics or the marketing or the sales conversion or the website or any of the stuff that's the tactical part of the coaching, then they're more excited because they can see that at the end of the tunnel, at the end of a year or 2, 3, 4 years, they're actually working towards something rather than just being a hamster on the wheel saying, "Every day, I wake up. I got 75,000 things coming at me. I get inundated. I get overwhelmed." Then the days, the weeks, the months go by, and nothing from a revenue and from an overall vision standpoint gets created.

That's what most small-business owners ... Like I mentioned a few times, they're so working hard in their business, the day-to-day stuff, they never stop and think to say, "Am I going the right way?" You live in California. I live in Chicago. If I were to fly out to you in California and you and I hop in your car and you're going to say, "You know what? Let's drive to New York." I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds great, Robert. Let's do it." I'm excited; you're excited. We've got everything packed and all of a sudden, I say "You know, do you have a map or a GPS?" You're like, "No. Hell, no, jut hop in. We're just going to go, man. We're just going to flow." I'd be like, "You know what? I don't think so."

Even though that sounds hilarious right now, you'd be so surprised as business owners, they don't have the GPS. They don't have a plan. Then they wake up 3 years later, 5 years later and they're kind of where they were 5 years ago, but now, now they're more frustrated and now they have more overwhelm. That business that they started 5 years ago ain't as sexy as it was 5 years ago. That's because our brain is like a heat-seeking missile.

When you give it something to do and a goal and a stretch goal, even though it scares the shit out of you, which it should, by the way, you're actually giving it a target. When your brain has a target ... Like Tony Robbins says, "The most successful people on the planet are the ones that are always progressing to something new." They're always in the mode of progressing, learning, growing, expanding. The ones that are frustrated, pissed off at the world, woe is me, my life stinks, are the ones that don't have a goal to go after.

Robert Plank: Like you said a few minutes ago, it seems to simple, but so few people do it. Even just in the last 4 or 5 days, what's been going across my mind is that it almost takes more brainpower to think in simple terms than in the complicated stuff. As you were saying what you were saying, it kind of brought me back to when I was a kid and I was in Little League and if we were doing a practice kind of thing, then usually the practice would be ... One of the coaches would just hit fly balls over and over again, hit grounders over and over again, just to get that mastery on the fundamentals and stuff like that.

The other thing that I've been hearing from your personal kind of coaching is that you're all about the quick win, not necessarily put a bandage on the problem, but it sounds like you're all about the get-excited-first. That way, it'll kind of carry you when times get tough later. Like you said, when you have a new client, you find 10 grand just laying around in the business of something they're missing and you have them make that plan. That way, later on when they hit a roadblock, they can kind of look back and realize what the plan is, what the goal is.

Scott Hansen: Oh, yeah, you bring up a great point. Think about it like this. Think about it as a cross-country runner or a marathon runner. Think about it like, okay, if you and I were to just start running like Forrest Gump, we just ran for days and days, I would look at you and I'd say, "What the hell are we doing? Why are we just ..." "Oh, no, no. We're just going to continue to run." "Well, what's the end goal?" "I don't know. We're just going to continue to run." That would suck. The marathon runner actually has a target, 26.2 miles, and my goal is to be the best, to be number 1, to do that. They have an end goal. They're not just running 26 miles just for the sake of running 26 miles.

As a business owner, for anybody who's an entrepreneur ... I don't care if you're in the corporate space, if you're a business owner, when you have a win, an end goal, a light at the end of the tunnel, that gets you way more excited than, "Well, I'm just going to go to the gym every day." "Well, why are you going to the gym?" "Well, because I want to lose some weight." "Well, how much weight do you want to lose?" "Well, I have no idea."

"Okay, do you have a succession plan?" "Well, no. I'm just going to keep going every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday." "Okay, great. What is the point of you going?" "Well, I want to lose weight eventually." "Okay, great. Well, how exactly are you doing that?" "I have no idea." "Oh, so you paid the $60.00 a month for your gym membership and you're going every day. You just spent $200.00 on a new outfit to go to the gym, but you, frankly, don't have an end goal." "Well, yeah, I want to lose weight." "But how are you going to do that?" "Oh, I have no idea."

