interview

Taryn Larock: How She Went from Model to Creating a Sustainable Fashion Business

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The fashion industry has a lot of bad practices that need to course correct, but where you do even start?

Taryn Larock went from a model to a sustainable fashion business owner. In this discussion, she explains why she made the change and the steps she had to take to make the business happen.

About Taryn:

Taryn Larock is the founder of the sustainable brand Sage Larock, who previously worked as a model until launching the brand in 2015. Taryn Launched the brand specifically to offer women a sustainable & ethical alternative to traditionally made apparel. Taryn previously apprenticed under eco-fashion pioneer Linda Loudermilk in Los Angeles. SAGE LAROCK was recently awarded ‘Best Made in California Brand’ by the Los Angeles Business Journal (PETA Nominated), and has been featured in the Zoe Report, Modern Luxury Magazine & Angeleno Magazine.

Learn more about Taryn and her work at > http://www.sagelarock.com

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Adam G. Force 03:09

Hey, Taryn, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

Taryn Larock 03:13

Good.

Adam G. Force 03:14

Awesome. I, as I mentioned, before, we jumped on here, I’m excited to talk about the fashion industry. There’s just such a big matzah ball out there when it comes to fashion. And the cost of you know, we’ve all heard probably by now fast fashion or having supply chains that are, you know, not fair trade, or there’s children involved, you know, under age workers and things like that. So, so much. And then, of course, the pollution factor, right. So I’m excited to hear more about, you know, your journey of why you started a fashion company and made that decision, and kind of like where you are today and what’s going on. So we’ll dig into that stuff. Maybe you can just give us a little background to kick us off of kind of like, why, why you’re where you’re at now.

Taryn Larock 04:04

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, for years, I worked in the fashion industry in a different way. I did some modeling work in the US and Europe. And so I came out of that and I, I knew I wanted to be able to leverage the knowledge that I had gained from the industry. And I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, but also something that was sustainable. And so at that point, I was looking into different avenues whether I want to do textile design or, or work for a brand and I just, I found it very challenging to to find something that was in alignment with my principles of sustainability, and also from a human rights perspective. And I think what you said is it’s it’s a big matzo ball is the best way to put it because, and it’s getting the industry is getting better, but going back to about 2012 13 when I was I was just working with this as a concept central rock as a concept and a sustainable brand, that, that had that deeply embedded into our brand ethos. There just there was an awful lot out there at that point. So that’s that’s how I kind of got started because I was having difficulty finding a job that was in alignment with my own principles. And it would that I found would be interesting. And could could go in a direction where sustainability and and ethical production would be at the forefront. I just had, well, I’m not finding it. So I should just launch it. So here we are.

Adam G. Force 05:45

And what were some of the major, I guess, as you were figuring this out, and we all go through this discovery phase of figuring things out, you know, you know, what was standing out to you about the industry that you wanted to make sure if I do this, I’m going to do it differently. I’m going to do X, Y, and Z, like what were the I know, there’s a lot of different things about the fashion industry, but what really important to you and stood out, that’s a major issue that we’re tackling here that you want to do differently.

Taryn Larock 06:16

So I there were a couple things that struck me is really important, from the get go. And one of them was using fabrics that are either organic, or upcycled. And then also ethical production. And there’s a lot of greenwashing in the industry. I think specifically now with with the industry, it’s kind of trendy or cool to to be sustainable or have a sustainability initiative embedded into a brand. But I wanted to be transparent and have integrity in that rather than just say, Oh, well, we do one one piece that’s kind of sustainable, or that I can pass off is sustainable. I didn’t want anything to do that. Because having been in the industry in a different way, I saw that. I saw that. Women and now unfortunately, this is this is happening to men, we’ve all been kind of sold a bill of goods where we need to consume different things every season. And that has to be very trend driven. And it’s like we’re all kind of women. And as I said, Now men were locked into the cycle of consumption. And I thought that’s, that’s not really the way it should be. I understand that that drives more profits, but it’s it’s not in alignment with in my opinion of running an ethical brand to to constantly be in this loop of buy and do away with what you had. I think that that’s probably one of the least sustainable things we can do also. So I wanted to really drive a product that we lead with style and quality and wearability season after season and year after year, something that wasn’t going to fall apart in the washing machine, which happens with a lot of swimwear. Unfortunately, after you know you wear it for summers done, it looks trashed. But I’m yeah, I’m proud to say with the materials that we use in the in the manufacturing process that we use, but that isn’t the case. Just to test this, I kept the very first suit that we that we cut and sewed for myself, and I wear the heck out of it. And it’s still it’s still going so I wanted to lead with that. And then also, you know, I I’ve seen sweatshops when I was interviewing garment production here in Los Angeles, and I previously thought they only existed, you know, in mainland China or, or Sub Saharan Africa, but they are they’re underground parking. Lots here in Los Angeles in the financial district I’ve seen so it’s just and they’re quite sad places and a lot of brands use them because it you know, can double or triple your your profit margin. But yeah, I didn’t want anything to do with that. So, you know, just really Those were the key factors that I really wanted to consider in in even coming up with a prototype. And if we couldn’t meet, if we couldn’t meet those standards, I was going to step back and revisit how to do things in a better way. Yeah, I definitely believe that the fashion industry is operating is kind of an old dinosaur crawling around from ethical and sustainable standpoints. And it’s it’s changing, but it needs to change more quickly and catch up with consumer demand and doing things in the right way is my opinion.

Adam G. Force 09:35

Yeah, I mean, you brought up washing and and you brought up you know, a couple of key things that were important to you. And I think there is there’s just you know what it’s like not that greenwashing has come up when when the sustainability movement got traction. And I realized that it’s greenwashing it’s for everything. You know, it’s really just everybody wants to pretend To be something in order to get the reap the benefits, but not actually follow through and act, you know, walk the walk. And we see it so much. So I am… Now, if you look so as you explore this and you figure out like how you’re going to set up your business? Were you talking to like, were you looking at manufacturers overseas or just in the US?

Taryn Larock 10:25

So initially, we were just looking in the US just because I’m launching the brand, it was just myself and one other woman. And we we just really wanted to make sure we had full visibility on on what was going on. We didn’t want someone to say, Oh, yeah, we’re going to make this but we’re we’re going to send pieces over to Xyz factory, and we don’t have visibility on that. And then we’re calling ourselves an ethical and sustainable brand. But yeah, we really wanted to make sure that was the case, and also support the local garment industry here. A lot of it post 2008 went overseas, and there’s just so many talented people here we wanted to support.

Adam G. Force 11:06

Sure. Yeah, I mean, I’m always curious about that, because, you know, we’re not ecommerce on our end, and I have explored those ideas. And I’m looking at things like Ali Baba, and I’m just like, wow, yeah, a million different things, and then travel all over the place and look at these places. And it just got overwhelming to me. I mean, keeping in the states is nice. I mean, in my mind, more importantly, I like what you said is like it’s easier to manage, if it’s in the States, because you can get it and things like that. That’s smart. I guess the most important thing would be getting the quality of the product as in sustainable or whatever materials and all those things. Sometimes that stuff can get really expensive in state, and did you notice big differences at all? Or are not really?

Taryn Larock 11:55

You’re quite right. It definitely is more expensive. I think just because the sustainable market is kind of a niche market. So it’s, it’s definitely gonna be what I’ve seen about double or triple the cost. But on the flip side of that coin is the, it matches the quality with that, too, for what I’ve seen. So I mean, I just think from the perspective of building a better product, it makes sense, because our customers being interested in sustainability, they don’t want to just buy something and throw it away. After after one season. So yeah, it is more expensive, though. And it’s unfortunately unavoidable. We get all our materials from Italy, so it’s even more expensive. But worth it.

Adam G. Force 12:46

Yeah, I mean, listen, listen, that is the differentiating selling point just has to be clear. And you’re right, people will pay for better quality, meaning I don’t want to buy 10 bathing suits, I wanna, I wanna, you know, and my wife and I, like I literally was just buying, we were looking because we bought our first house a while ago. And we’re like buying a lawn mower. And I’m like, I could use the exercise anyway. So we’re paying someone to cut the lawn right now. It’s like, I can do it once in a while too. And as soon as we go to buy anything, I’m like, you know, I could get this like longmore for like 200 bucks, but then I’m gonna end up buying another one a year later. So it’s like, yeah, piece of crap is gonna play out. Same idea with any product, right? Like you always want to buy, it’s more expensive to buy cheap than it is to just get quality right out of the gate. Right. So true. Yeah, that makes a big difference makes a big difference. So I think that’s worthwhile. I think that’s good. And one thing that’s challenging in this marketplaces, and I don’t know, if you’ve seen this is like, Well, everyone will quickly fill out a survey or tell people that they support sustainable products. And that’s what that they’re going to spend more on organic, sustainable, whatever it might be. But it’s odd, because the survey data says, Whoa, look at this, look at these behaviors and attitudes are all in line with this, I’m gonna I’m gonna create this sustainable product, we’re gonna be rich. But then, when push comes to shove, and they get to put money down, and they see a really cool bathing suit from like, h&m for $50 versus another one for 75 at like scotch and soda or something, you know, they’re like, yeah, okay, I’m gonna get the one for 20 bucks. And this is what’s happening. It’s a very interesting disconnect about what they what they want to feel and say and do with what they actually act on.

Taryn Larock 14:35

It’s so true. And and I think it’s, you know, just to give everyone a brief little history lesson, it’s the fashion industry in 2008. When we we had the economic crisis, a lot of a lot of our production was sent offshore and in order to compensate for for and kind of correct consumers not purchasing and looking for discount goods or Not purchasing at all. The market was flooded if everyone remembers back with a lot of fast fashion. Yeah. And so I think, you know, it’s the $5 t shirt or the $20 jeans, and he said, the $15 bathing suit or swim trunks, and it’s just, you know, or five pairs of socks for like 10 bucks. And there’s a cost associated with that. Like, he doesn’t want to buy something in Payless. Everyone does, of course, but at the same time, there is a cost associated with that. And a lot of those costs are you know, we’re we’re destroying waterways by dumping toxic chemicals from carcinogenic dyes into waterways. And guess what those dyes go into your bloodstream via the largest organ, we all have our skin. Yeah, and you know, and that’s, that’s probably a whole nother discussion. There’s a human cost associated, which is there’s an estimated I think it’s 20 million people in modern slavery, which are in the fashion industry, garment production industry. And that’s just below tech and animal agriculture. So the fashion industry isn’t really doing well with with rankings on human rights, labor laws being upheld, because a lot of it is done in in third world economies, whether those regulations are in place, or as I mentioned, like underground kind of secret places in just under our noses, and in other global cities and first world countries. So it’s like, yeah, I want that $15 bikini, but what is it? What is the cost associated with it, and you’re right, it is like, it’s like your lawnmower, you’re just gonna end up buying another one. So it’s kind of like, we all have to be retrained. And unfortunately, the garment industry, like the market isn’t gonna do it. For us, we have to, I think it’s a reprioritization of our values. It’s like, if we look at our parents, closet, or grandparents closets, they had like, four or five really nice suits. You know, my grandmother had like four or five really nice dresses, some suits and then some things to wear to like a wedding or a cocktail party. And she wasn’t she might add a thing or two a year. Same with my grandfather, but it wasn’t this constant consumption of crap. Right? And so it’s, it’s like, what are we buying? And like, we’re throwing it away, it’s going in a landfill, I would say about 80% of the clothing being made is polyester or acrylic, which is plastic. So yeah, and it’s, you know, we’re pumping, I believe we’re pumping about 70 million barrels annually of crude oil to produce virgin polyester. So it’s like, you know, and that contributes to oil spills and fracking. So it’s just what is the cost for that $15. swimsuit. And I think that it’s a lot to ask consumers to sit and break that all down, it’s taken me years to research and I’m a little, I’m obsessed with it. So for me, it’s fun. But it’s it’s a lot to ask as someone who just wanted to go out and get a T shirt. So I think brands need to be remote responsible. And unfortunately, it’s like going in a grocery store. Just because something’s on the shelf doesn’t mean it’s good for you to put in your body. You know, you know, we kind of have to empower ourselves and take that back and be like, No, I don’t want to wear something made by a slave that has a carcinogenic aizome dye in it. It’s just gross. So I’m gonna pay 30 bucks more.

Adam G. Force 18:31

I mean, it’s a tough, you’re right, yeah. Tough shift for people. And I think, you know, the more I learn about human behavior and understanding how environment triggers behavior, it’s like, I struggle. You know, how do I want to say this? So for example, can we really rely on people to make the decisions like that, right? Because they’re in a position where they have all these considerations? And it’s like, Well, sure, I can’t afford this right now. Or it’s in like, they have this intention, where it’s like, it’s an honorable intention. That’s what they want to do. But when push comes to shove, and they have to, they’re scraping by check to check. It’s like, well, I’ve I just can’t afford to do that. And so I think it’s challenging because in capitalism, we have to build businesses. And there’s always gonna be somebody out there cutting the corners to be higher profits, to be higher profits to have higher profits. And that means to do these things that maybe no one else is doing, right. It could be child labor, it could be polluting, could, someone’s always going to be doing that. And we have to rely on the consumer to make the smart choice. When in reality, the way it would work best is if the environment itself didn’t rely on the consumer, just any choice they had the status quo was these these operations were done in a proper way like you’re doing

Taryn Larock 19:58

Yeah, and and You’re so right. I mean, it’s just all things being considered and when the market is offering you, you know, from let’s use h&m as an example. Like they they position themselves as a conscious brand. They’re conscientious of their production. Well, not to knock h&m but yes and no, if you look at the data, so I think that there’s a lot of misinformation out there. And you’re right, it should people should be able to, to make that decision. But what I found even from a consumer standpoint, being a consumer of sustainable fashion, as much as possible, myself, there aren’t that many alternatives out there. And the ones that are, yeah, you have to retain yourself, say, Yeah, I want a sweater. Well, that one’s $90. But it’s organic. And it’s the price I think we need to meet in the middle, like, there needs to be more accessibility for manufacturers and brands to to make things that have a profit margins that are acceptable to do business, and support, support production economies that the consumer can consider accessible. We just make sustainability and ethic you know, ethical fashion, a luxury option. It’s like organic food, like organic food. Now you go into some like dollar stores, there’s organic lettuce, like it has to be accessible.

Adam G. Force 21:22

I know and that that is the biggest challenge, I see a lot of these brands and if someone’s going to tell me that the quality, not only is it organic and sustainable, but the quality of it is going to last me like oh, you can put this in the wash 1000 times and you can wear it you know roughhousing with the kids outside, you know, for three years. And look, it’s still the same high quality shirt or pants I that sells me because I’m buying the quality. So it all of a sudden, like the sustainable part of it is nice, because you’re making a conscious decision. But as far as making sure you’re getting your money’s worth that I think that quality over time factor comes in pretty big.

Taryn Larock 22:04

Yeah, then you’re like sold, I’ll take it there’s a there’s a value add beyond my just feeling good about it. Ladies, I’m actually going to get my money’s worth. It’s like a little return on your investment for your being able to wear it for a few years. She said yeah roughhousing with your kids and your dog, it’s it’s going to pay off. But so I think manufacturers just what you said, Adam, they need to take that into account as well. Because that will be a value add for customers. So for those who are considering a sustainable or an ethical brand, right, like, yeah, embed that in the product, and then it becomes interesting to people. And then also like things that aren’t so trend driven. Because that’s a little trick that the fashion industry is done on us to keep profits, right. I mean, but it’s not necessary. It’s it’s just the way it’s been done. It doesn’t need to be the way it continues to operate. No, no, you’re right. And then that’s where the higher price comes into. We’re not gonna keep selling you a bunch of random things. It’s its own style. Yeah, you’ll be good new year or two

Adam G. Force 23:09

Man, smart people were a lot of the same thing all the time. Remember that?

Taryn Larock 23:13

Yeah, it’s true. It’s more efficient.

Adam G. Force 23:16

It is like a uniform, but where’s my black t shirt and jeans? That’s my outfit.

Taryn Larock 23:21

Uniform dressing. I’m a huge fan

Adam G. Force 23:24

Yeah. So tell me a little bit. What were some of the most actually before even ask that… Does the higher costs necessarily come from the manufacturer or from the materials that need to be accessed?

Taryn Larock 23:41

So it’s, it’s kind of twofold. So I mean, in an ideal world, the savings would be passed on to the customer, right? Like, I’m not going to create some some, you know, arbitrarily high profit margin for myself. To to qualify, the fact that I bought some fabric that was more expensive. With what we use specifically, the matter of fact is even though it shouldn’t be the case, like organic cotton farming, or like hemp farming, because it uses, like, bugs don’t like hemp, they’re just not going to touch it with a 10 foot pole, so you don’t even need insecticides on it. So it’s nice. It’s it’s just yeah, it’s not something they have an appetite for. So you would think that would be less expensive, because it’s less. It’s more efficient to produce, you know, it’s less like ours tending the plant, right. But that’s not the case because it’s still kind of a niche product. They’re producing less of it so it’s more expensive. And with this swimwear fabric we use they’re actually teams of divers. And then recently, we worked with the marine conservation group, Sea Shepherd, and they’re pulling out like plastic poachers, nets. That it’s crazy, like some of them are miles long each. So there’s not a cost associated with getting like besides the crews pulling them up, but it’s like the product is already there and you just there’s a process to like grind it up and turn it into fabric. So, you know it, it is, I think it’s more expensive because less of it is being done. Yeah. And then also, you know, we just live in a world where, like, if something doesn’t have all the chemical compounds and whatnot going into it, it’s, it’s going to take more time potentially to produce because again, less of it is just there’s less demand for it. And so I think once that demand grows, then things will become more accessible. So when more brands, you know, companies get on the bandwagon of utilizing these materials, it’s going to be better for all of us.

Adam G. Force 25:54

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s like going Costco versus the family owned little corner store.

Taryn Larock 26:00

Totally. It get support, but it may be double the price. So yeah,

Adam G. Force 26:05

Yeah. Oh, my God. It’s tough man. But I yeah, I guess yeah, I then I’m, it kind of leads me into my question I wanted to ask before is just what have been some of the challenges for you personally, not just with, you know, I guess just anything in the scope of getting your business off the ground that you’ve had to overcome, you know, during your process, since you started?

Taryn Larock 26:35

Yeah, and it’s, it’s interesting, um, I think some of the some of the things that we roadblocks that we ran up against initially have what I’ve been proudest of having kind of is our brand ID later on, and really what is made, I believe the brand worthwhile and special. Like, when when I was starting out, and trying to source some, some organic or upcycled fabrics, people would be like, Well, I have no idea why you want this, this is not the way it’s done. And I got so much pushback, you know, and and now this is what is the differentiating factor of what we do and why we do it. So there was a lot of that and just, I mean, finding things that are a reasonable price. And, and that it’s still in the fashion industry, a lot of the organic stuff. It’s like, I mean, I you know Whole Foods has like a little clothing section in some of their stores. And it’s nice, it’s like Fairtrade cotton, the manual, like the quality is not always it’s not always like a lot of longevity built into the product. Because it’s, it’s, it’s not supposed to be a luxury product. But it’s like finding things that will last it’s like using some of those organic fabrics. It’s nice that it supports Fairtrade. And it supports, you know, organic farming. But then I think, I think looking at things and being like, well, I can’t use that because I bought those before they fall apart after being washed four times. So shrink. And so it’s like finding something that is going to be functional, stylish, and have some longevity, longevity and then be have quality production. And like when I was trying to put all those pieces together again, I kept getting pushback of why would you want to do that? Why would I want? Why would I want that when I can go to Whole Foods and get you know, the organic underwear for like 15 $18 Why would I want to pay more? Why are you making this like show us where the demand is. And again, I feel like the pushback that we got is what has made us special. So I’m glad we stuck through it. But it’s still it’s still a process that is consistently being worked out. So I don’t want to say that that’s totally in the rear view.

Adam G. Force 29:03

Gotcha. Gotcha. Makes sense. And what what do you I guess, what’s the vision now for you over let’s say in 12 months, like, what does your brand look like?

Taryn Larock 29:19

Um, so we’re continuing to grow our our swimwear line, I mentioned that we recently worked with the marine conservation group, Sea Shepherd. So they had pulled out 40 tons of nets out of a marine reserve. These were poachers nets from Chinese fishing boats that their shark fishing net. So it’s for shark finning. And some of these are worth like 10 grand each. You know, they’re they’re not supposed to be there and they kind of have to sneak in and be very stealth and drop these nets that are pretty much unbreakable. So we’re very proud to be able to work with the different nonprofits to, to kind of highlight what they’re doing and then show how the fashion industry, I think it’s interesting that the fashion industry has a lot of power, because it’s got a lot of visibility. And it’s like, you know, people pay attention to fashion. So one of the things we like to do is, is partner with nonprofits or causes that are tied to the fashion industry or tie them in different ways. Like canopy planet we also work with as a nonprofit, they, they work to protect global forest areas from the fashion industry. And it’s like a lot of people don’t know that millions of trees, old growth trees even are logged every year to produce cheap fabric rayon and viscose. So it’s, I think we’d like to continue to raise awareness about protecting key conservation areas by which can be actually done through fashion consuming, which I think is kind of cool. So we’d like to continue on in that vein. And then also, we’re rolling out a couple new product lines, and one is going to be lingerie for women. And so we’re going to be doing all organic fabrics dyed with botanical, totally non toxic natural dyes, because I saw that there’s a lot of organic, like underwear socks out there. And those are the things that are closest to our lymphatic system where we absorb like a lot of what we put on our body, which is kind of scary that most of it is pretty toxic. So and then there’s a lot of organic stuff out there, but it’s dyed with chemical dyes. That kind of negates the fact it was organic to begin with another greenwashing issue. So we’re gonna do like, totally clean, we’re excited about that. So just, you know, I would really like to grow the brand and offer more to consumers, and more diverse product range with diverse partnerships to just really highlight that sustainable fashion can be functional and stylish.

Adam G. Force 31:55

Hmm, that’s awesome. Yeah. And it’s interesting that you’re partnering with lots of different nonprofits and I guess, what about like, how is it been from an e commerce standpoint in fashion? You know, marketing, like getting set up with an e commerce shop like or, you know, or is your site on Shopify you doing your own thing? I think some of those little details might be helpful for people just to see like what you kind of worked through and where you landed?

Taryn Larock 32:23

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we’re on Shopify, which is, which has definitely helped. I think that’s important for product base, e commerce platforms. And also, we’ve just started exploring doing some, some different partnerships, and some digital marketing. And then we have also partnered with some influencers that are aligned with the brands. So from a marketing perspective, when we started out, it was just kind of organic word of mouth. But now is, as we’ve which is amazing that we got a lot of brand ambassadors that way, just aligning with with some people’s principles and what they were interested in, and they’re being excited to take part in, we were really honored and blessed to have from day one. But now growing, we’ve partnered with a really amazing app, I don’t know if you’re a lot of your listeners or your community of check this out. But it’s called good on you. And it’s a they’re out of Australia. And they’re an app that ranks on pretty much every brand out there in terms of sustainability, ethical production. So it’s a really nice resource for consumers to be able to just have on their phone or check out online, and you’re like, Oh, I really like this brand. What are they up to? Is this sustainable or not? They, they kind of do all the research for you. And then tell you why it is good or not based upon their rather thorough rating system. So we’ve partnered with them to to promote our brand, digitally as well. So So yeah, we’re just exploring a few different options. And we’re looking into getting into some I know it’s a funny time for a lot of businesses right now. But we’re looking to expand it to Australia, southern hemisphere, but more as well.

Adam G. Force 34:18

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Very cool. Well, listen, I want to make sure you get a chance to give a shout out. So anybody interested in checking out your shop and what you offer and all that good stuff, the products? Where do they go?

Taryn Larock 34:33

Totally. So online, check us out at Sage la rock dot com and then feel free to message us on Instagram. If you have any questions. And it’s Sage underscore laroc. And, and and yeah, we’re happy to answer any questions about sustainability. We love to chat about that. So yeah. And look forward to connecting with people.

Adam G. Force 34:54

Cool. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. Sharing all your insights and doing What you do appreciate it. Thank you Adam. Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Wei Houng: Creating The Right Money Mindset

Listen to our exclusive interview with Wei Houng:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

What if your money mindset is limiting your financial results as an entrepreneur? What can you do to change that? We connect with an expert on that topic, Wei Houng, who is the founder of the 6 Figure Academy and host of the podcast, Money Lab.

About Wei:

Founding Member and 6 Figure Breakthrough Coach, Wei Houng, has made it his passion, purpose, and goal to help people eliminate anxiety around money to achieve financial success and live a 6 Figure Lifestyle.

And it wasn’t because he was always a 6 Figure success.

Despite having his first 6 Figure business at the age of 22, he struggled for years to consistently make 6 Figures AND keep it. When he finally figured it out (along with going broke several times), he vowed to make it his mission to help others avoid as many of the pitfalls as possible to 6 Figure success.

And over the last decade and a half, his desire to help others achieve financial enlightenment has evolved into a symbiotic adventure for both him and his clients. He has worked with celebrities, industry thought leaders, and countless entrepreneurs to re-define the role that money plays in their lives. The results have been life changing.

Success Starts From Within, is his personal mantra. It came as an “ah-ha” moment while working with one of his own mentors. The “ah-ha” was that most of his failures were due to him looking outwards for success instead of within. Soon after, he discovered that to help his clients achieve the results THEY were looking for in money, it was more than just about helping them solely in the area of financial success.

“It is about creating success in ALL areas of life to reach your financial goals. Every one of these areas have an impact on each other: finance, health & fitness, mental & emotional, and spiritual.”

The 6 Figure Academy is literally a physical manifestation of Wei’s life experiences. Its philosophies guide all the life coaches and business coaches in the company. By coaching and guiding individuals to reach a high level of clarity in their lives, all the coaches at the The 6 Figure Academy live by the mantra to educate, empower, and inspire others to what their next steps should be, and how to make it happen.

With a background in Computer Science & Engineering and a cohesive minor in Business Management from UCLA, Wei has infused the rapid problem-solving engineering approach in a holistic way to the strategies at The 6 Figure Academy. The holistic side comes from him being a Certified Life Coach, Master Practitioner and Trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Master Practitioner of Hypnotherapy, and Master Practitioner of Mental and Emotional Release® Techniques. He is also an ordained minister in spirituality.

Learn more about Wei Houng and his work at > 6 figureacademy.com

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Wei Houng 02:38

I’m good. I’m good. Adam, thanks for having me on looking forward to it.

Adam G. Force 02:41

Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited because I always like to talk about money, and especially the mindset around it. So yeah, listen, for anybody that doesn’t know you know, my story a little bit Wei and I connected back in January, when we were able to travel out in California at a summit that we were at together. And He is an expert, he did a great talk on money mindset. So Wei maybe you can jump in and tell us just a little bit about how you got involved in this topic and why it’s so important to you.

03:14

Yeah, that’s a great question, Adam. I didn’t actually choose this niche to be in my, my audience actually chose it. Okay, for me, which was always the best way to do it, I guess. Because that way it takes the kind of the guesswork out of like, what should I do? What’s my purpose? What am I here? How am I going to help my audience, right. And one of the things that came up with the work that I do prior to be too special, you know, to me specializing in, you know, the this money mindset piece was, you know, I was always working on people’s potential and working on helping them achieve the lifestyle that they want. And because of the capitalistic world that we live in, inevitably, we were we would always work around something around money, you know, there’s some kind of a blog around money or challenge around money. And mostly it showed up as anxiety and stress and worry around money. And for me because of my own journey around that. I mean, it I just basically said, You know what, let me show you what I did. Let me show you what my teachers teach me or taught me. And over the years, I developed a systematic approach because of my engineering background, from college, to reengineer, bad money stories to the deep core reasons why we create the challenges anxiety and stress that we have around money. And so one day, a few of my clients said, You know what, as they were giving me their testimonials and reviews, they said, you know, you changed my life, there’s a whole whole a whole set of things that you were able to do but one of the most important things one of the most significant things was to was that you helped me eliminate anxiety and stress I had around money which opened up the doors to all that was possible. me as an entrepreneur to make my impact on this planet. And I said, Oh, that’s interesting and not even see it. It took my coach to tell me like, hey, by the way, do you see a trend here? And I said, No. It says, they are talking about your ability to help them to remove their attachment or improve their relationship or limit their anxiety and stress and work around money. I said, Oh, okay. Well, maybe I’ll do that. And ever since then, I haven’t looked back because I realized it was they were right. It was like the keys to the kingdom, that if I help an entrepreneur who is really focused and wanting to make an impact on this planet, and wanting to make a difference, the last thing we want to do is to occupy our days and times, constantly worrying and stressing about money. Once we get that out of the way, what can you do then?

Adam G. Force 05:54

Yeah, I mean, so that that’s, that is a major force of anxiety and doubt. I mean, what’s the scenario, right? You’re, you’re working a job, but you want to become an entrepreneur, you start a business. But now you know, you’re not making enough money. You got got to put food on the table, you got a mortgage, you got these things going on. in there, of course, is anxiety. So there’s some of it is like, so how much do we attribute Wei to… well, some of this is just like, do you have a good product and any business acumen whatsoever? And some of it is going to be business mindset? Or does business mindset trump wall? I mean, money mindset trump all

Wei Houng 06:36

right, money business mindset could kind of go hand in hand. So they’re both are correct. I would say because we live in an era where you can make money literally doing anything. And there’s a part in one of my courses where I talk about shifting the mindset of your internal narrative or rhetoric that your niche won’t work or your product isn’t good enough. And I list out all these ridiculous products out there and are making millions in the world today. Did you know for example, that there is a a plastic wishbone company, that all they’re doing is making these plastic wishbone you know, the wishbones that we did, and we pull it apart and make a wish? Yeah, there’s literally boxes of it. You can buy with like hundreds of wishbones in it that you can just open up and start making wishes on your own. And it’s a multimillion dollar company selling plastic wishbones. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 07:33

So not only are they selling some Bs, but they’re polluting the world with it too.

Wei Houng 07:41

I don’t think they’re eco friendly plastic wishbones. Right. So that’s one of the things that, you know, kind of shift the perspective and again, it becomes a mindset type of a hack, it’s a way so if you have this intention, and in this desire to make a difference with your idea with your product with your service, there is always a way for you to monetize what’s keeping, you know, entrepreneurs with their purpose, or as you like to call social entrepreneurs, from becoming successful is not that their product or service isn’t good enough. I’ve seen enough of that over the last couple of decades of doing this work, that it’s more about the what your mindset is, what your relationship with money is that will allow you to think of the different avenues and channels of monetization, that can happen for your product or service. And also, it lends to that ability for you to truly own the value of what it is that you provide for your audience. So I absolutely think it’s completely a mindset. I mean, it’s the full embodiment of owning that piece. And it’s, it’s it’s almost less about the strategy or I mean, obviously, if you had terrible copying and terrible marketing strategies, and you terrible packaging and stuff like that, then yeah, that might contribute to that. But what then led to you making those decisions to have terrible copy, to have terrible packaging?

Adam G. Force 09:09

Agreed. I was just gonna say, if you have a poor money mindset, then you won’t invest in good copy.

Wei Houng 09:15

Right? Exactly. Or you will unconsciously make decisions that will maintain and validate a bad money mindset.

Adam G. Force 09:26

Yes, I love that. So I’m gonna even write it down. So you unconsciously, this is so important, anybody this thing that because we all do this, and I’m gonna have Wei explain why this happens in a second. But we unconsciously make decisions to undermine what our success could be because of what we’re telling ourselves all the time. Is that do I have that right?

Wei Houng 09:49

Exactly. That’s exactly right.

Adam G. Force 09:51

Yes. It’s like you’re making yourself fit the mold. So if you’re constantly in your mind, like saying things about yourself or How hard it is to make money or that it’s like it’s it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. And then that’s exactly what you’re going to start creating as your reality. Right?

Wei Houng 10:10

Exactly. That’s exactly right. I mean, prior to me picking this niche, what I specialize in was working with the most powerful part of the human consciousness, which is the unconscious of the consciousness. So many of us focus on the conscious mind, because that’s what we’re aware of. We’re conscious of it. Yeah. However, most of our emotions, our decision making process, everything that runs and governs our entire existence is powered by the unconscious mind, in other words, is done autonomously. Yeah, which includes a lot of the programming and the stories around money that we grew up with. And what happens is, the unconscious mind spends its entire lifetime of you, looking for events and circumstances and truths, so to speak, to validate the existence, or the purpose of keeping those stories alive, because we use those stories to survive when we were younger. But then when even if we outgrow it, we forget to expire those stories. And we keep looking for ways or doing things, to validate its existence to validate as a truth and maintain it as a truth even though they may not be serving you anymore as a appropriate truth.

Adam G. Force 11:25

Yeah. So you’re validating a truth that does not serve you and, and I mean, you know, I’ve noticed this too, and I’ve read a few books with guys like t harv, eker, and things like that. And it’s like, he’ll tell you, like, don’t say bad things about other people who make money. Because even if you’re saying bad things about other people, just the fact that you’re saying it, you’re kind of just programming that into your own mind. Like, it doesn’t matter if it’s about someone else or not, it’s still gonna affect you, it’s like you programming yourself with the same thing. Right?

Wei Houng 11:53

Right. And let’s go even deeper with that and see what t harv. eker is talking about is how to condition yourself out of that, what I what I deal with is, well, how did you know how to use that to begin with? Yeah, because what you’re trying to kind of re hearse yourself out of by doing the affirmations is a deeper programming of learning that you had at a very, very young age, and a much quicker ways to get to well, how did you eat? How do you even know to vilify rich people? How do you even know to make it a bad thing, because that wasn’t something that you were born with. It was something that was trained into you to nurture it was nurtured into you, by a teacher, such as a parent, such as a relatives such as society, such as culture, yeah. And until we get to that route, we can rehearse and sometimes this is what’s so frustrating a lot of people because I believe in t harv, eker. stuff, the millionaire mindset, what people don’t realize is that if you don’t get to the root cause, you may get a little frustrated as to why things are taking so long to work. But if you want it to work faster with those affirmations, you want to get to the root cause you want to get to what, where you learn that to begin with, unpack it there, deconstruct it, let it go. run some forgiveness around it. Then when you run the affirmations, you’ll be running it on an empty canvas. You’re not trying to paint over something that’s already there.

Adam G. Force 13:22

Yeah, I love that you made me Yeah. So it’s, it’s much nicer when you put a tattoo on a blank piece of skin, not when you’re trying to do a cover up.

Wei Houng 13:30

That’s exactly right. Because you have a tattoo, so you get it right. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 13:36

made me think of that. It’s very powerful, very powerful. Now, I’m, I am someone who read the books, and I’ve done affirmations. But for me, I mean, honestly, I get on to a kick for a little bit, but then you like fade back into old habits. And you’re like, oh, why did I stop doing that? And it’s like, you do it and it feels good for a little bit. And as soon as you feel any, like, goodness from it, you’re like, all of a sudden, it’s like you got somewhere with it. And now you just fade back into old habits. Do you see that a lot with people?

Wei Houng 14:09

Yeah. And that’s a function of our culture, educating us or teaching us that the way to success is willpower and your ability to will yourself to success and that is such an arduous process I found over the years because I went through it myself as well. You know, I always talk about look at the salmon and they swim upstream. But we forget that salmon only do that right before they die. They don’t do it all their life. Most of the time they’re swimming with the current they’re not going against it. They’re going against it just so they can reproduce and then they die.

Adam G. Force 14:41

Yeah, it’s true

Wei Houng 14:42

And so what what I you know, through my my journey of understanding why is this so hard, I realized something is that we’ve been trained to use the part of our mind to achieve results. That is the least powerful out of the two aspects there. There are essentially two complete ponents of our mind, there’s the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. And there have been clinical trials done to test the power or the processing capability of each component, the conscious mind processes information, and they say about 7 million bits per second, which sounds like a lot, because that’s 7 million bits. As you’re scanning around looking at the room seeing what’s going on, what we don’t realize is the unconscious mind processes at 70 million bits per second, which is 10 times more powerful, which is why the unconscious mind is capable of continuously running our bodies, our endocrine system, our sweat glands, our ability to breathe, and blink and beat are heart that’s all governed by the unconscious mind because it has the processing power to do that. What we are doing is we’re not allowing the unkind word basically over tasking our conscious mind, we’re willing it to get to a certain point, and then we get burned out. And then we start to slip back into what we let the unconscious mind take over, because it’s more powerful. But the unconscious mind is still running those old programs. And that’s why we will ourselves to somebody Yes. And also, why is this happening again, is because the unconscious mind has yet to buy in to that new teaching that new learning because it’s still trying to run that old operating system, those old bad money stories of how money supposed to be.

Adam G. Force 16:17

Yeah, so tell me, I mean, and that’s, I think everybody right, so like, we all have certain blueprints that are, you know, created as we grow up. And as we get older, some people start to recognize them and others don’t, you know, like others just continue to keep on keepin on. And, you know, as as if you become an entrepreneur, there’s gonna be a point where you’re, you are trying to figure out well, how do I, you know, mature as an entrepreneur, and how do I take myself to that next step? And I think it always finds its way back to a mindset. Because it’s like you said, you have an operating system that’s kind of outdated. It’s kind of served its purpose, but it’s like you need to, you need to download the latest updates.

Wei Houng 17:02

Exactly.

Adam G. Force 17:04

Right? So I just want to ask, though, but tell me a little bit about because you got into that blueprint conversation, the root causes? I mean, how does someone start acknowledging and figuring out what those are? I know, you obviously have supported a lot of people to do this. Maybe you could take me through just a high level of what that looks like.

Wei Houng 17:24

Yeah, absolutely. Great question. Because, you know, here’s the thing. Why I love working with entrepreneurs is because, you know, one of the things as an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs who have made it will figure out that in order for your business to grow as an entrepreneur, you have to grow. And this is why I love about working with truly dedicated entrepreneurs, because they know that in order for them to grow their business, to scale their business, to take their business to the next level, they have to invest not just in their business, that the highly invest in themselves as well into their own personal growth, because their business, their passion, is going to be an extension of themselves. And so one of the ways to uncover that is to be constantly in the inquiry of, to understanding yourself to Know thyself, as a Greek philosophers would often often say, since the beginning of Greek philosophy times, they would talk about Know thyself. And the reason is, because every human being that I found in the work that I’ve, that I’ve been doing thus far, it has a unique success, and money blueprint, no to humans, will make money the exact same way. Because the way you make money and create money flow, I would often say you have your own unique frequency of money flow. And to understand how to get to the root cause of bad you need to pull the veil back of what you came into this world with, as your unique what I like to call unique money vehicle. What are the behavior patterns that are naturally authentic to you? What are the things that drive you? What are the things that affect your communication style on how you learn and how you communicate with others? What is your alchemy of refinement, right, because if you buy into someone who has a high refinement, and you’re not designed that way, you’re more earthy, more organic, than trying to get those fancy toys and the fancy materialistic gains is not going to drive you however, there are those who can be motivated and driven that way. It’s different for every human being. And that’s why we use this patented human assessment technology that we have to help kind of disconnect people from the matrix so they can finally see themselves get the operating manual for themselves, to understand what it’s going to take to create the unique flow of success and money and prosperity and purpose in their lives. And if they don’t connect to that core part of them that came that they came into the world with. It’s always going to be a struggle because you’re trying to be like somebody else or you’re trying to make money like somebody else. But the thing is, everybody makes money. differently. And they may seem similar, but there’s very unique drivers in place that will distinguish one person from another even though they’re doing this employing the same strategies and tactics.

Adam G. Force 20:13

Yeah, I think that’s interesting, because they’re, it’s very common. And we see this a lot that entrepreneurs look to other companies that are doing well and want to copy them. Obviously, there’s a number of reasons why that’s not the best idea, because you don’t know really what the success is behind what they’re doing. And also, like you said, there’s, it’s like a certain fit for certain people. Right. And so it may not work the same for you. And there’s so many other factors as well. But I, I agree, I mean, that just, I see that happen a lot. And I’ve been down that road where you see and aspire to certain things. And you realize, wait a minute, why is that? So working so well for them? But but not me?

20:52

Right? Exactly. Exactly. And a lot of entrepreneurs, especially if they’re investing heavily in their business, will come to a certain point where they say, wait a minute, I think I need to and and this is part of the growth, you know, you, you realize, wait a minute, that my greatest investment and where I should invest most of my time, energy and even money is on myself. Yeah, that is what’s going to grow your business faster than anything else. That is what’s going to make your business more sustainable. And that is what’s going to help you make the greatest unique impact that is in alignment with your passion in alignment with your purpose more than anything else. Because if you just do a paint by numbers, ABC XYZ strategy that someone else did that worked for them. Yeah, what they’re not going to realize is Remember, we talked about most of its unconscious, so what most of what made it work for them worked on an unconscious level. And unless they invested heavily to elicit that from their unconscious mind, you’re only going to get a part of the equation. And the other part requires you to figure out how does that then fit with my unique model with the stories that run underneath? That’s things that are driving me on an unconscious level, both emotionally energetically and mentally. Across the board. Yeah, that’s what’s going to make the difference. That’s why I always tell people yeah, great model, the model, the strategy, model, the tactic, and then when you get a basic fundamental idea of how it works, start to lose your unique essence all over it, because all you got was the sticks and bricks in that moment. Now it’s time to make it yours. And when you do that, that’s when you make a difference in terms of utilizing what anybody else teaches you to take it to the next level.

Adam G. Force 22:33

Yeah, I love that. And that, and that is you get a model. But it’s like any sales funnel or tool or anything. What matters is like what you put in it, right? Like the message is the content and how you use it and stuff like that. So it’s just like, right, you know, it’s like having a car, we can all drive the car very differently. Now. You know, someone’s a wild man’s and then there’s a lady that goes 10 miles an hour.

Wei Houng 22:56

Yeah, totally. My cousin and I, both years ago, bought a Ducati, the same Ducati motorcycle each. And we were the same model, just different color. And then of course, I understood like, you know, these handmade Italian bikes, you’ve got to really drive them because they’re meant to drive hard and drive on a track. And so I did my cousin other hand, he kind of drove it very, like a civilian would drive it. Right. Right. One day, we decided to switch bikes, just to kind of see if there was a difference. And he goes, why is your bike so much faster? And I said, Why is your bike so sluggish? And I realized it was how he was driving it, versus how I was driving my motorcycle. And it created a created this custom experience that was uniquely my signature. And that’s I think what a lot of people are missing when you’re learning something new from you, or from me or from anybody else, is that at some point, you’re going to have to allow the tone, the frequency, the unconscious, unique, beautiful configuration of programs and stories that exist within you to then kind of like imprint it on to the sticks and bricks of what you’ve learned from somebody else.

Adam G. Force 24:06

Right. Right. Yeah, that’s a great little analogy. I liked I should use that a lot. It’s a good one. Yeah, so So tell me I guess what? I’m curious. Like, if someone works with you, what do they expect?

Wei Houng 24:29

It’s it’s pretty straightforward. Over the years, I’ve refined the process. So it’s very, you didn’t used to be that clear, used to be like, just show up and we’ll talk about things and have a breakthrough.

Adam G. Force 24:39

We all start their Wei. So anybody listening, your first iteration of anything, it should and will most likely not be ideal, but it just gets it gets to where Wei is now with starting there first.

Wei Houng 24:53

Right? Well, one of the first things we do is we I make sure every every student every client gets an offer. portunity to finally see themselves for what they are not who we use the word what. So that we could distinguish between what was nurtured into you that may or may not be working for you, versus what you are uniquely designed for. So we utilize our patented human assessment technology. And we basically give them a, an operating manual for themselves so they can see how they authentically are and what feeds them, what helps them thrive in this lifetime. From there we go deeper into really understanding what each of those components are, because it’s, it’s like a whole new language. If you met, if you remember from the movie matrix, when Neil was first disconnected, there was a, there was a little bit of like, what the heck is going on? Right? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. And so we take it step by step, then from there, we go into in the more one on one more intimate type of coaching, we then dive into what we like to call a breakthrough session, which is, I like to call it we take a sledgehammer to all the old programs inside you that no longer serve you get that out of the way, clear the debris, clear the floss and clear the roadway. So that when we take the speed limiter off your vehicle of success, you can go as fast as you want without running into something on the road, or worse yet and running into a wall. Right? Yeah. And then as soon as that’s done, then we then we go through the support of making sure if you’ve never driven 200 miles an hour before, and you’ve only driven by 80 miles per hour, well, there’s a little bit of learning that needs to happen is how do I drive at 200 miles an hour without killing myself? Yeah, and so we would go into the, you know, the ongoing coaching that way. And plus, as we continue to help you understand the intimate details of how to use your operating manual itself, to help you, you know, create success in what it is that you’re trying to do in this lifetime. And so that’s, that’s, that’s the core, you know, steps of the process so that, you know, that we’ve kind of whittled down kind of whittled down over the years as one of the most effective ways to get results. You know, you’re you’re increasing your money flow and optimizing a mindset, but more importantly, what’s happened, what’s, what’s that underlying secret mission is to unlock your unique code of happiness and success in this lifetime. Life Mastery.

Adam G. Force 27:24

Yeah, I mean, I love that. And I think that it’s, it’s, it is such an important part, as we’ve been talking about. So, you know, as you guys listen to two ways, you know, talking about I mean, this is, this is the kind of thing that I’ve been fussing around with for a long time. And I see over and over going, you know, into these like summits we were at in January, or you know, Caitlin’s mastermind program and stuff and right. Everybody’s, this is just something every entrepreneur goes through, because to your point, it’s just how we are historically programmed, we’re not really unless you grow up in an entrepreneurial family, and just like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you grew up in the family with the Rich Dad, you’re just not programmed this way. And it’s gonna if you want to live your life a certain way, you’re going to have to figure out how to get oriented to where you are now and then figure out how to make the adjustments, right.

Wei Houng 28:17

Yeah, and it’s such an irony, because America was essentially built on entrepreneurship. Yeah, you know, and for some reason, it’s never taught to us really, as children growing up that that would be the way to as a as an adult, you know, as an option or as a venue to create a life for yourself. Now, for a long time, my parents really didn’t understand why I wouldn’t go work for somebody else. Yeah, I know. Yeah. That’s, and if we think about what all the pioneers of, of our country is in us anyway, because I’m sure your podcast reaches people all over the world. But if you think about it, everybody started off. I mean, all the pioneers were had their own business. Nobody, Wednesday, I’m going to go work for you. Right, we brought on help. But for the most part, every human being trying to make their way in the world chose entrepreneurship as a default, because what else were you gonna do?

Adam G. Force 29:15

Yeah, pretty much. And it’s true. And when you said that, we’re not taught that it you know, it made me think about Sir Ken Robinson, who recently passed away it was a big speaker on education, and he’s got the number one TED talk about how schools kill creativity. And you’re right, like he gets very clear on the fact of the matter is, schools were created during a certain time where we needed workers for industry and that is what school is based on. You know,

Wei Houng 29:42

It’s the Rockefellers

Adam G. Force 29:46

The Rockefellers, man. Yeah, I mean, it’s time for change. I mean, are there things like social entrepreneurship classes and entrepreneurial things? Yes, of course, like you can do those things and 90 and 90% of the time you just have professors who’ve never, ever done business before in their life trying to teach you something of a book.

Wei Houng 30:03

Right? Exactly. Theoretical entrepreneurship, right?

Adam G. Force 30:05

Yeah, great. But, you know, even guys like James Wedmore talk about how there’s a total 180 flip from the employee mindset to the entrepreneur mindset. And, you know, I, we had our conversation you and I, for your show. And, you know, we talked about my own issues, and we all go through this guy’s so as you’re listening to this, this is such an, I wanna, I just want everyone to take it very seriously. Because we get so excited right way about, you know, running the business, building the business, seeing it come to life, which gets into very tactical thinking, and like, I got to just build all this stuff. And, you know, like, we we will say, I’ll invest in programs about like myself development and things like that, when I’m successful. And I always look at someone saying, tisk, tisk, tisk, you got the horse? You got the cart before the horse, you know what I mean? Exactly.

Wei Houng 30:58

Yeah. Because the reality is right now, with social media, the way it is, you can literally Google some of the most amazing business tactics and strategies, and piece together everything you need to create a six figure or even seven figure business, what you won’t find in that journey, in a piecemeal format is a way to effectively and consistently get get you to grow on a personal level, which is what your business needs more than anything else, right to create sustainable, long term success and the ability to put your purpose out there and help as many people as possible. That’s it,

Adam G. Force 31:38

man, that’s 100% it, you get the right mindset, you tell the right stories, you’re off to a pretty good start.

Wei Houng 31:45

Yeah, yeah. And though it may not immediately give you that instant gratification, I think that’s the big thing is people are looking for that instant gratification. But that’s where we create the roller coaster effect of results. You know, I think we have to let make sure people understand that when you’re investing in yourself, you’ve got years and layers of stuff to kind of suss through, to reshape and just kind of like get out of the way. And so it may not be kind of an immediate thing. But in the long run, it’s an exponential growth opportunity that you’ll have by investing in yourself first, or maybe concurrently with everything else that you’re doing. Agreed.

Adam G. Force 32:23

I mean, well, that’s that the instant gratification is a factor to consider. Because people get so jacked up on Well, I had to pay the bills next month. And I get that that is like, I just hope people don’t quit their jobs before they are successful with a revenue channel in their business.

Wei Houng 32:40

Exactly. I mean, unless you’ve invested, I mean, we’ve had we’ve had that happen, but they but these are students who have really kind of committed themselves to understanding what it means to shift their but their money stories in a way where just simply allows money to flow in without attachment to how it comes in. And we see a lot of that happening. And they are making able to make that leap because they did that deep internal work around their bad monasteries, reengineering, eliminating the stress and worry so that money has an easier time just to come in. You know, most human beings when they struggle with money flow, it’s not the economy. It’s not politics, it’s not media, it’s literally themselves. They’re literally putting a block and dictating how money should come in. So that actually keeps money from wanting to come in, because money doesn’t care how it comes into your life. It just wants to come in. Yeah. But if we had these mental blocks around it, we’re not gonna let it in.

Adam G. Force 33:35

I still got mental blocks, I got to work out.

Wei Houng 33:38

We all do. I mean, well, as long as you were raised in a capitalistic world, you’re gonna have layers of blocks. Every level of growth, financial growth, but it’s so worth it when you finally get those blocks out of the way. Because when you do it, right, they don’t come back. And then you don’t have this roller coaster effect. And you can enjoy continuous growth every single time you do.

Adam G. Force 34:00

Right, exactly. It’s true. And it’s just and and the other thing and then we’ll wrap up here. It’s like, everything takes time. Like we have to stop thinking and even Gary Vee is out there saying it now he’s like, give it 1011 years and you might have a nice little business. He’s like, stop saying, I’m gonna be a millionaire before I’m 30. And all this other bullcrap. You know, it’s like, everybody wants it right away and breaking down your money mindset and really getting into more of an abundance mindset with money. It’s gonna take time, building a business, trying new ideas, different revenue channels, it all takes time. Like, you know, months go by when you’re testing these things out and doing all this work. And so if people would just give themselves a break, and realize, like, if you think it’s going to take a year, it’s probably going to take two years. I mean, just right, but like, like, I love Alan Watts, and one of my favorite quotes and I’m gonna just abbreviate this, but he talks about how The point of a song is not to get to the end, it’s to dance during the song. This is the dance. So enjoy the journey, right?

Wei Houng 35:07

Exactly. Enjoy the journey, enjoy the dance and just recognize the fact that so what if it takes one or two or three years if you’re doing the work that we’re talking about? that literally translates to 20 to 30? Maybe even a lifetime of struggle? eliminated in just what a handful of years?

Adam G. Force 35:24

Exactly

Wei Houng 35:26

It’s the perspective that needs to be put in place there. So that way, you know, people don’t really think oh, it’s taking so long. It’s like, really, you just, I have one client, he’s a teenager kid that his mom said I need to work. And he is constantly in a rush because he’s His eyes are open now. He’s been disconnected from the matrix. And he’s getting frustrated five, six months in I said, Dude, you just you just shaved 20 years of guessing and seeking out of your life and you’re only 18 have a little patience with yourself

Adam G. Force 36:01

that’s a man, you see people do it all the time. Like oh, man, just it’s I get it. I do get where they’re coming from, but right.

Wei Houng 36:08

And they’re not dancing, and they’re not realize they’re in the song. The dance is there. I mean, they can dance now. Right? They can enjoy it now. But they’re so hell bent on this results driven society without realizing the results lie within every step of the way.

Adam G. Force 36:22

That’s it, man. You’re right. All right Wei, listen, how do people connect with you? What if they want to work with you and and take that next step in their own life? What do they do?

Wei Houng 36:32

Yeah, there’s a because of the depth of what we do, I always encourage people to there’s so much free content out there, like with my podcasts, or with the YouTube channel with hundreds of videos on there. But one of the best ways to go to the six figure academy.com and or you can go to go dot the six figure academy.com. And there’s an E book that talks about from money anxiety to six figure mastery. And when you go in there, it starts to introduce you into the world as a little e course that comes up, it’s all free to kind of introduce you to how profound this work can be. Because it’s not for everybody. And I’m not for everybody. Because I can get a little intense because I want to help people get results without with a minimal amount of time. And so I think one of the best ways to engage in the free resources and contents out there, there’s a ton of it. I think I even have a free masterclass that gets introduced as soon as you get the E book. So there’s so many different ways. I think that’s one of the best ways to kind of understand what it is that we do to help people not only increase your money flow, but completely change the paradigm of existence of happiness and success and create sustainable lifetime success.

Adam G. Force 37:40

Yeah, sounds amazing. So everybody listening, it’s the and then the number six, figure academy.com. So the six figure academy.com. And you can grab all kinds of good stuff in here. Get Wei’s masterclass is free download stuff like that, just to take those first steps, get acclimated, learn a little bit more about what was doing. And you could basically take it from there right away.

Wei Houng 38:06

Yep, absolutely. There’s so many different ways and all roads lead to me. And, you know, I’m not, I don’t not pay attention to emails and private messages or direct messages. So if you want to just reach out, I’m there I’m really easy to find you just do a google on me. I’m everywhere.

Adam G. Force 38:25

Awesome. Listen, I appreciate your time today and just sharing your insights and your stories. So we will stay connected man have a great rest of your day.

Wei Houng 38:34

Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate you letting me kind of help you, you know with your purpose and your audience. Really good stuff that you’re doing here. Really appreciate it. Thanks. Appreciate it, man. Take care.

Adam G. Force 38:45

Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast. Visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Lisa McLeod: How to Start Selling with Noble Purpose to Drive More Revenue

Listen to our exclusive interview with Lisa:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Why are so many big companies now jumping on the “good business” bandwagon? Because that’s what the market wants! But how do you do it? We spoke with an expert, Lisa McLeod about her work helping big companies make the transition and why it’s so important to their sustainable success.

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Lisa McLeod is the global expert on purpose-driven business and the bestselling author of Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. Lisa has spent two decades helping leaders increase competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. Her work debunks the myth that money is the primary motivation for most employees. She developed the Noble Purpose philosophy after her research revealed, salespeople who sell with Noble Purpose, who truly want to make a difference to their customers, outsell salespeople who focus on their own targets and quotas Lisa is a former Procter & Gamble Sales Leader who founded her own firm, McLeod & More, Inc. in 2001. She helps leaders at organizations like Cisco, Roche, Volvo, and Dave & Busters drive exponential revenue growth. Lisa has keynoted in 25 countries and authored over 2,000 articles. She has made appearances on the Today show and the NBC Nightly News, and her firm’s work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR.

Learn more about Lisa and her work at > https://www.mcleodandmore.com

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host, Adam force co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and life to go big, visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. All right, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the show, I hope that you’re doing amazing we have some good stuff today. I’m excited because we’re going to be talking with Lisa McLeod, okay. She is a, an expert in something that we love, purpose driven business and selling. Okay. So she’s she is known around the world as an expert in purpose driven business. And she’s actually the best selling author of a book she wrote called selling with noble purpose, how to drive revenue, and do work that makes you proud. Now, she spent a few decades working with leaders to increase their competitive differentiation. And here’s what’s really important emotional engagement as well, all right. And she kind of breaks down this whole process for these big companies and how to put more purpose into their business, get them on the right track, not only just for the field goodness, and protecting the planet, protecting people doing the right things, but because doing that is actually more profitable. And there’s evidence out there, we’re going to talk about these things today. So you can really kind of get your head wrapped around like the direction business is going from the top down. I mean, it’s started with like this whole transition to social entrepreneurship and small businesses. But now it’s just kind of starting to boom, and it’s starting to vibrate through all size organizations. And so this is an exciting conversation and how she broke in and started actually consulting on this is pretty cool. So lots to learn through this conversation. Now, if you missed the last episode, Amy and I spoke about how marketing is not just about numbers and big audiences. Alright, so this is an important conversation, because we kind of get wrapped up in the wrong things, especially when we’re running a solo business or just with a founder. And we’re kind of like, in our own world. And we’re so wrapped up about numbers and big audiences, it leads to bad decision making bad decision making leads us to being stuck, because it’s usually based on asking bad questions. Okay. So definitely an episode, go back, check it out. If you haven’t yet, I think you got a lot of little gold nuggets out of that. Um, so lots of exciting stuff going on here at Change Creator, we’re going to be having kind of like a big revamp across our general network. And we’re still running a lot of content on Change creator.com. So guys, don’t forget to visit there, you can just go to Change creator.com forward slash, go big, and grab some of the free assets that we have to help you out. But also, that’ll lead you to the rest of our website, we do lots of good reviews of tools, guys. I mean, we are all about brand stories, okay, so we help people get very clear on their brands and their identities and the stories that they’re telling. Because this is so important. It’s the backbone of your business. And we have to be able to deliver those messages, right. So this is where the tactics come in. But first, we got to know what those stories are. All the tools and things we’re doing. This is your presence. This is your world to deliver your stories. Alright, so we get deep on those things to help you guys make good decisions on that. Alright guys, let’s dive into this conversation with Lisa. There’s just so much good stuff here. We’re going to cover so let’s do it. Okay, show me the heat. Coming to the Change Creator, podcast show, how are you doing today?

Lisa McLeod 03:52

I am awesome. Despite social unrest and a pandemic, I’m still awesome.

Adam G. Force 03:58

Yeah, the pandemic that’s a we can go off on a tangent on that one. But let’s not do that. So we are here to talk about you know, meaningful business right, you know, selling with a noble purpose as your your latest book is titled, and we’ll get into that more. So before we do, just tell everybody a little bit about what is going on in your world today and your business like what’s the latest and you know, a little bit of background on how you got there.

Lisa McLeod 04:28

So, as you said, I’m the author of a book called selling with noble purpose and like a lot of people my story to get there had a lot of twists and turns. And so I’ll say the thing about my backstory is what selling one noble purpose did was it brought together my super hyper competitiveness about wanting to sell and help companies sell along with wanting to make a difference in the world. And it relates actually to the pandemic and all this social unrest because the thing works. Seeing in our business right now, I work as a consultant that I do a lot of training for sales organizations. And we’re seeing this fundamental question that people are starting to ask, which is, you know, who am I? Why am I here? And why does this job even matter? And so what’s happening is that is coming at the same time that customers are saying, Why are you here? Are you just trying to close me? Or are you trying to actually help me? And so you have customers that are starting to question intent? And then you have people in sales jobs that are starting to say, does this even matter? And if you can’t answer those two questions, you’re going to be out of luck.

Adam G. Force 05:39

Yes, I love that. And I love that you brought up the intent because one thing I’ve been saying for a while, and now I got some backup I hear from you is like, I’m always saying, guys, yeah, the customer, you they want to know, we call it with them, what’s in it for them? Right? And but I go, it’s much more than that today. Now, they’re gonna look at you and say, well, what’s in it for you? Why are you doing this? Yeah, I think we’re seeing that more. But a lot of people aren’t really taking notice of that, because you still see a lot of promotion of marketing, like, Oh, it’s all about the customer. And what’s in it for them, forget everything else, focus on the benefits for them and all that stuff. I’m like, it’s going beyond that. Now, don’t you know, and that sounds like you’re feeling the same way.

Lisa McLeod 06:18

I am. And it’s more than just you and I feeling that way, there’s actually hard data that tells us this, I want to go back to what you were saying about the wiffen what’s in it for them. That’s sort of sales 101, you know, to get away from here’s my product, and just the spray and pray. And I’m old, I’ve been in sales like a really long time, I’m not going to give a number but a lot older than you. And that old sort of wisdom thing was based on this, if I could show you a way to save money and do this really preachy inauthentic model, and so now, customers are reading your true intent. And what the data tells us is sales people whose true intent is to improve life for customers, not just toss out some with them. So Cz, here’s your little benefit, but whose true and noble intent was to improve life for customers do a couple things. They outsell salespeople whose internal talk track is focused on their own targets. They also this is really important for this time, put for more effort. And they have more tenacity. Because if you’re just in it for yourself, I mean, you just mentioned to me in the warm up that you have a five month old, so you have definitely experienced this. If you’re just living life for yourself. At a certain point. You’re not going to make the extra effort. But if you know someone else is counting on you, that’s when we go the extra mile. It’s part of our DNA or hardware that way. And so the sales people that felt like their customers were really counting on them. And they were doing something valuable, put forth more effort over time, and they could rebound in the face of setbacks.

Adam G. Force 07:56

Yeah, I love that. And I would actually love to know where this hard data comes from. Can I get my hands on it?

Lisa McLeod 08:05

Absolutely. So the best place is in our book selling with noble purpose. And I’ll tell you, it comes from a couple of places. One, there was a real breakthrough study out of Michigan State University by Dr. Valerie Goode, who this was actually her PhD dissertation that she did this across multiple industries. And she was able to through interviews, discern what the mental talk track was of the salespeople, whether they were thinking I’ve got to hit my number, I’ve got to close this deal, versus whether they’re thinking how could I improve life for the customer. And so she was able to discern that those who had that second talk track were the top performers and have more tenacity. There’s also organizational research, there was a huge article in Harvard Business Review. And a former I used to work for Procter and Gamble, a former p&g colleague of mine, Jim Stengel, also study this, that organizationally, when you have a purpose bigger than money, you outperform the competition. Stangl study said by 350%, by the HBr study said you also outperform the competition on not just sales, but also employee engagement, and customer retention.

Adam G. Force 09:18

Yeah, that’s great. And I you know, so hearing those types of things it makes me think of, we call it money breath when you go as a sales rep, right? Yeah, you get money breath because you are concerned about hitting a number getting the sale, and not as concerned about helping that person which, you know, we have those mirror neurons that start firing and they people pick up on that, whether it’s whether they realize it or not, they’re picking up on that body language, facial expressions, whatever it might be, that’s sharing that kind of feeling that person has, right.

Lisa McLeod 09:53

That’s exactly it. I love I’ve heard it called money breath and quota breath and it’s kind of like onion breath. Yeah, yeah, if I ate for lunch, I might not have onions in my teeth. But if I’m breathing them on you, you know I hadn’t? Yes. And so the here’s the important thing to recognize is, we uncovered this several years ago that this different mindset was the difference between average performance and top performance. But here’s what organizations unknowingly do. They are literally doing the equivalent of feeding their employees onions at lunch, because if you think about the average way an organization communicates with their sales people, they don’t say, how can we make a difference to customers? unless there are top performing organization? Most organizations say hit the number, hit the number hit the number. So then that person is out there breathing, as you call it, money breath on the customer? That’s because that’s what their company fed them for lunch.

Adam G. Force 10:50

Yeah. Yeah. Hundred percent. I mean, it’s, it’s it’s a symptom of the model.

Lisa McLeod 10:55

Right? Is the model. Yeah, it’s the ecosystem around the seller.

Adam G. Force 10:59

Yeah. And it’s a product of desperation. Sometimes.

Lisa McLeod 11:03

It can be. And I really understand that. And so when I say this, this is what they fed them for lunch. I say it with great empathy. Because I have run a business where we were worried about money during the recession. And it’s horrible. You lie awake at night thinking, How can I pay my people? You know, can we make payroll Friday, it’s a terrible feeling. And so what we wanted to do in the book, Simon noble purpose is actually the second edition, because we’ve learned a lot since the first edition, is we wanted to show well intended people, how you can create an ecosystem in your organization, and how you can create the mental tenacity in yourself to always be focused on improving life for the customer, because it’s easier said than done. Because everything in a traditional business model points you the other way

Adam G. Force 11:52

It does and it is easier said than done. And I can see so many roadblocks for that. Because, like we said product of that ecosystem, or just system in general, because people are always stressed about money if they’re not making enough one way or the other. And because we live in that kind of a system, you’re you’re kind of stressing about, you put all your energy on that. And so now you get into a mode of just, I gotta get this money, I got it. And that’s all you’re focused on. So it’s hard to flip the script, because you have, you have like, and you’ve been indoctrinated to feel and believe certain things based on everything that’s happening around you.

Lisa McLeod 12:29

That’s right. And it something monumental happened last summer, that was not noticed by a lot of people outside the corporate world. But the CEO Roundtable, which is several hundred of America’s top CEOs put a stake in the ground, and they renamed the purpose of a business because up until that point, we had been in what folks refer to as a shareholder primacy model, which is, the purpose of a business is to make money. And what these CEOs saw was, if that’s your Northstar, not only do you run the risk of unethical behavior, hello, Wells Fargo. But for most people, most people aren’t going to be unethical. But what happens is, you don’t create competitive differentiation. Because all you’re thinking about the money, you’re not thinking about customers, you don’t create emotional engagement. And so the CEO said, the purpose of a business is to provide a return to stakeholders at the top of the list is customers. And so it was an important thing. But what we made it our practice to do is particularly for organizations that are sales driven organizations, is we identified 10 places within the ecosystem where you can flip the switch, to make it easier for people to focus on making a difference to customers.

Adam G. Force 13:48

Interesting. And so this is the consulting that you offer, right? You go in and you kind of have a blueprint have areas that are pivotal to look at, diagnose and optimize in order to get new results.

Lisa McLeod 14:02

That’s right. And one of them is so simple

Adam G. Force 14:06

Give us an example, you guys have to read the book or whatever to get the details. But let’s let’s get a little taste of what you got going on.

Lisa McLeod 14:13

So I’ll give you a very specific example. So one of the things that we know is the way you run your sales meetings, is again, you got to run your sales meetings differently than traditional. So we were working with a client and this is all public. It’s in the book. It’s on our website. It was a bank, out of Atlanta, a commercial bank called Atlantic capital bank, great bank, nice people, several hundred people, profitable bank, but they said we want to up our game. We want to be differentiated. We want to stand out in our space, and we want to become a best place to work. So one of the things we did a number of things, but one thing we did was we changed the way they ran their sales meetings. And so instead of starting the sales meeting the way we usually do, here’s the numbers. Here’s what the pipeline looks like. Here’s what we need. Close, all important things. Sure. Instead, what we taught them how to do, and every single person the bank knows how to do this is they start their meetings with a customer impact story, a story about how they made a difference to a customer. And it can be as simple as, here’s this customer we loaned money to, for their chain of dry cleaners, there are now 15 people employed there. This is what they do, this is how they do it. Here’s a photo of the owner, we’re making a difference. This wasn’t just money that went out the door, what we’re doing is we’re fueling their prosperity. What that does, when you start your Start your meetings like this, you fire up a totally different section of people’s brains. There’s neuroscience on this, because now everybody’s frontal lobes are fired up, empathy and compassion are fired up. They’re saying, Wow, we make a difference, we have this higher purpose, you can literally make your team more confident and more authentic by telling these stories in every meeting. And that’s one thing that we did, and you can like anyone listening to this podcast, you can start doing this, like in a half hour from now

Adam G. Force 16:04

Yeah, I mean, it’s a very simple adjustment. But you might need to really, it might first mean that the team has to actually focus on those things to get those stories because they might not even be paying attention to that yet.

Lisa McLeod 16:18

Well, that’s the part telling the stories isn’t challenging, finding the stories can be challenging. And so that’s a lot of the work that we do with companies is finding their stories, because in organizations, we tend to have two kinds of stories, we have the wind story, we closed a million bucks, we’re awesome, whoo, this bomb, yay, or I guess elbow bump now. Or we have the product story. Here’s what we make and how cool it is. What we do is we put the impact that you have on customers at the center is very different than a lot of companies will say we want to be customer focused, but that tends to be nonspecific. And so selling with noble purpose goes beyond pleasing customers. It’s about improving customers. And that seems nuanced. But you can probably hear the difference in it.

Adam G. Force 17:09

Oh, yeah, of course. And you made me think of Danny Meyer’s, I don’t know if you know who that is. He’s a wrestler. He’s like a world famous restaurant owner. And he has some of the most ridiculous restaurants in New York, like multiple Michelin stars, all that fun stuff.

Lisa McLeod 17:26

I know who he is. He has not cooked for me though…yet

Adam G. Force 17:29

Yeah, we I took my wife to 11 Madison for a lunch and it was like $1,000. So you know…

Lisa McLeod 17:35

Hope it was a good lunch.

Adam G. Force 17:36

It was a very good lunch. You know, he wrote a book called setting the table. And I was like, why would I read a book from a restaurant guy. But it was all about business. And his whole thing was going above and beyond for the customer. Like, for example, he had a call from somebody that he knew a potential like someone that comes to the restaurant. He’s like, Listen, can I have a big thing going on? And I want to know if you can open up the restaurant for this important business thing I have happening. And it’s like midnight or something. He’s like, Are you kidding me? But instead of like resisting and saying No way, he was like, Sure, I’ll do it. Not only did he do that, he found out information about the people that he was bringing, and what was going on. And he went above and beyond. And he made it an events that they would never forget, right. And he did this on a regular basis. He literally would Google people who made reservations. And he would sit them next to each other so they can start sparking conversation, like these types of things.

Lisa McLeod 18:35

And you’re giving evidence to how effective that is. Because you’ve eaten his restaurant now I can’t wait to eat as restaurant now we’re spending our precious air time talking about the guy and were enamored of him. And that’s what we find is when you have this clarity about what your noble purpose is, which is not making money, it’s beyond making money in that bet particular bank, it was we fuel prosperity, when you have clarity about what your noble purpose is, then you can get everybody in your organization lined up. Because the challenge is so often, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, you usually do have clarity. And you didn’t go into business, just because you thought it would be you know, a whim, you usually have clarity about how you want to make a difference. The challenge is cascading that down to customers, and to employees so they can cascade it to customers. Because what usually happens is, somebody has this great idea, oh, I’m gonna, you know, do this great restaurant, I’m going to make it this way and have this great customer experience. Then when it goes down to levels and that person isn’t in the room. You find yourself saying things like focus on the customer. Yeah, but that’s not exactly what he meant. What he What if I was to work with him and come up with his noble purpose. It would probably be something like we make memories that last a lifetime or something like that. If I tell the server, you’re making a memory, it’s gonna last last a lifetime. Well, that’s totally different. Totally different.

Adam G. Force 20:03

Yeah, totally different than focus on the customer. Exactly. Take care of the customer customer first, like that doesn’t really? Yeah. What does that mean?

Lisa McLeod 20:12

It doesn’t, it doesn’t provide you with the disk with a lens for decision making. And that’s what we’ve seen with our clients is, the noble purpose does three things. It seeds, your culture, it gives you something to stand for. The second thing it does is it provides a lens versus Dziedzic decision making. So if your purpose is make memories that last a lifetime, or fuel prosperity, or whatever it is, helps you figure out what to say yes to and what to say no to. And then the third thing is it drives sales behavior. And that’s where you get the huge economic win.

Adam G. Force 20:45

Yeah, I think that’s great. I mean, I love that distinction. Because the clarity is so important, especially when you’re trying to grow a team, and you want to stay true to the original intention.

Lisa McLeod 20:56

That’s right, it takes what we’ve done, we’ve worked with a lot of smaller and midsize organization, and it takes what is implicit in your business, and makes it absolutely explicit. So with that, with that bank, and they’re on our website, you can see the CEO talking, it’s what he and the other founders had in their heart. But yet, as they grew to several hundred people, it was starting to erode. So what we did was we put that stake in the ground. And I’ll give you another thing that you can do, that we talked about, we coach a lot of sales managers. And one of the things that we do is we anyone can do this is we insert what we call the game changing question. Okay. So the game changing question is, after you ask your salesperson, when are we going to close it? How much is it going to be? Who’s the competition? And when we get the money? You ask one single question, how will the customer be different as a result of doing business with us? And that one question will point your seller towards the customer, it will also tell you what your likelihood is of closing the business.

Adam G. Force 22:06

Yeah, I like that. I mean, you’re it makes you very focused on the result. Right, right. So it’s not? Yeah, I mean, it really puts the attention there to make sure that you’re walking away with the result that you intended.

Lisa McLeod 22:20

That’s right. Because if I ask a salesperson, how will the customer be different as a result of doing business with us? And they can’t tell me? They’re not going to be able to tell the customer? No. And so, yeah, so every product you make, every presentation you do, every coaching session, you have, should be aligned around answering that single question. That’s why we call it the game changer, because it totally, it shifts your focus from you to the customer. And it shifts your focus from trying to do something it’s nice to try and do some actually makes a difference.

Adam G. Force 22:55

Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. Now, tell me a little bit of just about you, you know, you’re you start working with these clients. I’m curious on, for example, let’s go back to when you decided, you know, you’re not working at PNG, you’re doing your own thing, and you’re getting clients based on the idea of this. What were some of the challenges you faced on locking in a partnership?

Lisa McLeod 23:22

So I’ll tell you, I left p&g many years ago, and I went to work for a small consulting firm. So I was very fortunate in that I could work for someone who already had some established thought leadership, we were in the sales and leadership space. And I could learn a lot there. And I started my own firm, I’ve started to be really honest about this. I know a lot of people start their own firm because they’ve got some big sexy idea or something like that. I started my own firm, because I was a VP of sales, who worked a 70 hour travel week, and I had a baby. And that was not gonna work. So it was really I loved what I did. But that was back in the days when you didn’t go to your boss and say, Hey, I’d like to work 20 hours a week. So I decided to do that on my own. But my biggest challenge in getting clients in the early days, especially around this idea of noble purpose, because I don’t have it quite as as clear as I do. Now. The biggest challenge was helping people connect the idea of belief and seemingly soft things with hard revenue. Because when I first started doing this, we know how to study for Michigan State. We didn’t have a front page of the HBr Harvard Business Review. It was. And so what we ended up with in the beginning was this handful of clients that said, yeah, we believe that will work and we didn’t have a lot of evidence. We had some psychological studies, but not any real hard business evidence. So for example, one of our early clients was Hootsuite. Yeah. And we started to work with them in early days. And then chief revenue officer Steve Johnson is pretty well known guy in sales, you know, heard me speak and said that thing, that noble purpose thing we got to younger on Salesforce, we need that. And it took off like lightning around the globe, they own their space. They grew revenue by 2,000% during the time that we worked with them. So after we started getting some hits like that, from people who instinctively knew that this was right, then we had the evidence.

Adam G. Force 25:30

Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of difference. And I want to make a point of clarity for people listening is like, when you have these ideas, the fact that you weren’t as clear as you are now about really, you know how you were going to do this thing? Yeah, what it actually looks like you were kind of like working through it that didn’t stop you from reaching out and selling the idea, right?

Lisa McLeod 25:53

No, it didn’t. And I want to clarify, it didn’t stop me the lack of clarity didn’t stop me from reaching out and trying to sell the idea. I wasn’t always successful in selling it.

Adam G. Force 26:03

But that’s okay.

Lisa McLeod 26:04

But that’s okay. And that’s how you learn. And so what happens is, the essence of your idea will attract those early adopters, those people who were already thinking about this, so we had Hootsuite was an early client, company advocate, another company out of Canada, g adventures was an early client, we had a company called shelf Genie that makes glide outs for your shelving, you know, so so it’s easy to get to. And all of those, there were individual leaders who said, This is what I’ve been thinking, you’re naming what I’ve been thinking. And so it wasn’t new to them, but I had a little more clarity than they did. And so the the me that you’re interviewing now, is 10 years later, we’ve done this with, you know, over two dozen firms, we have hard numbers, but the me in the early days was there’s something bigger than money here. And if we can tap into it, I think we can do big things. And the lease and people listening probably have an idea like that stated that way. And don’t try to convince the skeptics go with the people who go, yeah, that’s sort of what I was thinking tooo. those are your people

Adam G. Force 27:15

Exactly. Yeah, it makes so much sense. And, you know, you got to let you got to go out there, get the feedback, see what people are responding to that data is just priceless. And I mean, how are you getting in touch with Hootsuite? How are you like, you know, getting leads for an idea like this just emailing out and pitching the idea? Like, how do you get someone’s valuable time to say, Hey, I have this idea, I can get you more sales. What was your strategy?

Lisa McLeod 27:41

It was content marketing. It was putting it out there and seeing what people responded to. And for, in my case, because I do consulting and training and speaking, it was speaking at a lot of conferences. And so when we traced back, all of those early sales, every single one can be traced back to something I put in writing, even if it was speaking at a conference which sign that Hootsuite even if it was that I was at that conference, because something I wrote.

Adam G. Force 28:11

Okay, so your content is people took notice, it was of interest and it got you recognized got it,

Lisa McLeod 28:18

right, one of our biggest clients read an article, founder of a global adventure travel company, read an article, he sent it to his VP of sales and said, This is what we need to start doing. And the VP of sales, read it and thought, well, I’ll just call her.

Adam G. Force 28:32

Exactly.

Lisa McLeod 28:33

And so that’s that’s the important thing. And most folks know this now, as it’s hard to resist the temptation to do marketing, early in your content, if you know what I mean. And it’s hard to resist temptation. Talk about yourself is not interesting to people. That’s not interesting. What is interesting, is your point of view your take on things, and also how you’ve helped people.

Adam G. Force 29:01

Yeah, yeah, I mean, something that we like to emphasize is, you know, we teach storytelling for marketing. And we talk about telling the right stories to the right people at the right time. There’s a time and a place for you to use your personal stories to demonstrate different lessons or experiences. And you’re right, you the timing factor, if they’re coming in, for the first time to read an article like what is that article going to be about isn’t going to make sense for them based on you know, where you are in that journey?

Lisa McLeod 29:29

Right. Because back to what we were talking about with sellers and with customers, people are starting to gauge intent in a much more skilled way. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One, we have a whole generation of people who grew up as digital natives, you know, I’m old. So when I watched the news, I was like, well, it’s the news. It must be true. You know, and I had a hard time on learning that but you have a lot of people that are like your age, like My daughter’s age. She’s a first year school teacher. And they are looking for intent in everything that comes at them. Yeah. Yeah, completely different. So you have all these young people who are looking for intent. And then the other thing you have, and I don’t talk about differences between men and women very often. But in this one instance, it does apply. You have more and more women buyers, and women have centuries of learning how to gauge intent. And we can spot it.

Adam G. Force 30:32

Yeah, it’s interesting. Good, for good reason. for good

Lisa McLeod 30:39

reasons. Our lives depended on being able to assess intent. And those skills have been handed down to us for a long time. And I had I had one VP of Sales say to me, you know, about half our buyers now are women. And if I get one more complaint about my salespeople going on and on about themselves, I’m gonna scream.

Adam G. Force 31:01

Yeah, of course

Lisa McLeod 31:02

because they’re reading that intent. That aside, all customers are in a heightened phase right now. And and now that all sales are being done virtually, and we don’t have the come on in and shake my hand have a cup of coffee, all those necessities, people reading your intent in the first 30 seconds. 100%.

Adam G. Force 31:21

Yeah, I mean, and it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s a different dynamic, for sure. And I think a lot of people are struggling to adapt, but it’s gonna be interesting to see, you know, what happens over the next 12 months.

Lisa McLeod 31:34

Yeah. And it’s from where I sit, and what we’re seeing with our clients, that companies whose sales people can go out, and be clearly there to help customers and be excited and be compelling, are the ones who are going to win. And you create those sales people. You can’t create passionate, compelling sales people unless you have a passionate compelling story, inside the company, and desperate to hit our numbers is not a compassionate, compelling story. So organizations that really create that customer impact story, that noble purpose, and they infuse it into every phase of their sales process and their daily cadence. Those are the ones who are going to win. And they’ll be still standing a year from now.

Adam G. Force 32:19

And that’s the thing. And then you also create a loyal client or customer, whatever you want to call it. And so your your, the lifetime value of that client will probably go up as well. And the person with the best lifetime customer value is going to have the biggest marketing budget.

Lisa McLeod 32:38

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And the things that we’ve seen with our clients that have embraced this idea of selling the normal purpose is they have increased customer retention dramatically. The bank I mentioned to you, their earnings were up 40%, that is a lot of money. They won a Best Place to Work award two years in a row voted on by their employees because their employees are on fire. And they were voted two years ago best bank in America, the CEOs on the cover of American banker. And it’s because once we get beyond food and shelter, human beings have two fundamental needs. We want belonging and we want significance, we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. And if you can capture that, as an employer, you don’t have to be curing cancer. I mean, if you are good for you, but I mean, we’ve had, you know, Hootsuite, they’re empowering human connection, this bank, they’re fueling prosperity, the people that make the glide out shelving are putting more joy and love into the home, because you’re not going to bang, throw your cabinets to get out your cookie sheet. I mean, it doesn’t have to be world peace. But if you have clarity that your work makes a difference. That’s how you create what we call the tribe of true believers.

Adam G. Force 33:53

Hundred percent. I love that. And you know, it’s interesting, because we’ve had like, similar pivots and people’s mindsets where we’ve literally had people join, like one of our programs, and they’ll go through and be like, after they go through this process, because we’re all about this intention as well. Right? Like, yeah, they meaningful and when they go through certain processes, and they start thinking about why they’re really doing things and who they are, are they aligned to their truth, all these things? It’s like, they’re like, wait a minute, I think I need to change my business. Like, yeah, well happens all the time. You know,

Lisa McLeod 34:25

It happens all the time. The thing that makes me so sad about that, is in a lot of cases, they might not have needed to change their business, because a lot of companies do really make a difference to their customers. But that’s not what they give voice to. Instead, the positioning, right. It’s not the positioning, it’s not the voice. Everything in business, pulls us too, talking about the KPIs talking about the numbers, and that then becomes the story. And those are important, but they’re not the story. They’re the result of the story. And so I see a lot of people discouraged with They’re companies. And oh, my work doesn’t matter. I had one guy Tell me after I gave a big speech, he came up afterwards. And he said, Well, this noble purpose stuff, it really resonates with me. But my wife is the one who has the real noble purpose. And I said, What does she do? He said, Well, she’s a preschool teacher. And I’m like, What do you do? And he says, I manage logistics for this huge company had 250 people working for him. I’m like, she has a noble purpose. I mean, I love toddlers. But come on, buddy. Like you’re managing 250 people, your words are affecting how they experience their life every single day. I think you need some noble purpose, my friend. If you’ve ever been in logistics, you know, getting your shit done on time kind of matters to a lot of people

Adam G. Force 35:45

Yeah, so many things come down to this perspective, and it drives our decision making. And you know, people always used to ask me when we first started, Change Creator magazine, what’s the difference between an economic entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur? And I was just like, honestly, the decisions that we make, that’s really what it comes down to.

Lisa McLeod 36:02

Yeah. Well, and I will tell you that our work has revealed the social and the economic are linked. And yeah, oh, yeah. They are absolutely linked. And if you’re driving forces to make money, chances are, you’re gonna make less of it.

Adam G. Force 36:19

That’s the thing. And you might make money like, yeah, sure you got wolf on Wall Street, he wasn’t out to help anybody made money. But there’s other downsides and cost to that one may not be sustainable to you may not be later on down the road feeling good or fulfilled with your life. And three, it may be short lived, you know?

Lisa McLeod 36:38

Yeah, it is usually short lived. And if you look at I use Wells Fargo, and as an example, there are a lot of really good people that work for Wells Fargo. But what happened in that organization is the CEO said, Our purpose is to cross sell. Our purpose is to increase the share of wallet, our purpose is to hit these metrics. And when the CEO says it, it amplifies down to then everybody every day is having a report on these metrics. Had he said, as our friends at Atlantic capital set, our purpose is to fuel the prosperity of our clients. Right? Right, they would have cascaded as we did with Atlanta capital, we cascaded down an entirely different set of metrics. That’s why they’re on the cover of American banker, not in front of Congress.

Adam G. Force 37:24

On 100%, you know, one last thing that came to mind that I didn’t get to pick your brain on before was what really intrigued me is like your early days of like getting this thing going, because I know a lot of people in our who are listening here, they’re, they’re figuring things out, right, and you got the you got the ball rolling with an idea that you had. But when you brought on early stage clients, I’m curious around the idea, like so you, you’re actually doing something very significant. Like you’re working with some pretty decent sized teams, you know, seven figure companies, they have sales teams, all these things set up already. And you have to go in, and as a consultant adjust what they’re doing. So at one point, this was just an idea with that you had no personal data, or evidence from besides like literature and research and things like that. So was it hard for you like, with your confidence to go in there and be like, Oh, my God, I’m gonna go in there. I hope this works. You know?

Lisa McLeod 38:26

The short answer is yes. The short answer is yes. Having said that, we had done enough research. So the the idea actually came out of some of the research that we had done early days, that wasn’t our idea. It was a client’s idea. They had a study their sales team, and identify what differentiated the top performers. And that’s how we actually landed on selling with noble purpose, because I thought I was just doing a project for a client. And what ended up happening was, we were able to through these interviews that we did with folks, we watched himself, he looks at product knowledge, all these things. But I’m really interested in what goes on in people’s brains. And it wasn’t even really part of the assignment. But I thought, well, I’m gonna be out with these people. I’m gonna have to have dinner with him every night. I want to figure out what’s what here. And so when we studied the sales team, what I realized was there was a certain percentage of people that had this completely different mindset. And so we went back to the company, and we had done this study, it was a blind study. And they said, Who do you think our top people are? And I said, I think these five are the top people. And I was right. And I realized it was because they had this sense of purpose. And so when you ask, how confident was I, I knew that what I had spotted was real. In the early days, what I wasn’t as confident on was the way that I would bring that to life with people who didn’t have it. That took only a solid decade. So I knew that I could I’d seen it. I knew this thing was real. And so the the way That I managed that, you know, as an imperfect human was, when I went in and tried to act, all bravado and I got this, that actually didn’t work as well, right as when I went in, and we decided early on that our company purpose was to help leaders drive revenue, and do work that makes you proud. And so what we decided those two parallels is we would go in and just start asking questions about Where’s your revenue? Now? Where are the opportunities? Where do you think it could be? What areas do we want to increase? What’s employee engagement? Like how well do your sales people tell a story, and so instead of acting like we had the script for everything, we started to co develop this with our clients. And the more we did that, the more confidence we built, the more we went in and tried to act like we knew anything, everything, the more people would poke holes in it and erode our confidence. So it’s kind of ironic. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 41:00

Yeah, I mean, going in and just being honest and genuine. And yeah, I guess putting on that front. It never ends up going, Well, people can, you’re right, they poke holes in it, and they’re gonna break it down.

Lisa McLeod 41:11

And it also kind of tends to be confrontational. And that was the thing. You know, once you have a new thing, you think it’s a bigger departure from what people are already doing than perhaps it is. And that’s natural. When you have a new idea, you want to be distinct, you want to be different. What I came to realize over the years of doing this is what we’re doing is taking what people are already doing, and taking it up a level.

Adam G. Force 41:35

Yeah, yeah.

Lisa McLeod 41:37

And those are going to be our best clients and people that say, yeah, we already are pretty customer focus. Yeah, we do have a good business. We hope those kinds of people take it up a level. And you know, now when I go in, I can confidently say, There’s 10 things we look at, let’s do this, let’s do this. But it’s still a collaboration with the client.

Adam G. Force 41:54

Yeah, yeah. Great. I love it. Thank you, Lisa. This is a lot of good information. So hope everybody listening, sees all the gold nuggets that I’m seeing, and I appreciate you sharing it and the work that you’re doing, just sharing it in the book and kind of helping these clients and that you have, do things the right way and think about business in the right way. I mean, that is the key. For us, too. It’s really how we think and approach business. So dictates the decisions that we make. Right?

Lisa McLeod 42:22

That’s exactly it. And they’re the thing for us that we’re working on now is scale of when we, when we look at what’s happening in the world, you know, there’s some areas we can affect, there’s others that we can’t. But one thing we know to be true, is that business crosses, the lines that divide us business crosses international lines, it crosses a lot of socio economic lines. And the way we are at work becomes the way we are everywhere. And if we can get people thinking in this noble purpose way, and out of their own head and the ability to see the other, whether it’s a customer or whoever it is, is not just a means to your own end. But as someone that you can help when you flip that switch. Your Business changes, but so does your life.

Adam G. Force 43:13

Yeah, 100%. That’s a good note to end on here. We’ll wrap up and let’s make sure people know where do they learn more, and you know, find your book and stuff.

Lisa McLeod 43:23

Google selling with noble purpose, you will find our website go on Amazon. It’s available. The new version is available right now. And I really hope I want people to take away we work as a consulting firm with a lot of big organizations. If that’s what you’re interested in, we’d love to work with you. But if you were an entrepreneur, we made this book so that you could implement it on your own because I was founded a small startup and I know you can’t hire people. So we made this book with scripts and task lists and lots of small actions that you can take so that you can do it. Absolutely on your own. Beautiful.

Adam G. Force 44:03

Thank you so much, Lisa. We appreciate your time.

Lisa McLeod 44:06

It was so great to be with you Adam. Take care.

Adam G. Force 44:10

Thanks for tuning in to the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Adam And Amy: Marketing is Not Just About Numbers and Big Audiences

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Many of us believe that if we have a website, numerous social media accounts, and learn a few marketing ‘tactics’ our business will suddenly take off.

We spend so much time on tactics and distribution (should I start a podcast? what about Pinterest? What about Instagram?) that we MISS OUT on the #1 ingredient in your marketing…

Today, Adam and Amy will talk about what the # 1 missing ingredient is in your marketing.

We’ll cover:

— The counterintuitive way you need to look at your marketing strategy
— How do you know you are ‘missing’ the number 1 ingredient
— Why we tend to focus on the wrong things, at the wrong time in our business

Need a little help to get started, download our Storytelling Roadmap (FREE) today: changecreator.com/storytellingroadmap/

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host, Adam forest co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and life to go big, visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show This is your host, Adam force, we have an interesting discussion that we’re going to have today, this is going to be with me and Amy, we’re going to be talking about the fact that marketing is not just about big numbers and big audiences, this is something that so many of us get stuck on, just because of the way that marketing has shifted over the years, as we went digital, the perspectives of marketing and how we communicate, and what we’re trying to achieve has changed, right. And it causes a different objective in the minds of marketers, we had another discussion called stop thinking like a marketer, right? So, you know, a lot of us feel that when we have our websites, and social media accounts and all these things. You know, we want to learn these tactics, and probably heard before, like, stop focusing on tactics only, and all that kind of stuff. But we feel that those are things we can accomplish the things we can figure out. And that’s what’s going to make the difference in our business and help it take off. So we spend all of our time on these these ideas like Pinterest, and Instagram. And they’re important, and they play their part. But what we’re saying is, it’s not just about numbers and big audiences. So we want to get into that in more detail in just a few minutes. Um, guys, if you missed the last episode, it was a fun conversation with Corey Ames. And it was about carving out your own path and getting traction with smart marketing. He’s somebody that was a CEO of an agency and did he has a lot of digital marketing experience, kind of like me and Amy and our backgrounds. And he made the transition. And he started his own company grow ensemble, and he’s had some successes. And he so he shares that stuff. It’s inspiring to hear, we want to make sure we have people on the front lines here, kind of giving their aha moments and how they’re getting started and how they’re getting traction, right. It’s always helpful to hear from people’s experiences. So we’re going to get into that stuff. We have some exciting stuff going on here. We’ll be making some updates here at Change Creator, we’ve had just so much evolve in the business, and you guys will start seeing some of that come down the pipeline. Just as far as our, you know, branding and things we’re focusing on, you know, we’re really, our backgrounds are really in the branding and storytelling space. So kind of like how do we identify with clarity? Like, what the heck, we are all about who we are and how do we communicate our stories with the world and get attention, but not only get the attention, we are actually understood. And we get loyal customers, right? This this is all has to work together. And we’re going to be talking a lot about that stuff. So if you guys haven’t stopped by Change, Creator calm, go over there. We have a lot of our show notes from the podcast and other articles that are going up. That will continue to to get that stuff populated there. And if you want to learn more about storytelling, right, getting clarity that you need for your brand story, and then your sales stories, get on the waitlist for the captivate method. Alright, you’ll find that on the homepage, over at Change creator.com Alright guys, that is it. For now I’m gonna shut up and we’re gonna dive into this conversation with Amy and Mike. Okay, show me the heat. All right, we made it What’s up, everybody? Adam and Amy here. hope everybody’s having an awesome day. We just wanted to talk a little bit about you know, marketing and what it really is, right? Because we get so excited about having big audiences and reaching tons of people and all that stuff. So we’re going to tap into what is actually the truth behind marketing what that missing ingredient is today. So Amy, and I’ve been talking about this quite a bit. And so marketing is not just about big audiences and how many people we reach and distribution, right. That’s a small part of it. Do we need to get traffic? Yes. So we’re going to tell you a quick story about a friend of ours who has a killer program. It’s a it’s a course based program. And how they went almost a full year with no results, just sales trickling in. And then all of a sudden, in the 11th hour, they blew up. All right. So what happened? This is interesting. And Amy, you could chime in with any details here on this as we go. But you know you get set up and you’re running all these operations and they were they were kind of like fixing Their program and trying to really get it to connect with people. And they were getting as much traffic as possible into this program. But the sales weren’t coming in. And so they had to really kind of just sit back and figure out, well, what’s going on? And they would try all kinds of different things and different audiences that you would go after to get different types of traffic, right? Well, maybe we need to go after this audience or these people with these interests and things like that. And it just wasn’t making the connection. And so they started figuring out well, we may not have the right story, right. So what was the missing ingredient here, that really started to turn things around, and after about, I think it was 10 out of 12, like months right out of the year. They were we had a comment from them. And they were like, we’re so close to having the right story. And we were like, Oh, my God, I love that story. Here, right. And so on the front end, when people think about marketing, Amy, right, we say, all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook ads, like, that’s what people automatically associate with marketing

Amy Aitman 06:06

Perfect. E-mail list, all that stuff all the tactical things…

Adam G. Force 06:10

And why is that? Because, you know, we’ve all believe that the more traffic and people we get in front of the more our businesses will thrive. And so our friends, you know, they were getting in front of all the people, but why weren’t they thriving yet? Over time, they kept refining their story, which is when we say that we’re saying their marketing message, right? storytelling is your marketing. And that’s what we teach in the captivate method is really, that’s the most important part of the marketing strategy. So we say marketing, instead of thinking, distribution, and connecting a big audience and all that kind of stuff, and ads, we should be thinking, messaging stories in Italy, right? Like, we want to connect. And guess what, they finally got the right story, their their strategy aligned, and in that 11th month and 12 month, that 11th month alone, they had 70 sales. Now you multiply that by I think it was a 1500 dollar program. That’s a good chunk of change.

Amy Aitman 07:09

It’s a higher ticket offer.

Adam G. Force 07:11

Sure, it literally happened in that one month,

Amy Aitman 07:14

from like one or two sales to 70 in a month.

Adam G. Force 07:18

Exactly. And all of a sudden, I was like, Whoa, so the power, like you can have all the reach and big audience. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t take the time to create a really smart marketing strategy. So understanding how to use storytelling to connect with people, get them on board with what you’re doing. That is the key, and obviously why we put so much emphasis in it in the captivate method program. And it’s kind of counterintuitive, right, Amy? People don’t, it’s not something people feel like, Oh, I don’t have time to do that. I got to work on, you know, running my ads. And I got to work on getting Pinterest set up

Amy Aitman 07:57

I think if I asked a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs, like, what is your marketing strategy, I’d say nine out of 10 of them do not say storytelling, they do not say anything about storytelling, they feel like storytelling is a great add on. Or I can fix my messaging when or I can hire someone to fix my messaging. You know, that’s just a copywriting job. But really, I’ve seen it so many times, if your sales aren’t coming in, if your marketing is not effective, most nine or 10 out of 10 times, it’s your messaging, which is your storytelling. You know, sometimes there’s a there’s a problem with these, the automations are whatever, but nine out of 10 times or 10 times it’s your messaging, that’s not working. Because a lot of people get, you know, get really good at the distribution side of things, they get really good at, you know, creating a funnel or having their website or doing social media. But just because you get attention doesn’t mean you’re getting sales and doesn’t mean your marketing is actually working.

Adam G. Force 08:58

Exactly. I mean, I mean, and we see it a lot, too. I mean, you get on to Instagram, Pinterest, and all these sites, and you get so excited about like, Oh, I’m gonna create a killer Instagram strategy and all these things, and you spend so much time see this over and over again, whether it’s a social media platform, or maybe a podcast, right? I’m going to create a podcast, I’m gonna get in front of all these people. And, you know, we have a podcast, and we had a magazine, all this stuff. And we started a very complicated business at Change Creator. And I’ll tell you right now, every time I hear someone say, depending on where they are in the business, right, that I’m going to start a podcast. I want to be supportive and say, Yes, get your story out there and get in front of people. But I also know that it’s going to be a massive distraction, and it’s going to be very difficult to monetize. So this idea of this distribution on the podcast is so sexy and fun. I’m going to interview people and do all this stuff. Yeah, we can enjoy it and we want to do the things we enjoy and that we’re excited about. And all of a sudden, a year goes by and we look back and realize I was just solving the wrong problems. I wasn’t doing what I needed to do, I needed to understand, let’s say, three key things right aiming, it’s, well, how do I create the right marketing strategy based on who I am as a person and the business that I want to run? Right? How do I get clear on how to talk to my perfect customer? Right, how to connect with them and get them to understand my business? And then how do I create a system to automate my sales, so I can free up my time, like, these are your factors. And none of that you can’t create the system and automate sales to have the right message. Right? The right story

Amy Aitman 10:40

It’s a step that you can’t ignore, I see a lot of people coming to us in the captivate method. And they spent years, not just a year, they spent years and years and years on their marketing, and focusing on the wrong things at the wrong time. And really missing this key ingredient. And like kind of hoping to skip over it. Because I feel like this, this is something that may or may not come naturally to everyone, but it’s something that you can learn and you can develop, and it can become a practice that you that is really energizes your entire business. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of digital entrepreneurs, especially like, we just focus on the wrong things. And it’s usually things that we like to do. Yeah, so for me, I would say, early days, I mean, I love writing. So blogging was like writing blogging, content strategy, I could spend all day doing that, you know, but it’s like, actually getting out and doing the things that I need to do and tapping into my core story into into the stories for our marketing. Well, at first those a little uncomfortable, wasn’t it? Adam?

Adam G. Force 11:43

It always is. I think a lot of people avoid this work because one, they think they’re above it, they think they’re above digging into this, but to they also get very uncomfortable, right? It’s uncomfortable to dig into what is necessary to really create the marketing strategies that we need today to connect with the right audience. It takes real work to get this stuff done. And that’s why we have such a powerful methodology to help people get through that process. And once you do, you like you don’t ever want to outsource your marketing strategy and your sales in the first several years of your business. Like you need to master that craft yourself.

Amy Aitman 12:22

Yeah, messaging, you’d never want to outsource that messaging her and you really can’t, it’s almost impossible. Because I’ve hired a lot of copywriters over the year, I’ve been a writer for years. And the first thing any great advertising team is going to do and any copywriting team is going to do is they’re going to ask you for your story. That’s right. I mean, really are they’re gonna ask you about your story. They’re gonna ask you about your customers, they’re going to ask you for the things you need to know for your messaging. And if you let them guess,

Adam G. Force 12:53

You’re screwed.

Amy Aitman 12:54

You’re screwed.

Adam G. Force 12:54

They’ll take your money, they’ll take your money.