That's why people get in this rut. They don't challenge themselves, whether it's through fitness, through health, eating the right things, relationships, business. When people set goals ... I don't want to sit here and sound like I set a goal for every frickin thing I do, because that would sound just boring, because I don't. I'll give you a quick example of what I'm doing right now in my life. I'm 43, going to be 44 in a few months, holy crap.

Now I've worked out in the gym and worked out since I was 17 years old, but you get older and things don't bounce back as quick as they used to, etc., etc. What I started to do was say, "Well, I don't have the time to spend an hour and a half in the gym like I used to, so what can I do differently to tighten my body and tone my body up?" I would just go down to the gym and I would just get on the treadmill and I would do some things and I'd come back home. That's just boring.

What I started to do was say, "You know what? In 90 days, here is my goal. I want to juice 4 times a week, have a juice drink 4 times a week, a healthy juice drink. Then I want to go to the gym at least 4 times a week, and here's the key. I don't want to spend any more time than 30 minutes; 30 minutes, I'm maxed out." In that 30 minutes, it's non-stop, high-impact training. You go down for 30 seconds, you stop for 30 seconds. Your heart rate is consistently through the roof, and it burns fat all day long. Guess what? I am so much more excited to now go to the gym because I have a whole new strategy and a whole new vision of what I want my health and my body to look like over a 90-day period rather than just showing up to the gym because that's something I have to do.

Robert Plank: That's awesome. I like that. Have a real concrete, maybe even like a number base goal or something that isn't some crazy pie in the sky, but does still kind of stretch you so that you have to kind of do better to get where you want to be.

Scott Hansen: Yeah, it's the small wins. That's where we get turned on by human beings. We get turned on by small wins, the attaboys. If I hit this revenue goal, then I get to take my wife or my boyfriend or my husband out for a dinner, or I get a chance to maybe buy those new Nike shoes I wanted that are 150 bucks. If I hit this revenue goal in the next 60 days, cool. All that kind of stuff. You'd be surprised, a lot of people think they have to set 3-, 5-year goals. That is so much of a myth. Forget about 3-, 5-year goals. How about setting a 90-day attaboy win or a small win, 90 days. If I hit this, I get to reward myself with that. You're going to be more apt and more excited to continue the journey that way than, "Well, in 3 years, if I hit this number, then that will be great."

Robert Plank: Nice. I like that. Yeah, instead of going for years ahead of time, just 90 days and, again, something simple, but so few people do that. I really like that idea there. Kind of along those lines and as far as the advice and the knowledge you have to give, could you tell us, Scott, about where people can find your podcast, where people can find your coaching, and whatever kind of websites, whatever kind of cool stuff you're working on these days?

Scott Hansen: Yeah, I appreciate it, Robert. It was great chatting with you, man. You're doing some great things in this world as well. I appreciate the opportunity. First of all, I would say that if someone wants to check out my podcast, SuccessHackers.net. Success Hackers is the site. We have a lot of really great guests on the show talking about big thinking and entrepreneurship. One of the things that I train on and teach my entrepreneur business owners is how to get more leads and generate more leads. I actually have a free video actually that I'll give to your listeners. All they have to do is go to iwantmoreleads.net. Just type in iwantmoreleads.net, and there's a free video. It's pretty awesome. It'll absolutely revolutionize your business.

That's about it. They can follow me. I'm on Twitter, Scott Hansen. Facebook, Scott Hansen, obviously. I always reach out. If someone hits me up, whether it's through the podcast or through my coaching or whatever, I'm always ... I know a lot of people have their virtual assistant answer their e-mails. I don't. I answer all my stuff, so I'm very in tune with my tribe and my audience. I would love to connect with anybody that wants to connect with me. If someone does want to connect with me, again, you can go to SuccessHackers.net. There's actually a way to connect with me via e-mail that way as well.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Yeah, like you said, SuccessHackers.net and iwantmoreleads.net. Lots of awesome stuff today. I appreciate everything that you shared with us, Scott. Thanks for stopping by.

Scott Hansen: Thanks a lot, Robert. Have a great day.[/showhide]

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140: Find Fulfillment: From Invisible to Influence with Conscious Warrior and Freedompreneur Nick Pereira

How do you prevent burnout and enjoy everything you do? That's what Coach Nick Pereira (from HangoutWithCoachNick.com and the Freedompreneur Club on Facebook) stops by to answer for us. He tells us how to get into that flow state, start small and grow, PLUS go from invisible to influence with his five step model:

1. invisible (an idea in your head)
2. emergencence (cashflow and clients)
3. chaos (where you have more business than infrastructure)
4. systems (save yourself time and energy)
5. stability/influence (normal operations, scale)

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: Our guest today is Nick Pereira. Now Coach Nick has been an entrepreneur for over a decade and as an author, trainer, founder and the president of the Freedompreneur's club, Nick has helped thousands of small business owners become freedom preneurs. What's up, Coach Nick? How are things today?

Nick Pereira: Fantastic, Robert. Just an awesome day. Just got back from the gym so I'm feeling good.

Robert Plank: Awesome, feeling pumped and all that good stuff.

Nick Pereira: Yeah.

Robert Plank: Cool, I'm just coming in from a walk myself so not quite the same thing but same idea, right? This, that and all that stuff.

Nick Pereira: Yes

Robert Plank: Cool. Could you tell us about who are you, what you do and what makes you special?

Nick Pereira: Yeah sure. Well, those are loaded questions. As far as what I do, I help entrepreneurs become freedom preneurs which simply means helping entrepreneurs create their business in such a way where they can work when they want, where they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, with whoever they want doing the things they love to do. You know, as I know and any entrepreneur knows that if you're building a business, there's parts of that business that bring us so much joy or that are expressions of our joy. Then there's parts of the business that don't bring us joy and I help entrepreneurs create their business in a systematic way to allow freedom.

As far as what makes me special, I don't really know the answer to that but I think the best people to ask are the people that work with me. One thing that I would say that the Freedompreneurs club has done, what I think is special and what I think is done very well, is we've created a real community. We've created people so when I'm working with people I don't put people on contracts. I don't make anybody give me time commitments. That's one of the things I guess that's special is many coaches and trainers will ask for a specific time commitment. I don't ask for time commitments, I simply ask for value.

If I'm providing you value and you're getting value, you're going to stick around. It's a simple as that and I'm about to celebrate three-year anniversaries with certain people inside the Freedompreneur club and we have tons more that have already celebrated a year and two year anniversaries. I think what's special about what we're creating is people are sticking around, but they don't have to. There's no contract. There's nothing that says they have to, so we're truly creating a community of people that want to be there. I think that's what makes the Freedompreneur club really special.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Along what we're talking about and as far as, you said that you're all about like the whole package, I guess, not just the business part of it but also people having the lifestyle they want, live where they want and all that good stuff. What are your thoughts on like, I guess because there's two extremes on the spectrum. On one extreme, you and I have both probably been to events where people talk about lifestyle and time management and then the focus is on just taking time off, which I guess is okay but a lot of these people they just say, "Oh, I just took two weeks off, three weeks off."

I think, "Well, great," but what did you do for your business and the other extreme is like the Gary V and the Grant Cardone kind of stuff, which "Love what you do and hustle and do all this work and stuff," but then at the same time, I look at that side of the spectrum, and I'm just thinking, "That's way too much." What are your thoughts on that, I guess like the slacker side of things versus the workaholic side of things?

Nick Pereira: Yeah, yeah. I hear you with that and there is a lot of messages. I guess my thoughts are you got to find what works for you. What I have found that works for me is having a nice balance between what I'm doing, what I love to do and incorporating other things into my life. Now I guess here's the big distinction. I don't see a difference between my business life and my other ... I just see life as life, so for me, there is no distinction between "Am I working or am I playing?"

I love what we're doing right here, connecting, chatting. This is, I could do this all day long. So am I working right now or am I playing? I don't really know. I'm just living my life and what my life has become purposefully and consciously is just an expression of the things that I enjoy. I've learned to incorporate well-being into the Freedompreneurs club, entrepreneurship into the Freedompreneurs club, spirituality into the Freedompreneurs club. The Freedompreneurs club is truly an expression of just the different aspects of who I am. I've learned to do it in a way that's all-encompassing so I don't know where I sit on that spectrum other than live life in such a way where life pays you for being you.

Robert Plank: Interesting., but how do you go down that path and how do you kind of live the life that's meant for you without kind of going in a directional sort of way?

Nick Pereira: Yeah. Well, I think you're going to find a balance. Look, I've been the Gary V type, "Hustle, hustle, hustle. Get up, morning till night," and what I found is that I burned out because I wasn't doing it in the space of enjoyment, so I have nothing ... I could spend the entire day, my day yesterday was a day like that. From wake up to sleep, I was working and I was engaged in the Freedompreneur club and activities in the Freedompreneurs club so I worked really hard yesterday.