Amy Aitman 12:56

They will, they’ll take your money, and they’ll guess,

Adam G. Force 12:59

and they’ll guess. And we’ve done that we’ve hired expensive PR teams, marketing people, because we were thinking, hey, they know this better than us, or we just don’t have the time for it, or, you know, like, we have all these doubts in our brain. And then we start doing that, and we spent tons of money guys sent tons of money. And it was a huge waste of time and energy. Because now like, for example, we have all this stuff, obviously very solidified tons of stories. This is what we teach and we thrive on. And so we have a Facebook ads team. And guess what one of the first things like Amy said, we gave them a folder of like 3040 stories that were essential. We gave we know exactly who we’re talking to. So they could set up everything based on who we are as a brand, based on the stories that we have in order to accomplish certain things. It depends where someone is on that buyers journey, right? Yeah, what story do I tell? When do I tell it? What, like, there’s so much to this. But the more you focus and practice and get into these flows, then when you put effort into your distribution and reaching many people, it’s going to be effective, right?

Amy Aitman 14:05

Yes, it is. And you’re not going to spend waste time and money. putting things out at the wrong time. wrong message the wrong people. So how do you know how would you know, Adam? I have an answer for this one, that you’re missing this number one ingredient that you’re missing storytelling in your marketing. How do you know? What are the signs?

Adam G. Force 14:25

Yeah, well, I guess one major sign is that you’re not you’re not selling consistently. I mean, that’s number one, right?

Amy Aitman 14:32

That’s a big sign.

Adam G. Force 14:34

And people will start to say, ah, these Facebook ads stink, man. They don’t work, right. I can’t, I can never get sales. I’m like, Yeah, dude, because your messaging is completely off course. Not. Not only is it the wrong message, but it’s not being done in a way that’s compelling and thought provoking. It doesn’t it doesn’t connect with people. Marketing goes deep on how you actually connect with someone. And you should know Do they say in traffic every day, are they drinking a glass of wine having a, you know, drowning their sorrows every night like who is this person? And there’s lots of, there’s lots of ways to get to that. And that’s obviously stuff that we go through and teach in our program, because it’s so important. And did you have other thoughts Amy about…

Amy Aitman 15:23

I was gonna say the same thing, you know that you’re missing this when parts or all of your marketing is not working for you. So if you invest, say so much time into an Instagram strategy, and it’s just not connecting, it’s not getting to sales. This is where I like to look. And I like to say, okay, what’s missing? And it’s usually this messaging, if you find yourself getting a lot of people that like, love what you do, but are buying from you, then it’s, you’re missing this key ingredient, right? Um, that’s those are the two like, those are two key indicators that I’d say, look at your marketing. And I look at if you if you feel like everyone that you’re bringing into your world is not the right audience. This, again, is probably the the missing ingredient for that too

Adam G. Force 16:14

And you know what? There’s a major distraction that causes some of this for people. When we think marketing, remember we said earlier, we think marketing, we think social media advertising, you know, the distribution side of it, we don’t think that the connection, the communication side of it, but when we think about that distribution, think social media, well, we’re gonna say, we have a fear about what people think about us. Right? Yes, trade. For starters, people were afraid to put ourselves out there. And then when we do well, what are people going to think when I only have 20 people on my Facebook page? No one’s gonna trust my business. No one’s gonna buy from me, right? And guess what? That is the furthest thing from the truth ever. Okay. It’s about what you’re saying. It’s about who those 20 people are. What if each of those people was spending $1,000 a month of reoccurring revenue with you? Because they’re your perfect customer. So you got to Facebook people making $20,000 a month, okay?

Amy Aitman 17:10

This is a big mistake that we see so many people making, especially when it comes to story is they we they confuse trust with big numbers and they say if I had a million followers, and everyone would trust me, and I want when I when people tell me that I always ask them, okay, I have a product here, and I’m going to send out an influencer with the million followers, and it’s going to try to sell you or I’m going to send your best friend in the world that says, You got to try this product. Dude. This is the best product ever have I love this product? Someone that is that close to you? Who do you trust more? The Kylie Jenner’s of the world, or your best friend, or your best friend?

Adam G. Force 17:54

What about that story there is that girl on Instagram where they’re like, hey, she has like a couple million people or something following her. Like, she tried to sell a T shirt that someone was like sponsored to pay her to, like sell or something. And she was only able to sell like four t shirts to like millions of followers. And, you know, again, no connection. It was fake. Like, we just making the point about vanity metrics, this stuff just doesn’t matter. So that will hold you back. Yeah, it’s a leaf, right, or a false belief. And it’s based on that fear, the fear of what will people think? Right?

Amy Aitman 18:28

Yeah, because really, in today’s digital marketing, especially for mission driven entrepreneurs, it’s about connection. It’s about building trust, it’s about business connection. And it’s about finding the right people that our products can serve. That’s what it’s really about. It’s really not about how many people we have, you know, on our Instagram accounts or honor, you know, Facebook accounts. And I can tell you from being in the business and in the digital marketing space for quite some time, there’s a lot of ways to fake food, fugazi these numbers, and people know that… People totally know that as well. And so I feel like Nowadays, people really want that connection. And it’s more and more important than ever before, to have to build that connection with our audience to get that trust.

Adam G. Force 19:16

Absolutely. It makes a big difference to what you’re doing. So, you know, just to recap, the lesson here, guys is to where you’re putting your energy. I mean, we have to understand storytelling. Again, storytelling is your marketing. It’s how you’re communicating how you’re getting people on board with what you do, how you’re connecting with them. It’s also grounds your business and what kind of business you are and what you stand. There’s so much behind it. Storytelling is where you should be putting most of your energy any any company that has a great story to add is great, what storytelling will be a great company. Right? I think that covers that topic. I mean, it’s such an important one. So anything final words here. Any questions from anybody that is listening? We are happy…

Amy Aitman 20:03

No, Krista just said thank you, Adam. It’s so important only understand what you’re talking about connecting with your ideal customer. That’s true. Yeah, you see that a lot as well. I mean, it’s so important to have these connections and to build that trust.

Adam G. Force 20:19

Yeah. So think about your messaging. And connecting with people don’t worry about the big numbers and the distribution. Everything has its time in place. So we can always do the right things at the wrong time and averaging. So we really want to be take putting our priorities in the right order here. So marketing is not just about your distribution, it’s about what you’re saying, who you’re saying it to, and why you’re saying it.

Amy Aitman 20:46

Definitely. And like our friends that finally got the 70 sales on month 11 that we finally got the right story. And I can tell you from from knowing their story, they spent a lot of time and energy building traffic and doing that. Yeah, that wasn’t that that’s not what works.

Adam G. Force 21:05

Awesome. All right, guys. We’re gonna wrap this up and we will catch you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast, visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Cory Ames: Carving Out Your Own Path and Getting Traction with Smart Marketing

Listen to our exclusive interview with Cory Ames:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

What does it take to start making a real difference in the world? Do you have the confidence and belief in yourself to pursue your dream? We decided to speak with the co-founder of Grow Ensemble, Cory Ames, about his transition from CEO of a marketing agency to pursuing his own business driven by smart marketing.

—

Having figured out early on that a traditional path didn’t appeal to me, I left college early and joined a mutli-million dollar marketing agency where I ultimately became CEO. I enjoyed the work and learned a lot, but there was something I wasn’t getting from that work: fulfillment of what I saw as my social responsibility as a business person. I decided to combine what I’m good at (marketing, with an expertise in SEO) with what I’m most passionate about––improving the world through social impact. I started Grow Ensemble in 2018, a digital marketing, training & consulting company that helps nonprofits, social enterprises & social entrepreneurs market their mission online.

Learn more about Cory and his work at > https://coryames.com/

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

SPEAKERS

Adam G. Force, Cory Ames

Adam G. Force 00:03

Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host Adam forest co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and life to go big, visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host enforce excited to dive into today’s conversation. But before we do so, if you missed the last episode, Danielle and I jumped on and we spoke about what the backbone of a great marketing strategy actually is. This is such an important topic, so many entrepreneurs Mr. Mark, we don’t get done. We don’t get our marketing done right in the market. And guess what happens? We don’t get sales. And it makes everything stressful, difficult and overwhelming. So we want to really dive into that topic. And so if you missed it, definitely go back, check it out. This week, we’re gonna be talking with Corey Ames. So Corey Ames is one of these entrepreneurs that was not happy about the cookie cutter path. Right. So he actually left college early, and he joined a multimillion dollar marketing agency where he actually became CEO, you know, but it just wasn’t exactly what he was looking to do with the rest of his life, the idea of having more fulfillment was attractive. And so he ended up starting his own business, he wanted to make a difference in the world in his own way. And now that company is called grow ensemble. And that started in 2018. So not too long ago. But he has a lot of digital marketing background experience and insights that are going to be exciting to discuss with Corey and share with you guys. So you know, grow ensemble is itself is a training and consulting company that actually helps nonprofits, social enterprises, social entrepreneurs, all really get their missions out there online, right. So this is driven by marketing, expertise and things like that. So we’re gonna dive into some cool stuff with Corey and see what he has to say. And if you guys are not already, follow us on Facebook, make sure you join our Facebook group, the profitable digital impact entrepreneur, we love to connect with people there and share all kinds of goodies, step by Change Creator calm, lots of fresh content, show notes, from the podcast, interviews and all that good stuff. And you can get on the waitlist for the captivate method, where people are crushing it. We’re literally getting posts from people in our private group. They’re saying this was the best decision I made in my life. You know, what we love helping people align not this is for entrepreneurs who want to go from offline to online. This is for entrepreneurs that want to really get their marketing strategies moving forward. By using the power of story story is a lot more than a format we use for a social media post or things like that. story goes beyond that. And it is an art and every great business masters this art and it will help you align who you are with what you do very closely so that you do have a life of fulfillment. It’s very powerful stuff and it is the key to a great marketing strategy. Alright guys, so we’re gonna get into some marketing conversation here with Corey right now. Okay, show me the heat. No, you go. Hey, Cory, welcome to the Change Creator podcast. How you doing today?

Cory Ames 03:51

I’m doing good, Adam. Thanks for having me. How you doing?

Adam G. Force 03:53

I’m doing great. You know, we are getting through all kinds of work here on this new house. And it’s been exciting to get it done, getting our lives back. So I know you’re on the house hunts as well. So I wish you luck with that, my friend.

Cory Ames 04:06

Yeah, entering the world of homeownership. So taking your example, it seems like I might be a project manager sometime soon for some construction

Adam G. Force 04:16

It’s, it’s fun. Okay. Yeah. So listen, tell me just a little bit. So I like to start at a point of action. So like, what is exciting and what do you got going on? You know, these days? what’s the latest? What’s the greatest let’s start there.

Cory Ames 04:36

All right. Well, at the moment, you know, we we grow ensemble, we invest so much of our time in our own sort of content production and content marketing efforts, because it’s really been the absolute number one way in which we’ve been able to build a community around our own brand. Our own business is since we’ve been around about two years now. And so you know, I’m myself. I have have a background in search engine optimization, SEO. And so I’m always kind of tinkering and stuff like that it’s kind of what’s the next evolution of our strategy and our process. And so one thing we’re working through right now, which kind of has me pretty excited, and enthusiastic is the way in which we’re able to make the most out of all this existing content that we’ve created. So I think a lot of people, you know, think that they publish a blog post a podcast, whatever it might be, and they just kind of set it and forget it, forget it, and kind of, you know, set themselves on this endless hamster wheel of content creation, always meaning to produce something new. Yeah. And well, you know, putting out new stuff is really great, of course, and you want to kind of continue with that contextually relevant content, content, timely content, you know, in responding to your community, there’s just always a wealth of content you’ve produced historically, that can be repurposed, reutilized, and reorganized. So we took a look at our site the last few years, you know, we have 100 plus 150, plus almost 175, you know, different pieces of content from our podcasts or blog posts. And, you know, what we start to find, as you kind of evolve a content marketing strategy in SEO strategy is that the more content you create, there is the potential that there actually becomes some issues on your site. So the more content you create, the more strategic you have to be with how you organize it. So what we’ve just done, you know, previously, we’ve had just a long extensive blog feed along feed attached to our podcast, but now we’re starting to organize things, you know, thematically based off of topics, you know, whether we’re talking about issues in, you know, zero waste, or we’re talking about the topic of, you know, composting, the benefits of that for the economy, communities, etc, or social entrepreneurship, you know, digital marketing, we’re starting to group and batch all these things together. And I’m really excited about it, we’ve created all these different kinds of content hubs, as we call it, these landing pages for different topics, themes, you know, and, you know, subjects that we cover. And now we’ve made it a lot easier for searchers. And then ultimately, Google to access all this content, we spent so much time in creating, and are really starting to see a good spike in our traffic, and you know, must start to see that kind of stuff overnight. Because Google kind of allows you a bandwidth or, you know, amount of kind of a cut, I think they call it a you know, crawl breadth, the amount of time that Google is going to spend on your site trying to capture all your resources. And so making it easier for searchers, and visitors to find your resources ultimately, is something that Google likes. And as a product of that, you know, we’re seeing a really great spike in the amount of people that are circulating around girl ensemble today. So that’s, that’s where I’d start. That’s where my brains at in the world of SEO right now.

Adam G. Force 07:49

No, that’s good. It sounds like you’re on the right track. We’ve definitely, you know, as a media company, but down those roads and been lucky because Amy’s a total SEO nerd, and she thrives in that where we go. And, you know, we have reorganized our site several times. And it’s definitely gets tricky as the algorithms change and shift and just kind of leaning into the latest, you know, what Google is looking for? and all that. But yeah, I mean, setting up the hubs and organizing, there’s so many different ways to slice it, then you do have to make it easy for people. And there’s certain ways to group those things that make it really impactful. But yeah, sounds like you’re going down the right track. And similar because we’ve had those experiences. So that’s cool. Now tell me like, Where did you get experience in SEO? What’s some of your background that led you to, you know, one starting grow ensemble? And just your knowledge around SEO and things like that?

Cory Ames 08:45

Sure. Well, you know, my, my experience in digital marketing touches back all the way to, like the start of college for me. So I went to Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, where I’m originally from, and I, I’ve always kind of considered myself generalists, like I’m good at, and pretty good at getting good at, you know, enough things, but I’ve never been like the top 1% in any particular skill, you know, I’m above average, slightly at, you know, above average, in a lot of different things. And I never really knew exactly what it was that I wanted to do. And so originally, entrepreneurship and in building online businesses, specifically in digital marketing appealed to me because I, you know, I thought it would be a vehicle to create a lot of freedom and autonomy in my life to be able to pursue, you know, whatever it is that I wanted to do after, you know, so I thought that that digital marketing in building an online business would kind of be the gateway for that. So starting as like a freshman in college, I started tinkering around with websites. And you know, being a college student, you have no money. So, you know, I couldn’t I have these websites up, you know, what I’m trying to build some sort of kind of micro side business with it and figure out how to drive traffic to it and monetize. But the thing about being a college student with no, you know, extra cash on hand is that I couldn’t pay for any paid advertising. Yeah. So I learned first and foremost about SEO that, you know, well, obviously, you know, people, you know, pay SEO consultants and teams and all that kind of stuff, you know, it could be something that was driven off of labor, you know, if I figured out how to do it, you know, spent the time and put in the effort. And I ultimately, you know, could get thousands, if not 10s of thousands people coming in these websites that I was building, to come to the site for, you know, I’m putting in quotations here free. And so college student who’s, you know, money poor, but time rich, I spent a lot of time tinkering around with websites. And after a few failed projects, I ultimately had one that gained some traction, you know, build a pretty high traffic blog, a little kind of side business attached to it. And so I remember that first month with that site, and I made like, 170 or so dollars. Now, I really thought that I had made it as an entrepreneur, it was like that moment, like, Oh, my God, real money. Yeah, well, $170 for a college student is that’s a good amount of cash. So, you know, it’s from that moment that it was important, you know, and it kind of validated for me that I can learn this skill set, you know, and I became a bit more obsessive about it. And so, my pursuit initially was to try and make that something that would, you know, actually go from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand and sustain a living, you know, for a young kind of new entrepreneur, but luckily, and kind of serendipitously I ended up connecting with, who would then be my boss, and, you know, a mentor I’ve had for a few years. And he was running a digital marketing agency. And, you know, we got connected and hit it off and asked about the projects I was working on. And clearly from that, you know, what they did for their clients, I had a lot of relevant experience. And so I never ended up making that site, like what would be in my business, I ended up getting a full time job with this, this digital marketing agency. And so the the promise there from him, you know, I was like, the fourth employee was fast growing. Yeah, you know, they had 30 or so clients at the time, you know, by the time I was finished, there, we had over 100. And his promise was, you know, come, you know, hustle work for me, and I’ll teach you everything I know about digital marketing. So, you know, it was there, I learned so many the ins and outs of all things, PPC, SEO, you know, conversion rate optimization, all that good stuff. But it was that digital marketing agency experience that, that really, you know, set the stage for what would become great ensemble today.

Adam G. Force 12:27

Okay. And so what is the intention behind Grow Ensemble right now?

Cory Ames 12:33

Well, for us, you know, we have kind of two very, very basic aims in a lot of the resources that we create and share. And as well, the the work that we do for our clients in our community. So first and foremost, you know, we want to create really valuable resources around you know, all the topics that surrounds, you know, what we say, of building a better world, leaving the world and more just equitable and habitable place than we found it for all of us, not just some of us eating. And so what we’re doing is both, you know, my, my fiance, and I actually, we co founded gr ensemble together, and so we’re, we’re both so happens to be, we’re both generalists, and we love to learn, you know, and so the the first kind of selfish pursuit and creating all this content, having all these interviews with experts in this space is just to learn as much as we can about the space of sustainable business, social enterprise, social entrepreneurship, and in as well, you know, General sustainable living. And so we’re creating and sharing these resources, you know, really with the second aim of to bring more people into that community, from, you know, what we see as maybe as accessible of a point as possible, you know, we think that even by making some small, you know, more incremental daily changes, that you can make a significant impact over time, by being a little bit more cognizant and conscious with what companies you support, you know, in, in how you, you know, quote, unquote, vote with your dollar. Yeah, or as well, you know, how it is that start to spend your hours at work, you know, maybe you kind of more critically analyze the practices of the business that you work for, you know, or run, to see how it can be more impactful to, you know, so we kind of believe you don’t really have to everyone doesn’t have to be Mother Teresa, you know, dedicate their entire life to service. But, you know, maybe that’s a progression, and you ultimately get there, you know, but we want to invite people into the community from, you know, as accessible as possible. So it’s those two really kind of broad aims for us. And through those processes of creating content, what we’re learning what we’re developing in our own skill set, you know, we then help kind of train and support social enterprises, nonprofits and purpose driven businesses in the space that we feel hold on to those values and ethics that we still respect in this business space. You know, we help them get the word out about the good work that they do.

Adam G. Force 14:47

Hmm. And so I’m curious just on some of the challenges you’ve had in, you know, trying to get Grow Ensemble off the ground and, you know, really make it the business that you’re envisioning.

Cory Ames 15:01

Sure, so I think the thing that is, I mean, you know, with all these different business models, service, you know, in consulting and more kind of information based businesses are a little bit tricky because the model can kind of change overnight, you know, you can all of a sudden say, like, Hey, you know, we’re offering this now, we didn’t, we didn’t offer that yesterday, but now we offer this service, you know, it’s SEO services, or whatever it might be, right. As opposed to like a product based business. You know, where you’re very, like, you’re very tangibly attached to that product, obviously, you can launch new ones or whatever, but what you sell is very tangible and clear. You know, okay, here’s this, this widget, this is what it does, you know, do you want it or not? Obviously, you know, I know you’re a storytelling guy can get more a little bit elaborate than that. But, you know, for us, I think it’s been figuring out and, you know, what exactly is the model for us, you know, and how we, we shape and mold this thing around? What are our strengths, our skill sets, you know, where we feel best positioned to, to serve, and connect with this community of social enterprise leaders, purpose driven business leaders, and we’ve been kind of redefining that over the last years, which I think is, you know, very common amongst young companies. And so we’ve had the patience to really focus on that kind of audience building, you know, community building, so that we really immerse ourselves in the folks around the folks that we want to serve, you know, and then kind of having the patience to swap slowly tweak, you know, refine and adjust. What is this exact, you know, kind of business model, so to speak?

Adam G. Force 16:31

Yeah. Yeah. So, I guess, you know, as far as gras ensemble goes, and some of the stuff that you’re talking about? What has been so those are some of the difficulties or challenges and stuff like that, but you must have had some wins, remind me how long have you guys been in active now?

Cory Ames 16:53

Just about two full years, so we’re coming up on maybe a year and 10 months or so. Okay.

Adam G. Force 16:59

Yes, yeah, pretty young. So what has been some of the wins that you’ve had now to, to during those during that time?

Cory Ames 17:09

Certainly, so, you know, I feel that a lot of our wins come around come from the community that we’ve been able to build around girl ensemble. So, you know, for us that that really started with the podcast first and foremost, you know, is when we officially launched girl ensemble, that was really what was running in parallel was the podcast, that got us connected with so many different, you know, really exceptional, prolific, and as well as generous, very generous leaders in this this space of sustainable business. Yeah, you know, and so I would recommend that for folks, you know, maybe with the resources or the know how, and that podcasting is such a great way to build, you know, really key essential relationships early on, in your business as well multifaceted with being a wonderful opportunity to just kind of be, you know, almost a member of the media or like a journalist in your industry, learning so much about what’s going on, you know, who who’s involved, you know, what, what’s important to them, it’s such a great place to start, you know, and then soon after the podcast, we launched the written publication over at our blog, you know, really kind of leaning into our expertise of SEO and content marketing. And then it was in about six, seven months from then, you know, we were able to see our first 25,000 visitors in a single month around the site. So bootstrapping a blog, versus kind of hiring, and, you know, utilizing resources on a whole writing team is a different, different effort, my fiance and I have written maybe 60 to 70% of the content that’s attached to the blog. But, you know, with that kind of sweat equity, we’ve been able to build a pretty solid audience around it, and it’s continuing to grow, you know, maybe 10 to 30%, every single month. So, we’re excited about that, you know, that community and that’s allowed us to, you know, we have all sort of little mechanisms to kind of trigger conversations in our business with who’s engaging with the site, who’s, you know, subscribing to our email list, reading our newsletter, responding to those newsletters, we want to learn, you know, who’s who’s behind those, you know, email addresses on that, or so it’s, it’s been wonderful to see, you know, the, I always get kind of struck, struck with the absolute depth and insanity of the internet when, you know, it’s people in rural Africa, you know, replying to emails, you know, Vancouver, British Columbia, you know, overseas in Europe, wherever it is all working on these different social impact related nonprofits, you know, a social enterprises, whatever it might be, I’m always just kind of struck with Yeah. Now how the internet, you know, gives you access to all corners of the globe.

Adam G. Force 19:53

Mm hmm. I know that feeling. So, you know, and I think it’s important for people to realize that you know, and they are earlier days that the sweat equity is important, I mean, so, you know, when you’re putting in that time, I’m curious, like you’re creating this content, what has been your way, as you know, SEO takes a while to pick up. Especially if you don’t have a newer site, you don’t have the authority recognized by Google yet. So you may not, you know, you may not rank right away, and then let alone get traction from an article for another nine months, or whatever it is. So how else are you trying to or successfully getting your content in front of people?

Cory Ames 20:33

Sure, so yeah, obviously, SEO is more of a game of patience. So long term game. But I would say that, you know, outside of that organic search, that we’ve been able to accumulate, it’s predominantly partnerships, you know, so really, if you categorize traffic into three different buckets, you know, it’s that organic, traffic, paid content, or paid traffic, and then it’s referral based traffic predominantly. And so for us, you know, we’ve, as I mentioned, you know, now some hundred plus episodes into the podcast, we’ve been able to build a lot of really good relationships. And so, of course, you know, in the podcast exchange, you might, one of my number one goals with that, and hosting folks on the podcast is to, you know, have them feel like it’s a, it’s a special experience, you know, because I’m very grateful for the time that they’ve, they’ve taken to spend with us, you know, share their expertise, share their story. And so we really want to do our best, you know, to make it meaningful, not just something that’s transactional, you know, every other podcast that you’ve been on. So as a product of that, you know, we really kind of set the stage for what we feel are pretty good relationships. And we’ve had a lot of partners, communities that were attached to promote our content, things as a product to that. So you know, every single podcast episode, for the most part gets shared by our guests, you know, and that’s not always something you can count on. But now, that’s been a wonderful way for us to get plugged in to audiences that we wouldn’t otherwise you know, and when you’re bootstrapping, and budgets are tight, it’s going to be predominantly organic, and then maybe sharing from you know, referral partners that you’ll be able to get that sustainable traffic early on, especially when you’re, you know, really trying to refine and articulate your business model. You can’t just really throw paid traffic onto a funnel that’s super unproven. You know, it kind of depends on where, where your bandwidth is for, you know, experimentation and testing. And so it’s been predominantly those those partner sources that we’ve been grateful to get more exposure to places that we otherwise wouldn’t have.

Adam G. Force 22:29

Yeah, and you’re right, you can’t always rely on people to share those things. Yeah. It’s like we do the magazine. And we, you know, we’re, oh, man, we’re getting all these famous people, and they’re gonna share it to their massive networks. The only real big share was guys like Gerard Adams, and Jay Shetty and stuff like that. But most of the time, these guys did not put it in the circulation of their strategies.

Cory Ames 22:52

Oh, no, yeah, it’s that’s something that I’ve learned from the podcast in reading a lot on podcasting, and how to grow a podcast, everybody usually set like, there’s two things I see most commonly said, it’s like, oh, build out your show notes for SEO purposes, like just have a good set of show notes for SEO, and then to, you know, get guests to share your show. And those have been probably the greatest kind of misconceptions, I think, that I’ve seen in growing a podcast, that one, you know, with SEO, like, it doesn’t do you very good normally, to, you know, receive traffic off of like, the guests name or the guest company, you know, people who are searching for that probably aren’t searching for, you know, what your, your business is about, or even, you know, what, what kind of topic is being discussed on the show. And so, you know, we’ve seen, we’ve created really great show notes over the last year, and so many of those get such little ongoing traffic after the fact that we’ve published them, unless we, you know, really manually promote it, but no organic search, right? So we try to construct our show notes instead, kind of like blog posts, you know, because people, most shows aren’t interviewing celebrities of any kind, right? You know, we like to think that they are in our space, but, you know, name ID is not as big in this space of, you know, social enterprise or social entrepreneurship as it might be in film, you know, or something like that. And so, you know, we build them around the topics that people might be interested in. And then on the other end of that with, with partners, you know, you don’t want to be off putting in any sort of way, you know, you want to give them the option to promote it, obviously. And, but not force it upon them. Because people don’t like that. No, don’t like that. No. And and so what we’ve got to see is by really just prioritizing the experience, you know, more often than not, we can get those episodes in circulation, but by all means, it’s you know, we’re never pushing that we’re never leading with that. It’s always Hey, at your discretion, if you so choose, you know, whether you feel comfortable or not, you know, totally up to you. We just like to, you know, focus on did they enjoy their experience, you know, being a guest on our show.

Adam G. Force 24:57

Yeah, I mean, that that’s really what the focus needs to be it’s, you can’t, you can’t have the expectation of that kind of distribution and support and all that stuff. But a lot of times, you know, it depends on who you’re interviewing or working with. And I guess, you know, when it comes down, and one thing I have found is that they’re usually willing to do like a review for a podcast. But as far as sharing to their audiences, networks can’t always rely on that. But I found that at the end of a show, you usually would ask someone to do like a review, because that’s valuable, like on iTunes, and for the algorithm and all that kind of stuffs. And, and they usually will do stuff like that. So that that that tends to work. And, you know, I didn’t always do that for Change Creator podcast, and then even just like, the past year, I just kind of started doing that. And I was surprised that people were following through with that, you know, and I think it’s because you have a good conversation, you connect, and there’s value there. And they’re like, you know, they you have them on the line, it’s different when you’re just emailing someone cold, versus we just smoked for and a half hour, and now you’re asking for a little help, you know, what I mean? Makes me

Cory Ames 26:05

Absolutely, yeah, that’s, that’s why I’ve loved the podcast has been just a door opener, you know, for so many different relationships that are, you know, directly or indirectly relevant to our business, you know, it’s just been such a, a source of enrichment and fulfillment. In doing so, over the last two years, I highly recommend it, you know, if if people think that they might have the aptitude or interest in sustaining one

Adam G. Force 26:31

Yeah, well, that’s the thing too, I, you know, we get a lot of people that want to jump into a podcast. And it is, it can be tough and, and I want to touch on SEO in a minute. But, you know, starting a podcast, there’s a lot to it, especially if you’re not technically savvy, or you don’t, and you don’t, and then you have to do the editing, the marketing, the distribution, all this stuff. You know, it’s a bit of an operation, you got to get the recruitment down, and you got to, you know, do the interviews and all that stuff. So a lot of people tend to get distracted, or they think they’re gonna monetize it, you know, real quick and make a good chunk of change off like advertising monetization. And right, you know, that’s a lot more difficult than you might think you need some big numbers to do that stuff. The relationship building is great. And I agree with you like building that network and connecting with people having great conversations, all that stuff is super valuable. But I, I have found that like, when people are trying to sell an offer, and they have a product, whether it’s service or tangible, but they’re doing the podcast, and their early days, there’s a there’s a bit of it can be a bit of a distraction at the same time. So it’s kind of like, it’s it’s, I think, for your company is like more media focus, it makes a lot of sense. Same for me, we started with the podcast, but I think if I had to do it all over again, I might rethink that and start with a product that I sell immediately. And I’m curious on your thoughts just on the workload, the effort behind the podcast, based on the ROI that comes out of it, like, what would you advise now that you’ve done over 100 episodes, and you started this thing?

Cory Ames 28:11

Sure. So yeah, I mean, just to reiterate what you mentioned on maybe more traditional advertising or sponsorship models, yeah, you kind of have to throw out throw that away. Yeah, if you seriously think that that’s gonna sustain it, I think it’s like, you know, 1000 downloads is equivalent to maybe $20, maybe, or something, you know, for, right. And so, you know, that’s not a good, good approach to take. And so you do have to, you know, consider a few things. You know, for us, first and foremost, you might my priority was to install some good systems and processes around it, because I knew, you know, if more than the the effort of, you know, preparing for the interviews, hosting the interviews, recording them, you know, and kind of strategically thinking about the content, if more of the process involved me than that, you know, we’re we’re not going to, we wouldn’t hit 100 shows like we have, you know, yeah, consistently publishing twice weekly. Right. And so with that in mind, obviously, there’s more expenses that we accrue on, you know, what it costs to produce an individual show. Yeah. And so, you know, you have to be prepared that it will require some resources. And I think if you’re going to be serious about podcasting, you should invest the resources. But exactly like you said, You know, I think you have to know what you’re getting yourself into, as to how you can sustain it on the other end. So, yeah, for us, you know, we did a lot more consulting and service, you know, in the first year of our business than we do now. And so, the, it just so happened, that the guests that we’re reaching out to were potential clients for us, you know, and so I talked about, you know, cold email outreach versus inviting someone on for an interview, you know, you’re gonna get a lot more conversations and it’s a great door opener, you know, to see if, you know, validate some of your assumptions or hypotheses at this person in there. company might might be in need of your services or could could benefit from your services. So, for us, you know, we were able to turn around and again, with service based contracts, especially when they’re, you know, kind of five figure six figure contracts over a year. It’s a long sales cycle. And it takes a lot of time to build trust. Yep, you know, but we were able to see a positive ROI on on the podcast from, you know, pretty early on because of that,

Adam G. Force 30:25

That’s a good strategy. And that’s why I brought it up. Because I think it’s an important point, because you hear it a lot, like, oh, start a podcast, build the audience. And people have a misconception, that that’s how they’re gonna make money. Right, and that that’s gonna be like their bread and butter. But it’s a lot of work. And you need to know what you’re getting into. And you need to have a plan on how to actually monetize now, your monetization strategy of building partnerships, doing consulting, I think this is a powerful approach, especially for early stage businesses, is to really connect with clients work with clients on as part of your revenue channel while you’re building up the business. Right. So having that as an approach to build these partnerships is great. So to me, that’s the missing piece that a lot of people may not catch, or understand that you have in your pocket. Up, you know, we did something similar to like, I would connect with people on podcast, and they big Hey, I’m going to be in Miami, and we’d go get breakfast. And then we talk about their business. And we do some work. And, you know, early days, even to this day, depending on the client, like we still take some clients, and we will do a do it for you service, right, we have our membership and our program that we teach all this stuff. But we also do do it for you services, and we have some some other stuff we leveraged with our SEO strategies on our site with clients, and you know that the b2b stuff is valuable. So I think there’s, there’s always big money there. So if you do have some intellectual property to share with people, I think that you nailed it with the podcast as a great way for a lead generation tool.

Cory Ames 31:58

Absolutely, I mean, you just have to know what like be more more familiar with the medium that you’re getting yourself into, you know, just purely as a volume based lead in traffic strategy, podcasting is not that great. Because I think growing a podcast is a little bit more unless you have an existing kind of built in audience email is a lot of traffic around your site. You know, in social media platforms, that makes it a lot easier, obviously, but growing one from scratch, as we did, you know, with no existing traffic around our site, it’s a long, it’s a hustle to get it to, you know, what would seem kind of any, you know, me coming from the SEO space, I’m seeing 10s of thousands, you know, 50,000 hundred thousand visitors to the month in a site. And then I start growing a podcast, I’m like, Damn, this is hard. And like, I’m not seeing the same numbers that I normally would. And so you know, it’s it’s great for for nurturing relationships with an audience. It’s a much more committed committed medium than people scanning blog posts, consuming blog content like that, or email newsletters. You know, podcasting is great for for nurturing and cultivating relationships. And then, you know, for early podcasters, if you are looking for that, that source of monetization or sustainability, you know, the most valuable relationships you’re going to get out of the podcast are not necessarily listeners to start, but it’s probably the people that you’re going to have on the show, you know, whether that’s some sort of, you know, joint joint venture partnerships you can craft up, or if you can serve them, you know, specifically, of course, you do have to be, you know, delicate with how you have those Converse, you don’t want it to seem like it’s explicitly a mechanism for, you know, creating sales conversations for you. So you do have to be, you know, Cognizant and authentic, about how you do that, but it’s probably going to be the guest relationships. Yeah, that that will be the most important for you in the first year, honestly. You know, we we focus there.

Adam G. Force 33:56

Yeah, I think that’s, that’s good advice. So let’s touch on SEO, we’re kind of hitting our time here, but I want to just kind of talk a little bit about it, because it’s so important. And it’s really valuable. I think that you know, I’m a big fan of it. And because it’s sustainable. Now, there’s lots of little tricks and things like, you know, to stay on top of as far as like Google, you know, algorithms and all that stuff. But, you know, you have a, I’ve seen a lot of companies, Cory where they get investment media companies, you know, and they will pump out content, and then they promote the hell out of Facebook and other things. And you’ll see, like we will, we’ll go into h refs, or whatever tools we use, and we’ll look at their traffic patterns, right? And we will kind of investigate and diagnose a bit, and we see the massive spikes for the next like six months after or a year after those investments. And then all of a sudden, it’s like it falls off a cliff. And we’re like, Hmm, I wonder what happened and what we what Amy and I would talk about, you know this maybe two years ago, we’d be looking deep into this stuff. We’d be like, okay, so they got that investment. They spent all the money, but they didn’t have real content strategy or SEO strategy in place. Whereas those short lives bikes that they paid for, once the money’s gone, boom, like that’s it, it falls off a cliff. But with if you have smart SEO, why I love it, and I’m sure why you love it is because once you start building it up, it’s like a snowball, and it becomes reliable, reoccurring traffic over time.

Cory Ames 35:28

Definitely, yeah, no, I, I totally agree. I you know, and I think that SEO can kind of seem a little bit like a dark art or something. As people think about it, like, I’ve been asked, like, how much do you pay Google, you know, to get to the top spot, maybe a little less so now than a few years ago, but you know, what, there’s, there’s a few principles or components for me that it seemed to be most important. You know, while SEO can be complex, you know, that’s kind of why I’ve had the job that I’ve had in the last few years. You know, it really boils down to a few things, you know, to kind of break it down as simply as we can, you know, you in at the end of the day, what Google wants to do is provide the searchers with the absolute best potential possible result, you know, for whatever it is that they’re searching for, what question that they had, what problem they’re trying to solve, you know, what topic they’re wanting to research more or learn more about. Google wants them to be as satisfied with their result as possible when they click on the second search for search or what have you. And so what I always tell people is to think about when you’re creating, you know, your blog posts or content for your site, you know, think about how you can orient to that experience, you know, what would provide the most comprehensive, engaging blog post for what I’m imagining is my, my potential reader, you know, or potential site visitor as possible, you know, and, of course, that’s a horizon line, it’s, it’s tough to get that you work to it over time. But reverse engineering, everything that you do in this sense of, you know, thinking about how your site technically can perform. So like, if your site’s, you know, taking 10 seconds to load that’s going to be distracting to the user experience, right, and they’ll bounce off and leave, you know, if you think about the content itself, if it’s actually unique, you know, telling maybe an interesting story, or sharing, maybe relevant or interesting facts and data, things that people are really going to hang on to, that’s going to provide, you know, a much more positive experience than maybe what I see a lot of SEO companies produce, which is just, you know, some sort of kind of me to content or Mirage content, where it looks like everything else, you know, that is on the internet. You know, you want want to take that top line of what’s going to be the absolute best resource I can create and reverse engineer everything from there from the technical to the content, you know, to everything in between.

Adam G. Force 37:51

Yeah, yeah. And it’s a deep topic. I mean, we can go on for hours talking about SEO, obviously, and, you know, the hierarchy and the structure of the sites. I mean, it’s amazing how many times we have like, had to think through just how, because you can slice and dice the organization of your site in many ways. And you want to have certain things linked to your homepage for SEO purposes versus other pages and things like that. And it’s interesting, you know, like we, we have certain articles that do very, very well consistently for SEO. And I think one of the things I love is, if you have the right strategy in place, you are attracting the right people, right. So then when you have products, and you have your sales funnel set up, it’s going to be relevant. So like, if you have people coming into SEO, and then you have a lead generation mechanism set up to give them a first step towards you know, your, your journey to be a buyer. The conversion rates go up, right when they’re coming through the right stuff, because you’re attracting the right people. So there’s a nice, a nice flow and sequence, if you’re thinking it through on from head to toe, right. So, you know, we have an article about 21, like the top, or I think it’s 21 of the top leadership podcast. So people are interested in a leadership podcast, that’s a great start for us to get the right kind of person to our site, who’s going to be interested in what we’re offering. So thinking I like to make sure people are thinking like, what kind of content we’re putting out there not just to get eyeballs, but to attract the right customers for my products, right?

Cory Ames 39:20

Absolutely. And you know, when you can get into the nitty gritty of like keyword research and all this kind of stuff, but you know, I like to start from, you know, suggesting to people like what what questions are your customers currently asking or have historically asked you, you know, like in the sales process, business development process, you know, what sort of things are they interested in, you know, attempt to deconstruct what those you know, needs are those pain points and those challenges are in construct your content around that, because if you’ve been asked those questions before, there is a possibility that other people are as well interested in it, which is essentially what keyword research you know, this component of SEO is doing is providing For you, you know this, this data as to what people on the internet are searching for what people on the internet are actually interested in. So start with real people, you know, and see what questions you’re getting asked and build your content ideas around that.

Adam G. Force 40:14

100%. And, you know, I think we’ll wrap up here, but I think that that one of the beautiful parts of really locking that in is you got to be out there talking to your customers, if you’re not having those conversations, it’s everything is then a hypothesis when it comes to the, you know, the questions like you start in the right point, what questions have you already heard, and a lot of people if you’re not having conversations with your clients, or potential customers, or you know, all that stuff, you have a hard time really knowing them well, and if you don’t know them, well, it’s really hard to create content that they’re going to be looking for. Right.

Cory Ames 40:49

Definitely, yeah, no, that is certainly the first place to start. And I know we’ve we’ve touched a bit on podcasting, but this is one of the reasons I loved it, you know, because it was it was constantly triggering good conversations with people in my space. So just another plug for podcasting. Yeah,

Adam G. Force 41:04

yeah. Awesome, man. So I think that should wrap us up here I appreciate you just kind of sharing your experience building up grow ensemble, you guys are still young brand and it’s nice to kind of have conversations as you guys are on the front lines doing something cool and supporting the social impact space and all that kind of stuff. So appreciate that. And let’s tell people how do they learn more about grow ensemble get in touch with your podcast, all that good stuff? Where do they go?

41:35

Sure. So we host the twice weekly show The Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Podcast so available anywhere you listen to your podcasts, of course, but you can go to Growensemble.com where you can easily find that our whole you know, 100 plus episode feed and then as well Adam, you know, as it relates to SEO and some digital marketing specific stuff, we put together a little resource for the audience here at Change Creator, you go to grow ensemble.com backslash creator, and you can find a 10 point SEO checklist for mission driven entrepreneurs. So we’ll get folks started with a few of the basic components of SEO technical content in building your authority in the eyes of Google.

Adam G. Force 42:15

Let me just write that down. So grow ensembl.com forward slash creator Yep. Got it. All right. Yeah. So guys, we’ll have that just in the show notes when that gets live on Change Creator calm and you’ll be able to grab that stuff. And we’ll take it from there. So Cory again, thanks for your time keep doing what you’re doing appreciate all the work and the the push towards better businessman.

Cory Ames 42:44

Thanks a lot, Adam. Thanks for

Adam G. Force 42:46

giving me the time. Got it. All right. Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Adam & Danielle: What is the Backbone of a Great Marketing Strategy?

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What is the backbone of a great marketing strategy? Adam and Danielle discuss what every business MUST have to position their business right, create smart content, build relationships and ultimately win the hearts and wallets of the people they serve!

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Danielle Sutton 02:16

I’m co creator of the captivate method and hang out with Adam and Amy and do all kinds of fun things together.

Adam G. Force 02:23

Yeah, we are here to talk a little bit about, you know, what the backbone of a great marketing strategy actually is. And you know what it isn’t. It’s really important. I mean, it’s funny how many companies big and small, really miss this. So if you don’t have a really great marketing strategy, which is the backbone of your business, what happens? There’s a couple of pitfalls. Well, people get confused. And a confused person never really buys. So you’re probably seeing that with your business. And you become your content becomes kind of all over the place and inconsistent. Right, because you don’t, you don’t have something that is kind of clearing the path of where you should take that content. Any other thoughts there? Danielle?

Danielle Sutton 03:09

Yeah, I mean, I think the, if you don’t have this backbone for your marketing, two things happen, right? You, you say too many things all over the place. And you’re just rambling. You’re kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, especially on for media, right? Because it’s easy to just throw a post up here. And you, you know, you have all these internet marketing folks saying you have to post every day four times. It’s like, you have the tactics in the back of your mind and you’re just kind of throwing things out there without the strategy, or the opposite thing can happen is you just go quiet. And you just don’t say anything because you’re not necessarily sure what to say. Right? So those are two of the issues or you waffle back and forth. And then people are just really confused about what what are you doing?

Adam G. Force 03:55

You know why this happens too? It happens to all of us, right? In business….because we get to a point where when we ask tactical questions, we get tactical answers. And those answers lead us on a path that really isn’t serving the business that in the way that it should. And it all starts with asking the wrong question and say, No, and you have to think about I mean, should a business really be just a product or a service provider? Or should it be a vision that an audience can actually subscribe to and believe in and get excited about being part of Now think about that, think about the companies you love. There’s so many big ones out there that we get excited about. If you look at Tesla and Apple as the big ones, everybody knows, they created a vision that people want to be part of. And I think a key takeaway is really something you said earlier, Danielle, right, is that you can’t really separate your story from your business, right?

Danielle Sutton 04:56

Yeah, and that’s why that’s really the backbone of it. That. One thing about marketing is, like you said, the tactics. You I think, if you’re asking those tactical questions, you’re asking yourself, What? How often should I post on Facebook? Okay? So that’s technically a marketing strategy if you sit down and figure that out, but and you could do that on Facebook, and you could do that for your email. And you could even do that for your website. So you’ve maybe thought through your strategies for each of these different places or even you know if your brick and mortar, okay, but what is the backbone? What are they all connected to? And really, marketing is not separate from the ethos and the vision of your business. So, like what you said Adam, about the businesses that we get really excited to be part of and to purchase from and be fans of and advocates for, whether they’re apple or you know, the corner coffee shop, it’s because they have a vision that you subscribe to, and that vision doesn’t come from an isolated Facebook page. It comes From that marketing brand story, being baked into everything you do in your business, everything you share across all the channels, and how do you know how to keep that consistent? It’s your brand story is the narrative that you share. And it’s something that’s always consistent.

Adam G. Force 06:19

It becomes the North Star, right? I mean, so. So the answer of what the backbone of a great marketing strategy is a clearly communicated story that is the backbone of a strong marketing strategy. And I think people misunderstand what story is in business because it’s not just the stories we put on social media and that we say on stage and things like that. There is something outside of that that’s much bigger. And that is that brand story. It’s the ethos it is what you are all about in a very punchy statement, right? Like you should be very clear because this becomes the theme. Everything you do the content and all the stuff that we said, you know, that becomes like a pitfall for people. tactically, it now has a North Star, right? So a lot of a lot of big brands have like AI big ideas and visions and dreams and all these things that they want to share. And they know what they stand for in their minds. But when it comes down to actually communicating the story, throughout the online ecosystem, like Daniel said, their content gets very confusing and ambiguous. And like we said, it becomes inconsistent, because they’re not clear. Now everyone might say, Well, I have a story and I’m gonna put together but the clarity on really what that brand story is so important, in order to have very good marketing that follows, right?

Danielle Sutton 07:42

Yeah, absolutely. And this actually came up in a coaching call a few weeks ago. One of our captivators has this great product, and there’s actually so many big vision benefits to it like she’s been able to combine the environmental sustainability and sustainable employment and like a really kick ass actual product to solve the need itself. And so we were talking about well, each of these could be a story. But actually what’s like that bigger story? What’s the five word statement that brings it all together? And then those individual stories can reinforce that bigger message. Right? So I think that’s kind of the trap that you were mentioning, that people fall into is, yeah, I tell stories here, there and everywhere, like my newsletters, really fun to read. Okay, great. But is it serving that bigger vision? And is it communicating something that your audience can remember and share?

Adam G. Force 08:41

And actually, I love that you just said that what your audience remembers and shares them that is more important than ever today? Because with the rise of social media and digital, there is more emphasis today on the fact that it’s not just the brand who’s curating the story. The story which becomes the marketing right? is also now being facilitated by the customers more than ever. So you can have them telling a bad story about you. Or a very good story, which is what you really represent and what you’re about. So you have to be clear, like some of this is out of your hands, but what you’re putting out there is what they’re gonna feed off of, and it’s the story they tell about you as well. So that’s, that’s a big part of this. I mean, you look at like, you know, I’ve seen interesting debates around guys like Russell Brunson, who we’ve interviewed a couple times and you know, he’s always been a super cool guy and we put them in the magazine and stuff like that. But this is a guy who got out there. You know, he started this he we all know he loves junk mail as a kid, if you read his books, and he’s had a potato gun business. He’s gone ahead and created this hundred million dollar business. And it was something that is not just because he has software Click Funnels. It was because he got out there and he created a culture, whether you like the culture or not, that’s that that’s, you know, aside the story here, but he created a culture that people are excited to be part of. If you look at his funnel, hacking live conferences and stuff, it is just like an insane club, you know, and people go nuts for this. He has certain values and ideas and the way he does things which are part of his brand story that people now really thrive off of and they understand clearly what he’s about and they want to be part of that vision that he’s building It’s really impressive on what he’s done and I think there’s a million stories we can tell about it you know, change craters vision to is we want you to be a change crater. We want to use business to change the world. We want you to live your truth and make a difference that way because only when we live our truth, do we make the biggest contribution back to the world, right? So realigning ourselves and, and taking those steps that’s what Change Creator is all about. Collaboration is a major value for us. I’m sure you have stories too, Danielle, anything come to mind of entrepreneurs that stand out to you?

Danielle Sutton 11:09

Well, yeah, I mean…

Adam G. Force 11:12

I’ll put you on the spot.

Danielle Sutton 11:14

Yeah, well, I think I mean, it’s easy to go to the examples that get shared often like Steve Jobs, and they are so memorable, right. And so there’s so much passion there that’s shared from not just the product, but what that person has been through and what they stand for, like, you know, if you think of Steve Jobs in his famous speeches about introducing his new products, did any of us ever need any of those products when they were launched? Absolutely not. It’s not about problem solving at this point in the world. I mean, of course, the products and services that we consume, do solve kind of surface level problems, but it’s more than that. It’s about You know, tapping into the aspirational vision of ourselves. Yeah. And as a consumer, no matter whether it’s you know, hiring a coach or buying a pair of shoes, or buying a house, you know, or whatever it is going to a certain hairdresser, all of these things, give ourselves our identity as as a as a person. And so we’re kind of connecting to the identity of the people we consume from.

Adam G. Force 12:27

Well hey… Let’s talk about socap. As an identity story, we met with Jake ORAC, right? So Jake Orac, we were hanging out with him. He was somebody that was on the first cover of change care magazine. And he built this incredible business right where he’s keeping culture alive. That’s a tagline for Jake that’s part of his brand story, keeping culture alive. And he sells bags that use these artists and designs from around the world to support their cultures that were being overtaken by industry. And so when we were there, what happened Danielle, we Go someone comes up and they know oh my god. So ethno tech bags. So cool what he has his story out there, how he built this company why he’s doing it? In a glance, people know what he’s about. And when they buy a bag, what is Jake say? He says, Welcome to the tribe and people are excited. Oh, man, I’m so excited to be part of this. And guess what else happens when he’s positioned this way with a powerful story is he has a bag that cost twice as much as a regular bag, but are excited to buy it.

Danielle Sutton 13:30

And yeah, it makes you feel good, right? Like Amy and I both bought bags from him and we’ve carried them around for the rest of the conference. And we were happy as clams you know? It doesn’t matter that it was twice as much. We wanted to be part of that story. And that I mean, meeting the founder is actually a really interesting example. Right? Because we buy from people and not from companies and so that’s why you actually have a much higher affinity for any products or services where you know, the Founder you know, that they This is their business, their passion, right? Like if you think of a corner coffee shop, would you rather go support someone who you’ve met the owner and they know your name and they give you your favorite coffee every time when you walk in versus, you know, a Starbucks modle. It makes a big difference.

Adam G. Force 14:18

We invest in humans more than anything. And the more we get that story out there, the better and, you know, I look at Crystal Earle, like we were at a conference with her. And Amy and I were talking and a girl comes up to her and she’s like, she was…People would go up to Crystal, I can’t talk right now. And they’d be like, telling her story back to her. Right? And Chris was like, Man, this happens all the time. People come up to me, and they tell my story back to me. And because her story is just so riveting and powerful, it’s incredible. And so when you hear that, it’s like man, this really works and people are because here’s the thing, you can have all the products, all the features. All the stuff in the world It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the right brand story and you don’t know how to create an emotional connection. If you can create the emotional connection, none of the other stuff matters, the traffic the visitors, all the followers, it doesn’t matter when you have someone coming up to you saying your story back to you and they emotionally are tied to what you stand for. And not just the item. The items cool, but they’re actually buying into the vision. This is game changer.

Danielle Sutton 15:29

And we have a really funny example of when this just falls flat and doesn’t work, don’t we, Adam?

Adam G. Force 15:36

Yeah, we were talking before this or like, what’s a great story of a company that really didn’t um, you know, have their their brand story on lockdown and not a position themselves. Is that more like, I don’t know, because we don’t know their story. Yeah,

Danielle Sutton 15:50

They’re not on our radar. They’ve fallen off…

Adam G. Force 15:54

I would have to work too hard to dig that up.

Danielle Sutton 16:01

An example is like you’d be memorable and shareable. And the way you do that with marketing is to weave it into the full vision of your business and have a cohesive brand story that is authentically everywhere in your business.

Adam G. Force 16:18

Let’s reiterate that. Alearly communicated story is the backbone of a strong marketing strategy. All right. That is key. Ladies and gentlemen. Um, I think we’re gonna wrap up I think that’s it right? Otherwise, I’ll just start babbling and repeating myself.

Danielle Sutton 16:34

Yeah, no, you ended that’s what we want to remember…

Adam G. Force 16:37

I mean, this is so important. And I know a lot of people misunderstand storytelling, but there’s this these different layers that I hope we create clarity for you about. Alright, that wraps it up. We’ll catch you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast, visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive you Your business forward

interview

Greg Shepard: Should You Be Thinking About Your Exit From the Start?

Listen to our exclusive interview with Greg Shepard:

Change Creator · Greg Shepard: Should You Be Thinking About Your Exit From the Start?

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Should you be thinking about your companies exit from the start? What does that do for your business? We spoke with the founder of Boss Capital and serious entrepreneur (14 companies sold!) to find out the strategies you need to know!

GREG SHEPARD is the CEO and founder of BOSS Capital Partners. He is a Serial Entrepreneur, Author, Speaker and Angel Venture Capital Investor with a legacy of building and running sustainable growth businesses. Driven by a transformational leadership style, Greg has spearheaded multiple company exits in the BioTech, TransitTech, AdTech and MarTech space. Two of his former companies were acquired by eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions in January 2016 as a part of a cross-brand deal totaling largely over $900M. The transaction comprised the purchase and sale of numerous companies, two of which were Greg’s.

He has won: Tech Deal of the Year Over $250 million, Private Equity Deal of the Year Over $500 million to $1 billion and Cross Border Deal of the Year Over $500 million to $1 billion to name a few. Most recently, he has been authoring a book titled: ‘Meet the BOSS – The Agile Playbook for Startups’ slated to publish soon. Alongside the book will be a TEDx talk.

Learn more about Greg and his work at > https://www.gregoryshepard.com

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Greg Shepard 03:00

Fantastic, thank you.

Adam G. Force 03:01

Yeah, I appreciate you being here. You have such an incredible background. I’m excited to dive in everybody listening, you know, Greg has done so much it’s but I had to have a very serious prep talk in order to figure out where we need to put our attention. So there’s a lot of good stuff that we’re going to get into. And I’m excited that you focus on helping entrepreneurs today. It’s such an pivotal part of addressing some of the biggest problems around the world. So, Greg, if you could just give a little background about like, what’s going on in your world today and how you got there with boss and the direction you’re taking?

Greg Shepard 03:33

Yeah, so I started out with nothing. And I started building companies and I did 12 of my own startups, actually. 13 another one just sold a couple weeks ago. But I did a ton of these different startups. And in that process, what I was trying to figure out is how to get this down. You know, get it down to the point where I could understand everything. So I did a lot of planning ahead of times and a lot of retrospectives. And then I looked at all the things I call operating systems. So that’s like, you know, a lot of people don’t even know about a lot of them. But Six Sigma, everybody knows about agile, lean con Bonn, you know, so on and so forth. And during that period of time, I would test these different operating systems at different stages of the lifecycle of business, the maturity of a business, and in different companies. And I was able to figure out a way to align these things. So they aligned with the five levels of a business, and the five levels of funding and so on. And so there’s always five for some reason, but there’s these different five levels of things. And so what I did is I figured out how to do it, and then I would test things and then I would see what worked, what didn’t work, and I got it down to a science. So basically, instead of it being, you know, this, you know, the fog of war kind of walking in and never knowing what’s going to happen the day you walk into the startup, you know, it’s more of a science and so it’s more proactive than reactive. Yeah. And then I turned it into something where I decided to share with everybody to try to increase the the success rate of entrepreneurs and startups. Why is that important to you? I started with nothing myself. You know, my mom was a nun, my dad was a priest, they left the church and got married, and then, you know, adopted and foster children. And so I was born into this, this world of altruism. And I found it very, very difficult to get off the ground. Because I didn’t know anything. And I was like, Well, you know, these entrepreneurs, they are the future, right? So every time an entrepreneur succeeds, you see that money move from this big giant block. You know, that 1% that everybody talks about down to these entrepreneurs who have not only worked hard, but usually don’t have much and then it changes their life and because they’re different people, because they’ve had, you know, they’ve had to go through some grit to get where they are. They’re very altruistic. So see a lot of them giving money to charities and you know, you see them paying off student loans and their employees or stock options and all this stuff happens. And I was like, I can actually help with wealth distribution by helping more entrepreneurs succeed. And that’s what I decided to focus on. And this is the angle I decided to do it with boss.

Adam G. Force 06:18

Yeah. Interesting. And so what is boss specifically do that is so beneficial for the entrepreneur?

Greg Shepard 06:26

So it’s the it’s an acronym, its business operating support system. So the concept is, is that it’s an operating system like you would have on your computer to support your business. And so it has five stages. And these five stages were developed after years of doing I did like 1200 interviews with entrepreneurs that succeeded those that failed investors, accelerators, just all kinds of people. At the same time, I also tried to figure out you know, in the in the world of operating systems, what else was out there? So I entered The Navy SEALs in the first fighting, we have Air Force manufacturing fire departments, please spawn anybody that has a process or has to have a process to be efficient. Yeah. And then I applied all that stuff. And when I learned about the five areas that businesses fail, I created five areas to prevent that failure from happening starting at the beginning.

Adam G. Force 07:23

Interesting. I love that. And so how does someone even like this is very new to me. I’ve never heard of someone creating, like now, is this an operating system that would replace like, how does that work? I mean, you have to install this instead of like your iOS operating system?

Greg Shepard 07:39

No. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Okay. I call it an operating system, but it’s not software yet. Anyway, it’s not software it is. You think of it in terms of an operating system, but it’s more of a methodology and a set of tools.

Adam G. Force 07:50

Got it. Got it. Okay. So, these are some key principles from your experience and a strategic methodology that will help guide people through a process That is designed to help them take the right steps with their business towards an exit, right?

Greg Shepard 08:09

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it starts out with keeping the end in mind at the very beginning, right? So one of the biggest problem I see and this is riddled all throughout all of the five different areas that they fail, is they don’t start with the end in mind. They don’t start by, okay, who’s going to buy my business? So it think about it this way. If you are if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re building a company, you’re building a company to solve a problem most of the time. I mean, there’s only two types of companies those that are creating taking advantage of an opportunity or those that are solving a problem in either scenario, you have a customer and a profile of the customer, you know who your customer is, you’d never build a product and then go figure out who your customer is. You know, you don’t want to be a solution looking for a problem. So, if that’s the case, and your business is only a product to your acquire, remember Remember that acquire who’s buying your business, they’ve already invested a ton of money in acquiring their customers that money is spent and invested. Yeah, what they want to do now is they want to grow the the lifetime value. So you have the customer acquisition cost the CAC to the lifetime value ratio, the only way for them to make money more money on the investment they already made in their current customers is to either buy or build a new product, and they always buy, they don’t build. So that new product has to match their current ICP ideal customer profile. So if you don’t start at the very beginning, thinking about who the customer is, of you’re the buyer of your business, then you could build your business and then go to try to sell it and say up Nope, not wrong but wrong profile, and then they’re not interested in buying it or your multiples going to be really low, because there’s no match. And that’s what synergies are.

Adam G. Force 09:53

So yeah, and I love that thought process. I don’t think you know anybody listening I just don’t think enough entrepreneurs are thinking About exits, you know, it’s Oh, no, I’m not gonna exit. It’s gonna, you know, be long time forever. This is my passion. I’m never gonna get rid of it and all that kind of stuff. But there is a certain perspective that comes when you are preparing and operating the business with the perspective of exiting, would you agree?

Greg Shepard 10:17

Oh, for sure. And if you’re raising money, the only way the investor gets their money back is when you sell. Yeah. So if you’re not thinking about an exit, when you’re talking to investors, and when you’re, you know, building your business, then you right there at that moment, you’re already off. Yeah, you’re dead, because you’re literally going to investor and saying, Hey, give me a million dollars and all this deck and all the stuff you put together to build this business. I don’t know when I’m gonna return your money. I have no idea. In fact, I’m not even planning for it. Right? I mean, you know, that’s insane.

Adam G. Force 10:47

Yeah, no, it is and you know, we’ve had those conversations and you definitely want to know the exit and I like the decision making that occurs because if you are going to sell it, that means that you really do need to create systems within that. business that someone could take over and start operating when you hand it off, right?

Greg Shepard 11:04

That is so smart. Nobody ever thinks that’s exactly right. So it’s like, think a business is a hell of a lot more complicated than IKEA furniture. And IKEA furniture comes with directions. Yeah, right. So when you go to try to sell your business, there’s that’s where another big point of failure is, they can’t sell it because the buyer can’t figure out how to operate your business. And therefore they can’t figure out how to take advantage of your product being sold to their customers.

Adam G. Force 11:30

Yeah.

Greg Shepard 11:30

So when you build a technology business, and you write code inside of the code, there are comments, things that explain what that line of code does. If you don’t have that, when somebody is evaluating your code, they’re going to be like, my engineers don’t even know what these things do. So we have no idea where to even start. Yeah. Now, you would never do that. Right. I mean, you know, you always, every programmer knows any engineer that’s out there knows that you have to put those comments in there so that, you know, people know oh, this does that. This does that. And this is that. So that’s like what you do. Right. And so the five stages of bas are first the Northstar, which is understanding where you’re going and when you’re going to get there, and who’s going to buy your business. So think of that as like a GPS. So if you’re going from one place to another, you need to have two localities, right, you have, do you know where you are? And you need to know where you’re going. Right? Yeah, otherwise, you’re never gonna get that.

Adam G. Force 12:25

True.

Greg Shepard 12:25

Yeah, you know. And then after that, you have to have a plan strategy. So that’s like turn by turn directions, including things like oh, there’s traffic or a detour or you’re going this fast. So that means that you’re going to arrive at this destination at this time. And then after that, you have to have the ability to execute on it. That means literally getting in the car and driving to that, you know, destination. And then after that, you have to have the ability to standardize it so other people can go the same route that you went, which is standardization that’s accountabilities, best practices. And that allows you to Figure out where you’re going to go and how you get there. So accountability is what is being done in who’s supposed to do it, which functional areas supposed to do it, best practices, how it’s supposed to be done and triggers or when it’s supposed to be done. And now you have literally, this is how the business runs. But there’s a lot more benefits than than just that huge number of benefits as you grow and scale. And then, after you get standardization, you go through the Kaizen loop, and Kaizen. And Japanese just means continuous improvement, which I got from the Toyota Production System back when Toyota went from being nothing to a monster, and having huge quality and retention rates on their revenue. Right. And so, you know, that part allows you to go back through the best practices, figure out where you can optimize to eliminate waste using the lean methodology, and then put it back into the plan. And that’s why it’s a loop.

Adam G. Force 13:53

Mm hmm. Yeah, that feedback loop. I love the lean methodology and yeah, The stuff you’re talking about is so important. And I think that, yeah, the the exit strategy and the decisions that people are making, creating those processes. You know, we coach a lot of different entrepreneurs also. And we have found that these are, these are major gaps for people. So when it comes to marketing, and you’re right, it’s like, where do we put our attention? How do we find focus what’s important? And if you have the right, I guess, if you have the right frame of mind and where you’re going, you can make smarter decisions. We always tell people, you come in here, I’m like, well, you guys want to join this program, but tell me where you want to be in 12 months, and if they can’t do it, I’m like, well, then I can’t help you. I’m like, you have no idea where you want to go. How am I going to get you there?

Greg Shepard 14:44

Yeah, exactly. So in the North Star, there’s a few different stages. So I actually broke down each one of these higher broader phases, yeah, into what I call gates, okay, so that the entrepreneur can walk through and sort of slice this up into smaller pieces, so that they I can get through one of these phases until they understand the whole system. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s really actually there’s going to be a, it caught the attention of UCSD, the University here, which only number two in technology to MIT to use it in their business program, and they’re doing a TV show, actually YouTube show on it, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Which is awesome. But

Adam G. Force 15:30

I love that. So that’s interesting how these things kind of pop up like that. And I’m wondering, you know, you’ve sold a lot of businesses now. So let’s just talk a little bit more about the exit strategies. So when we go through the boss system, you’re you’re setting people up through the stages, but what are some of the critical lessons that you’ve learned? Like you’ve obviously replicated the process by selling multiple companies? I mean, you you are identifying, you know, the key customers profile for buying the business, you know, people do that for their products. And I can almost see at the volume you’re at, you’re looking at businesses just as your widget that you’re selling. So it’s like you’re looking for that ideal customer? And what are just what are some of the things you’ve uncovered with regards to exit strategies? And and actually, making sure you understand who that that right customer for buying the business is ahead of time?

Greg Shepard 16:25

Yeah, so, you know, I look at probably, I don’t know, between 100 and 200 deals a month. And when I look at these deals I look at, I go through pitch after pitch after pitch, because you know, we invest in companies through boss Capital Partners. And in that process, I swear, probably one 10th of a percent of the time, do they even have two things that I think are really important one is a go to market strategy. And the other one is your exit strategy. Yeah, right. Like, how are you going to actually go to market and how are you going to exit and when they do, they don’t understand what that actually means. an exit strategy isn’t sitting there and going, Oh, I’m gonna sell to Google. I mean, Google is that’s like saying, I’m gonna travel, where are you gonna go? The United States? You know, what state what city? What, you know, I mean, it’s like, really, you know, so. So that’s one of the things. The other thing is that they don’t actually back into the acquisition like, why is this company going to buy? What is their ideal customer? And do those things align? What is the behavior of the buyer of your company in the past? Like, do they have a pattern of buying can’t do they have the money to buy? You know, how many companies have they bought, like all this sort of research that you do when you develop the ideal acquire profile, you know, the, so those two profiles are critical. And an exit strategy is a plan, which includes, you know, data around, you know, who’s going to buy and all the reasons why and how to build your company for that. The thing that people don’t understand is, it’s not like you can work on your company for three years and on the third year, go Okay, I’m going to sell it Then just do that, that that is not how it happened. You know, so you’re the whole three years you’re planning the entire three years, you’re planning for an exit. So everything that you’re doing in your business is moving it towards being acquired by somebody else. And I’m not saying build a shitty business and sell it quick, right? Really, really good business, but you have to do it in the direction. So it’s directionally correct to the end destination that you’re that you’re shooting for.

Adam G. Force 18:27

I think people get so overwhelmed, Greg with you know, just getting a product to sell and just getting off the ground and all the decisions they have to make. And, you know, there’s a ton of information out there that takes everybody in different directions and we see it happen all the time with different entrepreneurs, you know, before they come into our our own program, and I’m curious, like if they’re struggling just to sell the products and get all stuff. I mean, is it I feel like a lot of people will come to me and say, well, it’s really hard for me to focus on trying to sell the company when I’m just trying to sell the product…. What do you think about that?

Greg Shepard 19:04

You’re not trying to sell the company the whole time, you’re just building a company that is easy to buy.

Adam G. Force 19:11

Yes.

Greg Shepard 19:12

You know, so, there, you know that when you sell a business, there are certain, you know, sort of, you know, Crossroads that you have to go through. So, there’s a process to that, for example, you know, your customer and their customer being the same, as I’ve explained before, but also things like, how do they know that the technology is going to integrate? How do they know that the financial numbers will integrate and benefit them? How do they know that the culture is going to fit? Yep. You know, there are integrations that you know, so in that process, you know, there’s there’s a few different targets like big benchmarks that you’re shooting for. And typically, you know, in the exits that that I do and the way that boss functions is you sell to people that you already have started a relationship with over many years. Yeah. So yeah, you can’t just on that If you want to sell in three years, which is my business is usually selling three years, if you want to sell a business in three, even five years, you can’t start that process at three years, because you have to realize that just the acquisition itself, if it’s a 50 hundred million dollar deal, just that one process is going to take at least six months. And then before that even starts, you have to have a courting period. Right? That’s like another six months. So you’re a year out right there. Yeah. So you can’t start that process that you know, when you want to sell and then before that, usually, there’s some sort of a small investment that they make. And before that, usually there’s some sort of a partnership and before that, there’s some sort of integration and you know, so it’s like, you know, you can’t be like, okay, now I’m ready to sell and then start that period because you just added two extra years or three extra years onto your, your exit strategy. If you had thinking thought about that the whole time. You would be doing things that benefit your company company at the same time setting up an acquisition in the future. Which is something that a lot of people don’t think about.

Adam G. Force 21:02

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think, you know, you’d be having certain conversations, connecting with people that you think might be the right, you know, buyer. And I think through those conversations, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re going to be learning more, it’s kind of like consulting, like getting on a strategy call with a client to find out well, what are you guys up to? What are you looking for what’s important to you, and really kind of get that data so that maybe you can take your assumptions and turn them into real insights that you’re operating your business around? Right. So how do you know what the key milestones stones are that you want to hit in order to sell to that company? That probably doesn’t come without a lot of conversation with that company? Right?

Greg Shepard 21:43

Right, yeah. I mean, it’s a lot. So the analogy I give to entrepreneurs a lot of time to make it really understandable. As I say, listen, so it’s not like you meet a girl and you go, Let’s get married. It doesn’t work that way. Right? It’s like Okay, let’s go have coffee. Let’s have dinner. Let’s have dinner again. And again and again, you know, and then after a period of time, you’re like, I trust you, I care about you, all these things happen. And then you say, Okay, let’s get married. Yeah, when somebody buys your business, it’s like that there is a lot of courting that happens before that. And you can’t just start that you can’t just say, Okay, I want to sell now and then just do it. Yeah, it just doesn’t work that way. You know, and if it does, a lot of times, the transactions will fall apart in that process. And when they fall apart in that process, usually the entrepreneurs in a very bad place because the process of selling a business is a massive distraction. Yeah. So, you know, they’re working through this process, and they’re working through this and they’re distracted by it. So they’re not paying attention to their business. And then all of a sudden, now, the deal falls through and now they’re, it’s like, it’s devastating. Yeah, so two things happen. Either the deal falls through completely or they lower the price and change the terms and then they end up you know, which is a lot of times the strategy of the acquirer. Yeah is to, you know, kind of just, you know, they have a Yeah, there’s a term right treat him like mushrooms, keep him in the dark and feed him shit. You know? And, you know, so you know, there’s there’s terms for these things because they’re real, right? So if you’re not newer, and you’re, you’re planning this whole thing the whole time and that happens, you’re like, it doesn’t matter because it’s just the flow of your normal business.

Adam G. Force 23:19

Yes, that is so important. And it’s easy. I mean, we only have so much time and energy to invest, right? And that’s a valuable resource those things and so, you’re right. I mean, what the if you’re going to distract yourself with these things, you want to make sure you’re doing it the right way. So easy. It’s so easy to get distracted for all kinds of different things. And everybody has all these ideas. So…

Greg Shepard 23:44

BOSS keeps people focused and on the rails, right, because I call it squirrel syndrome. You know, when you walk your dog and it’s like squirrel, it just bolts off. Yeah, exactly. That’s what entrepreneurs are live. It’s in their nature. Yeah, and it’s a positive thing. But you got to have a you know, one of those leashes that goes out that runs out and then comes back.

Adam G. Force 24:04

Yeah. A little stretchy.

Greg Shepard 24:07

Shiny syndrome. Yeah, exactly. Cuz, you know, shiny syndrome is you know, shiny thing syndrome is is real for entrepreneurs. Oh yeah.

Adam G. Force 24:15

Oh, everyone’s got new ideas all the time as like people come on to our coaching calls and it’s like, Oh, I got it. I’m gonna do this new podcast, I’m gonna do this, it’s gonna be paying it. I’m like what happened to the primary focus of like your offer, like all the sudden you’re like off on another tangent? Yeah.

Greg Shepard 24:33

huge problem, huge problem. So boss keeps that focus, right? Because when you use boss correctly, what happens is your board deck, you know, what you’re telling your investors is your boss system. And you literally show them. You know what you planned and you want to show predictability and also for your buyer. Nobody wants to buy a company that’s unpredictable. So if you create a path of predictability, it keeps you focused. And it shows you in the retrospective what happened. Yeah, but it also shows you that you’re predictable, right? Which is key. No investor wants to make an investment into a business that’s unpredictable. Or the people are unpredictable, and no buyer wants to buy a business that’s unpredictable because they’re betting on that being predictable. Right?

Adam G. Force 25:15

Yeah, predictability I can imagine is super important. Now we have zero focus primarily, primarily been tech, different variations of tech companies.

Greg Shepard 25:26

Yeah, I mean, I’ve done I did a, a lender in my when I was younger, and I did a biotech plant environmental biotechnology company, but ever since the internet came out. I’ve been Yeah, I mean, this software is just, you can make anything it’s a it’s a literal, you know, you know, self manifesting playground.

Adam G. Force 25:53

Yeah, but how does one even think about that? I mean, how like, in other words, when I think of software, yeah, I can get a million ideas, but the actual putting it together processes where you get lost, like if you don’t know how to code or you know, any of that kind of stuff.

Greg Shepard 26:08

Yeah, but you don’t need to now, you know, there’s a lot of really good development houses, and they have really good product people. So if you have a concept and you are through ideation, you can go to one of these development houses. And you can actually, you know, ask them and they’ll supply you with a product person, which is key. A lot of people think, Oh, I just go into engineering and then I, you know, and a lot of engineers think they don’t need a product person, a product person is very critical. Okay. I always tell people, I’m like, do you have a product person know who’s doing product? Oh, I’m just doing it. No, man. No, that’s not that you can’t do, that’s a special…

Adam G. Force 26:46

Define that for people, define the product person.

Greg Shepard 26:49

So you know, basically the product person is not only the voice of the customer, but they’re also watching what’s going on in the marketplace with competitors and they take all of this data that comes in Including, you know, feedback that comes from the current customers, and the fantasies of the entrepreneur. And then they distill those down into requirements and the requirements boil down exactly what this thing looks like. And then the requirements are coded. So you can’t go from if you have an entrepreneur, acting as a product person, this is very, very, very big happens all the time. You have an entrepreneur who already has squirrel, you know, shiny thing syndrome, and they’re trying to manage the engineers, it’s going to cost 100 times more. So a lot of people go I can’t afford a product person, but you can because if you don’t, it’s going to cost more money. Because you’re going to be going all over the place. And the engineers their mindset in the way that they operate is off of like blueprints. So basically, not having a product person is like building a house without blueprints. It’s like a contractor just going for it.

Adam G. Force 27:51

Yeah

Greg Shepard 27:51

And you’re just walking over there every day and going No, no, no, no, no, sorry. I want to window here, not there. And the contractor is like, dude, I got to put a beam in there. I got to rip this hole. Fallout I got it, you know, and that is the issues, right? So if you have a product person, it’s like having an architect, draw out exactly the plans and what they’re supposed to do giving that to the contractor and having the contractor build exactly what’s on the plans. And then you do iterations you do, you know, you improve later on, after you get a proof of concept and validation, which are extremely crude critical. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 28:24

Yeah. And I mean, what kind of money is required up front to you know, get a get a tech product like this, you know, put together as beta work with a product person that isn’t that,

Greg Shepard 28:35

I mean, I’ve done I’ve done, you know, proof of concepts for 50 grand, you know, so you don’t, you know, I mean, it sounds like a lot to a lot of people. But to get a round of financing for 50 grand, even an ideation is pretty easy. But, you know, I’ve done him for that. And then you do iterations because you have to come to the table with something you can’t just come to the table with a stack of you know, PowerPoints And go, Okay, this is just, this is what I want to do. Now I want to raise a million dollars. Yeah. You know, they’re like, no, look, how about you start by showing me something, you know. So I’ll give you 25 grand. And then you can see what you can put together. And then you do a minimum what’s called an MVP, a minimal viable product. Yeah. And that’s the minimal the minimal stuff you need. That’s viable, meaning it works. So at that point, you’re not trying to at that, that stage of an MVP, there’s a lot of MVPs. But at that stage of an MVP, you’re just trying to get to the point that you can demo something to an investor, you get the money to create something, then that can be demo to a customer.

Adam G. Force 29:41

Yeah, I mean, and that’s interesting, because you’re saying to get an investment to get that first 50 grand, so someone’s just got to believe in the idea and say, Okay, I’ll give you 50 grand.

Greg Shepard 29:50

Yeah, but or you just do it yourself. I did it myself. I mean, I worked for jobs. And, you know, that’s how I did it. I just, I just put every dime I had into Um, in the beginning before I, you know, started making exits, I put everything I had into it worked a bunch of jobs, and you know, paid for myself literally, they would send an invoice. And you know, I’d be hustling, and I don’t I dealt with it sort of like paying your rent. Yeah, I was like, Okay, I know I’m gonna get a $5,000 invoice, I need to go make five grand. So I would go work make five grand and pay their invoice.

Adam G. Force 30:26

I mean, I love that because that’s the kind of stuff people have to do. I mean, sometimes you’re straddling two worlds, right? You got to do the work and then you got to push your push down the path where you have that vision right? So if you don’t just make money with your business right out of the gate, sometimes you have to actually make money doing things that maybe it’s not your ideal dream.

Greg Shepard 30:45

Yeah, and you know, it’s like if you’re, if you’re doing that strategy, even if you’re not doing your…

Adam G. Force 30:53

Greg I think I lost you.

Greg Shepard 30:56

Wait, can you hear me up?

Adam G. Force 30:57

There you go.

Greg Shepard 30:58

Okay. So you’re doing strategy on a diet, right means that you’re, you’re paying a, you have a finite amount of money to use for your, you know, to get to the point where you can get something that has a proof of concept. In those scenarios, who is doing the product and the technology engineering for you, is very critical. Because you can spend that money screwing around or you can spend that money getting something done. And furthermore, the way that the things are done are really incredible. Like you know, if you do a monolith, which is like one big piece of software versus micro services, which is individual pieces that interchange, when you later on and you build your software, if it’s on my monolith, you know, when you’re trying to do iterations, it’s like playing whack a mole. Every time you do something, something else breaks and you know, it’s a nightmare. Versus in microservices, only that one thing breaks instead of everything. Yeah. So there’s like a lot of stuff you have to think through when you’re doing that, that you don’t know that in a good engineering group does know because they built this thing 100 times. Yeah, you know, so they’ve learned those lessons, you go to them and you’re like, Look, all I want is this one, like, give me any right now on building software for boss to run boss. And because it’s all in spreadsheet right now. Got it. And you know, with these guys, I went to them and I was like, Listen, all I want is an MVP on the North Star, not the rest, just the North Star. I just want to get to that point. And I want to make sure it’s right. And I went to a group that I had used several times for other businesses. And that is the the correct way to go. You don’t want to you don’t you know, build a house by slapping the whole thing together immediately. You know what, Mike, I’ll give you a good analogy. When I was younger. I had this mentor named Jim Eubanks, this guy was so cool. I was just young and I was just fighting to try to make a living and I was on a mission. And every afternoon on Wednesdays, he would send me drive me out to this bus bench. And across the street from this bus and this is an LA in the summer and I’m wearing a suit It was awful, right and I’m on commission so I’m sitting there not making money and he dropped On this bus bench and across the street was a cyclone, fence and dirt lot. And sign said coming soon. And I was like, What the hell, I’m like sitting here, you know. And then for you know, for a long time, it just said coming soon and then a really long time they dug that deep hole that a building has to have. And then they laid all the foundation stuff. And then the thing just blew up. And after the building was done, he goes, Hey, what did you learn? And I was like, well, I sat there for a long time. And I basically said the same thing. And he was like, so what you learned is that planning is more important than building.

Adam G. Force 33:33

Yes, I love that.

Greg Shepard 33:35

Footings took forever, the planting took forever and the rest of the building was you know, flew up. And you know, and that was like something that stuck with me and I was like man and so boss itself is that.

Adam G. Force 33:47

I love that. I love that. Yeah, and it’s so critical. I mean, you see it all the time and we we talk about that when it comes to course development online courses and stuff. It’s like you can spend you know three times as long planned. Adding the outline of the course and doing that correctly, and then putting in the actual program together, boom, you’re done in a heartbeat. And that’s, you know, so you spend most your time, like you said in the planning phase. So whether it’s your business or any other thing, I think it’s, it’s, it’s universally applicable when you’re putting something like this together.

Greg Shepard 34:19

Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, pencil progress. Perfection.

Adam G. Force 34:25

Yeah, like that. So what kind of companies have you been investing in now?

Greg Shepard 34:30

They’re all software companies. So, you know, the market is now you know, there are bear markets and their bull market. So bull markets, you know, like I said, there are companies that sell things that are solving problems and there are companies that sell things that take advantage of opportunities. And in a bull market, you can invest in things that are taking advantage of opportunities. And in a bear market, you sell things that are solving problems, because in a bear market, people are trying to save money in a bull market, people are trying to make money. So because the market is shift now into more of a bear market, you know, because of COVID and a lot of other factors, you know, you have the ability now to sort of say, Okay, well now I need to change my investment strategy. I need to look for things that are recession resistant, not proof resistant. And these are businesses that are saving businesses money, because that’s what happens when you’re in a bear market. So the investment investments that we make now are not opportunity type businesses, they’re, you know, problem type businesses.

Adam G. Force 35:29

Hmm, interesting. Interesting. Awesome. Well, listen, we’re hitting the end of our time here. So I want to make sure we give you a chance to just give yourself a shout out. Where do people find more about you? What’s the best place to get more info?

Greg Shepard 35:44

Gregory shepherd.com. So it’s just my name.

Adam G. Force 35:48

Simple as that Gregory shepherd.com. We will have that in the show notes on the website when this goes live. Greg really appreciate it. I mean, obviously you got a ton of experience. You know, by creating and selling companies so appreciate you just kind of diving into some of that and the ideas behind the boss methodology. So yeah. Thanks again for being on the show man. Appreciate it.

Greg Shepard 36:13

Thank you.

Adam G. Force 36:17

Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Adam And Danielle: When is Sharing Your Story Too Much (And What’s The Real Benefit?)

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Do we really need to tell personal stories in our business? Should we? And when is it too much?

This is a question that comes up a lot with students in Captivate. So, Danielle and Adam tackle it head on to share some important considerations.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Danielle Sutton 02:20

Hello. Hello, everybody.

Adam G. Force 02:23

So, you know, we were just on a coaching call together Danielle is one of the CO creators of the captivate method. And we were inspired to come on here and just share an idea about sharing your story, right? We’ve seen through our experience coaching lots of entrepreneurs that sometimes not only do they wonder, Well, why would I share my story? But what is really the benefit? And an interesting question came up today about a very personalized story and is it oversharing? Like, when is it too much? Right? So that’s, that was a really interesting question, Danny, I’m gonna let you Just kind of if you don’t mind, we can TSF a little bit with kind of where where we were taking this idea of oversharing and why it’s so important.

Danielle Sutton 03:10

Yeah, for sure. So I mean, I think it is a question that’s come up a lot with different people in our program and that I’ve had just personal conversations like, okay, so you’re talking about storytelling, but why do I share my own story? And really, ultimately, it’s about building trust. Right. And I think we’ve talked about that before. But let’s get into the details of how that happens when you’re talking about your own experience, or even sharing the more vulnerable pieces, because the thing is, with surface level stories, they don’t necessarily they might teach a lesson. They’re kind of like the moral of the story is this, but does it create connection in the same way that going deeper or sharing something a little more vulnerable, a little more? You know, something you wouldn’t share with everybody. So then the question of the What is that point? Because you don’t want to overshare but also how do you get under the surface so that you can create more connection and more trust. So I was telling Adam, before we jumped on about this memory I have when I was really little, and I was maybe 10 or so. And I had met a new person I don’t know, at school or at a summer camp or something. And I remember her saying, she leaned over, she’s like, do you know how you make really good friends, you know, picture 10 year old girls, right? She’s like leaning and you tell them a secret that only you shared with them. And and that creates a bond instantly. And then you can go off on your merry way and have a bunch of fun, right? So I thought it was an interesting insight, especially for a 10 year old, but it relates to exactly what we’re talking about. Because, yeah, so jump in Adam

Adam G. Force 04:49

Sure. So, you know, when we’re running businesses, and we decide, okay, I know I have a story to tell my story. And sometimes entrepreneurs will tell us like, Well, why don’t I have to share my Story, all they care about is the business, the product and what we’re doing. And the stories behind that. Yes, those things are important. But today, people are raising red flags when it comes to marketing. And they’re going to say, I don’t only just want to know what’s in it for me, but what’s in it for you, as the CEO of that business, right. And so when we’re in, especially that zero to $10,000, a month range, we’re connecting with people, we have to have more intimate relationships to build a foundation of clients or our audience. And that is a relationship building process. And so part of that is, you know, you’re sharing value to these people, which means you might have tough lessons, you’ve learned big failures or things that make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. You kind of put them in the back of your subconscious don’t really want to think about it anymore. But it’s a powerful lesson that you’ve learned. And maybe if you share it with people, not only does it tie into what your business is all about, but they benefit and they Learn that same lesson. So the reason we’re really sharing these stories is not just to have fun and talk about the business, it’s to actually help people and to build more intimate bonds with people. So now you’re getting a loyal customer. And like I love Daniella, your example of the little girl who tells the secret because now you’re sharing something. Have you ever had someone say to you like, wow, I really appreciate you like sharing that with me, because I know maybe it was tough and you’re sharing something that is just a little bit more vulnerable. And it goes a long way in building relationships, right?

Danielle Sutton 06:37

Yeah, for sure. And it it like we said, creates that trust because why would you tell you know, if you’re putting yourself out there and sharing something that’s a little bit uncomfortable, potentially. You have you know, that recognition that this was really tough for me or hard on me in a certain way, or it was embarrassing or I’m ashamed of it or I wish I did things differently and by sharing it Not only is it a little tough for you, but you’re doing it because you’re helping the other person. And so they recognize that they will know from the story that that must have been hard to share. Because that you As humans, we put ourselves in each other’s shoes and you imagine yourself in that story, and you think, Oh my gosh, like that sucks, or that must have been really hard, or I can’t believe they went through that. And so instantly, you have that connection, because you’ve both one of you has been there and one of you is imagined being there. And it brings up all the emotions, and that’s how you can relate to each other. And also, you know, the person listening can realize like, that took some some courage or it took something they wouldn’t have done that unless it mattered, right? unless it was important to share. So I appreciate that and then it builds the trust that way.

Adam G. Force 07:49

It goes a long way. I remember I was writing for this. What’s his name? Brian Cameron was last name. He has a really great website. You know, he I forget, what’s the name of that was an odd name. It was not a real word. And that’s why, and I haven’t read it. So anyway, I wrote for and he gets when you put an article out on his media platform, you’ll get you know, we have had over 1500 shares, let alone views, right. And so one time, I decided that I was going to be a little more vulnerable and a story that I told, and I told the story about when I was younger, and I was in wrestling. And what was really vulnerable was, the story was about how, how our results can change from one day to the next, just based on how we’re thinking. And really interesting. And the vulnerable part was I put a picture of me when I was a young kid, and I was on the little podium with my little trophy and wow, I mean, it’s an embarrassing photo. I’m in my little thing singlet I put it out there to all those people, right because The lesson that I was trying to share from an entrepreneurs perspective to other entrepreneurs, to me was really important. And yeah, I have to share that story sometime. But it’s like, it was. It was the strangest thing. I’m tempted to share it, but I don’t want to take up…

Danielle Sutton 09:17

The thing already…You’re blushing even now and you already shared it 1500 times. Already shared it 1500 times. Yeah, but I mean, that’s a picture is worth 1000 words word sometimes. So it’s interesting that you mentioned the picture there because again, people will see it in a flash and they can put themselves, they can imagine Oh, imagine being like a little wrestler kid. And what the story is about you were fighting or wrestling a guy who was way bigger

Adam G. Force 09:44

I’ll tell the story in under three minutes. You ready? So by the time I completely freaked out and I had to do a doubleheader in wrestling. All right, so I was at a wrestling tournament. And there was this kid I was actually a really a pretty good one. wrestler and I was in the finals. So I was watching the semifinal match right to see who I would be wrestling. And there’s this kid named his name was Luke. And so he goes out there and he’s like this crazy nutty, like, full of energy kid. And he goes out there and within a minute he, he throws the other kid and broke his a collarbone. I was like, Whoa, dude, like, this kid’s an animal. Like, I gotta go out here and wrestle him. He’s gonna break my arm. And it freaked me out. So I go out there and within a minute, he pins me I’m embarrassed. I’m like, oh my god. So my father talks to me. And he’s like, Adam, you’re just as good as him gave me the whole pep talk. Right? And so here’s where it gets interesting. The next day, I had to wrestle that kid again at the the one on one team meet. Right. So that was a tournament which was just more random. And so I had to go back the next day, get on a bus and so that night, I was like saying to myself what my dad says like you’re just as good as him. Do this and really trying to get my head. I mean, again, I’m young kid, I think I was 1011 years old. We get there. And then you know, they’re playing the national anthem. And I’m like, we’re all lined up on the edges of a mat. And my heart is like racing out of my chest. And then finally, I’m the first match because I’m a small guy, I was the lightest So first, as soon as that national anthem was done, I had to go out there and face my biggest fear. And I ended up we had one of the best matches in my life. So ended up winning like for for 16 points to 14 points. And I won the match. I mean, so nothing changed from the day before to the next day where I got pinned in less than a minute. It was just getting myself time to think the right way and believing in myself right from a little some words of encouragement from pops, right. So to me, it’s just a really great example of how your mindset can really dictate your behavior because you’re acting through fear and reservation and all that stuff. So that was my story about that.

Danielle Sutton 12:01

That’s good. I like that. You know what that actually reminds me of an embarrassing story I can share that’s related

Adam G. Force 12:07

Fire it up.

Danielle Sutton 12:08

I don’t think I’ve ever told this to anyone. So you guys know that really famous TED talk about I should know the name but I but I don’t, but it’s in one of the top 10 about using your power poses, right to get, like physical stance can help you get in, get confidence and present yourself better. So I went to a startup pitch competition in Brazil about seven years ago

Adam G. Force 12:34

Cool.

Danielle Sutton 12:34

And we were living in Chile at the time, building my business for… I had no idea what I was doing. But applying to different startup competitions was something I had done and happened to get chosen to go to Brazil, Sao Paulo and the way it was structured it was for social impact organizations. So that part was really great because often I was sharing about my work with other startups. had nothing to do with social impact. So, I mean, I was excited to be there. But you had to present to two talks, two pitches. One was a one minute pitch in your category. And then if you saw, I think there was eight startups in the education category. And if you were one of the top two, then you had a chance to do a five minute pitch after that. So on the way there I had to basically prepare and memorize a one minute pitch and a five minute pitch had no idea if I was going to do the five minute pitch, like in Brazil did not speak Portuguese and it was like a whole adventure. But I can vividly remember standing in the washroom, doing the power bombs before one of the pitches I forget if it was the before the one minute I think it was before the one minute pitch. I was like, I gotta psych myself up. I went there by myself, you know, I I didn’t have any kind of friends or support people there and anyways, they join us He did tell me that I need to get sick too. And so I was like fighting a fever and I’m in the wash. Okay, I got to do the power pose. And I actually I nailed the one minute pitch and I was shocked when they said, you’re gonna do that you’re in the top two. You’re gonna do the five minute pitch. I was like, Oh, crap. Now guys. Remember what I prepared for that? And it’s all you know, in the same day. Anyways, it’s so I’ve done….

Adam G. Force 14:25

I need a picture of that power pose, okay?

Danielle Sutton 14:26

Yeah, I can’t demonstrate now because I haven’t like holding my computer. I don’t have a table in front of me. But you know what I mean, TED talk. I love that.. Oh, yeah. Mindset is everything. We talk about that a lot in that debate, as well.

Adam G. Force 14:41

And keeping just in mind as we talk about sharing our vulnerabilities like when you’re in especially it goes for any time in business, but especially in those early zero $10,000 a month. Like we’re building relationships, this is the focus so, you know, connect with people share your life lessons and make sure they’re aligned with your business. It’s not just random stuff, but like, don’t be shy to put yourself out there because you know, when you own your past and you like become confident with it and you’re willing to share with other people, you grow as a person to write.

Danielle Sutton 15:12

True, yep, it’s win win for sure. And, but like we said, at the top, the point is not just, like you said, share random things. It’s really to, hey, I’ve been there, I understand where you’re at. And guess what I learned something that might be helpful for you and help you avoid this pitfall, or at least not fall as deep or at least, you know, do the exact same thing right after you heard my story. At least, you know, we both been there and that feels magnetically right. So it goes a long way.

Adam G. Force 15:44

You know, we just shared on a coaching call to like, I don’t know if anybody listening knows Russell Brunson and some people love them. Some people hate them. That’s the way these things go. You know, he’s a great marketing mind. And he went on stage for two hours and told every failure story that he’s had. I mean, just the deepest of darkest like failure. And afterwards a woman, he told me this, and we interviewed him. And he told me this. He was like, you know, this woman came up to me afterwards. And she was like, thank you so much for sharing all that. Because I realized now that I’m not the only one, I’m not alone. And I was about to give up, throw in the towel, and you really have re inspired me to say, Yes, I can do this. Like, if you went through all that, and you still succeeded, I can do it too. So that relatability the lessons that were learned and just feeling like you’re not alone. I mean, these are powerful things. You know, she’s probably loyal now, as a customer to you know, his business just because there’s this connection. It’s like, hey, let me tell you a secret kind of thing that we talked about, right. So it’s a beautiful thing. All right, listen, I guess we’ll wrap up. But I think that those are some really important takeaway. So you might look at this lightly, but I would take it very seriously when it comes to creating your network, right building an audience like really creating like actual relationships with people and It’s not just about throwing up ads and trying to sell, sell, sell it’s connect with people build a really strong foundation for your business.

Danielle Sutton 17:07

Yeah, love it. And if you’re watching, let us know if you have a story about this inaction or you know if you’re inspired to share vulnerable post or a failure story and let us know what happens because it’s always Yeah, it’s always surprising and yet not surprising, you know, like, it helps you connect with people for sure.

Adam G. Force 17:26

Yeah, we will see you on the next live. All right, guys. Take care.

Danielle Sutton 17:32

Bye.

Adam G. Force 17:34

Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast. Visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Cory Lee: Going From Idea to Selling Several Companies!

Listen to our exclusive interview with Cory Lee:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

What if you have an idea to do something HUGE, like start your own gym but don’t know how to make sure it works? Well, Cory Lee and his wife built 4 gyms and 2 health clinics in 5 years and sold them, so we decided to talk to them about how it all worked.

Cory Lee is an entrepreneur, business builder, and leader developer. He was trained and mentored by the world-renowned leadership expert John Maxwell and is now an executive director with The John Maxwell Team. In 2012 Cory and his wife opened their first business, a physical therapy clinic located in a town of only 1,100 people, Within 5 years they were billing over $2 million per year from that one location and had opened and successfully sold 2 physical therapy clinics and 4 gyms. Cory is an accomplished speaker and is often invited to speak and train employees at companies looking to develop a culture of leadership. He also provides individual leaders with opportunities to maximize their own growth through one-on-one coaching and mastermind groups. Cory is most passionate about helping entrepreneurs navigate business growth but not at the expense of their faith, family, and fitness. When he isn’t helping companies and individuals grow, Cory can be found spending time with his family. Cory and his wife of 14 years Kimberly reside in Mississippi and have 3 children: Colton (9), Kendall (6), and Brady (4).

Learn more about Cory and his work at > https://www.coryleeleadership.com/legacybuilders

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host Adam forest co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and like to go big visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash growbig to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. Happy to have you here. If you guys missed the last episode, you can check it out. Damian, not Amy. Nope. Danielle and I talked about what digital conversations are and what they mean to your business. This is just an important marketing perspective to understand. So if you missed that one, check it out. There’s a lot of gold nuggets in there from Danielle and I. Okay, so For this episode we’re gonna be talking with his name is Corey Lee. All right, so he’s got a quite a background in 2012 him and his wife actually they opened up their first business and he’s going to talk about how all that stuff happened. But it’s interesting and you know, it was a physical therapy clinic and they also had some gyms, they started a gym. But within five years, they were billing over $2 million a year from just one location, and then they opened up a bunch of others, but they ended up selling two physical therapy clinics and four gyms. All right, so massive build ups and sell exit strategies, which is really cool. So he’s learned a lot over this time and how he actually kind of tested the waters got things off the ground, all that good stuff, and we’re gonna I’m gonna dive into that with Corey so you guys can really get some insights on how that all worked and how he made it happen. All right, so you know, he does a lot of talks. Now around company culture and leadership, and supports people on their own growth paths, right with coaching and mastermind groups, and he’s going to talk about some of that stuff here today as well. You know, outside of that Corey is a family man. He’s got three kids and all that good stuff. And I think you guys are gonna really enjoy this conversation. So lots to learn here. So stay tuned. Latest and greatest, you know, it’s interesting, because we had a, I had a conversation with somebody that sold 14 businesses now just the other day. So that is Greg shepherd. So that interview is going to be coming up soon and a few weeks. But something that was really interesting that he brought up about, we always say you got to slow down to speed up. And one of the things he mentioned was, it was he said, you know, you have to put more time into planning than you do in development. Not that you want to get stuck in the planning phase forever. But you know, we really do want to like build a strong foundation. That is the point he gives a really good story that demonstrates that So you’re building a strong foundation and taking your time on the key fundamentals, so that when you’re ready with that, the rest is going to go. It goes quick, right? The build is the easy part. It’s getting the right strategy and making sure that you know what you’re doing and you’re testing and you’re ready to rock and roll with a strong foundation that makes all the difference in the world. That creates fast growth. Right. So another exciting thing that happened recently that I haven’t really mentioned here on the show is I got this email the other day from I saw from Shark Tank on ABC. And I thought it was gonna be some like trick or spam. But no, it was actually their clearance department where they get legal clearance because they want to they want to show Change Creator magazine on Shark Tank. So How exciting is that? We were pretty jazzed up and pumped about it. So yes, Change Creator is going to be getting their appearance one way or the other on Shark Tank. That’s going to be the Blake Mycoskie, magazine cover because Blake is going to be a shark. So we interviewed Blake, there’s a video interview, you can check out that we did. And we put them on the cover of the magazine. And so he’s going to be a shark on there and he’s going to tell a story and part of his story and his road to success. He’s including Change Creator, so they’re going to be putting the magazine up on the show and people will get to check it out. Anyway, I thought that was exciting. And this is what good storytelling and Marketing Leads to and attracts people to and these bigger things then take place and that’s why we teach what we teach in the captivate method, guys. Okay, so let’s dive into this conversation with Corey. Okay, show me the heat. Hey, Cory, welcome to the Change Creator podcast. What’s going on, man? And how are you doing?

Cory Lee 04:46

Adam, thanks for having me on. Man. I’m excited about our conversation and really just talk about what’s going on. It’s just an exciting time. We were talking before we came on. We have three kids and they are all back to school. So maybe a little bit of sense of normalcy kind of coming on as well. So excited about that.

Adam G. Force 05:06

Yeah, was that that’s it. Where are you located? Again? I forgot.

Cory Lee 05:10

We are actually in Mississippi, um, people will hear the here the southern slang and they say you from Texas, right? I tried to cover it up, but I can’t but I’m from Mississippi.

Adam G. Force 05:20

Okay, Mississippi. Alright, so kids back in school that gives a little takes a little pressure off. I know, I’ve been talking to a lot of other my friends in my network in the entrepreneurship space. And it’s tough because they’re becoming the teachers, you know, as well. And it’s just adding this layer of complexity. Kids are getting bored. And, man, it’s just a big mess.

Cory Lee 05:40

Yeah, yeah. So here, they had an option of going back or doing online stuff and our son, he said to me, so you’re not gonna have me behind technology all day, are you? Yeah, they love people just as much as I do. And they want to go back. So yeah, it’s good stuff.

Adam G. Force 05:55

Good, good, good. Alright, so why don’t you give her us all just a little bit background. I know you’ve had an interesting past when it comes to building businesses selling them, stuff like that. So I think we want to dig into some of that today, because there’s just a lot of questions around how all that works. And so if you can just kind of tee us up a little bit with like the background in a nutshell.

Cory Lee 06:20

Yeah, so in a nutshell, so my background is actually in the physical therapy space. I’m a physical therapist assistant. And, you know, my wife, she is a physical therapist, and while she was in school, you know, like many entrepreneurs, we would be driving around town, and I’d have this idea of like, you know, wouldn’t it be cool? Like, wouldn’t it be really cool if we had our own business? Like our own physical therapy clinic and Ooh, you know, wouldn’t it be cool if this physical therapy clinic if we also had a gym along with it were yesterday physical therapy, but, you know, maybe we’re making an impact on the community. Well, wouldn’t that be cool? And you know, she graduated we we were actually out in Phoenix, Arizona for a time we moved back to Mississippi And about that time is when we transitioned into business. We opened up that business and we opened up. Adam, we opened up a physical therapy clinic in a town of 1100. People, man 1100 people, right. And, you know, and it was awesome. It was great. And our our focus was to make an impact on the community. In a five year period of time we, we actually had started four gyms, to physical therapy clinics, and in 2017, we sold pretty much all of that in a five year period of time in that one physical therapy clinic that we opened up in the town of 1100 people when we sold we were billing out over $2 million a year. And in 2017, we transitioned out and I now do business coaching and speaking and training, just love, you know, help an entrepreneur newars and really leaders step into their vision and their dream of owning a business or leading a team as well. So that that’s, you know, super quick super brief, kind of where I am today and what we’re doing now.

Adam G. Force 08:14

Yeah, I mean, I love that and I you know, I have been that person my wife and I were you know, we we got super serious about our health and we were going to that we were when we were living in Philly for six years we were going to the gym you know, four or five days a week sometimes he was definitely dragging me there but we made it and you know, like we kind of were like, man, it would be really fun because we always go to these gyms are like, this is cool, but man, I wish it was like this like that. And I know like there’s a market for this or that don’t make it be cool to really open up this kind of a gym. Right? So I’m curious as you had these thoughts. How did you decide on the like a type of gym to open? Like, what was the market? Who was it for exactly what was the style like? So how did you come to conclusions on what would make sense and Was there any preliminary testing to figure out this would work for you or not before you went all in?

Cory Lee 09:05

Yeah, that’s, that’s funny. So, you know, when we started I have zero business knowledge or business experience, right. But I had a ton of enthusiasm. And let me say we opened up in a small town, right? Like, if you would have went to a business school, they that’s probably not very smart, right? And what we did though, was kind of as you’re talking about what kind of jam and those kind of things I just did what I enjoyed to do, right like I was thinking about the gym, what what would I love in a gym? What what kind of classes or fitness or what kind of equipment would I like, and what people what you find is people are attracted to passion, right? And people saw the passion that we had and that that attracts people, the passion that you have for your business is very attractive, you know, yeah. And, and, and not They people with passion, they stand out. And people take notice. And a lot of people will get caught up in that way. So for us, it was just really what we were personally passionate about. And people were attracted to that, you know?

Adam G. Force 10:14

Yeah. I mean, I like hearing that kind of commentary. And I’m wondering, you know, so people say they’re attracted to Pat, and I think they are. I mean, I think there’s more like, when I worked in corporate years ago, they would say, what’s the width of them the what’s in it for them, and always thinking about the customer? And they’re gonna say, well, what’s in it for me? And they think more today we’re hearing will, what’s in it for you from the customer? Like, why are you doing this business and why would I work with you and they want to know a little bit more so having that passion and a real intention behind it, such as, you know, you had, I think translates like you’re saying, Yeah?

Cory Lee 10:55

yeah, you know, and, and as you’re talking there, what I found too, is when you You are passionate about, you know, you hear people talk about what’s your purple cow or I know you say the golden calf right? What makes you stand out? Well, what, what helps you exceed expectations? Well, I think it becomes easy to exceed expectations when you’re doing something you’re passionate about. So you you serve your clients or your customers, or however you define them to a higher level when you are passionate about what you’re doing. And that’s what I found for us anyway. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 11:28

Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. Um, you know, so let’s say you got this passion, you decided to do a gym that, you know, kind of reflects who you are. And you know, there’s other people out there like you that are interested in the same thing, right? And that kind of starts defining this differentiation. It’s, it’s based on yourself and your story and all that kind of stuff. But there’s got to be a point where we’re making some real business decisions, right? We got to put the CEO hat on, and we’re going to have to make decisions because you know, while the passion takes us to a certain point, there’s a A lot of mistakes to be made that money can go flying out the window or you hire the wrong PR and marketing teams too early or who knows what you buy the wrong equipment? Or you get a lawsuit? I don’t know. You know, so you got the CEO decisions to make. So we got to have a combination of passion and business smarts. So what were some of the steps like, let’s just let’s just stay with the gym idea for now. Because I’m super interested in that. And you know, this is obviously a physical store, but like, what were some of the early decisions in getting that set up from a business standpoint on Well, how do we get members? How do we get equipment? Like how do we get the money to do all this? Yeah,

Cory Lee 12:41

Yeah, yeah. So from the gym standpoint, I’ll tell you. We just started doing exercise classes out in a field and in a park, you know, and we would do that and we charge people $5 a class. And, you know, as that bill, we kind of, I guess, I guess you could say we kind of tested it that way. Yeah, yeah. And kind of built slow. And even then the physical therapy side, we built slow, right? We didn’t go all out from the get go, we, we built slow and developed relationships. And then from there, as the money did start coming in, then we started to invest in our business. But, you know, you talk about some of the decisions that we made when we started out slow, and we developed relationships, and we went from there. But, you know, as, as we grew, what I also realized was john Maxwell talks about being the lid on your business, you know, as the leader or as a business owner, you are the lid on your business, that your business will never exceed your ability to lead it. Yep. Well, I inherently kind of realized that that I was the lid on my business that I couldn’t do everything and I shouldn’t be doing everything and that we had a big dream. And if we needed if we had this big dream, then we needed a big team and that’s when we really kind of once we got it. Going saw the need to bring your own team members. And I’ll be honest with you, that was probably one of the scariest moments of our business is when we hired somebody else, right? You know, scary, leaving my job and my wife leaving her job. But when we hired that first team member, that that was probably even scarier, because now somebody else, you know, the decisions I made didn’t just affect me and my family now they affect to somebody else’s family. Right? And, and really, that drove me to become a better leader and to learn. So when we just started out slow and then also realized that we didn’t need to be doing anything and shouldn’t be doing everything. I mean, find other people that that kind of could fill in the gaps where my weaknesses are, and there’s many of them and where somebody can fill those gaps and you know,

Adam G. Force 14:49

Yeah, no, it’s important, and I think timing is important for when you do that stuff, right. So yeah, I’m sure you got a taste of that. And I think like you You answered one of my questions already, which was, you know, how are we testing these big ideas before we’re dumping, you know, all this money into it to find out that it doesn’t work. And there you go, everybody. I mean, here, you know, Cory, when they went to a park, they had people pay a few bucks, were they interested, but they’re also now just getting attention kind of building an audience, if you will, right, getting people familiar. And, you know, here you are, like, testing out the idea. And it’s like, if you’re getting people to sign up, and they’re taking the classes and they’re doing the thing, you might have a little something there. You can also have an audience to get some feedback from and learn from and connect with and all that kind of stuff. And they can become little word of mouth marketers for you. Hey, oh, this new gym is opening, right?

Cory Lee 15:40

Yeah, exactly. And that’s, that’s exactly what we did. You know, and I remember one night, we had just a real small area, but we had 41 people show up one night for one class. Oh, that’s great. And that that was kind of at the point that we realized, you know, we needed to do something we needed to take this. I think we have something here, you know, Yeah, yeah, it started out just doing a little bootcamp class at a park you know, for $5 a class but but but but also starting out small. It didn’t overextend ourselves, but it also helped us get good at first, right?

Adam G. Force 16:15

Yes, yes. Yes at the flow.

Cory Lee 16:18

Exactly. It helped me to. It really helped me to learn how to not only structure class but manage a class. And not only do that but pay attention to each person, too because it can and we’re talking about Jim stuff, but you know, it’s very easy to get going with all your hats that you’re wearing as a entrepreneur trying to get going you’ve got a market you got to do all these things, but Miss kind of the needs of the people that are coming to you, it’s very easy to do that. So it helped us get good first and grow, grow at a good pace as well.

Adam G. Force 16:54

Yeah, I like the idea of get good first, like, learn the flow. Get familiar. You know, you don’t have the overhead of a ton of equipment and a storefront and all that kind of stuff. So you got a lot more flexibility, less like stress and weight on your shoulders to figure this out. And so you got it. Now I am assuming when you started, you must have started somewhere where there’s like, you know, almost like maybe you had a class and nobody signed up, or then you had two people and then five people, and there must have been a little bit of progress there. Is that true?

Cory Lee 17:23

Oh, yeah, definitely. You know, and, and that could easily be dis discouraging. But then also found, you know, two people showed up, you know, and if two people I very much value time, I very much value my time. So I try to value other people’s time as well, right? They made a decision to get in their car, to drive to wherever we were, they made the decision to get out of the car. And if it’s just those two people, then I need to show up for them. Right. And because behind each one of them, there’s a behind that tree. There’s a forest Other trees, right? And they need to take care of them for the fact that they showed up, but then the the secondary part of that, too is, you know, if they’re served at a high level, when it’s just them, you know, they become raving fans too. And that’s what we love to create, right?

Adam G. Force 18:17

Yeah. I’m curious, can you tell me a little bit about when you started getting the word out to invite people to this concept that you have to see if they would come and join? How did you get the word out? But more importantly, what was your story that you were telling them of why you’re doing this and what this is all about?

Cory Lee 18:37

Hmm, that’s good. That’s good. So you know, you do the all those social media type things. And what we did at the time, was just post pictures, put it on social media, we tagged them, and you know, they love seeing that and they would comment and, you know, that does something to the Facebook algorithm and those kind of things but we’re also very intentional to not This is where we had failed in other parts and sometimes fail in the business now is being intentional about hey, you know, we’re having class Thursday, invite a friend, right? specifically asking for that referral, if you would say, right in and really getting going that way. Kind of getting that marketing out really helped that way too. And in our story, too, you know, like I said, we wanted to do something that was impactful for the community, we did not want to just be another business that was part of the community. So we want to impact the community and one of our visions was, Mississippi is constantly one of the most obese states in the country where the whole country has obesity epidemic, right? Well, Mississippi has the number one is always you know, one of the worst and could Not stand that right, we wanted to change that. And that was kind of our vision for it. And, and one of the visions I had was to make this town, this town of 1100 people, one of the healthiest small towns in the state of Mississippi. And that was kind of my vision for it. And you kind of cast that now, making making this town, one of the healthiest towns in the state of Mississippi. I never really said that to anybody other than myself. But But the other part was the vision that I was trying to cast where we’re doing this kind of community type thing. We’re wanting to be a part of the community. And, you know, when there were community events, we tried to show up, Ryan and we tried to show up and kind of unique and different ways you know, and just being a part of the community and real quick own that that was kind of my vision for it was to make this town one of the small, healthiest small towns in the state of Mississippi will. The year we transition out they were awarded a Blue Cross Blue Shield award for being one of the healthiest small towns and The state of Mississippi which was really cool to kind of see the community do that and to be a very small part of helping them do that too. So that was kind of cool.

Adam G. Force 21:10

That is kind of cool. I like that. So okay, so we got through this process of kind of getting your story out there change is having an impact on the community and you know, kind of doing doing something special and from the heart right talks about you know, you were talking earlier about how important it is to have passion in the business. And so you got that out there as your marketing and spread it on social media invited people to the parks, no overhead, great, great way to test this type of thing. Now you’re ready to buy a place it did. I mean, I find it daunting. I go into a gym and I don’t know how big the gym is or what kind of gym you have. Exactly, but you know, it’s like you got to get all the equipment, you got to get a location and buy the property and all that stuff. How do you handle those types of things like what Are some of the steps just high level that you had to consider in order to make that happen?

Cory Lee 22:07

Yeah, so that that is funny you say that because a lot of I’ll be honest with you, Adam, a lot of my stuff is out of ignorance. Right? So. So, you know, like I said, we had 41 people show up for one class one night, and our physical therapy clinic was, was really busted now the same. So I remember telling my wife, I said, You know what, we’ve got to do something, it’s time to do something. We were renting the space for the physical therapy clinic, and we were just meeting at the park for the gym stuff. And I said, You know what, I think we need to build something, let’s buy some land. And let’s build something. And I said, you know, I’ve seen some signs on the way into the clinic. I want to call them tomorrow. So Adam, I get get to work and as lunchtime and I’m about to get in my truck to go Look at the signs and I see this lady from the bank walking over. And I know she’s coming to talk to me, I was like, ah, and I know she’s gonna talk and I love her, you know, she’s super nice. But man, I really want to look at these land this land, right? And she comes up to me says, Hey, I see what you guys are doing in the community. And I just want to let you know, my husband and I have some land. And we’ve kind of just like to give it to you for a very small fee. And I, you know, we want to give it to somebody who’s gonna make an impact in the community, and, you know, I just want to listen about it. And I was like, Okay, well, I mean, that’s cool. You know, it’s probably not gonna be very good land, but I’ll go look at it. I go look at this, and it is prime location for this community. Right. And, as I’m spot on, right, so we do that and we ended up building a 1600 Square, 6800 square foot building that had our physical therapy clinic and actually today in there, in this, this was kind of, you know, you think about up until this point we were charging people $5 a class, right? Yeah. Well, now we’re moving into a building that we’re building. And we’re about to go up to $75 per month. Okay? So we’re asking people to make a commitment now, you know, $5 per class, you’re not really committed too much, right? I’m a contract class here, there. But now I’m committed and most gyms in that area are going, you know, 30 $35 per month, but we’re kind of doing CrossFit. Right.

Adam G. Force 24:37

Yeah.

Cory Lee 24:38

Yeah. So that’s a commitment. And, you know, it’s kind of just a leap of faith and, you know, kind of personal faith and I really felt like it was it was God ordained, I guess you would say and it you know, it was awesome. Right, but a lot of it was acting out of ignorance. I’ll be honest with you. He just gone for it. Yeah, just going for I remember sitting down with him. The contractor and tell him everything I wanted to have. I said I want to have 20 foot ceilings, you know, in the CrossFit gym, I want to be this big and he kind of dropped his pin and looked at me said you want this here? How’s that? Yeah. And I remember through this whole process talking to the bank and the bank is like, you know, they were kind of surprised that the loan went through and the contractor surprised the city approved. I was like, What are you talking about? Surprise, like, why are you surprised and you know, I can see it in my mind I see it anyway. But yeah, so…

Adam G. Force 25:36

Aw, man that’s pretty awesome dude, because you know, you’re not you’re you were not being bound by you know, I guess stigmas of like thoughts of what should be like this contractor had right he’s like this here because he just is you know, his preconceived notions. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. So you talk about having leaning into ignorance. Well, I guess there’s there is a benefit sometimes when ignorance can kind of lead you to just do what you think you got to do and kind of break new boundaries.

Cory Lee 26:09

Yeah, and, and along with that, you know, my wife, she is a very wise woman, too. And, you know, she balances out some of that. And she’s almost my measuring stick to if it’s a good idea, and if we get her blessing, she’s thought through it and prayed through it as well. And it’s Let’s go, Ryan. And if we’re both on land, and we’re all in, and I think that’s a lesson as well is, you know, once we made that decision, we were committed to the decision. And there are other decisions in the past that I’ve made where I was not fully committed, and working with entrepreneurs as well. I see them say, Well, I’m gonna try this but kind of in the back of my mind, if this doesn’t work out, I can go back to my job or I can go back and try this and I’ve found that that does not always work. Because when you make the commitment up front, that you’re all in, you have to mentally make the commitment up front, that then you’ll do everything that’s necessary to bring that that business or that goal into actual reality, you know?

Adam G. Force 27:15

Yeah, hundred percent. You know, we always say to, you know, people in our community that if you’re not willing, if you’re waiting to go all in for your business to be successful, like if you’re waiting to be successful to go all in on your business, you’re gonna be waiting for a very long time.

Cory Lee 27:30

Yeah, yeah.

Adam G. Force 27:33

People say that all the time. They’re like, Well, when I get more sales, when I am more successful, I do this, then I will invest in myself, then I’ll invest more in my idea. Hey, you know what I mean? It’s backwards chicken in the egg kinda.

Cory Lee 27:45

That’s wrong. That’s right. I know. We’re not transitioned out of the, the therapy in the gym stuff and doing kind of what I do now with the leadership training, those kind of things. Or remember early on, you know, in the back of my mind, I was doing the same exact thing as well. You know, more give this a try. But if if it doesn’t work out, I can always go back. You know, I can find a job as a physical therapy assistant, I could open up another PT clinic, but I’ll give it a try. And I had indeed.com pulled up on my phone a lot, right. And I realized that I wasn’t fully committed to the jury. And I had, you know, I had bet, you know, burn the ship to the nba.com. Right, I had to throw that out. And when I did when I made that commitment, something kind of magical happened. I don’t know what it was, but the business started to grow itself, right. And making that commitment up front is key for us.

Adam G. Force 28:38

Yeah, it’s tough when you got your mind in multiple places, trying to be good at multiple things, right. So it’s like, if you can find the focus, you got it, you only have so much time and energy, so you got to put it all in there and try to make it happen. Now. Some people need to make money on the side here and there, but the more the more of that percentage of the pie of your time and energy you can put towards your Your primary focus the better.

Cory Lee 29:02

Yes, sir. That’s right.

Adam G. Force 29:03

Yeah. Now tell me a little bit about like, what’s going on today. So I think you were in business for five years, but you sold everything. How much did you sell it for? And what are you working on? Exactly. Now? How are you helping entrepreneurs?

Cory Lee 29:15

Yeah, so I’m gonna say we had the physical therapy clinic. And in that five year period of time, we sold off the gyms kind of individually. Okay. We sold the physical therapy clinic and we sold it for over a million dollars. Yep. And one thing that I noticed, Adam, that this was a key lesson for me was that I knew I had made a mistake, right? And the mistake that I had made was a leadership mistake. Our business was growing. We were doing great. But I had developed a bunch of followers, right, people who went above and beyond, we talked about five levels of leadership. Well, I hadn’t developed any leaders who could step in once I stepped out When that happened, the business kind of went down. Right? This kind of back is back up now. But But that was a mistake that I made I you know, one of the things that we talked about is, as leaders, the power isn’t within us the power is in empowering other people. And I did a poor job of that. But that was a lesson for me. So we later on sold the two physical arms or the two gems, the 24 hour gym and the CrossFit gym, to a friend of mine, and was a little bit more intentional about that. So he started out actually as a member, and he has some great leadership qualities, some great leadership traits. So kind of in that he became one of our coaches. And then over time, he continued to develop and he became our head coach. So then he kind of took on more, more roles and responsibilities, and when it came time to sail, he was the obvious choice to sell it because he was the leader of that group. And now you He’s taken it on to, you know, even better than what we had it but, but that was a lesson for me that, you know, to develop other people to see the talent and potential within other people and extract that talent and potential and put them in the positions to succeed and that’s how your business grows. That’s how it actually multiplies is by developing leaders within your business. So,

Adam G. Force 31:24

Yeah, no, that makes that makes a lot of sense. And you know, you guys got to that point. I’m curious were like, Did you always have the exit strategy in mind? Like within five years, we want to sell this. Was that always the plan? No, not one bit.

Cory Lee 31:41

It wasn’t right. It never was. Right. So again, I am a person of faith and, man, I loved it right. I love the business. I loved every aspect of it. I love the business side, the marketing side, the the leading and all that stuff, right. And I remember, you know, God told me I said, hey, you’ve got you’ve got this out of the realm priority order. And I tried to negotiate with God. Right? Well, hold on, you know, I’ll put it back in its place. Right? And, you know, it’s like, you know, you gotta you gotta let it go. And the best decision we’ve ever made right to do that, because it’s allowed us. I have grown personally, and professionally, I would say, almost need to telescope to see how far I’ve come since then. Right. And and I don’t think I would be from the personal growth standpoint where I am today, if we hadn’t made that decision. And one of the things that really helped make that decision as well as you know, I loved it. But we had small kids too. In that five year period of time we had the four gyms and two PT clinics. We also had three kids during that five year period. And I can remember one night I had been at the gym early in the morning at five then I was at a physical therapy clinic all day and I was about to leave again is about Four o’clock in the afternoon to go coach all the CrossFit classes that night. And I was telling her older son Good night, and that I would see him in the morning. And this is at four o’clock in the afternoon, right? And he says that he, you go into your house. And it hit me that I had been spending way too much time away from our family. And that had gotten out of the wrong priority order. Right. So it was never intentionally planned that way. But But also, I’ve realized in this growth to some of my gifts and talents or to encourage and motivate other people, but also to get things going to get things off the ground and get people excited about something and find someone else to hand that off off to and we could probably do a whole podcast on on that as well. But that’s been a real growth that has helped me to see some of my where my giftedness lies.

Adam G. Force 33:54

Yeah, I mean, that’s awesome. And now you’re doing some speaking Are you mentoring anybody? What’s going I like that stuff.

Cory Lee 34:01

Yeah, so I do speaking and do one on one coaching. I also do some leadership training where go into businesses and work with their leadership teams and call it developing a leadership culture. But one of the things we’re really excited about and passionate about right now is helping male entrepreneurs kind of get their businesses up and going. And really, if they’ve been going for a little bit how to get it to the next level, one of the things we found is, again, had zero business knowledge or business experience, but we had a ton of enthusiasm, right? And we realized if our business is going to grow that like we’ve talked about, and as you probably know, Adam to is that we’ve got the grown right as the leader, we’ve got to grow. So we read the books, we went to the courses, the seminars, the webinars, all those kind of things, but we had people who can mentor us from a distance through their courses and material but I didn’t have that individual or that group of other guys that I could go to to share some ideas with and say, Hey, what do you think about this who could up level my idea who can also relate to what I was going through in business, or even served as guardrails as I wanted to grow that business, but not at the expense of my faith, my family and my fitness. So, as entrepreneurs, we created that right. So we’ve created a mastermind group specifically for male entrepreneurs. And, man, that’s been fun. That’s been exciting. And I love seeing what’s happening with their men that are in that group. And I know you have a community as well, I would just want to encourage anybody that’s listening to really fully take advantage of the group that Adam is offering there, because there’s some power in community there.

Adam G. Force 35:37

It’s true. I mean, I like that you started the mastermind, and you can support people that way, because you’re right. I mean, the idea of surrounding herself and getting that real time feedback, asking questions, getting coaching, like, I can just imagine in my mind right now a car that’s racing down the highway and when you mentioned the guardrails, it’s like, they keep you from going off in a million different directions off the road. You know, he You get to this point of no return, because we have so many ideas and decisions that it’s so easy to go off on a tangent. And so you know, a year goes by and it’s like, oh my god, like what have I’ve even been doing?

Cory Lee 36:12

Exactly right.

Adam G. Force 36:13

Yeah. Happens all the time. All the time. Yes, sir. Good stuff. Yeah, it is good stuff. I mean, that’s the challenge of entrepreneurship. And, you know, every great entrepreneur has a mentor or coach or community. It’s just inevitable. And I hate like when people talk about being a self made entrepreneur, because there’s no such thing. There is no self made entrepreneur, everybody has what they have because of the help of other people. That’s right. Listen, record. I really appreciate you sharing your story and your insights and some really great key lessons. These are all applicable. These types of lessons, whether you’re online or offline business, just the idea of testing taking these steps and you know, hiring at the right time, you can definitely hire too early. So a lot of people will say you got to delegate the things that You’re not an expert in. And Cory, I agree with that too. But I want to make a clear point for people that timing is important there too. Because, you know, if you’re starting a business and you don’t know who your audience is, you don’t know how to sell to them. You don’t have to share your story and connect and get people on board. Hiring that out is going to be a challenge, right? Because you’re just kind of like saying, Here, create that strategy for me take take something I love, and you figure it out for me. And I feel like you went through those early stages. And then when you were ready to grow and really get the gyms you hired out to take the next steps, but you kind of had the strategy in place, right?

Cory Lee 37:35

Yeah, yes. 100% I’m glad you clarified that because you definitely can and, and I found that people, you know, when you hire team members, people fail as being a team members when they don’t get proper training, or when they don’t know what winning looks like. And then the other one is the attitude which hopefully you’ll catch that in the interview process, but they fail when there’s not proper training. And if you haven’t figured out how to do so, So with those things to properly train them, you know, then that’s that sets them up for failure and it sets your business up for failure as well. And, and you know, and when they don’t know what winning looks like, that was a another big lesson for me is Hey, can you do this? Right? But but not telling them what winning looks like so

Adam G. Force 38:18

yeah, exactly, exactly. No, it’s just it’s one of these little things that gets kind of like missed. So I want to just kind of point that out. It was important. Thank you so much. I really appreciate we’re at the end of our time here. I think it was a really great conversation. I’m excited to hear more about how you guys continue to make progress. How can people just you know learn more about your mentorship and everything that you got going on?

Cory Lee 38:41

Yeah, I don’t appreciate man. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. And I hope this has added value to your listener. So Adam, I’m a I’m a I’m a cookies on the bottom shelf kind of guy, right? You got to keep it simple. So I’ve created a page for your listeners specific to your listeners. I got them two free gifts to write but but on their own this page I’m going to give to you it has, you know some information about our legacy builders mastermind group. And you know, it’s got the icons on how you can follow us on social media too. But I’ve got two free gifts one is a, a personal assessment where you can kind of ask yourself these questions, see how balanced you are in life. But add on the other one is a spousal survey, right? So you get this and you hand it to your spouse and they answer questions from their perspective about you. And and, you know, it sounds tough, but I promise you, it opens up great communication if you’re going to have a great relationship with your spouse, and I believe this world needs a mommy and daddy who are united, right? And anyway, anyway, it opens up great communication. So those can be found at www Cory Lee leadership.com slash Change Creator and that’s just for you and your listeners there, Adam. I appreciate you guys.

Adam G. Force 39:56

Awesome. I appreciate that. Cory that’s pretty cool, man. So guys, You could check that out we’ll put it when we get this published formally on the website. We’ll have that there for everybody to grab. And I’ll make mention of it in the intro and all that stuff. So, Corey, Thanks again so much for your time appreciate it man and let’s stay in touch. Awesome man. Um, I thoroughly enjoyed it man. Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast. Visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Adam & Danielle: How Digital Conversations Drive Your Business

Change Creator · Adam & Danielle: How Digital Conversations Drive Your Business

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What are digital conversations and why is it so important for you to become an expert in them? Co-creators of The Captivate Method share everything you need to know.

This talk will cover…

— Digital marketing and vacuum sales
— The role stories play in our online business
— How we navigate the Story Map

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Danielle Sutton 02:43

I got all the good weather. Really, it looks nice.

Adam G. Force 02:46

We got the rain out here over the ocean. And we’re we’re looking today to talk about a digital conversations you know what is a digital conversation and why it is essential for your business now. It’s something that really came to mind for us, actually in the past year. And it’s a way of framing something up because we are storytellers here, right, Daniel. And we look at marketing a little bit differently because we’re trying to come at it from a very authentic place. And this is just what has worked for us. So Danielle, and I were talking just a little bit before and I’ll let tell you a little story about how he came up with this and what it actually means to you and your business. You know, we were running paid ads for a while and putting a good chunk of change in there. And so when we were doing that we kind of gotten absorbed into the world of these funnels. Right now everyone’s talking about funnels for years now or like, you know, it’s part of the sales process and nurturing someone to become a buyer and connecting with them and things like that. But it’s very the way people talk about marketing right now and they talk about funnels. It became very got, like absorbed in it and a little bit lost in it. And it became very cold as this process, right? So we have all these different pieces of the puzzle online. And we would be putting them together and mapping them out, oh, we gotta say this, we got to do that. And, you know, it was all about the transactions and getting the buyers and all these things and you kind of get lost in this marketing thought process. And it’s kind of like what we talked about in the first Facebook Live just past Monday about, you know, stop thinking like a marketer. Because at the same time, when we were not getting the sales we were looking for, we would follow up with people, we get on the phone and what happened. We, they we would get on the phone for just market research to find out Well, why didn’t you buy and get that feedback? But what happened was, we would actually end up getting questions from them and they would then join our program and become a buyer right? So there’s someone that we can help and we started scratching our head saying Okay, so it didn’t work going through through our funnel, right and then when we get on the phone we’re able to make this happen. And we were like, Well, how do we I literally remember this at night, one night text messaging Amy and Danielle, and I was like, I think we need to just shift the way we’re thinking about these funnels and look at it as a digital conversation. How do we take those types of phone call conversations, and start applying it to all the pieces of real estate online and make it effective and warm. And remember that these are people we’re talking to, right? They’re not widgets that we’re just trying to get across the finish line. And it kind of changes how you think about each piece of real estate online. And everybody that we spoke to on the phone is unique and had and we had to tailor that conversation and it’s really no different that’s what really kind of led us to being more personalized and leaning into like behavioral marketing and things like that. So the digital conversation is the is replacing this idea of funnels to remind us that we are having a conversation right Daniel, it’s like we always talk about knocking on the door. When people go door to door selling vacuums. And they get an hour of somebody’s time. And they sit down. And as that person’s talking, I don’t need the vacuum because or, you know, I have, I’m skeptical because of this, and you get to give a tailored response. And we like to use stories. So we’re storytellers, and we have our stories that we tell to help people get around those barriers. But in the digital space, you don’t get to sit down and in real time, tailor the conversation. So you’ve got to think of how do I take that conversation and put it in the digital space? So that’s sort of that’s, that’s,

Danielle Sutton 06:34

I think that… No, no, that was a perfect intro. And it’s true, like the digital conversation is just bringing the whole experience for both the person providing a solution and the person seeking a solution. Back to the human way of doing things. I think people can get really tripped up when they are trying to build an online business by Yeah, the minutiae of the tactics and the like, what’s the click through rate. And what’s the CTA the call to action? And what’s the ABC c d step? Right and, and of course, every bro marketer and their cousin is teaching all of these strategies. And if you don’t do it exactly the way you’re supposed to, then it’s not going to work, right? And, and so it’s really easy to get sucked into this vortex of like digital marketing, best practice. But the reality is, if we strip away the digital veil, we’re just humans getting to know each other, and providing, you know, a puzzle piece fit where I have what you need, and you need what I have. It’s as simple as that. That’s business, right? So we need to kind of get back to the basics. And that’s why this whole philosophy of the digital conversation has worked so well for us because we’re not thinking of a funnel in a linear step by step. approach. Of course, you know, there’s things we might be trying to improve and iterate and there’s always kind of those details. But at the fundamental level, how are we thinking about the relationship we build with the people are in our world, like in our realm, right? And it’s about that two way street, it’s having that conversation. So one example I shared with Adam was, you know, if you have two people at a ping pong table, and one person is shooting the ping pong across the table, if you don’t give the other person a chance to reply, or like being part of the game, then the game is gonna be very, very short. Right?

Adam G. Force 08:25

It’s such an important part of the process. It’s really a perspective shift. And when you have that perspective, shift, you start, you don’t look at it and say, I need to have these really clever benefits outlined on my landing page. It’s, it’s you’re thinking about it differently. And you’re thinking about, well, at this point in the conversation, what needs to be said where are they it really forces you to think about where they are and their own journey. So you can say, Oh, I understand where you’re at. Let me let me give you information that’s going to help you understand this better, right. Will this work for you? What’s it going to do for you? Like, what do you need to hear based on where you are in that journey? That’s a really important point, we’re adding warmth based on the perspective we have with this digital conversation format.

Danielle Sutton 09:07

Yeah, it makes a big difference really. And like you said, with the, the door to door salesperson, even like a more modern example might be thinking of going for coffee with somebody who you met at an event and they said, Oh, like I’m really interested in what you do. I’d love to learn more. You know, let’s meet for coffee. We might have aligned interests. I’m sure this has happened to you. It happens a lot. Right? And and then when you’re there in the coffee shop with your lattes, you actually can ask these questions like Adam said, and you can address misconceptions, which is another big piece early in the process, you know, to help someone understand more what what your what you are offering and how it can help them. All of these little touch points, you know, can go really quickly in a one hour coffee chat, but online, they’re gonna be very in pieces. And so like Adam said, how do we think about where we tell each other stories so that the person on the other end gets the full picture. Even if it didn’t happen in a one hour Sit down. Right? Yeah.

Adam G. Force 10:08

And that that is the key. I mean, and this is like a big shift when it comes to marketing and everything that we’re kind of talking about. So, you know, we, we go through this a lot. And this is something that we’ve now adopted into the captivate method teaching as we go through it, because we, we get into this thing called a story map in there. And so I know nobody knows what that is, because it’s something that we just made up, it’s proprietary. I’m gonna tell you about it. So basically, what happens is, you know, you learn how to connect with people, you learn how to set yourself up, but the story map is going to be kind of like a compass for you, right? And the way we look at it is, well, where is somebody in the conversation? And so we have this map concept, and it’s like, well, maybe they’re not even aware of you as a company. So that’s like you’re at the intro phase of the conversation with the buyer. And then you think about well, what’s the next step of the conversation? Like, how would it develop? If you bumped into someone like the vacuum cleaner? It’s like, Who are you? What are you about? And you get, that’s the beginning. But if as they get warmed up, they know who you are and things are changing. They’re gonna move down the line on the story map, right? So we’re mapping out where they are. And then based on where they are, well, what stories do they need to know at this point. So now we’re aligning which sales stories and things they need to understand. This is not a way to manipulate anybody. This is a way to be relevant and personalized and make sure that they have the right information. And we use stories because you don’t just tell people things because that’s not going to be effective in the sense that they understand it in a way that you want them to with a lot of clarity. Clarity is a big word around what we do. And so stories are better because they demonstrate and people get aha moments and they go oh, I see how that could save me time? Oh, I see how that could apply to my life, right? So it becomes very clear. And so that story map goes through every phase of that buyer journey and all the stories that are most relevant at each stage to be very effective in in our marketing. So that’s a big piece of like, what has a kind of like, come to life, if you will, based on the idea of this digital conversation? So yeah, I mean, that was I just wanted to share that. And I don’t think we’ve ever really talked about the story map outside of the program.

Danielle Sutton 12:33

No, we haven’t. But it’s one of my favorite tools. Because again, so we’re not it’s still there’s still a strategy with these digital conversations. It’s not like we’re throwing all the best practice out the window, but we’re shifting the lens that we look at it through, right. So with a story map where things like Adam said, are they even aware of of your business? So there’s certain places online, where it makes the most sense to share those stories about you and why your origin story? Why you started your business, what your values are, and how you got there. And those stories go really, really well in certain places online. And then in other places, you know, because of how we logically, you know how someone moves through this digital conversation later on, we need to tell different stories, so that they can, like Adam said, see themselves in your examples. So it’s relevant to them, and they’re able to understand if it’s a good fit for them, again, it’s not manipulation at all. It’s like, let’s give them the information so they can make a decision. And if you only have part of the information, you’re not going to make a decision. And that’s like as you and you shouldn’t be like you. It’s our job as the communicators of the value that we provide to give our listeners enough information to make a good decision for them. And that’s how it’s Win Win and that’s how your impact grows. And that’s how people can really benefit from what you have to offer.

Adam G. Force 13:58

Yeah, hundred percent. And it makes me think about something that I learned over the years. And it’s not something I’m making up. It’s something that our mentors have taught us and helped us mature as entrepreneurs. And so I’m going to share this little pro tip with you is funnels don’t really matter. They will optimize your financials, in some regards, I totally get it. But you can say, Oh, look at this formula, this this funnel flow, or this webinar model or framework, whatever it might be. And those things don’t actually matter. They work for certain people, and they accomplish certain things based on all the trial and error that particular entrepreneur might have had. But what really ends up mattering is, do you know exactly who you’re talking to? And what stories are you filling the funnel with? So now when we call it a digital conversation, we’re saying, we’re here to build a relationship. And yeah, we have stories to tell you so you can get to know us you can get to know why, what we stand for what our product will do for you. And now we’re having this conversation and warm them up, it doesn’t you can put them through all kinds of different funnels, you just need to have the them filled with the right messages and the right stories. And that’s why we focus on that so much in captivate, because it’s all about the storytelling that’s like the fuel for the car. I don’t care how you build the car, but

Danielle Sutton 15:19

It could have all it could be top line car, right Ferrari level components.

Adam G. Force 15:25

Exactly. I mean, you can get Russell Brunson webinar script or his funnels, and if you put crap in it, it’s just not gonna matter. It just will not work. Okay, so this is how a lot of people also get hung up, because they’re like, Oh, I put all this stuff together. And I’m gonna now run this ads and you know, $5,000 later, it’s like, oh, my God, like, I don’t have sales, what’s going on? It always comes down to how we’re communicating with people. So storytelling is what has created movements. This is what has created all social change. And if you’re not harnessing this as the CEO of your company, It’s gonna be a long road, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Danielle Sutton 16:03

Yeah, I agree. I think Adam Let’s leave everybody with a little challenge because we didn’t talk about this before. But I think now that we have shared this idea of the digital conversation, I want you to listen like pay attention to somebody new a new business or a new person that pops up into your perspective and if they interest you, like pay attention to why you want to keep learning from them or why you don’t and if you decide to take the next step with them and like kind of go meta on on somebody new in your world and just notice you know, how they do the digital conversation well or not well, I think he that some, some experiences from the receiver and can feel very, you know, flat or dull or just plain annoying, right? And some are such a gift and you think like I can’t wait to hear from this person again. So just notice that as a as a receiver of the messages.

Adam G. Force 17:02

Yeah, absolutely. I think that covers everything. I mean, the the primary takeaway really just comes down to, you know, how we think about is I had a note here. Yeah. So I mean, the primary takeaway is really just how we’re thinking about our marketing. If we step away, remember that we’re talking to human beings, that we’re building relationships. And these are conversations, just because we’re online, let’s not lose touch with the fact that these are conversations with people. We’re not just filling online widgets and hoping for sales like we’re actually talking to people. It’s just that we’re doing it in a different way. So you know, we focus a lot on how to how to use each piece of real estate, what stories to tell, I mean, there’s a lot of moving parts. But when you become a master storyteller, this stuff is fun, right?

Danielle Sutton 17:51

Really fun because it’s just as fun as getting to know someone new at the coffee shop or at the bar or meeting a friend of a friend. You know, that’s the feeling we want. Be able to have so.

Adam G. Force 18:01

Exactly exactly and listen, one of the things that I love about storytelling and these marketing principles that we’re teaching is they are not a fad they’re not come in and go in and like gonna get oversaturated or die out and they don’t work for some people but not others know, this is tried and true. It’s proven throughout all our history. It’s just a matter of really getting to know how it works for your business and putting it into practice. It will work for you and it’ll work for the remainder of your years as an entrepreneur

Danielle Sutton 18:28

Yeah, I’ll back to clarity right you get that clarity and you can rock and roll.

Adam G. Force 18:34

Coming here from Change Creator, we are all about making the world a better place. We are all about helping people. So when we talk about selling and getting rich, we mean Yeah, get rich and money get rich and fulfillment help people make the big difference in the world. All that good stuff.

Danielle Sutton 18:50

Awesome, thanks Adam

Adam G. Force 18:50

Thanks for tuning in to the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other things great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Jon Macdonald: Get More Sales Through Smart Optimization of Your Existing Website Traffic

Listen to our exclusive interview with Jon Macdonald:

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What if you could increase you monthly revenues without spending more on ads? What if you could just optimize what you already have and jump your sales up monthly? We decided to talk with Jon MacDonald, who is the founder of The Good, which specifically helps brands optimize their conversion rates to get more sales from existing website traffic.

Jon MacDonald is founder and President of The Good a conversion rate optimization firm that helps brands convert more of their existing website traffic into buyers. The Good has unlocked results for some of the largest online brands including Adobe, Nike, Xerox, The Economist, and more. Jon regularly contributes content on conversion optimization to publications like Entrepreneur and Inc. He knows how to get visitors to take action. As President, Jon has helped lead The Good to become one of Oregon’s top 20 fastest growing private companies. The team at The Good have made a practice of advising brands on how to see e-commerce sales double or more. In recent years, brands that have worked with The Good have seen an average revenue increase in revenue of over 100%. Jon volunteers for several causes throughout the Pacific Northwest and is an active committee member of industry associations and peer groups such as Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO).

Learn more about Jon and his work at > https://thegood.com & https://jonmacdonald.com

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Transcription of Interview

SPEAKERS

Adam G. Force, Jon Macdonald

Adam G. Force 00:03

Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host Adam forest co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and like to go big visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash growbig to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the show your host here at force. If you missed last episode, we had a killer conversation with Gino wickman. If you don’t know Gino, he is the author of a famous book called traction. He also runs a company that has over 400 employees based on the Eos program. So we tap into all that stuff in that conversation. A lot of great insights about what it really takes to be an entrepreneur. Now Gino says not everybody’s cut out. So do you fit the mold and what does he mean by that? So really important conversation, and the guy knows his stuff. So dive into that. That was the last episode again, it was Gino wickman. Today we’re going to be talking with john McDonald. So john McDonald’s founder and president of a company called the good. And he’s all about conversion rate optimization, right? To help brands really convert more of their existing website traffic into buyers. I mean, something that we all want, right? So we want to get the most out of the dollars that we spend, we, at some point in our businesses, we have to actually put money into our marketing, right, the organic stuff is beautiful, and it should always be ongoing. But sooner or later, sales will plateau and we have to expand our reach and do paid marketing. And that means bringing more traffic to our website. And then the key is to get the most out of it. So the more people we can actually get into our sales process and have them become customers, the better the and the healthier the our business will be. So we’re going to talk a lot about converting And sales, optimization, all that kind of stuff today with john. So I think you’ll get a lot of value out of that. And just a heads up. So if you’re catching this today, today is what July 14. So starting next week, this will not be a timeless point here that I’m making. But if you are catching this at the right time, on the week of the 20th, we will be doing a live series on Facebook. And we’re calling it the mid year boost because it’s all about kind of what we’ve learned from this first half of this year and all the chaos with the pandemic and the civil rights movement and everything that’s happening. You know, we’ve all kind of have to take on different ways of thinking about our businesses and all that stuff. So we want to give people a mid year boost kind of reactivate and energize our businesses for the second half of the year. So we’re going to be doing a number of topics on that specifically, and to help out the different entrepreneurs and that’ll be going Live, I think it’s gonna be every day at noon next week. So the week of the 20th every day at noon, you can catch us on our Facebook page or group, okay? Now if you have a particular issue or challenge or something you’re facing in your business, and it’s a topic that you want us to think about covering, you can go ahead and email me directly. I’m happy to take your email Adam at Change Creator mag, comm email me, let me know what you’re thinking. And we will weave it in there. And then you’ll if you’re on our email list, we’ll we’ll put notices out and stuff about when we’re going to talk about different things. So, guys, yes, so live series next week, it’s probably something we’re gonna do more and more of, but we want it to do this mid year boost, because it’s just been chaos in twine in the first half of 2020. But a lot of entrepreneurs are having the best month of their lives. So let’s get into it so that you can start having the best month of your life on the second half of 2020. All right, guys, we’re gonna jump into this conversation with john McDonald. Don’t forget to visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go be okay. Show me the heat. No, you go. Hey, john, welcome to the Change Creator, podcast show. How’s everything going, man?

Jon Macdonald 04:11

Great. Thanks for having me today.

Adam G. Force 04:13

Yeah, you’re welcome. You know, like I’ve mentioned to you before this call, I’d love conversions and sales, and we need lots and lots of them. So I can’t wait to dig into it. So just tell us a little bit about, you know, where you are now with your business and how you got there just so we can get a sense, you know,

Jon Macdonald 04:35

of course, so the good we are, as you mentioned, a conversion rate optimization firm, so we help brands to convert more of their ecommerce visitors into buyers or customers. And we’ve been doing this we just had our 11th anniversary a couple weeks ago. So it’s been over 11 years now. And you know, we started out as a development shop ecommerce development shop. We were helping brands to Get online. And pretty quickly what we found was that was one commodity, right? So there were tons of development shops out there. And all of e commerce was moving over to software as a service like Shopify, etc. So they didn’t need that custom development, that high level development that we were able to do. And so I saw that trend coming down the line. And our mission at the good is to remove all of the bad online experiences until only the good ones remain like that. Yeah. And that’s how we got our name. And so I kind of went back to the roots and said, Okay, what are we what can we do that’s going to have the biggest effect in our mission? And how are we going to affect change online? Knowing that, quite frankly, shopping online is a pain in the butt, right? It can be can be, and it’s come a long way over the past 10 years, but you know, I went around the country and I interviewed all of our best clients and asked them why they hired us and said, You know, I’m just going to show up at your door, can you give me 1520 minutes, I’ll bring a coffee, whatever it takes. Everybody was willing to have a conversation, believe it or not, which was amazing. And they I heard kept hearing a common theme between all of them. And that’s that they didn’t hire us because we could build them the best website that hired us because we knew that one when we launched the site, it wasn’t going to be perfect. And to that, perfect perfection is not obtainable. But an continual iteration of improvement on the site, to make the consumer experience better to remove all of those bad experiences, was really the the methodology that they fell in love with and why they decided to work with us. And lo and behold, that’s basically what conversion rate optimization is today. Back then it really wasn’t a term. So that’s how we ended up where we are today.

Adam G. Force 06:59

Yeah, I love that. It’s it is it is an interesting art to really go through that iterative process. And I think, especially with a lot of people in who are probably listening right now I, we’ve been down this road ourselves, Amy and I and our team and stuff and many others that we’ve coached and things. So it’s people who like when things aren’t working, we can get into like this panic. And instead of really diagnosing the problem and making very simple updates and testing, we start changing everything and then we just get lost in this world of changes and we don’t know what’s working and then it just leads to this stress. That never really gets you to your your mark. Right, your goal. Have you seen a lot of that happen?

Jon Macdonald 07:46

Yeah, you know, in the best way to eliminate that stress because it is super common is is to use data, right? So don’t don’t guess and instead, don’t, don’t follow your competition blindly. Right, because you don’t know if something’s actually working for them and so many brands that are starting out, look at their competition. And they say, What are they doing? I need to do that too. Well, that creates a sea of sameness, right? And if you’re not going to be a little bit different than how you’re going to stand out and when, when that customer, yeah. And second, you really don’t know if it’s working for them or be if they were running a test that you got opted into, and you’re just seeing the test. And they were just trying to figure out if it’s working. Yeah,

Adam G. Force 08:30

yeah. I mean, what’s under the hood, you have no idea. Like, you see the surface of the model. And you’re like, and we see that too, like, Yeah, that’s a great point to make. Because people tend to look at their competitors and model them without really knowing like, what the magic sauce is underneath, like, based on circumstances you mentioned, or just all the workings that are happening that you don’t know about.

Jon Macdonald 08:51

Right? That’s exactly it.

Adam G. Force 08:52

dangerous, very dangerous, and it does happen a lot. We’ve been we’ve been down roads like that, you know, several years ago where we were, we thought we were being smart. And I always got to a point now, that was my first business with the second business Change Creator, I was. People will say, well, let’s do you have you done any competitor research? I said, No, I don’t care about my competitors. I’m not even paying attention to them anymore.

Jon Macdonald 09:14

And it’s interesting, but best econ businesses that we run into, say that exact same thing. They’re not concerned about their competitors, they’re concerned about providing the best experience for their consumers. Right. So, you know, if you track every click and movement on your site, and you can do this in aggregate, I’m not talking about individually identifiable information here. I’m talking about you know, looking at analytics, understanding where people are dropping off in the funnel, where they’re exiting your site, perhaps even where they’re spending a lot of time on an individual page, which is contrary to most marketers, most marketers will say you want a high time on site. I always say you want the slowest time on site possible because you want people to be able to get in accomplish the task they showed up to your site to do and then leave, because they’re not there to hang out. Right? They’re there for two reasons. One is to something or somebody told them that your product or service can help them solve a pain or need that they have. Yeah. Right. So they’re there to do that research. That’s the first thing. And then the second thing is if they determined that your product or service can help solve that pain or need, they want to convert as quickly and easily as possible. So anything you do to get in the way of that research or tech conversion, and it just makes people frustrated, and they have to spend too much time looking. So just tracking every click and movement can really help you understand what people are doing on your site, what content they’re engaging with, and there’s a lot of different types of data that are readily accessible are all within privacy regulations, and all can help you to just have a better experience online.

Adam G. Force 10:58

Yeah. I think that It makes a lot of sense. And I think a people where people get tripped up, and they’re a little bit afraid, is understanding how to not only read the data, but to even track it. Right? This is, this is not easy for a lot of people, especially when you’re in your first few years of business or you’re running solo, and you don’t have someone familiar with Google Analytics or whatever, you don’t know who to hire. If you hire them, you don’t know if they’re, you’re doing the right things. So like, you start having to figure out this foundational strategy at the beginning. And then you could really start tracking these things. And I think, you know, hiring obviously, a team like yours, who knows how to read the data to track these things is valuable. But what tips might you have for somebody to start thinking about their e commerce shop right now? And what kind of you know, analytics would be valuable for them to look at? And is it just as simple as using Google Analytics to do it?

Jon Macdonald 11:58

The short answer that Yes, it is. And here’s the thing. A lot of people do overcomplicate this and they get concerned that they they’re jumping into a tide pool that they can’t, they can’t swim in. The problem here is that Google Analytics in itself is out of the box is, you know, not that complicated. Now, you can add layers on top of it to get more rich information and have a better understanding. But don’t stress out about any of that. Now, all you really need to do is just set up two things on your site, Google Analytics, and hotjar hbot. That’s going to give you heat maps of where people cursors are on your screen and where they’re touching on mobile. It’s going to give you scroll maps how far down the page or people scrolling on desktop and mobile, and it’s going to give you session recordings. So this is going to be where they’re going to show you a user who and how they clicked or several users and how on average, they click around your page where their mouse flies around their page that kind of gives you an understanding of where they’re looking on a screen because yeah, on desktop, your cursor is generally followed by your eyes locked. So now, these pieces of data are not as overwhelming as people might make them out to be. And the best way to just get over that hump is set your expectations low, and just say, I’m not going to become a master at this right away. And that’s okay. All you really need to do is dive in and take a look at that data on a regular basis. So maybe every other day, spend 15 minutes look into the data. Right? All you need to do is just spend a few minutes a week. You know, if you’re spending more than an hour a week, I’d say you’re even probably spending more time than you should be looking at this data. Here’s what you’re looking for. You’re looking for an AB banalities. So what are the days or the things that are happening on your site that spiked or dropped and then trying to just look real quick and say okay, what did I do that day and that caused the spiker that drop. Did we send out an email and some message was really, you know, provoking and got people in? We did we make a change on the website that people really liked. You know, just all you have to do is look back on that. And it’s really about the rhythm. Right, you’ll start to see

Adam G. Force 14:17

the signing process. Like, when you say rhythm, it makes me think, like, get into a process that’s consistent and gives you the feedback loop that you need, basically.

Jon Macdonald 14:28

Yeah, that’s exactly it. And the only way to truly have that perspective that would come with a feedback loop is to be looking at it on a regular basis, so that you know what, something that is abnormal looks like, right? Otherwise, you don’t have that baseline. You don’t know the trend. And that’s really what you’re looking for here is just if you can pay attention to one thing, it’s just what’s the trend over the last week, over the last month, year over year, and then you can start doing you know, more advanced things, you know, and they’re not Given that advanced, you should use something in Google Analytics called annotations, you can google how to do that. It’s pretty quick and easy. But that’s just like, Hey, we sent a marketing email this day here is the topic. And you just start logging those things into Google Analytics with the date and time that you did them. And that really can help you just have some idea of what you did each day to your site, or your marketing activities that can really help you notice why those trends were changing.

Adam G. Force 15:28

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, as people are measuring these things, and this is in our program, the cat’s away method, we hone in on on making tracking important and simple part of the process because there is no growth without tracking, right, like you just, you’re just throwing darts without a dartboard, basically. And it makes a huge difference in one of the things that we have found personally with Change Creator too. I mean, right now we’re running conversions. You know, you know, lead magnets, opt ins and things like that are Around 70%, right. And I think you know that a big change occurred for us, not just on, you know, optimizing what’s on the landing page and things like that as far as like button copy and things. But it was as our story got more cohesive, and it aligned to the audience we attracted so they were the right audience, right from Facebook ads or wherever the traffic might be coming from, that holistically all work together more cohesively. So now the story was clear, the audience was attracted and related to it. And the conversion rates went way up, because it used to be closer to like, you know, 25 to 35%. And now, it’s going higher and higher and higher as we get more dialed in to that that internal narrative that the customer has.

Jon Macdonald 16:46

Well, I think you’re you make a really great point there, Adam, which is that a vast majority of folks run ads, and there’s no real connection to the landing page. You’re sending people to Yeah, in that connection, that context, the When somebody comes to a landing page, I get calls every day, we’re talking to people who want us to help just optimize landing pages, and they call up and they say, Hey, you know, we just want to touch our landing pages. And it’s like, Whoa, you know, that’s like telling me that you need new tires and only changing one tire. Right? It’s, you’re going to leave so many more problems there. Because that could really be solved. So don’t fix just a part of the problem, right? You need to fix the entire problem. And we don’t do anything at the good with driving traffic. It’s not where we play, we play on site. Once somebody reaches the site, we help make sure they convert as quickly and easily as possible. But understanding the context at which people are arriving at the site and what messaging was sent to them is a very integral part of then optimizing a landing page to resonate with that same audience and with a similar message so they know they’re in the right place. You know, obviously that message got them to click on the ad so then don’t He’ll he won’t ignore that message once they get to your site. But then a lot of people, it’s really, really common to bounce off of a landing page, but do something like just type into the browser, URL bar, the the the base URL for the site, because, you know, most landing pages get rid of navigation, things of that sort. So people look at, you know, if you’re not paying attention to the trends of data, you would just think two things really quickly, you would think somebody bounced off your landing page, and it was the ads weren’t working. Because when they come into your site, it’s going to be a organic or direct visit, because they just typed in the URL or deleted everything else out of the URL, just to get to your base site, right, your homepage. And so, you know, if you’re not paying attention in the data, you would miss that connection. And instead, you would just think, well, I’m getting a lot of direct visits. My ads aren’t working because people are bouncing off of the page, so I don’t need the ads anymore. Yeah. So it’s really easy if you’re not paying attention to data, too. To make assumptions like that, as opposed to data back decisions about what has been effective, what is actually working?

Adam G. Force 19:06

Yeah, no, it’s a great point. And you do have to look at the holistic experience, right? Not just a part of the funnel, you had to look at the entire funnel. And, you know, the steps in the tech are great, but to your point, just keeping things cohesive, having that story, really aligned just throughout the whole process is so important. And another thing that we have found valuable and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts is really thinking about where the traffic is actually coming from, because they are going to be in a different mindset, as far as the buyer journey. So if you get in front of someone on Facebook, that’s very passive, in sense of, they’re just kind of stumbling across something they weren’t actually looking for it versus, you know, a search platform like Google where they’re looking for something specifically, and you might offer it so that you already know they want that and the expectation is there versus on face. It could be a little bit different. So like we started adding certain things on the page, like, here’s what to expect with this. And we tell a little about who we are build up our credentials if they don’t know our brand, and, and we have seen stuff like that help the conversions. When we put the right information, it could be about us, it could be expectations, or whatever the offer is, and things like that. It seems to help a little bit. I’m wondering if you have any similar experiences?

Jon Macdonald 20:26

Well, again, I think it’s all about, you know, making sure you have more than one landing page. Yeah, a lot of a lot of brands that are smaller that we start working with, what they’ll do is just have one landing page and say, I don’t understand why this isn’t working. The challenges you know, you if you’re hitting on different pain points, again, remember people only clicking on that ad coming to your site because they have a pain or a need they’re trying to solve and they think that you know, you can help them do that. So you need to that needs to resonate and every audience might Have a slightly different pain, or a slightly different reason for clicking on that ad. So tailoring different landing pages to different markets and different ads you’re running can be really, really valuable. And I think it’s really important, you know, as you get into Google and people are searching around certain pain points in terms that you have a landing page that matches up with that, and is optimized for that. To address that concern.

Adam G. Force 21:26

Yeah, yeah, no, that’s such a good point. I love the idea of having multiple pages for to tailor it based on who that audience set might be. Another interesting thing that we learned was to separate your experiences between paid and organic. So we have it’s the same product, same sales funnel, but we have one for organic and one for paid and they could be tweaked accordingly. But you can also see the variations in the results and stuff to see what what’s doing better.

Jon Macdonald 21:57

Yeah, and again, it’s all about having to the right data tracking, right? I mean, this seems to always come back to that point. But it’s true like, otherwise you don’t know what’s effective. And you don’t know what’s actually being engaged with your consumers. So you really need to have that data to both, you know, the qualitative and quantitative side. And that means go and just ask people to take a look at your site and give you thoughts on it. So this is something that gets missed quite a bit. We, we do more advanced user testing, but this is again, something that a lot of people hear user testing, and they’re like, I’m gonna just run the other direction because I think it’s really complicated. You can make it very simple, especially right now while people are, you know, in their homes have more time because they’re not commuting, etc. Offer to get somebody on zoom, and just do or Google Hangouts or any of those and just say you know what, I want you I’m going to give you a 15% off coupon or gift card, for my Store whatever it is, I just want 1015 minutes of your time. And what I’m going to do is, we’re going to load up the website, you’re going to show your screen, your camera and your audio, and you’re just going to answer a couple of quick questions, you know, and speak out loud as you’re going through that process. So what do I what I mean? Well, first of all, let’s say you’re selling t shirts, just high level example here. You could tell people find the right t shirt and right size for you. Then just be quiet. And ask them to talk about what they’re thinking as they go through that. And there’s, you know, okay, well, I’m trying to find where the T shirts are on this site. Now I want to browse what category I like in these t shirts. Now I’m going to try to figure out what size is the best fit for me, and how do they go through all these decision points, right, really is eye opening. And you can learn so much just by watching somebody and observing somebody do that on your site.

Adam G. Force 23:52

Yeah, I mean, that is a classic UX, you know, way of doing things and seeing and I mean, that’s what hot jar is. helping with too. It’s it’s a little different experience. But I do love hotjar and the tools that you mentioned, because they are super powerful. And getting that kind of like, especially when it comes to e commerce, I think it is really powerful to see people and how they navigate your website. So you can see where are they getting hung up? And I guess it would be a little bit different when you see it in person versus you know, the hot jar approach. I they both serve a similar, I guess purpose, but you can definitely get some interesting different points, I guess.

Jon Macdonald 24:31

Yeah. And that’s exactly it. I mean, it’s having a full full picture of not only what people are doing, which is one hot jar will tell you, but also why they’re doing that. And that’s what you would do user testing for.

Adam G. Force 24:43

Yeah, that makes sense. And I feel like a lot of people, especially early stage entrepreneurs, will feel like oh, like I just need to get this up. And they kind of don’t take these types of things seriously. Like it’s not, they’re not there yet. Or you know what I mean? And they skip these types of steps. And then you know, a year goes by, and they realize they’re just kind of treading water. And they’re not really making progress. And they wonder why.

Jon Macdonald 25:11

And this is, you know, again, if even if you don’t have any traffic to your site, you could do user testing. Yeah. And I highly recommend you do that before you would you’d go live with any new new site, you will have a harder time until you start getting more traffic to really see trends and data. But the traffic level doesn’t need to be that high. Right? I mean, you could have, you know, a couple hundred visitors a week and you’ll start seeing trends. It’s just a matter of, you know, making sure that you’re getting that more qualitative data early in the process.

Adam G. Force 25:45

Yeah, I mean, exactly. And that that becomes a big thing for people. I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to the traffic. It’s like, well, I don’t have that much traffic. So why would I go through all this effort to set up this tracking and everything else? I I started When people say that, because you’re gonna have to get traffic for your business one way or the other, and like you said, even if you’re getting 100 people a week, that is data that you want to be tracking, you just hope I guess the key thing too. And maybe this is a big point that when you work with your clients, it’s like, well, let’s say they’re getting 1000 people a week. But I guess my first gut check is well, are they the right people? Right, like, because if we have people that are totally irrelevant, you know, like, sometimes people will want to cut corners and be like, Oh, I’m gonna do Facebook ads, and I can get tons of traffic, and they’re just doing these countries that really have cheap ads and traffic, but they’re not necessarily their target audience. So is that even relevant data now? And it kind of like voids the whole thing?

Jon Macdonald 26:44

Right? Yeah. And you think that it’s really, really important to, you know, focus on converting your core audience before you would expand out?

Adam G. Force 26:55

Yes, yes. Yeah. 100% Yeah. You know, as as early entrepreneurs, a lot of times people have a very deep fear of, we call it a niche FOMO of actually going Nish, like looking for that perfect customer because it’s they always have a rationalization. Well, you know, I can I can help these people in these people and I want to make sure you know, it’s like, No, dude, you’re just hurt in your marketing. When you do that. I see it all the time.

Jon Macdonald 27:23

Yeah, no reason to waste your valuable money early on in the process. Really just focus on who your target is. and get those folks to convert. Once you do that you can expand out and start driving traffic. But the, you know, this is the problem with with paid traffic in general is eventually that paid traffic. In order to get more and more and more of it, you do have to expand the breath a little bit and you get less qualified traffic, you start going after keywords that are less and less relevant, right? But early on, you can really tailor that to just the folks that are Going to be most relevant for you. And that’s where you’re going to do a lot of learning. So if you don’t pay attention to the data early, you’re losing a ton of valuable information that is going to get more watered down, the bigger you get. So not having that tracking in place. As soon as you launch is a huge mistake, you really need to set that up immediately. And even if you don’t touch it, and you just have the data flowing in, you know, fine, you know, you got to set your priorities, I get that. But if you don’t set that up immediately, then you’re not going to have that historical data over the long term to even go back and study. So it’s really important.

Adam G. Force 28:38

Yeah, makes sense. Awesome, man. Well, I think this is all really valuable. And I guess the last thing I just want to cover and then we’ll jump I when it comes to e commerce, is there anything else that stands out to you for early phase entrepreneurs, that you see regularly with with clients and things like that, that they might want to be aware of when it comes to conversion? Specifically in the e commerce world, right, not just in general, but in e commerce?

Jon Macdonald 29:05

Well, I think that the first thing you should do, as I mentioned, is make sure you have the right data tracking, and you’re actually talking to consumers when brands don’t have that. It’s a huge issue later on. But beyond that, I think that the biggest concern I see is that a lot of these small brands are looking for quick wins, and they end up falling for gimmicks. And what I mean by that is they’ll put the latest Shopify app on their site that they feel like is supposed to somehow magically increase conversions. And the reality is they just don’t. There’s no quick win when it comes to conversions. I know that probably crushes a lot of people when they hear that. Here’s the reality though, it’s it is relatively simple to get conversion rates up if you start making data back decisions, but that means you have to have the right tracking and pay attention to it. And if you’re willing to make that commitment for even an hour a week, you will See your conversions go up and your return on adspend go up and all the other metrics that make you make an entrepreneur and e commerce smile, they will help be there. So I highly recommend that you really start giving that some thought immediately.

Adam G. Force 30:17

Love it. Thank you so much, john. Appreciate it. Let’s give a shout out where people can learn more about your business. Maybe they need your support. How do they How do they get in touch and learn more?

Jon Macdonald 30:28

Yes, so the good is just at th e, g, o d calm, so the good calm. And, you know, we’ve got a variety of optimization services that we can deploy for brands large and small. You know, we’ve been doing this 11 years. So we work with brands like Xerox, Nike, Adobe, the economist, but we also work with with hundreds of smaller brands as well. So I highly recommend checking out our conversion growth assessment. This is where we can help tear down your site and provide some really actionable feedback and it’s, it’s at a price point that is great for every brand large and small. Awesome.

Adam G. Force 31:09

All right man, thank you so much for all your insights and taking the time to share with us today.

Jon Macdonald 31:13

Of course, thanks for having me.

Adam G. Force 31:15

Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

interview

Gino Wickman: Do You Really Have What it Takes to be an Entrepreneur

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How do we know if we really have what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur? Can anyone do it? In this interview, we talk with entrepreneur and author of the legendary book Traction, Gino Wickman, to find out who should take the leap!

An entrepreneur since the age of 21, Gino has had an obsession for learning what makes businesses and entrepreneurs thrive. At 25 he took over the family business, which was deeply in debt and in need of help. After turning the company around and running it for seven years, he and his partners successfully sold the company. Gino then set out to help entrepreneurs and leaders get what they want from their businesses. Based on his years of real-world experience, he created the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a practical method for helping companies achieve greatness. He has personally delivered more than 1,900 full-day sessions for more than 135 companies, helping them implement EOS. He is also the author of the award-winning, best-selling book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, as well as Get a Grip, Rocket Fuel, How to Be a Great Boss and What the Heck is EOS?. Gino is the founder of EOS Worldwide, an organization that helps thousands of businesses implement EOS with the aid of an international team of over 350 professional and certified EOS Implementers and online support. There are almost 100,000 companies using the EOS tools Worldwide. Gino is now devoting time and energy toward helping entrepreneurs-in-the-making get a huge jump-start on taking their entrepreneurial leap, which is why he created Entrepreneurial Leap.

Learn more about Gino and his work at > https://www.e-leap.com/

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Gino Wickman 02:44

Okay, show me the heat.

Adam G. Force 02:48

Hey Gino, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How’s everything going, man?

Gino Wickman 02:53

It is going great. Happy to be with you Adam.

Adam G. Force 02:56

Yeah, appreciate appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re busy guy and You know, I did. I’m one of the avid readers of that book traction that you have. And I’m excited about your new book, the entrepreneurial leap, I think this could be really a good one for our listeners to dig into. So thanks for being here to talk about it and kind of sharing some of those insights and stuff like that. If you could just share maybe a little bit of background like, just let people give that give you that bird’s eye view of your background for those that don’t know, traction and EOS like really, in a nutshell, and then how you got to transition into this new book.

Gino Wickman 03:32

Yeah, happy to so the quick entrepreneurial journey is that I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2001, took over a family business at 25, did a big turn around, grew it, sold it and then set off to pursue what I really discovered is my calling and that’s helping entrepreneurs and so I created a system called Eos. I’ve written five books around it traction being the kind of epicenter of all the books that explains Eos. Those books have sold over a million copies. We have over 100,000 companies running on that system using that system. And I built an organization with my partner Don tinny called EOS worldwide that now has 375 EOS implementers. All over the world, helping companies with that system sold that business two years ago, still on 12 and a half percent still the EOS guy still on the books, still doing talks, still have clients, all that good stuff. But taking us to where we are in for this podcast. It was about 12 years ago when I was 40 years old. And I said when I turned 50, I’m going to shift my energy. And I’m going to go to the front end of the entrepreneurial journey, and I’m going to help entrepreneurs in the making, get a huge jump on taking their entrepreneurial leap. And so after almost three decades of helping entrepreneurs, you know, I feel like I’ve dialed in the genetic code in and what this book is all about entrepreneurial leap is doing exactly that what I’m actually doing is teaching and helping my 18 year old self and so there’s an old saying That says we teach what we needed the most. And I’m basically teaching my 18 year old self. Because if I knew what I put in this book and what I’m teaching the world now, when I was 18, I would have literally had an 11 year jumpstart, because it was around age 29, that I really realized that I was an entrepreneur, and then capitalized on that. So that’s the fastest version of the story.

Adam G. Force 05:23

I love it. Thank you. And I’m curious, just that last part, what what made you realize that you were an entrepreneur when you’re 29, what happened?

Gino Wickman 05:33

It was an intersection of a whole bunch of data points. And so I had done the family turnaround. I was getting a little bored with that, because that was running and growing it. I was in a program called the Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. I was in an organization called ye oh now known as EO the entrepreneurs organization. And, and it was all of those intersecting points being surrounded by entrepreneurs, and I really realize, you know that there was a light bulb moment that just, you know, helped me see that I am a wild and crazy entrepreneur. And, and then I also really realized my calling, which is this gift that I have for helping entrepreneurs. And so I took an entrepreneurial leap, we sold the business, I then took an entrepreneurial leap and built a business around what I really realized that I was here to do. Hmm.

Adam G. Force 06:25

It’s interesting, cuz I noticed in you know, the early part of your new book, he talks about how you either are or you are not born with it and saying entrepreneurship is nature, not nurture. And I kind of want to just talk about that a little bit, because I’ve had, I’ve had mixed perspectives around that meaning Some people say everyone’s an entrepreneur, and you’re saying something a little different. So I would love to hear your perspective on that.

Gino Wickman 06:52

Yeah, for sure. And it’s a great debate. So I really urge you to, you know, voice your strong opinions, because we may not agree and I think that’s the best thing we can do for your audience is for them to hear the contrast, of course, and I’m really excited about your audience because you know, you and I were talking to, you know, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in the makings, and so they’ll totally get this. And they’ll form their own opinion. But you know, very directly very strongly. I believe a true entrepreneur has six essential traits. And we can talk about those if you want to get into that next but but I believe they have six essential traits. And this is 30 years of history working with thousands of entrepreneurs. And not only that, I believe you are born with them. I don’t believe these traits can be taught you can’t teach a trait you can teach skills, but I believe you’re born with them. And so it’s truly nature over nurture. And so assuming all that is true, I want to I’d love to hear your response to that. But I want to create a context for your audience because this will really help them see in their mind, exactly what we’re talking about. Because if you picture an arc, I teach something called the entre General range. And what the entrepreneurial ranges is, this is where all self employed people reside. This is where all people that own their own business reside in. So if you picture the far right side of the range, picture the words true entrepreneur, and if you picture the far left side of the range picture, self employed people. And so on the right side, true entrepreneurs, the far right side are the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Sara Blakely, on the far left side, are all of the one person shows people with a side hustle consultants, things like that. And so with every self employed person, everyone with a business falls somewhere on that spectrum on that range. And when I say true entrepreneur, the people with these six essential traits, I’m talking about the people on the right half of the rain, the people that go out and build organizations with people and so you know, everyone Listening is somewhere on that range if they’re all self employed entrepreneurs. And then the last little point is that I really feel like I’m doing a service to the world because right now everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Just like in the 70s. Everyone wanted to be a rock star. And with all due love and respect, not everyone was cut out to be a rock star. And not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. And listen, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be true entrepreneurs are borderline crazy in some really freakin hard and get your ass kicked on a daily basis. And it’s not, you know, all it’s cracked up to be. So there’s my jumping off point for you.

Adam G. Force 09:39

Yeah, I love it. I mean, no, I totally get where you’re coming from. And maybe for some people, it would start with defining exactly what we mean by entrepreneur, right? Because I think some people might have different definitions of that as well. And you know, you’re talking about some of the greats and the largest organizations in the world and then the self employed person Who is, you know, making a living on their own, but they’re not building large teams at scale. So I like the idea of this range. And I think you know, for me, I guess in my perspective, you know, I had a conversation with Muhammad Yunus. I don’t know if you know who he is, he’s like, I see that. Okay, so he’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner in the space of social entrepreneurship. And he started Grameen Bank and all this stuff. And I had a conversation with him and he believed that you know, everybody’s an entrepreneur. And I think it comes down to these definitions and how we’re looking at it. And when you talk about some of these essential traits, you know, being a risk taker a problem solver. I start to wonder well, what how did somebody grow up? What did they learn and it does this become a a effect of human behavior and conditioning? To make them the kind of person they are right so they’re not skills but they are? subject subconscious behaviors, right. So can those things be changed? If somebody actually wants to change it, right?

Gino Wickman 11:03

Yeah, love it. And so like, I’ll give you another couple thoughts and then indirectly answer your question because, you know, I know a lot of your audience out there, you know, they consider themselves entrepreneurs, but they’re one person shows and the first point I want to make is that is absolutely admirable, respectable, you’re still taking a risk. And I just consider you to be a business owner, I consider you to be self employed in that case. And so to hold that thought for a minute, I always use a just a really kind of raw example. And that is, you know, somebody with handy skills can become a handyman or a handy woman charge 60 bucks an hour, make 100 grand a year and go do what they love. And if they’re good at it, and they do a good job, they’ll get referred and they will be busy for the next 25 years of their life making 100 grand a year and that is so admirable, and then you and I could give 1000 examples Have a business one person could go into and do and obviously, your audience has a lot of that. The point I’m making is, I just don’t consider that to be a true entrepreneur. And you’re right. It’s definitional. This is just my definition. So yeah, don’t get don’t get pissed off at me. I’m talking to your audience. But, but that’s just my definition. The point I’m making now is someone with these six essential traits, they can’t help themselves. But to turn that into a business. It turned that into an organization, grow it and start bringing on people and so that handyman that has the six essential traits is going to spend a year doing that work and then realize, holy cow, if I hire someone else, you know, I can elevate myself and someone else and someone else and all the sudden they’ve got a construction company, the person that cuts a lawn cuts 20 lawns, 30 lawns realizes, wow, I hire somebody to cut those 30 lawns and go cut 30 more. They can’t help themselves but to build an organization This is a cautionary tale because so many people I’ve talked to, you have people in your audience right now, they just need to remain a one person show and make their hundred 200 300 400 grand a year and that is admirable. And there’s actually there’s a piece that will come over them once they realize they probably don’t have all of these traits. But for the ones that do, the idea is now that you know this after reading the first part of the book, which I call confirm, now you clearly know what you are. And I’m going to show you a path in a way that’s going to make your journey much more seamless. you’ll avoid half the mistakes you’re about to make, I can help you get there faster. And I I’m just trying to save the person that goes out and tries to build an organization and they go through 10 years of hell and fail because they really didn’t have what it takes to become a true entrepreneur and be on the far right side of that entrepreneurial range. We talked about God

Adam G. Force 13:56

Yeah, I see where you’re going with it. And it is in that that that realm of growing an organization having, you know, 100 people on your team, I guess, and you’re far more. Right.

Gino Wickman 14:09

Exactly. And then to that same point, having 100 employees is not all it’s cracked up to be, you know, yes, worldwide is over 400 people in that organization. And it is daunting, it’s complex. It requires, you know, a whole different set of skills. And then it prompts another thought, and that is just using me as an example, when I sold the family business, took my entrepreneurial leap. I was actually that one person show for the first five years I was out there as a coach working with entrepreneurs, but again, I couldn’t help myself, but to turn it into an organization again, that now has over 400 people in it. I just couldn’t stop myself and it was a pretty damn good, peaceful life, those five years in the work I was doing, but I was just compelled to keep growing and growing and driving and driving. So anyway,

Adam G. Force 15:00

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that all makes sense. And it sounds like you know, for a lot of people, you have to really be honest with yourself and what you want, right? So, you know, some do you want to have 400 employees and all the complexities and everything that comes with it, right? Because there comes a different responsibility and different pressures and stresses and things like that. And if you have a team of one to five people, but you’re making a million dollars a year, that’s a very different dynamic as well. So I guess it comes down to what somebody really wants out of their life.

Gino Wickman 15:32

Yeah. And that you know, and so you just perfectly teed up part two of the book because once you finish with part one, there’s an assessment you take, you ultimately get a score. That assessment is available on the website, free and downloadable E dash leap calm but once you confirm that you have the six essential traits, and you’re a true entrepreneur. The next part of the book is called glimpse and then I spent the next third of the book showing that potential entrepreneur a glimpse of what as possible in the world for an entrepreneur and more importantly, what all the options are. And so to your exact point, I created this tool called my biz match. And what I’m teaching in this part and leading to this tool is to help that entrepreneur out there listening to understand all of your options, because there are so many more options to being an entrepreneur than just a billion dollar tech, unicorn entrepreneur. I mean that that’s one in a million, and it’s not for everyone. And so what I teach and talk about are all of the industries available out there. And then I talk about the types of companies because there’s three factors when it comes to type of company. It’s Are you a product service or a business service? Are you a product business or a service business? Are you b2b or b2c? And are you high price, low volume, low price, high volume, when you start to weigh all of those factors, I believe every entrepreneur is drawn to something and then the third thing you get into is size. Just like what you’re talking about there, because, again, 10,000 employees is not for every entrepreneur, there is no shame in having a $3 million heating and cooling company throwing off a 20% profit with 40 people. In other words there that is respectable, admirable. And so there’s no shame in that. And so with my biz match, you literally just click on a bunch of buttons, answer some questions, and out pops the perfect business for you. And so we’re all built. They’re our product people in this world. They’re our service people in this world, and they rarely meet. And so it’s just trying to learn and understand what you’re drawn to. That’s going to greatly increase your odds of success and keep you doing something you’re totally passionate about.

Adam G. Force 17:42

I love that. Now that sounds pretty cool. And and I think it’s such an important part of the process that a lot of people skip is, you know, simply becoming clear about what you want and what’s going to make sense for you. Because, you know, the way we’ve always looked at it too is if you write down your in your notes or you take a process like yours, Going through here and you see, well, here’s what I want. You may not know what that looks like, or the person that you actually need to become to get there, right? So I always looked at it as a way to start getting clear on something. And if you have a book like this, and you’ve been down this road, then like, it’s really hard for an entrepreneur to say, Well, I do have that drive and vision and I want to have, you know, 400 employees also, but they don’t know what that business looks like. And it’s really hard to create something when you don’t know what it looks like.

Gino Wickman 18:32

Yeah, and it’s exactly what I do and why I wrote this second part of the book is to create that glimpse, because in my mind, you know, I picture this word entrepreneurship, and that potential entrepreneur listening as this big block of marble and and in there is the sculpture in there is that person so I always I describe it as helping them to see the light and then see their light and so the light is understated. This whole context of being an entrepreneur, their light is then seeing where they fit in that entrepreneurial world. And so I’m quite proud of how powerful it is. Because by the end of glimpse, you had this vivid picture of what the perfect business is for you what the life looks like both Heaven and Hell, how to avoid the eight mistakes that every entrepreneur makes when they take their leap. And I also give countless stories of entrepreneurs who were right where you are, and and what they did to grow to what they grew to. And then from there, we go to the third part of the book, which is path and then I show a clear path for how to greatly increase your odds and eliminate half the mistakes you still will make the other half it’s part of the journey and they’re unavoidable. Hmm,

Adam G. Force 19:49

interesting. So let’s touch a little bit on the three parts in a little more detail. So we did kind of cover off on the range concept and things like that. Let’s just quickly If you don’t mind touch on the some of the essential traits and and why they’re important.

Gino Wickman 20:05

Yeah, you bet. And so at a very high level, I’ll give you all six. It’s visionary, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker, and responsible. And so those are the six, you know, in terms of why they’re important. They’re kind of self explanatory, but I can do a really quick, you know, one or two minute riff that paints a vivid color of all six if you’d like me to, but at a high level, those are the six and they’re all vital. And so I get asked, Well, what if you don’t have one or two? Well, here’s the answer. If you don’t have one or two, you’re probably not a true entrepreneur. And it’s a great awareness, but they’re all vital. Mm hmm.

Adam G. Force 20:47

Interesting. And I like the responsible one because you see a lot of leaders today that blame everyone but themselves so to see a leader who can blame no one and you know, really Look in the mirror and and be that kind of a leader I think is really important in the kind of leadership it takes to build these big companies, right?

Gino Wickman 21:08

Yeah, here, here. And I’ll do a little 32nd riff on that one, because that’s one of my favorites. So people are always shocked when they’re hearing this list, and I get through the first five. And those all make sense. And all of a sudden they hear response, I’m gonna go, Whoa, how is that on the list? It is so vital. And, and so here’s how I know that you’re born with it. Here’s how I know that it’s nature over nurture. And that is, you can put the entire world in one of two categories. There are people that take responsibility when something bad happens. And there are people that blame everyone else. When something happens, they take no responsibility. And the reality of it is you will have a household with four kids, four siblings in the same household and as you’re listening out there, you’re putting all the people in your life and these two categories because it’s so obvious, but if you think about a family with four siblings, you literally will put those siblings in one of two play one of those two buckets? Because how on earth is it possible that those four kids because you out there listening Think of your brothers and your sisters, it’s very obvious how could they grew up in the same household by the same parents same raising same teaching same everything. And yet, half of them end up taking responsibility half don’t you’re born with it its nature over nurture. And responsible means this it means that you blame no one. It means that when something goes wrong, you default to looking in the mirror. You don’t look at who to point to. You take total responsibility for the outcome. You don’t believe in entitlement. And I had a friend that said it so well in a sentence that he said somebody who’s truly responsible when they’re building gets hit by a meteor, they believe it’s their fault. In other words, you chose the building, you built the building you chose to be there and so that’s the essence of responsible and I would also say you know, both are a psychology disorder, there are people that take too much responsibility. People don’t take enough. Both are psychological disorders. I’m not saying it’s healthy for those of us that take responsibility for everything because we carry such a burden. All I’m saying is, it is a trait of a true entrepreneur. And if you don’t have it, you’re just not going to be a successful entrepreneur.

Adam G. Force 23:20

Yeah, I love that. That’s, that’s one of my favorites on the list there too. And I think let’s just jump over to a glimpse, he talked about some of the critical mistakes. I think people listening would like to hear, you know, what are some of these critical mistakes that you’ve come across? Working with a lot of different clients and all the different experiences that you’ve had that really stand out here that might be interesting to talk about?

Gino Wickman 23:42

Yeah, I would love to. And so contextually the point here as I go into these eight is, I paint a vivid picture for that potential entrepreneur of what a day in the life of an entrepreneur looks like. And so you shoot out 10 years from now and picture one of these two scenarios. And so I paint both the dream And the nightmare. And the point and that is I’m showing them how to live the dream. I’m also showing them how they create their own nightmare. And there are eight mistakes that almost every entrepreneur makes when they take their entrepreneurial leap that put them in the nightmare. And so I’m going to go through each of them very quickly. And I would love it you know, you know your audience better than I do. If you’ll just kind of pick the top two to you that you think they would like we can drill down on that, but here are the eight very quickly, number one, not having a vision. Number two, hiring the wrong people. Number three, not spending time with your people. Number four, not knowing who your customer is. Number five, not charging enough. Number six, not staying true to your core. Number seven, not knowing your numbers. And number eight not crystallizing roles and responsibilities.

Adam G. Force 24:50

Yeah, it’s great list. There’s two that I can pull out for our listeners. And I think the two would be actually there’s three but I’m going to call So let’s do not knowing who your customer is, and not knowing your numbers, I think those are two major mistakes that whether they realize it or not, those are the mistakes that are happening.

Gino Wickman 25:10

You’re here. And so the classic mistake here is and for what this is worth, you know, in everything that I write, there’s not one ounce of theory, this comes from the real world. This comes from my three decades. And so this is based on the hundreds, if not thousands, of clients that have come to me and us. And these are the issues they’re facing with us, when they’re at 10 to 250 employees, and these are the mistakes they made. And we’re basically fixing all of those mistakes. And so not knowing who your customer is. The issue there is, is you’re taking this buckshot approach to the world, you know, you’re selling your wares, you’re selling your service, you’re selling your product, and you’re just kind of selling it to everyone. And it’s diluted and it’s murky. And so the idea the way that you saw that is you take a big step back and you get clear on the demographic geographic psychographic of your ideal customer. Who are they? Where are they? What are their? What are they? And to the degree you can get abundantly clear, that’s going to really focus your marketing energy, resources, dollars to greatly increase your sales because now you know who your ideal customer is. You’re speaking their language, you’re using their colors, you’re using their verbiage, and you’re attracting more customers. And so typically when that entrepreneur takes that leap, again, they’re just casting this wide net and and selling very little.

Adam G. Force 26:30

Yeah, yeah, love to hear it and keep reinforcing that for everybody.

Gino Wickman 26:34

Yeah, and then going to not knowing your numbers, that the downside of having the six essential traits almost always is true entrepreneurs, wild and crazy visionary entrepreneurs typically are not good with the numbers. I can still barely read a p&l, quite frankly. But they’re just not great with numbers. And so with that, they’re unfortunately flying blind. They’re always going with their gut. It’s chaotic, and they Not maximizing the profits, they’re not maximizing the growth. And so three simple solutions here, implement a weekly system where you’re looking at the five to 15 most important weekly activity based numbers. Number two, implement a monthly p&l look at a monthly p&l and number three, manage a monthly budget. Even if you don’t know what the heck those three things are, and you just do them by default, you will be forced to learn it in the next two months, you’ll become an expert. So implement those weekly numbers. Look at a monthly p&l manage a monthly budget, and you’ll be an expert within two months, if not a year.

Adam G. Force 27:39

Yeah, it’s so important and it’s a hard lesson that we’ve learned because I’m not somebody that I mean, I like the numbers but I’m not one that’s pulling it together and organized around it. I get like I just want to keep doing other things in the business and growing and stuff. And, you know, I’ve learned the hard way that what you don’t measure doesn’t grow. So keeping an eye on Those things and the most important things is going to be key to growth. Otherwise, you’re just kind of like, you know, floundering a bit

Gino Wickman 28:07

here here and I, you know, one last little point on so I call it a scorecard five to 15 numbers. I learned it from my business mentor when I was 25 years old. He taught me the concept of scorecard. I ran my first business on 14 weekly numbers, ran my second business on 14 weekly numbers. And what it does for you is it literally helps you predict the future because you what you do is you’re looking at those weekly numbers, you want to look at 13 weeks at a glance. So you’re able to see patterns and trends and you can literally predict outcomes three months from now, if you’ll work from a weekly scorecard. So I urge each and every one of your listeners listeners that implement that this week.

Adam G. Force 28:43

Yeah, absolutely. Really good advice. I love that. And why don’t we wrap up on one last part here in the path because I think this is important for people. I mean, everybody in our audience is acting based on their passion, they want to do something meaningful. So what I want to touch on here as you talk about the importance of having a mentor, you know, we have our program, the captivate method where we put storytelling at the heart of their marketing. It’s very authentic, we get consistent sales. And so this is like a group coaching experience. And, you know, a lot of times I feel like people will say, you know, I’m not ready for this or that, and they have this fear that holds them back, right, or perfectionism and things like that. So I would love to hear your thoughts on why it’s so important to have a mentor.

Gino Wickman 29:25

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ll share a couple things there. First is I’m going to talk through the pure mentor relationship and the process for finding one and then I’ll go to the second point, but the idea here is for you to find someone out there who is where you want to be. And, and rule of thumb, you’re going to need five to 10 names because you’re going to hear a lot of nose but you reach out to those people and meet with them for an hour. Ask them what you’re looking for. They share their stories and their insights. You share your story and at the end of that if it feels right, you decide to move forward. You agree on a structure. And so I met with my business mentor every month, hour and a half for literally five years. And he taught me so much. And so that’s the mentoring relationship and about 60% of all of the entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with my research, the ones I’ve talked to have had a mentor. And so the point here is if you don’t have a mentor, it’s not a death sentence, you’re going to be fine. But having a mentor is like a speed pass, you really can jump ahead with a mentor. Yeah. Second point, however, is the world is different now. You know, when I was 25, almost 30 years ago and was I was with my business mentor mentoring the last 2030 4050 years was a one on one relationship. And and it there was no money exchanging hands while the world has changed today, with coaching and masterminds and these organizations, there’s a lot of paid mentoring going on, you know, frankly, I’m a paid mentor for my clients. Yeah. And so, so it’s a little different. Now. The reality of it is you can still very much Find a free mentor and I would urge you to do that but but through the incredible amount of education and wisdom and how easy it is to access and in the the kinds of things that you offer entrepreneurs, you know, I’ve had my paid mentor has been Dan Sullivan for 23 years, I’ve been flying to Chicago every 90 days, I pay a lot of money to be around that man because I learned so much. So I’ve had free mentors, paid mentors, you just ultimately have to find someone who’s where you want to be and attach yourself to them some way shape or form. Love it.

Adam G. Force 31:36

Alright, Gina, I really appreciate your time today. We’re gonna close out here. Let’s make sure people know where do they reach you to learn more, find the book, maybe your website, wherever you want to point them here.

Gino Wickman 31:47

You bet. So the epicenter for all things entrepreneurial leap and everything we’ve been talking about is eat, sleep calm. The book is available entrepreneurial leap is the book. It’s available through all major Retailers but you can get to it through the website again E dash leap calm and then you’re also going to find a ton of free resources. There are nine free tools all intended to help you confirm that you’re an entrepreneur in the making and take a much better successful leap. Love it.

Adam G. Force 32:17

Thank you so much for your time today Gino,

Gino Wickman 32:20

my pleasure Adam had a blast.

Adam G. Force 32:22

Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show Adam foreseer. Your host. If you missed our last show, it was with Angela Henderson. Angela is super cool and she is out in Australia. She’s done some great work. So we talked about building an e commerce business and adapt identifying new opportunities. Angela is somebody that we actually met in one of our coaching programs that we’re both in she travels around the world spending, you know, 4050 grand a year doing masterminds and programs and we linked up in one of them. And so she was kind enough to be on our show and share some of her wisdom that she has from all her expertise and success in the e commerce space. So don’t miss that one. So this week, we are going to be talking to somebody who’s been In the digital marketing space for quite some time, and his name is Tom Colter, he’s actually the founder of a Weber. So if you’re a betting entrepreneur for a little while, you probably heard the name a Weber before, they are a staple in the email marketing world. So, Tom’s gonna have a lot to talk about when it comes to different strategies, insights, lessons and learnings in email marketing, and just digital marketing, you know, in general, so this will be a really great conversation, because I know we’re all looking to get more engagement, more attraction, which ultimately leads to a better functioning business, right. So that’s why we’re talking to Tom. And we’re going to see, you know, all these 20 years, what are some of the trends and things that he is seeing? Don’t forget to stop by Change creator.com we always have lots of fresh content going up there that you guys can check out and you can get in on the magazine Change Creator magazine right now for 99 cents, okay, so it’s $10 for the year, 99 cents a month, and you get access to our entire library of content. So Guys, we updated the app, make sure you go to the app store and you get the latest version. So download the update, and you’re gonna see some really cool stuff. So one, you’re gonna have all 28 magazines we’ve done so far in the app. And then on another tab, there’s articles, these articles run through an RSS feed. So you get quick, easy access. So every week articles are coming in from the Change creator.com website. So you don’t have to go to the website, just pop the app. And you can go check out conferences, you can check out magazines, you can flip to the tab, read the latest articles, all that good stuff is now in the app. And it’s just 99 cents a month, or $10 for the entire year for full access. I was actually reminded today about a memory from a few years ago, several years ago, when Amy, the co founder, Change Creator and I were in San Francisco, and we were there for a conference but all of a sudden we were running around the city trying to get some things done. And we heard that Muhammad Yunus was in town promoting a new book that he had coming out And he was at the Commonwealth center. So we were gonna go there and say, Hey, we got to go meet Muhammad Yunus. You know, he’s like the godfather of social business. And so we find out tickets are $200 a pop. And we’re like, I don’t know about that, but didn’t matter because they were sold out. He sold out the entire place. And we couldn’t get in which was a huge disappointment. And you know, Funny enough, guess what happened? Well, we decided to get clever. We figured out what what’s the story, we’re gonna tell the story of Change Creator, we’re gonna get in touch with these guys and share all their info. And we got in as media for free. And not only do we get in there, we made connections with his team. We ended up having a killer interview. If you haven’t heard yet, definitely go back to listen to the Muhammad Yunus interview we did. And he was also featured on the cover of Change Creator magazine, such a great addition and it was such an honor to have that conversation at 7am in the morning with Dr. Yunus. Okay, guys, I won’t hold you up any longer. Don’t forget to leave us a review. We very much appreciate it. We’re gonna die. into this conversation with the founder of AWeber. Tom calls okay show me that he Hey, Tom, what’s up, man? How you doing today? Welcome to the Change Creator podcast Show.

Tom Kulzer 04:12

I’m doing excellent. Thanks for having me on today. I got

Adam G. Force 04:15

it, man. So, you know AWeber has been kind of like a staple in the email marketing world for for quite some time. You guys been around for what? 20 years now or something?

Tom Kulzer 04:26

Yeah, 21

Adam G. Force 04:30

was crazy. I mean, I honestly remember 10 years ago learning about AWeber from some of these some of these online marketers when this stuff was all really picking up and they’re calling Yeah, AWeber is the best guy to get on AWeber and as a guy and that’s how I learned about you guys just from other entrepreneurs. Actually, they were probably doing affiliate marketing for you. So yeah, really, really great brand. I appreciate you jumping on here. And I’m curious actually what you were doing before AWeber like what what led you to the email marketing world

Tom Kulzer 05:00

It was kind of a bit of a twisty road to some extent I was actually in school at the time, studying mechanical engineering, managed to then switch to finance, you know, totally related fields. And just kind of on the side, I was selling wireless modems. So this is back in the dial up days, you know, where that was still a predominant method of connecting. So we didn’t all have iPhones and, you know, high speed internet connections in our pocket everywhere. So I was selling these wireless modems and in the process developed a sequence of emails to automate the people that had inquired about the product at the time. And I just wrote a little script that would send these emails out over the course of several weeks. And it worked really well as far as actually like educating people on and ultimately closing sales on those. And that ultimately turned into the initial versions of AWeber was making it something that other people could use for their own business. So I had people that came to me and said, Hey, I want to That email thing that you’re doing nothing like this exists out there. Can you do that? You know, can you do that for my own business? And I said, Well, you know, it doesn’t exist, but let me see what I can do. So, you know, so there was a need, and I filled it at the time. So and the rest is kind of history. And it’s grown from there.

Adam G. Force 06:16

Yeah. You know, it’s funny, because he started off saying you had a certain you’re going to school for engineering and stuff. What was this? an engineering that you went to learn?

Tom Kulzer 06:25

It was mechanical engineering, not computer science. Nothing like that, you know, make sense with my dad. Now. I like to say I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. So I’m sure people would argue with me about that. But uh, yeah, I like to know a little bit about a lot of different things and be able to piece them together in ways to create value.

Adam G. Force 06:46

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s always funny because I always argue with my wife luann about you know, college and stuff like that, you know, for kids and everything. Like, I’m not a fan. Oh my god. They don’t need that. They just gotta learn how to make money in this world. One way Are the other doing something that they just like, you know, and she’s a real big Well, I went to Cornell and it’s been the most valuable thing in my life and all this stuff. So when I hear people like, the guy went to school for this, and then they become an entrepreneur, but it’s totally just doing something totally different. When I heard you say that, I was like, it’s a pretty good example. You know,

Tom Kulzer 07:19

I have, I have little kids as well. And I’ve definitely had this conversation with my wife and friends and and I really think that school even though I never finished, and I don’t have an official degree, I think school is immensely valuable, in that it gives you perspective, and it creates relationships that you wouldn’t otherwise have. So I would always, you know, I would definitely encourage my own kids to go to school. You know, if they take a path that moves differently than that, I’m certainly going to be supportive of it, but I think it’s a good it’s a good direction to at least start in until you have a different direction that you might think might ultimately be better.

Adam G. Force 07:52

Yeah, that’s usually where the conversation ends up. There’s definitely perks for it for sure. So there’s there’s a place you know, and I just, you know, you see a story with, you know, the school debt and everything and people can’t get jobs. So it’s a, you know, it’s funny because you buy a program today, you know, you’re in the digital marketing world and people want to buy something, and they always want to see that 30 day, you know, money back guarantee. And you know, then it’s like, well, you know, you pay all this money for a college, there’s no guarantee that you’re getting a job and getting that money back either. You know, it’s very, yeah. Anyway, so I don’t want to go too far off on a tangent, but I can get sucked into this all day. But I want to hear a little bit more just about the development of AWeber. Because obviously, since you’ve been around for a couple decades now, take us a little bit through the evolution in a nutshell, just kind of like where you started and where you are today. Cuz, you know, we’ll get into like the future of AWeber as well.

Tom Kulzer 08:47

Yeah, I think you know, initially it started out as very, very simple. It was simply a series of seven email messages that were all plain text, no graphics, no fonts or bold or anything like that. because, frankly, email clients back then didn’t support it, you know, eventually that evolved into, you know, being able to support sending email newsletters and that sort of thing. And, you know, to where today you know, now it’s it’s really a full suite, you know, marketing automation platform that allows people to, you know, create really beautiful designs and things that match their, their brand. And, you know, really be able to communicate in ways that are engaging with their subscribers in as much automation as you possibly can to make that not only time saving for end users, but also more engaging for your subscribers to receive content that is relevant to them. Yeah, so it’s really evolved significantly over the years, you know, we have 100, you know, 10 or so people in our office here that are working every day to continually improve the platform. It’s not a you know, design once and be done and continue to sell it forever. It’s very much an ongoing thing and that’s, you know, a big part of the benefit. have, you know why we exist? And why? Having a cloud solution for that is so valuable?

Adam G. Force 10:06

Yeah. Yeah. No curious because, you know, there’s many different email platforms, obviously, that people get, you know, lost doing their research, trying to figure out what’s best for them, and everybody has their own needs, right, that that’s suitable. So who are who does this really suit? Right now? Like, are you geared towards a specific type of, you know, entrepreneur or business owner? Who do you look at as a primary customer right now?

10:30

You know, most of our I wouldn’t say there’s a specific single industry that we target there, it’s more about company size and and how they’re engaging with folks online. So typically, you know, small business customer, whether it’s an entrepreneur just getting started out of their kitchen, you know, upwards of, you know, companies of 100 Plus, you know, we also have big enterprise customers that use us for different parts of their site. So, um, you know, different enterprise class like blogs. Use us for disseminating They’re blog content in an automated way. So that people are able to see their news updates and that sort of stuff. And it’s fully automated. And it’s something that their enterprise email service provider solutions don’t actually support, whereas we do and we automate all of that. So… it really ranges a spectrum. But predominantly, it’s that small business, you know, solo entrepreneur to small teams in the, you know, 10s 20s and 30. Team Member kind of kind of categories.

Adam G. Force 11:29

Interesting. Yeah, I, you know, I, that’s helpful and makes a lot of sense. I just want to ground the people listening here. And, you know, I’d like to hear your thoughts just on, you know, the evolution of digital marketing. Do you have any just I’m just curious, because you’re in obviously, the digital marketing space. You’ve been doing email marketing specifically for for quite some time. How are you’re seeing, you know, this space evolve? Is there anything that really stands out to you these days?

Tom Kulzer 11:57

Yeah, I think when you step back from email, and look at kind of the Bigger marketing digital marketing ecosystem. You know, we started out back in the days of like AOL being giant, you know, and you getting the, you’re getting a little floppy disks, and eventually the CDs. You know, and that’s really when AOL was was a heyday in AOL to a lot of users was internet back then. They didn’t know that there was an internet outside of, of AOL. And I think it’s interesting that over the years as social networks have built up, like many people think that Facebook is the internet. And there is a repetition in these trends of you know, kind of as as different businesses gain kind of that market share. They create kind of these walled gardens that try to keep everybody in and everything else out and they make it really hard to communicate and interact with anything outside of that guard, which is why businesses today, you know, are often told like you need to be on Facebook, you need to be on Twitter, you need to be on Instagram, you need to be on all these different things. And it’s hard for I think a lot of businesses to figure out where where they can have the most impact and how they can connect with their, with their users in the most genuine way. And I think the the biggest kind of trend throughout all of that is email has really remained very relevant. And if anything, the center to a lot of those communications, like Facebook’s one of the biggest email centers on the planet. Yeah, and it’s, and most people say like, social media is gonna kill email. It’s like, no, no social media relies on email to exist. Yeah. And I think it’s something that a lot of people kind of overlook. It’s one of the few mediums where you can actually, not that you own a relationship but that you can own the ability to communicate with with those users, but you don’t own some of your subscribers email inbox, and you have to respect that. That permission that someone has given you to to enter their inbox But, you know, whereas Facebook, you might have 100 people that are following you or that have liked your page, but when you post something on Facebook, that doesn’t mean all hundred are gonna see your stuff it you know, and not even 90 or 80 likes these days, it’s, you know, 10 20% if you’re lucky, whereas email, like if you got a 10 or 20% on, you know, open rate or like a delivery rate and all the other 80% were on deliverable never even saw your message, like, people be like banging down our door with pitchforks. Like, it’s a very different kind of, you know, ecosystem where when you send an email, like 99% of those emails are getting delivered to the people that requested them, and they’re going to be able to see them and it’s not some algorithm that’s deciding that whether you’re going to see it or not see it. If you’ve given permission and you’ve been actively engaging with it, you’re going to see it every single time. Yeah, that’s, that’s that’s probably like the biggest kind of big picture view of the whole digital marketing that I’ve seen overall on the trends as it’s kind of come and gone over the years.