Today I'm doing this interview. I've got a few calls this afternoon and then tonight I'm hanging out with family, so it's just finding a flow that works for you and that, I believe, is going to work differently for everybody. I also believe that you start small and you grow, meaning even with Gary V, I don't know him personally, and I know his story just a little bit, but he didn't start off as who he is today. He started off with winelibrary.com, I believe, and he started it off as an Internet thing and he said, I believe I was listening to something, and he said, for 2, 3 years or however long time ... I don't want to, don't quote me on any of this. It's his life, but he spent just building his brand on social media and building the winelibrary.com.

I think now 10 years, 20 years, whatever it's been for him, he's evolved where he can get up because he's so well trained and oiled. I think that we should not lose sight, it's easy to watch someone from stage and I've met a lot of successful people who have spoken to thousands upon thousands of people and it's easy to look at them and say, "Wow, they get up from morning until night. They're just in that flow," but what we don't see is that they've spent 30 years getting to that point.

They didn't start that way. Many of them started off part-time jobs doing it on weekends, squeezing it on their lunch time so they definitely had a work ethic that was more than the average individual for sure, but from my experience and my interactions and associations meeting tremendously successful people, no one started that way.

Robert Plank: I agree with that and I think that the people that I talked to had all those ups and downs and ups and downs and they kind of had to like put in however many hours or however many weeks in a row just to get past all that stuff.

Nick Pereira: That's right. If Malcolm Gladwell, I believe it's his book "The Tipping Point" or "Outliers," I'm not sure which one, both of them are fantastic books. He talks about this idea of 10,000 hours to master anything or to become a master at anything is you have to spend 10,000 hours. If you broke down 10,000 hours into a five-day work week, eight hours a week, that's five years and then you're hitting about that 10,000 hours.

In entrepreneurship, there's that five-year hump. If you make it past the five years, you've got something so I think that anybody listening to this, wherever you're at in the journey, especially if you're more at the beginning stage of the journey, just remember that there's no such thing as overnight success. Overnight success is 5 to 10 years minimum, and I think that we forget that and also remember that everybody starts at different points and under different circumstances and situations.

Where I started my journey and where you started your journey is two different places, so for us to say that there is one singular way of being in a business that creates success, I think that's very limiting. I think a more realistic way to look at this is to say, "You as an individual must find the path for you. You must find what is success to you."

Gary V's life is, from his videos, seems awesome but that's not my path. That's not success for me. Success for me is much different than what he's saying. Now, I like Gary V. I'm not saying, and I listen and I take the lessons and the business lessons and I apply them to my business and to my life but I also have enough wisdom and everybody should have enough wisdom for their own selves to decide for themselves what is success for you. That's freedom preneurship. That's what we're talking about inside the Freedompreneur club is we as a club don't define success for you. You come to the club and say, "This is what success," and then we say, "Great. Let's support you to get that."

Robert Plank: Nice. I like that. Everyone has their own path and I agree with that about a trillion percent. Right now, at your point in life, you have a lot of stuff figured out, you have it together, but was it always that way or did you have a starting point? Did you have like a point where things got so bad something had to change? What's the journey been for you?

Nick Pereira: Oh my goodness. Most of my life has been rough. Not really, I say that. I say that, but I laugh because I'm like, "Not really." Look, I come from a great family. I come from, I'm a very blessed to come from loving parents and a great family and I lived in a safe neighborhood, so many of life's challenges that are presented to certain, to other people, I didn't have that but I have my own challenges and for sure. There's times in the entrepreneurial journey, I dove headfirst. I didn't start part time.

I quit my job and I said, "I'm going to do this without really even having a business," so I did it that way, which caused tremendous amounts of pain and suffering because there was myself and Sarah, my girlfriend of seven years now, she's been with me through the whole journey, we have times where we didn't eat or it was $.99 noodles. I remember the first time we bought a $10 meal. It was a big deal. It was like, "Wow. We're living it up."

Absolutely, everybody has a story. Everybody has struggles and that's another thing that I really want to share with people is that we look at all, whether it's Gary V, Tony Robbins, whoever it is, we look at these successful people and we think, "Oh, wow. That's so nice," but we don't know them personally. I don't know Gary V personally. Look, I shoot videos too. I don't know what his life is actually like. I know what he's telling us his life is like, and I know that I can tell that he obviously is very knowledgeable, has tremendous amounts of material success and has reached certain insights.