Adam G. Force 14:58

Ya know, it’s it’s a great Point and you’re right. I mean, you get 100% deliverability. Unless you have a junk email that’s, that’s on, you know, you know, but at the end of the day, you guys get it out there and Facebook is getting less and less. I mean, you get I don’t even know if it’s 10% anymore. So yeah, we got like 30,000 people following us and only, you know, 80 people see a post, you know, like, what is that about?

Tom Kulzer 15:23

Yeah, it’s definitely has changed

Adam G. Force 15:25

the other thing too, that is interesting is I think that over time, you’re right, like, it’s a staple for any entrepreneur, like, email hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s only gotten better and smarter. And if Facebook crashes, your email list is still there. It’s not going anywhere, right? Your business doesn’t get disturbed.

15:44

Right for Facebook shut you down, poof, all your 30,000 followers are gone like you don’t have any way of recouping them and nor do you have any way of communicating with them other than to potentially open another Facebook account, which you know is going to be hard pressed to do to begin less if you Got yourself shut down that way where, you know, you know, it’s different. Yeah, I will caveat all that was saying like email marketing should be permission based, you know, you don’t want to send spam. You know, you don’t, you don’t want to, to, to, you know, violate people’s trust by sending them emails that they haven’t requested, you know, you don’t want to get it yourself. One that’s sending it to other people. And I think that that’s something that especially as an entrepreneur can be very enticing. You know, I’ve listened to you actually, I was listening to one of your, one of your guests that you had on not too many podcast episodes ago, where they were basically encouraging people to spend just shaking my head I was like, No, no, no, no. Like, you want to make sure I’m not gonna name names, but uh, you know, it’s, it’s one of those, you know, you want to make sure that people are requesting the information that you’re sending, and that’s overall the best way to have a successful email program and have successful and get influence and relationships that come out of email is to start on the basis of permission. Yeah, so

Adam G. Force 17:06

I agree. And you know, one of the things that, you know, my co founder, Amy and I talk a lot about is, you know, as business is changing today, more and more people have their guards up ad blockers are popping up. And people don’t they don’t trust the information that’s out there. Think about if there’s more videos, you don’t know, if it’s real, there’s more images that you don’t know if it’s real, or articles that are misleading. Like, there’s a lot of factors out there today that are causing people to lose trust. And so trust is becoming the most valuable resource you can have, especially when you’re trying to start a business and build up, you know, advocates for your business. So I think you’re right, if you’re just throwing things out there, people don’t know who you are, and you’re just trying to pitch, you know, spam and sell things. Today, that’s going to be more and more difficult. It’s not like the wild wild west, maybe in the early 90s, or whatever it was, right. So I think the trust factor that you mentioned, and being permission based is going to be really important to developing a relationship that’s sustainable. Your business?

Tom Kulzer 18:01

Absolutely.

Adam G. Force 18:02

So, so, yeah. And I’m curious then, you know, as as this stuff is evolving what what are you guys thinking about? Is there like, what’s next for for a Weber and development? Like, what’s the vision for the next year or so?

Tom Kulzer 18:20

Um, you know, we we don’t get into a whole lot of specific, you know, down and dirty product plans internally, we definitely have a roadmap for those. I think the biggest thing that you’re seeing is, you know, for us is is the amount of information that businesses are putting out there in the amount of different platforms that they need to be on the the ability for them to communicate with their users in the most time efficient manner possible is, is I think one of the most important things like actually today. We just had a big release called Smart designer. And basically what it does is it allows us an end user to come to our site, enter their website address themselves. And we are able to pull out their logo, pull out their images, pull out their color themes and those sort of stuff that they have on their website and create some really beautiful templates as a result of that, without the end user having to do anything like where are our basically, our algorithms are able to put together a bunch of templates that they can pick from that are already branded already look like them, and they can get started with and send right away to their subscribers. And I think it’s those kind of automations that whereas in the past, you might have had to have a designer, you might have had to take, you know, a stock template and tweak it to the way that you like, like most of us, myself included, you know, are not brilliant designers that can make ourselves you know, make our stuff look really beautiful. And while our templates make that a lot easier, I think you know, this sort of automated mechanism for building templates that are fully branded right out of the box is a really cool and innovative way to save people time, but also make them look better. Like make their stuff more engaging with their end users and make it more identifiable when it’s so when it shows up in your inbox is like, Oh, yeah, that’s that website, I was on last week that I gave my email address. And I didn’t want to get these updates. Whereas when you get something that like, you know, has a different color theme, or maybe he’s missing a logo or something, because the site owner didn’t get around to putting it in their template, you know, it, it hampers that instant recognition that I think is needed to help with the overall engagement of the emails that are being sent out to PDF. Yeah. So that continuing of the trend of using machines and using, you know, the the programs and stuff that we have on the back end to be able to aggregate that content and do things that are smarter with it. and sending it to people that are more engaged, I think is going to be kind of a continued theme that you’re going to see from us in the in the years to come.

Adam G. Force 20:50

Interesting. Yeah, that consistency definitely will help you know, it’s like going from an ad or seeing a brand on one platform and then you click through and you’re told it’s totally different, you know, title and color scheme, you’re like, Am I in the right place? Okay, yeah.

Tom Kulzer 21:04

You know, I’m not saying anything about a particular brand or anything, but like, just look at, like, target as an example. Like, I’m sure we’ve all seen the ads, like their commercials on TV. And it’s like, you know, before they ever say the word target or the company name target, you know, you’re watching a target ad, just by like, the way that it feels. And and that I think is, you know, that’s a branding that obviously, you can spend 10s of millions of dollars to get that, but like, you know, the i think it’s it’s subtle things like that of just seeing a consistent color scheme, a consistent theme throughout all the different channels that you’re communicating with users is what helps build that over time. So I’m build that record.

Adam G. Force 21:44

And have you guys had any focus on I don’t know what your internal, like data collection is like, but what do you guys do too? I was going to get into like, you know, the idea of open rates and what you’re saying Seeing is working for people like have you do you collect that kind of data to see like, what kind of emails are working well? Or what are getting good clicks and all that kind of stuff? Is there any kind of data collection like that?

Tom Kulzer 22:11

Oh, yeah, absolutely. That’s the, you know, a big part of the value of our platform is the open rates and your click through rates and your unsubscribe rates, all of that sort of metrics that we roll up for each individual customer, but then we also roll up, you know, across the aggregate and across different industries and verticals. So yeah, now we see you know, 10s of millions of of email send every day and, you know, millions of opens and clicks throughout the platform every single day. So there’s, there’s a tremendous amount of learning there. I think, you know, overall from an email landscape when you’re talking to in it, you know, an individual and business owner, you know, email these days is all about engagement much, much like they talked about on social platforms. It’s also similar to, you know, an email the I think the bar is different in Email than it is on social platforms. But it really comes down to sending engaging emails, there really is, you know, the definition of spam these days from from a mailbox provider. So think like Gmail or hotmail or Yahoo, one of those, you know, the definition of spam to them is really, Does somebody want it? Or do they not want it? And they might have wanted it in the past, but no longer want it? In which case, they’re gonna they’re gonna potentially throw that email in the spam folder. Yeah. And and at the end of the day, how are they judging whether or not you want that email or not, you know, obviously, there’s the spam button that you can click in an email client to say, like, Hey, I don’t want this anymore. But there’s also what you do with the email every time you get it. You know, when you get that email, do you open it? Do you read it? Do you click on links in it? Do you reply to it? All of those sorts of things feed into their algorithms to determine whether or not you and others like you are going to want to receive emails from that sender. So it’s really important that when you’re sending emails out, that you’re keeping your engagement off, meaning you’re keeping people opening them, you’re keeping them clicking them, you know, and even replying and forwarding them off to other people is a really good signal. You know, there’s a reason that all of your personal communications back and forth with like myself or others, you know, are always in your inbox is because you’re replying to one another, you’re having conversations, you’re engaged in interacting, whereas a lot of emails that a lot of businesses send out, you know, they’ll send them with like, a no reply email address. And, you know, it might be a little like Kurt, but like, I always describe that as like giving all your customers the middle finger. You know, it’s basically like your buy my stuff. Don’t talk to me,

Adam G. Force 24:43

essentially, right? Yeah, I see that alot

24:45

And it’s like, absolutely, I see that all too often. And it’s like, absolutely, like the most terrible thing that you can do. Like you want to engage with people like you want to help them and while you know you need to figure out the you know, economies of scale and how you can help people As your audience grows, I think those kind of one to one personal relationships and those personal engagements are really what makes the difference between a brand that thrives and a brand that dies. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 25:14

So have you seen? Or do you have anything off the top of your head? That would be a helpful insight for people when it comes to, you know, engagement in the email space?

25:28

Um, you know, I think, you know, obviously, starting with sending content that’s relevant, you know, what are people signing up for? What are what are you telling them they’re signing up for? You know, are you sending emails? You know, when somebody signs up, Hey, get updates from my blog, you know, 10 tips about whatever it’s like, okay, but are you then going to send them an email every day? Are you going to send them an email once a month? How are you setting expectations with them on the content that you’re going to send, like, I often see like people that send really frequently, you know, they’ll have a signup form on their site and they don’t tell people Hey, I’m going to send you three emails a day. I don’t know about you. But when I sign up for something, I don’t generally expect to get three emails a day from that sender. And I’m probably going to either unsubscribe or complain pretty heavily, as soon as they start doing that, unless the expectation was set up front. You know, I think, you know, as far as ways of engaging, I think surveys are a really good way of, you know, just asking different little questions. And having people kind of partition those users off to different parts of your site that speak to and engage with them more directly than maybe like a, you know, a broader sense. And the cool thing is, is once you do that, you can also like in our platform, you can actually tag users. So if you click on this particular link, I can say I was I was using like a, like a catalyst as like an example. So like, if you click on the dollar articles, you know, I can tag you as dog and if you click on the cat articles, I can tag you as cat. And that way in the future, I can send the cat people, all cats. stuff and I can send the dog people dog stuff because I’ve learned what they’re most interested in. And I can now mark it to them in a more relevant way. I think it’s, it’s kind of a hokey example. But like, it’s, I think it’s something that most people can like instantly grasp as how that would be more relevant, and why you’d be more likely to engage with that content than if you know, half of this stuff that I send is completely irrelevant to you because you’re just not into cats.

Adam G. Force 27:24

Right? Yeah, that’s perfect answer. I mean, at the end of the day, it does come in it sounds so obvious, like, oh, send relevant stuff, which means, but if you took it a step further, before that, which is set the right expectations up front, you know, we collect emails where someone’s like, oh, get this free guide. Next thing you know, you’re on the weekly newsletter, you know what I mean? It’s like, Well, wait a minute. This has nothing to do what I signed up

Tom Kulzer 27:49

I didn’t get told that I was gonna do it that either.

Adam G. Force 27:51

Exactly.

Tom Kulzer 27:53

Yeah. You’re gonna ultimately hurt yourself in the long run by doing that so Exactly,

Adam G. Force 27:57

exactly. And the tagging is a great tech to really help start tracking who’s showing interest where and I love the idea of that segmentation to really again just become more relevant. And it’s almost like just personalizing the conversation over email.

Tom Kulzer 28:14

Absolutely. I think another thing that’s really interesting, like, you know, in, in the marketing sphere, you’ll often hear like, Oh, I’m gonna send an email blast and like, every time I hear somebody say that, like, I just cringe a little part of the die. Yeah, because it’s like, again, it’s kind of that like middle finger to your your audience. It’s like what you want to blast all your all your all your subscribers, like, that doesn’t sound like a really nice thing to do. And I think the best way to reframe it, and what I tell folks is like, don’t write your email to 100 people or 1000 people or 100,000 people or however many subscribers you have, you’re not writing an email to a huge group of people. You’re writing it to one person, that one person that’s, you know, pulling out their phone from their pocket and reading your email or sitting at their desktop and reading Getting your email in a laptop or whatever. It’s, you’re, you’re talking to one person at a time. Yeah. And and I think the best way to kind of get that voice there and to think about that one person is like, when you’re writing your emails, think about like writing an email to your mom, like, you know, your dad, your grandparents or your sister or whatever it happens to be like, write it to one person and make it relevant to them. And it’s much more likely to be relevant to a lot of other people at the same time, because you’re writing you’re writing to the person and not just like this huge anonymous group, which makes your message I think, more personable, and more identifiable. So like, you’re just you’re more likely connect and an actual human level than than just like, Oh, I send an email to my list. Like, I hate when people refer their, their subscribers as as like a list. They’re people. You know.

Adam G. Force 29:54

I know it’s funny because I just had this we just did a discussion. My co founder, Amy and I were talking about how The digital world of marketing is not like when you go door to door and you sit down, you had a full conversation with someone face to face. It’s like taking that conversation and spreading it around digitally. And now when people think of marketing and targeting and all this stuff, it’s become so cold. So to your point, you know, it’s now a person is a click or an impression. They’re no longer like we’re having a conversation. We’re talking to people. It’s like this cold marketing jargon.

Tom Kulzer 30:25

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. So the clicks and the opens and the lists that they’re all people and they’re all somewhere on the planet. There’s maybe a couple floating around in outer space at any given time, but I doubt they’re reading your email. They’re all here. And and I think that it helps to talk to them as people and not as this inanimate object.

Adam G. Force 30:47

Exactly. And and just, you know, it shapes your perspective of what you’re doing. So the step the actions you take can be different just because of the way you frame up the way you think about it. Absolutely, um, you know, one of the things they just wanted to ask Real quick was that came to mind is just when you when you got off the ground with AWeber you know, you’ve done this entrepreneurial hustle. I’m sure you’ve had your ups and your downs and things like that. I’m just curious of any advice you have, you’ve been now, you know, sustained your business for over 20 years. So just any general advice for people who are in their first five years and you know, we all go through our ups and downs like that. So I’m just curious what your thoughts might be to based on your decades of work.

Tom Kulzer 31:29

I would say everybody’s an overnight success 10 years in

Adam G. Force 31:33

exactly.

Tom Kulzer 31:34

Like, like, I think that the news media like Star obviously portray, like these in this this persona that like every business is an instant instant, overnight success. Very, very few are, you know, we’ve seen hundreds of thousands of businesses, you know, come many are successful, many, many are not and I think that as an option For an area kind of have to have a thick skin and a determination to like kind of, you know, walk the, you know, the trodden path and keep moving things forward. It can often feel like a million miles. But I think eventually, you know, eventually with the determination and the right kind of, you know, the right thing that has value to to, you know, people that you’re putting it out there to, I think you will see success, it’s just, it’s just a matter of getting there and very, very few businesses are like instantaneously successful. You know, everyone starts with one subscriber, you know, the biggest trick is like, just starting, you know, I hear a lot of the like, I don’t know what to write and it’s like, just write something because something is better than nothing. Yeah, and and just just that, like, just keep, just keep moving forward. And, and I think that eventually, you know, more more often than not, those that persevere are eventually successful and I think that down that road can often be long and arduous. But I think in the long run it can can be really, really beneficial and really pay off.

Adam G. Force 33:11

Yeah, hundred percent. I love that. Thanks for sharing that. And then, you know, the last thing I’m going to ask you is just kind of this closing question that we’ve been asking people just to kind of give you a chance just to speak from your experience. And you know, if you had this opportunity, you had the world’s ear to share in a message that’s important. You know, what would that message be to everybody?

Tom Kulzer 33:34

You know, I I really gave this some thought in it. And it’s kind of weird because the first thing that popped into my mind that kind of like blanked out on on like the name of your site and whatnot, and the first thing that came into my head was like, be your own agent for change. And then I connected back to two and I was like, oh, that totally sounds like pandering. Like, there was like, with like, being completely honest. It was a first thing that just popped into my head when, when you asked me the question. You know, if you don’t like something, you know, don’t wait for somebody else to make it better. You know, we really have to be our own agent for change, whether it’s stuff in your life, whether it’s your personal life, your business, whether it’s your employer where you’re working, like, you know, it’s stepping over, we, I often use this example in our business here, it’s like if you see if you trap a piece of trash on the ground, like don’t step over it and wait for somebody else to pick it up, like you pick it up. Because if somebody else sees you picking it up, they’re more likely to pick it up the next time they see a piece of trash and I think that being that agent for change can be so so powerful both you know personally and professionally and being the the solution and not part of the problem. You know, we talked about this, this concept called pairing here in our office where like, you know, you might go and you’re, I think a lot of people’s natural reaction is to like add, there’s something negative like I’m gonna To go tell somebody else about this negative thing. Whereas like, really the healthy thing to do is be like, Hey, I see a problem here. And like I see these two or three different solutions to making that problem better, like, and I think everyone’s life is so much more enriched, when you’re really the solution for that change. And the solution for those problems, rather than just like perpetuating the problem consistently, you know, over and over again. And I think a lot of people get really hung up on all the reasons they can’t do things. And not all the reasons that they can do things. And I think that, you know, being that agent for change can be really scary for a lot of people. But I think if you’re not doing something that’s a little bit scary every day, you’re not changing and growing. And if you want different results in your life, you have to be doing things that you haven’t done before, because if you’ve done them before, you would already have seen that success in your life. So you really have to kind of step out of the comfort zone over and over and over again in order to really create Create that change and to create the, you know, the the ultimate, you know, outcome that you’re looking for. So that’s kind of my that’s, that’s my pulpit.

Adam G. Force 36:11

There. It’s so important I like just appreciate you saying those things and, you know, just helps it leave people in an inspired mindset, you know, so I really appreciate your time today, Tom, this is great.

Tom Kulzer 36:22

Hey, thanks for having me on. It’s been fun. Awesome. We’ll be in touch.

Adam G. Force 36:25

That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Adam & Amy: The Hard Truth About Delegating For Your Startup

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Delegating work is important for any business but what if you delegate the wrong things at the wrong time?

Change Creator co-founders, Adam and Amy, have been there and learned hard lessons that they share in this talk about delegation.

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam fours. Hope you had an amazing New Year celebration, holiday break, spend time with family, all that good stuff, maybe a little time off to recoup and get ready for the 2020 year. Amy and I want to kick it off this year, having our first conversation to talk about delegating for the year because, you know, we had a conversation about this before in our community, people were not necessarily as concerned about finding the right people. I mean, that’s very important. But also, are you delegating the right things at the right time? Are you doing more harm than good? Because we’ve been down that road with Change Creator, where we did bring on teams for PR and marketing and other things that we delegated. And we made some big mistakes and so you know, we recouped since then, thankfully, and we want to share some of those experiences. With you have so you can have a solid 2020 as you guys are trying to scale your impact businesses. If you did miss our last episode it was before the holidays here it was with Jessie whose last name I will not try to pronounce because it’s a tough one. But we did talk about selling and tech and things like that. And it’s a really good one because he has a lot of sales experience. And so if you missed it, swing back through, you’ll get some good sales nugget nuggets out of that. We’ve made some good updates on the website, we just put some fresh content out there for you to check out. There’s a really great in feature story we put together with prime roots. They just raised $4 million, and they’re in the superfood space. So we talk about climate change. We talk about healthy foods and that industry, investors are chomping at the bit guys to get in on that space when it comes to vegan foods and that type of stuff. So you might want to check that out. Last but not least, don’t forget to stop by Facebook. That’s where we’re hanging out a lot. So check us out on the Facebook page follow us and if you want to take your conversation to the next level. Talking about your business and learning about, you know, really making it profitable. Well, that’s where we want to stop. Have you stopped by our group it is for the profitable digital impact entrepreneur so you could check us out over there. All right, guys, I’m not gonna hold you up any longer. We’re gonna dive right into this conversation with Amy and I and kick this off. Okay, show me the heat. Hello, guys. We are going to talk a little bit about delegating today. Because you know, when you’re in the first several years of your business, you start thinking about, you know, where are my weaknesses? What do I delegate? So you know, delegating for your business is important. But what if you’re delegating the wrong things, and you’re actually hurting your startup? So what would those things be and why we want to get into some of that today?

Amy Aitman 02:46

Oh, that’s great. Yeah, we’re gonna get into that. But first, I want to ask you guys who loves watching Netflix? I mean, I think everyone, right? Yeah, look, I’m a love Netflix and there’s a show that I’ve done. discovered recently, it’s called million pound restaurant. It’s a fun one. And the premise is, these new restaurant owners get to pitch their business to investors. And then they get to open their own restaurants and see if they get the million pound investment, which is really exciting. And one of the things that restaurants do is what’s called a soft launch. So they opening night, they have their new concept. Some of them have started like street vendors, and then they go into their own restaurants. So it’s their first chance to really sell to this bigger audience in this new location. And imagine that you have this or you have started your own vegan, sustainable restaurant, you really care about the environment. You are an amazing vegan chef to make vegan food tastes like amazing food that even there’s a lot of and it’s soft launch night and there’s so much on the line and a soft launch night so Instead of, but instead of cooking your signature dishes and mingling with the crowd and working your dream, this is your night to shine. You hand the keys over to Gordon Ramsay. And you say to Gordon, now Gordon Ramsay is an amazing chef, and I’m sorry, Turner. I’m sure he’s, I mean, I know he’s really great at running his restaurants. But he comes in with, it doesn’t take the time to get to know what you’re doing. He looks out and he says, I think I’m going to make the steak a steak restaurant because he’s like, I’m going to start to serve steak. So we go then he changed the menu. He changed the stuffing. He does whatever he wants, because he says I’m going to make this a success. And so your vegan your sustainable restaurant becomes the Steakhouse and your customers that came in looking for the best vegan dishes are suddenly getting this menu with hunks of meat with steak on it because Gordon Ramsay is running a restaurant But you’ve been told that you need to outsource this and Gordon Ramsay to the best. So then your soft launch is a disaster. People aren’t really happy even though he’s an amazing chef. And then you get Gordon Ramsay’s bill. So now not only are you broke, you’re not selling the product that you wanted to, you’re not selling your vision. You’re and Gordon says, I’ve set you up for success and he leaves so your business is like that restaurant is like you. A lot of us do this. We have this really strong vision for our company for our brand. But when it comes to actually opening night soft launch trying to make the sale time to get to know the customers we hand the keys over to Gordon Ramsay because we think he could do it better. Yeah, but he can’t always do it better.

Adam G. Force 05:53

Well, and it may not be it see you know, you have a certain intention behind that business right like something that’s meaning To you, so if you are doing a vegan restaurant, you probably care about the environmental, you know, correlation to that kind of, you know, meat consumption, all that stuff. So you know that intention can change and nobody’s going to have that passion and intention, like, like the founder does, right? And so for, you know, it’s a great fun example with Gordon Ramsay coming in and changing things up because his mindset would be, well, we’re here to sell, make money and get it done. So we got to do what works, right? I, you know, he’s not gonna feel and appreciate the intention that you have, you know, when you’re the as the founder writes, it’s just not the same. So handing the keys over at the wrong time to somebody like that could really in reality, like throw your business in a direction that you may not be happy with? You know, like we most of us had heard the advice. I mean, I would say anybody in the entrepreneurship space, you know, you know, if you aren’t good at certain things like we don’t we all were we’re like a jack of all trades in the beginning. We try to do everything and but at some point We got to start delegating the things that are our weaknesses, right? Mm hmm. And so you know, you hear both sides of the story. And the question becomes, well, what do you delegate? And you know, what if you hire somebody that is going to hurt your business more than actually helps your business. So that advice can be misleading for those reasons. And it can make you end up actually delegating the most important part of the business that really you need to own. Okay? And we really want in business today more than ever, with the way that the digital environment is evolving. We really want to build authentic relationships with our audience. I mean, that trust is so important. And it starts with the founder and the core team of like, why they even started this business. And again, no one’s going to be able to speak to those intentions, which really do differentiate your business, the way you can write as a founder. I mean, you can consider somebody like Tom’s And I think, you know, he started this with an intention of helping children that don’t have shoes because there’s so many issues that stem from that. And it was kind of like an overwhelming, you know, sensory overload for him when he came across this situation in Argentina. And you can imagine from the get go him switching it up with them and they go, you know, he actually a great point is like when I interviewed him he was he told me as a response to my question, which was, what would you do differently if you started today? Tom’s and the one thing he said is I, you know, when I brought in the executive team, I was I would take a very different approach, because what he learned is that people come with habits that may not serve the original intention of the business. Okay, not that they’re bad people or, you know, they have malicious intentions themselves, but they have different beliefs, different habits of what it looks like success. So all of a sudden, they changing the business intention, start changing the way things have to happen because they’re going after a bottom line. It’s kind Like you have this social impact business but you’re going to bring in like somebody on Wall Street character

Amy Aitman 09:04

who’s going to go right and could you imagine if he had led that vision go or hadn’t kept driving that vision throughout his so even he’s saying like I might have hired my executive team differently, but even when he did hire people, he had such a strong vision for his company that he could keep pushing that so that’s when when you know, we would never imagine a Tom’s without Blake but it’s because it’s not because he’s the face of the brand because he’s the driving force of his sales of his vision of those intentions that he’s always had the company that’s a really good example.

Adam G. Force 09:40

Yeah, and that’s what’s going to earn a lot more trust is there to see Well, this is the guy that started it, this is why he started it. It also makes him different than other people. So you know, he’s not necessarily competing on price and all these other things. So same thing with Ivanova Patagonia amazing products. Their intention is just threaded throughout everything they do. They do additional programs they do charities, every piece of clothing is, you know, with intention for the environment and all this stuff. So, you know, he is that driving force, and he is he is the face of his brand as well. You know, so staying true to that intention is really important. And we don’t want to delegate it to somebody that might start shifting us away from that, and it might happen slowly to might not be a dramatic thing. And then all of a sudden, a year or two goes by and you’re gonna look back and say Holy crap, like, Where is this gone? You know, like, what are we doing?

Amy Aitman 10:29

So true. And as business owners, we are the one like we have to not only you know, work on our the passionate part of our business and things that we love doing our business, but we have to run our business to Yeah, and we have to be we have to be the driving force of our sales of our marketing. It’s just you can’t you can’t, you can’t pick and choose you have to do both, and to be success. You really do.

Adam G. Force 10:52

I agree. I and in the earlier years and Listen, I’ve done over, I don’t know, hundred 200 150 200 interviews and I asked I started asking people I feel I’m like, you know, you need to be like the sales of your business is what gives you control options, the ability to be a contributor in life, you know, to do good things like this is you need that money to do these things. And you need to actually, this is so important to the business, you don’t want to just delegate that out of the gate, like you need to become the number one salesperson for your business. And that means learning and talking to who your customers like learning who they are by talking to them intimately learning like, can you get on the phone and actually sell a product? Right? I mean, if you can’t do that, you know, you’re going to struggle digitally, especially when you want to go at scale. You know, so these things are really important to consider and you’ve got to build that strong foundation. Now that’s not to say that we never delegate there’s a time right you can do the wrong things at the at the at the right time or the right things at the wrong time. And so you know, if you don’t become the number One salesperson, there’s a couple things that come to mind of what happens. So like what happened? No, firm this up yourself and learn how to talk and sell these products. Yeah, aside from missing out on really getting to know your audience, and really what makes the business tick, yeah, you’re gonna miss out on sustainable growth and sales, right? Yeah. And you’re going to burn out at some point because you’re going to be competing on price and features and those types of things, versus that intention that’s very attractive to people, and that differentiates your business. And then you’re going to have maybe people saying

Amy Aitman 12:34

that happened so many times before, too, especially with social impact companies, it’s like when they’re creating their product, they’re taking all those sustainable things really into consideration, their cost per acquisition or their their price points are really are higher, so they have to charge higher, but as soon as they take a step back and say hire a PR team, hire marketing team, get something on e commerce, like You said they missed out on sustainable growth in sales because all of a sudden, the little few little sales they’re getting aren’t coming in. And we’ve seen this with a lot of examples before. And then some expert says we need to lower your price because your if because your, your cost for this T shirt is $35 and every other t shirts $20 but the whole intention of our company was not to sell a $20 t shirt that you know with tons of water waste and by splashing out into landfills your entire company. And so you get stuck between these two realms when really you need to think about what why you started this company in the first place. And you’re gonna get sustainable growth and sales. So you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna need to sell less and not compete on price. If you are the one that’s driving this intention. It’s really important. We have so many times it’s so easy to get caught into that competing on patients temptation. Yeah

Adam G. Force 14:00

For you, there’s so many crossroads, right? And ultimately, honestly, like, if you lose sight of your intention, you start straying. You are you’re gonna have all this competition on price and features, but you’re gonna start lacking fulfillment in what you do. Right? So part of having this intention and a meaningful business is there’s a sense of fulfillment you’re doing something you are excited to wake up for, that you believe in that does something for the people in the world and all that kind of stuff. So, I mean, you don’t want to end up just doing going through motions that feel like a job, you want to live a life right in harmony with, like who you really are. So this makes a big difference in the business. So it’s a major differentiator, those those things differentiate far more than price points and all that stuff that stuff it will it’s gonna be extremely hard road and you’re gonna go broke.

Amy Aitman 14:48

let other people compete on price, exactly what other people do to play those games because that’s not going to work for your business. Exactly.

Adam G. Force 14:56

So I think it’s really important to state that you don’t have Hire a sales team. When your sales are lacking, you hire a sales team when your sales are thriving. That’s when when you’ve already figured out all those things, and you’ve got it pinpoint. And it’s like a well oiled machine. And you know your audience better than anyone, you’ve built the foundation. Now you can get other people trained in everything that you learned from all those conversations and all those sales right?

Amy Aitman 15:25

Now, that’s the best time to hire a sales team, and then a PR team and a marketing team.

Adam G. Force 15:32

Yet there is always a time and a place and you know, you know, will tell the story we did go down this road to but before we get into that, I know Amy, you were mentioning a couple of these like questions that people might be asking themselves and I think they really tee up.

Amy Aitman 15:48

Yeah, I mean, after talking to so many people, they come to us at this point when they don’t know how to implement marketing and they don’t really want to put themselves out there. So if you’re in place right now where you’ve considered outsourcing that’s which is what we’re talking about today. You might be telling yourself, I don’t even have the skill to sell my products, right? Like, I don’t have the skills I’m fabulous like you. I mean, I totally understand that, that could that could be holding you back. And but these are skill sets that you can everyone can not only learn to do and that you can learn to do, but that you have to do, you have to learn these these skill sets. And I know personally with me and with our time here at Change Creator, there was a time that I really loved to be back behind the scenes and to be in the background, not think about sales copy or questions or talking to the audience because digital digitally you could easily do that you can easily take take a step back and it’s really a mindset block that we have, that we don’t have the skills so there’s ways to learn to get those skills and a lot of questions we get from people in our lives. And when they come to us is why would anyone listen to me? I’m not an authority in this space. And I always like to say, you know, when, like started Tom’s he wasn’t an authority in the space either he was a Blake Mycoskie, we all feel like that, especially in the beginning, and we all feel like, you know, we don’t have the authority, nobody knows who you are. But we’re never going to build that authority. And we’re never people aren’t going to find out who we are, or get the intent or hear about our vision for our company unless we put ourselves out there. And we make this such an important driving force of our business.

Adam G. Force 17:35

Yeah, and I think that’s a fair point. Just to add one little comment there too, is, you know, if you know something that someone else doesn’t know, you’re an authority you can help them you know, if you have something that they need, like you could talk about that you can help them so you don’t need to be over a PhD that has all this need to help people that don’t know what you know.

Amy Aitman 17:56

You’re authoritarian to right now. If you’re at the point where you considering hiring any kind of marketing team, that you’re already an authority in something because you’ve created a product, you’ve thought about sustainability, you probably put your got your website together, you’ve probably done a lot of stuff. You have your own sphere of authority. And you can build upon that once you’ve already if you’ve already got to that point, and a lot of people that come when they’re thinking about considering hiring a marketing or PR team, this is the point that they’re at. They’re really such great authorities in you know, sustainable fashion company. And they know their fashion. They know the numbers, they know water waste, but then they’re like, I’m on an authority in my space. I can’t get I can’t do my own work. I can’t get myself out there. So yeah, I just kind of like that’s a really great point, Adam, because it’s true. We get this question a lot too. What if I’m an introvert, or I’m shy? should I hire someone who’s a people person to do this and I really feel like this is such an antiquated thing for brands. You hire like somebody else to be the voice of your brand and you hire some celebrity or you hire some influencer? Yeah, I feel like the tides have shift with that. I feel like people do not want some fake person that represents your values and your brand. I really feel it that’s to send and the funny thing is 70% of entrepreneurs say that would say that they’re introverted. So there was a lot of really successful, really successful introverts and people that are because I find to the people that are call themselves shy and introverted, when it comes to talking about their passions and what they’re really their vision. They light up. Yeah, because it’s really mean something to them. So if you’re introverted or shy, I’d say that’s even more reason for you to, you know, get yourself out there and to not hire someone who you think is a people person. We all have people we can offer people person. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 20:02

These are all fear blocks. You know, it’s kind of like how if you’re saying these things, these questions your mind and you’re having these thoughts, you will start finding ways then to avoid coming the salesperson because it’s uncomfortable for you. And all of a sudden that’s where these ideas of delegating sound nice. So you hear the Tim Ferriss and all the other start saying, well, you got to delegate and you go, yep, you’re right, because I’m super uncomfortable doing this important part of the business next time, you know, you’re gonna do what we did. And we’ve been down this road where we were busy, we’re building a complicated business, and we thought to expedite our process of promotions and sales. We would delegate we got a PR team was that a couple thousand a month we got a marketing team a couple thousand dollars a month. And you know, we

Amy Aitman 20:49

we hired a salesperson to even hired we did hire a salesperson, yeah, we

Adam G. Force 20:55

this is where we not only not only do we know from other conversations, And other entrepreneurs experiences and stuff about these challenges we’re talking about, but we’ve experienced them firsthand. And we were like, whoa, wait a minute, we’re spending all this money, the ROI is not there. Whereas the gaps, and one of the major gaps was we need to take a step back and get in a grassroots mindset and start talking to our audience and really learning the sales narrative through these conversations.

Amy Aitman 21:23

Yeah, I can tell you we got zero sales from all of the thousands of dollars. And, I mean, we hired amazing salesperson, but if we don’t know how to sell, we can’t tell him how to sell. And so we really just had to take that step back, like Adam said, and really talk to our customers. And, you know, figure out like, what are the objections were what if we had to do the sales conversations and it is uncomfortable. I mean, it can be really uncomfortable, especially. It’s really tempting to just throw money at the problem is sometimes I say, it’s so tempting to to say Make it rain take care of this for me, it is so tempting to do that and i know i there and I and part of me really wishes that would have worked because like, in the early days and we’d be rolling in dough dough right away because you know if we could just throw money at this hiring somebody else that we would that I would have worked for us

Adam G. Force 22:24

and it didn’t know they have different intentions, they have different agendas. They have different passions than you like it’s just not going to translate the way you want to when you got to build that real core audience up front right it’s just you got to do it and you know, now we have over what 100 videos of sales conversations that we’ve had, you know, some of them in the beginning they’re awful we suck and we listened back right oh my god, I was like, This is terrible. Like No wonder they didn’t want to buy anything, you know? Yeah. And that’s gonna that’s okay. You get out there you know, I read a book so like craziest guy has Like $400 million a year agency, and he’s even in this book, he’s like, you’re the number one sales rep. You cannot delegate this and we’re like, yeah, we learned that. Thanks for now the book comes out.

Amy Aitman 23:13

Yeah, you learn the hard way. And we want to make it you guys the easy way cuz trust me, you know?

Adam G. Force 23:18

Yeah. All right. Listen, let’s wrap this up. I think this is a fun conversation. Hope you guys had a couple lightbulb moments. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you’re thinking about this conversation. Have you experienced anything similar? Do you have any thoughts? love to hear from you? And we’ll catch you on the next side on the next video.

Amy Aitman 23:33

Yeah, we’ll continue this conversation on our private Facebook group. So if you haven’t joined by now, come that’s where we get into the nitty gritty of all this stuff. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Bye.

Adam G. Force 23:48

That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews and more ways to stay on top of your game. Available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag Comm. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Brian Robinson: Becoming a Selling Jedi Master For Your Startup

Listen to our exclusive interview with Brian Robinson:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

One skill every entrepreneur needs is to know how to sell! And that’s what we are talking about with author and sales expert, Brian Robinson.

Brian Robinson is a sales and marketing expert, best-selling author, and coach. He has worked for some of the best-known companies in the world, including Coca-Cola USA and Johnson & Johnson.

Upon leaving his corporate career, he helped launch a successful startup where he was the first person in the history of the industry to sell more than one million dollars in business in twelve months—entirely by phone. He has over two-decades of in-the-trenches, battle-tested, face-to-face and phone-presentation experience that can benefit virtually anyone, from Fortune 500 companies to entrepreneurial ventures.

Brian is the author of the Amazon #1 Best-Seller, THE SELLING FORMULA: 5 Steps for Instant Sales Improvement. Brian and his wife Cindy reside in the Oklahoma City area and have eight children – which could be the topic of an an entire podcast in and of itself!

Learn more about Brian and his work at > http://brianrobinson.me

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:01

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the change critter podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. If you missed the last episode, it’s with Mark Agnew. He runs this eyeglass companies challenging the famous one for one model that was started by Blake Mycoskie. And it’s great to see people continuing to innovate, how they can contribute and tweak their business models for different types of social impact. If you missed that one, I highly recommend going back to check it out. There’s lots of good little golden nuggets in there for you. This week, we’ll be talking to Brian Robinson. And I’m excited because, you know, we’re really focusing in on the sales and marketing stuff and it’s just such a critical part of business and a lot of people in the social impact space are you know, They have a fear of selling, you know, there’s just it’s so tainted from years of sleazy sales. But, you know, we’re changing that. And that’s, that’s a big focus for us, and how do we approach people as human beings today. And so anyway, Brian Robinson is a sales and marketing expert. And he’s also an author and a coach. He wrote a best selling book called The selling formula. He’s done a lot of work with big companies that you’ve probably heard of like Coca Cola, and Johnson and Johnson. So he has a lot of good insights in so we’re excited to see what he has to say about the sales process and and what he’s learned in his experience. And it’s interesting, because just recently, Amy and I, Amy, the co founder, Change Creator here, we were talking and one of the things that we brought up was, you know, how we start delegating things, especially when it comes to sales because we feel like maybe that’s just not our sweet spot. And it’s so important that as founders of companies, we become the number one salesperson because we really, there’s a lot there’s a lot that comes out of that experience and being called close to that process when it comes to understand the narrative identifying opportunities or problems in the, in that process. So we were talking and one of the things that came up was this statement that just kind of came out of nowhere. And it was a nice quote, but it’s important. And we’ve seen it happen a lot, which is you don’t hire a sales team. When sales are lacking. You hire a sales team when sales are thriving. So think about that. Because you know, what we’re trying to say is that if your sales are lacking, lacking, then your systems are not set up, right? It’s not working yet. So you can bring on a sales team spend a lot of money, and they’re gonna have a hard time selling. But if you are able to establish that sale system, then you bring on a sales team and you train them in it, you’re going to be able to really scale the business so it makes a very big difference. People we’ve interviewed have chimed in on that saying yes, been there. It was a very painful lesson. So remember that that’s a good it’s a good little tip and it’ll come in handy down the road. If you’re not following us on Facebook guys, check us out there. We do lots of good content, and we flow everything through there. And then our group is tied to that. So you can take it a step further and the group is the profitable digital impact entrepreneur. So check us out over there. Lots of good content coming down the pipeline. All right, well, let’s see what Brian has to say and get into this. Okay, show me the heat. Hey, what’s up, Brian, how you doing today? Welcome to the Change Creator, podcast show.

Brian Robinson 03:28

Thanks, Adam. doing awesome. Doing great.

Adam G. Force 03:31

Great, great, good to have you. I’m excited because we’re gonna talk about selling today. And you have an awesome book, the selling formula five steps, for instance, instant sales improvement, which is pretty cool. And you know, being transparent, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’d love to just hear your expertise since this is a big focus for us at Change Creator and helping our audience you know, sell more with their social good businesses. So yeah, I mean, I if you can Just like what what do you? What do you have going on these days? I like to just get like the latest of what you have going on.

Brian Robinson 04:06

Yeah, so very exciting. Our company, little less than two weeks ago just released out of beta. We’re, by the way, we’re a digital marketing company. We provide in lobby digital signage for a lot of businesses around the country. And we’re the first company to release that service on the Apple TV platform. So you can just navigate to it now find our app works 24. And we offer that service via that app. And there’s some incredible capabilities there. So our whole company’s stoked about it.

Adam G. Force 04:40

So you guys decided to make an app I think, you know, there’s it’s one of these bridges that people are scared to cross sometimes and I’m wondering what what led you to to commit to that.

Brian Robinson 04:53

We provide equipment to play the video content in our clients locations. We work with a lot of banks, credit unions, medical facilities, and the cost of obtaining that equipment, maintaining it. And all that goes with that, plus our whole force of service technicians. It became a reality that if we could provide an off the shelf hardware piece of hardware and it was integrated with the Apple device, then would be a game changer. And just out of the gate, it is absolutely a game changer. It’s changing everything about the way we think our clients think about the service the way they view us. Was it easy? No. It was a challenging road. And we had a good year and a half of development in it with our partner. And but it worked. And we just had to work through the the different components and pieces of making that happen. It was well worth it though. And it should be

Adam G. Force 05:54

I can I can definitely appreciate that. And I know what goes into creating these things. So kudos to you Guys, we’re getting that done and kind of pushing through.

Brian Robinson 06:03

Thank you. Thank you. Good team, we got a great team.

Adam G. Force 06:06

Awesome. So before I get into just the topic of selling and trying to get all the little nuggets I can from you just give us a little overview of the book, like why did you write it? And what are people supposed to take away from the selling formula?

Brian Robinson 06:23

Sure. My background was corporate sales with Johnson and Johnson and Coca Cola USA for a total of about 20 years. And I was in four different divisions. And Johnson and Johnson and I journal quite a bit. So I was sitting outside journaling, and I started to write down what what was it that I did consistently in my selling. And I kept bumping up against these five steps. And I recognized that, gosh, if I could help decrease the learning curve for somebody that’s challenged with sales or as in sales. And kind of questions in their gut, what am I missing? That’s why I wrote the book. And it’s, it’s kind of we talked about prior to the show, it’s kind of a velvet glove approach to interacting with your clientele.

Adam G. Force 07:14

Yeah. Okay. Got it. Got it. So I guess where I get curious is, you know, we are, you know, we’re helping people who are in the let’s just say the first five years of business. This is most common for our audience. And I’m wondering if in your mind, you have any thoughts on the difference in selling during that time? I mean, here we are in startup world, versus you know, we got the Johnson and Johnson’s, what are the differences in similarities? Any thoughts on that?

Brian Robinson 07:44

Yeah, great question. I discovered because I’m, I was involved in the startup several years ago, that I’m now with, and I compare that to what I do with Johnson and Johnson. The difference is With the entrepreneurial approach, truly, if you don’t sell you don’t eat. So you better have some response, you better close some deals. And so in the j&j world, at the end of the day, if you didn’t close a deal, it wasn’t live or die. It might hurt your numbers a little bit. So that’s the dramatic shift that occurred in my world when I went to straight commission sales and start in the startup. So what I found is the five steps if I can share those with you real quick, fire away. Yeah, the first step is to connect with your prospect and set the agenda. And what I found to be fascinating is after a full year of high level sales coaching, my number one takeaway is in this step, and that setting the agenda with your prospect, and that simply sounds like this. Hey, Adam, with your permission, I’d like to go ahead and set the agenda for our conversation today. Is that okay? Yeah, well Who wouldn’t say that’s okay? And you just tell them it’s three steps. And then I go into the in the book I talk about what you should potentially say. And what it does is it brings everything to attention right away in the prospects mind because they know you have a plan. And most people just show up. And you know, I’m gonna say, throw up. And that’s not a good plan, right? The second step is to interview the prospect. And this is critical. I discovered that questions really are the key to life. And if you take the time to craft clear, cogent questions, and literally have a sheet of questions with you pull it out when you’re having the conversation with your prospect. They respect that you’ve taken the time to do that. And it also takes the pressure off you to think about what you might have to say, yeah, and so that works really well. And then third is present your solution after you’ve Of course diagnosed the challenge. you present the solution based upon the answers you received. And then you give your pricing and your guarantees, and close the deal.

Adam G. Force 10:07

So I’m going to just jump in on this and kind of unpack a couple things going through my brain. And you know, you kind of started with this conversation with the with the potential client. But this is in a particular world, where you’re sitting down with somebody and having this conversation, whether it’s, you know, over the phone or in person or whatever it might be. What about people in the e commerce world who are trying to sell these products, you know, in ethical fashion? And, you know, how am I thinking, how is my thought process around selling today, different than if I’m not going and having quiet conversations like that?

Brian Robinson 10:44

So you referring to a more of an email approach or some of the social media approach?

Adam G. Force 10:49

Yeah, I mean, I’m getting there. That’s kind of where I’m going because you have to look at it. And because in our world, we got to say, well, not everybody has that kind of business, right, where I’m gonna go and say, Hey, client, let’s do some work and I want to close this deal. So now there has to be a conversation, I think, kind of translated from that in person, but now done digitally. So we have a different product. It’s a different dynamic. So if I have an e commerce store, and I’m trying to sell these things, how do we get the same conversations going and starting to flow? And this is kind of like what we talked about a lot. And it’s just these, I think there are core fundamentals to selling like you mentioned. So we’re just kind of starting to translate this stuff into like a digital environment, if you will. Mm hmm.

Brian Robinson 11:32

I really think the best way to frame that answer is with one key word and that’s curiosity. If you can convey a sincere, authentic sense of curiosity, with the questions, you ask that open, potentially open the dialogue with your prospect, that’s the key, instead of coming off as I know the answer to your problem. How about do you have a challenge like this? Is this something that you face What’s your 2am issue?

Adam G. Force 12:01

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that’s kind of like starting the conversation with them. So they can start feeling like you there’s something to relate to, like you understand you kind of get in their head a little bit, right? And you’re talking to them out. You know, you’re you’re asking these questions, but you can frame them up in ways where they’re like, yeah, that is me. And in a kind of start saying they start seeing themselves in this conversation.

Brian Robinson 12:24

Right on. Yeah, I totally agree.

Adam G. Force 12:26

Awesome. And so I guess I’m, I’m curious, have you had some interesting feedback and stuff on this book that you had?

Brian Robinson 12:35

Yeah, as a matter of fact, I just had a conversation last week, gentlemen, and I spoke and he said, he bought the book for his entire sales team. He’s with a medical startup. And he had them read it. And they’re actually going to apply these steps. Yeah. In their sales conversations. And so well, that that felt great. ,

Adam G. Force 12:57

Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. Yeah. And you Got a sorry, go ahead. You had something Oh, that’s

Brian Robinson 13:01

okay. When one of the one of the other things that I keep getting feedback on is the pre call preparation, the pre call mindset or mindfulness. Yeah. And that’s something that tends, in my view to be overlooked. And that’s simply taking some time to think about your prospect before you ever pick up the phone, send them an email, or get get in person with them. And it’s just taking some time to like and care and be grateful for them. And really kind of throw that picture in your mind that this is somebody you really want to serve. Yeah, and it changes the whole dynamic.

Adam G. Force 13:37

Right? Yeah, I can see that I can see that. And I think you know, today I one thing that stood out was I was I learned about the the guy that founded Costco a little while ago, and he mentioned that so many people suppliers want to distribute their product through Costco, right. And one of the things he mentioned was he said, you know, let’s say you have a laundry detergent. It’s a saturated market. There’s all these different people who are, you know, have different laundry detergent. So how does he decide which ones to work with? And he said, it’s not always about, you know, the price differentiation and all those things, because there’s a lot of common ground. So that differentiate it differentiation only goes so far when it’s saturated. It’s a saturated market. And he said, so the number one I know number one determinant about it is, I go with the person who I like and trust the most. Mm hmm. Yeah. Does that resonate with you?

Brian Robinson 14:33

Totally. Yeah, totally. It’s, at the end of the day, it’s a like, and trust world with selling. Yeah, yeah. You know, some people are just strictly transactional. I don’t think that’s the vast majority of people though. Now, because we really want to connect with others.

Adam G. Force 14:49

Yeah, there may be circumstances and you can win like that here and there. There’s these transaction things. It’s just a great deal. But in the long run, I don’t know that those methods are sustainable. And there’s gonna be some kind of burnout through trying to compete on things like price like that. I think you start to fall apart after a while.

Brian Robinson 15:06

Totally agree. I’ve seen it happen in multiple industries, too. Yeah, if the old the old adage is if you live by price, you’re gonna die by price.

Adam G. Force 15:15

Exactly. I mean, you just can’t you cannot continue to compete that way. It’s just it just wears out. It can be difficult and then you can you don’t really have differentiation at that point. You just have a momentary blip of differentiation.

Brian Robinson 15:31

That’s right. That’s right. It is momentary.

Adam G. Force 15:33

It is momentary.

Brian Robinson 15:35

Yeah, well said.

Adam G. Force 15:36

Interesting. Interesting. So tell me a little bit more about the formula. I like to hear the way you’re approaching things and I guess teaching and I started in my mind everything we do is digital, right. So like, one thing that we’ve done, I’ll just share this before you get into some details is you know, I Change Creator we talked about how important it is to before you Sell digitally, to get on the phone with people who are who you think are your correct customers. And even if it’s zoom over zoom or Skype and you do like a video call, and and talk to them and sell your product to them on the spot. Mm hmm. And then, you know, the fascinating part of that is, through those conversations we were because you know, everyone that everyone knows do market research to get to know your audience, but it’s super different when you actually try to start selling to them. Because the conversation dynamic changes, all of a sudden you have a sales narrative being built for your digital environment. Mm hmm. Yeah, I’m just curious, like, just to share that because, you know, we’re talking about learning to sell in person in order to sell digitally. And I’m curious on your thoughts of just how important it is to be able to do that as a founder.

Brian Robinson 16:51

Oh, it’s critical. And then it really brings me to a point in the book about the questions you ask. And I’ve discovered a very powerful way to build your questions. And it’s very simple. Just take a sheet of paper or an Excel spreadsheet and make three columns. And then put in your first column, the key feature, right out next to that in the second column, the benefits related to that feature, there’s going to be multiple benefits. And then in the third column, write the key questions that would elicit those benefits. And you’re going to wind up having this fanning out from features all the way to questions of bullet points, and then take the 20% most important benefits and use those questions in your narrative. And here’s an example of that. This is this is in the book, but I’m just gonna read this. I think it’s very helpful, perhaps for your listeners. Yeah. So imagine that you’re selling pre made home cooked meals for two to six people. And what you do is you simply have the first benefit is it saves up to 16 minutes per meal, including for food purchase prep and cooking time. Another benefit is just pull it out of the freezer and put it in the oven. So there’s two benefits you’ve written down for that. Yeah, so three questions. Number one. And the third question is most critical. Number one, on a weekly basis, how many dinners Do you cook for your family? You could see asking that right. Yeah. Question two, how much time does it typically take you to make a dinner for your family? Yes. Okay. That’s a fair question. But the critical question gets down to the emotional piece. If you could just pull your dinner out of the freezer already prepared and put it into the oven without having to think about it. How would that affect the frequency of your family meals?

Adam G. Force 18:39

Yeah, yeah. Right. How does it affect you in general, like your time you free up time, there’s more time with maybe the family. So there’s, I think that’s a powerful point.

Brian Robinson 18:49

And that’s where you want to ultimately go as you craft your questions is into that space where it really affects the individual and could affect their life, their family. And so on.

Adam G. Force 19:02

I love that. Yeah, I like the three column approach that’s kind of organizing your thought process a bit for these conversations. And, you know, I’m one of the things that we’ve gotten really into is, you know, telling stories to people to help them like when they have an objection, you might say, well, we don’t, we don’t like frozen food. And that in that example, you gave, right. And so this, that and the other because of certain reasons, so would you do you find yourself in these conversations with clients to say, Yeah, well, you know, my friend Susie, it’s amazing, Chris, she felt the same way. And but here’s what she found out, and then you tell a story that demonstrates something that kind of like, overcomes the objection that they just had.

Brian Robinson 19:45

That is a brilliant approach. Adam, I referenced that in the book. And you’re absolutely right. What you’ve done in that case is you’ve pre created social proof. It’s third party and it’s not you telling them it’s the story, selling them Really what it boils down to, let me give an example of this a live example. Our car company sells, in addition to digital signage on hold messages for the phone system. So somebody put on hold, though, hear those messages, etc. And they’re custom. I had a client call me he’d been with us six years, and he wanted to cancel our service. And my knee jerk response was, Oh, my gosh, what do we do wrong? And he said, Nothing. I really think people listen to on hold messages, Brian. And I said, Well, let me try something. And Adam, we are involved in conferences all over the country, and we provide a driver for giveaway, it’s worth about $300 in a drawing, and we do this everywhere. I had an extra driver in my office and I said to my client, well, let me try something. I’m gonna go ahead and write five messages. And let’s see if anybody even responds. We’re going to give away a driver on hold. So an example of one of the messages was, we don’t even know if you’re listening to this, but if you are, please tell the receptionist you heard this message when you come off hold and wait. into a drawing for a free $300 driver in 17 days 97 people signed up to win that driver Wow. He kept the service that story I just shared is that is to your point it’s a story I share with people that that think nobody listens to on hold messages and nobody can argue with that because it’s a true experience.

Adam G. Force 21:23

Yeah I love it and that is the key don’t tell demonstrate and that demonstration provides such clarity around the idea it’s powerful and then you’re not just like telling someone something you know where they have no context almost right.

Brian Robinson 21:39

Exactly.

Adam G. Force 21:41

Now the context is there. I love that and it gives value to what you say. I was I was I heard a story about there is a couple of days in Coney Island. This guy’s like I brought my wife to to Coney Island to see this art or no was she brought him to an art display. And there was this guy that did this famous picture of a pig swimming in the ocean. And she’s like, Well, what do you see here? She’s like, well, I see a pig swimming in the ocean. Right? no context. And then the artist, or photographer came over. And essentially this guy started this company for meat purposes on this island, but he didn’t think far enough ahead. And he, you know, didn’t plan on how to feed these pigs. And so long story short, I’m really kind of rushing through it. But long story short, what happens is the he had to a restaurant on another island. So anytime they had all the food scraps, they’d get in a boat, go over to pig Island, and out in the water, they dump all this food and the pigs learned over generation after generation, they’d have to swim out to get the food. So now when they see boats coming, they say, hey, it’s feeding time. And that’s how the photographer was also able to get such close up photos with the pigs and everything else in pig Island. And so at the end his story now the guys like Here’s I want this picture. It’s a great talking piece. It’s a great, you know, like all this stuff, so he added so much value to it. But without that story, there was not a not value where he would want to buy it.

Brian Robinson 23:11

Guess what, Adam? Yeah, I have fed those pigs in the Bahamas get to hell. I’m not kidding. And the weird thing about it, we fed them hot dogs.

Adam G. Force 23:21

There. Yeah. That’s pretty messed up, man.

Brian Robinson 23:27

But it was hilarious. You jump out of the boat and they are they’re just swimming out. It’s so funny. And so fun.

Adam G. Force 23:32

That is cool. That is after hearing that myself. Like, I want to go experience that and it is a cool conversation. Yeah, man. That’s good. That’s good. So um, yeah, so I guess, I guess Tell me a little bit more. I’m curious. One thing that people forget is okay, great. You learned how to talk the talk and walk the walk and you’re able to get clients great. You made the sale. But what about the big, important part of your business, which is post sale and renewals? Mm hmm. I think people forget that part of it.

Brian Robinson 24:11

Well, we’re, you’re right. And we’re fortunate in our industry, we have clients, service representatives, that they’re tasked with reaching out to our clients every 30 days. And so they’re constantly getting touched. So to your point, when renewal time happens, it’s not like I showed up and then come back a year or two or three later and say, hey, guess what, it’s time to renew. And they’re like, Who the heck are you? Yeah. They’ve said, Oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t been changing our content as much as I should. But Kelly always reaches out to me and there’s She’s so good about that. And, wow, I don’t have to work as hard nearly as hard as if I showed up once every x number of months or years, right?

Adam G. Force 24:51

Yes. Yeah. And so I’m gonna just put that into context for people listening is you have a system that works for you. Meaning like, you You don’t have to work as hard because of those very simple light touch points every 30 days. Mm hmm.

Brian Robinson 25:07

And it’s all part it’s automated as well, but we escalate it to a personal contact. If after six days from that automated response, we don’t get anything. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 25:16

And that’s it. I just that’s just a piece

interview

Adam Force & Amy Aitman: How We’re Navigating Covid-19 as Digital Impact Entrepreneurs

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

It’s not business as usual right now but this is a good thing for us as leaders and entrepreneurs.

Change Creator cofounders, Adam and Amy, talk about how we’re navigating these changing times and how you can really lean into your business right now as well.

This is the time when our actions are going to change the trajectory of our businesses and our clients for the next six months.

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show hope everybody is doing amazing. If you missed the last episode was with Allie ball, she is crushing it, turning her intellectual property into a thriving business. So it’s a great interview for you guys to check out lots of good nuggets in there. She’s in the food, retail space, but she’s talking about how she developed her business online from consulting to actual you know, evergreen digital, so lots of good nuggets in there for you guys. So go back and check that out when you get a chance. You know, today we’re going to do something special, and I hope everybody is staying safe. I know we’re going through some very unique, unprecedented times with this virus that is going around. So I hope you’re practicing your social distancing, saying inside and staying safe with your families. This is so important right now for people. And it’s also a great opportunity. Right? So it depends on how we look at everything. And all throughout history, whether it was Einstein or Nikola Tesla, you know, the idea of isolation and solitude is also, you know, the times that you have the most creativity, those epiphanies and aha moments, giving your brain it kind of like gets into this focus. And when you’re alone, these great ideas can surface Okay, so take advantage of that. What can we do to serve more people? How can we pivot our business to adjust to what’s going on today and help others who are struggling, right. So there’s a lot to consider and a lot to think about. So Amy, and I actually did a Facebook Live not too long ago. And we’ll be doing some more. It’s been a little bit crazy here. So we’re trying to pop on as often as we can. And we talked about some of these things. Because we noticed in our Facebook group, the profitable digital impact entrepreneur, how people are feeling. And I know that people’s businesses are taking a hit, or they’re nervous, or they are, you know, faced with some fear and anxiety around the circumstance. And so we wanted to talk about that a little bit. How do we, how should we be thinking about this situation today, and start adapting? And so this is actually a Facebook Live, I wanted to bring it here to the podcast, because I thought it was a good conversation, and that you all would get something out of it. Okay, so we’re gonna dive into this conversation. And Amy and I are going to talk about, you know, how we’re navigating everything with what’s going on today. Right? Like, what does it mean to your business? How should we be thinking, and it’s just, you know, it’s not business as usual, right? So this is the time to step up as a leader. We are entrepreneurs, we are problem solvers. And this is the time when our actions are really going to start shifting the trajectory of our business and our clients over the next six months. So we’re gonna dive into that chat. And this is again the Facebook Live that we did recently. And I wanted to bring it to you guys here on the podcast. I hope you guys enjoy this and you get something out of it. We’ll be doing more live. So join us in our Facebook group, the profitable digital impact entrepreneur and guys, as always stop by change crater comm we have lots of good stuff being published over there for content that you guys will probably find very valuable. Without further ado, let’s jump into this disc. Okay, show me that hey. Hey, everybody. So pretty interesting times. I think these are unprecedented and a lot going on. So Amy and I have been talking a lot amongst ourselves and our team but also with other teams and people in our network. And we wanted to just bring this conversation to you. So I don’t know if you saw our notes in the group yesterday, but there’s a lot that we Want to support you with when it comes to kind of managing how things are changing? And what it means to us as entrepreneurs, especially as entrepreneurs in the social impact space, right? Mm hmm. So there’s a few things we were going to cover off today that we think would be helpful just to kind of like, start things with you. And so, you know, Amy, we had a couple topics that are really important. And I think there’s Miss misconceptions here. And this is kind of a time where we really want to be empathizing and supporting each other. But, you know, we’re looking at what it means to people and their business right now. Right, like we have this virus taking place. And how is it changing your clients lives? How is it changing the customers you have and their lives? I mean, how many of you are hearing comments from clients? You know, we’ve heard about clients wanting to pull ad dollars out. We were part of a summit in May and our Are the person that was running that are one of our coaches had to rejigged the entire thing to become virtual right to support what’s going on in these circumstances? You know, people are, they have brick and mortar style businesses, and they have to figure out how to digitize them and what that means. So we want to talk about a couple key things. What was the first thing on on our lists, Amy that we wanted to cover?

Amy Aitman 05:24

Yeah, before we get through our proper gonna cover I just wanted to say like, many of you out there, you’re probably self isolating right now. We’re here we’re with our families. I just want like one to say that when our if you see our post yesterday, our like, our businesses, and our lives are so intertwined. And right now like I’m home here with my little guy, he might be home off of school for quite a while and I’m just so thankful and grateful. And Adam, Adam has a little one on the way soon.

Adam G. Force 05:57

Yeah, we’re, you know,

Amy Aitman 05:58

we’re dealing with not just are businesses here but our lives and that’s why we really wanted to come and speak to you guys more, we’re going to be coming on live more, we’re going to be speaking to you guys so much more because we really want to support you during this time. And this is why this our first talk. And you can hear my little guide. So it’s gonna happen. And so these are the comp we’ve been having a lot of conversations with our students with our clients with, like Adam said with other entrepreneurs in the space. And one of these is topics that are coming up the most, the most for people and we really want to talk about so today we’re going to talk about is it unethical to sell your products and services during this time right now? I know there’s a lot of things going on. And this is a question that we’ve actually gotten quite a bit so we’re going to talk about that.

Adam G. Force 06:52

Yeah, which is a good question because we all feel just put Coronavirus aside. You know, a lot of times you say Selling and people give you the face like, Oh, yeah, I don’t want to do that right because that’s kind of a gross thing. It’s not like they feel dirty a little bit. And there is some stigma around it. But what happens when you have a situation like today, right the Coronavirus, like should you be out there selling? And the short answer is as entrepreneurs, we are wired to be problem solvers. Right. And when we are solving a problem, we are trying to transform someone’s life. And that means we look for ways to support them and transform their life, which means we’re selling. And so you know, an example of this would just be having a brick and mortar store and having a service that is offline. But then you have a program that can help someone Bring It Online, right, because during this time, they’re not able to run their business, the way they normally Would. So if they’re losing money month over month or right now week over week, and you can help them kind of get set up to get that money back into their pockets for their family, then it’s okay for you to sell a program that will support them and doing that, you know, we still have to run our businesses and we’re lucky right? Me because you have digital businesses now. Put a comment here if you’re if you hear this talk right now, and you know, maybe you’re somebody that is trying to get digital and you need support for being digital. You know, maybe you’re one of those guys because this is happening a lot. And so really understanding Well, what are your your audience and your clients going through? And if there are creative ways as a problem solver for you to help them. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do everything for free is there communities and discussions about things that are free? Yes, but you can definitely be selling and should be selling Because if you are selling, it means you’re out there transforming someone’s life. You’re helping someone solve what they have, and you’re putting money back in their pocket. Right? So that’s our initial instinct as leaders and as entrepreneurs. I don’t know if you have other thoughts around that, Amy,

Amy Aitman 09:15

no, this is the time that we really need to be helping people and we need to be selling. And I think a lot of us, especially as ethical entrepreneurs, we want to we have such empathy for our customers or for clients. But really, all of you that are sitting out there are good people, you we’re not talking about somebody selling, you know, hoards of toilet paper and selling them on the block. Not doing that, like that’s not what we do, the businesses that you guys have and the businesses that like that we have here. I know that we help people in our program, we help our clients build their businesses, we help our clients, you know, supercharge their marketing, and so that’s something that people really need, especially in these times. And I really believe that this is the time that what the decisions that we’re making now as problem solvers, as leaders, as entrepreneurs, that’s going to change the not just the trajectory of our businesses and of our customers lives, but of our communities and the people that we can really help and we’ve been given such privileged to have online like right now, the internet’s not down. The digital space is not here, there is a lot of ways to help people. And so if you are struggling with thinking about like discounting your your service or not selling your service or taking it offline, I really want to encourage you to say, No, you’re helping, you’re helping people and if you don’t have a digital offer, or you don’t have a digital product, there’s so many ways to get creative. I have seen so many of my friends and people come out of the come into the digital space and a new way and show up and be like how do I use zoom and how do I build my community and how can I start a Facebook group tonight I have at seven o’clock I have a digital zoom book class now is simple. Really? Yes, right. I thought it was amazing that she really wants to that my zoom instructor really wants to lean into her community and say, Hey, I know that you guys are all home. And that you’re all we’re all self isolating right now. So why don’t we do zuba one of our colleagues has his has a lot of events and events space. So he brings entrepreneurs, digital entrepreneurs together six, seven figure digital entrepreneurs together. And guess what, a lot of us in those spaces and depends if you’re an e commerce right now, or if you have depends on what niche you are, if you’re in the travel niche, some of us are really struggling with certain digital aspects. So he’s like, how can I build my community around now on Friday mornings, we’re going to have these talks and we’re going to bring that together. And that’s just really what I’m saying. So if you you guys are good people. You have products, you have services you have offers. That are really helping people lean into that. How can you help more people, I would say, lean away from discounting your service or from taking your offer off the table or from not doing your marketing right now. And guess what, there’s more that you can do. You can offer bonus workshops, you can offer bonus lives, you can offer both bonus things to really lean in, if that’s what you want to do and bring more value. That’s what Adam and I are doing. And that’s why we released a statement yesterday, we are offering more help to our current students and helping them say, Hey, are you guys struggling right now? Are you worried about, you know, creating your digital offer and you want to you want to do that a little bit faster. We’re here to help. This is what we live and what we breathe. Right, Adam?

Adam G. Force 12:45

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s been pretty impressive. You know, there’s just been such an incredible amount of community kind of uprising in a sense. I’ve been invited to digital coffee meetups. To meet while we’re all social distancing, right? We can’t get in person. So great conversations happening about these things brainstorming what’s going on. What have you heard from clients? What have you heard from clients? How can you help them? What are the big challenges they’re facing? Because if they’re losing money, you want to help them, figure out how they can solve that. Right? So, you know, seeing all these big conferences and summits go virtual, I mean, this is leadership, right? They’re not just shutting it down. They’re figuring out a way to continue to serve their audiences and their clients one way or the other just like zoombak continue to serve their audience. I think it’s really impressive and you know, we’re just hammering off like a couple you know, scenarios here. But there’s a lot of scenarios out there for different clients when it comes to advertising when it comes to marketing when it comes from brick and mortar to digital, like all these different things have to be taken into account. There may be a little piece of that equation that you have expertise around and that you could support. Let’s say you have a course or something, it might be part of that program that supports it, and you create a workshop out of it. And now you have that for $100 versus your original $500 program, right? So there’s pieces and things that may not even require you to do a ton more work. It’s just a very focused offering, that will help someone with a very new and unique problem that they have because of this global, you know, challenge we’re facing right now.

Amy Aitman 14:36

And as entrepreneurs, I think it’s really exciting for us to have these challenges and to set our businesses up and to be into really help people and get them said, How are we leaning into our customers and saying, Okay, what is your challenges right now? Where are your pain points? What are you guys struggling with right now? And what can I create to really help you write up

Adam G. Force 15:05

And part of that is get involved in the communities. I mean, we had someone in our mastermind group, start a Facebook community and you know, having some of these discussions. I mean, people are hungry for the support. How do you get involved? Learn More. This is about empathizing. This is about connecting with people online, having these conversations. And it’s not just going in there and thinking, selling selling, it’s, it’s how do I help you? And that doesn’t mean you have to give every all your time, energy and expertise away for free. You just help you solve problems. Put the Coronavirus aside, you’re always solving someone’s problem. You’re not taking advantage of them but you’re giving them a solution that transforms their life. So, you know, that’s that’s the entrepreneurial mindset it is how do we solve these problems? And you know, I agree with Amy, you know, we’re not here to just like discount and Do all these kind of crazy offers because of it, it’s a problem. You’re supporting people. It’s no different than any other way. You want to be sensitive and empathetic to their situation and be authentic and genuine in trying to help right?

Amy Aitman 16:14

I mean, make a really good point and honestly like with or without the Coronavirus, these are the things that we need to lean into. We are problem solvers. We need to think about who we’re helping. And one of the things we talk about a lot around here is digital conversations, and building communities. This is not new to us. This is what we do all the time. This is what we help people do. And so if you’re sitting there right now and you’re worried about your business and you’re thinking about I need to solve some new problems, this is something that you need to be doing with or without staying at home for three weeks or these big downturns in the economy. Like we want you to set up your business for a lifetime. We want you to have these systems set up for a lifetime. Yeah, that’s what we’re, I mean, this is what we can help you, you guys do. And I love that. One of the things that we’ve said we’re talking about today is how to really lean in and build stronger communities. And that’s why we’re here today. Right? We’re, you know, we’re leaning into you guys. And we really want you guys to build these strong communities. But I want you guys to think about what you’re doing today to set your business up for the next six months, the next 12 months because guess what this Coronavirus thing Yes, it’s probably going to get a little worse, we’re probably going to have a lot more shutdowns a lot more things, a downturn in the economy, but it’s going to get better before it will get better things are going to get back to normal and for the for us problem solvers. For us leaders here we can this is a really a time that we can really dig in deep now. I’ve talked to a lot of conversations recently with people about how they shut down their businesses to be honest with you, and what and they asked me what was your what’s your Advice like you have your, your setup. Amy, you have a digital online presence. Yeah. I said, Yeah. Because I’ve always been working on this. This is what I’ve done to recession proof my business, resend Yes. You know, so I said, What can you What can you do right now? And my answer to this was like lean into your marketing lean into your customers, you might not have something to actually sell them right now you have a we might have a brick and mortar store that is that’s where they have to come to get your services. But there’s so many things that you can do set up your online systems, you know, talk to people, email your audience, build your audience, this, these things come down in the next three weeks, four weeks, you know, three months. So then long term thinking, which is where we should be thinking as entrepreneurs, we’re set up. So the decisions that we’re making now and that you guys are making now in your businesses, that’s where they’re really going to pay off for us long term and I want you guys 16 I have taught I know many of you personally that are that are out there. And I’ve talked about your businesses and you guys are doing some amazing things. We really want your businesses to succeed, because you guys are here to make a better world. And so that’s why we’re here today.

Adam G. Force 19:17

Yeah, listen, it taught me to go on and on about it. And I think it’s important to recognize there was a great insight. And this is just part of the entrepreneurial mindset, especially during these times that one of our coaches shared, and that is, you know, this is not a time to respond out of a place of fear and anxiety. Right, because as things around us are changing, hey, I have a baby on the way and my wife works in hospital hospitals here in Miami out right? Yeah, like this is not a good situation for us. My wife was at the hospital until midnight last night doing were coming home like it’s chaos and So that makes me nervous. And this is a difference in my life now. Right? So this is how my life has changed. And I’m lucky I work out of the house. And I think Amy made a great point about being recession proof, you know, we have learned to create digital systems online that work for us. And we, it’s it is kind of recession proof, you know, unless the there’s people, if people out there right now can’t get involved with what you offer, that might be a new dynamic of how you need to support them. And that’s kind of what we’ve been talking about here. But you know, there’s a lot that’s to be said for getting set up digitally. Not even just because of this situation, I would look at this situation to say, this is actually giving me the kick in the butt to back it up. So in the future, I am recession proof, right. And this is what we’re so passionate about in the captivate method program because we are that’s what we help with it as well. about building up your brand story, understanding how to set up digital systems, how to get people to love what you do. And once you have those systems running, you’re in good shape during these times, right? So, you know, these are just some of the key points that we wanted to bring up today. And, you know, don’t come at this from a place of fear and reservation, right? You’re not being unethical. You’re a problem solver. You’re here to help people. That’s why you’re an entrepreneur. So get creative, lean in and figure out what communities you can be part of, and help people, right.

Amy Aitman 21:35

Yeah, that’s, I love that, Adam. And you know what, we’re here to help you guys as well. And there’s a lot of topics that are going to better coming up. I mean, like setting up your digital systems, what tools you can use, how to have build digital communities, how do you build a community around your mission, we’re here to help you and give you guys some ideas and inspire that as well. So if there’s any topics or you guys are having a struggle by Want you to leave a comment? Ask a comment, this is the time that you guys can really dig in. I really feel like this situation in the world is actually a really great opportunity for us as entrepreneurs to really lean into our businesses to focus on the things that are going to set us up to build stronger communities digitally. Like it’s really exciting. I feel like this virus is not political. It’s bringing the whole world has to come together. There are some really positive things about it. So I feel like that’s why we’re given this opportunity right now. This is a good

Adam G. Force 22:32

time. Yeah. Active matters. And while it is a terrible thing that’s going on, and it’s kind of like disrupting things. That’s what we are about as entrepreneurs, we disrupt, right? And so we just look at this and we say, all right, what’s going on? How do we solve these problems? How do I help people get through these tough times? Guys, ask questions. If you’re stuck with your business, you’re not sure how to manage it. Like we’re here. Like we’re leaning in. We’re opening up this conversation. And so that you can ask questions. So if you have questions, or you need support with something, we can set up a digital coffee date, we could do group talks, you can jump on live again and cover certain topics. If there’s something you want us to talk about, that you have questions on, you know, just put it out there. You know, we’re here to help in any way. So, I mean, I think me that’s, that’s, I think, covers most of what we want to

Amy Aitman 23:23

Yeah , I think so.

Adam G. Force 23:24

We’ll be back. We have some other things to dig in. But this was just to kick this off, because we’ve noticed some of the fears people have, but also the automatic response of holding back. Right? Well, mine can’t sell, I can’t sell now, like, I don’t want to be the guy profiting off of this. And you know, that’s not the case. So you’re not selling toilet paper and flipping it.

Amy Aitman 23:48

hand sanitizers and I mean,

Adam G. Force 23:50

like Gary Vee came on, he’s like, I don’t want to see anybody out there, you know, buying up all the Purrel and then flipping it that’s shit. You know? Don’t be those guys. But I think there’s a lot of

Amy Aitman 24:04

I don’t think anyone sitting here are those guys right Adam?

Adam G. Force 24:08

no, no, no, this is all about impact entrepreneurs, guys, we’re here to be honest, authentic, genuine, really help people. There’s people out there that need your help. You might have expertise, tools, insights. So just get involved, talk to people set up a virtual coffee group, you know, whatever it is come up with creative ideas. There’s a lot that can be done to help people get through this time.

Amy Aitman 24:32

Yeah, you guys have unique, unique skills and abilities and great ways to help people. So that’s what I would encourage you guys to do and share your comments. Ask your questions. We’ll be back. Awesome. We’re gonna be here. Alright guys, see you later. Okay, Bye, guys.

Adam G. Force 24:50

That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content exclusive interview. And more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag Comm. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Shane Foss: Disrupting the Healthcare Industry To Help Underserved People

Listen to our exclusive interview with Shane Foss:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

The healthcare industry has not changed much over the decades and is ready for disruption! But how? We talk to Shane foss who is taking it head-on. He shares his strategy but also other areas in healthcare that could be lucrative for entrepreneurs.

About Shane

With over 20 years of tenure as an executive in the medical industry, Shane Foss became frustrated with how under-served Americans were with the current healthcare options. He set out to make a change and in 2018 achieved this goal through launching Hooray Health, an unconventional health insurance company dedicated to providing affordable basic and urgent health care alternatives to high-deductible health plans. Through Hooray Health, Foss and his team focus on offering peace of mind to lower-income individuals and families who face medical challenges, while also providing business owners with an affordable way to reward and retain employees. Partnering with companies like Sedera, Ameritas, and Aflac, they have be able to add critical services and supplemental plans giving immense value to employers and individuals. Throughout his professional experience, Foss has negotiated complex, multi-million-dollar contracts, worked in device sales management, created business strategies, and optimized P&L. He holds an MBA from Rice University’s, Jone’s School of Business, a BS from the University of the Incarnate Word, and a Surgical Technologist Certificate from the United States Air Force.

Learn more about Shane and his work at > https://hoorayhealthcare.com

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. If you missed last week’s episode, it was with one of the founding partners of a company called lime. If you’ve seen all the scooters running around, if you live in the city that they’re doing one of their tests and they’re all over the world now. They are really transforming urban living with this thing called the micro mobility movement. So we talked about that industry, the trend for disrupting transportation and how it impacts climate change, and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a really great conversation. If you missed it, I would highly recommend you check that out. There’s lots of golden nuggets in there from Andrew. This week, we’re gonna be talking to Shane fosse. He’s the CEO of a company called hooray health. So Shane has over 20 years of experience as an executive in the medical industry and he became frustrated Did as all entrepreneurs do with a problem, the problem was that they’re the Americans were underserved. So this is us base. They’re underserved with the current healthcare options. And this is an area I wanted to discuss as healthcare. It’s a very important area. And it’s been like a long standing industry that hasn’t really changed much. So to see somebody disrupting it and learn how they’re doing that, I thought it’d be a really great discussion, and it’s an area that we need a lot more entrepreneurs in. So he set out to make a change. And in 2018, he changed the goal by setting up and launching hooray health and they describe it as an unconventional health insurance company dedicated to providing affordable basic and urgent health care alternatives to high deductible health plans. Alright, so we’re going to talk about the industry how and Andrew. Shane will also help kind of we’re going to get into maybe some areas that entrepreneurs can get involved to disrupt the healthcare industry and then talk more about what they’re doing and stuff like that. So this is really relevant for business owners and for individuals who are looking for health care options and want to understand the industry. Okay? Step by Change Creator comm lots of fresh content going up there, guys, we just keep it flowing. And we love to make sure you get your hands on it. Tons of good, good stuff. You can also get on the waitlist for the captivate method right off our homepage. Don’t miss out on that opportunity. It is a powerful, powerful community. And we’re having a lot of fun with people that are already involved. And hopefully this is something that can help grow and sustain your business. Right? So it is all about getting it set up, right, how to tell your story to the world and put it at the heart of your marketing, right? This is how we connect with people. And then you got to actually set the business up to scale, get more leads, get more customers, and we got to do these things, right. There’s a million different options out there. And what our team is going to help with is giving clarity about the messaging clarity about yourself. And clarity about the execution. So check that out when you get a chance Change Creator calm. And I think we’re gonna dive right into this conversation with Shane right now. Okay, show me the heat. Hey Shane, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

Shane Foss 03:18

I’m doing wonderful. Thanks, Adam.

Adam G. Force 03:20

Awesome. Where are you located from? I forget.

Shane Foss 03:23

Oh, Dallas, Texas,

Adam G. Force 03:25

Dallas, Texas. You know, my sister lived in Texas for, I don’t know, 15 years. She was in Denton, which I think is just outside of. Yeah, just north of us.

Shane Foss 03:33

Yeah, just north

Adam G. Force 03:34

of Boston. Now. I have been to the Lonesome Dove and I know that is a very, very good spot for dinner. So that’s definitely yes. There’s a couple spots in Texas that I do love.

Shane Foss 03:43

Yeah, yeah, it’s great state. I moved out here from Minnesota. She’s 20 plus years ago now.

Adam G. Force 03:50

So Oh, wow. That’s a big change. cold cold cold to pretty hot.

Shane Foss 03:55

Yes. Exactly.

Adam G. Force 03:56

Exactly. Awesome. So you No, you are CEO of hooray health, lots of stuff going on here. And I love to talk about the healthcare industry. I think it’s such an important topic and it needs a lot of love these days. So we’ll dive into that in just a minute. But maybe you could tell everybody just what’s going on in your world these days with hooray health, like, what’s the latest and greatest?

Shane Foss 04:20

So, we’re really excited. We We just finished our Series B funding. We closed that up, actually last week. So that was a big milestone for us. We are we’re a startup. We’re, you know, almost three years into it. And we have just gotten to that hockey stick of growth. And so we’re a we’re a product that basically addresses basic medical healthcare coverage for hourly employees, part time employees. And it’s a it’s a product that really is there to serve a purpose. For somebody that cannot afford major medical, and a lot of people don’t realize that when you’re when you’re actually, you know, buying a, you know, $1,000 a month or 1500 dollar a month family plan, that, you know, you’re not going to spend all of that money, right, you’re not going to spend anywhere near that money, you’re gonna have all these deductibles and out of pockets and, and so you’re spending all this money that you can afford. And a lot of people just say forget it, and then they end up with no health coverage. And that’s where we come in. And so, you know, we were really focused on addressing those needs for the people that need it the most.

Adam G. Force 05:41

So, I mean, I like to just know a little bit about how you got there because I in my personal opinion, when I think about the healthcare, industry and insurance of any kind, and you call you say, assurance, which I think is cool spin and I just think of it as such a it’s an old system that has been around for a while done a certain way and how like, I’m curious how you got to the point of actually thinking about tackling this thing and doing something different.

Shane Foss 06:11

So, my background, really, I wasn’t in health insurance. I was from a been in health care in medical device. So as worked with a large, large medical device, orthopedic metal, medical device manufacturers running sales organizations for them. And I’ve always loved healthcare. My wife’s an anesthesiologist. We volunteer every year for medical mission work down in Guatemala, and so it’s, I love healthcare. I was introduced to health insurance after I joined a startup, I guess it was probably about six years ago now five or six years ago, and I just fell in love with the health insurance space because I saw all of this opportunity and I think as an entrepreneur, you you see the process problem, then you’re wondering why people aren’t addressing it. And then so you come up with a solution. And then you build your, your product based on that. And so I’m the founder or co founder of ways I listened to him talk a couple months ago, and we were in this meeting together. And, and he said something that was very profound, it said, Love the problem, not the solution. And so, you know, so what that means is, you know, you got to have a problem that makes sense that needs to get addressed, right? And then you got to fall in love with the problem, not your solution, right? Because that solution, just like for us, you know, it evolves it’s an evolution, right, the, the product you start with, is not what you’re gonna end up with, and it may not be what’s successful. And so, you know, it’s really interesting. I think that being an entrepreneur is, is a huge blessing in the sense that you get To get to go to work today every day and not know what it looks like, right? I mean, there’s something new that happens every day that you didn’t know was going to happen. And so, you know, in preparation for that I, you know, I worked for some great companies, you know, one of them was Stryker orthopedics that really, really gave me the foundation in a business standpoint, to do what I’m doing today. And, and so it gave me the confidence to do what I’m doing today. And so, you know, as other entrepreneurs are out there, getting ready to identify that that problem and build a solution, you know, it’s it’s a daunting task, but if you’ve got the foundation, it’s great.

Adam G. Force 08:41

Yeah. And so is this problem that you’re solving? Do you see it as something that’s just always been around? Or is it something that’s really starting to blossom more now?

Shane Foss 08:56

Well, it’s definitely blossoming I think it’s been exasperated by Obamacare, the ACA, the implementation, you know, that really, you know, I know that the idea was sincere and it was a good, good intention. But the problem is, and anytime you rush to a solution, you know, of course, you’re never going to have all of the angles figured out. But when you rush to a solution like that, that’s this complicated and massive. You’re, you know, you’re going to have follow, you’re going to have huge issues. And one of the things that’s come out of this is our uninsured rate continues to grow dramatically. But it’s really, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s prevented our hourly rate to really grow that middle class, we’re destroying the middle class with the cost of health care. Healthcare now has become, you know, if you’re a part time or hourly wage employee, you pretty much don’t have health insurance. You Don’t have any options. You know, when you’re working for these large corporations, they’re covering the employee. But the family now is 1500 1900. You know, we just saw a renewal for 20 $700 for a family, right with a $6,000 deductible. You know, 20 $700 a month is not sustainable when 75% of America still makes less than $50,000 a year. So, so the problem continues to grow. And so what we’re really trying to address is that population that can’t afford any type of coverage, and we’re giving employers especially large employers the opportunity to offer a product that is that is an affordable kind of basic solution for these hourly employees that are typically younger, right? Most of our population is under 45. And so it just gets them to a doctor with no balance. bills, and you know, you’ve got to fix payment, you’ve got access to telemedicine, you know, 24 hour medical concierge. And then we have a mobile app. Right. Imagine that. I mean, the healthcare industry is so behind in the times, right. But you know, it just so we just do the basic things for this population. And you know, what, our plan starts at $99. Right. So a month, I mean, so it’s very affordable. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 11:29

That’s interesting. And I’m, I’m curious, just, you know, over time that has passed, you know, 10 years or so as you know, coverage costs go up, more people are uninsured. I mean, how have you seen the dynamics of the health care, industry evolving? This could include things like technology and things like that, so that we can start seeing a shift in how it’s provided to people like like you’re doing like what are some of the the changes we see Make some new opportunities possible.

Shane Foss 12:03

So I think really the, the willingness as the, as the millennial generation, which is really our first technological generation, right, they’re born with a, you know, with technology in their hand. I think that they’re more willing to implement, you know, telemedicine, I think some of the things that they’re they’re doing with virtually are is really important, you know, especially mental health, there’s a shortage of mental health professionals today. And, and actually, funny fact is the millennial generation is the highest utilizers of mental health services. So that poses a problem. So I think that that video, face to face technology, I think is great. I think the ability to even talk to a physician on the phone is important. But you know, it’s interesting because healthcare in general There’s, there’s innovation, but it’s very incremental. Right. There’s not a lot of leaps and bounds. Right. So, you know, when you go from, you know, if you look at the iPhone from in, for instance, right, from the, you know, the the razor flip phone, I mean, that’s a dramatic leap, right? I mean, that’s a, that’s a huge jump. Well, when you look at medicine, everything is incremental, because it needs to be clinically tested and proven. And, and it’s a it’s a generation or a generation Excuse me. It’s a it’s a system that is very ingrained in what it’s done historically. So, so new, new innovation in healthcare is really challenging, and the incumbents are so strong. When you look at you know, Blue Cross Blue Shield and anthem, you look at Cigna, Aetna, United Healthcare. They are They are really incentivized really to keep it more of the status quo. hospital systems. Yep. Right. Yeah. And so it’s really, so it’s, it’s hard for innovators in this space. Because, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of money there. That’s, you know, it’s better off not to do something, right.

Adam G. Force 14:24

Yeah, I mean, I see, like, you know, there it is, like, you know, it’s a for profit system. And I think to your point, they’re incentivized to keep things like the status quo so um, so that you know, as we have this conversation about the industry and why I’m asking you how it’s evolving and you know, your thoughts on those things because as we have people here listening, you know, I’m gonna want to get into what what your offer means to business owners and you know, people in general, but I also wanted to give people some insight just about maybe some of the The major issues and I know we’ve kind of glossed over a couple of these things. But I just want to get clear on some of the things that do need help now in the medical industry, so you’re solving a big problem with your business Hooray, health. And I’m curious if you have other thoughts or things that you’re seeing that really do need to break status quo and change, just to give people a little bit of thought, who are listening about? Oh, you know, like, maybe these are areas that they can see themselves contributing as well.

Shane Foss 15:30

Yeah, I think the organization of data and the transparency of that data I think, is really important. You know, if, when you look at healthcare, the crazy thing is, you know, if you want to break it down to the most basic scenario, if I walked into Walmart, and I bought a gallon of milk and I pay $4, for that gallon of milk, I go home, I drink it and you know, A week later, I get a bill from Walmart that says, well, actually $4 was just the initial cost now now you owe us another $10. Yeah. And oh, by the way, I can send you the collections for that. $10. And I will send you the and there’s no negotiating. Right, you know, is it’s so crazy, because what’s happened is there’s this bifurcation in the sense that or dis Association, if you will, of the actual consumer, which is the patient, and then the payer. So the hospitals and the providers are actually you’re not their customer as the patient. The insurance company is the payer, right? They pay the bills. So there’s that disconnect. So I think, you know, in the future, I think that there’s a lot of opportunity in this pricing, transparency, and this ability to go and shop for care because as more and more people be Come uninsured is not going to be just the people that are making less than $50,000 a year, we’re talking people that are making 100 to 200,000 that can justify a 20 $700 a month payment. Yeah. Right. So what they’re going to do is they’re going to take that 20 $700 a month, they’re gonna put it in savings, right? And then if something comes up, they’re gonna need to go get care. And so they may, they may have a crazy catastrophic plan that’ll cover you know, cancer or something big. But, you know, if I if they need to go in for a simple surgery, and even a rotator cuff surgery, you know, I can go in, I can get everything with Anastasia surgeon facility, implants, everything, I can get that done for $15,000 cash. Well, that’s less than what I paid for a full year of health insurance. So I think that this consumerism is really on the rise. It’s not there yet, but we’re at We’ve been at this tipping point for a while on the cost of health insurance. And so you’ve got a lot more people willing to look at that, and, and just say, Look, I’m just paying cash. So when I walk into a doctor’s office, I’m paying cash, what is it? And so if you’re able to, or not organize that data, and you actually get providers, you know, on board with that, I think that, you know, that’s a huge opportunity in the future. So all those entrepreneurs out there, they’re looking for some, there’s a there’s a great opportunity.

Adam G. Force 18:32

Yeah, sounds like there’s a number of gaps, and they can probably be broken down into an another, like, even more niche little areas, which is pretty cool. So that’s helpful. I appreciate you sharing those insights. And I’m curious then, you know, based on where you are now with hooray health, like, just let’s get just clear on how you are different than other insurance providers.

Shane Foss 18:56

Sure. So the biggest difference with us We created our own provider network with fixed pricing. And what’s very unique about that is we, we built a national network of retail clinics. So CVS, Walmart, Walgreens, they’re all our partners. And then you have, we have 14 of the top 20 urgent care of businesses nationally as well. But we’ve got, you know, just under 4000 locations in 47 states, but we have fixed pricing, and so we have a $25 copay, and then there’s no balance bill for our member. And the big deal about that is $25 is a very, you know, predictable and affordable way to get care, okay, because you need to have some skin in the game. But what’s nice is they don’t have they can go in and anything done under the roof of that provider, any of the services. So if they, they had IV, they had asthma breathing treatment, they got an X ray, the guy stitches, everything’s covered under our contract, so they don’t have to worry about about Knoxville. And so that’s our biggest competitive advantage. You know, the other thing is our mobile app, you know, obviously the mobile app with the full integration with. We’ve got telemedicine there, we’ve got our provider network, obviously, we own all of the code, we own the databases, you know, it’s our network. So it’s, so it’s really, it’s really a, all in one centrally located service for our members where they just go to the mobile app, and they can find everything. The other thing that we’ve done is we have on with that fixed pricing, we have fixed price contracting on labs and radiology as well, where, you know, you don’t have to worry about that balance bill. And I think that’s where, you know, it’s pricing transparency, but more importantly, it’s really contracted. You don’t even have to negotiate, right, you just, you literally go in and you know, it’s gonna cost $450 for an MRI, and that’s okay. Yeah. So not 4000 like, you know, I was quoted, so, but so I think that when you look at really key differentiators, it’s, you know, our provider network and our ability to really protect members from that balance bill. And why that’s important is one in five Americans are sent to collections for an unpaid medical bill every year, and the average is less than $600. So the problem is not the surgery, the cancer, all these crazy things. It’s literally the Hey, I went in to see my provider because I was sick. And I got a balanced bill for $600 that I can’t pay. Yeah. And when that when they would have accepted $100 for it, right. So that’s a huge competitive advantage for us. And then the and then the other part of it is that mobile app, that mobile app, really, you know, if you’ve ever tried to find a provider, it’s incredibly difficult, right? And in network provider, it’s very simple with us, you know, you just click search a govt nccn just shows you a right. And then and then the next step is the drugs. So we have our discount program right on the mobile app. So while you’re in the office, you can type in, you know, systemized, and if you had a sinus infection, and it’ll give you the lowest price right there, you can call pharmacist, but it tells you exactly where to tell the provider. Hey, would you just send the script over here? So it’s, it’s really a it’s a nice workflow. It’s a simple process for a very complicated industry. It

Adam G. Force 22:32

Yeah. And that is that’s what I was saying is so daunting. So it’s interesting to hear the steps you’re taking to solve these problems. And are you working with employers like business owners as well?

Shane Foss 22:44

Yes. So we, we work with small and large business owners, we we really focus on their hourly or part time contingent workforce. So a lot of times They have very low participation with that hourly workforce. So we’re able to go in and provide a more cost effective product for them. To make sure that they’re they’re covered. got it

Adam G. Force 23:15

got it. Interesting. And so um, so for entrepreneurs say you’re you’re getting to the point where you’re scaling up your team, you’re looking for charts now, we work with a lot of, they would have to be people who are directly employed. Right, but because you mentioned hourly and part time and things like that as the primary focus. A lot of times I find that those are people that are contractors, but you are talking about people who are fully employed, or are you able to offer insurance to as an incentive to those others other people as well?

Shane Foss 23:45

Yes, absolutely. We can sell it to them as well. So we we can, we can offer our plan through an employer to 1099 right. Contract labor, part time, hourly, yeah, so It’s, it’s a very flexible, we can actually sell it to individuals in certain states. We actually, we can. If you’re a freelancer, right, and you you’re looking for just some basic coverage, you can actually work with us. And if you’re in one of the approved states, then you can, you can buy or plan as an individual.

Adam G. Force 24:24

That’s pretty interesting, because I can imagine some of these startup teams today in the name of flexibility that you might have sales teams and stuff like that, that are, you know, contractors, they’re not necessarily full time employees, but you can still potentially incentivize them with these types of perks.

24:41

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very inexpensive way. Right? Yeah. I think that with if you look at the market today, the market today is so competitive. It’s the it’s the most competitive it’s been since the tightest labor market since World War Two, right. So being able to offer A differentiated product like us, you know, the other part is, you know, hooray health, the insurance company the assurances are promised, right? We believe health care coverage. It’s too expensive. It’s complicated, it’s untrustworthy. And our goal is to change it. We, you know, we stand for something where our marketing is really, you know, it’s a true product. So our, the feedback we get from employees is they really like the product. They like, who who we are what we stand for, you know, we’re not just another, you know, carrier that, you know, plain Jane, black, white, you know, documents. I mean, we’ve got a little color to us. And so it’s, uh, yeah, so I think that it’s a really it’s a really good opportunity.

Adam G. Force 25:47

Yeah. I mean, so it sounds like you’re really trying to reduce the number of uninsured people and lower standard coverage costs that I mean, those are two key things, right.

Shane Foss 25:58

Yes, absolutely. We, we we always say we don’t compete against major medical, you know, if you have major medical health insurance, yeah, we’ll either supplement that, or we really compete against as not having health insurance. So when we show employers examples of, you know, in a different scenarios, it’s always against not having health insurance. Yeah. Because, you know, you look at these large national, you know, retailers, for instance, some of these national retailers have hundreds of thousands of part time employees, right, it’s 80% of their population, their employer, employee population, and they don’t offer anything today. So the bulk of those people are uninsured. And so it poses a huge quandary for them because people call in sick they can’t afford to go see a doctor. So you know, it’s and then things turn into more, you know, into worse things, right. You know, you end up getting bronchitis, then you get pneumonia, because you know, you Didn’t go in to see a physician to get the antibiotic. So I think that, when you look at the employers in general, employers in general are very maternal to their employees, they want to do the right thing, the offered, the opportunity just hasn’t been there to offer a product that really is effective. And that’s, that’s where, you know, for us, we really have a great competitive advantage, because our network is we match up really well with these national employers, because traditionally, you know, they could take care of their group in Texas, but then the rest of the, you know, 49 states are out well with us. You know, we’re we can have a contracted provider within 90% of all their locations today within 20 miles, which is a home run.

Adam G. Force 27:52

And it’s yours is there like a annual commitment or how is how flexible is the term that you’re someone works with you on

Shane Foss 28:00

Yeah, so if Well, there’s some legalities around it. So if they’re doing a pre tax, then they have to offer the plan for a full year. But if if they’re doing a post tax, then then it’s the flexibility is they can cancel it at any time. So it doesn’t matter. So those are just kind of the legalities of it. But we, we usually sign a contract with the employer to offer and it goes year to year. And so that’s, that’s, yeah, that’s what we do. Hmm.

Adam G. Force 28:34

Yeah. No, it’s interesting. And I mean, I just I, I’m curious and how I have two things. One, I’m curious how you a company like Ray health would be impacted. If you know somebody like Bernie Sanders becomes president and we do you know, single payer health care system are Medicare for all and all those things. Does that impact you in a good way or bad way? Curious

Shane Foss 29:01

Well, you really never know for sure until all the details are worked out. But, but I will, I will say this the, you know, if you look at Canada, if you look in, you know, in Europe and England, yeah, you know, where they have, you know, a single payer system. There really are two pairs, you’re you always have private insurance, employers still offer those benefits because, you know, as a competitive advantage. You know, it’s interesting because where I grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, one of our top revenue generators for the city was actually our Canadians coming down for surgery in in Duluth, because, you know, we’re only a couple hours from Canada. And the reason is, you know, once you once the budget runs out, there are no more total knees. There are more, no more, you know, hard casts and you know, a so I think that it’s it’ll be to be determined, but we’ll I think we’ll have a place no matter what. Just, there’s, there’s, there’s a good chance that even even with whomever gets in the White House that, that they’re still gonna, you know, Medicare for All is still not very popular with everybody because it’s, you know, 38 trillion the first five years I think it is on the budget. So, yeah,

Adam G. Force 30:33

yeah. Well, and it seems to me in these situations, right, you know, it’s like I always talk about not having a Kodak moment if we know the story of Kodak right. So it’s like someone coming up to you saying, we’re gonna have this whole digital world we don’t need your model anymore. Well, you could say, Oh, crap, I’m out of business. Or it’s kind of like Well, how do we just like you said the, the solutions always evolving, right. So the solution, how does it adapt to the to the marketplace and what’s going on? So

Shane Foss 30:57

Exactly.

Adam G. Force 30:58

Yeah, no, this is, this is Interesting stuff and you guys raised money. It sounds like you’re on your series. Be curious how much you guys have raised so far.

Shane Foss 31:07

So we’ve raised a total of just over $7 million. Total. Congrats. That’s awesome.

Adam G. Force 31:13

Yeah, very cool. So what kind of steps did you have to take to get your first round locked in?

Shane Foss 31:19

Really, it was friends and family. It was Yeah, I just went to went to a few of my friends and my family and, and everybody, everybody kicked in the first, the first amount. And then, and then once we kind of had the proof of concept worked out, we went out and professionally raised the Series B, and we’re very happy with our partners. We were very strategic about who we who we partnered with. And so we’re really excited, really excited. We got a lot of good things going

Adam G. Force 31:51

sounds like a chain sounds like I appreciate you sharing your insights about the industry and how you guys are solving some of these major problems and I look forward to seeing where you guys Take it so let’s stay in touch and let’s give a shout out. How do people find where do they find you the best place to find you and learn more?

Shane Foss 32:07

Sure is a hurry healthcare.com h o ra y healthcare.com. That’s the best place to start. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Adam. I really appreciate your time.

Adam G. Force 32:20

Yeah, that’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Rod Yapp: Next Level Business with High-Performance Leadership

Listen to our exclusive interview with Rod Yapp:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

What makes a great leader in today’s world? Has leadership changed over time? Rod Yap is a high-performance leadership expert who answers those questions for us in this discussion.

Rod Yapp is a former Royal Marine Officer and the founder of Leadership Forces, a program that takes the high-performance principles of the Royal Marines and applies it to leadership development. Rod has exemplified leadership on the front lines (literally) in Afghanistan and Libya and now uses that experience in order to develop leaders within organizations such as Land Rover, HSBC, and NATO.

Learn more about Rod and his work at > https://www.leadershipforces.com

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show hope y’all are doing well. This is your host, Adam force. Today we’re going to be talking to somebody about leadership. But before I get into that intro, just a reminder, if you missed the last episode that was posted about a week ago, Amy and I spoke about the hard truth around delegating for your startup. This can be a tough one man, you can really get yourself into a financial pickle if you’re bringing in the wrong people at the wrong time. So this is something that we’ve been through ourselves and was kind of like a growing pain, if you will. So some really valuable input there just from our experience that we kind of kick around and share some insights that you may or may not be aware of. So I think it’s it’s a really healthy conversation. And as you’re looking to grow your business, you’ll find some good nuggets in there. So go back, check that If you haven’t already, this week, we’re going to be speaking with somebody by the name of Roderick Yap, calm rod. He’s the CEO of leadership forces. So he’s got a lot of experience as a speaker, a leadership coach, and all that kind of stuff. And he was actually in the, he’s a former Royal Marines officer. All right. And so he led the Marines, all different operations all around the world, whether it was in Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, and all these different places. And then in 2012, he joined a group called the, your Renko group, and he was actually responsible for developing leaders using an operational excellence model. And then as of 2015, he decided to found found the leadership forces business which focused on developing leaders within organizations and he’s worked with clients such as HSBC, Deloitte, Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls Royce and NATO and all kinds have other great organizations. So he’s really stepped up into this leadership role, and he has a lot of great experience to share. Because it’s so important for our businesses. I mean, great leadership can be a game changer for long term differentiation and success. So we’re gonna dive into this conversation with rod in just a minute. Just a reminder, we always have lots of fresh content coming out on Change, Creator calm, so swing by get all the new goodies. And if you haven’t already signed up for the captivate method, there is a waitlist there, you can jump on our site on the homepage, you’ll find that you can sign up. This is all about how do we how do we communicate effectively with storytelling? And how do we apply that to our business? We call this a digital conversation. really powerful stuff. And we’ve seen some great success from our current students and members. It’s a really fun community. So check that out, and we’ll send you some information. All right, guys, I’m gonna dive into it. Don’t forget to stop by iTunes and other places that we are like Spotify leave us reviews, ratings, all that good stuff. It helps us a lot and we really appreciate your support and ongoing, you know, listenership so thanks again and we’re gonna dive into this conversation with rod. Okay, show me that he Hey rod, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today man?

Rod Yap 03:25

Good thanks very, very pleased to be here.

Adam G. Force 03:27

Yeah, well Awesome. Thanks for being here. So, you know, I’m just I leadership is something that as we go into 2020 I’m putting more emphasis on just because it’s such an important part of operating a business that becomes you know, profitable successful. And I think leadership especially when it comes to building a team is really important. So tell me just a little bit about like, what’s going on in your life right now. Like what’s, what’s the latest, the greatest just to kind of tell us where you are

Rod Yap 04:01

So I’m continuing to develop my business I started in July 2015, how they felt that there was sort of something that I could add to this industry. I sort of looked at the kind of market and felt that most leadership development professionals tend to tell us a lot of ex HR, or organizational psychology backgrounds, and I had different, you know, I was more of a sort of practitioner. So I felt I could sort of take that experience, and, and sort of build a business around that. And when I sort of think about, you know, my background is, is obviously, as an officer in the Royal Marines, I think about my career in the military. You know, it really was developing people it was helping my Marines to get better at their jobs to become more effective to comply performance. That was what I enjoyed most about the whole my, my sort of seven years in the Corps. So I wanted to see if I could replicate something similar to that in the commercial world.

Adam G. Force 04:56

Yeah, I love that and what led you to the Marines

Rod Yap 05:00

Really, it was just a desire to do sort of something completely different. I believe in the concept of service. Certainly serving my country, but sort of serving other people. And I sort of thought about it much in the way as many people might think of sort of a graduate scheme. But then I was like, well hang on a sec, what are the graduate scheme puts you through 15 months of pretty demanding leadership and management training, and then your first job is line managing 30 people? Nothing like it right? And no one gives you that sort of that level of responsibility, that level of training, you know, that development as it gets, and I guess in a nutshell, that’s probably what took me in that direction.

Adam G. Force 05:41

Hmm. Interesting. So it sounds like you’ve been are all around the world. And just before we get into some of this, you know, a deeper conversation around leadership. I’m curious. Just about some of your experiences Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, I mean, anything stand out to you experience wise that kind of maybe hits you

Rod Yap 06:01

I mean, a lot of them were unique in their sort of own way. Afghanistan was a very kinetic war fighting environment. What What that means is that people were shooting at us an awful lot. And Libya was one of those environments where we really didn’t have a clue what was going on. Are you really making up as we went along, and then working sort of off the coast of Somalia was, was actually sort of quite quite a lot of fun. I quite enjoyed it, you know, working with small boats in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Yeah. And when I think about some of the lessons that I take from all of those experiences, I think really, serving in the military, like, a bit like travel, gives you a much sort of broader perspective. I served in Afghanistan in 2007. And, you know, when I look back on my sort of time there, we had no real grasp of how that country or how those people lived and operated. Did we approach that that world in that environment with our own sort of set of values and our own ways of thinking about a world? And it just didn’t? It just, it just didn’t compute, if that makes sense? Yeah. And, you know, I remember being there. And sort of one one story from my time there was that when I was based in San Diego, the district district center in the heart of Helmand Province, you know, we would get firefights from time to time with the Taliban. And if we accidentally sort of, you know, hurt some civilians who got sort of caught in the crossfire, what we do is we sort of patch them up, and we would bring them into a bring them into the base and sort of give them some compensation. There’s a fairly, fairly blah, sort of method of reparations, if you like, yeah. And what we started to notice was that, you know, certainly some groups this was kind of incentivizing that behavior. So there’s one tribe or one family that would that would actually grow In members of their family of their group with gunshot wounds, because we were paying to fix these people, you know, despite the fact that this had nothing to do with us that we haven’t been involved two or three days, I just remember thinking, you know, like, if that’s, you know, if that’s how people live here, I just, you know, I don’t have the, you know, the values or that sort of language to really compute how people can do that to each other in order to get paid. So, it just made me realize that, you know, it’s incredibly lucky to be born in the West and, you know, just by pure accident of being born in the UK, you know, I kind of won the lottery that he respects

Adam G. Force 08:40

Hey, now, it’s funny, as you were saying that I was thinking in my head, that birth is a lottery.

Rod Yap 08:47

And you know, it’s a total accident that we were born, you know, in, in the sort of developed world. Yeah, we just have things like you know, eating clean running water, easy access. So those things because they’re things that, you know, a lot of people don’t have.

Adam G. Force 09:03

Yeah, which is it’s an eye opener, it makes you grateful, that’s for sure. And, you know, it’s that I’ve noticed with about at least 80% of the people that I interview, especially when it’s, you know, different social entrepreneurs and such that their inspiration to start something really powerful as a business and change the trajectory of their of their life is from a travel experience. That’s usually what jolts them, it’s like a sensory overload.

Rod Yap 09:29

Hmm. Yeah, I think I think certainly with this sort of social entrepreneurs that that I’ve come across, they really kind of get this concept of, you know, making a contribution towards making a better place somehow. Yeah. And I think whilst a lot of veterans or a lot of people serving the military wouldn’t necessarily Connect as strongly as a social entrepreneur that certainly some absolutely would, you know, some of them join the military or, you know, join the police of the army. Fiber graded because they want to have a positive impact because they want to splice. And I completely see that I get it.

Adam G. Force 10:06

Yeah, I mean, there’s many ways that we can all contribute and you know, so not everybody is the same. And, you know, I can appreciate all the different formats and lifestyles that people have that, that make a difference and contribute and stuff like that. And I think, you know, as business is really transforming quite a bit over the past couple decades, you know, being a great leader, like redefining what a great leader is and how they think and what they accomplished, like, I think is really important, because there’s that trickle down, right, the leader of a different company or organization, when you have values in place that are important to not only the company, but the people that the company serves and all that stuff. It starts kind of like pushing good business. Right. Do you agree?

Rod Yap 10:53

Yeah. You know, I think you know, how you behave sort of sets the tone, certainly if you’re in leadership positions. For the organization, so, you know, I, I contract with a number of organizations that will often say to me, you know, we’ve got a cultural problem. You know, we’ve got an issue that our culture is not quite right. You know, I’m actually Well, you know, I might often say this in the kind of first in a pitch presentation, but actually the problem, they have a problem with the way in which they leaders are behaving as a leader, you need to need to pull off. You know, understanding the culture simply is a reflection of leadership, positive or negative. Yeah, it’s kind of really, really important. And that fundamentally comes down to the behavior of the leaders in your organization. It’s what they do, every single day. It’s the impact that has on the people around them. That’s what sets the tone for the culture of your organization. And I think when you’re relatively small, that’s something you’ve really got to focus on. Because if you’re only a sort of team of nine people and you may you hire someone in who’s potentially toxic as your 10th employee. Now 10% of your organization is going to cultural issue. But 100,000 people that that’s not so much of an issue, but, you know, when you’re small those you know, you need those kind of people that can muck in and help out are willing to roll their sleeves up and do work outside of their job description. And, you know, lots of people aren’t willing to do that. So you know, then certainly right for your your organization.

Adam G. Force 12:23

Yeah. 100%. And I’ve heard a couple, you know, interesting lessons that I’ve learned, which are one great leaders hire great leaders. So you definitely want people that are the right fit for your company culturally and have the mindset that will push the company in the right direction. But also I was interviewing the founder of Tom’s Blake Mycoskie and he said that, you know, one thing he would do differently if he started over would was his hiring because I guess as they got more established, when they were hiring the executive team, you can find people that have great resumes, but what happens is they have this experience As leaders in their particular space and their history, and they bring all that baggage with them, which may not jive with the current culture that you’re trying to create?

Rod Yap 13:09

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s really easy, you know, check yourself and consider, you know, the impact of the things the brand names have on you, and all the assumptions that you bring with them. Because if you, for example, work in a FinTech business, for example, you know, off top my head and you hire people from sort of larger banking organizations, you know, often their experience, you know, if even if they’re particularly senior can be very, very specialized, and they understand how one area, you know, to go and work on what much smaller team will require them to have a far broader remit for the things that are going on. And frankly, to to kind of get involved with actually doing stuff. Well, maybe just to wrap up is I think the hiring was a really interesting one because again, you know, a lot of sticks or a lot of people that want to build a high performing team. Yeah, really thought about that hiring process. is still very much a kind of, you know, couple of interviews, you get off of the job kind of thing and my view that you know, anyone can be good for a couple of hours down the route or you know, give give people some work or give people a kind of case study and see what questions they ask to their, how they approach something that is relevant to the job they’re going to be doing. Because as you know, when you’re a small team, right, that those jobs are going to evolve, the responsibilities are going to change rapidly. So you don’t need people that can do something, you know, very neatly fixing with into into a job description. You need people that are flexible and malleable and can roll with the changes that the company is going to go through. And I realize you know, his family is giving people some work and see how they handle it will give them some things to think about in a sort of scenario based scenario based process.

Adam G. Force 14:52

Yeah, hundred percent. I mean, I think that’s a really important point for anybody listening is that especially when you have a smaller team you in the first couple years I mean, people start out as solo entrepreneurs often and and i would definitely encourage having co founders, but as you start building a smaller team to get extra hands on deck, you, you really do want to think about people that are not just good at a particular job, but that can kind of face challenges and pivot with the needs of the market or the business as you see what’s going on. And you can kind of like you said, Go with roll with the punches. Yeah, that’s powerful.

Rod Yap 15:29

Yeah, absolutely. You need those people that have that agility, flexibility and worked around you. That’s not my job description.

Adam G. Force 15:39

Yeah, yeah. I will tell me a little bit about just from your experience, then around leadership, you know, have you seen an evolution in leadership over the years? Has has the mindset of leadership changed?

Rod Yap 15:56

I’d like to think so. I like to think Leadership is moving away from something that is, you know, is really reserved for the kind of C suite executives and something that people, you know, do or responsibility that comes with a position of authority. I think it’s moving away from that. And I think it’s moving away from that kind of, you know, I’m a leader, I come up with a plan, I tell you what to do. I’m not convinced that approach has ever worked particularly well, but having spoken to, you know, people in the generation above me That said, I get a sense that that’s how businesses and organizations used to operate. And I think nowadays, there’s an expectation that, you know, if you were a leader in a position of, you know, in a position of authority, you know, you asked your team, you know, right, this is the end state that we’re working towards, you know, how do you think we should approach that, you know, you might have a challenge, you invite the feedback, you invite their ideas, and then your job is effectively to cherry pick the best things and, and to sort of build it into some kind of plan because I don’t buy into this nonsense that, you know, Millennials don’t work hard. I think that’s absolutely rubbish. I think that they will work hard, they will absolutely work their nuts off, but they have to be involved in that process, they have to be made to feel like, you know, they were part of the planning. And you know, I that I want to be fit, I want to feel like that as well. So, so that’s where I kind of see things going. I think that people have a different expectation about what their what their bosses are going to do and how they will involve them going forward. But some lasting change.

Adam G. Force 17:39

Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point. And and, you know, organizations are flattening out, you know, from the height, the traditional, like hierarchy structure. I mean, I think there’s always like decision makers, like you said, but the teams are more involved and everybody becomes a leader in their own right, in a sense that, you know, we have to be able to trust and rely that they’re going to get the job done. Based on what the end game is about, right, so if everybody’s on the same page, we can work towards those same goals. And I think that that’s, that’s powerful. That’s a powerful change in mindset. And, you know, interesting, I just did a quick talk about how there’s some new data out that I think 50% of millennials, and 75% of Gen Z are leaving their jobs for mental health reasons. And I was kind of blown away and alarmed by those numbers. And you know, everyone gives them the bad rap. They don’t want to work hard. And so you know, when you have like stagnant low wages, or you’re being overworked for those low wages, like there’s some burnout there, but I also think there’s a lot of misalignment of people trying to get jobs that one they’re overqualified for or two, they’re just not meaningful to them. So they’re kind of like just miserable, waking up every day and doing it so they might be in these bad, you know, job environments.

Rod Yap 18:55

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a that’s a really concerning issue. But then when you sort of think about it, you know, certainly when my father came home, you know, if the office call, it’s because the building was broken down. Right. But you know, there was a real emergency. Yeah. Now, as companies are more global, you know, you could be working across quite a few different time zones. Yeah. Therefore, your emails and phone calls never really switched off. There’s not that many people or not that many bosses that will will, you know, advise you or sort of say to you that you need to put in boundaries, you need to push back when people are asking for you, you to deliver stuff for tomorrow. And, you know, it’s five o’clock here. And you haven’t, frankly, got any more working hours to give. I think, I think that is a contributing factor. But also, I think, again, I think some of this comes down to leadership, because most of us have worked in a team, right where, you know, let’s say you’ve got sort of six people in that team. Two or three of them are really sort of strong performers and maybe some others kind of, you know, coasting, perhaps a little bit of that generally tends to be a bit of a bell curve distribution around to the performance. And one of the leaders tend to do with the people that deliver all the time, they tend to give them more work. Because it’s a lot easier to do that than it is a performance management conversation with someone else and go, hey, maybe you’re putting your weight here. I need you. I need you to deliver in accordance with my expectations, because frankly, I’m not going to keep giving more stuff to those people who always deliver for me. I think I definitely think that’s part of it as well, that sort of inability to handle those difficult conversations.

Adam G. Force 20:33

Hmm. Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense. That’s important. And it is tough. I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with that. And, but I mean, there’s ways to approach it that I guess are it’s more beneficial because you can help somebody else kind of make progress in their own life by giving them that feedback and helping them move forward. And I’m, I’m curious, so you know, you do a lot of leadership training and development to help you know, create a High Performance cultures, I’m just kind of checking out your website here. And you know, I’m curious in some of the things that are important to your process that you see with a lot of the organizations you work with then some of the maybe some key takeaways that might be valuable for our audience to understand when it comes to this leadership. Dynamic.

Rod Yap 21:22

Sure. So I mean, I think the first thing is be really cautious of people that give you a nice sort of type, by definition of what leadership is. Leadership, by definition is about judgment. It’s about making good decisions that get the best out of a situation. So, you know, when people sort of say, you know, leadership is all about empowering people. Yeah, I agree with that. 99% of the time, you are absolutely right. But you know, if you only walk across the road and we see someone get hit by a car, the last thing you would necessarily want me to do in that situation is empower you to call the ambulance you know, you think it’s the right thing to do to Just call the police or the ambulance come and help this individual, you know, that’s an environment where sort of tight command and control and sort of, you know, taking, taking control and gripping that chaotic situation is sort of really, really important. I think some of the things that, you know, I work with with people on are, you know, creating that sort of clarity by having that aligned goal, you know, it’s a really, really simple and sort of common theme. There’s loads of other people that sort of talk about this. But I think it’s really important to have a unifying goal of the team are working towards because then once you’ve got that clarity in the how you can ask them for support on and you can, you know, you can say right, how do we how do we achieve this as a group of people who’s going to do what in everything becomes much easier. Once you’ve got that clearly aligned picture of what you’re working towards. I tend to use and sort of, you know, NASA version man on the moon by the end of the decade is a really good vision with a nice set of time boundary to as well. Once you’ve got that happen You know, it’s one of those things that you you over communicate, so you cannot afford to communicate what it is you’re working towards as a group of people so that people know instinctively right? How do I how does my workstream fit in with the achievement of that vision? You know, unless you’ve got that vision, you can’t really answer that question. You know, holding people to account is really, really important. And accountability is a sort of two way process for me. So accountability involves, you know, turning around to a leader saying, hey, look, you’ve been distracted by the new shiny thing. You said that that’s the vision, we’re working on that don’t change that unless there is a reason to change it. And then we should all get together and discuss it and make a decision based on the facts rather than following your instinct on what needs to be sort of worked on. So lastly, I mean, I’m sort of trying to, you know, try to keep this short. So I’m trying to be concise. You know, laugh, you know, the ability to build strong relationships. You know, how well do you know your people? How well do you know you’re doing I want to ask you that question. And I’m sure there’ll be a lot of people sort of nodding down. Yeah. Oh my people. Okay, would you know? Do you know the names of their spouse? Do you know the names of their children? How old? Are they? Where do they go to college? when they grow up? What do they do with their spare time? What are their interests? What do they want to have a career within your organization? Do they want to stay here? Do they want to be you know, or do they do they want to take this experience and start their own business? The answers to all this stuff, frankly, are less important than the fact that you answer them because you started you ask people that because right what you’re demonstrating by that is demonstrating that you care about them and that you’re interested. And fundamentally, people aren’t gonna follow you because you’ve told them to, they’re going to follow you because they believe they have their best interests at heart. So the sort of clarity that vision, relationships and accountability if I can be really succinct, those are probably the three areas to work on more than anything else as a star. Beautiful.

Adam G. Force 24:59

Yeah. Ain’t no I, when you teach these types of things, I’m always thinking in my head, like, I hear that stuff I’ll make, you know, it’s just a matter of caring. It’s like, you know, who are these people, like you should care enough to ask about how they’re doing, who their spouses meet them. And like, these are people you’re going to spend a lot of time with as well. Right? So I spend I talk every day to my co founder. So these are people that you really want to get to know and you gotta, you gotta like them. You know? Yeah.

Rod Yap 25:29

Social Enterprise why, you know, that that’s confused about this. Because that, you know, if they share that enthusiasm for the problem that you are trying to solve for the people that you are trying to help, and they will walk through because to achieve your vision, and that’s a that’s a great thing.

Adam G. Force 25:47

Yeah, yeah, they need to believe in what the mission is. So you know, people overlook the missions in their company, especially early on like, yeah, yeah, I gotta have this mission statement. It’s just like, boilerplate crap. But it’s not like that clarity of like, where you’re going and why you’re doing what you’re doing, especially the why you’re doing it because people want to get behind something and not everyone’s going to start their own business to get behind something they believe, but they can certainly join something else that they believe in and be excited about waking up every day.

Rod Yap 26:17

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s kind of the key thing. I mean, that would be question number one for me, in a relatively small organization, a social enterprise. Why do you care about

Adam G. Force 26:26

Yes, yes. Love it.

Rod Yap 26:29

Like, you can’t convince me of that, then. Frankly, may I’m not sure there’s a but you know, I’m not looking for someone that just wants another job. Because the reality is, the job description I’ve just shared with you is probably going to change in six months. So I need someone that is kind of willing to be flexible, but enthusiastic and passionate about this purpose or the purpose of this organization.

Adam G. Force 26:49

Yeah, early on. I mean, that’s, that’s probably most important. I think that’s, that’s a beautiful, we’ll wrap it up there. And I want to just let people know where they can learn more about what you’re doing and your programs and stuff. So why don’t you give a shout out to where they can learn more and connect with you?

Rod Yap 27:05

Sure. So my name is Roderick. Yeah. The beauty of having a unique name is that I can pretty much be found on the internet. So hit me up on LinkedIn. I’m an open connector. So you know just assembling changing the text. just invite disconnects are always accept. And my website is leadership forces calm and I blog there about articles relating to leadership, human performance, taking the principles of what I’ve learned in the military, in the nuclear industry in the sporting world, into the corporate world. That’s that’s what I have to do. That’s my, that’s my mission in life anyway. Beautiful.

Adam G. Force 27:41

I really appreciate your time today and sharing your experiences and expertise.

Rod Yap 27:47

Thanks very much.

Adam G. Force 27:48

Great to speak to you. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews and more ways to Stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Peter Montoya: Becoming a Transformational Leader For a Better Future

Listen to our exclusive interview with Peter Montoya:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

What is transformational leadership and why does it matter to your business today? Find out with expert Peter Montoya who has been an entrepreneur for over 30 years, a best-selling author and keynote speaker.

Most Speakers who teach have not done it for themselves…and most Entrepreneurs don’t know how to speak… Peter is the rare exception.

He’s a thought-leader who has also accomplished big things. Peter bootstrapped his successful software company from an idea in 2008 to a multi-million dollar exit in 2018… without capital, investors or partners.

Peter knows how to inspire people by tapping into their unique purposes. Peter is a truly fascinating and multi-faceted guy, with decades of experience in speaking to audiences about his business knowledge, inspirational journey, and human behavioral insight. Though Peter struggled through school with undiagnosed ADHD, he was admitted to and graduated from the University of California Irvine in Political Science. Post-college he became a traveling speaker and salesman, chalking up over 3000 presentations and living in over 22 major cities.

Peter went on to found a successful advertising agency and software platform, dedicated to financial service professionals. He quickly became the industry guru, writing numerous books, including one of his best selling works “The Brand Called You”, “The Personal Branding Phenomenon” and his newest book “Leadership Power”.

He now pursues his passion for humanity and the planet – he sincerely believes that all people and organizations have a special role in perpetuating the survival of our species, our civilization and our planet. He speaks thoughtfully and passionately about the need for Transformational Leadership in today’s world.

Learn more about Peter and his work at > https://www.petermontoya.com

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. I hope that you’re doing amazing. And if you missed last week’s episode, you might want to go back and check that out. We spoke with rod Yap. He’s got a ton of great experience, and we cover off on high performance leadership. Now leadership has been a very big topic. I mean, today we are talking about how businesses evolution, how businesses evolution, how business is evolving, and what kind of leadership is evolving with it, right? How do we lean into leadership for today’s world? And what does that look like? And it’s really important because great leaders create trust, they inspire people, and they do good in the world. And that’s what we’re all about here. So we’re going to be talking to Peter Montoya. Now. Peter Montoya has a lot of experience That we want to learn from. So he’s a leadership strategist. Now. He is a keynote speaker. He’s done a ton of talks over 3000 talks in, I think 20 over 20 major cities. And he’s also a best selling author. So he’s a best selling author for a book called The brand called you the personal branding phenomenon, and his latest book leadership power. Now he started his own company as well. He bootstrapped the software company in 2008. And he had a multi million dollar exit in 2018. So he’s been down the startup road. He’s been traveler, he has been a storyteller. He knows what it takes. And he seen what it takes to be a transformational leader. And that’s what we’re going to touch on is, you know, what is the the what are organizations roles in the future of humanity? What is transformational leadership? And what do you need to know about leaning in to be a great leader for your startup right now, we have some great stuff that has been released on Change Creator calm so before we get into that conversation, I just want to give you a heads Up to a check that out. Just a quick reminder. And guys, you can find our Facebook group, if you go to our website, you can join us on our Facebook group and get involved over there. It’s the profitable digital impact entrepreneur, we’d love to see you over there, we have a little bit more of a tight knit focused conversation around business and startups. So if you have a business idea, or you already have a business, that might be a great place for you to get into that community. One other thing I want to mention is if you are a Shopify user, we recently did a review on a company called Shogun. And the so Shogun offers so much flexibility. They are a page builder for Shopify. So I know Shopify has some like limitations around how the functionality and the analytics, so they not only give you deep analytics, but they give you the ability to really customize every page the way you want on Shopify, so you can increase conversions and do different types of testing and all that good marketing stuff. Go to change. calm. So if you have a Shopify store, search for Shogun, you’ll find our full review, I think you’ll really like it. We were We were pretty blown away by the software and the capabilities, one of our writers had a chance to really dig into it and get like an account to explore it. And they did the review based on that really cool stuff. So I just wanted to throw it out there, I think you can benefit from it, and help drive your business forward. So without further ado, guys, we’re gonna jump into this conversation with Peter and really dive in deeper into the leadership role. Hey, Peter, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

Peter Montoya 03:38

I’m doing phenomenal. I’m so excited to be here.

Adam G. Force 03:42

Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re a busy guy and yet lots of stuff going on. But I think you do have a lot of great experience to share. So we’re gonna dig into that over the next 20 to 30 minutes and see where it goes. So I always like to just kick it off. Just tell us like what’s going on in your world today. what’s the latest? What’s the greatest? I’m going through another pivot.

Peter Montoya 04:03

So I have been an entrepreneur for 30 years. And as an entrepreneur, you kind of when you start your first business, you’d like to think this one business is going to be my lifelong business. That is not the case. So I probably have started and either closed and or folded in or sold 10 businesses, and I’m probably on my 11th incarnation. Now, I’m going back and rebranding myself as a leadership speaker and high performance teams expert. I have been a speaker for the better part of 30 years, but never in the leadership space.

Adam G. Force 04:37

Yeah, and some of the information I got it sounds like you’ve only done about 3000 presentations. Tell me about your first business that you bootstrapped and had a multi million dollar exit. I think we all like to hear about those, those life, lines of business going from start to finish. Got it.

Peter Montoya 04:57

So I’ve only had one more section. than failure in my life, I’ve had, you know, seven businesses that failed and one business that had a really fantastic exit. I started my first business as an advertising agency back in 1998. I was 29 years old, I thought I knew at all. I was an advertising agency specializing in financial service professionals. And I did that for about 10 years, I became the go to guy. If you were a financial advisor, and you wanted to help marketing or branding yourself, and then I evolved that business in 2007 or so.

Adam G. Force 05:33

Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Now, I guess so once you sold that one, why did you decide to exit and what did you do next?

Peter Montoya 05:42

Well, that business, which was the advertising agency, I basically kind of collapsed it and then started a software business. So the advertising agency was a model where I only ate what I killed every single month. Yeah, and every single month I had to generate between 200 and $400,000 a month in sales, which I was doing myself Using using stages so you know, speaking in front of audiences and selling audiences on our advertising services, and I realized I was really sick and tired of being on a hamster wheel. Yeah, constantly having to eat what I kill. And I wanted a recurring revenue business. So I started a software company called Marketing Pro, which provided automated marketing content for financial service professionals. And we charged subscriptions of 25 to $75 a month, in between 2008 and 2018. When I sold it, we amassed 11,000 subscribers, and we sold it to a much bigger company. The reason I sold it was it was I had all my equity in the company. I mean, I had no debt, but I also had no assets, except for maybe a couple investment properties, a couple cars. So it was up my whole entire nest egg, and I wasn’t passionate about it anymore. I’m an entrepreneur and so I fall in that kind of quickstart category of where you’re always having new ideas and you want to go in new directions. I kind of built it gotten over the hump and lost the passion for growing the business.

Adam G. Force 07:06

Yeah, yeah, you know, I see that happen a lot. And I guess you got to be willing to kind of let go, what you what was the past and be willing to just kind of move forward with new ideas. And I know as entrepreneurs, it’s pretty common that you’re like, top level big picture thinker and you want to try all kinds of different things that focus can be tough sometimes.

Peter Montoya 07:25

Yeah, exactly. So once the problem is solved once you’ve got a workable model, okay, what’s next?

Adam G. Force 07:31

I, you know, my, my co founder, Amy and I were always saying is, you know, it’s really important to us that our business can run without us, because to your point, you want it to be an asset. And as we have the investor mindset, you really want it to be able to operate without you. And, you know, I think that kind of leads you to certain types of decision making. greed. Yeah. So you’re really getting into the leadership stuff. Tell me a little bit about that focus and what you’re thinking there.

Peter Montoya 07:58

So I still think the world is suffering from a dearth in really good leadership? I think there is collectively a large elephant in the room that we as a society aren’t talking about. So here’s what I mean by that. And here’s the question I’ve got for you, Adam, in 50 years from now, if we went forward to 2070, do you think the world and society will be better than it is right now or worse off than it is right now, based on the trajectory we’re headed on?

Adam G. Force 08:27

I want to say that it’ll be better but the problem is I had to actually think about it. be negative.

Peter Montoya 08:37

So that’s kind of how I am too. So based on our current trajectory, it is going to be worst. While you’re talking about climate change, overpopulation, pollution at the lot loss of biodiversity. We are headed 180 million miles an hour in the wrong direction. As a civilization Yeah, so the most important question the most people Dialogue we should be having right now as a species is how can we work together to solve our collective problems better? And on the other side right now, the large the conversation right now is, is how can I make the other side more wrong than we are? So we get our way that is the conversation we’re having right now in this country. And that is a profound lack of leadership.

Adam G. Force 09:25

What do you think is the barrier here? So I mean, I love that you’re focused on leadership because we do need more heart led leadership, we need people that think holistically about not just their companies and businesses and assets, but actually how they impact people in the environment in the world. And you know, we haven’t done that for a long time, which is why we are where we are. However, I don’t know how familiar you are with things like Cambridge analytic and the power of you know, our technology today and data, and just the disinformation and the the campaigns going on. It’s I mean, I see a huge challenge in getting people, I guess clear on like what’s right and what’s wrong because everybody can find a study or report or something that that supports their own agenda

Peter Montoya 10:14

That’s a really, really great point. So what social media is now doing to our society is the same thing the printing press did to the world about 400 years ago. So when the printing press was first invented, there, all of a sudden you thought, Oh, my gosh, I start spreading information and the world’s become more informed. And actually, what happened was a huge proliferation of conspiracy theories about 400 years ago, and actually led to the Christian crusades where they killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. For about 30 years. It took 30 years to figure out how to publish information that was actually accurate. We’re going through the same kind of tectonic train change, change right now with social media. Yeah. And we are only 10 years into it. We may have 30 more years to go until we figure out the platform’s technology, the policy among those platforms to actually start telling the truth. So we can agree on a common set of facts so we can actually solve problems.

Adam G. Force 11:15

Yeah, I mean, that sounds amazing. And I would love to see that I know, I was listening to somebody talk, and they were like, Listen, fossil fuels are no longer the most valuable currency today. It’s its data. And when she said that, I was like, You know what, I actually don’t think that’s true. I think that today, it’s trust. Because you know, especially from a business mindset, like based on what we’re talking about here with disinformation and poor leadership and personal agendas, you can’t trust anything anymore. So if you can earn someone’s trust, you’re gonna get a lot further.

Peter Montoya 11:47

I like that. Well said.

Adam G. Force 11:48

Oh man. So what kind of steps now have you been taking to kind of pursue a shift in leadership?

Peter Montoya 11:57

You know, the biggest thing is one thing I could impose upon your audience is for them to consider what their moral compass is. And so most people have never even really thought about the definition, their moral compass, and it probably is the most important decision they’ll make in their life. So the truth to me is, is that morality is subjective. Those are the objective that your morality is subjective, which means each human being is decide what is the goal of their lives, and to some degree with the goal of people’s lives are around them. And some people go well, you know, it’s easy, it’s God whenever God tells me to do what God says is moral. That is my moral compass, okay? Other people might say it’s the Constitution. So the US Constitution instead of federal laws, if it’s legal that it’s good, if it’s illegal, then it’s bad. Other people have I think the default moral compass for most Americans is personal enrichment. So as long as it makes me money and doesn’t hurt somebody else too badly, then it’s okay. So you know, I want a big house big car. I want to consume a lot. I want a reasonable enough We will listen to me. And then you know, I want to be left alone, and they more or less are living the morality of personal enrichment. Now what I think what I’ve chosen for my life, and I would like more people to choose for their life, and I can’t make them do this is that of human well being? I think everyone’s moral compass should be set to maximizing their own human well being and everyone else’s well being as well. And as soon as you make a decision, the calculus of how you make decisions and what you value changes radically.

Adam G. Force 13:32

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And I think, you know, I think there’s a, I guess, an educational gap. Would you agree that over time, there’s an educational gap that could be preventing people from actually understanding that in another word, another way to put it is, you know, people don’t see as clearly that the a shift or transition from an individual or an organism will impact the whole, and they don’t see it that way. Cuz if you did, you’d realize that all these things of thinking for yourself, I have enough money, I don’t want to hurt someone too bad. You know, that’s the wrong way to think about how we operate as a global community.

Peter Montoya 14:16

That’s absolutely right. And you got to look at the culture of the United States and the culture of the United States all moves toward radical individualism, radical individualism, and I want to win as long as I don’t hurt you, or someone else too bad. So as all of our society, I mean, we basically have been indoctrinated for the last hundred and 20 years with what’s called a prosperity doctrine. And the prosperity doctrine basically says, success equals happiness. As soon as I make enough money that I can buy my house in the woods, be completely and totally isolated, live off, you know, live off the grid where the government’s not bothering me. I have succeeded and I will be happy. And what’s amazing about that is those people are the least happy people on the planet. So the Whole aim of our society is going in the wrong direction. And that happens both in religion, it happens in personal development, almost all personal development is geared around the prosperity doctrine. What happens in our educational system? All everything is moving toward How can I be alone? How can I make a lot of money? How can I do this all by myself, it’s all geared the wrong way, which is the opposite of how we thrive. If you look at the schools of positive psychology, look at the studies in longevity, everything’s about having a purpose, which is usually greater than yourself, making the world a better place. And number two, having a lot of interconnected relationships 100%

Adam G. Force 15:39

So, you know, a lot of times you’ll hear like, there’s been massive progress with technology, and people associate that with just overall progress, but we haven’t had you know, I think what we’re kind of getting at is educational and spiritual progress around you know, how we live. I mean, you can hear these guys like Bernie Sanders and stuff, talk about About how they want to help more people, and it’s going to cost taxes and all this stuff. And so people will say, Well, I’m not gonna pay for someone else’s kid to go to school or get health care. And I’m just like, I can just see such a huge disconnect and how we actually are thinking about things.

Peter Montoya 16:14

I would agree with you. So I would say that humanity right now if you look at humanity in terms of a human life lifespan, we are in our college years, and your college years are about is how do you adapt? How do you use unlimited adult vices. So when you first go to college at 18 or 19 years old, all of a sudden, you don’t have anyone telling you and putting restraints on what you can do anymore. And you can drink smoke sacks gamble, what drugs, you have unlimited access to all of the human biases and most people in their first couple years of adulthood adulting they over indulge? And they realize there are prices to pay for doing whatever you want when you want to do it. And we as a society are exactly the same place right now. We are realizing Yes, we can As much carbon as we want as cheaply as we want, we can have as much technology in our hands we want, we can be staring at our screens as we want. However, those things as indulgent and as good as they might feel as easy as they might be, there are huge societal repercussions or societal individual repercussions from that. So we are as a society right now, as a species right now, in those 1819 year old years going, just because we can doesn’t mean we should. And we’ve actually got to restrict ourselves based on what is in the best long term interests of our species.

Adam G. Force 17:33

That’s the that’s the tough one right there is really getting people to I guess, it’s like a reeducation process almost how do we get people to detach from those you know, historical conditioning conditioned beliefs and start thinking in a new direction with you know, I just, it’s a very difficult thing. So I guess that’s why you’re focused on leadership and trying to have a top down effect.

Peter Montoya 17:59

Noticed some degree, I mean leadership and really changed, you know, the military was the prototypical takedown style. You know, I’m the leader, you do what I say. And today, it’s really an inside out job, which means we’re really trying to empower people. So they make better decisions for themselves and for the organization as a whole. We want thinking self leading, empowered people making decisions, so no longer isn’t necessarily a top down. We’re trying to really imbue them with the right tools that make better moral decisions for themselves and the people around them. Yeah, and

Adam G. Force 18:34

I think, you know, so. So basically, getting because I, you know, it made me think of this film the family, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, or saw it. It’s like, they’re like, these are the leaders that have the most impact. And when I say top down, forget traditional corporate hierarchy or anything like that, but people that have been influenced in a sense, it’s like, if they’re out there, spreading the Bs, like, it just makes it that much harder and to Your point we want people to start understanding what this I guess modern day leadership is and not even just what it should be, but what it needs to become and why, right?

Peter Montoya 19:11

Yeah, absolutely. Right. So we’re really focused on self leadership and self leadership really is empowerment. empowerment is one of those terms to a lot of people where they go, it’s kind of a fuzzy word, but they really, empowerment really is very well defined. So here’s what empowerment is. First of all, empowerment is authority, plus confidence, plus competence. So when As for me, as a leader of an organization, I want to give my people maximum authority to make as many decisions within alignment of the organization. So the organization is really clear, the objective is really clear or head is really clear. And we’ll give each one maximum authority to help us achieve that goal. Next, I want to give them the competence and the skills and I’ll ask them questions and training to constantly give them more and more comps, make better decisions, and then with that usually comes down competence. So when they’re sitting there in a decision making situation, they are empowered to make the best decision for them in the organization. I love that.

Adam G. Force 20:09

And so and what are you offering and doing right now that’s that is supporting people to become a transformational leader, if you will.

Peter Montoya 20:18

Great question. So I’m an infopreneur. These days, I’ve got a great YouTube channel which is youtube.com, slash thrive, e union. And on there, we’ve got 54 different videos that basically teach different life skills and leadership. So that’s one thing we do are putting the final touches on a book right now called the 10. Secrets of leadership power, self testable for self leadership and leadership of others want to really kind of break down and get pragmatic steps for people to actually be able to know how to build up their leadership skills. And then also I’ve got a great online coaching community, which is on Facebook and it’s currently free. So that would be Peter Montoya leadership coaching inside of Facebook, go to Facebook search for Peter Montoya leadership coaching, and join our free leadership coaching community.

Adam G. Force 21:09

So thanks for sharing that. And just curious then, as leadership is evolving, and where do you see it? Do you see these leadership styles changing? Obviously, it has changed over time. And do you see it happening more in certain areas? It could be small companies, large corporations, government, whatever it might be. Do you see it evolving in certain places first?

Peter Montoya 21:34

Yeah, it certainly is happening. And I don’t know if you saw it. In the last couple months, the American Chamber of Commerce actually kind of changed what they thought was the objective American business now, whereas the objective of American business was either by default or stated to maximize shareholder value, right. The Chamber of Commerce, more or less said, I think the US Chamber Congress more or less said, we now have five stakeholders and we get to consider all five stakeholders. Clients are one shareholders be another, their vendors, their employees and the communities they serve. That actually is a holistic solution. Now we’ve got American businesses saying making money alone is not it.

Adam G. Force 22:21

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s it’s powerful. And I do recall seeing that and I’m curious at what impact the you know, I think it was Chamber of Commerce, but them setting the tone, if you will, curious on what kind of impact that’s really happening because I feel like you know, there’s probably a lot of old blood out there and a lot of new blood coming. I think the new blood is gonna lean into those ideas, while the old blood is gonna have their mindset on maximizing profit, because that’s just their mentality.

Peter Montoya 22:51

Yeah, I mean, you also understand that money is you know, highly, highly addictive. So human beings have two potential Reasons for living. The default reason for living is your basic survival and this goes back to our homosapien origins and more or less how we survive if human beings is to eat, don’t get eaten and procreate. That’s how we prepare. keeps giving you some of the survival of the species going forward. And making money is nothing more than an extension of that basic core programming. So you say well, how is making money I mean, buying more houses and more cars, just an extension of eat, don’t get eaten and procreate. reproduce. And when more or less people buy cars, have houses have boats have more vacation as a way of attracting mates? If you think Oh no, I’m evolved. I live in a big giant huge house and I’m beyond my core programming. Basically basis rival No, you’re still caught on the hedonic treadmill of that and it takes a level of comfort. consciousness to go, you know what, I’m going to transcend my basic core programming of survival and move on to human flourishing or thriving. And that’s basically when you make the choice that you want to live for human well being. And once you figure it out that maximizing human well being is what you’re going living for. Then you start living for things like purpose, relationships, calm, and you actually reorganize your life in a much more holistic way. But it takes some intelligence to do and discipline to do that in our society.

Adam G. Force 24:30

Yeah, definitely. Now, do you do you think or would you agree that there that we’re actually living through a major transition in in business overall, globally?

Peter Montoya 24:45

But yeah, I certainly hope so. You’re getting more and more Gen Xers like me into the executive ranks, and we have a much more holistic way of looking at the world so I’m really hoping so. Gen Xers have been the biggest disappointment. Is this most not the biggest non generation in history? We haven’t even had a president yet. So we’ve had baby boomer presidents, and they’re looking we might skip right over Gen x’s and just get all millennial if they elect Pete Budaj edge. Yeah, there hasn’t been I don’t think any of the candidates right now for president are Gen Xers were worthless generation.

Adam G. Force 25:20

You know, you don’t hear too much about Gen X. That’s, that’s no, it’s it’s, it’s now millennials and Gen Z. And for some reason, yeah, Gen X gets skipped.

Peter Montoya 25:30

You did.

Adam G. Force 25:32

Man. So yeah, I think you know, there is a big transition. And you know, one of the things I always like to say is that, and I’m curious on your thoughts is you know, as more people as the internet grows and grows, and we have this, all these new opportunities, it’s there’s never been a better time for opportunity for someone to say, I’m gonna I’m gonna escape the nine to five like what we were taught and programmed to do basically, and I I’m going to do something of my own, like, I’m just gonna figure out my own. And what I always want to see people do is like, find harmony, like there is no work life balance, there’s just your life. So you just start creating this harmonious, you know, duality like comes together, right? And it’s like, I’m just gonna shape whatever I want. And now with the internet, you can do that the opportunity is there.

Peter Montoya 26:23

So yeah, it certainly is. I mean, there’s so much technology now that allow you to actually, you know, work from home from home and basically look like a big business. So there is a lot of opportunity in that one regard. And then in another regard, the number of new businesses starting in America right now is less than during the Carter administration. The large businesses on this planet, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tesla, you know, they are gobbling up a whole lot of mindshare right now. So in some regards, it is easier and in some regards, it’s harder because of the climate right now.

Adam G. Force 26:58

Yeah, that’s an interesting point. I’m always looking for statistics on the number of companies started or you know, failing, like, and I don’t know, like where you get your numbers. Any any ideas on that?

Peter Montoya 27:11

Good question. I would have to google it again. Yeah, I know. I googled it not too long ago and saw those numbers, but it’s, it’s out there. I’m guessing it is. The Department of Commerce is where those numbers are. Yeah. Neil Patel recently posts something around about a 500,000 or so companies start but only about 30. Some thousand make it? Right. Right. And those numbers are pretty powerful. You know, but what’s interesting is I see more people, and you don’t need to be a Tesla to live. So live, what you might define as success, right? So you can grab your small part of the pie and help a small part of the global community in your own way with the skills that you have. And we would call that living your truth. I was at a conference in Toronto and I interviewed a girl by the name of Nasseri Sheikh who is on our magazine cover and when I spoke to her she was a child slave went through all the stuff she got out started two businesses. And I asked her in the end, if you had one opportunity to give a message to the world, what would it be? And she said, I would ask that people dig deep live their truth, because that’s the biggest contribution you can make to the world. Did I lose you? Sorry, I had muted the microphone to sneeze. failed, unmuted. Yes, in my vernacular, that is living your purpose and purpose is the intersection of five of five things. Number one, what you’re passionate about. Number two, what you’re good at what you’re skilled out. And number three, something that benefits humanity. And once you find the intersection of those three things, yes, you are maximizing contribution to our species. And so I really hope that your listeners here are not just doing jobs that they like, and that make them money. But actually, they’d like to Really good at that are helping society beautiful.

Adam G. Force 29:04

I love that. And I and I that’s where I want to see this overall transition go, you know, we have more transparency now with the internet, we could see what’s going on in the world. And hopefully we can find trusted information. And as people get, you know, inspired more than they want to contribute back to help solve some of these problems. And that’s what we’re all about here at Change Creator. So we see a lot of people who do have their hearts in the right place.

Peter Montoya 29:26

Oh, I love what you’re doing here. Adam is fantastic.

Adam G. Force 29:28

Thank you so much. Appreciate that. And I really appreciate your focus on leadership. And you did define it, but I just want to do a final definition and we’ll wrap up. So I have a note here that you know, like we talked about transformational leadership. Let’s just give everybody a very clear definition on what that really means. today.

Peter Montoya 29:49

A transformational leader is someone who changes the fundamentals, fundamental understanding of what something is. So our founding fathers This country 200 years ago, created a fundamental change in understanding what a country could be. Up until that time, most of the countries in the world were all monarchies basically, in powered by God more or less. And the United States of America was the very first democracy and no one thought that model would work. Here we are 200 and some 70 years later, and a half the countries in the world are now democracies, they created a fundamental change understanding of what something is. Steve Jobs is another one. I mean, Steve Jobs probably was a transformational leader at least twice, if not three times. First with what a computer was a computer up until that time filled a room. It was only for governments and research institutions and colleges and things like that. And he basically said, No, a computer is what you put on your desk. It’s more functional. That was probably number one. Number two is probably iTunes. We changed how we got listened to music versus CDs. It was now digital. And the third one was what is a pocket computer Caught a fall, but really it’s a handheld computer. And that was the probably the third time he created a fundamental change understanding was something is, so what in every single time but those fundamental transformation leaders, not only they change the understanding what it is, but they also unlock hundreds, thousands or millions of other leaders. So if you think about it, how many businesses have come evolve because of the iPhone? Well, there’s thousands of or hundreds of thousands of businesses that are created doing software and hardware for the iPhone. And then you also got to think about all the businesses that were started because people could run their whole entire lives off of a handheld computer. So he trance he created other leaders based on his own transformation.

Adam G. Force 31:47

Yeah, I love that. I love the fact that has, you know, Britney bring up a great point about how just creating these transformations such as the iPhone, it just opens up a world of whole a whole other world of opportunity, which is been the case and it’s been pretty amazing. So I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. Well, Peter, listen, I appreciate your time. We’re gonna wrap up here. And I want to give you a chance. I know you gave some shout outs earlier, but let’s just what’s the best place for people to learn more about you and your leadership? approach

Peter Montoya 32:16

our website, which is Peter Montoya calm that should be easy enough to remember. And then I would also go to facebook and join my free leadership community, which is the Peter Montoya leadership coaching in Facebook.

Adam G. Force 32:29

Awesome. Perfect. Alright guys, you heard it, check it out. This sounds like exactly the kind of leadership we need. So really appreciate you sharing all your insights. Peter.

Peter Montoya 32:39

I love that you have this channel and thank you for having giving this gift to the world and having me on it. I really love this episode.

Adam G. Force 32:45

And your next step is to change create a revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit change. Raider mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Maddy Martin: Increase Sales and Impact With Messenger AI Strategies

Listen to our exclusive interview with Maddy Martin:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Are you leaning into modern marketing solutions that will allow you to help more people and scale impact? We spoke to the head of growth and education at Smith.ai.

Maddy Martin is the head of growth and education at Smith.ai, which provides integrated phone and web chat services for solo and small businesses, including their virtual receptionist & intake service, live website chat, and Keypad cloud phone system.

She has spent the last decade growing tech startups from New York to California and has expertise in digital marketing, small business communications, lead conversion, email marketing, SEO, and event marketing.

Learn more about Maddy and her work at > https://smith.ai

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

What’s going on everybody welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host Adam force. hope everybody’s doing well today. If you missed the last episode, it was with Travis chambers. He’s the founder of chamber media they’re doing some really amazing stuff with video and so we talked about video marketing and development and all that good stuff. So a lot of good gold nuggets in there and as you know, video is hot today. So you want to check that out. And today we are going to be talking with somebody in the AI space and her name is Maddy, Martin. She’s head of growth and education at Smith AI. And they’re all about integrating you know, web and phone chats right so automating these processes to help increase your sales connect with leads validate the leads right. This can lead to calls the can lead to whatever your funnel or process is. And you know, there’s a lot of money left on the table today, when we don’t have these types of resources in place. And even, you know, like Facebook Messenger is super powerful with really unique strategies behind it. And you know, programs like this for your website can really help you increase your monthly revenue for your business. So we wanted to talk to her about how businesses are using this stuff, why it’s so important and get a sense of what they’re doing that’s different, and bring that to you guys. So you can get some insights and maybe fresh ideas for you know, pulling in some more leads, pulling in some more sales and upping your business, right, the more we can do that the more impact we can have in the world, with our companies. And that’s always a good thing. So the other announcement I want to make is, we have a very special offer and it is a it’s new. We haven’t we haven’t shared this with anybody just yet. And it is our storytelling roadmap for impact on Entrepreneurs now we run a program called the captivate method. And we help supercharge your brand with storytelling right to turn more leads into sales and automate your business and really set things up and integrate storytelling as a powerful marketing force. And this is a first step. So we want to share this storytelling roadmap as a first step to get acclimated understand story a little bit better and what’s going on with it some of the mistakes that people make when they’re in their early years of startup. And so you could check that out now this again, this is a fresh document we’d love your feedback on it as well. So you can go to the URL change crater comm slash forward slash storytelling roadmap. All right, just all one word. So Change Creator comm slash storytelling roadmap, and you can grab your free copy of the storytelling roadmap for impact entrepreneurs. Now check it out, let us know what you think we’d love to get some feedback on it. And we hope you really enjoy it and it’s helpful for you. There’s lots of good nuggets in Alright, so this will be a good first step. Alright guys, I think that’s about it, you can check out our website, check us out on Facebook, you know where we’re at, you know, get on Facebook, this is where we put a lot of content and then get into the Facebook group, the, the profitable digital impact entrepreneur. All right, we have a really healthy community in there that you can connect with lots of good insights. And we hope to see you over there. Alright, let’s jump into this conversation about messenger and AI with Maddie. Hey, Maddie, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How’s everything going today?

Maddy Martin 03:38

Oh, it’s great. Thanks, Adam. Thanks for having me.

Adam G. Force 03:40

Yep. Thanks for being here. I think you’re in an exciting space and you know, just over the past couple years, there’s just so much talk around this type of technology and messenger support and I think, you know, for even for our business as we get into this stuff, it’s I always look at it as like another thing to learn, but I think So look at it as like, Man, you better start leaning into it, because that’s money that you’re leaving on the table for sure. And I’ve seen just incredible results for people. So maybe just give a little bit of background on what’s going on with, you know, with you today, what you’re working on and just kind of a little summary there.

Maddy Martin 04:18

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So I’m the head of growth and education for Smith AI, which is a Virtual Receptionist and web chat service that’s now offering also texts answering for small businesses primarily. So we operate now really globally, but we’re based in Silicon Valley and we have the majority of our receptionists are in the US and Canada, English and Spanish support for really a professional services, businesses and solopreneurs to small business owners who are you know, the first few years of business to more mature and advanced where they understand the opportunity cost of their time, which for me is a long time ago. Economy Major really resonates with the with the business and our clients because we know that yes, you know, you could take out a loan and spend more money you can leverage friends and family and you know, venture capital. But what you can’t get more of no matter how hard you try is time. And it’s precious in terms of how quickly your business gets adopted in the market, how quickly you make sales and in are able to find the right product market fit. And what we find is that if business owners are spending all their time on admin tasks and chores and answering the phone, or neglecting those and not finding replacements to pick up the phone and answer emails and chats, then what happens is that there is a huge lag and missed opportunity in business growth, and that can significantly affect the sort of opportunities and viability of the business.

Adam G. Force 05:53

Yeah, I think that was well said. And it’s a tough lesson to learn because, you know, there’s a I would say that as As soon as you’re when you have an established revenue stream, let’s say I just have one product as a start up and you’re starting to get sales, you know, that’s when I would really start looking at this technology to help kind of capitalize on that. And I think you made a good point just about the time we put in because I’ve seen it over and over again, where people put in a lot of time in the weeds with this type of stuff, rather than spending their time you know, they talk about working on the business versus in the business and there is definitely some truth to to that and how you spend your time is important. So once you just have those sales like I think technology like this is is essential, actually, you know

Maddy Martin 06:39

Yeah, and I think you know, there’s such like a chicken and egg sort of mentality with services like this even think about like, are you using a CRM? Are you using online calendaring? Have you outsourced like the chore of bookkeeping and accounting like we’re approaching tax season, right? So maybe, I mean, to be honest, maybe we’re in tax season if we like it or not. And what ends up happening is that we get so bogged down by the day to day and the chores. But we don’t take an eye on the things that actually really move the needle, which is responsiveness. That’s the most important thing. And if we don’t invest in the tools that allow us to be responsive, then we end up shooting ourselves in the foot. So like, there’s often this analysis paralysis that happens, where you think, Oh my gosh, there’s so many CRMs on the market, like which one do I choose? How important is it that it connects to all my other tools? Should I have a you know, email account hosted by Gmail or Outlook or how does it play well with my other systems, and what we find now that’s really honestly a huge advantage to small business owners is that there are not as many like long term commitments and contracts that are required by software. You can use most software and services month to month, so there isn’t so much of an initial investment. And, and cost if you don’t like the software, so what I recommend is that you just get started using something that’s like free or low cost, like think about calendly. I mean, they offer a free online calendaring solution, there, even CRMs that start free. There’s email marketing tools that start free until you hit, you know, a total number of contacts. And then you know, like, this is something I like to use, it works for my business functions. It’s something that I can understand. But you don’t know unless you start actually using these systems and not just reading you know, your peers posts in a Facebook group, like how they’re going to actually work for you. Because like, if you agonize, you will never end up choosing a software and frankly, nothing is perfect, but you won’t know what actually you even want or like to use unless you just get started. And that’s one of the biggest struggles that we see small businesses. face.

Adam G. Force 08:58

Yeah, it’s true. And I think you see a lot of the software companies, they do offer, you know, a free access opportunity, you know, until you can get your business to a certain point, but that by that point, you either love it and you’re integrated with them. So you continue, or you don’t and you can try something else. So there’s really no reason to not get started with some of these things. And, you know, we’ve done it with calendly and drift and just simple things like that. And we’re behind on the messenger game and you know, this type of support at the level that you guys are, are doing. So that’s led me to be super curious to talk to you more about it. And if you could share maybe a little insight around, you know, the uses of this technology for small businesses and, and some of the things that might stand out as just someone maybe top two or three items that stand out that could be valuable, that someone should be thinking about that maybe they’re not.

Maddy Martin 09:55

Yeah, um, I think there there are three sort of core things to think about. About one and we started actually with our website chat having a self service sort of platform like you know, an intercom or drift or something. But what we found is that small business owners don’t need to answer their own chats. The two options that we now offer are live website chat, which is staffed by us, and also staffs, your texts answering and messages. Then the other product is the chat bot, which is automatically responding with programmatic answers that you know, respond to common questions and steer leads in the right direction towards scheduling a consultation or or buying products online. And those are the tools that are really hands off either there is someone handling it without your involvement or there is AI handling it without your involvement. But when we first sort of launched the website chat, and giving that self service platform, we realize like hey, hang on a second, like our core, you know, business Owner clients are not available. That’s why we exist to sort of deliver this service either through live humans or AI to respond on their behalf. And that’s what we do with phone calls. And and now doing that across, as we say, omni channel platform, so phone, text, website chat and expanding from there into other things like Facebook and other messenger apps. But what we know is that business owners always want to be in the loop. So when you’re looking at the system, they should notify you and anyone else who is scheduled or who is, you know, purchase a product, the notification should not only be to the business owner, but also to the buyer or to the lead. And then also see how you can sort of get the most out of the system. So like, a lot of people probably know that there are call answering services. But what a lot of people don’t know is that you can actually mask a business number. And I’m not speaking about spoofing and spam can actually move Ask a business number and we can call using your business number so that it shows on caller ID, your leads and clients to follow up on maybe they completed a website form or they left their cart abandoned and they didn’t end up buying the product, whatever the case may be, they have indicated an interest in buying something from you a product or service, we follow up on those great leads on the people who may be you know, indicated an interest or had a consultation with your service and didn’t buy. And then you have that entire workflow sort of both inbound and outbound with us answering, you know, screening, scheduling, answering questions and getting that, that revenue in or following up on people outbound to call them and to get that sale proactively. So I think that that proactiveness and the level of depth that we provide is really the thing that moves the needle, not a glorified voicemail right now. Just like leave a message. I mean, how annoying is that? When you go to a website, and you see that little like chat widget, and then you click on it thinking, I’m going to get live help right now either like through AI or a human being. And then it says, okay, enter your information. All right, I’ve done that name and email and then it says, things were away right now leave your message. And you’re like, what, you know, a bunch of baloney, like you just like made me fill out a form basically, and I’m not going to get live help. That’s such a disappointing experience. So I think that there is the expectation unfortunately, that like we live in the Uber Amazon instacart world where people are getting instant gratification and unbelievably great, fast service for any questions that they have about buying something or or just like, you know, contacting a business. And what ends up happening is that like, those are the same clients or the same consumers who are Going to be interacting with you. So if you don’t have business texting, if you don’t have a Facebook page with messenger, if you don’t have a website that has anything more than a form and instead, like, you know, a chat widget for real time interaction, then you’re missing out on potential business. Like, for example, what we see is that you can expect one chat for every four calls you get for a net new lead for your business. So we know that there is money being left on the table.

Adam G. Force 14:29

Yeah, and I think that’s huge. I think that, you know, I literally was just having this conversation with my co founder, Amy about just abandoned cart stuff, or you know, people that are hitting that page and you know, there’s retargeting solutions and, you know, ways to follow up with people. But I think that this type of support and follow up is really important. I was gonna say powerful, but I just think it’s really important because there is a ton of money left on the table, and it might be something very simple. With these follow ups that you find out that were just holding someone back from that sale, and not only do you get the information, but you will get the sale also. So, like, if you’re not following up in these different, there’s different ways to have these follow ups. I feel like and you know, you want to be covering your bases and in the ways that are going to be most effective and immediate.

Maddy Martin 15:19

Yeah, I mean, one other thing that I’ll emphasize, honestly, in terms of tools, because there is a little bit of hesitancy still here with text messaging, that, you know, chat is great. But it does require sort of someone coming to your website or prompting that engagement, right? But texting is really nice because it can be less, less less inbound, right? And it can be two way and we know that unlike email, which many of us are still leveraging, but it’s you know, lower and lower open rates and more noise and less effective text messages, get an astronomically higher ROI. Right so what ends up happening is that for those who are most likely to respond to a text message and who are most clearly indicating that they want to hear from you, they want to engage with your business or they have already engaged with your business and I’ll get to an example of that in a second. You can text them and get a much higher interaction engagement rate and and you know when to sale rate so that you can you know, really make the sale happen especially if you have a mobile friendly website. Or if you have purchases available for product on other sites, you can direct through link them to make a purchase and it can even be something that is a personalized link so it gets them right back to where they were started, you know, with cookies, etc. So So to me, like I’ve got chrome on my desktop on my browser. If someone texts me a link on my phone, then I’m using Chrome no matter which device I’m in my Chrome knows where I am. So I can pick up right where I left off. Again, leveraging technology that’s not costing you anything extra. But it allows you to help facilitate that sale. Now with existing clients. What’s really interesting is that you can even use texting to help them write reviews for you, what we see is that reviews or referrals are still incredibly important and have a ton of weight on the attraction and the sort of search ranking of your business, the visibility, everyone is checking, you know, online reviews and referrals. Even if they have a friend who tells them you know, go check out this business, they’re still going to look at it and what you want to do is systematically be asking for and getting fresh reviews and from your happiest clients of course, so if you use texting and you say thanks so much for you know, your recent purchase and we’re leaving us you know, five stars, when you automatically email them about you know, thanks for making this purchase. You You made a purchase in your cart. And then here’s the automatic email. If you text them and you say, Would you please write a review on our Facebook page or Google My Business or wherever it is that you have a listing, then you can help facilitate that actually coming to fruition, whereas in the email, you know, someone’s gonna snooze it, maybe they want to do it, maybe the open rate is lower, if you just direct them to that link right there. And then and you can even if you’ve captured, you know, comments from them, praise in the past, you can include that to make it even easier for them to write the review. One of the things that we even do is we can call, you know, recent clients back who left a positive review and say, you know, what, you know, let me just, you know, have a little mini interview with you, and we will send this to you, you can approve it, and then I’ll send you the link to post it online, like really facilitating that online reputation management.

Adam G. Force 18:55

Yeah. Which I love and I and I think a lot of people have a gap there with getting those reviews and stuff like that for their products, and it can be a real pain in the butt. And sometimes people do need that little, like, make it as easy as possible for them. So they need a little nudge.

Maddy Martin 19:10

Yeah, and I think they don’t want to they don’t have time, right. So you have to facilitate that.

Adam G. Force 19:16

Well, we’ve learned, you know, like on iTunes and stuff, like people find it to be a real pain in the butt to like, they want to leave a review, but it becomes like a hassle. And so if it’s not really simple for them, you lose that and I know like on iTunes, it can be a little bit if you’re not familiar with the process, it’s a little bit clunky. So that kind of like hand holding could be really valuable to getting those additional reviews and stuff. So have you noticed anything? I’m curious on just some of the companies that might be using this type of technology and support at the level you’re talking about. And if you’ve heard any kind of results stories that have shown an uptick in their sales or Just overall business revenues and things like that.

Maddy Martin 20:03

Oh my gosh, so many okay like a few things well, first of all one like sort of PSA. I travel around the country Adam and like I talked to a lot of small business owners, and many of them are using voice phone systems cloud phone systems and they don’t sort of Secret Shop them. So after you listen to this, one thing that I would recommend that you do if you’re running a small business is to have someone call your business phone number and count the rings and then pick up when you hear the you know, first or second ring. So count the rings on your end because what we’re seeing is a lot of latency. So sometimes if your phone system is not set up properly, or if you have a lot of delays, then you could be missing calls for the very simple and very fixable reason of like there’s eight rings and I kid you not this actually happens before you hear it ring once on your end, and people are hanging up then before they even reach you. So that is really an easy fix. The other thing that I recommend is that if you don’t have business texting enabled for your phone number that you get that immediately a lot of our clients say, you know, these are lawyers, financial advisors, e commerce, you know, they say they didn’t realize that people were trying to text their number until they enabled it or until they switch their phone system. And the really nice thing is that that typically is rolled into like any cloud phone system plan, it shouldn’t really cost you anything extra. If so, it’s extremely small potatoes right in the grand scheme of your costs, and you know, 510 bucks a month or something that have basic business texting enabled. And if you have a landline, you can even use zip whip, or you can use Smith AI to provision sort of a business texting solution for you. So that’s something that I would absolutely recommend and then I would definitely also recommend looking into you know, having sort of automation setup, so that if you have a webform filled For example, from a new potential client or from someone who says, Yes, I want more information or you do product demos, or whatever the case may be, you have a really good system of follow up. So that if someone, even if they’re chatting on your website, that you always have the opportunity to sort of like have that conversation with them. One of the things that we see is that business owners shoot themselves in the foot sometimes by saying, play by my rules, rather than trying to be in tune with the clients and say, okay, you’re contacting me, on my website. Here you are, you’re chatting, or you’re filling out these forms. If you’re just filling out forms, you should definitely have website chat if you get a lot of form fills and e commerce requests. If you have website chat, then what happens? You’ve got someone who’s live on the line, and you’ve got this fish on the line and then they say, you know what, I need to step away like can I can I turn this into a call or this is getting a little bit more complicated, you know, I want to learn more about extra Z, you know, can I schedule time to speak with someone, you want to be able to make that available to them. So either they’re able to schedule a call for someone on your team, maybe it’s even you the business owner. Or if you’re using an omni channel solution where for example, we know your business, and we’re using chat and phone to communicate on your behalf, we can actually even have our receptionist, take that phone call and continue the conversation so you don’t have the interruption. But the main thing is that don’t get interrupted until it actually has to be you who brings in that final sale, who does that demo or consultation are much more sort of advanced conversation that only you or your team can do before that point. If you are doing all of that triage and handling yourself, then you’re spending a lot of time with people who are probably not all converting to clients. or customers? And that doesn’t need to be you who’s on the front lines? Yeah,

Adam G. Force 24:07

yeah, I mean, the time saving is huge and I agree that was gonna be a question is that converting from the the automated chat because you know sometimes there does it does require a personal touch so you might have a trigger point that would turn it into something that you can handle personally to close a deal or whatever it might be but the whole setup process and the initial conversation getting there sounds like it can be automated and then you can have a trigger point to set up a call as needed.

Maddy Martin 24:35

Absolutely. And the nice thing with online calendaring is that if it is you know, you or your staff who has to have the you know, consultation or demo or discussion, then we will book that based on your calendar settings. So you can say you know, I only open up you know, my public calendar for you know, three demos a day or phone calls in the afternoons and I need 15 minutes of buffer time in between Each appointment to take notes and follow through. All of those things are completely customizable. And when we’re booking appointments for you, it’s not like we’re seeing into your calendar or we’re logging in or you need to buy another license. It really is just a link that we use based on your directions. But the important thing is that it’s not just anyone having a link and they’re just booking appointments with you willy nilly. They’re screened first to determine if they’re a good potential client or customer or even partner. You know, are there people who you’re doing work with? Maybe it’s b2b and not see to see, you know, b2c? There may be different vetting steps based on who is on the phone and how you plan to work with them.

Adam G. Force 25:46

Yeah, and I think I would make the point that it’s nice to be able to screen people because you want to get a sense of who is coming in who is chatting because you can look at that and say great, these are the right people. For my My business or you’re going to find out these are not the right people for my business. So now you want to look at well, then why are we attracting the wrong people? Do we have the wrong SEO content? Are we doing the wrong targeting in our ads or whatever it might be. So I think it’s great to be able to screen people and make those types of decisions because you’re starting a sales conversation or a funnel, whatever you want to call it. And if you’re seeing a lot of the wrong people, it kind of leads you to determine there’s probably other issues with your traffic to begin with. So I love that I love that screening opportunity. And I like the automation. I mean, not that we don’t want to have personal touches, but you know, once you get to a certain number, more and more people coming, it’s like you just can’t, right. So it’s it is nice to be able to manage some of the primary conversation to like, vet somebody depending on what they need. And then if they are a buyer, then you have that conversation.

Maddy Martin 26:53

Yeah, I mean, I think that you also just go back to that SEO point that you made that is a really important In one, and it’s sort of this like unknown secret benefit to having something like website chat that allows you to get the exact language that people are using to search. So what do we know, we know that like Google doesn’t really give you the keyword so much anymore that people are using to search and find your business. It’s really hard to determine all the entire questions that the entire keyword set that’s driving business to your pages. So what we know, though, is that in a chat, they’re using the exact same language that they were searching for in Google, right? Because like, maybe they got to the right page, or maybe they got your homepage, or maybe they search for something and now they’re actually going to search their exact query on your website. A lot of small business websites don’t have search or very robust search. So chat actually can be a search portal for the rest of your site. If it’s connected to live agents, they can facilitate you know, getting the right answer to you or providing it directly. But the really nice thing is that you can read into all of the chat transcripts that you see. And you can pull out the best blog posts the best FAQ the best, like, you know, questions that people are asking and then answer them proactively on Facebook or Twitter and say, we just got, you know, three of the same question this week about, you know, product A, wanting to, you know, share with everyone the answer because we didn’t realize it was something that wasn’t, you know, well known. You know, you as a business owner, you have deep expertise. And sometimes it’s easy to have those blinders on where, where you don’t keep in touch with like, those basic questions that maybe you take for granted. And we see this really often. Or maybe you have used a digital marketing agency that isn’t totally familiar with the exact language that’s used, like a really good example of that would be, you know, with attorneys who do personal injury, like let’s consider the phrases like car wreck, or car accident, right? Like if you’re Just saying car accident all over your website, but you’re in a region in the US where people say car wreck, then you’re going to be missing out on some of that search traffic. And if everyone in your chat widget is saying, Oh, do you handle, you know, injuries from car wrecks, you’re like, Oh my gosh, it’s so simple. Like, I should be using that keyword too. So something like that can be a big unlock to organic search traffic growth, as you were alluding to,

Adam G. Force 29:29

yeah, yeah. No, I love that. That’s all really good information. And I just think that there’s such an important place for this type of technology. And there’s a lot of ways we can use it. I get a little sensitive around the text messaging. I think it’s super powerful. And obviously it gets high exposure and opens. I guess we all just have to be a little bit more intimate, right, it gets Yeah, email is like at one level of intimacy and trust. And then you get to the text messaging. It’s like you’re really in the Inside world with somebody

Maddy Martin 30:03

And so you need to be careful and not invasive, right? Like, you know, consider how interested the person is and then be Be careful. You know, it’s like how I teach writers who I’ve worked with, you know how to use an exclamation point you know, it’s like a jalapeno like you only need one and you know any block of text any recipe right? Right. Um, too many is overload. You want to be careful with like how much you’re you’re out bound communicating, whether that’s email or text message, but you really don’t want to ever feel spammy and have clear indicators of when you send that prompt follow up and on what channel

Adam G. Force 30:42

love it. Yeah, makes sense. Well, it sounds like there’s a lot of to explore here for people. So you know, if you got your business you’re you’re up and running. This type of support could not only just takes give you some time back, but it could also improve your sales and conversion rates, not just the number of sales, but those conversion rates can go up based on the volume of traffic, you have come to your site. So definitely something really great to look into. So thanks for sharing, you know, your expertise on the topic and some of the ways that people are using it to grow their businesses that you’ve seen and stuff like that. So, Maddie, let’s give her a shout out to where people can learn more about it and kind of check out what you guys are all about.

Maddy Martin 31:27

Yeah, thanks, Adam. So if you are interested in having us help you accelerate growth with phone calls, chats, texts. We are available to speak with you live@smith.ai our website. We also have a phone number traditionally 6507 to 76484, or you can email us at hello@smith.ai. And as a listener of this podcast, we have created a special promo code so it is Change Creator 100 that’s 100. And if you put that in, you’ll get not only a free trial for calls and chats, but also $100 off your first month. And if you don’t want to spend a dime, you can use our free AI chat bot that has unlimited conversations available to you for your website.

Adam G. Force 32:20

Awesome. That’s, that’s great. Appreciate that. Alright guys, so take advantage. I thought this was gonna be you know, a great call. And it was because I really wanted to dig into more of this chat stuff as our team is even looking into it and kind of share this with everybody that’s listening in. So it’s a really good opportunity to start automating your business more taking that time back and capitalizing on those sales that you’re leaving on the table. So thanks again Maddy, appreciate your time this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag calm We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Jennifer Priest: Grow Your Startup With Organic Traffic on Pinterest

Listen to our exclusive interview with Jennifer Priest:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Need more traffic? Maybe Pinterest is a place for you to start exploring? We speak to the founder of Smart Creative Social, Jennifer Priest to learn more about organic traffic on Pinterest.

As a digital entrepreneur for over 17 years, Jennifer intimately understands what it means to run a successful online business and manage your online marketing needs in-house … or yourself.

With over a decade of digital marketing experience for large corporations to handmade artists (and everyone in between), she knows what it takes to make content that gets traffic, to navigate the algorithms of popular platforms, and to interpret data in meaningful ways business owners can understand and use to make successful decisions.

Learn more about Jennifer and her work at > https://www.smartcreativesocial.com

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show where we help entrepreneurs earn a living doing what they were born to do. And if you missed last week’s episode is with Emily Hirsch. She is a Facebook marketing Rockstar. She’s built up her agency, her marketing to 25 people now and I think they have like, they’ve done about a $23 million ad spend so far, and they’ve had over 90 million in return. She’s done talks at like Russell Bronson’s inner circle and Ryan deiss has conferences and stuff like that. So she’s been really growing like wildfire over the past couple years. And so we picked her brain and we’re gonna and we shared all kinds of good secrets in there for you guys to pick up on. So swing back and check that out. If you haven’t already. You don’t want to miss that one. So this week, we’re gonna be talking with Jennifer priest. She’s an expert. She’s actually in a mastermind with me and Amy We were just out in California and we were talking and stuff and she is a, she’s a rockstar when it comes to Pinterest. This is like there’s untapped traffic here, everybody. So we wanted to just kind of see Hey, what are we missing out on? How do we get started in Pinterest and kind of get into the nuts and bolts of that stuff and she also just has an incredible story of transformation. So, you know, not becoming an entrepreneur is not always an easy thing. It’s it’s a push for people, and it becomes this lifestyle. So Jennifer has had incredible changes in her life that have been, you know, really inspiring and she’s been very successful with her business because she’s been working so hard. So we’re gonna tap into those Pinterest secrets and her story in just a few minutes. So last but not least, guys, swing by Change Creator calm, lots of fresh content coming out over there and you could check out the latest and greatest can also get on the waitlist for the captivate method. We are helping people supercharge their marketing with storytelling so They can build trust and actually attract more customers, right? So you could check that out, we’d love to see you in that community can see if it’s a good fit for you. And last but not least, don’t forget to leave us a review. We very much appreciate your support on iTunes and other platforms. It goes a long way guys, and we appreciate you being here. And hopefully you guys are getting value out of this. So Oh, one thing I did forget, if you guys want our storytelling roadmap, you cannot get it from our website. But if you go to Change Creator comm forward slash, storytelling, roadmap, all one word Change, creator.com forward slash and then all one word is storytelling roadmap, you’ll be able to sign up and get a free copy of the storytelling roadmap. There’s a lot of good tips and insights in there and some key information about mistakes that people are making when it comes to their marketing. When we talk about story, storytelling, we’re really getting into the depth of real marketing. That’s what that is all about. So you don’t want to miss that kind of It’s it’s really designed to energize your your business. Alright guys, we’re gonna jump into this conversation with Jennifer about Pinterest and see what we can learn from her. Okay, show me the heat. Hey, Jennifer, welcome to the Change Creator podcast. How are you doing today?

Jennifer Priest 03:19

Awesome. I’m really glad to be here.

Adam G. Force 03:21

Yeah. Thanks for joining us. I’m excited to have this chat because I know you’re all about organic traffic over on Pinterest. And that’s an area that our team is always talking about. So I love to just learn a little bit more about it and share those insights with our audience. So I guess for starters, just tell me a little bit about what’s going on in your world today and how you got into Pinterest.

Jennifer Priest 03:44

So right now what I’m doing is I have an online program called Smart pin Pro, where I help businesses drive massive traffic to their site with Pinterest in just a couple hours a month. And so we use the power of automation. We work with SEO because Pinterest is a search engine. The way that I figured all of this out and started kind of down this path is that all starts with a DIY blog. So I was teaching craft classes all over, I was doing Etsy, eBay craft fairs. I was running myself ragged and on the verge of burnout. And one of my friends was like, Jennifer, you have a blog to promote your business, why aren’t you using that to make more money that way? Instead of just, you know, having do all this stuff where, you know, packing like $2 orders from Etsy and stuff like that. That’s just not a huge ROI. And so in order to work with sponsors, and to get money from ads and affiliate, you need a lot of traffic. And so I started really digging into Pinterest. I felt like I was doing everything that I could. And then I was trying to do everything right, and it wasn’t getting any results. And so I really dug in and started figuring it out for myself. And at the same time, I had some social media management clients that I was running their social media, so I started doing things for them and people were getting word, and they were like, wait, wait, wait, what are you doing? Can you You tell us, can you teach us Can you show us and so that’s why I started this online program a couple years ago, is to help other people drive that massive traffic, so that they’re not having to be on Pinterest all the time, and they can be in their business doing the thing they’re passionate about

Adam G. Force 05:16

Yeah, I think that’s super important. And yeah, I just had a conversation with somebody in our Facebook group. And, you know, they were talking about how, you know, they get great word of mouth and organic in that sense, but they’re having a hard time with using social media and getting people on board with fresh traffic that cold traffic and turning them into to buyers. So how does your process help? You know, is it is it like through developing warm leads? Is it going out to pulling in cold traffic? Can you tell us just a little bit about the approach?

Jennifer Priest 05:48

Really on Pinterest, it’s very much an SEO type of activity. So you know, Pinterest is kind of this strange animal where it’s like, it’s like Google and Instagram had a baby So it’s a very visual, but it’s really based on search. But it has some of those those social elements like you can follow people, you can message. And so we kind of lump it in with Facebook and all of that. But it’s it’s really much different. If you really focus on SEO, like what are people looking for on Pinterest? And then where does that intersect with what you have to offer? A lot of times people will come in and they have this whole Bank of content. And then they’re trying to like shove it and make it like fit into some kind of shoe. That’s the wrong size. Yeah. And so what we do is we actually say, Okay, before you even create the content, let’s do some research on Pinterest, let’s find out what people are looking for. And then we position your content or, you know, we teach you how to position your content, so that it’s going to be found by the right kind of audience that you want. And then it’s pretty easy, right? You’re you’re offering them some information, you’re offering them some kind of solution to a problem they have. And then they’re going to click over and come to your site. And so from there, that’s where it’s really dependent on how Your sales funnel is set up. Right? Do you have a way to capture those leads? We see a lot of people come into

Adam G. Force 07:06

Jennifer, are you there? Is your is your connection ok?

Jennifer Priest 07:10

Yeah, well, I thought it was.

Adam G. Force 07:12

Yeah, you’re back. You’re back. All right. We got some post editing to do.

Jennifer Priest 07:17

No sorry Adam. I’ve never had this happen ever

Adam G. Force 07:23

So I forget exactly where you left off. But you were just talking about some of the ins and outs on Pinterest. But so I guess I’m curious comparatively like you work probably on other social media platforms as well. What’s the major differentiator is the major differentiator for Pinterest the the power of that SEO feature that you’re that you’re leveraging?

Jennifer Priest 07:46

Well, the major differentiator is that Pinterest is actually part of their mission. They’re in the business of sending traffic away from their platform, even though they are monetized with ads just like Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Want to keep people on their platform, they don’t want you to leave. Whereas Pinterest is like, we want you to discover new ideas go off platform, go try them and come back. And so what that means is that referral traffic from Pinterest to other sites year over year is on an increase. Whereas referral traffic from like Facebook, and we’ve all experienced this is on a decline. And so Pinterest, since it’s it’s engineered to send people off platform, it’s just made for exactly what we want to do send traffic to our sites which I love and that’s that’s one challenge with Facebook. I mean, I love Facebook,

Adam G. Force 08:33

They are a powerful marketing engine for sure. But I love that on Pinterest you can they kind of are, you know, pushing you to to let people go from their platform to another platform and maybe you can give us what’s an example. And you know, we don’t you don’t need to teach all your secrets. But just maybe one little secret or tip for people that might be interesting on how you are using that that fact that you can drive traffic Pinterest, other places like what’s one way that someone might take advantage of that?

Jennifer Priest 09:04

Well, I think one thing is on Pinterest to have a really clear call to action of what you want people to do. So ideally, yes, we want them to click over but things like okay, let’s say that you have a podcast, right? have something on the pin itself that says, Listen now, so that they know what they’re getting when they go to the destination. We don’t want them to have a surprise, right? Nobody likes that. They want to know they’re going to a podcast. But we also want to tell them like, Hey, you can listen to this right now. This is available for you right now. So things like an arrow or a text and or a text overlay that says, hey, this is this is what we want you to do subscribe now go download it now. Those things that that tell people what action we want them to take to be very clear because people people are busy, and they’re just not paying that much attention. And so we can really utilize that on Pinterest. We don’t have any kind of penalty for text overlays, like you know, on Facebook, there was a 20% rule and all that. There’s nothing like that. on Pinterest

Adam G. Force 10:01

So I mean, you don’t so you’re not like if you let’s just use the podcast example. So for people listening, I mean, you might have audio clips on Facebook, you might have them on Soundcloud on your website, it just depends where it is for that podcast, we’ll just use that example. And you can use the Pinterest boards and and their space, that environment to kind of find people using your SEO, and then lead them to these other platforms where you have that stuff hosted. Is that right

Jennifer Priest 10:29

Yeah, definitely. You know, a lot of people think Pinterest is just for bloggers, but we actually have a lot of YouTubers in our program, who only have a YouTube channel and they’re using Pinterest to send traffic there. So really Pinterest is a place where you can send traffic from there to whatever destination you want. The key is really making it clear like you’re going to you’re going to search engine, optimize all of it with keywords, etc. But making it clear to the pinner. Hey, where are you going to end up? Am I ending up on a video a blog post or recipe? What do I get?

Adam G. Force 10:57

And do you find I guess people are used to that then but Pinterest, right? Because I know I always I’ve been on there a few times myself when I was looking actually for food recipes, I find that to be a good place to find some ideas. And you have to click into the pin. And then you usually have to click one more time, which will take you then I guess, to the off site location where it’s hosted.

Jennifer Priest 11:18

Yeah, so that’s how regular static image pins work. Video pins are a little bit different. If you click on it, it’ll pause it. And so they’ll have to click the link in the description. So that’s a little bit tricky to get clicks with that. But you could use both like I would say use both in your strategy, especially if you’re doing something like a podcast. You may not want to put an audio clip on Pinterest because people aren’t aren’t watching the videos with audio on but you can have some engaging imagery and then that goes to your podcast.

Adam G. Force 11:47

I just love the idea that you also have a lot of YouTube influencers and stuff or you know, people whose businesses are on YouTube in your program who are leveraging Pinterest and it’s just I guess, I guess kind of breaking into just a freshman source of eyeballs and traffic? And have you noticed certain categories? For you know, because you have to always look at these platforms and say is my audience there? Is this where they’re hanging out? And have you noticed certain categories really popular and flourishing on Pinterest versus others?

Jennifer Priest 12:18

You know, there’s, there’s, of course like food, right? That’s super saturated, and very popular DIY crafts, handmade, that kind of thing, fashion makeup. Of course, those are on there. But that’s not all that’s on there. You know, what I tell people is it’s kind of like if we look at Google and say, Oh, well, you know, news is popular on Google. So there’s no reason for me to try to do SEO because I won’t show up and search. People are still searching for things. So just the same as searching on Google and YouTube for for topics they’re searching on Pinterest. One of the things that I think people should do or actually there’s two things I think they should do if they’re if they’re a little wary and wondering Oh, geez, I don’t know if my my people are on Pinterest. One is go on Pinterest and do a search. Do a search for your topic. And see what comes up. You can learn a lot from that process. And then the second thing is go into your Google Analytics and see if you’re getting any referral traffic from Pinterest. Because just because you’re not pinning something doesn’t mean that your people can’t pin something. So if your people are pinning your stuff, that means they want to save it, and they’re putting it on Pinterest and that can get your traffic. So go see if any, any of that activity is happening. That’s also a good indicator that you should actually be on Pinterest.

Adam G. Force 13:27

Yeah, I love that. So I mean, you just do some basic market research go in there do some searches it does it show you. So you’ll see a bunch of pins. Does it show you how like what the volume is kind of like Google search. It’s like Oh, he had this many results does it show you that?

Jennifer Priest 13:42

It does not show you the volume. It doesn’t show you search volume either. But there are some in some things that you can look at as far as indicators. So when you do a search underneath the search bar, there will be some bubbles that come up with additional keyword matches like the keyword combination. And if those are happening, that’s a good indicator that there’s a significant search volume on Pinterest for that topic. You can also go into the Pinterest trends tool, which is brand new, and it’s only in beta in the US as of the time of this recording. But you can go in there and you can see some comparative analysis for search volume. So it doesn’t show you overall volume, but you can compare different keyword terms to see what is more popular and when it’s most popular.

Adam G. Force 14:27

I see I see. Interesting, and I guess, how long did it take you to start? I guess finding your methodology that worked for Pinterest. So can you take me through that process a little it.

Jennifer Priest 14:40

So it took me a few months to really start to understand Pinterest and how it works. And that was in 2015 and 2016. So you can imagine that a lot has changed since then. So with Pinterest, really my approach starts with their mission statement. You know, what are they What are they here to do? They want to help you To discover and try new ideas, they use the language in their marketing that they are a planning tool, right? They help people plan weddings plan, travel plan purchases. So they’re a tool for people to plan their lives. And so when you think about that, and then you kind of drill down a little bit lower and you say, Okay, well, what, how does Pinterest make money, they make money from display ads. So they need people to have a good experience. They need people to come back over and over. They need, you know, lots of opportunities to show those ads. So they want to have the best user experience possible. A lot like Google, right? If Google showed you like horrible results in the in the top of the feed that had like belly fat ads and pop ups all over, you would not go to Google anymore. You’d be like, Oh, no, I’m not going there. Because that’s a bad experience. Yeah, yeah, same with Pinterest. So if you keep that top of mind, and that drives everything that you’re doing, and I mean, we get way way more granular when we talk about strategy, but that’s, that’s kind of the basis like don’t spam Do things that you think are going to create a good experience, do do things that are going to give that pinner all the information they need in order to click over and get what they need from you. You know, make sure that that pin delivers on whatever it promises they’re going to get by clicking. You know, that’s, that’s really where it comes down to. And then you know that it’s all the tactical things, right? Like how many times you should pin and that kind of stuff, but yeah, you know, really, it’s, it’s letting that mission drive you and say, Okay, what is it that that is? How is the Pinterest ecosystem set up? And then how do I function within that in the most quality way? That’s gonna give me the best ROI?

Adam G. Force 16:38

Yeah, I mean, and that’s the key is really like attracting the right people. Because I think people get so us today, they get obsessed with numbers, and they become these vanity metrics, like we’ve heard and, you know, it’s like how many followers and you end up focusing on getting as many followers as possible, when really that’s not what matters, right? So, the SEO factor I love because I think with SEO, you really can start attracting the right people. And then if you have the right story, like your brand and personality and what you offer, they will stick around and follow you. So then you really do attract the right people. Now, I know a little bit about Google SEO, and my co founder, Amy is an expert in SEO on Google and stuff like that. And I’m curious, when you consider SEO for Pinterest, like when you’re putting stuff up? Does it take time to start coming up in searches? Like, is there any kind of delay in that like there is in Google like to be ranked or anything?

Jennifer Priest 17:35

Yeah, so the first 24 hours that a pin is up. Pinterest is essentially that’s when it’s crawling your site, and is trying to figure out okay, what is this pin about? And so there’s lots of data points that it looks at from the pin, the board, you know, the URL, the destination, URL, etc, for it to determine, okay, who do we show this to? What’s this about? Right? And is this a quality experience that we can then you know, push this higher up into feed. So the first 24 hours is pretty important. And where you upload it to is pretty important because that all that data is, is used for that. And then there’s, there’s a drop off after that point, right, you might hit peak for about 30 days. And then there’s a drop off in performance. Typically, that’s what we see, depending on how you’ve optimized that pin. Whether you’ve used hashtags or not which keywords you used, you know what board you pinned it to how frequently you’ve pinned it, all those factors, those can determine the length of time that that pin is still functional and working. And, you know, so so sometimes we’ll see we use a lot of UTM codes to track stuff. Sometimes we’ll see that pins with hashtags perform better right in the beginning, but then they taper off and pins without hashtags don’t perform as well in the beginning, but then the performance picks up a few months in. So there’s some some different, you know, things that you can do for mixing up how you’re going to how you’re optimizing each pin like we talked about. Every single pin exactly the same way, there’s no one formula that we’re using, because we’re trying to get that even traffic over time. So that, you know, we may have something that spikes pretty early on because Pinterest, you know, it scans it in the first 24 hours. Or you may have something that takes a while or it may have something that’s three years old, that’s picking up traffic because Pinterest, every pin is evergreen. So Pinterest will always pull old stuff and serve it back up as long as it is very, very relevant to those search search results into the interests of the people that are looking for that topic.

Adam G. Force 19:35

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Interesting. So, um, one thing that as you were talking I’m curious about is you said you started this in 2015. This process what were you doing before this?

Jennifer Priest 19:50

Oh, I was trying all kinds of stuff. I was doing Facebook, I was reading Facebook groups. I was watching YouTube videos and going on blogs and just getting caught up you know, even going to conference isn’t getting caught up in all of the tactics that people are using. And they’d be like, okay, follow this step, this step, this step this, and then like rainbows are going to shoot out of the sky. Yeah. And so, you know, and I felt like, Okay, I’m doing all the things that everyone told me to. I’m jumping through every single hoop. And I’m not getting any results. And what I, what I realized was actually a lesson I learned back in college when I was struggling to learn math. And I was I was like struggling my college algebra class. And I learned that once you understand the why of what you’re doing, then you can solve any problem, right? It’s not the steps. It’s not the process. That’s important. It’s understanding why why do we cross multiply? What is that right in math. So the same thing with Pinterest, it’s like people are telling you do these steps, these steps, these steps, these steps, but as you’re doing the steps, and you’re not getting the same result, because you’re a totally different business than that other person’s business. There’s so many factors involved in that she can’t just like cookie cutter it as you’re applying those things and things aren’t working out, right? Because you don’t know why you can’t adjust. You don’t know what to adjust, because you don’t even know why you’re doing the steps other than like so and so told you these steps worked for them. Exactly.

Adam G. Force 21:17

You have no Northstar. Yeah, it’s so true. It’s true. Yeah. And so I mean, did you ever have Were you always pursuing entrepreneurship? Or did you ever have jobs that you just were doing the good old nine to five?

Jennifer Priest 21:32

Yeah, so I I wanted to be a music journalist. When I was in high school, I had a Xen, I work with record labels. It was amazing. And kind of things fell apart when I was getting ready to go to college, and that had some family stuff going on. And so I went in the military. And then I got married and had a kid and I was like, Oh, I can’t do this crazy, entrepreneurial travel writer, musician life, I have to be responsible and so I went to school and I became a substitute teacher. And then from there I became a grant writer and contracts manager and analyst and I worked in the government for a few years, doing the nine to five grind. And it was absolutely soul sucking. And I, I lost my job. And it was the best thing that was traumatic, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because that night I was getting my master’s I went to class and my professors like you can’t be here like it was snowing and you know, bus like beside myself. So then I go to the scrapbook store because I had been teaching classes there on the weekends, and the owner of the scrapbook store is like Good, I’m glad you lost your job because now you can teach scrapbook classes full time and I was like, I’m never gonna make that much money doing this and it just kind of all worked out and then look at I mean, I still scrapbook I just came back from a scrapbook retreat. But I do all this other stuff, you know

Adam G. Force 22:55

A scrapbook retreat. Is that a real thing?

Jennifer Priest 22:58

Yeah, totally. I’ve been to 45 ladies rented out a full bed and breakfast and we sit there and scrapbook and, you know, laugh and have a great time

Adam G. Force 23:08

Like creating a scrapbook of like memor

Jennifer Priest 23:11

Yeah, yeah. Our photos of our family. J

Adam G. Force 23:14

ennifer now you’re really nerding out on me.

Jennifer Priest 23:18

I mean, I am I’ve been in the craft arts and crafts industry for 17 years. So,

Adam G. Force 23:22

Wow. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, and so how has entrepreneurship changed your life?

Jennifer Priest 23:30

Oh my gosh, like, the whole thing of lifestyle design and, and all of that it just always seemed kind of foreign and, and I just didn’t really understand it. And this last year has been one of the best years in my entire life as far as really embracing entrepreneurship. And the the possibilities. You know, last summer I my son and I were looking at this thing on Facebook, it was you guys might have seen it. It’s like this 30 day road trip to see everything in the US and we’re like, we should totally do that. And we did it like I got in the car. We drove for 31 days, we saw tons of people, we drove all over the country. We didn’t see everything but it was amazing. And then so having the time to do that, the freedom, the location, freedom to do that, you know, and I did a launch. Wow, I was I was at The Ohio State Fair in the middle of a launch. It was so awesome. alive. Yeah, it was a live launch. And I made a ton of money while I was at the fair with my son. I mean, who doesn’t love that? You know, and then now I’m actually sitting here I’m looking out my window and looking at Palm trees and I am four blocks from the beach. And just like knowing that like with, with entrepreneurship, you can scale things you are in control of where you live. And I was living in the desert like six months ago miserable and sold my house and now I live by the beach like it’s is incredible, what it allows you to do the people it allows you to meet. I mean, if you’re going to talk about lifestyle design, this is ultimately lifestyle design. And really the only way you can do it is as an entrepreneur.

Adam G. Force 25:13

It’s true. You know, it’s interesting. It’s hard. You know, once you’re in a nine to five, and you start working on your own projects and making money and doing things, it’s you can almost never go back. It’s just, it’s just, you get so used to designing your own life and doing things the way that you want to do them. It’s a whole other sense of freedom. And I find it to be so motivating. So yeah, you know, and I’m curious though, like, a lot of times as we’re building our businesses, and say, from 2015 till now, I’m curious of what some of your biggest challenges have been to scale your courses and the programs that you’ve now been operating

Jennifer Priest 25:59

Well, I was doing launches for a long time. And that was really draining. And I did this launch in December of 2018. And I worked really, really hard on it. And, and I did like a five day challenge, you know, kind of like a PLF style thing. And I had all these people asking me for tons of help, and I was running myself ragged. And I look at the people that signed up, I only had five sales, which was definitely not my target. And none of the people that signed up were the people in the challenge who were sucking me dry of like, all my time and knowledge. And I realized I am I am like burning myself out now with this new thing. serving people that are never going to pay me like some of them had been through my challenge five times already. And I changed everything and I joined a program to help me evergreen my mind launches. And so now I’m on the Evergreen model and I absolutely love it because it really does free me up so that I can show up for my people that are paying, you know, I can show up in my group and I’m fresh and yeah rested. And, you know, I’m not like running myself ragged trying to help all the people with freebies.

Adam G. Force 27:19

Yeah, that’s the challenge too, because we have done challenges in the past as well. And we noticed the same thing. You know, I guess it comes down to really just trying to really attract the right people, but the freebies can, it can be a great starting point, but I’ve noticed to your point, people go through them the saint like over and over and they’re just looking for free information and they never become a buyer. And that is that’s exhausting. After a while

Jennifer Priest 27:46

It is and you know, learning that lesson because I was of the school of thought of like, give your best stuff for free, and, you know, help everyone and then people will just come and pay and you know, and I i really had to come by I don’t know, I had like a come to Jesus moment in that December 2018. And I was just like, this does not work. And I really had to relearn how to market because, honestly, the easiest thing for you to do is just tell people how to do it. That’s so easy, right. But you’re handicapping them. Because now you told them how to do it. They don’t didn’t learn why they didn’t learn how to do it themselves. So now, the next time that that doesn’t work, because if we’re talking stuff with algorithms, it’s not going to work right, you know, just a matter of time. Now, they don’t know what to do. So you give them enough that they feel like they know enough to move forward when you know, they don’t know enough because you just gave them a little tidbit for free. And then they don’t even know how to adjust or they didn’t learn the methodology or any of that stuff they really need to know to understand. And so you just handicap them for a little bit longer. Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s a it’s actually so much more compassionate, to not teach for free

Adam G. Force 28:57

Now, I mean, we found the same thing like you don’t want to teach people to how because there’s so much behind it and they have to understand other things first, so you can really teach them the, like you said, the whys and the what’s and then they gotta, you know, the deeper education is the how cuz I agree that the order of that I mean, you do a disservice to people when you just give them quick how to use and then they try it it doesn’t work and they just don’t know the full picture right? They get like a little tiny piece of the puzzle.

Jennifer Priest 29:27

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I’ve seen this where, you know, years of helping people and they’re still in my free group, trying to cobble stuff together on the free plan. And they’re like, I’m not getting results. I’m not getting results. Okay, we’ll pay for printing. I don’t have money to pay for a program. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you’re just like, okay, but this is why you’re gonna stay in this place like, and it’s heartbreaking. But at the same time, it’s like, you know, I’m not helping them if I just give it to them.

Adam G. Force 29:56

It doesn’t work like that. And you know, it’s a hard lesson to learn especially early stage. entrepreneurships we found it, we find that there, it’s it’s interesting because I have seen people who just start a business or a course or whatever it might be, and they will be the people that will sign up for a $20,000 program right out of the gate. And I’d be like, Oh my god, like, I wish I had the courage to step right into it. But nine times out of 10 people are trying to Jerry rig all the freebie information and tried to pull stuff together and figure things out, because they’re afraid to invest in themselves, right? Like, what if I lose the money? What if it doesn’t happen? Like all those different doubts and stuff? And we’ve noticed that a lot and they end up a year goes by and they look back and they they end up quitting or scratching their head going What happened? How come I’m still stuck, you know? Yeah, happens alot.

Jennifer Priest 30:46

Yeah, it’s like, I call it like adulting in business, right? So I had lunch with a blogger, a DIY blogger yesterday, and she was telling me how she’s really concerned about her her sight because she does stuff with power tools. And she’s like, Oh my gosh, I don’t know, like if somebody got hurt, I don’t know about my liability and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, well, don’t you have liability insurance. And it’s funny that I even say that to her because I didn’t have liability insurance for a long, long time. And it’s like, we’re kind of just kind of just limping along, hoping to get by with like, the least amount of stuff that we can do in our business. And then we’re wondering, why are we not successful? And a lot of us is mindset shift of saying, This is not just my business. This is my life. Yeah. And how am I going to proceed? That’s going to give me the best success. Like, I need to be serious about this, like, we can have a lot of fun, but I need to be serious about this, like, you know, do all those adulting things in my business and one of those things is investing in yourself to get the training you need instead of just kind of hacking it together

Adam G. Force 31:45

Absolutely. You know, and it’s, we, I’ve had conversations with people and they’d be like, I just can’t afford to do that right now. I’m like, can you afford to not do that right now? You know, it’s like people just like, I just see the pain. I can hear the pain I literally have people who would write to like Amy and I in our groups and stuff to make a man and I just, you know, I’m about to give up. I’ve been trying to do this, and they just never had the courage to really invest in themselves. And it is like you said, It is sad to see and you can only help so much. But sooner or later, they have to figure out and take, I guess that that leap of faith and believe in themselves, right?

Jennifer Priest 32:22

Yeah, there’s an example I love to give one of my dear friends, he’s been in business for 10 years. He just hit a million dollars this year, which is amazing. I’m so proud of him. Right? But he refused to take any classes to invest in any coaching. He only would consume free content. And he’s amazing. Imagine how much sooner he would have hit a million dollars. It took him a decade. Imagine how much sooner he would have hit that if he would have just invested a little bit in learning and that would have accelerated it so much. But instead he spent a decade trying to get to a million.

Adam G. Force 32:56

That’s that’s that’s what I see. I agree. I mean, that is That is a painful, so I mean, kudos for making it. But like, Why spend 10 years of ups and downs and struggle when you can accelerate? I mean, if you’re just willing to give it a shot, and you know, even even if we have like a $20,000 investment, or whatever it might be, we look at it and say, it’s not I don’t worry about how expensive or how big that number is, I just say, well, what’s the ROI? Right? Like, is this gonna get us where we need to go? Because if that’s what you need to do, you just that’s just what you need to do, you know

Jennifer Priest 33:29

And you can play a game to make that money. You know, it’s kind of interesting how we look at money as something that’s finite money is energy energy is infinite. And so we can manifest that we can do something like Okay, great. I want to invest in this program. That’s 20 grand. How many of my widgets Do I need to sell to make that? Yep, you know, and it’s very simple, but we’re like, oh, no, no, no, no, I can’t invest. I can’t do that like, and you can make the money you can bring it in like In fact, there’s a car. I’m looking at buying right now. And my co Just challenged me He’s like, play a game make the money. And I was like, I have the money. He goes, No, no, play a game, make the money and to buy the car even though you already have the money, why not challenge yourself? Because I want But you know, it’s it’s that thing of like, yeah, I can make the money like so we we tend to look at it like oh, I don’t have the money right now then go make it, go make it, you can totally do it.