I think we can all learn from that, but I also don't know him personally so I make no judgment of whether his life is successful or not. I just simply listen to the information. Same thing for me, listen to the information. Yes, I've had tremendous amounts of struggles and pains and failures of businesses. Most of my businesses haven't been successful and it's only in the last 3 to 4 years and I would even say in the last year and a half that we've really hit a stride that has created a lot of success and that's growing and it's fabulous the way it's growing but it doesn't mean that I don't wake up every morning like everybody else with some little anxiety about this or little worry about that.

Over time, what I'm noticing is that those anxieties, it's a process. Over time, those anxieties, those worries, those doubts are being replaced by that faith, that optimism and that realistic thinking or that, what I call, clarity so I'm not positive, not negative, but just clarity. This is what it is and once we can discover that this is what it is, then we as individuals become much more equipped to navigate through the world.

I think that should be everybody's main focus. My main focus is in building a big business. It's creating my own well-being and becoming better me, a better version of me them. I say "better version" no different than a seed blossoming into a flower. Well, a seed has all the potential of being that flower but it needs to be nurtured. It needs to be put into the good environments. It needs to have the right amount of sunlight and the right amount of water so that's what the Freedompreneur club, that's what we are. We are the right food, the right water, the right nutrients, the right associations to allow whatever is meant to come out of you to blossom.

That can take five years, that could take 10 years, that could take a lifetime. Depending on your belief systems, it could take multiple lifetimes and with that knowledge, there is no destination, there is no success. There is simply growth. Am I expanding or am I contracting? As long as I'm expanding, then things are going well. I hope that answers your question.

Robert Plank: Yeah, it does. It's like all this like really deep stuff. It's almost like I'm talking to the Buddha about enlightenment. With all that and stuff, would you say that what's ... Is there any one thing that's helped you the most? It it a matter of just like the consistent daily action like you're talking about or is it the right mindset or tools or this community? Would you say it's one thing that's helped or is it a collection of small things?

Nick Pereira: Definitely a collection of small things. It's a process, so with ... There has been moments of transformation, so whether that's, I've done many seminars, courses. I've gone to many healers. I've spoke to many different mentors and coaches and so all of them have added into my life. Just like coaches and mentors, just like what you're doing with this show, you're adding into people's lives. I've listened to tons of podcasts and things like this as well and all of it is compounded into a thought process with the moments of transformation but don't strive for those moments of transformation.

Those moments of transformation happen when the timing and the environment are right. We don't know when they're going to happen. You talk about the Buddha. The Buddha didn't know when enlightenment was going to happen for him. It was just, he put in the work. If you know the story of the Buddha, Siddhartha, he put in 11 years of living as an aesthetic studying from spiritual masters, living as a Yogi doing all of these sort of extreme sort of practices to find enlightenment and still couldn't find it and it was only when he sat under the Bodhi tree and he surrendered to the moment and said, "I'm not leaving here until I know the truth," did he then receive his enlightenment.

I say he received it because he himself didn't cultivate it. He put in the work and then it was the right time, the right energies, the right situation where he could then pop. No different than again, I'll use the example of a mango tree, so a mango tree is growing and if you didn't know it was a mango tree, you would just see a tree. In fact, if you took some bark from that mango tree and tried to bite it, you would be like, "Uck, this is nasty. This is bitter," but what you don't see is inside that mango tree is striving. It's putting in the work. It's getting the nutrients from its environment and it doesn't blossom in the winter because it's not the right time but the right time comes along in the spring and all of a sudden, there you go. You have mangoes and you have sweetness and you have beauty and you have all of this.

That was a process, so nothing just happens. Everything is a process and I think that the more that an individual understands that, the more they can be free in their life because they don't put this unrealistic expectations on themselves about, "What's going to happen tomorrow?" or "I got to make something happen today." Don't make anything happen today. Just simply cultivate yourself as such a way where making things happen becomes easy for you.

Robert Plank: I like your way of looking at it, especially because the conversation we've been having as far as like, "Should I be working super hard or just relaxed and let it happen?" I remember when I first got started, I was thinking, "Okay, what's the line graph going to look?" I was thinking, "Is it going to be like shoot straight up, like win the lottery almost or is it going to be like this slow, slow, slow rise," and it seemed like for me, and I think for you and I think a lot of people, it seemed like it was a matter of these milestones.