Adam G. Force 34:24

You just got to figure it out. And you know, it’s interesting because I in my first business, I had a record label and we would be struggling with things. This is very new to us. And this is also like 10 years ago. And I would be like we weren’t focused on making money. We were focused on getting artists on the record label, you know, doing record release parties, all these things. And it wasn’t until we said, Wait a minute, like, we’ve got to focus our energy on actually making money and it just changes your decision making. And all of a sudden, because people are like, well, I don’t know how to do that. Well then you need to become financially literate. You need to start figuring out how money works and how to make Make money and get creative. But if you’re not even thinking about it that way, it’ll never come to you. You know?

Jennifer Priest 35:06

What I think one of the big challenges with that is that a lot of the things that we see people doing in their business and that we’re told to do in our business, are not things that actually produce revenue. Like I love social media, but social media typically does not produce revenue in one to two steps, right? So that’s a business building type activity. And what you need to do is be like okay, if I got to make money right now, what is it I’m gonna use my time for? That’s gonna get me only there’s only one or two steps from money. And just like you were saying with signing, signing artists, not one to two steps away from money, right sales is one of those way for money. So that’s the thing like bloggers tend to focus on, you know, oh, let me go on social media. Let me write a bajillion blog posts, right. I see people that are like, course creators, they’re like, let me start a podcast. Let me Yeah, we’re that’s so far away from money right

Adam G. Force 36:00

It’s true. We see it all the time, I had another media partner that runs another media company sake. And I’m just not making enough money. And we would do a little brainstorms, like once a quarter and stuff and share what’s working, what’s not. And he’s like, I think I’m gonna start this podcast and then I’m gonna do this and do that. I’m like, dude, like, you’re putting all your energy into things like a podcast, which may give you some fresh eyeballs, but it’s so much work. And there’s really not big revenue behind it, and especially not anytime soon. So I totally hear you dude, when you put energy into these things, so part of it is just taking the right steps at the right time. Right. It’s kind of like prioritizing your efforts.

Jennifer Priest 36:39

Yeah, just being really discerning and and kind of taking the emotion out of it. You know, we get so married to our business and we’re like, oh my god, it’s my baby. And, you know, we we get so tied up in it and instead of taking a step back and going well, what actually is going to move my business forward? And I mean, to go back to Pinterest, I see this on Pinterest all the time, people Like, well, I’m going to blog about, you know, my five favorite ways to style my dog’s hair. And it’s like, okay, but that, like, no one’s looking for that. Right? So it’s like making business decisions about like, what content Am I going to create to promote my course or promote my site or whatever you’re you’re promoting, is that content people are looking for. And a lot of times, people are so married to this? Well, I’m passionate about it. And so other people must want it instead of doing the research.

Adam G. Force 37:26

Yeah. And I kind of think it comes it goes back to what you were talking about earlier about understanding why you’re doing certain things. Because if you don’t have that grounding, like a foundation of your house is not solid, you’re gonna start doing content and programs that just don’t really make sense for the end goal because you don’t have that foundation. So you get kind of I’ve been messy before as an entrepreneur doing things all over the place, you know, shiny object syndrome, and all that stuff. And you’re like, wait a minute, why am I doing this? Did I look at the data What’s happening here? So anyway, yeah, on the same page with that, but to listen, I want to be respectful of your time, and we’re Definitely a little bit over and I appreciate you sharing all your insights on Pinterest and all the great success that you’ve had since you’re started your journey. So let’s make sure we give you a chance just to give a shout out anybody out there looking to learn some Pinterest strategies from an expert like Jennifer, where do they find you?

Jennifer Priest 38:19

So you can just go to smart pin, pin dot pro slash free, and there’s a masterclass that you can take and learn how to actually create a Pinterest strategy in five steps. So it’s pretty cool.

Adam G. Force 38:33

Awesome. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Appreciate your time today. Thank you. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator Po

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Charlie Hartwell: What Investors in the Social Impact Space Look For in a Startup

Listen to our exclusive interview with Charlie Hartwell:

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If you’re looking for investment, what do you need to know today? We asked the managing partner of Bridge Builders Collaborative to find out from his perspective as an investor.

About Charlie:

Charlie Hartwell is the Managing Partner of Bridge Builders Collaborative, a group of highly successful investors who have been investing in start-up companies in the space of mental wellness, consciousness, and spirituality. A Harvard Business School graduate, Charlie has served and led organizations in 14 different industries, including starting a non- profit in the slums of Kenya in 1986 that has now served health care to several million patients. He also founded the first for-profit expedition company in US History to promote the Bancroft Arnesen Expedition – a historical 1,7000 mile crossing of Antarctica by two women who became the first to cross the continent on foot. Now Charlie and his company are passionate about supporting the growth of a new movement around mental fitness, heart-centered connection, consciousness evolution, and improved health care. Bridge Builders has invested in such companies as Pear Therapeutics, Insight Timer, Headspace, Happify, and others.

Learn more about Charlie and his work at > https://shiftit.com

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the chase credit podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. I hope you all are doing well and staying safe. Now if you missed the last episode is with Mandy Barbie. And we talked about overcoming stressors so that you can thrive in your business and your life. This is such a fun conversation, but also really impactful, great insights about mental blocks and really stepping up your game as a business owner, a CEO of your company, and taking your life really to that next level. And we all have these blocks and challenges and have to deal with stress and anxiety and things as we go through these processes. So really great conversation. So if you missed that swing by check it out. Today we’re gonna be talking with Charlie Hartwell. He is one of the managing partners over at a company called bridge builders collaborative. And basically, there are a bunch of successful investors, right and unconscious companies. He has served and led organizations in 14 different industries, including starting a nonprofit that was actually in a struggling area of Kenya, and is now serving healthcare to over several million patients. So he has a lot of interest in experience. And we wanted to talk with Charlie because he has the investor perspective. And I know a lot of you listening might be looking for investments. So we wanted to just see what he had to say about the space and what you need to be looking out for. So hang tight here, and we’re gonna get into that conversation with Charlie in just a minute. Guys, if you are, I know as you know, with this pandemic going on, there’s a lot happening. And more and more people are coming to us and looking to get into the digital space, which makes sense, right? It’s a little bit more recession proof. And so, you know, our program that we have is called the captivate method and this is one Where we’ve been supporting people this program is, it’s not just another course or anything like that this is, you know, getting on calls Live Twice a month getting real coaching one on one to support you, and get you from point A to point B as fast as possible in the digital space. It’s about creating a digital system that has the application of really powerful storytelling so you can connect with your audience, right, build trust, and really get consistent sales. That’s the idea you want to get attract the right leads and get consistency. So if this is something you need help on and you’re looking to, you know, ramp up, then this is definitely a good opportunity for you, and you can get on our waitlist right now. So you go to Change Creator calm, and you’ll see in the menu or on the homepage, a waitlist that you can join for the captivate method, and you’ll just start getting some emails. We’re going to give you some information and then you’ll get an invitation to our master class. That master class will be an opportunity For you to see how this program can really help you so that you can make an informed decision and and we hope to see you in that community. Such a great group of people. So this could really be your tribe if you’re looking to make a difference in the world, and you really want to scale your digital marketing and business really, okay. So guys, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna hold off much longer here. We’re gonna get right into this conversation with Charlie and see what he has to say about the investor space right now. Okay, show me that heat Right so we should be rocking and rolling. I’m just gonna double check settings because I haven’t done a zoom interview in a while. Make sure we’re good. Audio Yes, video. Okay, cool. I think we’re good to go here.

Charlie Hartwell 03:53

Alright.

Adam G. Force 03:55

All right, Charles. Now do you like Charlie Charles? What’s your woody

Charlie Hartwell 03:59

Charlie? Charlie, okay, sure.

Adam G. Force 04:02

All right, here we go. Three, two and one. Hey, Charlie, welcome to the Change Creator, podcast show. How’s everything going today?

Charlie Hartwell 04:09

Good Adams, good to talk to you.

Adam G. Force 04:11

Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate you being here and taking the time. Sounds like you got a lot of interesting stuff going on. And we always love to hear from the investors perspective. So, you know, I know you have some current events and shifts going on. So tell us just a little bit about what’s going on, you know, lately, like, what’s the latest? What’s the greatest and what’s happening in your world?

Charlie Hartwell 04:32

Yeah, so I’ve been working for this group called the bridge builders collaborative. It’s a group of high net worth individuals have been investing together over the last eight years in the space we used to call mine training. We, you know, we’ve invested in several things that are going to scale in that space and our partners got together a year ago and sort of said, How can we best use our capital to inspire and invest in tools For inner well being that bridges sort of the human energy to make social change possible. And we’ve shifted to kind of saying how do we invest in things that go deeper into the human experience? And you know how to create paradigm shifts.

Adam G. Force 05:18

I love that. And so, can you tell me a little bit about when you say create a paradigm shift? What does that mean to you?

Charlie Hartwell 05:28

I think a paradigm shift is about sort of changing our stories changing. It like living more authentically, it’s authentically creating shifts in society so that we get we become more focused on our mental and you know, in our inner well being as opposed to just our physical well being, which we spent a lot of time focusing on as a society. How do we create a paradigm shift to looking at Who are we? How do we live to be our authentic show that our authentic selves? How do we sort of get through and get past trauma the toll on us back from living the life that we’re meant to live?

Adam G. Force 06:16

Yeah, yeah, I like I like when you said changing our stories. You know, we all have stories and internal narratives that are built from years and years of just living life and the people were around and things we do so kind of starting to acknowledge what those stories are and seeing which ones serve you and which ones you need to unlearn and which ones need to now start learning. Right. It’s powerful stuff. So I love to hear that and I think we are in an age where authenticity is more important than ever I was, I was actually reading the latest Edelman truth barometer special report for 2019. And right now, less than 50 bucks. percent of the general population are trusting businesses. And, you know, when you hear a number like that, you just start to think, man, there’s just a lot of phony baloney out there. And people have their guards up over years of just bad marketing, right, and deception and false claims and so that authenticity is something people crave. Do you agree?

Charlie Hartwell 07:21

I agree, you know, my wife who’s a what the one that that got me into this space, you know, talks to us a lot about about human conditioning. So as we grow up in, you know, in societies, whether it be our family systems, the schools, we went to the churches we might have gone to or whatever religious institutions, we get conditioned, and a lot of times that means getting conditioned out of whom our authentic selves is. And you know, for a lot of people that I talked to, there’s kind of a journey back in their 20s or 30s, maybe their 40s of like, how do I reconnect with my authentic self and then how do I want to use my authentic gifts to Create whatever the life is that I want to create for myself, that also hopefully improves our society.

Adam G. Force 08:08

Exactly, exactly. I mean, that is why that is why Change Creator actually started because I was I was working at Web MD for 10 years as director of strategic marketing. And I had an experience where I had my own epiphany. And I started realizing that I wasn’t burnt out and from overworking or travel and long hours, it was because I was doing something that was misaligned, it was doing something that wasn’t meaningful to me. And that’s boom, it just hit me right there. And that’s when everything changed. And this whole mission started.

Charlie Hartwell 08:39

Yeah, took me a lot more suffering than it seems like it took you in order to get to that same moment,

Adam G. Force 08:46

That was a very abbreviated version. But, you know, we all have our own path, right? So we all will will find our way and hopefully, you know, like, it’s funny because when you finally get there and you’re waking up every day, and you’re actually now live Being this new trajectory of your life, you start to look back and be like, man, like, what was I thinking before I was I sleepwalking? Like where was I? You ever have that feeling?

Charlie Hartwell 09:11

Oh, yeah. No, I mean, for me, it was not waking up every morning it was just waking up as a human being and sort of saying, Wow, I was living, I was programmed to be as opposed to life I was meant to be and how do I uncover? You know, once I had that sort of wake up epiphany, it’s kind of like, how do I uncover what’s ever getting in my way from living to what, you know, my authentic self wants to live and, you know, it took some work and some years to kind of get through some of that and and there’s a lot in for me, there was a lot of letting go. People have stories, beliefs, in you know, that I needed to let go of in order to kind of live a more authentic life.

Adam G. Force 09:58

Yeah, and that’s the hard thing. I think for a lot of people, and it’s something that’s probably an ongoing life journey to be able to actually acknowledge what is serving you and what’s not, but then actually being willing to let them go, right? Whether it’s friends or certain narratives in your mind, or even, you know, just the people who are around you and you move, but you know, we always rationalize things to say, Well, I’m a little different. So for me, it’s this or for me, it’s that and we don’t want to accept things always find a way around it, to convince ourselves otherwise, you know,

Charlie Hartwell 10:34

yes, and my wife, you know, again, as I was going through this, you know, my own experience, she talks about how when we decide to make these dangers to become our authentic self, those who love us the most are the most resistance, or those who say they love us the most are the most resistant to that because they’re used to us, is you know, being in a certain box might have been created, and so is You know, you break free of that. It can be hard to kind of, to there’s an adjustment that happens, whether it’s family systems or friend communities or people, you know, can either go along with you on that ride or you need to let them go.

Adam G. Force 11:15

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Definitely. Now, tell me a little bit about the companies. You’ve been investing in what what you’ve been looking for. And then, you know, I know you’re, you’re, you’re leading into this health space, and just where you’re going with the investments now.

Charlie Hartwell 11:33

Yeah, so over the last, you know, over the last eight years, we’ve made 12 investments. We’ve made a couple investments in the digital therapeutics space. So we were one of the first investors in a company called para therapeutics. Sort of the first FDA approved software for addiction recovery. We invested we’re an early investor in a company called headspace, which sort of helped bring Meditation to the masses. We invested in a company called Muse brain sensing headband helps people to meditate. Oh, yeah, you know, you can read your brainwaves. We have, you know, invested in a company called hapa phi, which really is it was a mental behavioral health, sort of gamified the science of mindfulness, positive psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy. And now, you know, is is itself becoming a digital therapeutic. So a lot of investments in kind of the space of, you know, helping to bring mindfulness into the mainstream. And, you know, with the shift that we’re now making, you know, we want to go deeper than that, and sort of deeper into some of the things you and I were talking about earlier about, you know, how do we invest in people’s social wellness and then in their, their, their relational well being Or their spiritual well being? How do we go from getting people sort of on the map, you know, to meditate to getting off the map to creating the social change that it resonates with their purpose? How do we training the mental well being

Adam G. Force 13:16

etc? Sure, yeah. And so, when when you do find, I guess I’m curious and how you guys discover companies and organizations that you’re interested in. So are they reaching out to you? Do you guys have a process for what you’re, you know, where where do you find them? And how do you discover these companies?

Charlie Hartwell 13:37

I’m just curious how that plays out. We have a really good network and and over the last eight years because of our because of the way that we invest the value that we add, and sort of our social mission combined with, you know, our desire to create abundance you know, through you know, finance And social returns. A lot of people naturally, you know, come to us. There are conferences that I attend. And you know, as well, where I find new entrepreneurs, but a lot of it just comes through sort of the reputation that we’ve developed, if people are in this space, they tend to know who we are. And, and for us, I’d say deal flow is, you know, it’s not the problem. I think I’ve probably looked at, you know, 1000 companies over the wall. And that’s kind of exciting, actually. Because, you know, before that time, there really were very few investments in the space. So the great thing is, the space is expanding. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs who have, you know, interesting ways that they want to bring these kind of solutions to the marketplace. But, but, you know, people find us through various ways

Adam G. Force 14:58

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so I guess just to piggyback off that, when you do decide that something might be up your alley, what do you look for to say, you know, like, you know, everyone’s always wondering and they come up to our audience will come to us and ask and say, Well, what what goes in a pitch deck? Like, what what do investors look for? And I think there’s some commonality and interests for things like that of what an investor might look for. But there’s probably also differences in preference and what’s important to different investors. So I’m curious if there’s some key things off the top of your head that are important for you to see from potential company that you invest in?

Charlie Hartwell 15:41

Yeah, that’s a really good question. So the first thing, I’ll just say there’s green. The first green is kind of a social game. So I imagine if we were to invest in this company, what would be the positive impact to humanity? And, you know, if I can’t see that, if I can’t see that, that’s, there’s a really big change that can happen, then, you know, I kind of screen that out, then then we look for if there are assignable validation for the product or platform, the next you know, barely really key pieces, you know, who is the entrepreneur? And when we look at it, you know, for entrepreneurs, what we look for are people. Number one who have managed egos. Number two, who have integrated, whatever they’re trying to bring out to the world. Number three, are they good team leader, do they listen, and and, you know, do they have some experience, you know, as an entrepreneur, then you know, we kind of look for stage where we’re normally around the series A. We’ve made exceptions in the past to that, but that’s kind of that’s Kind of normally where we play. And then, you know, the last thing I look at is if we were, you know, to make this investment, Can I, can I see a return on investment for our

Adam G. Force 17:11

investors? Yeah. And are you usually looking for return on investment over long term or

Charlie Hartwell 17:18

hort term, we tend to be patient investors. And, and at the same time, if there are opportunities, you know, to get a return on investment sooner, that’s fine. But we have tended to be both patient and follow on investors. So if I look at the, you know, 12 investments that we’ve made, our partners have tended to invest, you know, in almost every round of every company, once we make an initial investment, we tend to be very committed and in it for the long you know, for the long term and if the long term turns out to be short term Guess that’s okay too. But we really want to support the entrepreneurs. And, and I think one of the other things that I look at Adam, is whether or not we can add value because we’re not in. We’re not in in these investments to just, you know, make money from them. We want we have a lot of value add that we can offer companies. And we’re, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s one of our passions to be a value added investor. So I look and say, Look, can this company utilize the value add th t we have? As another one of o

Adam G. Force 18:35

r screens? Yeah, I mean, I think you just answered a question that I had kind of percolating, which was, you know, are you a strategic partner or just a, you know, financing and investing and it sounds like you guys help out with maybe your networks and Intel intellectual property and stuff

Charlie Hartwell 18:51

like that? Yeah, I kind of look at it. We have a model that’s, you know, sort of like a four c model. You know, caches The least important thing that we’ve been to the table, we bring people in the space, we bring a tremendous, you know, amount of connections, we, you know, our partners have run some very large companies and enterprises. And so they have a lot of counsel, you know, for the entrepreneurs if the entrepreneurs needed at various times. We also bring credibility, you know, in the in the space, we’re a really well known investor, and oh, you know, that’s one of our season then at the end of the day cash is as I said, that’s, that’s the least value added thi

Adam G. Force 19:36

g we burn. Gotcha, interesting. So let’s just take a little bit into what what how we’re defining or you guys are defining living the that healthy lifestyle that you’re now trying to promote where people are, you know, meditating and doing certain things for self care living authentically. You know, I recently read something that, you know, like we all we all seem to be chasing happiness. And I read something where it said, happiness is not the primary thing that people are yearning for. It’s actually meaning. What do you think abou

Charlie Hartwell 20:16

that? I’m totally in resonance. Yeah, a lot of happiness chasing, and actually, you know, living life, like, I would say, you know, you can observe, you know, you can observe a difficult situation or with your angry or something, and you can still be in a very, you know, in a very good state, you it’s not about being happy every more moment. And I absolutely agree. When we just chase that, I don’t think I don’t think people are very fulfilled doing that, and, and I don’t get necessarily leads, it actually probably leads to more stress. I rather, I’d much rather live a life It’s authentic than a life that’s just happy. Yeah, way The more I do that the happier I am, but happiness isn’t about chasing something. It’s about a plac

Adam G. Force 21:10

of being. Yeah, yeah, I like that it’s true. You know, I one of my favorite philosophers is Alan Watts and He always talks about abbreviate this is, you know, when we play music, we’re the point is not to get to the end, right? The point is to realize that it’s not a journey. It’s it’s music so you’re there to just dance. And that’s kind of like how we look at life is like what are we racing towards? There is no end that you’re racing towards you should be enjoying the music. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, he’s interesting character. So you know, I you know, I Change Creator. Obviously, we are all about the social entrepreneurship approach. We don’t have a specific focus in health, but we do believe that people are going to live happier lives. When they wake up, and they are doing something that’s meaningful to them, right, and I, you know, I interviewed Nasri Sheikh and she was like she was a child slave for for many years. And I spoke to her because she started to she got out of that somehow in Nepal. And she started two businesses. And my last question, I was at a conference in Toronto, and I was interviewing her and I asked her, if there was one message you could share with the world, what would it be? And she said, to dig deep and live your truth, because that’s the biggest contribution you can make to the world. And I thought that that really resonated with me and I think that, you know, get helping people not only, you know, come to grips with, you know, who they are or, you know, become comfortable, like through a process of meditation and stuff like that, but to actually figure out how to proceed in life and because right now, like, Don’t you feel like or you probably see a lot of people where they’re kind of hooked into a pattern, and I think you said it really nicely before. way that you are programmed versus waking up and doing what you really should be doing with your life. It’s hard sometimes to to figure out how to approach that new that new lifest

Charlie Hartwell 23:10

le, right? Okay, so we’re going to change topics a little bit if it’s okay with you. So let my last name is Hartwell. And when you figure it out, that’s a very head driven exercise. For me, when you’re living in your heart, you know, then you don’t have to figure it out. You just have this knowing and the sensing and you from from where I said, you know, you can sort of if you understand who you are, and what your purpose is, and sort of what your energy is all about, then you can be in resonance and you actually don’t have to figure things out. You can sort of set you can live an intentional life, and then watch things unfold in front of you, and just enjoy the pure Folding and like, enjoy the maybe it’s not the right that the tapestry of what’s created when you set an intention, a life sort of from

Adam G. Force 24:10

the heart. I think a key word there is intention, you know, doing things in your life with intention, I guess should always be the case and is really valuable, I guess where I would struggle and we’re we see a lot of entrepreneurs who are trying to live, you know, their best life is that, well, they still have to, you know, we live in a capitalist system, which means we have to have money in order to pay for food and housing and kids to go to school and obviously, you know, things are getting more and more expensive. So, you know, they end up starting these businesses, which is like their dream and what they’re all about, but they can’t figure out how to create progress with it in this system, so they ended up going back to old patterns of jobs and stuff that they don’t like, which is that, to me is hea

Charlie Hartwell 25:02

tbreaking. Yeah, I agre

Adam G. Force 25:04

with you. So you see a lot of that. And, and I guess, so you got to find that balance a little bit. And I think there’s so many people out there too, they have this passion, and they just don’t have certain technical business sense. Just because that’s just not where their experience

Charlie Hartwell 25:19

you know. Yeah, I know, I hear that because I, you know, I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs and I, my, my, some that I speak to, like, really are like, they have great intentions. And they’re, you know, they’re real visionaries. But but but they’re not always grounded in this third dimensional reality that you’re talking about, which is which is very much about like, how does this system work? It is it is a system that you know, energy is driven a lot by by money. Distribution is about how do you get your ideas out there. Sometimes, you know, sometimes if you’re not grounded you know, and understanding that it can be even, you know, it can be challenging. I know some of the most brilliant people that have these ideas, but they can’t like bring them down here to the planet. Does

Adam G. Force 26:16

that make? Oh, yeah. Oh, no, it definitely makes sense. Or they either can’t figure out how to bring them down to earth or they’re afraid to, they’re afraid to to try because it’s so unknown. So they could have a beautiful idea. And they could have all the willpower in the world to figure it out and operate it, but they just need to understand how to make that happen. You know w

Charlie Hartwell 26:39

at I mean? If they need it, yeah, there’s a there’s a both and they’re from my perspective, they need to understand how to make it happen, and they need to understand that they’re not if you let go like you’re not in charge of how it’s going

Adam G. Force 26:53

to happen. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I noticed that a lot of social entrepreneurs. They want to To do so much to give to the world and contribute that they actually don’t, I mean a lot of people don’t like money because they see it as you know, the root of all evil we’ve heard all those those sayings and things like that and I get that because there’s obviously some some really negative behavior that is triggered from money and stuff like that. But when they have that mindset, I noticed that specifically social entrepreneurs, they tend to almost have a fear block when it comes to actually making money so it holds back growth, no matter what their intention is. So it’s like there is like a skill set around that part of it right? So you have like living your truth doing what’s right you know, like taking care of being authentic, all those things. And then to actually understand well, business making money, like those are skills themselves, I think and really something that people will have to start to learn to kind of, you know, turn their life and work into like one harmonous thing.

Charlie Hartwell 27:57

Yes, and or to find a team Were those where they can be the visionary self or whatever their self is. But yeah. And collaborating with other people that have the gifts that they don’t have and yeah, hundred percent that when you find a team where somebody says, You know, I know this, but I don’t know that and I trust so and so, you know, wit

Adam G. Force 28:20

the money Oh, I’m not great at that, but I trust this person. I think when you you know, find those kind of teams that are, you know, that are in resonance with a mission but all understand and appreciate each other’s gifts and skills. Those are stronger teams. I love that. I think the key thing right there you said is that they’re in resonance with the mission you find people that have the passion that you have, and you know, maybe they have a skill set around the finances or the marketing or whatever it might be. As long as you have validated your your business and product then you get those guys on board and having them Mission aligned is realy the key.

Charlie Hartwell 29:02

Yeah. And maybe, you know, can I maybe provide an example of one of our companies

Adam G. Force 29:07

Of course. Yeah, yeah , dive in

Charlie Hartwell 29:09

So so a couple years ago, we invested in a company called insight timer. Insight timer is company based in Sydney, which probably is the largest library of sort of meditation or conscious, you know, audio in the world. They have 5000 teachers globally the teach, you know, that have meditations or music or talks. And there’s, you know, 12 million people on the platform. And when we invested, you know, yeah, I look at the return, but I look at the abundance that’s created, we invested when they had a community of probably, maybe, you know, 6 million people, and they wanted to take a free community and begin to create more abundance recharging subscription, It’s still free for anybody that wants it around the world, there are 30,000 free meditations. But at the same time for people that want, they can buy individual courses, or they can buy a subscription as you know, sort of special features. And as I look at that, from an energetic exchange, and from a place of abundance, when you provide all of that you have the abundance of the free for those who want to be free, you have the abundance of, you know, 5000 teachers who are getting paid 50% of what comes into the platform. When people do pay, and, you know, look at the abundance for you know, as they’re able to charge, you know, actual money for value, then they can hire people, and at the end of the day, then investors do better so everyone wins in an energetic exchange. And, And to me, that’s a really cool model of Yeah, money’s involved, but money is actually just about creating abundance.

Adam G. Force 30:59

Yeah, that sounds Amazing. It’s and it says, you know, these meditation apps seem to do really well. It sounds like they have a pretty big base.

Charlie Hartwell 31:08

Yeah, they have a big base. And what I like about you know about it is they have that big base and they’ve never spent any money on marketing because it’s all sort of organic versus You know, a lot of the other meditation apps are really all about marketing and acquisition and, you know, paid and this is just about natural growth of a community. That kind of all wants to grow together.

Adam G. Force 31:29

6 million people organically? 12 million. Yeah. Get out of here. So how are people finding out about them?

Charlie Hartwell 31:40

Well, they have 5000 teachers on the platform. I mean, through word of mouth through teachers recommending it through I mean, basically, that’s it. It’s been it’s been word of mouth because and, you know, people like the experience so much They can find the teachers that they want that resonate with them or the music that they want that it’s just very natural. It’s very natural, and people recommend it to ot

Adam G. Force 32:13

er people. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Wow. That’s amazing. That’s a big base for for organic for sure. So and what was the name of that program? Inside timer and say timer, we’ll check it out. So anybody listening, you guys can check that out. I’m a big fan of meditation. I’ve been doing that for years. And I just find a ton of value in the process. You know, I like to run exercise, you know, shower in the morning and then meditate and it really just kind of sets you up for the day to be very focused an

Charlie Hartwell 32:43

creative. That’s g

Adam G. Force 32:46

eat. Yeah. Well, listen, we’re going to wrap up here in a minute and I want to give you a chance to let people know where they can learn more about, you know, you and connect and what you have going on and check

Charlie Hartwell 32:57

hings out. Yeah, I mean, so our website is brittle. builders collaborative or BBC, or sorry, bb collaborative.com. You know, I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter under Charlie Hartwell, my wife and I have a business that I do this work from a business called the shifted Institute, which is about igniting consciousness inspiring him at potential and creating a paradigm shift. And that’s it shifted

Adam G. Force 33:26

All right, guys, I’m just taking notes there, Charlie. Awesome. We’ll try I really appreciate your time and walking us through some of your thoughts around the investments and where you’re taking everything and enjoyed the conversation just around you know, living an authentic life and living your truth

Charlie Hartwell 33:43

Right. Yeah, Adam, really fun to hear a little bit about your story. And I appreciate that you’re having these conversations. I’m I appreciate that. More people are interested in them and I thank you for your time today.

Adam G. Force 34:00

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Online traffic is a must today if you want to scale your impact! So, what does it take to get A LOT of traffic to any website or funnel?

To answer that question, Clickfunnels founder, Russell Brunson released the book Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook. And it’s GREAT!

Of course, Change Creator co-founder, Adam Force, had to talk to him about it and ask some burning questions!
You don’t want to miss this interview.

“It’s always an honor to talk with Russell, he’s a rockstar and just a genuinely good guy. His new book, Traffic Secrets, is some of the best marketing insights you can find. It’s the real deal.” ~Adam Force

Oh and guess what?

Right now, you can grab a FREE copy of his book so you can start getting the traffic you need to grow your biz to the next level.

Click here to learn more and get your copy >> bit.ly/3aEMvhp

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:00

Hey Russell, what’s going on, man? Welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

Russel Brunson 00:04

I’m doing amazing. Thank you so much for having me, man. I’m super excited.

Adam G. Force 00:07

Yeah, you know, I’m excited to have you here and excited about your book. You know, I did. I ordered that bad boy, I haven’t gotten my copy yet, but I’m waiting very impatiently, with this whole pandemic, you know, everything’s backed up and slowed down. So we’ll hopefully get that soon. Listen, man, tell us just a little bit, just to kick this off and get everybody acclimated. Um, you know, why did you decide to even create Traffic Secrets on top of everything else that you’re already doing?

Russel Brunson 00:32

Yeah, um, that’s a really good question. Sometimes I think I love punishment or something. writing books is really hard. No, but the real reason is, you know, it’s, I think, a unique spot, like being one of the cofounders of clickfunnels. We have a chance to see so many people’s businesses and what they’re doing what’s happening behind the scenes, what’s actually working, what’s not, I get an email every single day, which is like Christmas where it’s like, here’s all the top 20 funnels from in all Click Funnels based on sales and based on leads every day see 40 new funnels are like working in real time and like we get chance to see all these these fascinating things and then I see also the the frustrations of people that are cancelling and people that are you know are just like I’m ads account shut down, right? I have a funnel of my products way better than my competitors but nobody sees my their binaries and like, all this stuff. And it’s like, Man, it’s so for me, I’m always thinking like, what, what’s the thing I can do to help the community the most right now? And I tell you what, I did not want to write another book because there’s so much pain associated. Right? Like the biggest The biggest problem we have right now is traffic. I think the biggest problem is that they they’ll look at it from from a lens of like, like how to run Facebook ads, or how do i do Google? I do get from these lenses or the people that are talking about traffic. They’re always like, we found this loophole. And here’s that exploit this loophole that we just found and like, by definition, a loophole closes like it’s, it’s only there for a little bit. And, and I just, I’ve been nervous. I think there’s, you know, obviously we’ve been blessed over the last year. Seven or eight years where Facebook has made traffic so easy for people. But I see it shifting right now. And, and I was like I need to help my entrepreneurs that follow us to like understand traffic more strategically different so that when Facebook shuts down or when Zuckerberg gets closed down by the government, hopefully. But whatever happens, like there’s that we’re ready for it, because it’s going to happen. And in fact, it’s funny that the introduction says introduction, and it says there’s a storm coming. And I didn’t realize we’d be launching the book in the middle of the economic storm, but but it’s happening, I think that people like need these skill sets right now because it has happened for you yet. And ad account is going to get shut down. Like the way you rely on traffic right now is going to shift or change or disappear. If you’re not prepared, your business will be gone. And I’ve seen so many people who had amazing businesses who are out of business now because of that. And so it’s really to help people to have a more holistic, good way to you know, long term way to drive traffic to their business.

Adam G. Force 02:54

Yeah. And so what is I mean, are you saying to diversify to have paid and organic strategies in play, so can you just go a little deeper on what you mean, in preparation for that?

Russel Brunson 03:05

Yeah. So to answer that question, like, I want to go back in time, like 15 years, because I got started before Facebook before there was MySpace, and there was like Friendster, and then before that there were no social networks. And that’s how I got started on this game. When I was in college, I was trying to figure it out. And there weren’t like a ton of people teaching internet marketing back then. So it’s like, it was kind of harder to figure things out in the word. Anyway. And so I remember joining this, this group with these old school like direct response dudes, like Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer. And I remember joining the group I went the very first day and I was the only internet nerd in the group. And they always made fun of me and I think they bring it in a sales like a direct mail piece that we’re working on like Russell, this is an envelope inside of it to let people actually hold these when they open them a year. You know, they totally make fun of Yeah. And I remember one of the one of the meetings. I can’t remember who it was but they said something that I stuck in my head they said the problem is most of you internet guys, you think that the internet is a business. That’s why All like that’s why you guys are all so wishy washy. Like. He’s like, the internet’s not a business. The internet’s a media channel, just like direct mail or radio or TV or news. It’s, they’re all the same. And he’s like, you look at you look at the Internet as a media channel, it follows the same rules as all these other media channels. And so that’s how I learned marketing is like, Okay, well, let me do direct mail. So we did direct mail, we ran radios, I started learning these principles, and that was able to go over here like, oh, now they understand these things. This is actually really easy. It doesn’t matter if it’s Facebook or tik tok, or twitch or Mike, like, the principles are all the same. And so this book has really helped people understand the core principles of a media chant, how they work. And so that way, they’re evergreen. So like when Facebook gets shut down, or changes, like, like, okay, we’ll just work where do we shift where we shift you will still the same?

Adam G. Force 04:45

Yeah, I get it. So just getting to that real core, not getting so tactical about the actual little bits and pieces, but understanding how to look at the marketing strategy, not the just the execution on these different platforms and things like that. I love that. Yeah, that’s super helpful. Um, next To get this book I mean, you know, I traffic always is a big struggle for people and just really getting that foundation of how to see it. I guess it shifts the perspective a little bit, which can just be a game changer, right?

Russel Brunson 05:12

Yeah, it opens up, it opens up so many more. You mentioned earlier, I go down rabbit holes, these rabbit holes of traffic where it’s like when you get the book, like chapter one, I geek out a lot. Like, in fact, if you look at all my books, like the first section of all my books is like understanding your dream customers. Most people like just running and like, yeah, understanding, I understand your dream customer like a deep, intimate level, you know, their fears, their thoughts, like just really understanding him. So step one is that in step two, the second question then is like, how do I buy Facebook ads to these people? It’s like, I know, these people are where are they hanging out online? And where are they congregating? And when you ask that question, it also shifts because like, Well, my dream customer say they’re into health and fitness or couponing or whatever it is, right? Where are they hanging out? It’s like, Well, here are the 30 blogs that they all read. Here are the 200 podcasts they listen to here are different. Facebook groups they’re part of here’s the email list they subscribe to you here are Austin’s like, Oh my gosh, like there’s this whole world of, of these little like gold mines, these little pockets of traffic. I think right now everyone’s like focus on like, one, you know, again, Facebook and one thing that traffic’s like there’s so many other traffic sources that nobody’s tapping into. In fact, I did this experiment someone the other day, who was like what could afford ads, Russell, so I was like, Okay, I had my way, grab your phone out. So as you’re listening, you will be able to see it. But if you’re watching, play along here, you go. Like there’s there’s the podcast app, right? It’s free and click on the podcast app. And you’re like, Okay, and then you go through here, and if you scroll down, there’s a section says the top shows. Yeah, so it shows you what are the best shows today. So you click on top shows, you can see all and there’s categories so it shows. There’s news, comedy, sports, history, art business, like there’s all these categories, right? And then let’s say I give a product for kids and family, right kids and family. And right there pops up 200 the top 200 bit rank on the most listens. The top 200 podcasts in the world for for, for family kids. So because the family and kids like, it was crazy as like some of these podcasts, I don’t think people understand this. Like I have people all the time like, well, if I could be on The Ellen Show, I’d be rich. It’s like people aren’t watching TV anymore. Some of these podcasts, get more downloads per episode than Ellen’s ever dreamt up. And say, and these people like there’s not at levels of producers and all these things. It’s like you can you can mess up. I love your podcast, I actually have a really cool product and a story. Hey, come on, and tell him like sure, and you can get on a show and get free traffic. Yeah, or most of these, most of these podcasts also happen to sell ads. And then because there’s not like some easy ad network, like like Facebook, you can buy ads, like most people don’t buy ads there because it’s you have to like actually email the person like how do I buy ads exact so there’s so much opportunity to add costs are so much cheaper. And so it’s like there’s a way when you start shifting your thinking like that’s like, Who’s my dream customer, where are they at? And it’s like, how do I how do I get my message in front of Okay, can I get on podcasting you can buy ads cuz I can Write guest blog blog posts Can I get them to blog about me? Can I buy a pop up on their blog? There’s, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities that most people are just completely ignoring right now.

Adam G. Force 08:08

Yeah, it’s true. And I think that a lot of these bloggers and stuff who still get lots of traction and things like they’re on there under us, they’re they’re overlooked quite a bit, right. And,

Russel Brunson 08:19

you know, you’re tapping into these mommy blogs who like it’s funny that they blog and they get paid like, five cents for somebody quick to clip a coupon or something. It sounds like you pay five cents a click and then like, I was like, I figured bucket clicked to give it away. Yeah. Yeah, 2000 bucks later. I’m like, that was one boy that nobody else has ever. Right? All right, let’s do this again.

Adam G. Force 08:40

I love that man. It’s true. You just got to open your eyes and we tend to get fun. What do you call tunnel vision sometimes, right? And we we’ve had a major focus on organic and Facebook. And I love like what you’re doing too. We’re always all about getting out on the podcasts and those types of things. And there’s just a lot of creative thinking and untapped resources. So I’m sure you’re book will cover a lot of those cool

Russel Brunson 09:02

areas exploring differently. What I was like, because he was he was talking about SEO right. Like, and I talked about the book I’m like, let me show you my shortcut because like, I remember when we first started learning SEO, I was like, so frustrated cuz I’m so much like, I want like when you guys want to win, you want to be ranked number one for this keyword like today. Like it frustrates like, I remember the first time like that we had a campaign trying to rake us for set of keywords. I remember being so frustrated, like a week or two, I went directly to Google and type in keywords, I found the top 10, the top 10 listings on every page, and I realized that most of those pages like blogs and things like that, where someone’s looking at ranking stuff, and they don’t want to sell anything. And so I start emailing people directly. I’m like, dude, you’re a number one for work at home. Can I and there’s a big banner ad, can I just buy that banner ad from you? Okay, can I pay you to put a pop up on your site? Yeah, like sure. And so within like, within five seconds, you know, if you searched by dream keyword, which we’re hopefully someday going to rank for and someone clicked on it, click on a page and they went Like my ad was there and instantly like that fast I was getting all this SEO traffic from other people with SEO for me. And like, again, it’s like so simple, but these little things that is shifting your mindset that people don’t think about that hopefully this book will just be like, I have control my own destiny once again, like it’s simple, it’s easy, we start looking at through different lenses.

Adam G. Force 10:16

And I love that that’s a simple perspective shift. That’s a great example. So anybody watching or listening right now, I mean, just the idea, like we do a lot of SEO for organic traffic. We have b2b clients who want to tap into that traffic, but flip the script. And it’s like, well, I’m not gonna rank for everything based on let’s say, our membership that we sell, but we could tap into other people who already have it, and they’re probably not capitalizing on it. Anyway, you get a pretty good deal from them, probably.

Russel Brunson 10:40

Definitely, for sure. I love that man.

Adam G. Force 10:42

Listen, I was curious. One thing just because you did two other books. Did you change your process at all, like based on the experience?

Russel Brunson 10:50

Yeah, I did this one for sure. One thing nice is that I never use Google Docs in the past because I always hated Google Docs and it’s a book I found out about him and now like, I’m obsessed with

Adam G. Force 11:00

Cool. It’s awesome

Russel Brunson 11:01

I don’t know how I wrote them. I read it in like Word and then I send it to people to edit, send it back and like eight different edits. I’m trying to like sync it was a nightmare. So what’s fun about this I did is like, I started Google Docs. I wish I was like, a ways down. And then I invited some people close to me, I was like, hey, I want you guys to go behind and read it not like editing, editing, like, grammar, bowing, editing, like constantly making sense. Is it confusing? Like, yeah, the story have context enough to actually you know, and so like, I had five people reading behind me and like leaving comments and stuff. And so as I was doing the book, they were falling behind me by the time I got to the bottom was really fun. So I got to talk. And it was like, I was I was rewriting but with like, 10 people’s ideas. Oh, like, Oh, that’s so good. Like, it was a it just made the process more collaborative. and way more. I like that will turn out better because of i

Adam G. Force 11:44

too. How long did it take to get this one put together

Russel Brunson 11:47

Ah, this was a pain. It was a good day. Yes, I’ll benefit from the pain. So if it were my first started was about 18 months, but was like, I mean, obviously I’m doing a lot of things as well. I’d say like the hard way crunch time of like, like, I have to finish a chapter every like three days or whatever. Like the thing was, you know, the first 18 months has tons of research and fighting stuff in outlining and trying to structure and a lot of Dude, I’m a doodler. So a lot of doodles, like head to paper was probably a good three to four months of just like, everything else is blocked off.

Adam G. Force 12:18

just like, yeah, that’s not too bad though. I you met the way. You mentioned having other people read through it. We I spoke with Guy Kawasaki not long while ago now but he was like, Yeah, when I write a new book, I take the manuscript draft and I’ll send it out to my Twitter audience and let everybody just share feedback. I was like, really?

Russel Brunson 12:36

e’s a I would dare to do that

Adam G. Force 12:38

I thought it was pretty brave to he’s like listen, if someone else can steal it and do it better than me then shame on me.

Russel Brunson 12:46

I think for me it’s like I have this fear because it’s funny. I any creative person like you create in private so it’s like your words your thoughts. You’re loving it and the CGI Yeah, you give it like first time someone read it. I outside my few close people for some like I shipped a couple copies of people and like I was I was so scared. I remember the first person who messaged me back was Garrett. Garrett J. White, he messaged back, he’s like, dude, that’s what he said. I’m like, Oh, crap. He’s like, this is actually better than the first two books. I was like… Oh, I don’t want like, this is actually like..That’s like, it’s so scary. Like to put out a tweet. I can’t even imagine that I would have had a heart attack, I would have melted down. I don’t know.

Adam G. Force 13:23

Yeah. Well, listen, I like to just get your thoughts on, you know, I know you have teams running ads, and all that kind of stuff. But when it comes to I just want to talk about paid traffic for a minute. And I’m sure you obviously cover a lot of this in the book. But I guess we’re so what are some of the shortcomings people have with paid traffic? Meaning like, you know, we work with a lot of solopreneurs people in the first five years, let’s say, and I’m curious, because what happens is they have this fear factor of actually spending money. So they’re not getting enough data, right? And they’re, they’re not willing to pay for data. So what are your thoughts about like, you know, proving out a new funnel, like we don’t nail it up the offer on the first try, right? It’s like, any thoughts on just how to lean into that. Pay traffic world a littl

Russel Brunson 14:01

bit. That’s the hardest thing. It’s like, I’m gonna gamble. So go to Vegas, they throw a quarter and the first time they win, like, they’re like stuck on gambling, whereas like, yeah, eight ads, it’s the opposite. It’s like you don’t, you know, and I thought, we talked about that here where it’s like, if you’ll get the initial advertising efforts are going out there, you’re trying to like, you’re finding people, you’re bringing them into your world. It’s like, you spend 80% of the money there and you’ll get 20% results. It’s like, oh, it sucks for rocks. You have to like get people get data, get things in there. It’s just like, this annoying, frustrating experiment. That’s just no good. And then what happens then you bring them in. Now they’re dumped into retargeting buckets, where now you’re spending 20% of money. If you make 80% of your results, it becomes easier, but it’s like, you have to get through the grind of this first. I think if if it was nice, you know, and I was kind of the first time I would look at this almost like, if you’re hiring a coach or a consultant or you’re buying a course then people like they’re less scared of buying a course or higher than they are by ads, but just like okay, I’m buying A coach or you know, whatever is gonna help me go find my dream customers and buy, you’re gonna buy a bunch of data and they’re gonna dump it to me. And then this date I’m going to use and like look at it from that lens. And then like, give it to whoever drive the ads for you, whatever. And and just know, like, I’m spending and it could be, you know, whatever you’re comfortable 1000 bucks, 5000, whatever, like, but just to like, write it off as like, this is money that I’m hiring a consultant to find the data who’s gonna buy my offer in the future. They look at that lens and it’s like, they got their money’s bad. I’m not expecting any return on investment or even one I’m just getting data back. And then now you got these buckets where you’re targeting stuff happened and then that’s where that’s where that’s like you get your head of like, this is so easy to get people are buying like crazy, but it is definitely scary when you don’t look at it that way. It’s just like…

Adam G. Force 15:42

yeah, it’s true. Well, and organic for a lot of people can be pretty slow. So they’re like, it’s been three months and I haven’t had any new sales for my course. And it’s like, well, how many people have actually watched your that been through your funnel? Oh, well, yeah, yeah. I’m curious if you have thoughts. I know you because you’ve done some transactions. type stuff with load lower ticket items and scale all the way up to super high ticket items. You know, when it comes to thinking about traffic, does that change is the strategy change between transactional versus high ticket? Right like the entering that thought process?

Russel Brunson 16:19

Yeah. That’s interesting. I and you know, people always ask me, well, should I just do it low tickets are just too high and I feel like a good business has has all of them like there’s there’s purposes for them, right? Like when I launched Click Funnels, I was going initially after a warm audience. And so we had $1,000 offer. We did two webinars and like we just we like I was doing funny in experts secret until I tell people do a webinar a week and they’re always like, complaining. So you know, the first 12 months of clickfunnels, I was doing three to five webinars a week. Some days, I would do three webinars in a day. Like it was just like, like pedal, the metal would go 200% we’re buying ads, we were buying emails, we were like as many things we can do, just to get things and that’s how we grew from zero to 10 million in the first year like just like I killed myself and I wanted to die. I get it right. But then it got point where like, there’s so much saturation. So people seen it, we got harder and harder to, like, possibly keep buying stuff to it. And that sounds like okay, now we need, like a lower ticket thing to step down to, to kind of be like this Trojan horse to get people in, and then we can send them to webinars. That’s when we did the.com secrets, but it came I think six months, six, eight months after clickfunnels this book came out Yeah, that would grab people in they come in that’s where they buy the book. They go to the book funnel and then from there, we push them to a webinar funnel. And then they’re like, that was that became the model, you know, and like Traffic Secrets book is the same thing like it actually if you look at like my business like.com secrets was like, you got all the people who are internet marketers who are like, they may have understood funnels me Not yet, but like, that was the group we were going after. And after I got that group into the world, I was like, how do we go beyond that world? Let’s find people who are experts and influencers and help them to understand how funnels work for them. So the second book came out, which may cast a wider net to people that who who weren’t marketers yesterday, you know, but like we turn that we grab them and turn to help them understand how funnels work and brought those people into our world and traffic. versus like the wider net? Like anybody who’s got a website or business or anything you need traffic, right? So he can go to places that like nothing else can, right? I’m working on a radio campaign like I’m running this on radio as it’ll penetrate spots that I can’t penetrate with other offers. Yeah. So we’ll take a step has the ability to penetrate different segments and things like we have a book for for network marketers, specifically on network marketers can use funnels, and that’ll penetrate into that market and grab people in and then help them bridge the gap between, you know, network marketing funnels, and then we put them into our same webinars and moving from there. So that’s kind of how I look at it. And then the high end, obviously, is just super profitable. You take all

Adam G. Force 18:38

that? Yeah. Yeah. So you know, you got your value ladder that you talked about the other books, you’re really working people through that process, and they serve different purposes, I guess. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, man, I mean, I’m curious to know just also, when you’re when you’re going through, you mentioned doing like a webinar a week and I think a lot of people do roll their eyes at that because it’s like doing a live webinar. I think what a lot of people make get nervous about getting out there and going live and things like that. And two, it’s pretty time consuming, right? If you have an hour 90 Minute Webinar, and you’re doing that multiple times, but it’s nice when you’re getting sales, right?

Russel Brunson 19:10

Yeah. So like, it’s like all the things I could be doing in the business is the most valuable thing I could possibly be doing. So why don’t I do it? And the only thing it forces you to do because people like Wait, so I do a new webinar every week to my list. I’m like, No, no, this is the same webinar word for word the same every single time, which then it forces you because because if you just say webinar to your list twice, it’s gonna stop working, right. So it’s like, that means I have to get new people in every transaction, because I was like, I’m not gonna jump on a webinar unless we got at least I can’t remember I had a number back then and get at least 3000 register. I was into the webinar. It’s my traffic, five days to get these like, so they’re like they’re freaking out like they’re focusing on traffic. So we got everyone our company focusing right things like our traffic, he was no longer like sitting on their hunches. Like, I have to get X amount people registered routes. This whole business model falls apart. I got to deliver my presentation. I just got everybody. It got everybody doing the right thing. When we started focusing on

Adam G. Force 20:01

that, okay and doing it like why not have it evergreen and recorded like versus the live this is so you can get real time feedback. Like what was the purpose behind

Russel Brunson 20:10

that? Yeah, I think eventually real time or evergreen is good eventually, but not first. And I think most people miss that. Like I the first time I did the webinar, the launch clickfunnels I was at an event I wrote it on the plane right over I did it. I did it and it worked. I was like, This is the man I forgot the messaging but I remember that next morning. I was like, leaving the hotel with my with my bag. And some lady in the lobby grabbed me. She’s like, Oh, your presentation is so fun. She’s like, I I just feel bad. I didn’t buy it because I’m a coach. And so I can’t use I can’t use clickfunnels. What? Yeah, well, because I in the in the presentation I showed like my supplement funnel, I show Drew Canole. As I showed you say I don’t have a supplement. So I can’t use Click Funnels. I was like, What? I was like, I’m a coach, like I sell books in college. So like, She’s like, no, I this is you rent, she runs back to her room. She grabs three other women, they come down all three of my grab order forms they fill in handed to me, and they’re like we had no idea that we could use As a coach or consultant, yeah, yeah, some jumping in the plane. I was like, Oh my gosh, like I missed it. So I went through it. I tweaked the presentation add those things in. I got back to Boise. That was like a Saturday I think and then it was like next Monday. I on the flight texting everyone I know like I had a webinars converting like, can you promote it? So we had webinars lined up for the next week I did the very first webinar. I’m invited to that day, the first one had, they both have like, I don’t know, 800 ish people that were on it and the first webinar that morning, and I did like $30,000 in sales. I was like, I thought it’d be a little better. Remember, I went through it. I looked at all the questions people submitted during the webinar, and I was looking at like, Oh my gosh, like they’re used, Hear, hear, hear their views about the offer here. Here’s all the list of wherever they were stuck. So I took that went back to my slides. And I like I just added slides, tweak things, change things to address all those concerns. And like four hours later, I did the same webinar to the same size audience. And that time we did $120,000 in sales. And so then I went through and I export all the questions again, okay, where they get stuck down, and we keep this habit of every single time we would do that we would do presentation, export it tweak the slide sweet slides. And I did that for weeks and weeks until I had this thing where it’s just so polished. Like Tuesday I can do it by I can do it from memory word for word. And that’s what it’s like now I like go for Go Go evergreen it. The problem is most people evergreen the first version, because it’s like, I’m gonna do it once they do it once and then they’re missing all. Like, they used to live every day for a month or every, you know, four times a week, every week for a month, they would they would probably two or three extra conversions. And just like someone knows, like the difference, like if you’re if you’re, if you’re like 5% of people are buying a webinar, it’s like a six figure your webinar, you get 10% that’s like a seven figure webinar, you get 8%. That’s a $10 million, your webinar. It’s like the getting 5% conversion to 15 is in between six figures and eight figures. So like, Is it worth making those tweaks in those

Adam G. Force 22:47

ests? Big time, big time and you’re seeing where you need to make tweaks based on just where people are asking questions. So are you pausing to be like, Hey, does anybody have questions or they just firin

Russel Brunson 22:55

There’s fired about… Yeah, I do. A lot of trial closes throughout my presentation. Like you Give this up quickly. But I don’t look around during the presentation because it throws me off as a person. You export it look through all like the kind of stuck here stuck here stuck here

Adam G. Force 23:08

Yep. Yep. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because there’s just so many little points of, we’ve had things where people are, well, I wasn’t sure if that was for me or not, because you said solopreneurs, right. And I thought that was for this. And we’re like, Ah, man, you know, and it’s like, they’re all these little nuances. And you can get stuck in a world of changing things for no reason if you don’t have that data, right. Yeah. Listen, Russell. I know we’re about on our time. So I’m going to wrap up here. Let’s just give a shout out. Actually, one last thing is just to point like, where can people learn more about the book? Do you have a specific URL that you want to shout out?

Russel Brunson 23:38

Yeah, for sure. Right now we’re doing a promotion or pre launch where you can get free copies of the book, silver Traffic Secrets calm. You got a 995 shipping handling for the hardbound copy. We got a whole bunch of amazing bonuses. There’s like five or six full full length training videos that come with us from like Prince EA, for example, got 3 billion views on, on on Facebook. You He made a whole video showing how he goes viral videos, which is insane. Like it’s so good like, Ross Yossi wrote the foreword for the book he, he would have we were very competitive me and him and we had to challenge him to sell the most books. He was selling four times more books than I was. And we could not for the life of me figure out what he was doing different. So I flew out to Arizona spent a day with him, we figured out was like this one stupid thing that completely missed, went back made the tweak. And same thing we have our book sells for x of where they were before. And he’s spoken for like you live as like shows the audience, the whole presentation, sharing it, and breaking it down and showing everybody that video is in there. And there’s a whole bunch of cool stuff you get for free with the other three books. So that’s kind of what it is. And I hope you guys love the book. Yeah, man. Awesome. Well, thank you for your time such an important topic and we love that you sharing all your expertise and good luck with the sales man, everybody grab your copy of traffic secrets, you know, it’s gonna be killer if it’s anything like the other two books, right. Awesome. Thanks, man. I appreciate it’s a lot of fun.

Adam G. Force 24:51

Take care, buddy.

interview

Steve Cockram: Become a Leader People Want to Follow

Listen to our exclusive interview with Steve Cockram:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

We all have an inner leader waiting to take on the world, but how do we make that come to life? We spoke with expert and author, Steve Cockram to find out.

Steve Cockram (UK) and his business partner Jeremie Kubicek (USA), have recently released their 3rd book on leadership – The 100X Leader: How to Become Someone Worth Following. This has been coupled with the release of our new digital GiANT platform, which scales healthy leadership development throughout organizations. Think Netflix meets Peloton with a leadership twist! The platform is disrupting the digital space and our organization GiANT is currently the fastest growing tech business in the USA.

Learn more about Steve and his work at: stevecockram.com/ and giantworldwide.com

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. Excited to be here today we’re gonna be talking with Steve cockrum. He is a author of the book 100 ex leader. That’s third book he released with his business partner, Jeremy Kubitschek. So they are they talk about how to how to become somebody who’s worth following, right. And this has been alongside has released this new platform called giant. And that’s designed to help create healthy leadership development through organizations, right. So this is all he’s all focused on leadership. And that’s a big topic I think, especially for today as we’re navigating these uncharted waters. You know, the more we can undertake In the leadership space, the more we can step into our role to become who we need to become with our businesses as entrepreneurs. So he’s looking at really disrupt the space with this platform giant. Sounds pretty interesting. And I was very interested in his thoughts as he is so dialed into leadership space with his books and things like that. So I want to share it with Steve and see what he has to say. If you missed the last episode, it was with the one and only Russell Brunson. He’s the founder of Click Funnels. It’s 100 million dollar company and he has that new book Traffic Secrets. If you missed that, definitely go back and check it out. It was a really energized conversation. It’s on all the the main platforms here for the podcast, but it’s also a live video feed on our Facebook page. So you can catch the video version on the Change Creator Facebook page, you guys can just swing over there and check that out. Guys, we have some updates on the website. There’s always fresh content so don’t forget to check that out. If you haven’t already, you know, we have Change Creator magazine has over 30 Premium additions, but also now the updated app has a flow of articles coming in weekly. So as that’s happening, you guys can get constant content. And the model is changes $10 for the year. So for 10 bucks, you’re getting access to tons and tons of premium content interviews with Richard Branson, Jay Shetty, Seth Godin regular flow of content. We made it as accessible as possible because there’s just so much great content there. So you can just go to Change Creator comm check out the digital magazine, and you’ll find lots of goodies. Alright, guys, we’re gonna get into this conversation with Steve. I hope everybody’s staying safe practicing their social distancing. And we’ll get through this all together. And we’ll keep talking about some of these things on our Facebook page and in the group, the profitable digital impact entrepreneur join us over there. Amy and I are doing conversations and lots of content around Stepping up your marketing with storytelling, but also becoming a leader right now during this pandemic, okay. All right, let’s jump into this conversation with Steve and see what he says. Hey, Steve, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today.

Steve Cockram 03:19

I’m doing incredibly well out from across the pond. Lovely to be with you.

Adam G. Force 03:22

And thank you for taking the time. Appreciate it. Leadership is a topic I love. It’s so important in our lives and our businesses. So I’m excited to kind of dive into your wealth of experience on the topic. So maybe you could just kick us off a little bit and tell us what what are you working on these days what’s happening in your world and just give us a little little update?

Steve Cockram 03:46

That’s great. So I lead a company called giant and the best way to describe it is seven years ago, my business partner good friend of mine, Jeremy Kiba track. Basically we both really ended up Our old worlds together. And we started a new consulting group together. And we really did a lot of research and asked our clients, what were the five major challenges they were facing as we move from the late industrial to the digital world? And they said, summary would be is how do I survive and thrive in a world that’s now? 365 24? Seven, it doesn’t turn off. How do I lead through influence more than positional power? How do I communicate and connect in a world that now learns visually interactive media application? How do I build agile collaborative teams, rather than recruit talented individuals, and particularly poignant for right now, Adam, how do I lead in a world which is increasingly digitally connected, but geographically dispersed? So for seven years, we basically built the tools that would work for the new world. That’s what we did well, two years ago, we realized that if we didn’t have a platform solution, then in the end, consulting in and of its own, couldn’t get there. So we now are what we call it. SAS plus business. So we are software as a service people pay monthly for our services. But we still have a fair number of consultants and coaches about 250 around the world who can go in as it were, and deliver the more traditional side of things. But everyone is learning to do remote right now. So that’s a giant and giant.tv is where you can find all that, huh,

Adam G. Force 05:21

pretty cool. So let me just dig into that for a minute. So if you go on to giant, it’s a resource for leadership insights, but like what is what is actually behind the gate? I see there’s a login on the page there. So what are you actually getting as the product?

Steve Cockram 05:39

So I think what we’d say Adam is that the new world requires different intelligence. And so therefore, there is ways in which you can develop self awareness as a leader, emotional intelligence leader and ultimately then how do you connect your IQ competence skill sets, credentials product To the world. So what most leaders are asking is, how do I lead other people because they don’t do what I would want them to do. And whenever I do for them what I would most want done for me, it doesn’t seem to work. So what we’re building really is a resource that anybody who leads any team whether you’re leading to people, one person or whether you’re leading 30,000, there is the issue, which is how do we create the leaders that know how to function and thrive in the world I’ve just described. So there are, you know, and also realizing that everyone is far too busy, no one’s got time. So little and often we found is a much more effective way of developing leaders than the traditional put them in a room for three hours and hope that does it. So there are all kinds of ways that that people are able to learn and engage and bring their team with them. Okay, so we used to do a lot of executive coaching. We Do some but what we found was that team has become the most important unit of productivity more than the talented individual. So that’s really I would say the focus will that platform does, it creates a way that teams can perform at a level they’ve never thought of. And if you think really a, as a larger organization is only a collection of teams. So it doesn’t really have one thing or 50 teams or you know, thousands of teams, we say the sub leaders define the subcultures and it mostly the development only touches the people who are well paid, whereas the reality is on the ground, the most important people are those who interact with your employees and the closer to the frontline they are, the more important they are but they often get less investment than others. So trying to make that affordable and quality and interactive that they can do it. You know, as they travel as they kind of fly as they go about their daily life and really just trying to Say, because his some tools that will help you lead your life and lead your people and lead your family better.

Adam G. Force 08:09

Yeah, no, I mean that accessibility is so important today as everybody’s on the move and opens up the doors for scalability. And I’m curious, you know, you’ve done a lot of studies in the space of leadership and what I guess two things. The first question is, now that we are the dynamic, obviously is always changing. We’re getting more digital, we’re leading teams, different dynamics and all kinds of stuff. So how have you seen leadership evolve between, you know, historical, you know, precedents versus what’s happening now due to this different stimulus of digital?

Steve Cockram 08:46

I say, I mean, gosh, it’s like pulling that from a selection. But I think one of the biggest ones out and that I think maybe interesting for your audience is the move away from positional authority to influence how become more and more important. So as a believes if you’re having to use positional power to get your way or force your opinion through, you’re already undermining your influence, because actually the new world expects you to be prepared and skilled to actually lead others through the influence II have. Yeah, so. So actually, you know, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re leading one or two people or laws fundamentally, as more and more millennials and Gen Z’s enter the workforce, what they’re looking for is a coach, not a boss. And what they’re expecting is they’re expecting collaboration, they’re expressing their opinions of matter. And for a lot of leaders, it’s quite hard to understand. Why Why do you think you can just, you know, have an opinion you’ve been here three weeks. So I would say I would say for a lot of leaders, one of the biggest challenges is realizing people won’t just follow you now, because they have to. They will stay with you because they choose to And all the statistics show that people leave leaders more than they leave companies. So recruitment and retention is pivotal in the talent race right now, because people have more choice than they used to. In the old days, you know where you were born, you might have had three or four options of a job. But in the digital world, those who have those skill sets are incredibly valuable and in demand. And I would say that for most leaders now, influence is largely emotional intelligence more than IQ. Yeah, you’re, you have to have IQ, you have to have skills that people want to buy and credentials to even get a ticket to the game. But emotional intelligence and the ability to establish, maintain and develop long term relationships, inside and outside your business, I reckon is the primary currency of wealth and influence in the digital world. And that’s a very different mindset. A lot of people who were born, let’s just say after 1982 or before 1982

Adam G. Force 11:06

Yeah, yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I, I mean, I, I worked at web D for 10 years, you know, a while back, and I saw just as we were getting into like, oh, responsive website development, and you know, any kind of calls online, all these things like, as these dynamics shift and the mentalities are shifting, I started to see that kind of shift in how teams were approached. And actually, I managed a small team. And I got really into, like, making sure the team all had an opinion and share a voice in what we were doing, making them feel like you know, it wasn’t like a hierarchy. And I guess a big thing is interesting. I took him out to lunch one time, I think you’ll get a kick out of this. And I went around the table and I was like, I was asking people like, what was the reason that you left your last job, and I think I had about maybe eight or nine people around the table. And like 95% of them said, lack of appreciation. Yeah, but that doesn’t surprise you, right?

Steve Cockram 12:10

They don’t. So I mean, we took a lot of work with Google and Google have done a huge amount of research that’s basically authenticated everything we’ve said, for which I’ll always be grateful. And the two things they tried to do a study called Aristotle, they did a subtle called Aristotle, which you may have heard of, where they try to understand what was the common common allergies of the highest performing teams in Google, Google measure everything. Google Analytics is everywhere. And they spent nearly two years of trying to find out what what they nearly gave up. And, you know, they came to the conclusion there were only two things that all of their highest performing teams had in common. One was there was psychological safety, that actually, everybody could challenge the opinion of anyone else in the team, including the leader, without fearing it would jeopardize their career. The second one was in the average team across an average year, each person’s vote roughly equally, in terms of time. Now, that was a salutary challenge to charismatic entrepreneurs like me, he usually liked the sound of their own voice. And most entrepreneurs usually are very opinionated. That was a massive one for us realizing that actually, the ability to listen and draw out the expertise skill sets of the people in those teams was was huge. You know, I’m a German, I ended up having an interview with the HR director again, before we push this any further, we want to know whether you’re googly enough. That was the phrase they use, they actually said nothing has ever changed our culture in the way that your giant resources have. But before we go any further with it, we actually want to meet the guys who founded it to check that you. We resonate with the values and who you are. I was I was blown away. It was luckily we passed and we’re doing other things with them at the moment, but it was almost like They will they were so protective of their culture for leadership, that actually they wanted to make sure not just the tools work, but the people behind it aligned with the same heart and be some of the things I know you guys care deeply about. Yeah, yeah,

Adam G. Force 14:13

no, you’re hitting the right buttons for our for us and our audience. And you know, what we believe in and things like that. I think, really, just more and more people have access to starting businesses on their own. Just like they have more opportunity to get jobs at different places that they might really align to. And as you pursue these things, you become your own CEO and a leader, right, what we’re talking about here. And one of the most important parts of where your marketing comes from is really digging into who you are as a person. So those values become this Northstar for decision making, not just in the first year, but throughout the life of the business.

Steve Cockram 14:47

I always say I agree entirely and by the way, and I say to most startup entrepreneurs, I love them. I’ve been one I continue to be one and go back and do it again, is people always ask me what you know. You’ll be You’d be very successful at doing this. What’s the one thing that you would say to an entrepreneur and I go, guys, or girls, the most important thing is you have to know yourself to lead yourself first. Because always say to me, what do you know what it’s like to be on the other side of you, in the different in the different orbits of your life. So what’s it like to be on the other side of you as a supplier, as a customer, as a client, as a friend, as a father as a, as a boss, so few people have ever really been prepared to look in the mirror and see what we call the broccoli and our teeth because we all we all have broccoli in our teeth, and you’d be amazed how many leaders undermine their influence every single day, and they have no idea they’re doing it. So giants talk is really a catalogue of mine and Jeremy’s failures, and the broccoli in our teeth and we always say, look, if we can identify what the problem is, and I’ll get Give me an example of one in a moment sure, if we can then codify it in a visual tool that an educated 30 year old can understand us and teach their friends, then we can multiply into a world, which is overwhelmed with information and saturated and however good the content is. If they can’t use it immediately, it disappears. The moment you leave the room or start listening to the podcast, or whatever it is book you happen to be skimming through. So I’ll give you an example of one that has changed my life. And and so it’s the simple thing where most entrepreneurs think out loud. So I’m a very external processor. I’m ID ating. All the time, I hypothesize about how things could be. And I almost argue as if I believe it, hoping that you will tell me why you don’t. So here’s the here’s the tool that emerged out of that because you can imagine a lot of people would come to me and go and say, What are you up to the last two weeks they go, we’ll be working on this. So why are you working on that? Last week, you told us that this is what we need to be doing. And I’m like, No, no, no, no, I was thinking out loud. I was spitballing. I was like dreaming, I was inviting you to collaborate with me. You’re telling me that you spent the last few weeks working on that. So we developed a tool, Adam called provisional plan, promise three words that will change your life as an entrepreneur, because what I meant was we created a vocabulary, where now when I start dreaming out loud, what somebody says to me if I forget, they say, hey, see, before we really start to move on this is this provisional, which means you’re just talking out loud, dreaming, getting opinions, or is it a plan? Have we actually together decided, this is what we’re going to do based on the evidence that is available to us and we’ve committed as a team to it, or a promise is something that says this will never change? Right? So basically, there are plans in business, the act Sometimes has to change. Now we’re going through a moment in our world where a lot of the planning of a lot of businesses is changing because of something called COVID-19. Do you see the difference so I’m plan is something we’re committed to, and we’re all aligned with. But it still could get knocked off course, a promise is something that I will never change. These are values that we will live as a community or these will be what we define ourselves as those giant we have like four values. You know, we have self awareness, love engineers, ie heroic goals. If you ask any giant world over, they can tell you those. They are a promise they don’t change. But strategy is usually a plan. And what we found was as entrepreneurs, we were often being provisional, but people were hearing it as a plan bordering on promise and the amount of entrepreneurs that are like that, who actually end up undermining their influence with the people who have the capacity usually to deliver on the dreams. And in the end, people start to go I’m not sure whether I trust you I don’t know whether you’re talking out loud or whether things going on so when I say to you, there’s there’s one that I guarantee you can use them and I guarantee everyone listening can use biggest place that made a difference to me was in my marriage. Why? Why? Yeah, you know, my wife is an introverted detail, very, very organized person. She only speaks when it’s a plan. And the number of times she’s got really frustrated because I was dreaming about something I said, Hey, we might need to get back to America. I’m getting exhausted flying everywhere. Speaking. Good night, darling. She wakes up in the morning, Helens in tears with a spreadsheet, trying to work out how we can tell the kids the grandparents, how are we going to move? Where are we going to live? And when I say Helen, I was only being I was only thinking out loud. Now she just says to me, Steve is this provisional plan or deployment. So there you go. There’s an example out of it. And it’s visual is colorful, but it’s simple enough that the child can understand that even the kids use it on me now. So, hope that helps. We’ve got about 57 of those.

Adam G. Force 20:14

That’s pretty funny. Imagine scenarios with my wife and she’d be, she’d be like, Hell, no, we’re not good night. Your plan is over. That’s a great point, though. It’s a great point on a clarity of context. I mean, you know, one of the things that makes me think of is clarity, and you’re kind of breaking it down into a thought process that provides clarity. And, you know, if there’s one, I always, you know, one thing I would say, and it sounds so simple, and everyone thinks that they’re clear, but if there was one thing that makes or breaks a business, and as a leader, it is clarity in all aspects of your business. So this is your what I see hear from you and correct me if I’m wrong is you have ways of breaking down these thought processes in order to create that clarity.

Steve Cockram 21:00

Yes. So for example, if if it’s all remember I said the new world for learning and communication, this is a bigger change than people realize. The industrial world was about words, books, memorization and data. The new world is visual. It’s interactive, and it has to have a media application. So what we realized was if you couldn’t capture it in a visual tool, that was simple, it would not scale. And so therefore, what we’re doing here is, we’re actually saying, guys, ladies, leaders, you all have tendencies. You all have wired into the way you’ve been made. So while we do a lot of stuff on self awareness, and kind of that, really knowing who you are, I’m a Jedi Master in personality in wiring. That’s one of my other sort of day jobs at it. But once he realized, you can show people what the mirror looks like on the other side of them, they can then begin to make a choice. So I always say that the difference between a good entrepreneur and a great entrepreneur is yes, you got to have a great idea. Yes, you got to do this. But fundamentally, you have to know what you’re great at and where your weaknesses are, where your blind spots are. And you have to make a choice with your actions. So if your tendencies just become your actions, you’ll get it right about most of the time, but when you get it wrong, it goes horribly wrong. The real skill set is self awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is what allows you to build your business and connect the product and the skills and the expertise you have to a marketplace which is saturated. And actually how you differentiate long term in a world which basically has almost limitless choice is that relational interaction with your client base, that’s the thing which is gold And it’s more valuable than people would ever really realize in the beginning.

Adam G. Force 23:05

Yeah, yeah. I love that. And I think I was just writing it down. I’d like the the notes there. The self awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence is a key to building a successful business. And I think it makes me ask you the question, you know, we have to know ourselves, and we have to know where we fall short and where we don’t and all those types of things. But have you found that people resist the truth in the sense of they’re not always honest with themselves?

Steve Cockram 23:35

So here’s what I would say I found out is that most leaders are unconsciously incompetent. Right? And you can’t blame somebody for being unconsciously incompetent. It’s they’re not aware of it. Yeah. And the reality is, I don’t know Americans are slightly better at challenging each other. Brits over here. We specialize in hinting and really just just looking down on people without telling them what’s going on. So a lot of what a lot of What john is doing is we’re holding up a mirror and go, Hey, Adam, do you know what it’s like to be outside of you and you go, I get this, I had no idea. We make you consciously incompetent, which is usually a deeply unpleasant experience when it happens. But mostly it is I mean, Adam wants to grow, they want to get better. The reality is, a lot of them just don’t know how. And so therefore, I can’t afford to go on an MBA program. I mean, I’m like going get enrolled in a course it’s going to take, you know, years of my life, and it’s like, No, no, I need some tools right now. Yeah. And I don’t mind if it’s one or two tools that give me something I can work on. And, you know, German, I spent a long time developing something called the five voices, which, if the listeners do anything, for those of you a Myers Briggs experts, he came at it twinned with Myers Briggs, but nobody could ever remember their letters when we went away. So we worked incredibly hard to create something called the five voices of a team. So if he goes to the Giant platform, as I said, you get a free month, if what you do is take the voice assessment on there, there is actually a personalized coaching Development Series for I think it was 15 videos per personality combination, that if you walk through that, that would make an amazing difference to who you are and how you understand what’s there. So, you know, again, join.tv backslash BB will get you a free month on on my, on my account. So that’s another one where self awareness is so, so important, because it’s very hard to be emotionally intelligent without being self aware. And sadly, a lot of entrepreneurs are, are more task orientated than relationship orientated. They do relationship, they do relationship because they, they need it to make the business work. I would say that in some ways that this, the primary skill set of the entrepreneur has to be has to be that relational connectivity and that ability To build long term trusting relationships, because that’s where people come back to. And that’s where you have a chance to be magical almost. And people remember, people remember that people who’ve chosen to serve people, not just transact with people. So it’s so easy when you’re under pressure and thinking, Oh, my goodness, how do I make payroll? How do I do this than the other, you often treat clients as a transaction. And that’s still a compliment that they want to buy something from you. But you’re leaving influence on the table. So many people try maximize the first deal. And they leave long term relational influence on the table. I’m always keen to go. I’m looking for something that I can build over an extended period of time. And therefore I’m prepared to invest financial capital sometimes in the beginning, because I’m trading it for long term relational capital, not because I’m trying to be manipulative, but because What I know is when I can establish a trusted relational partnership with somebody, actually, not only am I able to serve them, but they’re actually able to serve me as well. So, you know, that’s just giving you some of the things that I’ve learned through getting it wrong out. And Robin around. I was the negotiation King, I used to love winning and negotiations, until somebody held the mirror up to me. And I realized that actually, nobody liked dealing with me because they always knew if I was happy about the deal, it probably meant that six months from now they were going to be disappointed. That wasn’t a great reputation now. Now I’m almost the other way of going responsible generosity is a valley that I choose to live by. Because I found it’s a lot better when people think that you are generous as a, as a culture than when, in some ways, it’s primarily about you.

Adam G. Force 27:51

Yeah. And I think that empathy comes into play and that ties into the emotional intelligence factor that you spoke about to really, you know, be understanding And I think tying that into this idea of stop shooting for the short term, you know, game, the short term thinking where it’s like, I need an extra thousand I need to do this deal now. And, you know, we, you know, that was a lesson that we had to learn to and that is to think long term. It’s a different dynamic when you’re doing that, because everybody has this need to for immediacy, so we get panicked and we’re worried we need to make more money, we need their business, you know, so it’s like that panic results in like fear based decision making and then you start making decisions with short term thinking. So, you know, like, we would always take on clients where it’s like, all right, we won’t even offer them anything except a trial period of three months because we just start small and we build the relationship we prove ourselves and it may take more time, but then you get all the renewal business they like you they trust you and all that relationship building that you’re talking about. It does take time and it takes care right.

Steve Cockram 28:56

usually takes seven years to be an overnight success. Adam So no, nobody is nobody has done it faster. I mean, it’s really interesting looking, looking back at the moment, if you think of the financial crisis in 2008 2009, when you look at the companies that were formed in the midst of that storm that we now know as household names, so it’s fascinating to me to realize that there is always the opportunity for entrepreneurial innovation. And sometimes the darkest times the most difficult times are actually one of the most powerful actually forcing innovation and forcing new ideas. I mean, you know, right now, I will guarantee that every single person listening to this podcast is having to go cold turkey on a high touch business model. So a lot of us used to pride ourselves in getting in front of our customers face to face, events, visits, dinners, lunches, I’m losing weight the left you know, I’m not eating a business lunch for about three weeks has been great. my waistline, Adam. But I look at it and go, we’ve had to go cold turkey because right now, we’re in lockdown over here in London, there is no touch. We’re not allowed out. Right. So what’s happening is businesses are having to go digital in the space of two weeks. I mean, we’ve gone from high touch low tech to no touch high tech in the space of two weeks. Right. And I think it’s just a really interesting thing that in the end the businesses that come out of this, and will win in the next season beyond this, I think of those who will learn the lessons again, how do I leverage high tech, and therefore what is the premium high touch that I can put back in again, because I think we will probably get away with doing less touch, and more tech, in that balance of the feature. I’m personally hugely excited by, in many ways. The learning for me again, What does my world look like, in the new world that is coming the other side of the world won’t be the same again, this is not a small thing. I mean, you canonically it will be a huge challenge. But a lot of people are asking, Well, why do I have offices? Or, you know, why am I putting together an event for thousand people to come? When actually we’re doing it online? digitally? Yeah. And actually, people have enjoyed it just as much and it didn’t cost me 250 grand to put on. So there’s so much innovation, but I have sympathy in the sense that, you know, this is what I call that the luxury of self actualization. And when you’re in Maslow’s hierarchy of need, which is I need some money to pay the bills or just to keep the lights on, then in some ways, the reality is you may well have to leverage some of that relational capital is the difference. If you’re a transactional person, people will only transact with you, and they will any do it if it’s advantageous to both parties, right? If you’ve established long relational trust and influence somebody, you can actually go to them right now and go. How are you doing? And they’ll go, we’re doing right. Okay. I could really do with you buying some of these right now. Is there any way you could do something because I’m struggling in relationship, you will be amazed at what is possible when you’ve actually been relationship significant in someone’s life. Is anybody isn’t there? If if it’s just been transactional, because they’re doing something that only occurs in relationship, not in transaction? Yeah.

Adam G. Force 32:33

Yeah. I love it. Yeah, well, it’s it is I think these are a lot of great points. And, you know, as we continue to evolve, yeah, this is a major shift. And we talked earlier just about how it’s kind of, you know, pushing people out of their comfort zones, and it’s kind of accelerating change, you know, which is I always find to be fascinating, and I see it as a positive thing at the same time. While Yes, the virus that we’re going through is a bad thing, but the change That we are all embracing is I think, exciting.

Steve Cockram 33:04

There. I think that’s the reason why we’re entrepreneurs that we always see, we usually go through that, like we need, we probably had a moment of fear about two or three weeks ago when we weren’t Okay, how are we going to what’s going to happen? Yeah. And very quickly, you pivot and go, yes, we need a survive strategy. But what’s our thrive strategy in the midst of the storm? And that’s the kind of, that’s the thing, which I think entrepreneurs are so adaptable, they’re agile, they kind of turn quite quickly. And as always, cash is king. And you need a certain amount of liquidity to work, but the agility of the small is often an advantage in times like this so true.

Adam G. Force 33:44

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s and you’re right. I mean, we’re problem solvers. And that’s the way you got to look at it. It’s just another problem like solving any other problem for people. Right? So it’s really no different at this point. You just gotta be willing to adapt to it and understand it.

Steve Cockram 33:59

Yes, indeed

Adam G. Force 34:01

Listen, let’s give a shout out. I know you also had a really great book I want to make sure people are aware of in case you want to check that out as a first touch for learning more about what you have to say and digging deeper. So this is your third book. I don’t know I can’t remember who it was that you partnered with looked like he had a partner off there but yeah, hundred army.

Steve Cockram 34:20

That’s right, Jeremy and I, we basically co authored everything we do within giant and this was really our manifesto on leadership academy. And when I talked about the thing about the influence is more valuable than positional power. How do you grow influence? How do you be somebody that people want to follow not have to follow? And a lot of the practical visual tools I talked about, I think there might be 20 of them in the book. So that’s for those who love to read, but there aren’t many you love to read by the way and then you will books are really marketing. And they’re really credibility. The fact that you know, we’re a tight we’re a best selling book. Wiley as a New York publisher took our content. That’s usually a credibility, I would say it’s more likely that the people listening I’d love it if they weren’t read the book, because that would get there, the deepest thing we have. But as I said, there are ways in which you can, you can have fun playing with what we’ve created. And in some ways at a time when people are stuck at home, having a having a platform where you can work on who you are, and really develop that self awareness piece. So if you go to giant.tv, backslash BB, and put in your information, that gives you a free month. And what I’d encourage you to do is if you know your land, it’ll guide you, but I would encourage you if you want to the one thing that I say is go to the assessments app and take the five voices assessment that will give you a personality read. And as I said, if you click on the link there, there’s actually a coaching series designed for each individual, the way they’re wired by people who are wired like they are and so seeing different videos talking about what do you bring your best? How do you lead a vasectomy? What’s the things that you undermine your influence with? How do you do work life balance. So basically everything we thought the 15 key issues that we wanted all leaders to address are there. And they’re there for all 16 of the different personality voice combinations. So that’s the thing, which if that’s free, if you want to buy a book, then that’s wonderful, because that feeds my family. But honestly, the free on giant is probably the best place to go. And there’s a whole whole ream of resources that we filmed in the last few weeks about remote teams. How do you how do you lead from home? You know, even that was just created because it was live or what people needed. So join.tv backslash BB gets you a free month on the platform with us. So there we go.

Adam G. Force 36:48

Great. All right. Well, there you have it, guys. You could check that out for free for a month and explore you can check out the book if you’re a reader. Lots of valuable information come from a lot of experience and you know, good conversation. Steve, I appreciate your time today. Oh,

Steve Cockram 37:02

Adam. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you for being a great

Adam G. Force 37:04

interview. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play, or visit Change Creator mag. com. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Dan Hill: How to Read Facial Expressions for Business Success

Listen to our exclusive interview with Dan Hill:

What if you could get more information beyond what a potential customer was saying to you, to better understand how to navigate the conversation for a sale? Well, expert Dan Hill, talks to us today about reading facial expressions to do just that!!

Dan Hill, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized expert on the role of emotions in politics, business, sports, and popular culture, and has spoken to audiences in over 25 countries. To capture and quantify emotions, Dan pioneered the use of facial coding (the analysis of facial expressions) in market research starting in 1998 and his company, Sensory Logic, Inc., has done work for over half of the world’s top 100 consumer-oriented, B2C companies. Dan has received seven U.S. patents related to facial coding and is also a certified Facial Action Coding System (FACS) practitioner.

Dan’s latest books consist of Famous Faces Decoded: A Guidebook for Reading Others; Two Cheers for Democracy: How Emotions Drive Leadership Style; and First Blush: People’s Intuitive Reactions to Famous Art. His earlier, business books include: About Face: The Secrets of Emotionally Effective Advertising; and Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success, which was chosen by Advertising Age as one of the top ten must-read books of 2009 and features a foreword by Sam Simon, co-creator of The Simpsons.

In 2014, Dan received front-page coverage in The New York Times for his work with professional and NCAA Division 1 sports teams. Other media coverage has ranged from TV appearances on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Bloomberg TV, CNBC, CNN, C-Span, ESPN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC’s “The Today Show,” PBS, and The Tennis Channel, to print and digital coverage in Allure, China Forbes, Cosmopolitan, Fast Company, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, Time, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. Dan was educated at St. Olaf College, Oxford University, Brown University, and Rutgers University. Along with his wife, Karen Bernthal, he nowadays splits his time between St. Paul, Minnesota and Palm Desert, California.

Ready to supercharge your marketing?

Learn more about Dan and his work at > https://emotionswizard.com/

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. If you missed the last episode, it was with Steve Cochran, who is a rock star in the field of leadership. And the episode is about becoming a leader that people want to follow. This is a great episode with a ton of insights. You guys want to swing back and check that out if you haven’t already caught it. And the one before that guys don’t miss it was with Russell Brunson, the founder of clickfunnels. We brought him back on the show for a second interview. And we talked about his new book, Traffic Secrets and how to get tons of traffic to your funnel, right? We all need traffic for our businesses. So great episode, great insights. Don’t miss that one either. Today we’re going to be talking with Dan Hill. Dan Hill is a Specialized expert when it comes to facial recognition, right. So, essentially, he’s pioneered this business use the use of facial deep like coding to capture and quantify these emotional dynamics, such a powerful and interesting skill set, right. So, I mean, he is basically challenged most conventional marketing research completely. He has landed over 50% of the world’s top 100 b2b companies as clients. And he’s going to go through some really cool, just insights that will be helpful for you. And he’s an author of this book. It’s called famous faces decoded. And he goes through all these really cool examples of what what what information you get from the facial expressions of different people. And you can imagine how powerful that is Because so much is said through body language and facial recognition versus just the words that we use. And this is pretty powerful when it comes to marketing and different things like that sales calls and stuff. So very valuable skill set. And we highly recommend checking that out. So stay tuned for that conversation. He’s going to share some of those secrets and tips and all that good stuff. If you guys haven’t been by Change Creator calm in a while, check it out. We have lots of fresh content up there and you can get on the waitlist for the captivate method program. We’ve been having such an amazing time in that program with everybody. There’s a ton of coaching live calls our program that you go through, and it’s all about using storytelling to really supercharge your marketing and apply it to your business right so you can really start building trust but get consistent sales right you are building a sales system. If that sounds like something that you need or looking for right now just go to Change Creator calm and from the homepage, you’ll be able to get on the waitlist and check out the next masterclass that will teach you about what this is all about lots of good insights, and it’ll show you how the captivate method can help you so you can decide if you want to become part of this program or not. Alright guys, we’re going to jump into this conversation with Dan and just see what he has to say about decoding different facial expressions. Okay, show me the heat. Hey, Dan, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How you doing today, buddy?

Dan Hill 03:29

I am doing good. Thanks, Adam.

Adam G. Force 03:31

Yeah, thanks for being here. And you have such a unique background always. I think it’s unique and I think it’s kind of special. So I’m excited to dig into it. Because you know, as entrepreneurs here in the social impact world, you know, we really put a lot into the stories that we tell and to demonstrate, you know, things going on with our missions and our business and our products and all that good stuff, and kind of applying what you have from the visual stuff. endpoint, you know, facial expressions and emotions and things like that. I think it’s such a great layer today, especially as we do more and more visual communication and things on the digital front. So if you can just give us a little bit of background about kind of like where you are today. And then just a little background on how you got there. In a nutshell, that would be helpful just so we can ground everybody.

Dan Hill 04:21

Sure. So I run a company called sensory logic. We were the pioneers on bringing facial coding into the business space. But my mission was to frankly humanize business. There’s a wonderful quote that says that our two currencies, dollars and emotions, and I was interested in the intersection of the two. Over the 20 years we’ve managed to do work for more than half the world’s top 100 b2c companies. Yeah, so that’s cool, but I just continued like to push it out and figure out new ways and new applications. So I veered into being a political pundit. I’ve used it in professional sports, as well as business so great things emotions, just apply around Yeah,

Adam G. Force 05:01

that’s interesting. And so I guess what are some of the ways you’ve seen the Can you give us some an example or two, this in action, right? Is there any story you could tell that might demonstrate this kind of like facial recognition? application?

Dan Hill 05:19

Sure, I’ll do a really kind of unusual one from the world of politics. So in 2012, I worked on the Mexican presidential race. They only have one debate. I watched 25 people in a room live, and then I coded additional rooms. All the time I ever did a client presentation at four in the morning, when I got done and ran all the stats, they threw me in a limo that took me to party headquarters. I gave them the presentation, I said, the socialist who, by the way is Obrador, who’s now the president of Mexico. I said, that guy’s gonna search the person you’re concentrating on isn’t gonna go anywhere. I got done. The guy said, you’re wrong, Mr. Hill. In fact, he dead wrong. He said, You don’t know the country. You don’t know the issues. You Don’t even know Spanish. And I said yes. But I know what I saw in the voters face, and they lit up when he was speaking. And that’s the person should go after. In the end, I was off by less than one percentage point on the voting results. ad was dead right? Not dead wrong.

Adam G. Force 06:18

And that was based on reading the audience’s

Dan Hill 06:23

reactions. Yeah, their facial expressions while watching the one and only presidential debate that was held.

Adam G. Force 06:29

So how do we start thinking about this as entrepreneurs who are trying to you know, share stories get people to join us on our mission, right to be part of what we’re doing as a customer and how have you seen this come into play? Obviously, there’s all kinds of facial recognition technology and things happening but I mean, is there a sales calls like we’re like face to face over video right now and any just thoughts on how a young entrepreneur today can start thinking about this and applying or understanding it better?

Dan Hill 07:02

Sure. It’s absolutely vital. And it’s a very useful skill in doing sales. Yeah, I mean, it could be to, you know, venture capitalists that you’re pitching, but ultimately is gonna be day in day out to your customers. And it could be in person, it could be via zoom or Skype or Facebook, live chat. There’s all sorts of possibilities how this could apply. So facial coding essentially is seven core emotions revealed through 23 expressions. So let’s put it in a strictly business context. The emotion you absolutely do not want to see during your presentation and pitch in conversation with a VC or the sales prospect is contempt. contempt is the corner of the mouth. Excuse me, the corner of the mouth lifts up and out in a smirk. They give snidely whiplash the old cartoon character. Yeah, that that is contempt personified. It means I don’t trust you. I don’t respect you. I find you beneath me. This is the most reliable in the case that our marriage will fail. So guess what, it doesn’t work so well, in business either. If trust is the emotion of business contempt as its opposite, so that’s, that’s one emotion. Absolutely. But it’s a fairly rare emotion. Fortunately enough in business as in life. A really common emotion, on the other hand is anger. Now, it could be that you’re trying to sell them too hard. You’re trying to sell them too fast. If it’s too fast, you might confuse them actually, if you get a vertical wrinkle between the eyebrows, they’re pulling down together. Yeah, that could be concentrating. But then again, it could be like, I feel like I’m drinking through a firehose, and they’re just they’re just not liking it. You could be selling the wrong way. I remember one time I was up in Canada in Toronto, yeah. And I was trying to basically dislodge the incumbent solution so that I could get some of the money I guess, out of their budget. Yeah. And at one point, I saw that his lips pressed together and they press together so hard, there was a bolt below the middle of the lower lip. Which is a pretty intense version of anger. And I thought I went oh my god, that was a misstep. And I tried to you know, I do it come from a different angle, kind of semi apologize without, you know, overtly apologizing. He had it worked. I said to myself, this is over. And it was he did not take the follow up call did not now, I will it was over an hour. So you don’t really want to get there the lives press together a little bit, but without the Bulge. You can probably recover from that, but not the one I saw. Well, those are those are two key emotions, but I can certainly go through others.

Adam G. Force 09:33

Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, because you know, we have people here who are in our audience that are coaches or they have high ticket offers. So sometimes the sales funnel does have that phone call touchpoint. Right. Oh, let’s have a strategy session, we’ll kick off our relationship, we’ll have a call and and then you’re going to try to sell them on the high ticket offer. And I think this stuff comes into play. And even I think even in marker research that we’re Doing right like getting feedback hearing from people, you can start getting a sense, right and a read about, like how they really felt about something. Because I feel like sometimes people don’t want to share honest feedback because they’re like, Oh, I don’t want to I don’t want to be a jerk or I don’t want to like hurt their feelings. So they say things and it’s a guy. They give me the real truth here, you know?

Dan Hill 10:21

Oh, absolutely. There’s a wonderful story. Many years ago in New York Magazine, this guy was paying his rent in Manhattan, going to focus groups raise his hand, saying positive stuff. And finally, one time he offered a negative comment, and he got disinvited to all the future focus groups. But yes, they are way too given to just giving you the happy talk, and the high five and all of that, and it doesn’t correlate to what actually happens eventually. I mean, if you’ve never been lied to in life, Adam, you are either really lucky or you’re not paying attention. And market research as it’s historically done doesn’t really work all that well because of the lip service factor. So it’s a great chance to know whether your customers are on board. And another one that applies here besides the smirking contempt, and the anger is fear, like, that offers a little too weird. You’re advertisings off base, I don’t really buy into that message. People go to fear because they’re not comfortable. You can’t really sell the people who are afraid because they freeze and freeze means are not going to embrace your offer, they’re not going to step forward and make it happen.

Adam G. Force 11:30

So what a great sales person be able to see okay, cuz like you get on a call, and they’re gonna be like, okay, and if they have that fear, they might say, you might be able to see it in their face or the way that they’re like, oh, maybe I don’t know, like doing their their body posture and facial expressions. And they might say, Well, I don’t know, I gotta go talk to my wife or my husband before I do anything or I gotta go. And it’s like, is the great salesperson able to help them kind of overcome that fear in the moment there?

Dan Hill 12:01

Well, you have to try and I, and I think a really great thing is happiness. You just had this big smile, which people can see if not, you know, other than on the audio. But happiness is not a trivial emotion. Because happiness, the studies show means you embrace, you open up your code into consideration. So it can be a joke, something to lighten the mood to keep them with you, for most people love to be entertained. So if you can keep the connection rather than I’ll be back to you because back to you means I’m out of here. I’m out of here more times than not. So. And another thing about happiness is it there are studies to show that a happy person brainstorm superior solutions more quickly. Okay, so keep them in the conversation. Make them come back. Emotions are contagious. If they’re laughing and you’re laughing that’s a much better place to be so don’t give up Don’t get you know, frozen in fear yourself. Yeah, I would say Try have some ready made jokes or personal anecdotes. People also enjoy hearing them, you know, hearing your speaker put themselves down a little bit, you know, a little bit of self depreciation never as bad because they’re so used to the salesperson to say, it’s great. It’s great. It’s great. Yeah, say, well, it’s pretty great. Here’s a wrinkle, we’re still working out, could create a lot more trust than just glad handing something.

Adam G. Force 13:23

You know, I’ve noticed that too, because I’m usually pretty honest with people. And I’ll say, you know, certain things like that, and I have noticed that the conversation will get stronger as those types of comments are made, or stories are told about relatable failures, right? So they feel like oh, like, it’s not just me, like you’ve been there too. Right? And that tends to kind of create a bond of trust, like you mentioned, that’s a little bit stronger. So I’ve definitely noticed that,

Dan Hill 13:53

ya know, you want commonalities. They’re really going to a segment go talk to my wife about it. I might want to say, Well, why don’t you meet each other Just anything to keep them talking and then maybe you’re gonna have some little tidbit that comes out that you can relate to and create a story. And now people have connected over the stories. I mean, they’re not dumb in Hollywood, how do you pitch something they say, but what’s the story?

Adam G. Force 14:14

Man? That’s Yeah,

Dan Hill 14:15

and and stories work, and they bond and we have a narrative and we have narrative suspense. We want to know how it turns out. So stories are a good place to go off when I pitched I shouldn’t have started my company and I didn’t have the track record and the clients and all those sweet things. I just told them the mission of why I was doing this, where I came to how I discovered it, what were the aha moments? Again, they could sense my excitement. It gave me you know, some veracity that I was, you know, daring to make that step out into this new world. Yeah,

Adam G. Force 14:45

yeah. That makes a big difference. I mean, I’ve seen people like Maggie join, she runs this company called blink now and she was telling me her story over an interview like this and she helps all these children in Uganda. I think it was Uganda and Maybe it was Nepal. I can’t remember now it’s been a while. But long story short, she, you know, when visited, she wanted to help these kids out there she was still in high school all she had was like babysitting money and a couple bucks. And so she wanted to help this one girl get placed in a home and like all this stuff, so she needed about $5,000 or something. Anyway, she spoke to a woman who was like, man, I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to pull off what you’re saying. But I really like love what you’re saying in the passion and your eyes and that like, but she’s like, I’m gonna, whatever money you put into this business, I will match that and she got her first round of funding that way. So if she had 5000 this person put 5000 and now she’s a mom to like, 50 children out there. She’s building schools. She’s putting them in homes like it’s just blown up. But it started with her just saying I don’t have anything. I have this passion. I have a vision. Here’s why. Here’s what it is. And the story is what got her that first step of funding.

Dan Hill 16:00

Sure, well, passion cells that your emotions you express on your face reveals that you care that you’re involved. There’s a wonderful line from the poet, William Blake who said, still waters breed pestilence. People, people want to see something happening moving going on. Yeah, we don’t like to talk to a brick wall. So another application, quite honestly, a facial coding is also your employees, your first hires, if you’re an entrepreneur, your partner, that’s vital because you don’t have the spare access of a big corporation where half the workforce is disengaged, right? You know, they might be able to keep going. Every hire matters. You really want an esprit de corps, you need to talk to them, you need to figure out who they are you want to hire, right? So all of these emotions matter. So let’s go to another one. sadness. Yeah, sadness has a sense of disappointment, or a sense of loneliness or feeling for Lorne or it’s hopeless. So you don’t want your staff feeling hopeless. You got to get them to a different space. They may not tell you, they’re just engaged, they may not tell you that they doubt this is gonna work. But if you see the corners of their mouth go down, you know, kind of like a rodeo clown was taped. That’s a good sign. Even more reliable is with the cheeks kind of pull up and out. It’s a wince. They give Charlie Chaplin and all the old silent movies when he’s the tramp. Yeah, that Charlie Chaplin, wincing smile, it’s much more sadness that it is a smile. If you see either one of those two from somebody, or the inner eyebrows, in this case, pull up and up, together and upward. That is also a sign of sadness. So that’s not what you want. So now in your customer, but you really don’t want an employee because sadness tends to slow us down. And as an entrepreneur, what do you need? Faster, faster?

Adam G. Force 17:48

Yeah. So I mean, it sounds like these are emotions that we’re all aware of, and it becomes important in these conversations, especially with high ticket sales and things To start consciously paying attention to facial expressions that will express those emotions without them saying it right. So you’re giving cues like the eyebrows, the cheeks. And so these are all the things to be aware of like, if you’re not aware of them, then you won’t be able to read people.

Dan Hill 18:19

Yeah, now there’s, ya know, there’s there’s a key study at UCLA. Yeah, we’re looking at what it calls ambiguous moments, including sales pitches. And what they find in those situations that only about 8% of the true communication comes from the words 55% comes from the face and 38% from the voice. So you’re spending all your time picking out your talking points, and your verbal rebuttals. And what you should really be doing is worrying about the feeling points, because the feeling points are much more likely to loot lead to the sale or the lack of a sale. I think of them as the speed bumps. So you pick up the signal. This is the emotion, what does it mean? What are the likely triggers and then how am I going to pivot Do you deal with it either directly or indirectly as the case may be?

Adam G. Force 19:04

Hmm, that’s interesting. And and you know, and that’s beautiful thing, because if you can read the cues, but then you also understand you have certain sales like stories, things to help people, like it’s not to manipulate and get a sale it is to help demonstrate the points that you have. So people can be clear, right? It’s like effective communication. So you read them, pick up the cues, and then you can share the appropriate information that will help them overcome a fear, overcome an objection, whatever it might be, right?

Dan Hill 19:34

Yeah, as an entrepreneur, I mean, I’ve been one so you have to be adept. You have to be flexible and adjust in the moment. The face is the only place in the body where the muscles attach right to the skin. Yeah, it is quick, real time data, which is really cool. It’s that instantaneous feedback way beyond what everyone’s gonna be prepared to tell you because they’re being polite or they don’t care and so forth. Think back to Jackie Robbins. Somebody came in with the Dodgers. Yeah. I mean, they knew given the situation and the racism and all that, that he had to be super prepared. So they took them through scenario after scenario scenario. So when I started my company exactly what you’re suggesting, what are my rebuttals? What is the story? I’m going to bring in the example I’m going to bring in the joke I’m going to us, you know, you have to be, you know, fly in the moment, but it doesn’t hurt to have some preparation going into it.

Adam G. Force 20:25

Yeah, absolutely. That’s pretty interesting. I love these connections. It’s like just another layer of knowledge that you can use to better understand the person that you’re talking to. I mean, it seems like a more authentic base of knowledge than the words coming out of their mouth,

Dan Hill 20:43

saying, Oh, absolutely. And people aren’t always very articulate, or they fall silent and just let you kind of walk the plank, you know, they’re not going to invest. I remember one time I was pitching for a project for Toyota. And I do who is the key person in their corner of the room? Yeah. He started he started not paying attention. So I just left my schpeel go and I was kind of doing it but racking my brain I came up with something that I thought we hid his attention. I don’t remember what it was. But instantly he stopped looking at his iPad and back to me he came and I got the sale I got the project. Yeah, I love that.

Adam G. Force 21:18

This is good. I like this. So what are now what are what are the cues that you look for when you know maybe someone is starting to be a believer and they’re like excited about what you’re doing? But you know, like so what are the positive cues?

Dan Hill 21:36

Sure, well, the first one is surprised because surprise is also not a trivial emotion. Your eyes go wider. Your eyebrows lift your it’s literally allow you to expand your field of vision. It’s amazing how simple and basic you know, organic, a lot of these signals are surprises great because what do you need people’s attention. So they are metaphorically seeing more taking in more. Now you’ve really got them and you have a chance to, you know, loop them in. What you want to follow with the course is happiness because surprise is almost like a pre emotion. I can get a new car for Christmas, or I can have a new car accident, you know which one is going to be? Well, I’d like to sell on the first one. So that means that you want to get some smile to go along either simultaneously or immediately after that bout of surprise. Now there are different levels of happiness quite honestly, in my business, I report on four of them. A true smile is when the twinkle in the eye happens the muscle around the eye tightens, and that’s a true smile. You can take that one to the bank, a really weak smile that’s unilateral. It’s kind of like that’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard. At least you tried to humor me. So you kind of like you got a toehold you you’ve landed at Norma de but you’re still on the beach. The Germans are still shooting. You are not likely to go to the bank. When I call it accepted smile, you need to move it up to the higher level.

Adam G. Force 23:04

Yeah, yeah. I love that. So I mean, now I know you’ve written several books. And are they I did not get a chance to look up all the different books you have. But what’s the most recent? And are they going deeper on these topics?

Dan Hill 23:19

Yeah, the most important book for this purpose would be called famous faces to coded a guidebook for reading others. What I did is I offered up the secret sauce. I told you what the 23 expressions are. I told you what kind of triggers happen, how you can address them. So I gave all of this but I also gave it in the context of celebrities because we we know their stories, and it’s fun to look at their photographs. Sometimes you think you know these people, they’re rock stars or movie stars, media moguls, CEOs, politicians. You think you know them and in many cases you don’t. Part of the book is I gave people a chance I said, What do you think is the seat signature emotion of this elaborate. And they were right 35% of the time, what do you show

Adam G. Force 24:03

you show pictures?

Dan Hill 24:05

I show pictures to people. I said, What do you think is going on? And then I, you know, figured out it from my analysis, what was really the true signature emotion of people. As George Orwell said, By the age of 50, a man has the face he deserves. We do have muscle memory, we do have ADD patterns, and they give away how we react. Before I could get there, Microsoft actually submitted a patent based on the fact that emotions are contagious. And if you can show someone back an emotion that they relate to that they show a lot, they’ll buy in the relate to it really easily. So frankly, one of the great things you can do in a business meeting is get them to talk about the problem they have. Yeah, and then you can empathize with their problem. And their problem is going to invoke negative emotions. So you can talk about how you were frustrated about something that didn’t work, or how you sold a bill of goods on something at some point in your life. Now you’re on the same side of the fence. You Both had our problems, but now you’re gonna bring them over to your side of the fence. And yeah,

Adam G. Force 25:03

here’s the opportunity now so I relate to the pain I know what you’re going through. When you feel this way, I know that these things happen, right, these symptoms of that challenge, and then you can share the opportunity to to alleviate that pain. Right? Yeah,

Dan Hill 25:17

take them from pain to game. But I I think that book is the key one if they want a background on the role of emotions in business, I wrote something called emotion omics, which actually features a foreword by Sam Simon, the CO creator of The Simpsons. There are a lot of business books with a foreword by somebody who helped create the Simpsons, because I was taking a more humane or more emotional and frankly, I wasn’t, you know, averse to putting in a few jokes in the book as well. Sure.

Adam G. Force 25:46

Yeah. I love that. Now, tell me what was that first book that you mentioned that you had all the examples and stuff?

Dan Hill 25:53

Sure, fake. Famous faces decoded. A guidebook for reading others 173 celebrities in the course of the book.

Adam G. Force 26:02

There you go, guys. So as you’re listening here, you could check that out I think Dan’s book on that it’s gonna be super fun, but also powerful. So combining that with our storytelling strategies for marketing and understanding how to read people, this is going to give you cues to use the stories and help people get clear. So you can really address people appropriately based on their, their authentic feelings, and not what they tell you.

Dan Hill 26:29

Exactly.

Adam G. Force 26:30

I love it, Dan, appreciate it. I want to give a shout out to like how do people learn more about what you’re doing? Where do they go and all that good stuff.

Dan Hill 26:40

Probably the easiest thing is is the old website, the three W’s and then Dan Hill dot sensory logic.com. Sensory as in your five senses as in, you should lift your visual IQ and pay more attention to the townspeople. People are giving away

Adam G. Force 26:58

Yeah, love it. Awesome, this is really valuable information. And I appreciate you sharing it. It’s it’s kind of like it’s actually sparked a whole fresh perspective for me. Like you, you don’t necessarily consciously think about these things on calls and, you know, we get into these different scenarios with prospects, right clients who, and you just, you know, you’re thinking about how to talk to them. But these cues they think can just give such a, an additional layer of clarity to help you be to say the right things, you know,

Dan Hill 27:33

Oh, absolutely. I remember when I was in corporate life, we had someone come in and pitch us. They spent the first 25 minutes non stop telling us about their offer and how great they were. They never asked us what our problems were. They didn’t even remember to ask us why we hit invited them. In my case, they completely lost sight of that they made no personal connection whatsoever. I mean, there are so many meetings where honestly, it’s probably over on based on the first five minutes, which has nothing to do with the formal pitch, it’s all about making a connection and related to the person. Yeah, you know, Where are they from? Where did they grow up? Just you’re trying to find some avenue to commonality

Adam G. Force 28:12

love that. It’s so smart. You gotta you gotta walk before you run and build the rapport right?

Dan Hill 28:18

Yeah, I mean, we bought Yeah, we buy from someone we like we do not tend to buy from people we dislike. Other there are other options and very rarely does someone have a entirely or truly differentiated offer. You need the combination of a good offer that you’re going to stand behind that they believe in you. Yeah. And and that you get who they are and what their problem is. You got to learn to squat. You got to personalize it.

Adam G. Force 28:41

Yeah. My co founder, Amy and I call it like, we are on the same page. Dare we say it’s the know like trust factor. You guys, it’s the What’s his name? Geez, I can’t remember he’s one of the merchandising, the heads of merchandising over at Costco, Mike perot, I think his name is and he was In a book, and he was telling people like, when he gets all these companies, let’s say it’s laundry detergent, there’s 100 companies with laundry detergent, I want to distribute it through Costco, he can’t do them all, he has to make a decision. And he goes, it’s not I don’t make a decision based on price or like, you know, certain features or whatever. It’s who I know, like and trust the most. And so that’s who he goes with, right? And so these things that you’re talking about, it’s so important for these sales situations. And that’s where storytelling comes in. And now our facial cues.

Dan Hill 29:30

Yeah, no and but believe the story and that was what’s going to hook us in the facts. Everyone knows you can manipulate the facts and work the statistic and put it out there. And then that’s not personal. Yeah, I mean, you’re not going to trust a fact nearly as much as you’re going to trust the story. And the storyteller.

Adam G. Force 29:49

I love it. I think that’s a good one for us to wrap up on Dan. I appreciate your time today. You guys got the website. We’ll have it in the show notes and all that good stuff and you can check out Books, especially the one famous facing faces decoded, right?

Dan Hill 30:05

famous faces decoded. Yes, indeed.

Adam G. Force 30:07

Yes. Perfect. All right, Dan, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

Dan Hill 30:11

I had a good time. Thank you, Adam.

Adam G. Force 30:13

That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag Comm. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Jim Lawless: Overcoming Fear and Operating With Risk

Listen to our exclusive interview with Jim Lawless:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

What if you could start doing things that you never thought you could do? How would your life and business change? In this episode, we speak with a top-ranking expert about overcoming fear and operating with risk so you can break new boundaries.

Jim Lawless is the elite team coach of choice for many senior leadership teams around the world. He has been the architect of high performance and change in global organizations, governments, and Olympic teams for two decades. Ranked #6 globally, #1 outside of the USA, by Global Gurus in their 2020 ranking of motivational speakers, Jim has inspired and educated over half a million people on five continents through his mindset-shifting keynotes and workshops and many more through his bestselling book, ‘Taming Tigers’ (Penguin Random House). He delivers in business but also tests his frameworks personally and in extreme settings, giving him unparalleled credibility with his audience. Jim used ‘Taming Tigers’ to become a televised jockey within a year of starting to ride and to become Britain’s deepest Freediver in just 8 months of training. Both whilst delivering his day job (a key element of change). Jim was elected a fellow of the UK’s Royal Society for the Arts in recognition of his writing on culture and change.

Learn more about Jim and his work at: https://www.jimlawless.com/

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:10

Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. I hope everybody’s doing well and making out okay during all these crazy times with the political unrest and the Coronavirus. We are definitely living through some important times in history here. So if you missed the last episode of the show, it was with Dan Hill. This was a really unique and interesting conversation. We spoke about reading facial expressions. This is really telling it’s pretty powerful. So Dan Hill also wrote the book famous faces decoded. So we kind of dive into all this really interesting stuff and he gives lots of tips for you to keep an eye out. So when you’re on those sales calls, do you have something to think about? Okay, and that brings us to our next guest, we’re gonna be talking today. We with Jim lawless, and he’s actually a top level, or I should say, top ranking team coach of choice for a lot of senior leadership teams around the world. And he’s been, you know, the designer of high performance and change in global organizations, governments Olympic teams for two decades now, which is a pretty darn long time. So he’s been doing this for a while, has a lot of experience. He’s actually ranked number six globally and number one outside of the US by global gurus in their 2020 ranking of motivational speakers, which is pretty cool. And he’s really inspired a ton of people around the world, right? And through his workshops, and keynote, he does a lot of talks and things like that. But he also has a best selling book called taming tigers. And that’s something you might want to check out. He’s got a lot of great insights. Today we’re going to be talking with Jim about overcoming fear and how to operate with risk. All right, and he has a lot of interesting background because he became like a free diver and This is some it’s a really interesting sport. And I haven’t ever spoken anybody who has done something like this but it is talking about overcoming fear. I mean going and through that process is really it’s it’s something that not a lot of people can really do. So we’re going to dive into lots of different dynamics here and and tackle this topic of fear. And one key thing we noticed with a lot of people when it comes to fear that holds them back, they will say things like, I’m not ready yet because or, you know, my business isn’t ready yet because and they’re not they’re not ready. What they’re saying is they’re not ready to invest in something for themselves for themselves, and a lot of times that is, that is just a sign that you are making up reasons to avoid the risk, right? You don’t believe in what you’re doing enough to actually move forward. And I say this because it is when you say you’re not ready. That is Not a circumstantial thing, it is a decision, you’re deciding that you’re not ready. It’s not the situation or the circumstance, it’s actually the decision. So when we’re not getting the results we need for our business, that’s not the time to hold back. That is the time to reach out for help. That is the time to get fresh perspective, because we have to kind of step into a new role of who we are, if we want to get where we want to go. And if we don’t know what that looks like, it’s really hard, there’s gonna be a lot of trial and error. So working with people who do know what it looks like, can help you get there a lot faster. We’ve noticed this with so many entrepreneurs who have disconnects. And we don’t want them to lose their businesses because we’re here to make a difference in the world here at Change Creator, right. So you know, when your messaging is not connecting with people, this is going to be a big problem. And so this is where we focus on with really supporting your business by putting storytelling at the heart of your marketing in an authentic way, right to really build trust. And finally, get those Consistent sales. So you can stop by you can get on our waitlist right now to enroll in the captivate method, you’ll get a chance to check out our masterclass, learn a ton more about it. I think you guys will have a lot of fun with it. And it’s gonna be super valuable because it’s not a course this is a program with a full coaching experience, right? So you can think of this as a mastermind. And it’s going to take you from point A to point B, way faster, and you’re going to be in a community of people who are your tribe, right? Alright guys, without further ado, let’s jump into this conversation with Jim lawless. Okay, show me that heat Hey, Jim, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

Jim Lawless 04:41

It was a great pleasure. I’m very well thank you very well.

Adam G. Force 04:44

Excellent, excellent. Um, you know, you have a pretty, pretty interesting and intense background from free diving to steering leadership as some of the biggest brands around the world. So give us a little bit of a snapshot of kind of like what’s going on in your life. world today and how you got there?

Jim Lawless 05:03

Sure, I qualified as a corporate lawyer, worked in the City of London doing mergers and acquisitions work. I left that world at about the age of 29. And I began to work in communications, and communications drew me in to change and change communications change drew me into speaking about that topic and studying it more deeply and then beginning to get really interested in the human, the human aspect of change, which I don’t think we’ve given very much attention to, to be quite honest, how we, how we ask people more and more to go into uncertainty and risk and to adapt at a pace that humans aren’t naturally equipped to adapt at. But we don’t ever teach the skill of adaptations. So I think we’re seeing a lot of issues come out from that my world. Working with that on the broadest sense, and then working with organizations and senior teams, and individuals to assist them come together and deliver change. Hmm.

Adam G. Force 06:13

So what kind of gap care? Do you think like you mentioned that we don’t teach certain things around adaptation and change? Can you give an example or two of the types of gaps that are missing and maybe how they start over how we start overcoming them?

Jim Lawless 06:28

Sure. So we’ve we’ve all been raised for the industrial age, to get it right first time to the satisfaction of an authority figure who can define right and I’ve got two daughters, ones aged six and ones aged 22. And don’t ask is a story for another day. And, and they’re both of course absolutely wonderful. My 22 year old now at university in the UK, studying biochemistry having been completed trained, trained to get it right first time to the satisfaction of a higher authority figure which she, she does admirably. She’s now having to adapt into into a different environment. And that’s causing her some interesting discussions. my six year old, she’s going to be trained in exactly the same way Get it right first time for the boss, but with the with swiping, and and digital tools to help her get it right. So whilst they might be digital natives, they’re not. They’re not in any way trained for a disruptive, uncertain age. They’re being trained in many ways, more than my generation was so going to school in the 80s, where there was still a good degree of risk and experimentation that was it was safe, impossible for us to undertake. So we are asking people to go into risk and uncertainty. That’s all that changes. And we are not teaching people to do that you are saying that’s the broad picture as I see it. Yeah. And and there are two sides to that. One is management and organizations creating impact. vironment where it is possible and safe. So we get into the buzz phrase of psychological safety, which is an important phrase as a how to managers do that in a world where they were told to be the boss bigger and make sure everyone got it right first time historically? And how does the individual who’s received no training, start taking risks when their jobs on the line and so we go around saying, But you mustn’t fear failure, embrace failure and fail faster, which I personally don’t have a lot of time for. In any event, but but it’s utterly meaningless when the big boss says that from a stage and somebody who’s going to get fired if they don’t hit target is listening, thinking but this doesn’t translate to the words that I that you require me to inhale. So we’ve got some real disconnects. Now, when it comes to them, what are we not teaching people what are the gaps, and even just the emotional awareness of what it feels like to go through change or what what is going to happen to the body when we missed it? The sensations we get, which are all fear and anxiety. When we leave this famous comfort zone, we mistake those for genuine, immediate threat. we’re unable to query ourselves and ask why is this happening? Why is my heart racing? How can I work through this situation alone or with others to understand me as a machine as I go through uncertainty, risk and change, which, for example, is a key task for the free diver. Man back to that, but that’s why it was fascinating to go to that work. So I went to horse racing to sit on a thoroughbred racehorse, so I could experiment with this within myself. Robin just just talked about your studying, but we don’t help people understand that process. Therefore they can’t control it. They can’t bring it back in and therefore they can’t go through change. Mm hmm.

Adam G. Force 09:46

Interesting. And I love that you just kind of defined it so simply changes the risk and uncertainty. What does it feel like and you know, as you were saying, that I’m like, so as people today, we have these I guess like these definitions in our mind, which, like you said, what you talk about on stage is not applying to the people and the reality that they live in. And it made me think about when we’re young, and I’m like, you know, we get up, we fall down as a toddler, we get up if we fail constantly, but we never think twice about that risk of falling down or getting up. We’re not afraid of it at that point. So it seems like it’s something that we’re taught over time, to fear risk and change is and it sounds like maybe you’re saying that this is this is the industrial thinking. So it it is it is through a process of how we learn and when we grow up. So is it Am I making sense? You know, what I’m saying like how we I don’t feel like we have those barriers when we’re young. Is that true? Or do you think we’ve always have that fear?

Jim Lawless 10:46

No, we don’t have those barriers when we’re young was, but we acquired them very early on. I was raised Catholic under a very strict school and So I learned to fear making mistakes very in my in my life and how to keep quiet and sit at the back and not put forward my own unique and innovative ideas on things. So so so we learned this early on I think as adults we have to have one not keen on the don’t fear of failure we take bets you know, we have to take bets and that can be a bet within an environment at work and I can I can negotiate with my boss in very real sense about like, I can try this new thing that you’re talking about, but it may have this consequence Are we okay with that boss? So we can we can define parameters of failure and agree the downside of the bet what happens if if we don’t pull this off? And, and we have to any innovative organization is having those conversations on an almost algorithmic level that senior exec level then then we, we in any area of change, we’re going to be placing these bets we have to assess downside either alone or with others or with spouses or with business partners or with boss it’s a downside acceptable we we proceed if it’s not we don’t and that’s why I get in into tangled who’s don’t fear failure and embrace it might be okay if if you’re if you’re a Silicon Valley billionaire me personally I’ve got I’ve got a young a young daughter and there’s that there’s a level of risk of failure beyond which I will not, I’m not willing to tolerate for good reason, you know so. So I think we we need to have adult conversations about what don’t fear failure means but I think we do learn it earlier. Early on, I think we have it in us within for good reason is an evolutionary force. That is that is asking us to resist change, change equals risk and uncertainty that equals danger to us. It’s an evolutionary wiring an ancient wiring that fires up and it does require our obedience, but it does not if we can understand it. Sorry, it requires our attention but it does not if we can understand it before. Find out obedience, we can override it. And when intellectually we believe and can see that that is a good thing to do. I don’t think we’re teaching people how to do that.

Adam G. Force 13:10

Yeah, I mean, and so, I mean, it sounds like you feel there’s probably just a shift in how we’re educating youth in order to be better prepared, I guess, to take on this stuff, because, you know, I think there’s a lot of, you know, fixing around the schools and stuff like that. So as we think about entrepreneurship, you know, we’re not really being taught to become our best self, per se and be creative. You know, one of the most popular TED Talks is how schools like you know, destroy creativity and kids, right? So it’s like, this sounds like there’s just every loose evolutionary shifts that are necessary to help people understand and I guess better embrace these types of things. Is that sound right?

Jim Lawless 13:57

Yeah, I think so. But But, but when Never too late to learn. I mean, I teach this in organizations and in a one hour keynote where I can set up the the basic concepts and constructs and and we’ll talk about really simple ideas like going to approach her a powerful or an attractive other human being and the and the emotions we go through just in facing about risk and uncertainty and consequences are of doing that which are totally manageable, but we don’t, we don’t want to tolerate them, and how we can look to override that risk of that fear of risk and still carry on with with that, with that task. If we decide that I mean very simple ways of helping people understand this emotional challenge what happens when we leave the comfort zone, we don’t even talk about it do we don’t we don’t have a name for that place. We say leave the comfort zone but we never say where you go or how to survive mapless without but it is totally mappable in terms of how we can negotiate and navigate. But I in an hour on the stage people are totally ofay with the principles and within Two hours of workshopping and planning next steps afterwards, they’ve got a plan, which is it doesn’t take long but we just don’t do it. We’ve always focused on the leadership community and got them to, to sort of mix up some metadata. Stephen Covey talks about sharpening swords it seems we’ve always made the the leadership arm that, that moves up and down stronger and stronger and is teaching how to drive change and tell people that icebergs have melted or that cheese has moved. And what we’ve never done is helped all those little teeth to sharpen you know, little people they use and the me’s, the cellular level of the organization to understand how they can each do the new stuff that we’re asking them to do. So instead of just scaring them evermore with these metaphors, why why can’t we help people to understand what how they can move to do things they’ve never done before, which is all that changes at a cellular cellular level in the organization.

Adam G. Force 15:58

Right, right. So Like the example you gave of approaching, you know, powerful or good looking, you know, person and you know, we all like clam up and get so nervous to like approach our guy or whatever. And really in that situation, it’s not like you’re risking your your life, you’re not risking all your money. It’s just like, and we still won’t even tolerate that fear of what rejection, right?

Jim Lawless 16:25

And that’s because the system, the process, the physical process that we never get taught about takes over doesn’t it, and you and I, and anyone listening immediately, if we had measuring equipment on now, our heart rate should be increasing just by the contemplation of this. And because we don’t understand the bet the consequences and why our system is reacting as it is, we move back, you just put your finger on it, that there’s nothing actually at risk here. There’s only three types of harm a human being can come to physical security, either Economic or, or reputational, of course, we’re facing reputational harm, which is why most people would rather rather go out and play a game of American football than then give a presentation, right? Because one’s physical damage written all over it. But however, the other has got reputational damage, which historically, of course, is much more dangerous to us or getting excluded from the community a long time ago was used seriously. So we do once we can understand what it is that our whole body and subconscious mind is, is protecting us from we can intellectually take the risk. So there’s a constant fight between the frontal cortex where the executive decision making the human ability to postpone gratification, to, to want to make a contribution to want to build, to leave legacy, all of that happening in the frontal cortex. All of that requires going into places of uncertainty and risk. And then we’ve got this massive evolutionary system saying don’t go there Adam and Eve. We can understand how to use that piece of kit and override it when necessary requires our attention, not our obedience, we can’t move forward. So, so so everything you described that is absolutely accurate. We don’t want to go and make that interaction, why what’s at risk? And how do I override my physical body, which is saying runaway runaway? Yeah.

Adam G. Force 18:20

And I mean, I, as an entrepreneur, there’s obviously an entire journey of unknown. So I mean, if you if you can’t, if you can’t figure this out, and you know, we always say take calculated risks, like to your point, there’s things you will tolerate that, you know, you have a family and stuff you have to concern yourself about. So you have a tolerance level for certain extreme extreme pneus of risk. And I think as entrepreneurs, I’m just trying to align this here because it’s like, well, we do have to put money in the machine and invest or take a chance on ourselves and believe in ourselves and there’s gonna be things that work out and things that don’t. And one of the things that has helped me overcome certain blocks over many years is really to stop looking at it and saying, Oh, this cost a lot. And I’m worried about this loss. And I started really just saying, What’s the return on the investment that I could get here? And just seeing, you know, is it worth it to me or not? And that has made a big shift for me. So I’m curious if you have any thoughts on the application of, you know, the types of fear we face as entrepreneurs, and some of the steps we can consider or think about so we can intellectually take the risk?

Jim Lawless 19:29

Yeah, sure. I, you know, we went into Nitty gritties, I guess earlier on so let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s come back up for a moment. I think before to address that. We, we, we hold the pen, we’re writing the story, the story of our lives, which will touch potentially millions, even if we don’t set up IBM still going to touch potentially, potentially millions of people. And, and we write that through our decisions and our actions and our results. Every day, what is the story that we want to write during what is a very brief I mean long enough to do great things but a relatively brief time we get in the words of Cat Stevens to dance on the planet and and so that that becomes I think the the driving the driving force for many of us who are entrepreneurs and and whilst I work in the business I do I produce widgets. I’m very much an entrepreneur and set up my own business many years ago. So So I that I think, is a driving force, what’s my contribution? What do I want to make? And we have to keep a sight of that. And then with that, we decide what what am I willing to tolerate in terms of risk along the way, and what am I willing to tolerate in terms of not Dunn’s? And this is really important because the flip side of taking a risk and doing something of course is not doing anything. What does that tack take me on what’s that dirt compass direction, what’s the destination of that if I don’t act and take the risk, and that’s something again, we can we can not take into into account as we live for the moment, I don’t know, the ins and outs of what’s happening in the United States at the moment with the risk of dating and this, this podcast by by going there but at the time of recording, we’re in the middle of it. In the UK big debates about how if we don’t, the cost of not intervening heavily in the economy is actually going to be far out we will multiply if we don’t, the cost will be bigger, in terms of the wreckage caused if we don’t take out loans and and try and preserve the economy through this period. So there’s always a cost both economically but also in terms of life possibility to not acting and then the other element which becomes really important in assessing this risk is Is our perception. And of course we sense the world and we have a perception of risk, according to that, so most of the, the inspirational slash self help literature goes to places like well, you know, never forget that they Walt Disney was sacked as journalists and told it never amounted to anything and Fred Astaire you know, can’t sing can’t act can dance a little and, and so we tend to try and tell stories to ourselves to remind, to remind ourselves that when we look at other great success stories, they didn’t start there. There were setbacks. So when we come to don’t feel failure, let’s let’s not fear failure that we have assessed as tolerable. And let’s, let’s take those risks that we have agreed the downside We will live with if it should come to pass, then that’s like really hard against it. Let’s work really hard and make things happen and move forward. But that’s let’s have those in mind. as entrepreneurs as we move forward, and I think one last thing is that we are in a rush at the moment, so everybody wants to admit it before they’ve paid their dues. And good luck to you. Good luck to you. But I’ve not found the shortcut. And I’m watching everybody do that. And I’m not seeing them having found the shortcut. And I know Mr. Zuckerberg, you know, got it right first time to Harvard or Stanford, I can’t remember was the Facebook Thank you. But but that hey, maybe there was a bit of luck in that. I don’t know. But so that’s that’s not going to be extrapolated across the population of entrepreneurs. And so we are going to take time and maybe we need to go back and pay our dues somewhere to learn the trade before we come out. I set up a retail shop I missed this chapter. When I came out of law. I thought I’ll set up a shop selling environmentally friendly goods to save the planet at the age of around 30 and I went bust real fast. I should have gone and worked in retail for a while. I didn’t know anything about it. I was just going out.

23:58

Yeah,

Adam G. Force 23:59

yeah. Jim, did I lose you?

Jim Lawless 24:06

I’m still him. Oh, oh, I think I pose for you.

Adam G. Force 24:11

This is laughing. No, it’s true. It’s, you know, don’t pay their dues. It is, you know, we hear this a lot, especially from early stage entrepreneurs who are getting started and, you know, they’re like, well, I don’t have the money for this or that I’m like, well, the reality is you will probably have to straddle two worlds for a while, or you know what I mean? Like, you’re gonna have to have a way to fund your ideas. And that means probably working another job, and then building your dream on the side until you can, you know, shift over. But we also like for me, just as an example, I tested out just like you like I started stuff for, like hemp water bottle business, trying to help with plastic pollution, or a rain forest advocacy group and all these different things. And I actually ended up doing a lot of volunteer work in order to get familiar because these were new fields. This is not where I had my corporate experience. And then I put my corporate experience which is digital marketing and media and it came out to Change Creator and that made life a lot easier when I wasn’t starting from scratch again completely I and it’s and it’s so… I will get 21 year olds writing to me saying I want to be a speaker and how should I do it and I said well give us give us a call and in 10 years and I’ll stay in touch in the meantime it gives a call in 10 years because because as you’re gonna have to have something to speak about and you know, I look back just as you as many other people empathize listening on the audio, the broadcast it back, I studied acting and I took lessons and I listened to comedians, obsessively in my car, about how they were crafting their material. I listen to people from Zig Ziglar to whoever else in terms of business speakers, and concepts that are being put across. And then I went and lift them on horseback being dumped at seven o’clock in the morning by a racehorse into the hedge, and then being screamed at by the trainer, and then I then I checked it on out under meters under the ocean, and then I started bringing it back into the corporate world. And that takes a bit of time, and you probably still hadn’t heard of me, but it’s gonna be Seth Godin or Anthony Robbins, and that’s fine. We’re all making a different contributions, we’ll make our different contributions but but those those days are often are often going to have to pay now that’s not to make it sound like some old guy making out that the only way to get ahead in life is discipline and hard work or that probably is true. It’s really to say as reassurance as reassurance It’s okay if you haven’t made it at a young age, and also give up with the with the lifestyle and I mean, it is that there are times when you just can’t do the lifestyle because, yeah, you’re not willing to invest the time to earn the money to do that. Because you’ve got a big dream to pursue. So if we are speaking at some any entrepreneur but potentially younger now if I’m going to take that back because I know I know lawyers who are my age who became lawyers with me who still tell me they can’t pursue their dreams because they can’t give up the big money so you know, you just can’t give up the big house and the nice car you can give it all up you know, you then go go do it. So so we will sometimes have to make real life choices and the Instagram idea of everyone’s made overnight whilst we’re in the top brands whilst so it’s just you know, as clearly as nonsense So, so let’s, let’s, let’s be focused, placed a bet. Gather great people around us be humble, be curious, be be be knowing that we’re going to fall over and bruise ourselves more ego hopefully than anything else. But that will all take us in the direction. Yeah, yes. Makes a lot of sense. And I’m curious, you know, do you tie in when you’re on stage doing your talks and stuff? Do you talk about your freediving experience? And things like that any, any examples of your own life experience, you know, overcoming these challenges.

Jim Lawless 28:06

freediving is, is a beautiful metaphor. And I mean, I didn’t realize how beautiful when I took it on. I took it on for a number of reasons, not least of which my eldest daughter was very unwell. At the time side, I raised some money for pediatric medical research at the time buff the, the metaphor of literally leaving the comfort zone and going into what I call the confusion zone. All right, it’s rehearsed, you’ve practiced so it’s not entirely confusing, but you’re going into a realm of uncertainty, an incredibly hostile environment, and yet an incredibly beautiful environment. At 100 meters, you’re receiving the biggest hug. It’s 11 times the Earth’s atmospheric pressure. That’s 33 times the atmosphere change coming in to land at an airport and you do Another 60 seconds, and not in a pressurized container. It’s amazing, literally being hugged by the planet. But the primary, the primary challenge for the free diver is mental and emotional discipline and control, I have to override the system telling me to run away. So so it’s an act of mindfulness and meditation and it’s an act of remaining in my frontal cortex, never going anywhere near my amygdala being entirely in charge of what neurotransmitters and hormones are active in my system. And should I lose that even if something goes wrong and I move from a potential anxiety which I avoid into real fear because something has happened? Even then, I do not benefit from releasing adrenaline. Most situations we do a free dive, we do not so so that control becomes vital. So it’s a miniature exercise, in moving from certainty into uncertainty in an undeniably hostile if included right to be beautiful environment like a mountain incredibly beautiful, incredibly dangerous environment, going through extraordinary physical change, where the primary job that you have to succeed is the ability to mentally and physically and emotionally retain control. So it’s a wonderful metaphor and the way I use it on stage, I’ll show the film of my dies and I invite everyone to come and hold their breath. And I’ll make the point the breath holding is actually the easiest part. The mental part is big, and then the managing of pressure changes is the huge technical exercise in the breath hold is really housekeeping. But so I’m inviting to hold their breath and we’ll go on this journey together. But during that I’ll talk about the importance of making a decision to leave the comfort zone behind move to the other side. Even if we keep the day job or whatever other elements people need to be considering. alive. Whilst we whilst we do the transfer. We have to commit to get to The other side because the risk of course if I decide I’m going to go to 80 meters and stop there and have a little thing can see with I like it well yeah may not feel like good 80 meters if I stop and have a think about it I probably better just to move past that point and get on with the job and and come home and you know going going through any adventure of change there’s going to be some really rocky days and that’s real and that’s live and that’s why we admire people who’ve been through this journey and and we make movies about people who’ve been through on an extreme level and that they because they they have had to go to places dig deep get stoutly working harder late make me I’m not gonna say sacrifices but big priority decisions in order to get to the other side. If we don’t make that commitment across the the gorge of the confusion zone to reach the sunny uplands. We will will quit and will either come home and get a job. Back in the safe zone, or will quit somewhere in the middle never never really know what our True Potential was. So I like to use a die to answer your question, Adam, in a long answer there, because I wants to talk a lot about the divers, you raised it. I the way I use it most on stage is to talk about the commitment required. I have to decide at the beginning, okay, we’re doing this now. We’re going to 100 meters and we’re coming home unless there’s a big emergency that I’m gonna bail out. If it all goes well, I’ve got to have the mental capacity in the decision to go through that as no point. At the start of this thinking I’m going to go to 80% See how it’s going because 80% anything could be happening on 80% of the journey.

Adam G. Force 32:40

Yeah, no, I love that. You got 100% commit, prepare yourself. It’s an interesting process. What’s the deepest you ever have gone?

Jim Lawless 32:48

One I want the record. I wanted to be the first Brit past 100 I knew that somebody would break my record, right? Because that’s, that’s the deal. But I thought if I pass 100 and I’m the first guy to do that first. To that from my country, I can always say that at dinner parties as an old guy, I can always say, Well, I was the first to pass. Like, we’re not not as impressive but high performing in Maya, right. I mean, that was seriously impressive, but kind of kind of, I thought I’d always have that little thing. So it’s 101 was the deepest. Wow. It’s not, it’s not super impressive, but but for me, it was it was impressive. I think

Adam G. Force 33:26

it’s impressive. I mean, I’ve seen the deep diving through some videos and stuff. And it is, I can imagine as you’re really getting down there, and that you can feel the pressure, the silence, and you’re really, that’s intense. I can imagine the panic that can overcome you.

Jim Lawless 33:44

Yeah, except that emotion. I mean, it isn’t. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. It’s I if I’ve created an impression of it being anything other than stunning, I’ve done a poor job. It’s an exercise in mindfulness and meditation being utterly present. In, in mental discipline in I can’t have the luxury of a little drama moment. I’ve got no one to blame. There’s there’s utter accountability and responsibility. I have a tremendous team on the surface, who have worked with me on this and all support me should anything go wrong, but they can’t do the die for me. They can be in charge of how I conduct myself far away from them at the most critical points. So I have huge responsibility and accountability. And so it’s a little bit like I learned to fly recently and I and I am went solo in a helicopter. It was a little bit it really reminded me of that because there’s a moment when the instructor gets out, and you’ve got utter accountability for this slightly flammable bomb above other people’s houses and, and you just got to get it forget, you know, you got to get yourself back right for everybody underneath you. It’s a it’s a I like going to those places where I have to deny my natural ability and I certainly have the natural ability To let what I call the tiger on that, that force, it says back off, you can’t do it right. back into the comfort zone. I like testing those places. And it’s critical, I think, for my job that I have been there.

Adam G. Force 35:14

Yeah, no, I mean, overcoming those things, I always found that exciting too. I like to do push the boundaries and stuff like that. So I have a respect for people that are out there doing that kind of that deep that free diving and those things are pretty intense. And so I always found it interesting. And, you know, I, you know, as you think about being an entrepreneur and running your business, it’s kind of like, you know, how deep Do you go and are you 100% committed because I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs really will. They, they tend to have that fear factor that we’ve been discussing, and because of that, they end up playing it safe, like I don’t want to get too crazy. So I’m just gonna test the water just gonna go in a little bit, and so everything becomes half ass, and it ends up really creating more problems than good because Because they’re not 100% committed, and they’re constantly playing it safe out of fear.

Jim Lawless 36:05

That’s really interesting. I mean, we have to be when I say playing it safe I think it’s important people take bets that they are willing to lose on the downside. I can tolerate that convert so so playing it safe in that regard. Yes. playing it safe, however as in just just just holding back not fully committing and yeah, that that that is that’s that’s a different conversation. I think. I think that’s very dangerous. So it’s like going into a free dive on committed I mean, you could you could there’s anything you need to know you’re gonna go and do and I think that’s definitely the case with with entrepreneurship. And then I think with for entrepreneurs, I would always say, x together. For any for anyone I’d always say work with a mentor. Now this doesn’t need to be a paid. But it could be that’s that’s the paid coaches job. But that job of the mentor who’s been there before, or the paid coaches to challenge the perceptions Why are you seeing this as a risk? Why are you seeing that? You can’t do that? Yes. Because we will put these barriers up. And it can be extreme. Why are you saying you can’t walk across and speak to that senior person? Or that that that person to whom you are attracted? Why, why Why are you saying that? And that can be an What have you got to lose if you did, and those can be very important questions that can help us catapult forwards, a catapult forwards. So don’t do this in isolation. And that comes back to humility, knowing how to ask for help, which we were not taught to do. We were taught to get it right first time independently at our desk, the smartest in the class better than everybody else. This was the prized possession right, right back to the beginning of our conversation. And now we find the people who are really rattling ahead are the people who turn up willing to look the dentist in a meeting and they’ve done their work. They’re not actually dim, but they are willing to ask the big the big open helped me understand educate me quite You know, rather than and then go off and deploy that alongside their own mighty skills, rather than coming in, looking, looking to show off their skills and leave having acquired no more. So there’s a tremendous amount of humility, that, that comes with learning, taking risks entering into uncertainty. And if we’re not able to, to demonstrate that humility or ego needs, need something else, I think we have, we have a problem, a project an existential problem as an entrepreneur.

Adam G. Force 38:33

Yeah, yeah. You know, I, I’ll wrap up on this note, but I some of the things that I’ve read, which are similar, like you talked about going in the room, being willing to ask what some might say is a dumb question or whatever. You know, it’s this act of also just the willingness to be vulnerable, right, putting yourself out there and so many people do when they want to hide in the back of the classroom or, you know, they don’t want to be the one to put their hand up because God forbid they get the answer. are wrong and they look stupid, you know, that vulnerability is part of it too, I guess.

Jim Lawless 39:07

I think it’s the other side of exactly the same coin, you’ve you’ve, you’ve put your finger on it, if we’re going to create change, we’ve got it, which includes setting up successful businesses to create whatever that may be, we have to do things that no one’s ever done. And that certainly we’ve never done. That means by definition, risk and uncertainty. And if you put me out there in public, surrounded by risks that I might get this wrong, uncertain as to how to act, I’m by definition, in an extremely vulnerable naked position. And if I’m not willing to go out there and and tolerate that and have some strategies for surviving with other people who can hold my hand in that position, then I I am at risk as to my success. Yeah, exactly. It is vulnerable. It is vulnerable, and that’s why we admire it and that’s why when you when you speak to someone successful, unless as in some major figures, they inherited it from their fathers and may or may not have enhanced that fortune over time. If it’s somebody who’s gone from the bottom and made it, they’ve got time for you. They’re very genuinely, generally, they will have time for you for a lazy slacker who’s clearly not doesn’t mean they’re going to contribute anything because that’s against their ethos. But if you’re turning up humble and clearly willing to work and interested and asking big questions, I’ve never met one of those folk who was not humble and willing to engage in a conversation with me.

Adam G. Force 40:32

Interesting, interesting. Well, Jim, I really appreciate it. Man. I love these conversations. I think it’s so important. You know, one of the things I’ve learned over many years of doing business and stuff is a lot of it comes down to the way we think and how we respond to challenges and situations and you know, the mindset and the tactical part and the strategy part we can all figure out right? It’s just really how are we responding to those things and approaching them. So I find these conversations to be super valuable. And I appreciate you sharing your experience and expertise.

Jim Lawless 41:04

Adam, it’s been a huge pleasure, great fun to meet you and talk with you and I wish you and your listeners every possible success.

Adam G. Force 41:10

Thank you very much. We’ll talk soon again. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Bob Berry: Mastering User Experience to Grow Your Biz

Listen to our exclusive interview with Bob Berry:

Change Creator · Bob Berry: Mastering User Experience to Grow Your Biz

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Are you providing your clients with the best user experience so you can grow your business effectively? Bob Berry is a user experience expert with INCREDIBLE experience who shares key tips you need to know!

Bob Berry is a principal at AnswerLab, where he’s guiding Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and many others to create new, optimal online experiences in this age of coronavirus. He’s also the founder of The Human-Computer MasterMind Academy.

Learn more about Bob and his work at > www.itstheusers.com

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:10

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. If you missed the last episode, Amy and I talked about marketing misconceptions and things that you need to know for today’s marketing climate, very important stuff that will be very helpful for you. So if you missed it, go back, check that out. Definitely recommend it, you can get some good gold nuggets out of there. Today, we’re going to be talking with Bob Berry, and he has incredible experience. So he is a virtual operations and user experience expert. I mean, serious user experience. I mean, just as things change, like the pandemic, like it shifts the dynamics of businesses, it shifts the dynamics of people’s behaviors in the marketplace. And so, Bob has worked with companies like you know, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and he helps drive great experiences that push their businesses forward, especially during these crazy times where everything is changing right before our eyes. So we’re going to talk with Bob about how to think about user experience for our business. What does it mean to our marketing and getting more results, getting more sales, all those types of things, and he goes deep on it. So this is an area that we can really tap into with Bob. So it’s gonna be a fun conversation. So hang tight, we’re gonna jump into that in just a minute. You know, we’ve been hearing a lot of people kind of share their thoughts about marketing and, you know, they get so frustrated about the you know, getting in someone’s funnel and they know they’re trying to be sold to. And there is a lot going on around the internet today, right with social media and stuff and there’s the good, there’s good stuff and then there’s bad stuff. If it’s not jiving with you and you feel like you’re being sold to, you know, you may not feel good, but there are people out there that are authentically and genuinely trying to be helpful. They’re trying to do the right thing because they know That what they know can help you get to the next part of your life to advance the next step, right? And we’re all trying to live a better life, we’re all trying to do something that’s more in line with who we are as a person truly and deeply, right. We get so disconnected from who we are, to who we learn to be right, the jobs, getting married, having kids all great things, but all of a sudden, everything is you know, dictated by these thought processes. And, you know, we, we have this yearning to be to get back in touch with just raw living like with the depth of who we truly are, and who we want to be. When we wake up every day. You know, we have to put food on the table, we got to make money. But if we can do those things, of course, based on something that we truly love, and and is meaningful to us and other people, you know, the happier we become, we get like more synergistic with who we are on the inside, right. And that’s why we love receiving the results. We’ve been getting We have people who are finding these aha moments and living their their true identities, with their businesses through our program, the captivate method. And I’m not trying to just sit here and pitch the Castlebay method, but it is honestly why we made this program because we’ve seen these types of challenges so much, right? So, you know, we, we’ve been seeing, and having such a joy watching people find and connect with themselves again, and run businesses that now are making a living in connection with who they truly are. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. So when you can do that, and you can wake up every day. It’s exciting. You know, it’s transformational. So if you’re, if this sounds like something this is and the way we do this is really tapping into this concept of storytelling. So when you think of storytelling, you might have some misconceptions, right? But it really is about your identity, but then also how we use that information to, to communicate effectively with people about who we are and what we’re Trying to help them with right this is the only way we get people on board with these ideas it’s the only way progress has been made all throughout history right so anyway guys, you can stop by Change Creator comm we have tons of fresh content on there. And you can also find you’ll see on the homepage to join captivate, you can get on the waitlist, we’re gonna send you some information, you get a chance to learn more about it and an opportunity to enroll if it’s the right fit for you. So stop by Change Creator calm and check it out. And guys, you know what, we’re going to jump into this conversation with Bob berry right now. And let’s do this.

04:35

Okay, show me the heat.

Adam G. Force 04:40

Hey, Bob, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

Bob Berry 04:43

I’m doing very well, Adam. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to talking about what’s happening in the world right now.

Adam G. Force 04:49

Yeah, lots going on in the world. And as I mentioned to you before this, I’m a UX fan and bit of a nerd. So I can’t wait to dig into all your incredible insights. But just so everybody here who’s listening knows what you’re all about. Tell us a little bit what’s going on in your world today. And you know some of your background of just how you got there.

Bob Berry 05:10

So I’ve been doing user experience and related research and development for decades now, actually started years ago with Hewlett Packard back when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were still around. And out of school, I had a degree in computer science. So I’ve been geeking out on this stuff for a long time. And back in the HP days, in the early days of the web, I was one of their early business managers, and we were inventing social media elearning cloud based services and related Types Of Online experiences before a lot of those terms even existed. So that’s how I got my start. At the moment. I’m working on a couple of major gigs. I’m a principal researcher with answer lab, which is one of the premier user experience companies in the US and we’re working with major brands like Google, Amazon, FedEx, Facebook to help them make this transition. In the midst of this, you know, giant move to, you know, digital centric world that we’re now facing with the Coronavirus also have another gig that helps young entrepreneurs and ventures and startups get involved in this whole world of user experience. And that’s called Instant users calm. So yeah, pretty deeply involved in this have been passionate about it for a long time.

Adam G. Force 06:28

So that I mean, and yet your hands and a lot of different things there. And you’re obviously working with some pretty incredible brands, which says a lot as well. So just let’s just level set because I think there’s probably a lot of people that don’t have a clear understanding about the depth of what user experience really is. So maybe you can just give a rundown on when you say you’re working with these guys or supporting entrepreneurs or anything just in UI UX, what what does that mean to you?

Bob Berry 06:56

So a couple a couple of major points and this is very topical as it has a lot to do with what’s happening in the world right now. So when we talk about user experience, it’s really a much broader context than just what you might normally think of as a person interacting with some interface on a website or an app or piece of software. We really look much broader at whether it’s a business or an individual b2b or b2c. What is the whole context of a person’s life? what’s the what’s the day in the life look like? What journey are they on? What’s the narrative of the kind of problems that they’re trying to solve or what keeps them awake at night or what their business goals aren’t, who their customers are? And so we start with that and then we take all of the interactive stuff that our clients do, and put that in the context of that life and how people might interact with it and how they might solve problems. So today, the particular unique situation that people find themselves in is with the Coronavirus. Digital is becoming far more empty And then it has been in the past, not that it wasn’t before. So online systems virtual is providing a solution to so many of the problems we’re facing. Now, you know, all schools and education is going online. You know, a lot of healthcare is now done virtually digitally. So many companies are adapting to being able to offer customers new e commerce systems, we’ve got new startups that are developing ways to do testing and tracing and tracking for the virus itself. I’m not gonna just go on we can have a podcast just talking about the new innovations, and the new kinds of virtual systems that are out there. And all of those are all about new experiences, and how are we going to interact with one another? How are we going to maintain what we do or even get better at what we do, and be able to do that remotely and contact lists so we don’t spread this virus?

Adam G. Force 08:51

Yeah, that’s interesting. And, you know, I like the perspective of looking at the day in the life and then finding out how we how Our opportunity, right as a company fits into that, that day in the life. So the question that I would have is, what are some of the ways that you guys get accurate insights about the day in the life?

Bob Berry 09:15

So there’s all there are a lot of tools that we that we use one of them, for example, as we use diary tools. And there are some platforms out there that specifically provide automated ways to do this. And so we will, we will, for example, if somebody is testing an app or somebody has a new business service that they’re launching, we’ll provide them access to that. And we’ll have them maintain a diary over a period of time to find out what events in their lives have them, Go pick up that app or have them go to that website. What problems are they trying to solve? How easily can they get the answers that they need or get the tasks completed that they need to within the context of their business or their personal lives? A lot of times, then from those diaries, we then follow up with some in depth interviews to really kind of really unpack a lot of the specific things that they did offer them a variety of different scenarios. And you know, a lot of that is more qualitative to really understand how people are doing what they’re doing. But you can also rap a lot of quantitative tools around those as well. So those individual stories in those narratives, and that kind of Day in the Life is really critical. But at some point, you also want to understand how that works at scale. So there are variety of quantitative tools we can use to survey people and measure them in larger volumes, to really understand the kind of the larger trends and how significant are these tasks and these these needs that people have so you can understand how to better design, you know, the app or website or software or whatever you’re working on. That’s interesting.

Adam G. Force 10:48

So I want to scale down the perspective a bit and maybe maybe to start that part of the conversation, the difference in your mind and how you We might approach user experience for the, you know, first five years of a startup, right? I have an informational program or service or e commerce versus the Googles and fedexes of the world where they have a very different dynamic on the size of their their data budgets and marketing, capability, research capabilities. So just what like where do you see the difference in approaches there and then I want to dial into the the early stage entrepreneur.

Bob Berry 11:29

So the the important lesson here, the important insight here is that having that kind of interaction with your end users and your customers, is you can do all of that independent of budget, obviously, those big brands, they spend literally millions of dollars and for most entrepreneurs, that’s just out of the question. Yeah. So I’ve run you know, both as an entrepreneur and working in a corporate environment. You know, I’ve run usability labs and user experience projects with virtually no Budget at all. So it doesn’t cost you anything to develop a process to identify who your customers are, and find ways to put them in the midst of whatever experience you’re providing them, and observe how well they can complete what they need to add to make sure whatever they’re completing is also consistent with your business tasks. So you know, simply going to your customer list, and making phone calls or simply inviting people like here, you know, we’re using Skype, there’s so many tools out there. And again, you can do all this remotely. And we’ve done this remotely for years. And when everything began to go totally remote in March, we were really set up to do this. But, you know, if you’re an entrepreneur, you can use Skype or zoom or WebEx or just the phone, to walk people through whatever it is you’re doing, and to experience their experience as they’re going through it and develop a real appreciation for what their needs are and whether or not they can be successful with whatever you’re providing. So independent of budget, yeah, you have that kind of conversation, you can run those kind of tests, you can develop that level of intimacy without having to spend hardly any money at all, in some cases, none at all. Okay,

Adam G. Force 13:17

so Okay, so a couple things come to mind to kind of dig into that a little bit. The first thing is, you know, there I almost see two things happening here. You if you’re going to do a usability test of any kind for UX on your, your program, let’s say you have a membership site, or course you want to see are people confused? Are they not like, whatever that is, right? So you want to make sure that you have the right person doing that test, right. So it starts with knowing who your perfect customer really is to make sure that’s who you have. Because, you know, obviously you don’t need mom and dad doing the usability tests. Right. So that’s right. And and is that that stems from understanding That day in the life and how you fit in, right, because if it doesn’t, then obviously, it’s just not the right person. Right?

Bob Berry 14:05

Yes. Yeah, very good point. So having the right people involved in that investigation in that research is really critical. And, and there’s a lot of things you can verify. So it really again, it goes really beyond usability. If you’re a startup, you might need to validate your basic premise your you know, what’s your value proposition? What is the core message that you’re trying to send to the marketplace? What outcomes are you trying to create for people? And is that useful to them? Is that something that they actually need? And then are your marketing messages the way that you’re trying to approach them and attract them? is that relevant as well? So yes, finding those right people to make sure that you’re asking those upfront questions about your business model and your messaging as well as the actual experience itself. Yes, if you got the right people involved is going to be really critical and in most cases, offering something at no cost. cost to people and giving them an opportunity. Like, if you’re developing an online course, in most cases, if you’re addressing a market of any size at all, it’s pretty straightforward to find people that need that learning that need that outcome. And you can get them involved in whatever it is you’re doing at no cost and give it to them for free. And in exchange, they can provide you that feedback and give you the opportunity to interview them give you the opportunity to observe how they use it, and what outcomes they get out of it.

Adam G. Force 15:29

Right. So the cost to them is just a return of their feedback and interview and information like that. Maybe even a testimonial at the end if it all goes well. Right?

Bob Berry 15:38

Absolutely. Yes. And then it goes again, as we know, in those early stages, those kind of testimonials can be really critical.

Adam G. Force 15:45

I mean, I think it’s an important part of that marketing process. Right? I mean, if you’re creating a course or something like that, you know what we did was even at $200 we validated will people pay for this like is it Are they interested enough to pay for this Then we got the user experience information because Bob the way we did it, and I’d be curious to hear your feedback just for people listening is we taught this live actually. So we could see reactions, are they confused and things like that. And then that might be a first layer. But then to your point, you’re really getting dialed into the usability, like, on the platform itself, right?

Bob Berry 16:23

Yeah, I think that, that having those early experiences where you’re gonna be there with them and walk them through it, it’s what we call the experience experience. Yeah, so you’re gonna experience whatever they’re experiencing as they’re experiencing, and then that’s really critical. But at some point, they’re gonna have to go off and do it on their own, you’re not going to be able to be there with them and walk them through it. So you’ve got to find a way to do both of those. You got to make sure that you can be there with them and see how they’re doing it. And they might provide some guidance and there’s a lot of interviewing and questioning you can do. But at some point, you also need to give them the opportunity to use the product ultimately, as it’s designed to be used which, you know, I think in most people Especially for online courses and learning materials, that’s going to be self guided. And that’s going to be a pretty critical part of whether or not they’re successful or not.

Adam G. Force 17:09

Yeah, that makes sense. And don’t you have some programs online now that you’ve been working on, I’d be curious how you take in these types of steps for your own the work that you’ve been doing?

Bob Berry 17:20

Yeah, so we offer a pretty extensive set of learning tools, platforms, resources, measurement tools. And in fact, we’ve created a landing page for your podcasts and you can actually go there and we can talk about this at the end, and download a lot of learning materials for free to really get started on this. And there also is a lot of information there on some more advanced topics. And, and we touch on a lot of different ones. I mean, we don’t really have time to go through all the different elements. But there are a number of different approaches that we include in that they’re kind of on the leading edge of what user experience research is doing today. just name a couple of examples. So for example, one of the things that we’re finding, and you may have experienced this too, and some of the work you’ve done with your own programs, is there are so many different apps, platforms, devices, operating systems out there right now that being able to just verify that what you’re doing works functionally. So what you’re doing might actually be usable, it actually might be useful, it might be relevant, it might be something that people need, but it also might not be functionally sound. And you’d be surprised how often we we hear about and we discover functional problems, the thing just breaks. Yeah, certain types of phones or on certain types of operating systems. And so being able to run some of those tests just to make sure that everything is sound from a quality perspective is also critical to making sure it’s usable and useful and all those other things.

Adam G. Force 18:57

Yeah, we tend to find that out. Sometimes the hard way as people were just going through, and you get those messages saying, Hey, what’s going on with this? And I go, thanks for the feedback.

Bob Berry 19:10

Yeah, right. Yeah,

Adam G. Force 19:12

you know, because here’s the thing, part of it is like, you don’t want to get stuck in a cycle of like perfectionism that holds you back from actually putting something out there, right? So it’s like, people get so afraid that it may not be functionally sound. And we’re like, well, you’re better off just getting it out there getting the feedback, and as long as you know, like, so that would be an approach that we take. I see it so often with entrepreneurs, a limiting belief that Well, I didn’t put this course together or I didn’t create this program at or release it for the past year because I just couldn’t do it the way I wanted yet. It’s not set up the way it needs to be. It’s not perfect. You know what I mean?

Bob Berry 19:49

Yeah, I actually I’m glad you I’m glad you mentioned that Adam, because one another really key practice or method here is what we consider progressive or iterative testing. Okay, so get something out there early. There’s no better test of a product concept and product functionality than getting it in the hands of real customers and real users. Yeah. And it doesn’t have to be perfect. But you won’t know you won’t discover a lot of things on your own, that the market will reveal that your customers will reveal. So get it out there, try it out, get it tested, and then iterate and then do it again. And again. And again. You know, you look at a company like Amazon, for example. And when you think about e commerce and you think about online purchasing you obviously they’re the thing that they’re the company that comes to mind first. Yeah, well, they’ve been doing testing for from the very beginning, and they do it constantly, and they’re always improving. And a lot of times, and you may have had this experience, sometimes when they put new stuff out there, it’s not perfect, of course, but they constantly test to constantly evaluate and that, you know, that method by, arguably the biggest company in the world is also very relevant for the smallest company. In the world as well, get it out there, test it, verify it, find out what works and not tweak it, do it again, put it back out there, tweak it, do it again. And that’s just a constant process that you need to be committed to.

Adam G. Force 21:12

Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. It’s so powerful. So we basically covered off saying, we want to experience the experience with them and learn from that, then you want to watch them, experience it on their own and learn from that. And you want to make sure that you’re getting something into the hands of the market, and go through a process of progressive testing, which is that iterative process.

Bob Berry 21:35

Yeah. And then again, prior to all of that, make sure you understand the day in the life, their narrative, their context of who they are and what problems they’re solving.

Adam G. Force 21:44

So tell me this, Bob, do you have something that you use almost like a framework or a story script, which is for that day in the life where you could say, here’s this Avatar and we have a one page story about this person? That’s the day in the life like, how do you? How do you get that on paper. But when you know, when you’re setting this stuff up,

Bob Berry 22:07

you have to start with some basic assumptions. So you need to come up with some kind of an interview script that you can use to talk to people. So if you’re launching a product, or if you’re developing a new service or building a new online course, I think the assumption is that you already have a pretty good idea what problem that you’re trying to solve. And so you make some you have to make some basic assumptions about what those are based on your knowledge. And based on the market insights that you have that went into the development of that product, and then idea, building from that the interview process is essentially validating what some of those assumptions are. That’s probably step one. Yep. Is is getting those down, really identifying. What does success look like for the end user? What problem is that they’re trying to solve? And how does how do those success factors line up with what your own business skulls are in there. You know, there needs to be some overlap, obviously in those. Yeah, that makes sense. Another another practice that we’re really encouraging people to do right now, because of everything that’s happening with the economy and Coronavirus is, identify what those success factors are for your customers and your end user. And for yourself, get those assumptions down, and then start to project those into the future where based on the what’s happening with the economy with the virus in your particular market segment, or your customers, what’s the vector for those? Are they diverging? Are they converging, and that gives you even if you can only look at three or six months out to try to get a sense of where things are going. Because the world is changing very quickly right now. And it’s important to keep track of what your customers are going through how markets are changing how technology is changing, because it’s going to be it might be a very different world. If you’re looking on a launch world might be very different three or six months in the assumptions that you started with.

Adam G. Force 24:00

Hundred percent. Yeah, that makes sense. And that’s always a critical step. And it sounds like to me and just from my experience speaking here, you start off with this hypothesis, right, these assumptions, and then it takes time to interview and talk to protect like your customers and get the information. So this is an evolving process, right? You’re always refining that perfect customer and that Avatar and that day in the life, do you Is that true?

Bob Berry 24:28

Yes, that’s definitely true. And I think it’s probably more true now than ever, because of the rate of change going on out there today. So that’s true enough, you know, in the old normal, and we don’t even know what the new normal is. Yes, yeah. part of the process now is staying close to those customers. And again, times like a crisis are oftentimes of opportunity as well. There are some amazing stories of new innovations and adaptations that people are working on today that are going to require new kinds of experiences and for for entrepreneurs and startups, it’s a way to identify what are some of the emerging needs and take advantage of this.

Adam G. Force 25:06

Yeah, makes sense. And I’m curious one, one thing that can be challenging for people is actually getting people on the phone to do these interviews. So that’s part of why it could take time. Does it erode the value of the feedback? If you say, Hey, I’ll give you 50 bucks or 100 bucks for an hour of your time to do this? Is it okay to invest in that process?

Bob Berry 25:28

No, we do that all the time. And it can vary. And sometimes it might be an you know, an Amazon or a Visa gift card. Or again, it might be you know, access if you’ve got a product that you can provide in kind, or it might be you know, might just be cash. And in fact, a lot of the research that we do we simply pay cash. Yeah. And so No, I think it’s a it’s a practice that, that that, you know, the research industry, not just user research, but all types of market research. compensating people for their time and their input. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it’s doesn’t alter the results. And really, people commit when they know they’re getting paid, they pay more attention, they’re more likely to show up and they’re more likely to be on their feet.

Adam G. Force 26:09

Yeah, hundred percent. I mean, we’ve learned this too, because we would reach out to like 50 people just say we love feedback. You watched our, you know, our webinar, you didn’t join the program, trying to get feedback, and nobody wants to talk. And I was like, Alright, I don’t care. Pay him 100 bucks or $100 less This is you’re basically buying data. So to me, it’s worth every penny. Right? That feedback is like the crux of your business success.

Bob Berry 26:34

Yeah, well, and the other thing we’ve observed too, is that if you if you don’t compensate people in some way, then what you what you can end up with are those people that like to give feedback.

Adam G. Force 26:46

Ah, that’s a great point. It’s like you get the discount shoppers the freebie hunters and now you got the feedback givers.

Bob Berry 26:54

Yeah, well, it’s like it’s like online when you people comment on or do reviews on products. Yeah. You know, a lot of times you’re what you’re getting are people that like to give reviews on products, you’re not really getting a representative sample of all the users. So yeah, you have to be careful to not end up with that kind of bias. That’s a critical

Adam G. Force 27:12

question. That’s a great, great point. I never thought about it when it comes to the feedback cycle, that there’s just people out there that always have something to say about it.

Bob Berry 27:23

Well, and unfortunately, sometimes, and a certain percentage of those people are the grouchy ones, too. So that’s exactly

Adam G. Force 27:30

you end up getting these disgruntled people. Yeah, they’re always the first to speak up and say, Well, I’ll tell you what I think. Yeah,

Bob Berry 27:38

right. And not that they’re not that their feedback is invalid. You just want to get a much broader sample than that.

Adam G. Force 27:44

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So tell me a little bit more about your programs and where people can learn more about them. It sounds like you have some day. I mean, you work in the big world of the Googles and the fedexes, and things like that. But you also have stuff for the entrepreneurs out there. And I’m just tell us a little bit more about that.

Bob Berry 28:06

Yeah, so we have this this program, and it’s user calm. And it’s the official name is the human computer mastermind Academy. And what we’ve done is taken a lot of those lessons from what the, you know, the big companies do, and package them in a whole series of online courses, ebooks, tips and tricks and methods, platforms, etc. And so if you for this podcast for your podcast, Adam, people can go to change dot, it’s the users.com and download a lot of those materials for free. And again, it’s a lot of getting started stuff to just you know, what I’d like you’ve asked a lot of questions about what are the first steps people need to do. And then there’s a lot more advanced topics as well if you really want to get into this for the long term and maybe invest a little bit more money and be a little more rigorous about it. All that is in there as well. The other thing I’m offering is We’re trying to really keep a pulse on what’s happening in the world and what entrepreneurs are doing, how they’re adapting and innovating. And so I’m offering a free business consult by me for anybody that signs up for those free materials. And I’ll talk you through some of those early questions based on your own business and your own challenges and what you’re trying to create and what markets you’re trying to reach. And we do this all the time with companies of all sizes, including a lot of those big brands. And so hopefully, we can we want to learn from people that are that are doing this. We want to offer whatever knowledge or assistance we can provide as well. So that’s all part of that, that that offer.

Adam G. Force 29:37

Oh, yeah, I just checked out the site. So anybody listening, just to repeat that URL, it’s changed. It’s the users.com. And we’ll have that in the description and show notes and stuff like that for anybody that wants to grab it. Awesome. So Bob, really appreciate your time today. It was a lot of fun. Talking about user experience. And just as really critical process, I mean, we talked about identifying that day in the life and how that’s an iterative process and some steps to take to do that. And just how to think about it. And and Bob, correct me if I’m wrong, the more detail the better, right?

Bob Berry 30:15

Yeah, the more detail the better. But But, again, you have to have a balance between depth and breadth. So, you know, you want to make sure you have a pretty good coverage on all the different types or segments of customers you’re trying to reach. And that’s going to vary a lot depending on your business or your idea. So don’t go too deep on any one. Make sure you’ve got a good cross section of all you’re trying to reach in, then start to go deeper on each one. I would encourage that kind of balance.

Adam G. Force 30:44

Can you just before we wrap up here, can you give a little example of like, I had someone we’ve been we talked a lot about finding that perfect customer for someone’s business or course or whatever it might be. And really understanding when you talk about day in the life I mean Is it? Do we want to know? Are they married? Are they still working nine to five coming home frustrated or how they deal with their, you know certain things in their life, they have a babysitter for the kids they gotta pay for like, how in depth? Do we need to get that? Can you maybe give an example of maybe a brief, like sample description or something that like, what kind of details are we looking for?

Bob Berry 31:21

So some of the details you’re looking for one of the key questions we try to understand in the day in the life is what? What triggering event makes them reach for whatever your product or service or course happens to be. Yeah, yeah. So what’s what’s going on that, you know, that desire, that motivation for them to pick up or look for or seek you out? is really important. I think a lot of times we start by assuming that somebody has already got the product and so now they’re gonna start using it and doing whatever it is they’re able to do with it. But we have to back up from that and say, What is it that’s going to make somebody go look for you? Google search or, you know, go to a course catalog or ask their friends or go on social media, whatever it might be. What is it? What is that initiating event? And then everything in between is all the user experience usability, everything they’ve been talking about. But then on the other end to, what are they going to do with a result? When they’re done with it, when they take away whatever they’ve learned, whatever outcome they take, how are they going to apply it, how they’re going to remember it and apply it in their lives? So that those two bookends, what’s the initiating event? And then how are they going to apply it in their lives or their business are really critical. And when we get into a lot of this research about our product, we tend to get too involved in the product. And we leave out those two bookends, got it?

Adam G. Force 32:44

No, I love those. That’s great. I mean, just even just thinking about those life events that make someone consider that motivate them. It tells you a lot about the circumstances of their of what they’re dealing with and you could probably over time, find a lot of common ground between people And what’s motivating them?

Bob Berry 33:02

Yes. And then I’ll inform you a lot about, for example, how to promote your product.

Adam G. Force 33:07

Exactly.

Bob Berry 33:07

So, where where are they going to go look for what it is, whatever it is you’re offering. And that’s where you need to be promoting yourself and making people aware of it and describing your benefits and knowing and everything else. And that’s just you. And if you don’t cross that hurdle, you’re not you’re never in contention.

Adam G. Force 33:24

Exactly. That’s a good note to end. I appreciate it. Lots of good insights here. Again, guys, you can check out change. It’s the users.com. Bob, thank you so much for your time today.

Bob Berry 33:36

Adam, it’s been a lot of fun. Stay safe. Good luck with everything you’re doing.

Adam G. Force 33:40

All right. Thank you so much. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play, or visit Change Creator mag.com we’ll see you next time. Money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

interview

Mandy Barbee: Overcoming Stressors to Thrive with Your Biz and Life

Listen to our exclusive interview with expert, Mandy Barbee

Change Creator · Mandy Barbee: Overcoming Stressors to Thrive in Business and Life

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

As entrepreneurs, we all face challenges with anxiety, stress and mental blocks that hold us back! But what if we can overcome them? We spoke with expert, Mandy Barbee, who has over 15 years of leadership experience and is certified in clinical hypnotherapy, neurolinguistics, and the mind-body connection.

Mandy Barbee, MA Economics & CCHT, founder of Palladium Mind, is a transformation and healing expert who has helped hundreds of clients across the globe to overcome anxiousness and thrive in business, health, and life. By combining the power of imagery with their innate capabilities, she empowers men and women to regain a positive sense of control, transcend struggle, and enjoy everything more.

Learn more about Mandy and her work at > https://www.palladiummind.com/

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ca; there may be errors.)

Adam G. Force 0:11
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host Adam for syrette Change Creator. I’m excited to be here today because I love talking about the mind and how we behave and why we do things and our mental blocks and all that good stuff. And today we have a treat for you. We’re going to be talking to someone by the name of Mandy Barbie. She’s the founder of palladium mind. So we’re going to cover a number of topics here. She’s actually a she helps people in transformation and healing right? So she works with a lot of clients all around the world. And they she basically focuses on like how to overcome anxiety and different stressors and get over certain mental blocks in your life so that you can really start to thrive thrive not only in your business, But in life in general. So she has some unique insights that she’s going to be talking to us about today that I think will be really great takeaways that will help you on your journey as an entrepreneur. So excited to jump into that with Mandy today. If you guys missed the last episode of the Change Creator podcast, definitely go back we spoke to Ken Casals. He’s a very sharp guy. He was on the Forbes 30. Under 30. We talked about growing leads and revenue faster for e commerce. And there are some interesting considerations from you know what’s going on in the world today, but also just from his extensive experience working with a lot of clients and running a lot of different campaigns and stuff like that. So if you have an e commerce company, definitely something to check out. And even if you don’t, there’s a lot of great conversations just about growing leads and revenue, right? So don’t want to miss that one. And guys, one of the things that we have been focused on I know, we’ve had a lot of people come up to us and they’re obviously trying to go digital and they’re kind of stressing it. which totally get that. But you know, we are programmed the captivate method is we’re all we’re focused on digital, right? So the captivate method program is really about helping people get more, to really build trust with their audience, get more leads and get consistent sales. And we do this through strategic storytelling. So we really supercharge the business and marketing with storytelling, but we also set up these systems the right way. So you guys can have that that basically a sales loop, right? So if this is something that’s going to help you because you want to get digital and get your revenue channels up on the digital side, this could be a great program for you. We do look for early stage entrepreneurs who at least have their product that maybe made a sale or two at least, right? Because we’re not doing product development, but the community offers lots of live coaching and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a very powerful program. If you’re interested, it sounds like something that can help you right now. Go to Change Creator calm and you’ll see in the navigation menu or the header. It says Join captivate, you’ll be able to get on a waitlist and within a very short period of time, after you get a couple emails and updates, you’ll get an opportunity to join our masterclass to learn more about how this can help you. And then from there you can make your decision as if this is the right community for you or not, but really exciting stuff. It’s proven it works. We use these strategies all the time, not only for ourselves, but to help other clients scale their businesses all the time. So alright guys just wanted to make mention of that during this time with this pandemic, because I realized how important I mean digital is always important, but more than ever now we’re just seeing a whole influx of people who are looking for that kind of support so I would jump on it get in there check it out, and you can always reach out go to our contact page reach out if you have questions or you know, there’s a chat bot or whatever on there that you could talk to us. Alright guys, without further ado, let’s jump into it. Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes. And yeah, let’s talk to a man Hey, show

Unknown Speaker 3:57
me that he

Adam G. Force 4:01
Hey, Mandy, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show today. How are you? I am so good. Adam, thank you so much for having me. You’re very welcome. excited to talk with you based on all the incredible expertise you have. It’s a space that I always like to get involved in. So why don’t we just open the door a little bit with, you know, what is going on today with you? Not today specifically, but just present time. And give us a little bit of that background. So I like to get like what’s going on now and then we can kind of work our way into how you got here.

Mandy Barbee 4:37
Yeah, absolutely. So right now today in my world, I were hunkered down in Seattle, Washington, doing some social distancing here. And yeah, I get to work from my home office, and I’m serving clients all over the United States and one international client through my coaching and hypnotherapy practice. displayed in mind, currently, what’s going on, it’s very exciting to me is something that’s been a long time in the works, which is not a plug, it’s just something I’m extremely passionate about is the very first opportunity that I have ever felt alignment to share something virtual, a resource that will actually create healing with people where they don’t have to dip that toe in the water of one to one in person or, or virtual work. So it’s something it’s a product that I’ve been ruminating on and steeping on for the last like five years. And it’s finally coming to fruition in April. So that’s very exciting.

Adam G. Force 5:43
Very cool. Congratulations. So thank you. I you know, for me, one of the things that’s so important and why I really wanted to have this conversation with you is that you have an expertise in helping people overcome struggle by understanding and Managing, you know, the anxiety and fear, fear based decision making. And then when it comes to us being entrepreneurs, especially solopreneurs, who are, you know, on our own and doing these things? There’s a lot of that, right? There’s a lot of ups and downs and stressors that can really trigger a lot of anxiety and fear. And so, you know, one thing we always talk about is how, you know, when we make decisions from those places that are our timing from going from point A to point B gets much longer because we make lots of bad decisions. And I want to help people understand, you know, how to think about that and how to start managing it. So can you just like talk a little bit about, you know, how you work with people in general right now, just to give us some background on what you’re doing, and how, like some of the key things that you’re working with people on?

Mandy Barbee 6:56
Oh, yes, that’s such a great setup. The I’m a way that I work with people. This, this work that I do falls under it could be described in a lot of ways. And I think the best way to understand it is it’s working with imagery. So a couple key points are that anything happening automatically, in your experience, anything that’s automated, in your experience, by your body or by your mind is governed by your subconscious. So subconscious problems can’t be analyzed away. We can bring unconscious issues to light to awareness, but even if you do, you can’t like troubleshoot a feeling away. There needs to be an experience. I love it. You’re laughing beautiful. Can you relate to that? Oh, yeah,

Adam G. Force 7:51
I mean, you have these experiences and I just like that, use the word troubleshoot, like Oh, let me you know, it’s just it’s it’s a funny way of putting it I actually just say, I typed down I quoted you on that one, you can troubleshoot and experience.

Mandy Barbee 8:05
Yeah, you can troubleshoot a feeling away. Like even if this is the this is the awareness that I had like years into doing this work with people. And I will describe the work in just a moment. I want to bring that clarity too. So we’re all like kind of speaking the same language. But the awareness that I had was people like I don’t know what this anxiety is from, I don’t know what is causing it. I don’t know. And this is a huge point of frustration. And it’s also can make a feeling or a sense of failure. result in that person’s experience depending on how we relate to not knowing something, what we feel or decide about the fact that we don’t know the reason. It can either be scary or it can be defeating, and that’s totally relatable, but in, in in the big scheme, even If you do know because often people will learn most the time when I work with people, we discover the root just knowing it doesn’t change it. And that is something beautiful that I want to add took me like I said, years of working with people one on one to notice this huge frustration that we bring a loading to the situation with burden of Oh my God, I don’t know why, and then we find out and we still have to find a way of resolving it. So I think that that bit, that little nugget of information can bring a lot of grace like okay, so So knowing it isn’t going to make you feel better. What will

Adam G. Force 9:39
Mm hmm. And well, I mean, at least I guess if you can, like you have these conversations, you get to the root of what’s causing because like I always say like, if you don’t know a mistake that you’re making, right, you think you’re doing everything great just like having clarity on your business. Like if you think you have clarity and you don’t know the mistakes you’re making, well, you can’t get around them and fix them if you’re not even aware. So at least The first step it sounds like is like, well, what is the source of this anxiety? It’s easy to say I’m stressed because of money, and I’m Chef. But there’s probably other things that go far deeper that causes ongoing, you know, stressors or trigger you into behaviors that create these, this anxiety, right? So if we can understand what they are, then I guess you could start at least taking the next steps to manage that.

Mandy Barbee 10:26
I think that’s such a beautiful like uncovering that you just made about. We say when we say it’s just an opportunity, even for listeners in this very moment, to think like if there’s something that’s Top of Mind like, it’s money, I’m stressed about money, or I’m stressed about that, that one hiring decision or the firing decision that I’m contemplating or making that leap. It’s like you’ve identified it, that’s good. But then what’s the reason why that is causing so much distress,

Adam G. Force 10:57
right? And I mean, so like, what Like, what do people how do you start figuring that out?

Mandy Barbee 11:05
Yeah. Is it magic sauce? Oh, I can totally I’ll share as much as I possibly can. This is my area of genius or geek out. Yeah. Well, I think this would be a perfect time to do it best I can in describing exactly what I do and how I do it. So we can open that up. And others can benefit and command the resources that they are governing. So we use the very mechanisms in the body and in the mind and in the person in the awareness that are creating the problem automatically, to shift it. So if you want to operate at the level where change needs to happen in the subconscious, that’s the feeling body. So it’s not the intellect or the logical part. I’m pointing up right to my neocortex right now right to the temple. Not that frontal lobe. It’s the feeling body, the instinctual primal awareness, the instincts and intuition you could say, and how you in how you work with that is actually so simple, because imagery is the language of the subconscious. Oh, that isn’t that amazing? Yeah, we can talk problem with imagery. imagery. You haven’t heard

Adam G. Force 12:28
of the subconscious? No, I have not heard that concept. That imagery is the language of the subconscious. Can you can you tell us a little bit more about that? Like why that is?

Mandy Barbee 12:40
Yes. There’s, I say, I usually hold up three fingers and I’m doing that right now. There’s imagery, hormones and emotions. There may be more I’ve often asked myself this, but these are the languages of the subconscious. These are the shovelers of automatic creation. reactions. And so, like in dreams, for instance, this is a best way to describe it when we’re processing at night in a certain brainwave pattern. And we’re becoming aware of our unconscious information when we remember our dreams. Dreams are primarily an imagery. But there’s other aspects of imagery that also show up, we have an internal sense, we have an internal set of senses, that replicates the sensory experience we have in the outside world. So our perception gets repeated on the inside so the body mind can store it. I hope this is making sense because basically, if we, if we hear a sound, the way that we’re able to recall the sound later is because we have an internal sense of sound. Yeah. So you could imagine someone gently brushing a hand against your hand or you could remember sandpaper, how it feels. We have these internal sensory ways of storing information as well. And so that is the matter By which subconscious information is stored and organized. It’s also how it’s recalled.

Adam G. Force 14:06
Yeah. Okay, so, so now Okay, can we talk I want to talk about like, so this is helpful just to get that like depth of understanding. And I think a lot of times, you know, people and I’m going to ask a general question because I want to see just how you feel about it that when we are entrepreneurs, and we are exploring the unknown, we’re solving problems. The people that really are held back from finding success in what they do, it doesn’t matter how great of an expert they are, if they aren’t making it, it tends to be because of mindset blocks. Is that a fair statement?

Mandy Barbee 14:49
I am, like I would love to add to hear it because we talked a little bit before this call as well. And you mentioned mindset there too. And I think that mindset is one of those words when people say it, they might mean, sometimes different things. Okay. I would love to hear what you can you describe mindset, and then I’ll also butt up against that.

Adam G. Force 15:07
Yeah. So if I’m relating it to what you’re talking about. So if I was it’s the subconscious, so the subconscious conscious dictating how we feel how we respond. And a simple example would be around money, right? So everyone talks about money blocks, and it’s about well, what did your parents teach you about money? What were the stories you heard about money? And how do those affect the way you behave around money? And you know, it creates the feelings you have about it. So, you know, I always say, if you hate money, you’re probably not going to have much right if you’re not, if you’re not, if you think it’s a really hard thing to get, then you’re probably going to always make yourself work 100 hours a week in order to get money. Right. So it’s like, yeah, these are the types of exactly that I see with entrepreneurs. Including myself, we all have these things. And I’m like, for example, I read a book by Bruce Lipton called the Biology of Belief and dives into a lot of these types of things because I’m always hunting for how do I improve myself? How do I strengthen my mindset, but like a great example was like, Okay, if you had a CD playing old school, right, you got a CD playing a song and you’re like, I really want to change the song. Just thinking about it like saying, don’t eat those donuts, and I’m gonna be on a diet like it just saying it doesn’t do anything. You have to literally go there and reprogram it by putting a new CD and so how do we do that in our brain?

Mandy Barbee 16:39
Yes. I love that book, Adam. And I tell people you can listen to it in three hours on Audible on a Sunday morning. It’s good if you’re able super so good. He’s just a beautiful humans. How do you reprogram it? Yeah, and and do I agree about this? This, you know, experience of struggle being a lot mindset as you described it 100% were in alignment and understanding there, okay. How do we reprogram it? There’s working with imagery, you know, working with imagery is something that it’s let me pause there. I want to say something different. Okay. We reprogram it. When I was thinking of when I work with people, what’s really important to me to convey is that sometimes because I do practice hypnotherapy, people come in and actually Bruce Lipton, Dr. Bruce Lipton also mentions hypnosis at the end of the Biology of Belief, which is so interesting, just this tiny little word. Yeah, but I do practice it with therapy. It’s because it was a way that I was trained to utilize imagery with others. The imagery isn’t proprietary to any modality You’re using imagery all the time. Sometimes we can use it for good. Or we could use it for evil because we could use imagery to make ourselves spun up and imagine really terrible things. Or we can use imagery. Sometimes it feels spontaneously, or automatically without choice to put ourselves into what Tony Robbins would say, a beautiful state, that we can command our state, by the way that we direct our attention and the imagery that we call in this, you can see that there’s this interesting interplay that I think about all the time between conscious control and direction, and the allowing of our subconscious to play as well. And so I do people come into hypnotherapy a lot and they find me through through hypnotherapy quite frequently, and we always start with debunking this idea that there’s any form of transfer of control. Because I’m only going to help that person steer their own imagery in a relaxed state, I can’t install imagery. I can’t actually reprogram they, in a state of relaxation can access the subconscious and imagery arises naturally when we flip out of analytical mindset. Yeah, yeah. So

Adam G. Force 19:24
does that answer? It does so I have questions, of course. So you are talking about being in a state of theta, right? Is that your, your relaxed state.

Mandy Barbee 19:35
Theta is the data is one of those relaxed states and I, I tend to, I really work with people in alpha, which is a very, it’s a very wakeful, but alert state where imagery is natural. And so theta and delta are generally in a state of like deeper sleep. Like they’re either sleep light dreaming sleep or deeper sleep, and we’re definitely in a waking state. Just relax critical mind. Got it.

Adam G. Force 20:08
And when you talk about using imagery, just so everybody listening understands, like we’re not talking about necessarily, or maybe you are. So you can tell me like holding up a tangible image. So you see something in front of you, it’s more about creating the images in your your mind, right, like thinking about certain images. Exactly. Okay. Okay, and so, like thinking about certain images. I mean, does this come through like the, I guess one of the processes I’ve always been curious about, and it’s like, well, does this really work? And how do I know it works is like, you would obviously work with someone through this image process, which I’m not super familiar with, but does it relate to things like affirmations? Like what it was like, Is that another process or is it tied to it?

Mandy Barbee 20:58
Yeah. I’ll go back one tiny step and then take you all the way through like a spectrum of options. Because this is also like a point of passion for me is sharing with people the spectrum of tools that other people are giving them so that they understand where everything fits. Almost like like a care team, like your whole medical team working together, you can start to go Okay, wait a second, I see what’s going on here and why, and then this one, and then I’m getting a suggestion for this from somebody else. And you can kind of begin to govern your own experience even more powerfully. There’s a conscious piece and there’s an unconscious piece and the conscious piece like every person, every client, every human that I interact with, I want us all to be building awareness because in that awareness, other things become possible, just like you said earlier. Yeah. When you become aware of the problem, suddenly you can think about solving it. This when you work in a relaxed state of awareness that is one of the easiest tools for solving a feeling problem or an automatic problem. And that’s what we’re talking about here. So when we drop into a relaxed state of mind, it affirmation is one way of imagining something that’s not true now, or that we perceive is not true now, but we’re putting ourselves in the experience of being true by writing the affirmation or speaking the affirmation. I see this. Does that jive?

Adam G. Force 22:27
Yeah. For you? Yeah, I’m good. Okay.

Mandy Barbee 22:29
I think that that’s one way that I describe affirmation, because it’s one thing to go. What? Already reveal myself Harry Potter. I must not tell lies. I must not tell anybody I must write total dork moment. But if we write the affirmation over and over and over again, surely we could eventually maybe have a chance of brainwashing ourselves. But if you if you actually engage emotionally with the affirmation That you’re saying, You’re basically dressed, rehearsing the emotional experience and giving your nervous system the opportunity to taste what life is like, when that’s true. And you’re making it true right now.

Adam G. Force 23:16
I love that. Yeah. So okay, so cuz that’s something I picked up on through this process is like, you don’t just sit there and say something in your mind. Right? And you you want to, I learned that the most and I think you’re saying the same thing. The most important part of that is to not just say it and think it, but to actually feel it to actually emotionally feel what it’s like, when you’re saying that. Like that. That affirmation. So yeah, just mentioned jolting the nervous system and starting because now if you can feel it, like when you said I guess what life is like, right, and I think that that hit me, I’m like, Yes. Okay. So that’s probably the most important part of that process, right?

Mandy Barbee 23:59
Yes. Yes, and let’s take it a step further. So an affirmation is this one part of utilizing our decision making process which is conscious, to step into an emotional experience of something new, being true. And affirmation is not the primary tool that I use in my practice, but it’s what I will send people away to do at home because it’s support. It’s like this beautiful foundation or a brick road that you’re building underneath all the change work that we’re going to do the transformation work that you can do with imagery with a person one on one. And so, with imagery like on top, if we stack these resources, we’re bringing consciousness to bear we want the decision we want the decision making process on board with what we’re doing. We’re not trying to go ahead or without the rest of the person’s good decision making on board right then affirmations can support change work and in very light situations with enough rapid And consistency, they can and will change problems. But a lot of times when there’s real deep fears, I don’t mean deep like long ago or deep down or dark. I just mean, if it’s really emotionally charged. It’s really hard to step into the experience of those words even being true. We need something else to shift. And you can make shift happen like like that. I mean, practically like that when you’re working directly with the problem state via an interface such as imagery. So imagery allows, like an like an, like a translator between conscious awareness and unconscious problem within the body. So suddenly, they have a means of talking. Got it?

Adam G. Force 25:46
Yeah, I love that. That’s interesting. And so can you I guess I’m curious. Now that we’re kind of talking about the imagery, we talked about the affirmations like, how long is A process like this usually taking place before we can start seeing shifts in, I guess I want to say the reality that we’re manifesting.

Mandy Barbee 26:13
Mm hmm. This is this is one of the most fun parts of my job. But I get to tell you that when you do this type of when you do this type of you have this type of conversation within yourself. Yeah, using this language where suddenly I’ll say, it feels like sometimes when you’re trying to problem solve a feeling. It can be like one person speaking one language screaming at another person speaking another language and the other person screaming back with anxiety. And the conscious mind is screaming back with problem solving. They’re both just screaming each other and nobody’s understanding anything. Right? And it’s like, Can we just get a translator in here? And then you have a translator and they don’t even have a beef. Like Okay, cool. It’s like a handshake and it’s done. But communication got to happen. Right? And that is that fast. And not only is it that fast it’s that when you have that conversation, you’ve actually resolved the reason for the feeling. The feeling is only coming to deliver information. The problem is its language isn’t being heard or understood. Because we get so used to listening with our conscious mind, right or no longer those children just in worlds where reality and dreams can mix and we’re like, with our playmates, you know,

Adam G. Force 27:38
yeah, yeah. Okay. So I guess I’m curious. So I mean, because I guess it’s, it’s different for everybody, right? It’s not like you can say, oh, in a month, I’m gonna be a millionaire because I overcame my fear of money. Or like, you know, whatever it might be. You know, even like Tony Robbins, we interviewed him and he was like, you know, I’ve worked with all these big times. CEOs, professional athletes, all these guys, and no matter what level you’re at, he said that, you know, when someone’s trying to go to the next level of success like to move into a new version of themselves and a new version of their life 80% of the time, there’s a psychological block holding them back that he just helps them get around. And that’s all it is.

Mandy Barbee 28:22
Yeah, this is the exact This is the nature of my work is I help people shift the block, we help people resolve the block, right. And I can speak to and if anybody’s still listening after all of this technical communication, please. I feel like I just been on overload delivering so much tech information, but I really, I really love talking about this stuff out of them. So you don’t know how much I appreciate you just sharing this time with me and I really admire the work that you’re doing. Thank you.

Adam G. Force 28:57
No, I mean I love I love getting into these conversations I just think they’re so important. Because you know, entrepreneurship in my mind is about creating a life. And it’s, it’s there is no work life balance. It’s just about this harmony of how do you live your life? How do you spend your time? And I think there’s so many unnecessary stressors from past. You know, what do you call it conditioning that we’re not aware of. And I just give you example of how important this mindset stuff is. We had I was at a summit not long ago, and it’s about 40 people in a mastermind that we’re in, you know, one that you have to pay a big bill to be heard of. And so you’re already paying a lot of money over $20,000 to be part of this mastermind. And we got a room of 40 people. So a guy goes up and he presents about money mindset. This is what his program what he helps people with, right is just money mindset. And so it’s a $5,000 program for to be part of this. And then he had a small discount for people in the room. But at the end of the day 50% of the room right there on the spot, opened up their phones and bought that these are these are multiple high like six figure seven figure entrepreneurs. And they are without even thinking about it. Half that room bought that program because money mindset was just so important to the process of getting to that next stage. So what the reason I’m sharing this is that the work you do is probably one of the most important parts of becoming successful in building the life that we want.

Mandy Barbee 30:32
Wow, he really just honored me I see it that way too. And it’s one of the greatest joys of me finding my purpose is that I really think that like when you when you scrape away the scum and then you scrape away the pain you get all the way down to bare metal, like what I get to work with people is on the foundation, and when the foundation is rock solid, you can’t stop a person and it’s not hard. It’s not long to get there. Even Though that is so counterintuitive, because we can struggle against these things, for as long as we have memory, right, I see this stuff shift so fast. And it’s not a magic button. You know, and I know that you know that it’s not a magic button. That’s not what I’m saying. But your question was, interestingly, your question was like, how long does it take? Yeah, and I have worked well, my background in the military. And I also have background in manufacturing in a regulated, regulated industries, two of them. So we’re like precision and quality and root cause analysis, and resolution, the five why’s like it’s gotta be dialed in. Yeah. And I bring that to bear with this really soft, compassionate type of work to help people resolve some of the darkest stuff where we’ve got guilt or shame or whatever, and anxiety where it’s like, we’re breaking our heads against it. So to help people be able to shift those things. Where there’s a lot of belief sometimes stacked against ourselves. It is such an honor. Yeah. And so I have worked really hard my entire obsession is in creating a being able to provide something where there is an expectation that within this window, you can expect that a normal bell curve of results are going to be you can have a resolution not like in, you know, 19 days, it’s like a timer, it just goes off and you’re done. But it’s like, you know, there’s a range and if you follow the process, you can shift and a lifelong problem in weeks. I love

Adam G. Force 32:39
that. Yeah, I love that. And it’s because it’s funny you could see people they’ll spend all the money in the world on like, a course for a marketing strategy on Pinterest or all this other stuff and they end up missing the nurturing of the most important part important part of their success which is cultivating the mindset because and the reason is Say that is what everything we’ve been talking about. But the other part of it is, you know, right now you are not the person that you need to be to get where you want to go. So you have to literally become different versions of yourself to continue to grow into that, that future that you have a vision for, right?

Mandy Barbee 33:23
Yes, yes. Yes. And when when you were speaking about when you were just talking, what came to mind was when, when you with what you said was, we’re buying the strategies where it will pay for the marketing will invest in the equipment, right, but we’re less likely sometimes to pour into ourselves. Yes. And what came to mind was the creator and that’s this is your podcasts, you know, it’s it’s the Change Creator who’s creating the change, it’s the creator and so we have to nourish ourselves first because we are the consciousness That’s bringing all of this about. Exactly, exactly. I think it’s a good note to, to wrap up on I did want to just ask them, who you typically work with, right? Who is your, I guess primary, your perfect customer, if you will? Yeah, I, I am. I have a huge smile on my face right now because I have never really resonated with like with gender specific work. And I really believe strongly in the universality of this resource and want to be available to the human race. That being said, You know, I do have issues that I work very specifically and I can share a little bit about my practice if I actually work with 50 by 55% of my practice has been served has served men and 45% has been women. I work I have worked with people across 25 different countries. I can serve people as long as they should Share at this point in time, English as a common language, very percent because when you’re relaxed, it’s even harder to do that translation and maintain relaxation even if you’re multilingual. And my truly, my focus issue is on helping people resolve anxiety because I have walked that road, and it is possible to resolve anxiety and cease managing it. So I’m just really I’m really psyched about helping people to heal anxiety and no longer cope with it. Okay,

Adam G. Force 35:35
great. Well, why don’t we give a shout out where people can learn more about what you’re doing and find you?

Mandy Barbee 35:45
Yes, Adam is I’ll tell you right now then beautiful I am on Instagram. I’m a little I have a little bit of an Instagram addiction. lol and my handle is my palladium mind because my company is palladium mind play is one of the elements on the periodic table in the Platinum group. So that’s p ALADM. Mind and my website’s palladium mind calm and there’s a giveaway for accessing your alpha state at palladium mine forward slash change creators. Got it.

Adam G. Force 36:18
Okay, great. And we’ll put that in the show notes for everybody to check out. Mandy, thank you so much for your time and sharing your expertise. Inspire it was inspiring and very helpful. Thank you so much, Adam.

Unknown Speaker 36:34
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag Comm. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

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Alli is a former wholesale buyer turned consultant who helps CPG brands understand how to get on the retail shelf and have high sales once they’re there.

She works with clients through her online course, Retail Ready®, and connects with emerging brands through her podcast, Food Biz Wiz™.

Alli has a lot of knowledge to offer based on her experience and great success growing her digital business.

You don’t need to be in the food space to benefit from her process for going from knowledge to digital business.

Prior to launching her business, Alli worked for the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses, sourcing product and developing grocery staff for years at Bi-Rite Market on 18th Street, and then in the position of Head of Grocery and Store Manager at Bi-Rite Divisadero, building and managing a team and operations to support over half of the products in the store.

She saw that really fantastic product – really delicious product – would make it to the shelves and just sit there. Sales just wouldn’t come. There was something that the producer didn’t know about wholesale, yet she did.

She knew that the best way that she could help the sustainable food industry was to share those secrets on how to create a brand that WORKS on the shelf.

Since Bi-Rite Market, she has spent the past five years working with producers of packaged products – CPG brands – to build, launch, and scale the wholesale side of their businesses through her one-on-one consulting, and in her online course, Retail Ready™.

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Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ca; there may be errors.)

Adam G. Force 0:01
Seems to change.

Adam G. Force 0:11
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. Excited to be here today. I know there’s a lot going on around the world at the moment with this Corona virus. So let’s all just stay calm and think from a place of leadership and not fear. We are moving forward and just helping people and joining different communities and conversations and doing what we can to support each other as we adapt to what’s happening here. Right. We are problem solvers as entrepreneurs, this is what we do. We have a really great talk today. And so before we get into that, though, if you missed the last episode is with jB kromm. He is a podcasting guru business expert. He reaches about 12 million people a month. And so we talk about what it takes to scale a seven

Adam G. Force 1:00
Figure podcasts. So if you missed that, and you want to get those insights, just jump back there and make sure you listen to that episode. Today, we’re gonna be talking with Allie ball. She is an entrepreneurship Rockstar, and she’s been crushing it, she went from, you know, consulting, in the food, retail space to supporting people with group initiatives, all the way to now running an incredible evergreen business with online education. Alright, so this is a good good example. So of how to go and take your intellectual property and turn it into a thriving multi six figure business. So Allie is going to share some of her insights around how that all happened and things that you need to be aware of and organizational structures and systems and things like that. And I think you’re gonna get a lot of gold out of this conversation. Allie is actually in one of the masterminds that we’re in together. And so I’ve had a lot of good conversation with her. And I’m excited to have her on here to share her expertise and insights. So guys, just hang on for a minute.

Adam G. Force 2:00
We’re going to jump into that conversation. If you’re following us on Facebook, that’s our main social media channel at the moment. So you would probably have noticed that we put out a note to everybody about this Coronavirus, and we’re going to be having a conversation. So Amy and I are co founder here, my co founder here at Change Creator will be jumping on Facebook Live. We just did one on yesterday, which was the 18th of March. And we’ll be continuing to jump on to talk more about different things but how we’re managing the business and helping provide support for you guys running your businesses and things like that. So catch us on Facebook. If you haven’t joined our Facebook group yet. It is the profitable impact.

Adam G. Force 2:43
It is the profitable digital impact entrepreneurs you can find us there. Join us get involved in the conversation and connect with everybody. All right, guys. Last but not least, jump over to Change creator.com Don’t forget we have lots of fresh content out there and lots of good updates to

Adam G. Force 3:00
help you along your way. If you guys have ever have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. We appreciate all your ongoing support. And we’re going to dive into this conversation right now with Allie and see what she has to say. Okay, show me that he

Adam G. Force 3:16
Hey, Allie, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How’s everything going today? I’m doing great. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So you know, everybody listening. We are in the midst. This conversation is in the middle of this whole Coronavirus situation. So lots of stuff going on around the world. And we’re going to dive into a conversation here with Ali. It is not focused on the Coronavirus, but we are going to be talking about very important business insights for you.

Adam G. Force 3:42
But I know everybody’s got a lot on their mind right now. So we’ll just kind of see where this goes. And Allie, if you can kick us off. I just like to always give people a sense of what you’re working on today what’s going on in your world and just give a little bit of background for people and where you’re at. Yeah, absolutely. So I

Alli Ball 4:00
am a former grocery buyer turned wholesale consultant. So I help producers of packaged product in the food and beverage industry understand how to get on grocery store shelves, and how to have high sales once they’re there. So I do this all through a digital course called retail ready, and I educate consumers through my podcast, food biz Wiz. And so, Adam, you can imagine that we are in a really interesting time of this week and the past few weeks with producers a packaged product, especially in grocery stores with COVID-19. We’re seeing obviously a run

Alli Ball 4:42
on grocery products, particularly pantry products. So that’s really what we’re focusing on both in my facebook group and on our group coaching calls right now. How can these entrepreneurs navigate this time of an uncertainty and how they can how they can stay focused in there.

Alli Ball 5:00
And not respond in a panicked way. Yeah, so important to just to have that kind of mindset. We make bad decisions out of anxiety and doubt and fear and those totally, totally. And I think it’s, it’s my role as the leader in retail ready to show up as someone who is level headed and calm and providing creative solutions without being like, you know, on edge and panicked myself. And so often, you know, I’m actually very proud of my retail ready students. I think that we’ve got a lot of great energy in the group. And I love seeing I love I don’t know if you see this too in your group, Adam, but like seeing students, almost self coaching and coaching each other through these challenging situations. Yeah, yeah. Those conversations tend to kind of just naturally pop up as everybody has the same thing on their mind, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And just everybody listening you know, alley is a business. Kind of

Adam G. Force 6:00
She’s a beast when it comes to entrepreneurship. So that’s why I was so excited to have her on here. She’s crushing it with her program. And, you know, she did a lot of consulting before that, and then flipped it into this digital environment to really start scaling. So, Allie, tell us a little bit just from a business standpoint about the transition of taking your intellectual property from a consulting standpoint, and converting it into an online business through coursework and things like that.

Alli Ball 6:32
Oh, yeah, I’m, I’m so happy to talk about this topic. It’s one that I get really excited about. So I have been in business for six years. And I gotta tell you, I’m like six years ago, I would have never predicted that I would be a digital course creator. Like that is not where I saw my business going at all. But I left my job as a grocery buyer and I saw this hole in the marketplace. I saw so many producers Really, really great producers not understand how to get on grocery store shelves and not understand how to connect with those buyers and not understand, you know, similar to what you work on, like not understand how to tell their story and get consumers to care about their product. Yeah. And I knew that I had this unique perspective of being on the other side of the grocery shelves. And I could offer that to package food producers. So I left like I said, I left my business or my corporate job six years ago, and I started doing all one on one consulting, and I, I loved it. I loved working so closely with producers and helping them understand how to find success with their products. But I’ll tell you like, I am not someone who takes work lightly. And I was finding that I just didn’t have the capacity to serve all of the clients who needed my help, and I would see all All of these emerging brands struggling with the same exact challenges, and I knew that if I could get them in a room together, and I could, you know, systematize my offering for them, I could impact more businesses. So about four years ago, I took my my years of one on one consulting and I bundled it up and I was like, I have this theory but like, I can offer group coaching at a lower price point and you know, help more food entrepreneurs. And so I got out of like, my first my first retail reading was eight brands. And we did everything over conference calls like not even zoom it was like everybody dialed in.