We had those first couple of tough years but then the light at the end of the tunnel was that it's not always going to be that way. You put in the time there and then the way that you've been kind of relating this to your group and the stuff with the tree and stuff, it's almost like, "Well, most of it is out of your control," and these things will happen to you, but you have to be almost ready to accept it because it's not just like, "Okay. Well, if my business is going to take five years to take off, I'm not just going to wait five years. I'm going to be working my tail off five years so when that opportunity comes along or that joint venture or the stars align or I get the traffic figured out or a good launch, then now I'm prepared for it, I guess." Is that right?

Nick Pereira: Yeah, that's exactly it. Even think about what we're doing right now. If we were born 50 years ago or 100 years ago, the timing for us to do this, we would find different means in different paths, but the timing, you see, the environment has allowed certain new expansions to happen with the rise of the Internet. We now, everybody has their own media channel. Everybody can have a voice. Everybody can share their expression much easier than it was 100 years ago, so that's what I mean by the timing of it is that the world is shifting and right now the world is shifting in such a dramatic way, in such a fast way, that it's almost impossible to predict what it's going to be like in five years, so I don't know what the world is going to be like in five years.

I don't know what the Freedompreneurs club is going to be like in five years, but what I do know is what I'm going to be like. That's all I have control over. What am I going to be like in five years? Well, I know that I'm going to be joyous, happy, peaceful and abundant. Why? Because that's the commitments I've made to myself and that's all I work on is the commitments that I've made to myself and those commitments then have a natural result to it, so if you're thinking, "Oh, man. How much ..." if it's like, "How many hours do I gotta put in," don't count the hours.

If I counted the hours, I probably would may be depressed. I'm not saying I don't work hard. I want to make it very clear to everyone listening. I work hard. I have just found a way to work where it doesn't feel like work because work, if I could just chalk up to what feels like work is when I have to knock something off my task list. Work is a task list that I have to get through. Work is something that we have to get through and that's why it doesn't feel good.

However, if you become more of an expression of a creation where I'm not just getting through the Freedompreneurs club. It's not something that I'm just going to check off my list. "Okay, created the logo. I'm done." No, I'm creating it like an artist would create it like "Oh, how can we do this? Oh, doesn't that look beautiful? Let's make it like this," and you see, there's no timeline for me. There's just simply a creation process and as time goes on, it is evolving and growing and it's becoming more than even what I thought it could be because that's just the natural process of things.

Understanding how things grow, then you can apply that same knowledge to your business and understand how your business is going to grow. In fact, I've got a model that I take everybody through that works with me. It's called the "Invisible, the influence model". It's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I'm looking at it, so it's six steps in this model. The first step is "invisible," so take that as it's an idea in your head. If you're listening to the podcast right now and you're thinking, "I've got a business idea," well, great. You're in the stage of invisible.

Then eventually you're going to launch out. You're going start your Facebook page or website, whatever it is. You're going to launch out. You're going to get a few customers on the go and now you're in the emergent stage, meaning you're merging in the marketplace. In the invisible and emergent stage is you're still thinking a lot about cash flow. You're still probably in the mindset of, "I need more clients. I need more cash flow," which is a natural process.

Most businesses fail within their first year. We know this. Why? Because they don't understand the process. They think, "I've been doing this a year. What's going on?" A year is nothing. A year is like you're still like a little idea in the womb. You're not even a real thing yet, so basically you got to move through the process. You go into emergence and then what we call "chaos" comes next, and chaos in this context is not a negative thing. It's actually quite positive. It's where you begin to go, "Holy smokes. I have more business than I have infrastructure, meaning I can't handle the amount of business that I have," which creates a whole new stress.

By the way, when we hear stats, about 90% of businesses fail within the first 10 years, this is the stage of the process where they normally fail, chaos. The reason they fail or what I think is even worse is they never get past this stage is because it is a different way of thinking to get you to the next steps and processes so entrepreneurship provides a way to think differently. Chaos, you get through chaos by implementing systems and systems stands for "save yourself time, energy, money."

All of a sudden, through creating income, you get to buy back your time through the investment of infrastructure and systems. Then you move into stability or normal operations and when you're hitting this stability and normal operations, then you can scale your systems up, leveraged to abundance and then influence, so your Gary V's, your Tony Robbins, your whoever, whoever you're looking at. These people are in the stage of influence because they're 30 years in the game. They've got systems. They've learned the skills. They've learned the mindsets. They've put themselves in the right environments. They've connected with mentors, teachers and coaches and now, they're sort of enjoying the fruit. They're the mango now, right?

Robert Plank: Right. They planted the tree and it finally grew. Now all these years later, they can use it.

Nick Pereira: That's right. Right, so I like to share that with people so that you understand, first of all, identify where you're at in the process. Am I in invisible? Am I emergence? Am I chaos right now? Am I in stability? Stability, a lot of people in stability actually draw a boredom. They become bored with their business because it no longer challenges them, and this could be a dangerous place because I've seen many business owners that are in stability put themselves back in chaos because it's more exciting for them.

Always remember that a business is not a place to go to fulfill your needs. A business is there to for you to grow to provide value and to provide a life for yourself and for family and maybe causes or whatever it is that you're into. Stability, in that stage, you see a lot of business owners never go beyond that stage simply because they don't recognize that they're still in the growth process. For me personally, I don't know. I don't strive to be at the top of the ladder. I just continue to follow the process of where I'm at today.

Robert Plank: Interesting. With all that, how do you ... We're starting to run short on time but with all that, how do you avoid the 1 foot on the brake kind of thing? You kind mentioned that trap a little bit there, how some people get to the part where everything is kind of calm and running smoothly and they have everything in place and the tendency is with entrepreneurship is to throw that out and start over. How do you avoid the getting complacent and stagnant and not reaching your full potential?

Nick Pereira: I think you only, if you're in the mode of creation, then there's no end to that so therefore there's no breaks. I know what you mean because I've done that. I've put the brakes on myself, "Okay. All right. Too much," and that type of thing is coming from more of a deep-seeded fear that may be going on, the fear of success, the fear of what it means and the fear of change. If you truly move through the process, your life is going to be different. Your life is actually going to be different. Your relationships are going to be different. The interactions you have with people are going to be different. Who you're hanging out with is going to be different. What you're engaged in is going to be different and often we fear that change. If you notice that, "Oh, I'm putting the brakes on," then I would go a little underneath that and ask, "What are you scared of?"

Robert Plank: Interesting. This is a pretty cool system you have here about going from invisible, emergent, chaos, systems and then stability and it sounds like there's there somewhat of a minefield where a lot of people either if they don't have a plan or they don't have any kind of course correction, there's always these little ways to get stuck on something silly, something silly can get a lot of us stuck and waste years and stuff like that. I really like how you've grown this community, like you've said, and you have your blog and your podcast. Can you tell us about what it is that you have set up and your websites and this club and all your cool stuff like that?

Nick Pereira: Yeah, sure. What we've set up, if you go to HangoutWithCoachNick.com, it's a central place where you can connect to everything that I'm involved with there. Also, if you just look up Freedompreneurs club on Facebook and you can ask to be part of our private Facebook group where a lot of our interactions happen. It's a great way to connect with other Freedompreneurs, connect with myself and other like-minded people and other people doing some pretty cool stuff on the planet.

That's a great way to connect with me and inside the Freedompreneurs club, there are different levels so there's a free membership and then there's a paid membership. The free membership, you get access to the Freedompreneurs club Facebook group, you get access to all the trainings and stuff that are available to get you started. Then the paid membership has access to our 52-week e-learning system and this is our curriculum. This is the recipe that we've put together in collaboration with other coaches and trainers that help people become a freedom preneur.

We have applied this system to coaches, to trainers, but as well as brick-and-mortar businesses. Right now currently I'm supporting a mechanic shop, I'm supporting a cleaning supply company, a network marketers, speakers, trainers, a preschool and they're all using the Freedompreneurs system and they're just tailoring the system to their business. What we really teach is the foundations and the principles and the marketing principles that work and then we help you through our support system to gear it and tailor it to your specific business.

Robert Plank: Awesome. That's a bunch of cool stuff and could you state one last time, or one more time, the URLs just to make sure everyone has it.

Nick Pereira: Yeah, absolutely. You go to HangoutWithCoachNick.com and you could check out my hang out show and different things that I've got going on there and on Facebook you can just search Freedompreneurs club and you can ask to be a member and we'll bring you in and you could check out all the things we've got going on right now. Our club has grown. We had, it's a brand-new club as far as the Facebook aspect of it, like we're really bringing it out to people in a bigger way now. Just this week alone, we've had 50 new people join so right now we're exploding.

There's a lot of great momentum and there's a lot of great opportunity to network and to meet other entrepreneurs that are doing again, some really cool stuff. Inside the club, I believe we represent 11 different countries right now, Tokyo, Bhutan, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, places in the UK, US and Canada are all represented with active members, so we're a global club and we truly believe in global community.

Robert Plank: Awesome. It sounds like every entrepreneur, every business owner needs this kind of stuff. It's cool how the way you've explained this today, it all connects the business and the life part. I want to thank you so much Nick for being on the show and sharing all your wisdom with us.

Nick Pereira: Thanks so much, Robert. I so appreciate it.[/showhide]

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139: The Wisdom of Walt Disney: Live a Great Story and Control What You Can Control with Jeff Barnes

The expert on everything Disney, Jeff Barnes from TheWisdomOfWalt.com and author of "The Wisdom of Walt: Leadership Lessons from the Happiest Place on Earth" tells us how to live a great story. He shares how Walt Disney succeeded despite all odds, previous failures and existing competitors to create a superior product and experience.

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: We have Jeff Barnes who is an author, professional keynote speaker, university professor, and leadership and success coach. His book is called The Wisdom of Walt. It's an Amazon number 1 bestseller in multiple categories, including personal success in business. We're going to be talking about a lot of fun, Disney kind of stuff today. How are things, Jeff?

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.[/showhide]

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138: Bring Your Marriage Back to Life with Entrepreneurs Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo

Get back to basics and shorten those challenging times in your marriage! Meet Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo, from OneExtraordinaryMarriage.com -- the podcast they've been running for 6 1/2 years. The three of us discuss a lot of subjects -- not only how they repaired their marriage and others can do the same, but also how they developed this advice into a podcast, a series of books, and a coaching program.

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: On today's podcast we have Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo, the founders who are a leading source for couples on sex, love, and commitment on their number 1 marriage podcast where they have a bunch of bestselling authors and hosts, and they are our bestselling authors and hosts about entrepreneurship, marriage, and authorship. Welcome to the show. How are things, guys?

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.[/showhide]

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137: Intuitive Business Insights with Life Strategy and Business Coach Sasha Laghonh

Do you feel that sometimes you plan too much and don't take enough action? Sasha Laghonh from SashaTalks.com has the solution for you. She shares her secrets to internet traffic, keeping your emotions in check so they help you, and how you can get that tough love alternate perspective.

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: We're here today with Sasha from SashaTalks.com and she's a seasoned MBA professional who specializes in organizational and human behavior which grants her a broad base from which to approach many topics. Hey Sash, welcome to the show.

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.[/showhide]

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136: You Are in the Money Getting Business: Selling Domination with Rodney Hughes

Rodney Hughes, author of the book "Selling Domination: Your Blueprint to Selling More and Generating an Extraordinary Income" tells us how he helps companies all over the world, especially those who don't even know what business they're in! (The money getting business.) He also details the four steps you can take when looking to improve any business' profits in 90 days or less:

1. How you business handles obscurity
2. Missed opportunities
3. What's already working that you can enhance?
4. Where are you wasting time and effort?

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: We're talking about making money and building an online business. Our guest today is Rodney Hughes who is an author, international speaker and a high performance sales trainer who focuses on delivering results through collaborative and creative problem solving. Lots of cool stuff, welcome to the show Rodney.

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.[/showhide]

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133: Social Media Marketing Power, Customer Service and Rebranding with Kyra Reed

Kyra Reed from Made to Order Agency tells us about the power of social media including the story of how she was able to save the Roxy Theater in Los Angeles using internet marketing. Her social system consists of five points:

1. Who are you? (brainding)
2. Who are you talking to? (understand how your customers "feel")
3. What are you saying? (content strategy)
4. How are you selling?
5. What is your growth & maintenance plan? (what platforms)

[showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: We have, today, Kyra Reed. She's the co-founder of MTO Agency and author and business coach and is a nationally recognized industry veteran and a community-focused brand innovator. Sounds like lots of good stuff, so, strap yourselves in.

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.[/showhide]

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