Alli Ball 8:47
I like presented information, you know, over the phone. They got a Google Drive link with you know, a shareable workbook like, not very secure. Back then, but like, you know, that’s how it That’s how I tested it out. And I validated that this was a good idea. And so for the first few years of teaching retail ready, I taught it as a live course. And I would teach it about four times a year. And I would have about 15 brands at a time who would come in and we would go fast and furious, like six weeks of hard, hardcore, like heads down working on their food businesses, and then I would send them on their way. And I saw Adam, you probably know where I’m going with this. Like I saw a few holes in this logic. Yeah, first off, I when brands would come to me, and they would say, like, Ollie, like, I’m ready to work with you. I’ve got XYZ problems like no, you’re my solution. So often, I would say like, oh, sorry, I’m sorry. Like I’m in week two of teaching retail ready, you know, like you can’t join at this. At this point. Like get on the waitlist. I think I’m going to run it again in the spring like you don’t Hang in there. Which is like the worst advice that you want to give or like a worst message you want to give to someone who is coming to you with an open wallet, right? So it wasn’t good for me. It wasn’t good for these businesses who needed my help. And I knew that I had to somehow change the system. But again, like, I didn’t really consider myself a digital course creator and I didn’t. This was this was four years ago. I mean, this I first ran retail ready in 2015. So Gosh, like over four years ago now, and like the whole digital learning economy was not as robust as it is now. And so I didn’t know what an evergreen course was. I didn’t know that there was this thing that I could do to make it a not live course. And I feel very fortunate. I don’t know if you know this story, Adam, that Courtney foster Donahue of FB, everything and the course course Yeah. was a friend of mine. And and I was essentially complaining to her about this struggle with my live courses. And she said, you know, Allie, you just got to turn it evergreen, like, I know just the lady to help you. And so sure enough, she she introduced me to the world of evergreen. Yeah, yeah, that changed my business model entirely. So that was in 2018. And I changed retail ready into an evergreen course. Which you know, I’m sure most of your listeners know but that essentially means that the course content lives on my course platform and my students go self paced through that core course content while they still get live coaching month in and month out on on coaching calls and then in our Facebook community and things like that. But I turned that evergreen in 2018 and now we are enrolling about 30 brands a month into retail ready. We’ve grown to a team of two Five here at food biz whiz. And we’re really cranking it’s cool. That’s exciting. Yeah,

Adam G. Force 12:06
yeah, you guys are doing really great work. And it’s, it’s great to see. And I want to emphasize for everybody listening that the steps Allie took what she naturally did, which was, I’m a consultant, I’m helping people. But I need to scale more. How do I make this digital, going through the process that you went through to teach over conference calls, keep it low cost, just really simple with Google Docs and PowerPoint, whatever it is, they get in at a better price, potentially, you learn a ton from their feedback, you see where the holes are, and then you turn that into your course once it gets buttoned up. Don’t miss out on those steps like so. I think so many people want to get an idea come up with like, oh, here’s my four part course or five part course whatever it is, but they miss that part of like, Oh, you never were consultant for this, this information, and you never did a beta.

Alli Ball 12:57
Exactly. Adam I’m sure you, you’re the same, same. Same as me. Yeah, I get emails every single week from other entrepreneurs who want to start an online course. And they see me and they see my success. And I’m so grateful that they think I can help them. But then once we get on the phone, I realized that they don’t have a product. They’ve never served people through a consulting model. Like they, they just think that it’s an easy industry to get into. Which as we both know, is is really, really far from the truth.

Alli Ball 13:35
Yeah, it is. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 13:36
it sounds like

Alli Ball 13:38
yeah, and you know this to that. Just because you’re an expert in something, doesn’t mean you’re a great teacher. And doesn’t mean that you’re a great online teacher. And I think that that is so important to think about as well like I know a woman who wants to start an online course she is truly an expert in what she does. But she doesn’t want to show up on video. She doesn’t use social media and she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to she doesn’t want to have an online presence. And you know, I I know that what she has to offer is really valuable. But I also know it’s going to be really hard for her to build a market and sell a course if she doesn’t want to use those those basic tools.

Adam G. Force 14:25
Yeah, exactly. You mentioned not everybody’s a great teacher and right in my mind, I go off forget that not everybody’s great at selling and marketing and they all like we mentioned this is a common mistake that entrepreneurs make which is you think that you can just delegate the sales and marketing for your business and that’s like the biggest misconception because you need to be the number one sales rep especially in the first year or two of getting that thing off the ground.

Alli Ball 14:52
Yeah, Adam, I’ll tell you the the reason why I’ve had so much success with retail ready is because I love The sales and marketing side. I absolutely adore it. And I think one of the things that we talk about a lot in retail ready is that like, that classic phrase, like, if you build it, they will come is the worst business advice that I’ve ever heard that as a whole does not work. So often I see people, you know, either creating products, whether they’re physical products or digital products, they’re trying even to get into consulting, like whatever it is, whatever they’re selling, they build it and it’s a good thing. But if they aren’t out there, marketing their product and showing the world that they have a solution to people’s problems. No one’s going to buy it. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I like to. I I like to remind myself that it took me a while to realize this as well. You know, the first, the first two years of my business when I was doing consulting only I have my my income really abdun flowed. And you know, there were some months where I was making 1000 bucks. And there were other months where I was making 10,000 bucks. And you know, it was when I look back at it, you know, because everything’s hindsight here. Like, when I look back on it, I realize it’s because I didn’t, I didn’t have a strong marketing plan. And I wasn’t I wasn’t promoting my my services.

Adam G. Force 16:29
Yeah, and there’s just so many variables and decisions to be made that I see a lot of our students especially ones that sometimes earlier, they go off on tangents and they have so many ideas that it’s hard for them to keep their focus even even going through the program and stuff. It’s like, yeah, I’m like, will like go through and like, you just see like, weeks later this especially when we were running our beta and stuff, they’d come to each next call and I’d be like, no, like, we’re supposed

Alli Ball 16:58
to focus on this next two weeks. Adam, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I’ll give this example. So when I, when I first left my buyer role, I, you know, like I said, I was doing consulting and I was consulting for two different audiences. I did a lot of consulting with retail stores with grocery stores, helping them dial in their grocery operations. So understanding ordering and receiving an inventory management, understanding merchandising, you know, all of all of that, like how to run a successful grocery store, which was exactly what I was doing in my corporate role. I also then started doing that producer consulting, but I was so fired up about that I was so you know, that’s really where my passion was. But the retail consultant was really paying the bills at the beginning, of course, yeah, of course, right. Like, a grocery store has more money than a granola maker. So but I realized and You know, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but like, it probably took me a good 18 months to realize this, that the reason why my marketing was failing was because I was trying to speak to both audiences. At the same time, I was trying to speak to that grocery store manager, that grocery store owner, and that granola producer. And because my messaging was, you know, really focused on I can do this, or I could do this, or I could do this for you or like, I can also solve this problem. I wasn’t narrowed enough. I wasn’t, I wasn’t clear enough in what value I was providing for my clients. And therefore, people didn’t know if I was the solution to their problems.

Adam G. Force 18:42
Right, they’re not sure then you leave a little uncertainty because you’re like there’s not one group of people that is speaks very, very clearly, specifically. And I think a lot of people have Nish phobia because we don’t want to miss out

Alli Ball 19:00
Did Yeah, I totally did. I was like, my leash is producers of packaged product in the specialty food industry like that is so narrow. And you know, we even beyond that, like we focus on people who want to improve and increase their wholesale accounts. So like, not even talking about e commerce which is so trendy nowadays, like not even talking about direct to consumer, like we are solely focused on wholesale. And I was really nervous about that. And I gotta say, Adam, like, once I leaned into that, and once I put those nerves aside, everything clicked in place, all of my marketing became so much more focused. And I’ll tell you, like, I’ve shared my numbers with you, Adam, like when people find me, they know beyond a doubt that I can help them with such a particular problem. And that’s why they that’s why they convert to, you know, to, to a sale so easy. Yeah, because they they know, I think can help them

Adam G. Force 20:01
that’s the key, that is the key. And then all of a sudden, it’s easier for you to write because all of a sudden now your your messaging for yourself is more clear because you’re like, I’m just talking to this one group so all of a sudden you’re going deeper and deeper with more clarity on a very specific area, that’s easier for the marketer as well.

Alli Ball 20:21
Oh 100% You know, when I when So, you said like speaking to a narrow group and yes, of course, it is a group but I go so far as to have my ideal target audience that is a singular person, so I speak to every single time and so whenever I’m thinking about a marketing strategy or making business decisions, I can say to myself, like would Sylvie like this course Yeah, bonus would Sylvia be able to come to an 11am group coaching call, you know, everything is run through this altar of my ideal target audience, and I gotta say, like, it makes, it makes everything easier.

Adam G. Force 21:07
Yeah, it’s true. I mean, even for our own program at the captivate method, we are thinking about taking it even further. Like we go to social entrepreneurs, we, we focus on supercharging marketing with storytelling. And it could be for anybody ecommerce, it could be for, you know, coaches, agencies, and I’ve been with Amy and I have been discussing, like, maybe we do need to just narrow down to just working with coaches, you know, yeah. Because, I mean, just I’m saying this to people now on who are listening because you can, you can always go deeper on your focus, and it will only help you more, especially in earlier years. If you have a new offer that usually is way better to go very specific rock and roll and then you can always expand later.

Alli Ball 21:57
Yeah, absolutely. I think about that too. And like when I first started Doing my course. So I had two courses, I had retail ready. And I also had one that was called staff stuff. And that was all about hiring, motivating and retaining staff in the food industry. And I, you know, when I first launched it, I was like, why am I narrow? Why am I keeping this to the food industry like these, like, team building fundamentals and best like these hiring and like leadership skills are are essential in any business like why am I Why am I narrowing it to the food industry? And I, again, like I’m so grateful that I did because when that restaurant owner or when that retail store manager found me, they knew that I was specifically speaking to their industry, even if I know deep down that it can apply to any industry.

Adam G. Force 22:55
That’s that’s the that’s the part that tears at people is you know, deep down It can apply anywhere. But yeah, yeah, you just gotta buckle down sometimes and go after that very narrow focus, you know, and listen, like you could focus on that. And then after two years, if you’re making seven figures on that funnel, you then can expand the product to be for the next group of people.

Alli Ball 23:16
Right? Totally, like what we’re experimenting here with retail ready is thinking about, as the cannabis industry is getting larger and larger and the United States, they, they need these brand foundations and the wholesale strategy that we have put in place for, you know, non infused products. And so we could very easily replicate, you know, 90% of retail ready course content and market it to the cannabis industry. And, you know, I think that that is a really smart way to do it, or like a very, I don’t wanna say it’s an easy way to do it, but that that, to me is so much more thoughtful and strategic than just saying, I’m going to open this course up to anyone who you know who is an entrepreneur. Who wants to like think about business? Like that is so broad.

Adam G. Force 24:04
It’s so broad makes a big difference. It makes a big difference. And I’m wondering if you have remembered anything that like when you were doing your beta course. And you went from consulting to beta? Did the process you use for your consulting? Right? Yeah. Did that apply directly to the course? Or were there changes to the flow based on the fact that it’s now of course?

Alli Ball 24:33
Oh, that’s a great question. So what I did is when I started consulting, I, so I’m a systems person, I will tell you that like I love Yeah, organization systems. And one of the things that I did with my consulting clients pretty early on, is I developed a 12 step outline on how we were going to take them from, you know, business idea to getting there. wholesale account. And I would go through the same exact process, tweaking it slightly for my one on one clients. And you know that it took a little while to develop that process. But, you know, once I had, I mean, gosh, it was probably as fast as like, three or four clients, realizing that they, they all had similar challenges. So once I was able to have that, you know, that rough like 12 step process, I knew that that was something that I could replicate with, with my one on one clients. You know, at the end of the day, Adam, like, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel with every single client. And I would find that I would write No, I would write these custom proposals, and I would, you know, a client would convince me that they didn’t need a foundational aspect. And then we would get into meeting two or meeting three and I was like, Oh, God, like you really just, you know, you really needed homework assignment number two that I get to almost everybody, right? Yeah. And so once I, once I started, like documenting that system of how I, how I achieved a transformation in my one on one clients that so clearly created the curriculum for retail ready, you know, I was like, I’m already following these steps. So. So I would say like, as much as you can, if you find yourself replicating the same thing over and over with clients, that’s a really great indicator that it potentially could turn it into a course. Yeah,

Adam G. Force 26:33
yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So let’s dive into some of your organizational obsessions. Yeah, and the reason I bring that up is because I think so many people, especially early on, you know, things can get out of hand and you think you’re organized but you’re really not you’re not creating the systems you need because you’re busy working on your, you know, your business and in your business, whatever. And so tell me, I guess a little bit about has maybe some organizational ideas that you’ve had along the way.

Alli Ball 27:10
Yeah, so I can talk about a couple things. And I’ve got like two to like very tangible or not not tangible, but to like very concrete things that people can put in place. And then I just have like a general philosophy that I’d love to share with your listeners. So first off, I will say that I am a huge planner user, like a huge physical planner user. My high school actually required us to use a physical planner and they gave it to every student when you know, I don’t know first day of school or something. And we had to use this physical planner. And you know, when I was 14, I thought it was a drag like I I you know, I was like, why is my school requiring me to do this but I will tell you, it has like, laid the foundation for My time management and my organizational skills. So I have been using a physical planner for about two decades now. I actually add him I don’t know if you know this, I have a physical planner called the food biz Wiz planner that we give to retail ready students and we sell on my website. And it’s specifically again, I say it’s specifically made for the food industry. But like, as we were just discussing, you know, these are organizational skills that like anybody. Exactly, yeah, so let me talk, let me talk about like my two favorite parts of the food biz was planner that anybody can put into place, and they’re like, really my foundations for achieving all that I do in my business. The first one is realizing that I can achieve three big things every week, and that’s it. And so, what I do is, I’ll either do it on Friday afternoons or on Sunday evenings, kind of depending on How my week ends. But what I will do is I will sit down for about 10 minutes before before Monday morning. And I will plan out three things that I’m going to accomplish in the week that are going to hit move me closer to my quarterly goals. Yeah. And that, to me is so fundamental. Because no matter how, no matter how a week goes, I know that daily, I can turn back to those three things and know exactly what I need to be making progress on that’s aligned with where I want my business to go. And so, you know, it takes me 10 minutes every week. At the end of the week. I’ll then like sit down and review how far along I got with those three things. And that like that simple thing, like it sounds almost too simple, Adam, but that that like practice alone has has really influenced how much you I can get done in my business, and how quickly my business moves forward.

Unknown Speaker 30:06
Absolutely.

Alli Ball 30:07
So I love that. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a really big one for me. And then the second one is that I have a morning routine, and an evening routine that takes about half hour at the start of each day and the end of each day. And I do the same exact routine in the same exact order every day. Okay, and so now this is I mean, I’m gonna let you in on the secret I it seems a little bit like obsessive compulsive to do this. But it allows me as someone who primarily works from home, to have bookends to my day, and that’s really important because I don’t know if you’re like me, Adam, but like, I could work until 10pm every night like, I love what I do. I love working, like so easy for me to just work into the evening, however, like for my own like mental health For the health of my relationships for like, frankly, my physical health to like, I wouldn’t go to the gym if I worked all night long. I’ve got to have a way to end the day. So what I do is every single day, you know, Monday through Friday, I get up, you know, I have my coffee, I like to hang out with my husband for a bed and walk the dog, whatever. You know, that’s not part of my morning routine. But once once I sit down to work, I skim my email and just see you know, what’s on on deck for the day. I check in in my retail ready student group. I check my slack channels. And I check Instagram. Yeah, and that’s it. I do those four things in that order every day. And then this is the key Adam. I don’t do them again throughout the day. You know, like okay, I’m not in my inbox 15 times a day. I’m not On Instagram, every time I have a five minute break, like I’m not checking slack all day long and that to me has made all the difference because I am able to then you know do the opposite of multitasking. I focus on one task at hand at at a time and it really allows me to like almost like autopilot start and end my day.

Adam G. Force 32:23
Yep, I mean so important to have boundaries for yourself in a sense, right? Because little distractions can really interrupt the day quite a bit. So you know only looking at your phone in the morning at lunch and an evening like that kind of thing makes a huge difference. Your morning routines a little different than mine, especially your evening routine. My evening routine is have a bourbon by 334 o’clock so I’m late for my verb. In my morning is more along the lines have run a mile go to the gym for like 20 minutes and then I do a shower. And then a meditation and I’m like ready to rock and roll.

Alli Ball 33:03
Yeah. And that’s, I love that you bring that up, Adam because everyone’s routine can be different, right? Like, just because that’s my routine doesn’t need it. mean it has to be your listeners routine. It’s whatever works for you. And so for me, like, I usually do that from about 830 to nine o’clock, and then I do a gym class at 930 Oh, okay, there you go. Yeah. So like, it works best for me if I start my day by just checking in on my systems and you know, checking in with my team. And then I go do something for myself.

Adam G. Force 33:34
Yeah. So that when I come back at 11, I know exactly what I’m working on. And I can be heads down for like my most productive hours of the day, which are like 11 to two. And that’s a key statement, your most productive hours because some people are morning people, some people are night owls and all whatever it is, you know, so we have to work during our best hours and do the things that are best for us. And I think you know, it’s important to just be To follow that, right kind of follow what’s best for you, but I don’t want to rationalize and say, Oh, well then I better just get up at noon. It is so funny because my husband and I both work from home. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, we’ll like do our morning routines are dog is walked like, we, we come back from the gym at like 11 shower, whatever and then I’m like, oh like it’s noon. I’m just getting to work. Yeah, it feels so luxurious and so silly to have that be our schedule. You know, not every day but like often, but then I will tell you I will sit down and I am one of the most productive people you will ever meet. So I am sitting down and cranking it out until 4pm. And like achieving so much stuff, because I’m so focused again on like, my ultimate priorities every week and every day. I mean, it totally makes sense. I love it because tracking what you need to do and staying on top of it, giving yourself the time like going to the gym exercising, like I will say, as entrepreneurs that work out of the house, if we don’t make time for that one, we won’t be as focused. We won’t be as sharp but to your body will start to physically like fall apart. And you’re gonna be at the doctor saying I have neck pain. I have shoulder pain. Yeah, I have been there and I was like, holy crap, I stopped like exercising for I think, I don’t know, nine to 12 months, I was just like in the zone working every day from like, 5am till freakin seven at night. And I ran into real physical health issues.

Alli Ball 35:39
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s astonishing, right? Like, we I feel like we don’t recognize that Intel it becomes a problem. But I and this goes back to like, my general philosophy that I wanted to touch on is that Adam, I say no to most things that come across my plate. I swear to you that I have been able to have the business success that I have, because I do because I’m very picky about what I say yes to. And I have I’ve really narrowed and limited the amount of things on my plate. So I say yes to going to the gym like I say yes to having a healthy lunch every day. Like I say yes to making time to, you know, read at night and things like that so that I can become and stay that healthy entrepreneur that I that I strive to be

Adam G. Force 36:35
100% Yeah, I love that. It’s good. Ask it. This is good insights. Folks. Pay Thank

Unknown Speaker 36:41
you.

Alli Ball 36:43
Gosh, I could talk about this all day long. I

Unknown Speaker 36:44
know. I know. We’re good.

Adam G. Force 36:46
They’re good. They’re good. conversations that have to resurface regularly to remind us remind people listening about these key points because once you start having success as an entrepreneur, you’ll realize that The more you do take care of yourself that inner world, whether it’s meditation, running, whatever, that will help develop your outer world more in line with what you want. Right? So like, this is huge, and I think people neglect it.

Alli Ball 37:16
Well, yeah. And you know, it sounds so cheesy, but like, there’s a reason why we say like, put on your own oxygen mask first, right? You have to

Alli Ball 37:24
take care of yourself first, so that you can show up for others. And I think that is, you know, that’s our ultimate responsibility as course creators and entrepreneurs. Like if we are truly meant to be the leader that we want to be, we have to take care of ourselves first. Exactly.

Adam G. Force 37:42
I love it. Now. That’s a good note to end on here. We hit our 34 minutes, so I’m asked to wrap up. So let’s just um, there’s, I know there’s people in the food space and our audience, and I want to give a shout out how do they find you learn more about what you’re doing for Retail ready to see if maybe it’s something that could help them where do they go?

Alli Ball 38:03
Great. Thank you for asking. I’ve got two really great resources for them. The first one is my own podcast. Again, it’s called food biz Wiz. And that can be found at food biz whiz.com. And actually, Adam, I’ve got a couple episodes on how to get organized as a food entrepreneur. Why saying no is the most important thing you can do in your business, lots of topics like that. So if your listeners have enjoyed this style of conversation today, I think that they’ll enjoy some of those episodes. And then also I’ve got a really awesome nine step roadmap on how to get your products on the retail shelf. So if you are a food producer, beverage producer like wellness or supplement producer that is going to be great for you. So that’s at Alibaba comm slash roadmap

Unknown Speaker 38:55
how they bought calm

Adam G. Force 38:57
yeah slash roadmap. Okay, just writing it down. Alright, great awesome So guys, you could check out Ali’s podcast check out her roadmap and other information she has available at those resources. You know, I made a note to myself here Allie. I was like, Huh when to say no and I for potential Facebook Live video.

Alli Ball 39:21
Yeah, yeah. You know what? Adam all sent you that? That podcast episode. I feel so wholeheartedly that it is applicable to anyone, not even you know, not just food but just life in general.

Adam G. Force 39:36
It’s not Oh, yeah. Isn’t this like focused? Honestly, it’s just applies everywhere. It’s such a great kind of philosophy to dig into and think about. Yeah, you know, like you. You’ve been doing your your quarterly planner and things. Yeah. And we have been doing journaling, with different insights but more about nurturing the inside. Psychology. And I got to tell you, man, like we’re starting to apply this as a strategy for all of our new students. Because as you go through it, what I’ve learned in doing it myself for a while now is you get into these thoughts about your own journey. And they become great talking points for your live videos and everything else that you’re doing in the business because you’re actually digging into how you feel who you need to become challenges, what kind of conversations you have with your customers and all these types of things. It’s pretty powerful, just this process of writing things down.

Unknown Speaker 40:33
So yeah, I am.

Alli Ball 40:35
I know and I know that like we’ve, and I think it’s ironic because you and I are digital course creators, right? So like, obviously, we love all things digital, but I will tell you that experience of pen to paper is so so powerful. Yeah, yeah,

Adam G. Force 40:51
yeah. And there’s a number of ways that people do it. And so, you know, it just depends, I guess what’s best for you or what you’re trying to accomplish, but I love what you mentioned about the planner. I kind of want to combine that where I have two notebooks one is for like to dues thoughts and all that stuff. The other one is more for like journaling, you know, I keep them very separate.

Alli Ball 41:09
Same exact same. I’ve got like, I’ve got three

Alli Ball 41:16
high, you know, we didn’t really get into this But yeah, I, I have a daily journal, practice as well. That is so, so valuable to me.

Adam G. Force 41:25
Good. Good stuff, man. Really appreciate your time today, Allie, great as always talking with you. And I appreciate you sharing all your insights. And I love the success that you’ve had. So guys, check out Ali’s information, you got the podcasts, got the roadmap, all that good stuff, and maybe she can help you get on those retail shelves.

Alli Ball 41:44
Awesome. Thanks for having me, Adam. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play. or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

JV Crum III: What it Takes to Scale a 7-Figure Meaningful Podcast

Listen to our interview with JV Crum III!

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

If you want to make a difference in the world with a podcast, how do you make it profitable? We asked serial entrepreneur and podcasting expert, JV Crum, who reaches over 12 million listeners.

He became a self-made millionaire in his twenties and has been an entrepreneur since the age of 4 when he set up his pup tent to sell “hand-squeezed tangerine juice” to high-school students when they got off the bus. At the age of 5, he decided the answer to his family’s often rocky and uncertain financial life, was to grow up to become a millionaire. Like many kids who grew up with a lot of financial certainty, he dreamed of a different life.

By the age of twenty-five, he had realized that dream and celebrated by purchasing a new luxury home on the water and his first Mercedes. He had the “American Dream”.

Life was great, except for one thing. J V quickly realized that his childhood dream had not included the truly important parts of life, such as feeling a deep sense of purpose and fulfilment. Although he had all the trappings of wealth and success on the outside, he felt empty inside.

This awareness led him to two decades of searching, which included reading extensively in the areas of both human potential and spirituality, attending programs such as Tony Robbins, and participating in spiritual retreats. J V wanted more and was determined to discover the answer to what was missing in his life.

Fast-forward time and now, he devotes himself to helping others find their dream by growing a business that combines making profits with creating an important difference for their customers and our world. His goal is to help you to create a business that affords you true financial freedom and a life that provides you the deep fulfillment you seek. All Conscious Millionaire trainings, programs, and coaching are designed to guide you forward on your millionaire path.

Named by Inc Magazine as one of the Top 13 Business Shows, JV Crum III hosts the Conscious Millionaire Podcast and Radio Network with over 12 Million Listeners and over 2,000 episodes heard in 190 countries.

JV is a #1 best-selling author, speaker, mindset and strategy coach, and serial-entrepreneur who made his First Million at age 25.

You can learn more about JV and his show at:

Conscious Millionaire Podcast/Show:

http://ConsciousMillionaireShow.com/

Conscious Millionaire Website:

http://ConsciousMillionaire.com/

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Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ca; there may be errors.)

Adam G. Force 0:11
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. excited to have you here. hope everybody is doing well. If you missed last, the last episode, it was with Jennifer priest. She’s a rock star in the Pinterest space. So we spoke a lot about a lot of good stuff in there. And I think you’ll get a lot of good insights, not just about Pinterest, but marketing in general, too. I think you’ll get some good golden nuggets. So swing back through if you haven’t heard it yet. And check that out and you have some time. Today we’re gonna be talking with Jay v Crum. He is the host of the conscious millionaire show with over 12 million monthly listeners in 190 countries. Season Six of his network has a total of over 2000 episodes, which is really impressive. And he’s been on top 100 many, many times. He’s a serial entrepreneur, speaker, coach, all that good stuff. Also, he’s authored book, which was a number one bestseller on Amazon when it launched called conscious millionaire grow your business by making a difference. So we’re going to learn a lot from jv crom will tap into his experience in podcasting and speaking and just in general his business expertise on scaling up to that seven figure space. Alright guys, so don’t forget to stop by Change Creator calm we have a lot of fresh content flowing out there and you could still get on the waitlist for the captivate method, our community of incredible entrepreneurs, this just might be the perfect tribe for you to get involved with community is just so powerful and growing our businesses, you really just you can’t see that value until you get in there and you start getting all the insights, feedback, networking, we’ve literally had people start new products and companies together once they’ve met, which is really exciting to see. And they’re just scaling up their businesses through the power of their marketing which is grounded in really great storytelling. So if you’re ready to supercharge your marketing with stories Telling so you could build trust and get more of those buyers. Stop by and sign up on that waitlist. Alright guys, we’re gonna dive into this conversation with JV. But don’t forget to stop by iTunes, leave us a review. We really appreciate your support and your feedback. Hey,

Adam G. Force 2:18
JV Welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

JV Crumm III 2:23
Yeah, well, I’m excited to be here, Adam. You know, we were talking chatting before we started that I recently was in Aspen, I live in Denver and I had a really not good fall on black ice and I have torn and my left tricep and it seems impossible but actually pulled some of the bone out from my left elbow. And so the only thing I can say is however that sounds to you, that’s how it feels

Adam G. Force 2:52
terrible.

JV Crumm III 2:53
And I’m in a six week brace to keep my arm, left arm straight. So You know, little things like cooking. Like all of a sudden, I have really sharp shears because I can’t hold a fork and then cut the meat. And I don’t I’m just saying, I want to assure you if you’ve never tried to do that it’s really hard to dry yourself when you get out of the shower with one arm. Yeah, I’m like, yeah, it’s like all these things that we take for granted. Now, what’s really interesting is that, you know, within about a half hour almost fainted. Somebody helped me to a chair, you know, got me into a restaurant, and, you know, from the impact of that, but then as soon as I started processing it, I was immediately grateful, even amid all of this, because I would gosh, you had really very little control over what happened. You know, it’s like all of a sudden, I was on an ice skating rink that was slightly wet and in, you know, I could have broken my hip, I could have broken, you know, an ankle or wrist or dislocated my shoulder or worse hit my head and god knows what would have happened from that. You Some going not pleasant. I’m not you know, I’m not saying it’s not it’s pleasant, but I’m actually grateful that it’s not other things you know, because and and of course now we’re having snowstorms and I’m like paranoid to walk on the snow. Yeah, you know out in the parking lot cuz I’m going to Oh, that’s how it all happened to begin with I’m going every step is very carefully placed right now

Adam G. Force 4:26
I don’t blame you gotta be careful and I I’ve had my fair share of broken bones and issues so I know the struggle of dealing with it and your everyday habits in life change.

JV Crumm III 4:38
Yeah, we really don’t even think about how how much life is how easy life actually is until all of a sudden, you know, half of your capacity to pick up things and everything. Yeah, just bringing the groceries in this week. It wasn’t that I bought the whole whole foods. It was just that you can only pick up one bag in the right arm, bring it in, go. packet and Heather bag. So, you know, it’s been it’s been an interesting thing. But you know, this is part of being an entrepreneur because all this stuff happens in your business as well. And I think the most important thing to remember about being an entrepreneur is that we’re human beings. We’re people going through this experience people with families or children or, you know, spouses and, and all these different things, and then something happens like this. And you go, Wow, this was, believe me this week was, you know, I think we might put it at 30% productive for the whole week. You know, but it is what it is, it is what it is. And I said, You’re sleeping 12 hours a night because my body just needs to rest. But this is part of being an entrepreneur because all of this has to be integrated in you still have sales cycles, you still have, you know, in my case, six days a week of podcasts and God we’re four months ahead, you know, but you know, clients to meet with meet next week. I’ve got a meet up to go to You still have to figure all that out? Yeah, absolutely.

Adam G. Force 6:04
Hey, let me I want to just give everybody a quick rundown. You know, just to add on to the intro and stuff and get a little more of a sense, just, you know why you got into podcasting, and how you scaled it to such a significant size. So I just maybe just give a little background of where that all started.

JV Crumm III 6:25
Yeah, so I actually started on the other side of the microphone. I was at a conference in 2013. I met Jamie masters who has Eventual Millionaire and this was June and she says, Oh, I’d like to interview you. And I, you know, barely knew what a podcast was. And I said, Yep, sounds great. And then she interviewed me and it came out in September, and within three days, I had phone calls. I must have given out my phone number something at rate and had $23,000 with a coaching business and I said to myself, well, shall we Like I need to be home more podcasts. Yeah. And so I reached out and found podcasts and got on podcasts. And then there’s a summit that no longer exists called New Media summit. And it was really great. It was always the first weekend of January in Las Vegas. And I went to that, and I had my book that was coming out in the fall of 2014. So I had prepared what are called pre EPUB samples, and it’s ones that are sent to publishers, and reviewers and the back of it is the back is different for the rest of the books the same. So I took a case of them and my whole outcome for numerous new media summit was to get on as many podcasts as I could. Yeah. However, by the end of the first night in the pre party and talking to a lot of people who had podcasts, and I’d already registered, so I saw that every one of the breakout sessions had one breakout session on podcasting, and I just had this intuitive. Oh wow. I doing a podcast. So I went to all of those. And I told my team when I got back, I’m going to do a podcast. Now, just because of life. I didn’t start recording into July, July 8 of 2014. And I told my team, I said, I don’t know why, but I’m really supposed to do this. And it’s just gonna be huge. And I don’t even know how that happens. But I was right. I started recording where we’re going to launch in a month. It’s interesting. I’ve done seven podcasts now, and none of them have launched on the date. I predicted. They always launched about a month later, but they were all successful. So folks, I coined a realization that don’t launch until you’re ready. So I didn’t launch until September 16. But by that time, I there must be some record. I mean, there’s some people who do like two minute podcasts so they can say they have a lot of podcasts, but I mean, these were all real interviews and I had 662 interviews in the can I plan to launch two days a week. But when I sat down, I said, Gosh, I’m gonna have a lot of really unhappy people that are coming out nine months from now. They probably aren’t going to like that. And so I launched five days and very quickly got to seven. And the second month, I had 150,000 downloads, and which most people if they had that in a year, they’d be ecstatic. Yeah. And, and so it then it grew. Now we have between our radio show, our podcast, downloads, streams, 190 countries, we have 12 million listeners a month. And it just it grew exponentially. And I really think it was because it was a message that the world was ready to hear that let’s build high profit businesses that make a positive impact. Let’s make a difference in what we’re doing. It’s not just about transactions and how many boxes we can sell or how many units we can sell. It’s about really transforming other people’s lives and being fulfilled and happy. And getting freedom that we’re wanting in the process and, and it just seemed like that was a magic formula that people were ready to move beyond. Let’s just make money, which is, you know, kind of vapid actually. And let’s let’s make money and a lot of it. But let’s make money by doing something that is going to help other people, transform them, fulfill us, and we’re going to become happy and get the freedom we wanted in the process. To me, that’s the best of all worlds.

Adam G. Force 10:28
Yeah. When and when did they? When did you start that podcast? I mean, you’re doing what he said. I think it’s 12 million people a month or something like that.

JV Crumm III 10:36
Yeah. So it launched September 16 2014. So we’re in our sixth season now. And this season, we’re doing six days a week. So my joke is I become a slacker. I don’t do Sunday. But if it could come back, I just seen it. You know, it’s just like, oh, we’re in a good rhythm. This works. And one day a week is solo and that’s my Saturday show, which is Monday. To set show and it’s about 10 minutes. And I think people like it because you can, you know, go to the gym, run your errands, you can listen to it in a short period of time, and it’s just designed to help you get that mindset that makes the difference in really growing and scaling your business.

Adam G. Force 11:17
Yeah, yeah. So and I’m curious, you know, over over time, like what were some of the steps that you took because you know, I mean, I we run a podcast for for social impact and stuff like that, but I share a sack don’t see 12 million people a month. So there must be some secret sauce behind it. That may be a couple of tips you can share with people.

JV Crumm III 11:39
Yeah, so I’m a numbers geek. My background, you know, includes three graduate degrees, a master’s in clinical psych tax law, and, and an MBA so the tax law is is pretty unique in that most lawyers don’t like numbers at all. And and I love numbers. So The first year alone, I would wake up during the night, I checked my numbers 12 to 15 times a day. And so I knew the patterns. And I knew that if something wasn’t hitting the pattern that something was off, and I would go in, and I would just look at my tweets, I’d look at what was going on. We’d make adjustments, I would try marketing ideas. And within a week, I would make new changes. So I spent a year figuring out how to even write my tweets. So I think because I looked at it as an experimental lab, and I was just driven by the numbers like what will make the numbers increase, and I just kept trying and trying and trying things. And now, this last year, I, I made more changes in the show that I’ve made. Like maybe in the prior five years. So I think part of it is that I look at this as a craft. And every literally my typical recording day is I do six shows, and we have an hour block for each show. And the recording time for each shows 37 minutes. So I do really well with that. But every show literally every show, I asked myself, how can I make this show this episode? Better than anything I’ve ever recorded? So rather than just saying, Hey, we’re doing well, I’m like in a mode of constant improvement and always wanting to upper level and asking how can I get more value? You know, I email my people I I’m this last six months, most of my clients have come from me doing ads, experimenting, one of the new things that I’ve been doing that’s worked really well as I do a call to action and I give people my cell phone and I say text me. You know right now I’ve got three people That I’ve got to set up appointments with that have texted me in the last two days. And I’ll say, you know, if you want to get to your first million text your name and first knowing and then I’ll, you know, write back and ask for their URL and, and it’s actually me and I actually had somebody this last week who says, I think this is a scam and I wrote him back and I said, What are the odds? It’s a scam? When you heard me say it on my own show. Right? And they wrote back and they said, Well, that’s a good point. Here’s your fine. But I’ve had people that have just picked up the phone and called Nick Oh, my God, I can’t believe it to you. And I said, Yeah, I said it was my cell phone. You know that. That’s, that’s exactly what it is. So I’m just trying out different things, to engage. I think that I have so many people ask me, where’s the money in podcasting, and most people think the money’s in a different place. So we more than cover our costs. And I have two full time people, from our advertisements from our sponsors. But that’s not The real money that’s covering the cost of making a little money, the real money is in your relationships. And it’s two kinds of relationships. And you and I’ve talked about this, yeah, one relationship is with the guests. And the other relationship is with the listeners. So the only reason someone would text me is that I’ve built a relationship with them. Right? So throughout my show, I will talk to the audience, I’ll go, you may be wondering, you know, you may be, you know, feeling like maybe this is a bit too much too quickly. So let’s break it down. And so I’m having a dialogue with them, not just with my guests, and building building relationship, which I genuinely want to do, because I happen to like building relationships. And then with the guests, as you know, we’re already talking about maybe we could do an affiliate operation. every stage I get on comes from the guests. Every you know, I have a joint venture I’ve put together with another guests that we’re launching in a month. The affiliate relationships, guests Become clients. Right? So it’s all in the relationships, that’s where the money is. And that’s where I think the money generally is if you really want to scale something.

Adam G. Force 16:12
Yeah, I think that’s great feedback. And, you know, I hear and I’d like to hear your input. I know you’ve had a lot of success with it. But I hear a lot of entrepreneurs in early stages who do not have any revenue streams established yet. You know, everyone’s excited, they’re inspired. They see people doing podcasts, they see people blogging and doing you know, put, it’s so easy now I can put up my own website and all this stuff. And they’re like, Alright, I’m gonna start a podcast, I gotta write, I’m gonna do guest posting. And I mean, would you recommend starting the podcast as part like, what’s the is the sequence of operations based on your job? Wait,

JV Crumm III 16:47
yeah, that’s such a fantastic question. Well, I actually have a nine part nine step process for building a podcast, and I call it a growth engine podcast. So first let’s talk about why I chose that as the title is that from a business perspective, if you have a business, the reason to create a podcast is it’s going to be one of your growth engines. And where most people fail at that is they haven’t yet refined their business model. And as a result, their podcast isn’t refined. So the Step two is to integrate it into your business model. But if you haven’t done the business model, precisely, it’s very hard to know what your podcast is or why you would want to choose one topic or problem over another. So let’s talk about the business model. And the business model. What I’ve learned is, most people, especially if they’re stuck in the five figures, or they’re in their six and they can’t get to the seven figure, I mean, at a conscious moving our focus mainly on six figure entrepreneurs who want to get that seven and seven that want to Another million that’s who I tend to work with. But the whether you’re in five or six, usually, you can’t answer these three questions in one sentence. And so it’s really boiling it down to the essence, what is your one market? What is your one problem? And what is your one solution? And when you can get that down to one, you know, if you really want to be, have a big answer to sentences, so something really short and precise, you don’t yet know your business model. And what I find is that people who are who are floundering who are really frustrated in getting ahead, when I look at their business model, they’re trying to do too many things. They’re trying to work with three or four different markets. They’re trying to solve multiple problems, and they have a slew of solutions for them. And so I want you to think about these are two Companies that I do business with as a customer. Beyond that, I don’t have any relationship with them, so I have no reason to promote them. But it’s lead pages and Click Funnels. Yeah, both lead pages and Click Funnels, both of which I think do a great job at what they do. Got to eight figures very, very quickly. So $10 million in revenue by doing only one thing. Now, it’s interesting to me just as a comment, that lead pages has started doing more and Click Funnels has started doing even more and frankly, I think it’s a mistake. I think that they know what they’re in the business to do. And I think Jada just do that. But my point is, they got to, you know, 10 million in revenue, lead pages just created more and more lead pages where you go in, you plug in your words, and and then people, you send people there and it tags, tags them or puts them into your CRM. That’s all they do Click Funnels. It’s a series of pages that are that you build that take people through a sales process. That’s what they do, right? And so what is really important is to figure out, well, what is that hot button problem that you want to solve? And then what’s the solution? now want to add a piece because there’s a little different approach at conscious millionaire than traditional business, traditional business. What I learned in my MBA is you go out and you look at the marketplace first and find out a problem that hasn’t been solved or solved as well as you could. But I don’t really think that’s the way to start. If you want to build a purpose driven business that’s going to fulfill you and you see that this is part of your vision for being on the planet. You need to figure out what difference you want to be making and the easy way to fit that into the formula if you’re just starting at a different place because that’s really the solution. So the difference you want to make in the world is the solution you’re providing. And then you go out and find out, look at Okay, well, there are multiple markets who have a problem that that’s the solution for. And then you look at the markets and you go, Well, which one of these markets there’s three criteria that I like to use one, which one of them has the problem and showing up in a way that excites you? I mean, some markets, you know, types of,

JV Crumm III 21:31
you know, people, or professions or businesses just don’t excite you. Write well don’t choose that as the market you’re going to work with, because you’re not going to be excited to get up in the morning. Second, do they really have a burning desire to solve this problem? Now, this is a very important point, people can have a huge problem that they actually aren’t motivated to solve. And the easy way to understand that is we’ve already had a friend or family member, because we’re kind of stuck with some of those people, right? I’m just saying, who complain endlessly about an obvious problem. But they’re really identified with the problem, and they just want to complain about it. They really don’t want to solve it. Those make lousy customers, because they actually have no motivation to change. And then the third thing is they either have to right now have the financial capabilities or right now have access access could be a credit card access could be somebody who could loan them money, but they either have the money or access right now. So that they can comfortably buy what it is that you have to sell at the price point that you’ve determined, you want to sell it and that price point should be some fraction of the return on the investment you’re going to get from buying it for you. So that’s a whole formula. And how to come up with that price. I have a six part formula. It’s a little more than we can cover today. But But the point is, is the problem showing up in that market in a way that excites you? Are they motivated? So it’s a real hot button emotionally to move forward? And do they have the money to pay you? And are there then you know, plenty of those people because here’s the secret. You want to choose where you want to be financially three years from now. And you want to choose one market that can take you there, because people go, Oh, well, in six months, I’ll add another market. No, that’s the fallacy of thinking I need all these markets, you need one market. And you need to be able to stay with them for three years and imagine if you are selling them more and more to that same market, how much you’re going to learn about that market. You’re going to become a world class expert in that market. And as and as a result, you’re going to learn how to message exactly what they need to hear Do they need to hear the word happy? Because that’s really important to them, that they need to hear the word freedom because that’s really important to them. Do they need to hear the phrase pain free because you’re doing something to get pain away from? What do they need to hear, the best way to learn that is that you spend a lot of time with them, spend a lot of time surveying them, spend a lot of time in conversations with them, meet them at events. But that’s the beauty of having one focused market is that you’re really going to drill down and now your landing pages, your website, your emails are all messaged to that one market.

Adam G. Force 24:39
Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly it. And getting that clarity is key. And I think I want to add something to that market discovery, which is, you know, you talked about going out there and saying what, what market shows the problem in a way that excites you? And I think that there’s part of this process is also understanding yourself, right? Just kind of like where do you want know, what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to live and then you start, you start really becoming more original to because now you’re leaning into something that is unique to yourself your story and who you are. And you put that into that business. And it’s so saturated out here today that it just becomes helpful to make you original. And then you wake up every day feeling good about what you’re doing. Right.

JV Crumm III 25:26
Exactly. And I really think what you’re talking about Adam is authenticity. Pretty much. Yeah, I was talking to someone this week, I’ve done over 2000 episodes, and we were talking about authenticity. And he has a podcast as well. And and I said you know I’ve never had to even worry about anything I said because I just always say the truth about who I am and for the most part conscious millionaire as a brand is really just a statement about JB Crum, the third and who I am and what my values are and what my message is and what the difference is I want to make in the world So after 2000 episodes, I’m not worried if somebody listened to all of them that they’d hear me saying inconsistent things, because they wouldn’t or saying something that, you know, I had to worry about how I was framing it because I’m never even thinking about that. I just go, you know, this is what I’m thinking. These are my thoughts on it’s like what we’re doing today. It evolves over time, but it’s always the same theme. It’s always the same values. And I think that’s important for you that if you’re having if you feel like you’re having to make up a brand that’s not authentic, exactly. crafting the brand, finding the right words and the right phrases that’s just about messaging. That’s not taking away from authenticity that’s about connecting. But it got to start with something that’s core to who you are. And I would say that what’s really core to conscious millionaire and you think about even the brand conscious millionaires and I’m all about personal growth. I’m all about evolving my company. Just inside lived in a Buddhist monastery to learn how to meditate. I, you know that right now I’m following Dr. Joe dispenza and doing some of his work, you know, but but I’m always about how do I uplift my consciousness, uplift the consciousness of other people how can and to me that’s about respect as well. It’s respecting each other for who we are as human beings right now on our journey. And then I discovered for me as much as I love personal development, if it is somehow connected to money, it doesn’t excite me as much. So for itself, we’re just going to do personal development for the sake of personal development. It isn’t quite as exciting to me as if we’re going to do personal development, and now we’re going to be able to build our business better. And now we’re going to put more money in the bank and make a bigger difference with our business. So I had to discover that that’s my unique personality. And then there are other people who just do personal growth and it’s only for the sake of personal growth, but that’s their personality. That’s their natural value system.

Adam G. Force 28:04
Yeah, well, and you know, I was going just back to like, you know, the idea of everyone being busy started is starting a podcast, a good idea for a startup and all that kind of stuff, especially just, you know, depending on when you do it. And I think that to your point, bringing the money factor, just real quick is, you know, I think that people forget that they have to have a clear path towards establishing a revenue channel, they get excited about just content production.

JV Crumm III 28:30
Well, they do and and I want to circle back to that. I just want to make one quick comment. Because I work in this conscious space. I mean, I never pick up the phone or get on a zoom call with anybody who isn’t interested in making this a better world. So I don’t attract people who just go Hey, give me the formula to put more money in the bank and three months, but that’s it. They don’t really care about the people. They’re helping others and hey, I just want more money. Those people never even contact me which is which is good. It means my market is working because I actually want them to go away, because it’s not the people that are my market. Right. But when we come back to the podcast once you have clarification of your one market one problem, one solution once you’re clear about that, because the podcast must mirror that, and that’s where a lot of people, that’s what I want to be clear about. That’s where a lot of people go awry. You say come up with some cool name. I do not think the name of the podcast is the place to start. I think designing the podcast is the place to start. And then you come up with a name. But they come up with some cool name, hey, I’m going to do it on this and go Yeah, but how does that relate to your market? How does it relate to your business? So the podcast to be a growth engine must be able to fit inside your business model? And then my answer is when should you start a podcast today? And that doesn’t mean Put out your first episode. I think it’s gonna take you a couple of a couple of months to really get it all put together right about the fact You can do that as a month. And then you’ve got to ask some people, you’ve got to get clarification of who your guests are. It’s not just anybody. It’s very specific. But putting a podcast out, I think I have a book. And I’m proud to say, because I’m a numbers geek, it was the number one book on Amazon number one in 34 categories with 50,000 downloads in three days when I launched it, but that was a, that was a coordinated marketing effort. I wish I could say that just the name of the book attracted all these people. But no, we marketed and it was a very carefully constructed marketing plan. But the point is, my book came out and that gave me credibility. The biggest thing I got out of my book so far is that I met Arianna Huffington. And, and it was at an event and I orchestrated meeting her and I’d already signed the book to her and she looked at it for three to four seconds and it does have a fantastic cover. I mean, trust me, I paid for that. I had three different coverages. designers’ before we got what I wanted, and she looked at me and she says, Would you like to be a writer for me? As I like to say, I may not be the smartest kid in the in the room, but I’m not the dumbest. I said, Yes. Right. And in two weeks, I had my own column on the Huffington Post for three and a half years, purely off of my book. And I wouldn’t have gotten it without the book. So the book really gives you credibility. But I don’t think there’s anything that will give you traction as quickly as having a podcast. It gives you access. I have so many A Levels celebrity people in our in our world, you know, who have been on my podcast that I’ve built friendships with, that I otherwise at most might have known them as a quote unquote student, not the same status, right as a podcast that’s successful. All of a sudden you’re an equal status. Your your In one world, they’re in another world. But the but you’re acknowledging each other on the same level. And, and a lot of them have become good friends, I never would have had access to those people without the podcast.

Adam G. Force 32:14
Yeah, I mean, that is one major benefit is building those relationships, also brand equity and things like that. I just I get nervous because there is a decent amount of planning and work behind a power test.

UnJV Crumm III 32:26
I have two full time people, there is a lot of work if you’re going to pull off what I pull off.

Adam G. Force 32:31
And that’s that’s the challenge though JV is that people, especially when you’re in your first couple years, they’re like, I’m gonna do all this. Well,

JV Crumm III 32:38
you know, Adam, that’s a great point. And in fact, a reference that I said I just put together a deal with someone who was on my show a joint venture deal. It’s actually we’ve already named it podcast gold. It’s where people can come have their podcast, literally done for them all the editing, all the uploading and it’s designed to monitor ties so that rather than focusing on doing what I did where you have 12 million listeners, because the likelihood you’re going to duplicate that is not high. But that’s not really what you want. What you really want is a podcast that gets out there and makes you money. Yes. And so we designed a whole program where, where the target is to get your podcast to six figure revenues from the podcast. And so if you want to know more about that, or any, any of my programs, I’m going to give you my cell phone. If you’re at six figures, you want to get the first million just just send me a text, I’m gonna give you the phone number, first million and your name. And if you want to start a podcast and you want to do it in a way that you don’t have to do most of the work, and we’re going to help you design it so you actually make money from it. That’s podcast gold. So either send first million podcast gold, whichever you’re interested in both if you want both, here’s my cell phone 303 6410401 so that’s in Denver. It’s the Mountain Time Zone. It’s 3036 for 10401 just text me, I’d love to hear from you. And yes, as you already know, from this call, I actually am the person who gets back with you. It’s not an assessor. It’s me and we’ll be on the phone talking.

Adam G. Force 34:25
Yeah, you know, it’s funny that that happened to you. I sometimes we have that that program drift on our site, or we did and people can chat with you. And I would get I have it on my phone. So something important came up, I would respond and be Hey, you know, and, and nobody would ever believe that. It was actually me. I guess it’s Yeah,

JV Crumm III 34:44
I think we’ve got so many bots in the world. Yeah. That the natural the natural responses. This is just a bot. Yeah, it’s like no, I don’t do that because I value it. value the personal relationship. It’s all about me helping people, you know, build their businesses and build their lives. And, And that, to me is personal. So, I mean, when I send out a broadcast email, everybody knows it’s a broadcast email. You know, it’s got stuff at the bottom that says that you can unsubscribe and all that. But I really put a lot of time into personal contact with people. And I think it makes a lot of difference.

Adam G. Force 35:24
Yeah, I think it’s important to it’s a powerful, powerful and important part of any business. Well, listen, JV, I want to be respectful of your time. So I know you gave a shout out for your podcasting program. Where else can people just find your website and stuff? I want to make sure you get a chance to shout that out.

JV Crumm III Speaker 35:40
Yeah, just go to conscious millionaire com. In fact, it’s very easy to find me because I go by my name JV Chrome, and I was fortunate to get that so whether it’s instagram or facebook, or, you know, LinkedIn or Twitter, it’s at JV chrome and that’s where you can find me or you can just go The website conscious millionaire comm you’ll see the podcast tab you can join on iTunes or Stitcher. I think at the present time we’re in 37 directories 38 actually directories. And so there’s lots of ways to discover that way. But that’s the direct way. And again, if you want, you’re at six figures, and you want to get the first million texts me and if you want to build a podcast gold, that’s why we named it that way. So you’re making money from it. just text me at 3030 sorry, 3036 for 10401. I’d love to hear from you.

Adam G. Force 36:38
Awesome. Thank you so much, JV. Appreciate your time today and all your fabulous expertise. Keep up the amazing work.

Unknown Speaker 36:44
Well, Adam, it’s my honor. I listen, just a big shout out. You’re listening. You’re listening to a great podcast you need to stay and keep listening to this podcast. And I just want to challenge you today to take one thing we discussed today. Put it into action in the next 24 hours. I love that I

Adam G. Force 37:04
love that takeaway. Appreciate it. Thank you so much JV.

Outro
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag. com. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

interview

Susan Meier: Electrifying Your Brand Strategy to Amplify Your Impact

Listen to our exclusive interview with Susan Meier:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Susan Meier is a brand strategist, a visual artist, and the owner of Susan Meier Studio. Her past clients include Unilever, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Mars, Samsung, and Novartis. She has extensive experience in the field of branding and she shares some of her wisdom with us in this podcast.

Currently, Susan is working mostly in the health and wellness space. As a staunch advocate for people taking the reins when it comes to their own health, she works with a lot of clients who deal with technologies that facilitate patient interactions with their healthcare providers. Her ultimate goal is to help people improve their healthcare experience.

A Customized Approach for Every Business

For most projects, Susan takes what she refers to as a portfolio approach. She helps larger corporations with their sales and marketing teams, generally looking at branding during a week-long project with a set scope and phases of work. For smaller, early stage companies — especially those with a smaller budget — her approach generally focuses more on innovation, usually in workshop format. In this way, she helps young businesses capture their culture once they know exactly what they stand for but before they grow so much that this sort of thing gets a little out of hand.

In her nine years of helping companies build their brand identity, Susan has always set aside a portion of her portfolio for these smaller projects despite them being less lucrative for her. The payoff? They inspire her and she learns a lot from them. She enjoys contributing to entrepreneurs who are just starting out. That aha moment when the small, independent professional who has come to her for help realizes what their true identity is, who their audience is, and how they empathetically connect with them is something Susan finds truly rewarding. She refers to these elements as the three pieces of branding.

What is Branding?

Ask ten different business owners what branding is and you’ll get ten different answers. For Susan, branding refers to who it is you want to be in the world. What do you stand for? What are your values? What do you bring to the party that’s different from what anyone else is bringing?

It starts with identity and really kind of authentically thinking about who you are and who you want to be.

Language is also key, stresses Susan. Finding the right terminology when establishing your brand will make all the difference.

It All Starts With Self-Reflection

Thinking about who you are and who you want to be is the first step in the branding process, according to Susan. She explains that it’s okay to experiment with ideas and find that they don’t work. However, she also stresses the importance of constantly questioning whether it is truly you. Ask yourself if this is truly who you want to be. Is it who you are? Is this brand idea leveraging my uniqueness? My creativity? She goes on to explain that as an entrepreneur, you will not be able to create that groundbreaking idea when you’re just not feeling it. There needs to be a purpose for everything.

It needs to be mindful; it needs to be intentional. It can’t just be pretty.

The Pitfalls of Social Media

Susan warns that there is a distinction between branding and building a presence on social media. While building an online presence is important, she cautions that it skips over the step of figuring out who you are before figuring out how to get as many followers as possible. She adds that newer entrepreneurs who haven’t been through a branding process assume that their brand is synonymous with their social media presence which it is not. While branding is the basis of who you are, your social media presence is more of an execution tactic.

Advice for Early Stage Entrepreneurs

When asked for some advice for entrepreneurs who are just starting out, Susan recommended the first step to be one of self-reflection. Take a moment and think about who you personally are, what you are building and why, and what your motivations are. Make a list of your values. Secondly, think about where you would like to see yourself and your business or brand in ten years.

Another effective approach for early-stage entrepreneurs is to write a mission statement and then think about who you are serving, whether you have an audience, whether you have one customer or many, and then connect the dots between all those things. Take a good look at who you are serving, how you are serving, and what your promise is to them.

Lastly, Susan makes reference to the holy grail of branding: that you’ve thought through what you stand for and what you do before deciding how you will express your brand.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ai; there may be errors.)

Adam Force 0:11
Hey, what’s up and welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. Hope you are all doing really well and your week is off to a great start. It is Tuesday the 28th here as we speak. And if you missed the last episode we spoke with Peter Montoya. He’s a really…has a really impressive background and we spoke about transformational leadership, which is so important in today’s digital marketing climate, and leading good teams, good cultures, and that’s a great conversation. So if you didn’t get to listen to it, swing back, check it out. I think you’ll get some good nuggets out of there.

This week, we will be talking to Susan Meier. Now Susan is a brand strategist and a visual artist and so she’s done — she has a lot of great experience in this space and she has her own company right now called Susan Meier Studio. And and historically she’s worked with brands on this stuff including people like Unilever, you know, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Mars, Samsung, you know, some big players in the health space like Genentech and Novartis, so a lot of great experience to share. And we’re going to talk a lot about branding and user experience and things like that, because, well, one, that’s an area that’s really important to your business for, you know, visual, you know, communication. But also, this is an area that I nerd out on. I love branding and user experience. So I’m excited to have this conversation, I think you’ll get a lot of good stuff out of it. So stay tuned, we’re going to dive into that in just a minute. If you haven’t been to changecreator.com in a while, swing through there and pick up your Three Skills That Every Entrepreneur Must Have to Grow and Impact Business.

So many good insights in there. We’ve had lots of great feedback and I think you’ll enjoy that blueprint, basically. It’s right there on the homepage when you get there. So check that out. And I think you guys will get a lot out of it. And if you are on our email list or in our Facebook group, the Profitable Digital Impact Entrepreneur, I want to let you know that we do have a challenge that our team — myself, Amy, Danielle and Solene — are putting on. And that is actually kicking off today the 28th. So if you haven’t got the email sign up for the challenge. It’s called the Story Powered Marketing Challenge. We really want to start helping people understand how to harness the power of storytelling in today’s digital marketing world and why it’s so important, and what it means to your business — all that good stuff. So we’re going to start setting you up with those steps, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. So that’s kicking off today. So if you’re in the group, you probably got the invite or if you’re on our email list. If not, you can jump in at the last minute here or maybe you can catch us on the next time around. Alright guys, that’s about it for today. We’re going to kick this off with Susan Meier and start talking about some brand strategy.

Announcer 2:46
Okay, show me the heat!

Adam Force 2:51
Hey, Susan. Welcome to the Change Creator Podcast Show. How are you doing today?

Susan Meier 2:55
I’m great. Adam, how are you?

Adam Force 2:56
I’m doing amazing. The sun is shining. Actually, it’s pretty hot out here today. I’m in Miami. Remind me where you are.

Susan Meier 3:03
Lucky you. I’m in New York and it is freezing. The sun is shining, though.

Adam Force 3:06
I do love New York though, so cold or not. Yes. So listen, you know, I’m a big fan of branding and UX and all that fun stuff. So I think branding is such a important part of, you know, the personality of a company and who is behind it and all that kind of stuff. So tell me a little bit just about like what you have going on these days. I like to get the latest and greatest and then we’ll get a little bit on how you got there.

Susan Meier 3:35
Oh, sure. So, I have been for the last few years. fielding mostly work in the health and wellness space. And I find that really exciting because I’m a big advocate of helping people take more control over their own health journey. So I work a lot with clients who work in the technology space enabling, you know, sort of patient interaction with their healthcare or doctor interaction via new technologies. And I think we’re living in a time, in a world, where there’s so many new opportunities opening up through technology and through innovation that’s going to really improve our health — much needed — improve our healthcare experience. Yeah, so that’s been pretty exciting.

Adam Force 4:23
Okay, and so right now you’re doing a lot of consulting with companies. And I think you mentioned that you might be doing some, some new testing to work with individuals, yeah?

Susan Meier 4:33
Yeah, so my, in my business, I have a kind of a portfolio approach. So I work with larger companies, larger brands, corporations, helping their sales and marketing teams, generally, think about branding, and that usually looks like a, you know, sort of multiple week long project with set scope and phases of work, right like a traditional consulting model. Then I also run workshops, which is typically around innovation. But also I’ve done that for a very quick, quick brand positioning, sort of get my brand off the ground, put a stake in the ground around my brand. And that’s usually for earlier stage or smaller companies who don’t necessarily have the budget, but they do have the need, particularly when they’re early stage and are just about to grow, needing to sort of say, Let’s capture this great culture that we have now what our brand really stands for, before we grow and you know, the sort of things have the potential to get out of control.

So I’ve been doing this for nine years, and I’ve always saved a portion of my mental portfolio for those projects, even though they’re not as lucrative for me, right? But they’re very inspiring, and I really enjoy doing that work. And I learn a lot from it. And I like to think I contribute, you know, something as well there. So I enjoy that. And then what we were just chatting about is that in the last couple of years I’ve had individuals, so entrepreneurs, independent professionals like doctors, lawyers, consultants, people in those kinds of industries, where they’re an individual shingle. So it’s a professional brand, but it’s really the brand is them. And they’re sort of at a moment where they’re thinking about what their path forward is going to be, sort of how they want to show up in the world in a consistent way. And so I’ve been doing one-on-one work with a number of people using the same tools around, you know, what’s your identity? Who’s your audience? And how do you empathically connect with them? And how do you manage your messaging? Those are kind of the three pieces of branding, or at least they are for the way I approach it.

And, and so those are relevant for individual business owners and entrepreneurs as well. And this year going to be launching a brand new product, which I’m really excited about, which is a series of workshops where, which makes it a little bit more accessible and affordable for people who can’t necessarily pay the fee for a one-on-one, full-day session. where, you know, it’s a handful of people, maybe five or 10 people that come together in a room for that day-long session, do those same exercises, and share with each other inspiration, insights, as well as you know, my facilitating.

Adam Force 7:31
So sounds like you have a lot going on and some exciting stuff coming down the pipeline with the workshops. Can we just level set on how you’re defining branding?

Susan Meier 7:43
Sure.

Adam Force 7:44
And then tell us a little bit about your process.

Susan Meier 7:48
That’s a great question. And I’m so glad you asked it. I feel like so many of the things that I do for a living and that I talk about — branding, strategy, creativity — are all words that are just a little squishy, and people use them to mean so many different things, right? And none of those definitions is wrong per se. But for me, branding is really about Who do you want to be in the world? You know, what do you stand for? What are your values? What do you bring to the party that’s different from what anyone else is bringing? And so that’s why when I think about branding, and the process that I take my clients through, it starts with identity, and really kind of authentically thinking about who you are and who you want to be. I usually do like a values…I always do a values exercise, and we often will do a mission statement coming out of that.

Because I think it’s really important to self reflect, right? Before you sort of go, Oh, well, I want to be who my customers want me to be, which is not unimportant. It’s important to understand your audience and think about how you can deliver on their needs, of course. But first, you have to be true to yourself. And so then the second part of the process is, you know, you are providing a service or product, so you need to obviously think about who is on the other end of that product. And so depending on…I’ve worked with clients who were really in touch with that, and I’ve also worked with clients who aren’t so in touch with that, not because they’re bad people, or they’re not empathetic, but because it’s typically in spheres where it’s like a new technology.

So, they’re either scientists who are developing, you know, a new drug, or engineers who are developing a new technology or developers who are developing a new technology that’s really exciting. And it’s kind of all about the science of what they’ve created. And it’s this new breakthrough thing that everybody knows is new and breakthrough and haven’t quite yet thought about how it’s going to be used or how it’s going to be understood by the audience or even who the audience might be. And so that’s not a wrong way to innovate. It’s just a way where they need a little more help kind of thinking about things from the outside in.

Adam Force 10:03
Yeah, I mean, we see this a lot, too. And it’s like, you know, people are great at what they do. But they’re not necessarily experts at how to position it, how to get the world to understand it, and how to express what they’re doing, because that’s just not their skill set. Right? So they lean into people like yourself to learn how to do that part of it. And I think, you know, strategically like you make some comments on your website and stuff about kind of joining forces of creativity and strategy. And I completely agree with that. And I think that it’s really important for people, they don’t need to become branding experts, but they have to understand the strategy about what…how to like, think about it, right?

Susan Meier 10:44
Absolutely. And we can’t all be experts, nor should we be experts in everything. I don’t know how to code. And I’m not going to learn and I’m so grateful to those who do. So, yeah. So I bring sort of my skill set, as you do and as we all do. But yeah, I think the combination of creativity and strategy is very core to my ideology. It’s kind of core to who I am. I am both a brand strategist and a visual artist. I do that not just as a hobby, but also professionally. I show and sell my work and that’s been a part of me for as long as I can remember — actually, longer than I’ve been…much longer than I’ve been a brand strategist. And so I bring that perspective to the strategy work I do and what I find, you know, in my own life, but I also hear this when I’m talking to people about their careers and their paths — that to the extent that they can bring whatever their creative spark is, whatever creativity looks like in their life, into their so-called real work or into the work that requires them to have their analytical logic brain on, the more electrified that work can be, right?

They’re going to be more innovative. They’re going to be more engaged. It’s gonna be more fun. So I think the combination of those two things. And the other thing I think is super interesting, as I’ve read a little bit about this, the neuroscience actually supports this, we talk a lot about in popular culture about left brain and right brain. And I think we’ve actually begun to believe that we have these two separate halves of our brains that govern different functions. And it’s actually just not true from a neuroscience perspective. The two sides of the brain work together on everything, you know, certainly Language Center might be located here versus there. But you can’t speak without using both sides of your brain. And so I think there’s a kind of a pretty poetry in that.

Adam Force 12:39
Yeah. I mean, I would imagine that we’re not just — that the whole brain is being used. And it’s not just these little compartments that they kind of make it out to be. It just doesn’t make much sense. And I think you know, there’s a misunderstanding. When you hear branding people are like, Oh, my logo and my colors.

Susan Meier 12:59
Yeah, I’m glad you raised that. So it’s not that that’s not branding. That’s an important component of branding. And in my experience that’s often referred to as brand identity. Although that can also be confusing, because I just use the word identity to mean something else. So language is tricky. By the way, that’s a big part of branding: finding the right language. But yes, so yeah, so your logo, your name, your tagline, your colors, your fonts, your website, your podcast, all of that is part of your brand. I think of that as the expression of your brand. So the company I actually worked for before I started my own company — I was the Director of Strategy, but my title was Director of Vision.

There was a Director of Design, but her title was Director of Expression. And I thought that was so genius. I was really inspired by that. By the way, it’s the best title I’ve ever had: Director of Vision. It was so much cooler than strategy because really, that’s what strategy — if you would ask me the question about what is strategy that’s a whole longer another long answer. But really, it’s vision, right? You’re looking forward into where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there. And similarly, you know, the design and expression is really a great word for those visual components, or those succinct verbal components of how you come out into the world. That’s how you express your brand.

Adam Force 14:33
Yeah, yeah, hundred percent. You know, and it’s funny because, you know, I’ve done my fair share with some of these things. And I would, you know, I always read this research because you hear people talk about, well, you got to be this color because of this psychological reason and that’s like [unintelligible] reason.

Susan Meier 14:49
Yeah.

Adam Force 14:50
And one of the things that we do teach in our own program when it comes to just like, you know, helping people understand the basics around their website and stuff like that is like, you know, You can get hung up on the psychology of color. And I’m bringing this up just curious to see how you feel about it. And I would always say, listen, there’s probably some truth to some of these things, no doubt with some of the data and the tests. You could find conflicting information all over the place. At the end of the day, I would say like, Okay, if I told you, you’re going to go to the Harley Davidson website, and you think about in your mind automatically from preconceived information, bikers, black leather coats, all that stuff, and you went to their website, and it was all pink with flowers, it would probably not make sense to you. So to me, great branding is when someone thinks about, like, where they’re going, and then they get there and it makes sense.

Susan Meier 15:42
Yes, you’ve got to have a reason for what you’re doing. Now, there’s in your, for example, in your example, if you had a motorcycle brand and you got to their website, and it was pink, and there was some compelling reason for that, that they were able to explain, that was part of their brand DNA and their brand story, that could also be genius, right? Because everybody else goes right and they go left. So you can’t rule anything out. But I think the point, that is exactly the point you’re making that it needs to be mindful, it needs to be intentional. It can’t just be pretty. It has to be in service of some. And that for me is the holy grail of branding. That’s why branding is important is that you’ve thought through what you stand for, and why you do what you do before you make those expression decisions.

Adam Force 16:34
Exactly. And I like that you use the word intentional. I mean, I think that’s just such a big part of just everything we do as entrepreneurs is to make sure we’re acting with intention. You know, and I spoke to Jay Shetty a while back and one of the things he mentioned was a story he was with his art teacher, and he would go through this process there: Alright you guys, I want you to draw x, y&z. And you can do the best drawing, the most beautiful drawing just like he said. A beautiful website. And he would say, Well, why is this here? Why did you do that? Why’d you use this color? And if you didn’t have good reason, you fail. But you could have the ugliest drawing in the world and as long as you had a really specific intention for why you did certain things, you would get an A.

Susan Meier 17:15
Yeah, that’s a that’s a good teacher. That’s a good crit, as they call it. You know that you have to defend your work.

Adam Force 17:21
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So let’s talk a little bit. Now we kind of touched on strategy, we touched on branding. And you know, you say that in a lot of ways people think that these are at odds. So let’s just talk about that and explain how they’re not at odds.

Susan Meier 17:39
Well, I think there’s a bunch of myths that we grow up with, and it’s not necessarily that they’re in the front of our mind, or that we actively believe them if we were asked, but they’re so prevalent that somewhere they’re lodged inside our brains, like the starving artist, for example, right? Or in the same way that you might say, the absent minded professor. So this idea that people who are highly creative are somehow not, then at the same time, efficient or productive or organized. And it’s just not true because those who are highly creative and are successful in executing their creativity are extraordinarily efficient and productive and organized.

Everyone has their own way of doing that. Maybe they surround themselves with a team, maybe they have different tools than you or I or somebody else uses. But that tension that I think we set up as a society, starting with this idea of left brain versus right brain is just a myth. And in fact, if you’ve heard the expression freedom within a framework, I think there’s actually a sort of a confluence of the two sides. Not only is there not attention, but you need that stability and order in order to be creative and free and innovative. right? You need those two sides together.

Adam Force 19:10
True. Yeah, very true. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And there are so many myths. I mean, I guess we all have so many years of just different kinds of conditioning and messages. And you know, I always say today, it’s like, you know, we have this internet thing now. And there’s so much information out there where accessibility to become an entrepreneur, to live the life you want, is there. However, it’s also saturated with so much, just, misinformation because there’s a lot of people out there that really, they are trying to be something that they’re not, which means they’re not acting with true authenticity and intention, because they’re hungry to seize an opportunity. And all of a sudden, you have just flawed information, right? And I think a lot of that plays a part of this, right?

Susan Meier 19:57
I think it always comes back to self reflection, or should always start with self reflection if possible, right? Like thinking about who you are, who you want to be.

Adam Force 20:08
Yeah.

Susan Meier 20:08
And that’s also not always that easy, especially, you know, let’s say you’re 18 years old. It takes a moment to figure out who you are and who you want to be. And it’s okay to experiment with stuff and find that it doesn’t work. But that process of constantly looking back in the mirror and saying, Is this me? Is this really who I want to be? Is this really who I am? Is this really leveraging my unique stuff, my special sauce, my creativity, I think is very important. And you’re not going to really be able to make that impact, to create that groundbreaking idea in a sphere where you’re just kind of not feeling it, where it’s not the right fit for you. And so it’s always kind of that, you know, I think in the beginning of your career, you’re bouncing back and forth. Well, let me try stuff because you got to try stuff. That’s fine, it’s fine to sort of try something and you know, either fail or just discovered that it’s not right for you. But you kind of have to keep coming back to that core, that mindful intention of like, Who am I was this right? Why wasn’t it? Okay, let’s try something else.

Adam Force 21:15
Hundred percent. Yeah, it’s true. And that is those are steps I think that people believe they already know in their head like, yeah, yeah, I know who I am. I know what I love and all that stuff, and I know what I’m about. And they take them lightly and it’s kind of like the analogy I usually use is it’s like the one of the three little pigs building their house out of straw. And then you’re gonna have to keep going back and at some point, you’re like, why aren’t I connecting with the audience? Like why am I not making sales? Like why can’t I get anyone to pay attention to me? And then you’re like, then I gotta go back and like re sharpen my saw rebuild my house out of bricks now.

Susan Meier 21:50
Yeah, absolutely. I’m still doing that all the time.

Adam Force 21:54
Exactly. And that’s why I was going to do the house and I was like, you know, I said, resharpened the saw because we all have to go back and look at that sometimes because it strengthens what we’re doing just to like, sharpen it up again.

Susan Meier 22:05
Yep.And I think if we can think of it as a process, that it can actually be fun. And I think that goes back to where, you know, if you think about things through a creative mindset, then this becomes not, Oh, I had a goal, and I failed. And now I have to retool, because that thing failed. That’s a terrible story to tell yourself. Why would you tell your story that way? I mean, it’s, you know, it’s so much cooler to think, Oh, I created something. And now I need to resharpen my saw, create something else. And look, I made a hat out of something that used to be a dog. That’s much cooler!

Adam Force 22:43
True. And you put your scientific hat on, right? So here you are, you’re building a brand and you’re trying to see what works and what doesn’t. And you have to look — can’t tie emotion to it. So things take time. You put some effort in and you look at it as Yeah, you have a million ways of doing something and if the first one kind of flops, you cross it off your list and you move on to the next one. And it’s exciting; the story should be: Great, now I know that one’s…that’s one less I have to test out. Let’s move on to the next thing, right? So, in my mind, I’m always excited. I mean, yes, there are points of stress when you spend $10,000 and you’re not getting the results that you want.

But, you know, one thing we’ve learned, and you know, not to go off of branding too much, but, you know, you have to be willing to put in the time or the money one way or the other to get the data.

Susan Meier 23:31
That’s right.

Adam Force 23:31
You know, you’ve got to get the data. And I think that’s a hard lesson for people and they say, I don’t have the time and money to waste. And that’s the wrong word: waste. You’re not wasting it.

Susan Meier 23:41
It’s invest. It’s invest. For sure.

Adam Force 23:42
Yes. Exactly.

Susan Meier 23:44
Yeah, I think back to in college, there was a guy who lived on my hall who was two years older, and he was going through corporate recruiting, you know, where the companies come to campus and they recruit the best and the brightest students. And you send in your resume and then they send you back an acceptance letter or a rejection letter. And so this guy put all of his rejection letters up on his door. So you would walk by his door every day. And there would be, you know, three letters, five letters. This guy got rejected by like, 30 companies, and he owned it like a badge of honor. And he told me, I feel like those rejection letters aren’t failures. They’re like, look at the work that I put in here. And I am one rejection letter closer to landing that job. And I remember that my whole adult life; I thought that was such a cool way of looking at it.

Adam Force 24:39
Yeah, I mean, that is a mindset that you want to have. I mean, that is, yeah, it’s great to see that kind of stuff. And it’s funny because everybody thinks differently and you know, you find out in business that a lot of times, it’s not that you’re not doing the work or putting in the time. Like that’s all…everybody can do that. It’s really, How are you thinking about things? And you know, we talked about the conditioning. So how do you look at branding that maybe you’re not taking the right steps because you don’t see it the right way. Your perspective is not right. And there’s a lot that contributes to that. So, you know, having someone like yourself, like, as a guide, and somebody that’s been down the road many times, you know, this is where, you know, it is helpful to invest. Because a lot of times, you know, you need help on how to think about these things.

Susan Meier 25:22
Yeah. And I think just on what you just said…you know, I sort of read about what people are writing about when I think about personal branding. And I think that this is a little bit one of the pitfalls of the prevalence of social media, because so much of what I read about personal branding goes straight in for: How do you build your presence on social media? which is not an unimportant thing. But I think it skips over that step of figuring out who you are, before figuring out how you, you know, get as many followers as possible. And I think that a lot of people think about, you know, if you haven’t been through a branding process, a lot of people think about their brand as almost synonymous with their social media presence. And it’s not, you know, it’s not…it’s the basis of who you are. And then your social media presence is kind of an execution tactic.

Adam Force 26:15
Yeah. But contextually or content wise, I think would be a reflection of your brand expression, yeah?

Susan Meier 26:23
Exactly. Exactly.

Adam Force 26:25
Yeah. So I mean, there is a level of consistency. And, you know, we have to trademark this but we call it a digital conversation. Because, you know, you’re basically like…we teach storytelling for marketing and how to apply that to your digital, you know, business, right? And we’re not going door to door anymore. We’re not sitting down and having a one hour conversation where you can hear feedback and give a direct story or give insight that helps with the conversation. But we have all these bits and pieces around the internet that serve different purposes, and they tell different stories at different times, depending on who you’re talking to, right? So, you know, it’s that consistency. And people start doing different things in different places. And the whole narrative gets — which is basically part of the branding — gets messed up.

Susan Meier 27:08
Somebody told me the other day that in their company, they sort of forced themselves to come up with three messages and three messages only: What are our three messages? And then they put them up in the common area. And everybody had to be thinking about those three…and if what they were doing at that moment wasn’t in service of one of those three messages, they shouldn’t be doing it. I thought, wow, that’s tight. That’s great, you know.

Adam Force 27:33
Yeah, I mean, that’s true. That’s a great way to think about it. I mean, some people leverage the mission statement or whatever it might be, and there is a part of, I guess, leadership to keep the brand, you know, in line, I guess, and maybe I want to say, but just to keep everybody inspired and going in the right direction. Like, this is what we’re about. This is why you’re here. And so as you do anything, you need to be thinking about this because I’ll tell you, you know, after all my years, there’s many crossroads of like temptation to do things that might go off brand, because it might be more financially, you know, abundant for you, or whatever it might be. And it’s easy to go down those roads.

Susan Meier 28:14
It’s easy as an individual, and then think about how easy it is when you’re not thinking about a large organization. In fact, I have had a large number of clients who have gone through the branding process with them. And then they’ve asked me to stay on for six months to a year in what we call brand stewardship. You’re just sort of making sure that those branding principles were executed consistently by everyone. Everybody actually understood what we had done and why we had done it, and how it would appear in the world through those different channels of expression. That’s, that’s…it’s not easy.

Adam Force 28:52
No, it’s not. And it’s great that you’re working with individuals, smaller companies now because I think getting in on the ground floor like that to set up your culture and become a leader from the earlier days is a lot easier than trying to make a culture shift when you’re already 50 people deep. You know?

Susan Meier 29:10
Definitely. And the other thing is that, you know, most startups that I’ve seen, they have a delightful and unique culture that comes about from those three, four or five founders, right? And then they grow to like 10 or 15 people, and they still have this really true specific culture. And then all of a sudden, they grow or they’re about to grow to 30 people or 40 people, and that’s the moment when it’s easy to forget that culture. And to or to dilute that culture because those people weren’t there and it’s not their DNA. They need to be taught the DNA, you know, offered the DNA.

Adam Force 29:54
They need to be, I guess what is like a little training program.

Susan Meier 30:00
Onboarding.

Adam Force 30:00
Onboarding, that’s the word I wanted. You know, I don’t know if you know TOMS, like TOMS shoes. So I interviewed, in one of my past conversations, Blake Mycoskie, and I asked him, if he went back and started TOMS again, is there anything that he might do differently? And at first he’s like, No, not really. And then he’s like, actually, you know what I would do differently. He goes, I would go back and I would…when we were hiring our executive team and upper management and stuff like that, he goes, I would be more careful about who we brought on, because they come with all their past experience and it could be baggage. Because now they come in, and they might be a great salesman, or whatever it might be, but they’re good at where they were and they have their own ways of doing things that now they’re going to bring to the company, which could be completely in the opposite direction of your culture.

Susan Meier 30:47
Yeah. Yeah. It’s so true. I think we’ve all worked with a person at some time or other who starts their job and every third word out of their mouth is, Well, at my old job we used to…

Adam Force 30:58
Exactly, exactly.

Susan Meier 31:00
It’s, I mean, it’s easy to do, right? Because you’re trying to leverage your experience.

Adam Force 31:04
Well, yeah, I guess our takeaway here for everybody listening is really, you know, getting set up with the right strategy, understanding yourself, kind of building out the brand to reflect this expression of all that consistently. But then figuring out as you scale the business, how do you maintain that and don’t lose touch with it, right? So you want to have that stuff thought out and make sure you’re paying attention to it. So we’re going to wrap up here in a minute. But let’s just recap…if there’s any recap, you want to give about just a couple key takeaways about the branding process for early stage entrepreneurs that you think might be helpful, let’s just recap that real quick now.

Susan Meier 31:40
Sure, I think my advice would be, first of all, self reflect. Take a moment, take a pause wherever you are in the process and think about who you personally are — what it is exactly that you’re building and why, what your personal motivations are, what your aspirations are for your company, what your aspirations are for yourself professionally. All of those kind of self assessment questions, just a snapshot. And then think about, you know, where you would like to see yourself, your business, your brand, in 10 years.

Make yourself a list of values that you stand, you know, we believe…I believe…I stand for…that kind of thing. Or write yourself a mission statement, something that puts a stake in the ground that you can then go look back at or share with other people. And then think through Who am I serving? You know, do I have one audience? Do you have one customer or consumer, or are there are many constituents to what it is that I’m doing? And then you connect the dots between those things, right? So, you know, who am I uniquely in the world and who do I want to be? Who am I serving? And so therefore, how am I serving like, what’s my promise to them?

Adam Force 32:55
Exactly. I love that perfect, perfect.

Susan Meier 32:59
So those are the Cliff Notes.

Adam Force 33:00
I like the Cliff Notes. Yeah, just a little recap. We touched on a bunch of stuff. So that’s helpful. And listen, if people want to learn more about what you’re doing, maybe connect with you, work with you, where do they go? Where can they find you?

Susan Meier 33:14
I think it’s easy to start at Twitter where I’m @susanhmeier, and then all my other information — website, etc. — is there. And also there you can read my thoughts on what I’m thinking about and what I’m following.

Adam Force 33:30
Okay, so that’s @susanhmeier. Everybody, Meier is M-E-I-E-R. Okay. Awesome, Susan. Really appreciate your time today. That was a fun conversation.

Susan Meier 33:42
Thanks so much, Adam.

Adam Force 33:43
Alright. We’ll talk again soon.

Susan Meier 33:44
Take care.

Announcer 33:45
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

interview

Dan Doyle: Raise More Money More Efficiently for Your Nonprofit

Listen to our exclusive interview with Dan Doyle:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

In this podcast, we talk with Dan Doyle, Chief Evangelist at Fundraising Report Card, a fundraising analytics platform that helps nonprofit organizations measure the performance of their fundraising campaigns, gain insights into constituent data, and raise more money more efficiently — all essential to running a nonprofit.

The Creation of Fundraising Report Card

Fundraising Report Card was started by a couple of people from a company called MarketSmart which helps nonprofits around the country build their major giving and legacy giving pipeline. They saw that their clients were struggling to analyze their programs as they didn’t have any tools with which to do so. So, on a whim, Greg Warner, the founder of MarketSmart, and Zach Shefska, the COO, decided to build a tool that would help nonprofits analyze their fundraising programs. With the help of a team of coders and programmers at MarketSmart, they created Fundraising Report Card and built all the key dashboards and KPIs that nonprofits need and rely on.

Our interview with Dan Doyle discusses ways Fundraising Report Card can help you fundraise more efficiently. Their clients get growth dashboards, and they can look at things like their revenue and donor growth year over year, quarter over quarter, and month over month. They also get retention dashboards, so they can look at the retention by loyalty. Perhaps most importantly, clients can access lifetime value customized to them based upon the information they send and upgrade or downgrade reports. Additionally, Funding Report Card offers 12 KPIs, which clients can use to better understand their program.

Where to Begin?

Your focus will generally depend on what stage your business is at. If you’re a new organization, you’re probably going to focus on growth and whether you are growing year over year. If you’re a mature organization, your focus is more likely to be upgrades and downgrades and donor retention.

One key advantage of using Fundraising Report Card’s platform is that they offer a free version which is great for organizations that are just starting out and need the most help. This type of business doesn’t have the budget for an agency, let alone business intelligence tools, so it’s great that they can have these tools up and running within a minute at no cost. You can check it out at fundraisingreportcard.com.

Simple and Intuitive

Dan explains that their platform is incredibly user-friendly — a plus if you’re new to the business world. He adds that clients just upload a three-column CSV or Excel file from their database and start using their tools. Their typical client already has a CRM tool for its fundraising program. They then develop the criteria for people they want to analyze, export those donors off their CRM tool, and then upload them. As mentioned above, the Fundraising Report Card platform only requires three columns of data: a unique ID, a gift date, and a gift amount. It’s that simple.

If you can’t get a three-column CSV or Excel file off of your database, you have bigger problems than the analysis endpoints.

Frequency of Analysis

A typical client would first upload their file and look at their data through a fundraising assessment at least on an annual basis. They would examine factors like growth, dollars and donors, and retention rates. They can do a multi-year analysis and look back several years to see if their retention rate is improving or decreasing.

Dan explains that while initially, their typical client does an annual assessment, Fundraising Report Card likes to drive their clients to do an assessment at least semi-annually, and then quarterly, which is optimal.

Good Funding is Critical

Nonprofits are deeply rooted in doing good for others but all the good intentions in the world will get you nowhere if you don’t have any money.

There’s an old saying in fundraising: No money, no mission.

And so, fundraising is critical — it’s the engine that keeps the organization focused on its mission.

Lastly, in addition to quarterly assessments through the Fundraising Report Card platform, Dan recommends keeping the following in mind when addressing your nonprofit’s funding needs:

Have an investment mentality. Be willing to invest in order to find new donors to support your organization. Don’t shy away from it as it’s key for startup nonprofits.
Be willing to try things that are new and different. Experiment with new tools and don’t get lulled into doing the same thing year after year. Stick with what works, but always look to new and different fundraising tools.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by OtterAI; there may be errors.)

Adam Force 0:00
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam Force. And if you missed last week’s episode, it was with Cassie Parks who talks about money stories is all about your money mindset, the blocks that people have, and how she helps people overcome those blocks even has a program $10,000 in 90 days.

And she says she’s blowing that number away some really interesting conversation and very important, you know, insights to understand about the money mindset. So if you missed that, jump over to listen to the interview with Cassie parks. Today, we’re going to be talking to Dan Doyle, he’s a chief evangelist for the fundraising report card. And basically, it’s an analytics and reporting tool for nonprofits provided by market smart. And so fundraising report was actually developed with one very specific goal in mind. And that is to help nonprofits raise more money efficiently.

So we’re going to talk to Dan about all the ins and outs and how it actually does that and what value it brings to, you know, people in different levels of their business startups versus larger nonprofits. And so you can see where you fit in for anybody listening right now that has a nonprofit or thinking about a nonprofit, these metrics, these metrics, and this type of data is very, very important when you’re trying to grow a nonprofit. So yeah, this will be helpful information for you guys to hear what Dan has to say about that.

Another update is just if you haven’t stopped by the website in a while guys changecreator.com, we do have a new free report, I was going to say program free report. And it is called three skills every entrepreneur must have to grow impact business. And these are three things that are just really important to focus on. So if you’re feeling confused, you don’t know where to put your energy and your time. These are three things where you should really be putting your time and energy to start developing and growing your business. Okay?

So this is going to be helpful for you as a self development, opportunity, a business growth opportunity. And there’s really good insights, and we’d love to hear your feedback on it. So you know, if you download that if you’re not already get into our Facebook group storytelling strategies to grow your impact business, and we want to hear from you what is the key insights? What questions do you have, we have an amazing community and it’s growing, and it’s very, very engaged. So we’d love for you to be part of that community. So find us on Facebook, guys, this is where we hang out. This is where we do a lot of cool stuff. Alright, we’re going to jump into this conversation with Dan Doyle. Thank you all for being here. And I hope you enjoy this.

Announcer 2:48
Okay, show me the heat.

Adam Force 2:49
Hey, Dan, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

Dan Doyle 2:58
I’m doing fantastic out here in lovely San Francisco, thanks.

Adam Force 3:01
San Fran. Yes. You know, I’ve only been to San Francisco three times in my life. And this past time I went was for the So Cap Conference. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there.

Dan Doyle 3:12
No, I haven’t. Sounds good, though. We have a lot of conferences.

Adam Force 3:15
Yeah. It’s a big one for impact investing and stuff like that.

Dan Doyle 3:18
Oh, yeah. I do know what you’re talking about.

Adam Force 3:19
Yeah, yep. Yep. And you know, it’s funny, because when we first went to our first time out to that conference, couple years ago, we went out there because we’re kind of at the time looking at, you know, talk with investors and stuff like that. And it happened. Muhammad Yunus was down the street doing another event at the Commonwealth club.

Dan Doyle 3:38
Oh, no kidding.

Yeah. So we’re like, oh, man, wow. Yeah, just is random. So we, you know, we called ourselves that, you know, hey, we’re a media company tickets are sold out was like, 200 bucks a head. And they let us in. And we and that’s how we ended up getting him on the cover of our magazine.

Fantastic! Congrats!

Adam Force 3:55
Yeah, I mean, it’s like one of those things where, like, if you’re not getting out there, you know, know what opportunities might just pop in front of you. Right?

Dan Doyle 4:02
True. True.

Adam Force 4:03
So, Dan, tell us about you’re doing some really interesting stuff with fundraising, report card, and, you know, just in the nonprofit space and all that kind of stuff. So tell it Tell me what you have going on these days. Like what’s what’s the latest? What’s the greatest? And then we’ll, we’ll build up to it after that?

Dan Doyle 4:21
Sure. Yeah. Well, absolutely. fundraising report card is been around for a couple years now. And so the latest and greatest is we’ve got over 4000 nonprofit clients. So that’s an amazing deal. And we’ve got a growing number of consultants as clients, so philanthropic, nonprofit, fundraising consultants use the tool set too, so we’ve got a great growth in the number of clients both on the nonprofit side and the consultant side. And we have a wonderful free version, that a lot of smaller nonprofits, small and mid sized nonprofits are able to use it, then we have a bunch of paid subscriptions. So it’s really I kind of say it’s democratizing analysis, it’s making it. It’s something that’s at people’s fingertips where it didn’t used to be, and they’d have to pay a pretty hefty fee to get this stuff done.

Adam Force 5:11
Got it. Got it. Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty cool. So before I actually I have so many questions I want to get into but let me just get there. So we get to the background for people just so they know. It. What was the reason you decided that this was necessary? Like what led you to fundraising report card? And, you know, putting this this business idea itself together? Because it looks like, you know, on the surface thing all that’s complicated, right? There’s a ton of just like, technology behind this and all that. So it’s always interesting to hear how these stories blossomed.

Dan Doyle 5:45
Yeah. But actually, the story predates me. So I’ll give it to you, which was what excited me about joining the team, this this last year as the chief evangelist here. So it was actually started by a little group of folks at a company called MarketSmart. MarketsSmart specializes really in helping nonprofits around the country build their major giving and legacy giving pipeline. And what they thought is that what they saw with all of their clients is they were struggling to analyze their programs. They had lots and lots of reports with, you know, columns and rows of numbers and reams and reams of paper, but they didn’t have any tools at their disposal, that allowed them to visualize, you know, key dashboards and KPIs to help them understand and analyze their fundraising program.

So Greg Warner, the founder of MarketSmart and, Zach Shefska, the COO there decided on a whim that they would actually build this tool that would help nonprofits analyze their fundraising programs. And so the great thing is it there’s all these tools are out there and available. Just no one had been really putting them together. And so they with another team of coders and programmers at Market Smart, built out fundraising report card and kind of built all of the key dashboards and KPIs that nonprofits need and rely on. And it was really just an opportunity to hopefully help nonprofits, you know, raise more money by understanding their programs better, just kind of filling the deficit that existed and, you know, with over 4000 clients now, I think it’s proven that there was a huge deficit, you know, the CRMs just don’t offer the tools that we do. So it’s been a real great thing for nonprofits.

Adam Force 7:27
Yeah, I mean, the and what kind of data? What kind of like, what are these nonprofits getting from the platform, exactly?

Dan Doyle 7:35
Oh, my gosh, they get you know, they get almost everything but the kitchen sink with it. So it was just, we sort of gave away the store. So the kind of dashboards they is growth dashboards, and they can look at things like their revenue and donor growth year over year, quarter, over quarter month over month, they get retention dashboards, so they can look at the retention by loyalty. First time donors report dollars to get lifetime value, which I remember, I used to own my own fundraising agency, and you pay a hefty price to an agency to build out lifetime value of your acquire donors. And just because the technology so easy to leverage these days, clients can access lifetime value customized to them based upon the information they send, upgrade downgrade reports, I mean, there’s just a whole slew of dashboards. And then we’ve got 12 KPIs, which are sort of single snapshots that they can use to understand their program.

Adam Force 8:33
And can you customize, like what metrics maybe are most important to you? So I want to put ourselves in the mindset of some of the early phase nonprofits who are in our audience and probably listening right now. So they’re thinking, wow, this sounds amazing. You know, there’s a there’s also data overwhelm, right? And so yeah, I’m curious how much control you have. And if there’s some really key metrics that people, especially in the early phases, focus on.

Dan Doyle 9:01
So the nice thing I like about why I joined was, you know, we got 36, dashboards and 12 KPIs. And I guarantee that within those having been in the business for 30 years doing fundraising, consulting and running fundraising programs, small and large, I guarantee you, the metrics that you need to assess the strategies and developed tactics are within that tool kit, right. So you can pick you know, and depending on the life stage, you’re you’re absolutely right.

If you’re a new organization, you’re probably going to focus on growth, and are you growing year over year. If you’re a mature organization, you’re probably focused on upgrades and downgrades and donor retention. So, you know, there’s just within all of those, it kind of matches up with wherever an organization is in its life stage.

And frankly, also with consultants who consult with clients, they can access all the tools to based upon whatever client they have, wherever they are, whatever strategy. So I think for me, that’s one of the benefits of it is we don’t have to create anything new. It’s all sitting out there. You just need to decide and I do a lot of demos and webinars with new clients.

Adam Force 10:04
Yeah.

Dan Doyle 10:04
And it’s great to see them, they will ask all the important quick go great analysis leads to more questions. And they ask all the great questions they should be asking themselves internally, but now they’re asking it informed by the actual data.

Adam Force 10:17
Yeah, yeah. Which makes a huge difference, obviously.

Dan Doyle 10:19
Huge, yeah.

Adam Force 10:22
Is there any, I guess, future vision for expanding this type of dashboard and metric insight for the for profit space?

Dan Doyle 10:33
No, we’re pretty much focused only on nonprofits and consultants who work with nonprofits. And that’s our target audience, you know, there. And the reason being is, you know, for profit companies have different analytic needs, they have different funds that are available to them. And so what we found was one where we’re an organization, a company, steeped in fundraising, and helping nonprofits. So that’s sort of where we do our best and we shine.

And they’re kind of the organizations that needed the most help, you know, we find our typical new client signs up for free version. And they have zero analysis, they don’t have an analytic staff person, they’ve got a fundraising executive who wears multiple hats, you know, they open the door in the morning, sort the mail, do the fundraising, you know, you know, they’re doing everything.

They don’t have money for an agency, you know, they certainly can’t afford business intelligence tools like for profit companies can so a free version just immediately is, you know, up and running for them within a minute.

Adam Force 11:36
And so that was that kind of an interesting segue to fulfill a curiosity I have, which is around your growth. You said you How many years did it take now to get to your 4000? How long has this been going on?

Dan Doyle 11:50
It’s kind of started at about seven 2017, you know, end of 16, early 17, is when folks were really hearing about the tools. So just a couple years.

Adam Force 11:59
Okay, what were some of the more, I guess, what were the biggest contributing factors towards the growth at this point?

Dan Doyle 12:10
I think it was just, folks, finally, hearing word of mouth that there was an easy tool available for them to do analysis. They, you know, all those people who just had been suffering without having it because, you know, I know, I consulted with a lot of regional and small groups, and they just don’t have the money to bring in analytic tools, or even hire an analyst or anything like that.

And all of a sudden, they had that for, you know, 30 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, you know, or free if they wanted the free version. So I think just plain old word of mouth and people saying, hey, there’s a tool out there, that’s super affordable. And all you have is a super simple, and yet gives you really deep analysis. So it’s simple analysis, deep analysis, and affordable.

Adam Force 12:53
And it sounded like you said, you’re doing webinars and trainings and you’re out, meeting people in person. So just Yeah, all of those things, I guess, are contributing towards helping people because I feel like sometimes, while this stuff can sound exciting, people are always looking for the catch, right? It’s like, well, it’s like, you gotta like commit yourself to exploring something new, learning a new product, and all that kind of stuff. So I was curious about that onboarding, if there was challenges and stuff.

Dan Doyle 13:20
You know, there really isn’t. There’s the — 99.9% of the problems that a client might have, are getting data off of their CRM that has nothing to do with us, right. So if they can get three columns, CSV or Excel file off of their database, they can upload it and use our tools . They are incredibly intuitive. And when I do demos, it, you know, I spend a half hour but they only need about five to 10 minutes to kind of get the system and maneuver it pretty quickly. It’s all super intuitive. The navigation is great. You know, I always tell clients, if you can’t get a three column CSV, or Excel file off of your database, you have bigger problems than the analysis endpoints. So if they can get it off, they literally drag and drop upload, and within a minute, they have all their dashboards at their fingertips. So it’s, you know, it’s not that hard.

Adam Force 14:09
Yeah. Have you noticed that when you’re presenting our doing the demos and stuff like that, there’s certain aspects of the program that people is, you know, their eyes kind of light up?

Dan Doyle 14:21
Well, yeah, cuz for most of them, it’s the first time they’ve actually seen their numbers visualized. And I, you know, I always tell people, you know, a lot of our clients, I say, so many folks are visual learners. And they’re, like, 60% of the population is visual learners. And I think, frankly, fundraisers are even more visual learners.

And so for so many of these people is just an eye awakening moment, that all of a sudden, they’re seeing things visualize, so they can see growth, they can see decreases, they can see problems in retention, just visually right in front of them.

You know, it always kind of goes back to some of the fundamental questions about nonprofits and fundraising, which is where Where are the red flags? Where am I not doing well? And, you know, then they start asking, Well, how can we do this better? What did we do wrong? And then where are we shining? And how can we replicate that?

Adam Force 15:15
Right, right? And how big is your team now?

Dan Doyle 15:20
Well, there’s a whole team at MarketSmart, but there’s about four of us completely dedicated to Fundraising Report Card coders, myself, and, and others there. We’re kind of all virtual. So we don’t do a lot of in person meetings. It’s all by webinar and virtual meetings. So it’s really cool. We can meet anyway, actually, we’ve got clients all around the world. I was talking with someone Australia the other day, we have clients in Switzerland that wre logging in, and the UK, so we’ve got clients everywhere.

Adam Force 15:48
So that’s interesting. So people, and I just find this to be super valuable. So I’m just kind of digging into it with you for the sake of you know, anybody listening in the nonprofit world, and you guys can obviously go and explore the platform. It sounds like anybody right now listening that wants to can go sign up for a free plan. Is that correct?

Dan Doyle 16:09
Yeah, the free plan is available, they just go to fundraisingreportcard.com. And there’s a lot of green boxes that say, sign me up, it’s pretty easy. You sign up, all you need is a email address and a password and you’re up and running. And the the the only limitation is that we for free versions, it’s only 5000 records or fewer. So that meets the needs of most of the smallest nonprofits around the world. And then there are some dashboards that you don’t get some of the high powered dashboards. They don’t they’re limited to.

Adam Force 16:39
Yeah. And so like, what do you have to meet certain requirements? Like, do you have to have a certain like, where does the data I guess I’m trying to understand where the data is coming from? Yeah. So like, is it pulling? Cuz I know, there’s been some platforms in the nonprofit space where like, it’s like, oh, you have all these different areas where you have data, but how do you see it all in one place? Can you share a little insight on how that backend works for people?

Dan Doyle 17:07
Yeah, sure. So usually, the typical relationship is our client already has a CRM tool for their fundraising program. So whether they’re on NeonCRM, Salesforce, Little Brain, Raiser’s Edge, whatever it is, they have that. And then what they are able to do on their end is develop the criteria for people they want to analyze, export those donors off of their CRM tool, and then upload them just three columns of data, we just need a unique ID, a gift date, and a gift amount. That’s all we need.

We don’t want four, we don’t want two, we want three, you know, unique ID. No more, no less. And then they upload them and they’re up and running. And usually clients upload the largest kind of data master file they can find on their clients.

And then once they upload the largest, they then start saying, Oh, I want to only look at individuals, I don’t want estate gifts and bequests to be included, because they skew things all I don’t want monthly donors to be included, because they have a different look and feel. I want to upload them separately. So the beauty of it is I always find is they upload a big file, and then they start getting into the data and start parsing out their program.

Adam Force 18:18
Okay, that’s pretty cool.

Dan Doyle 18:19
So we’re platform agnostic. So you know, I really couldn’t care what platform they’re on, as long as they can get a file off of it. They can be up and running.

Adam Force 18:28
But typically, they would already have a CRM, where they have a database that’s at least starting to build.

Dan Doyle 18:36
Most of the clients do, we do have clients who have files smallest, you know, local clients, who everything’s just sitting on an Excel spreadsheet. So you know, so we have the whole gamut. We have clients who don’t even have a fundraising CRM, but they have everything on QuickBooks or something. And they can still use the tools.

Adam Force 18:56
Interesting. Okay. So and and I guess, our people, lot of the clients that you work with, is this for, like, I guess, how can you tie like, tie it together for me to show. I go in here, I upload this information? And how, then does it help with their fundraising efforts? So because I’m sure they’re all running like multiple campaigns a year? Or is it usually for evergreen campaign? Or is it like a launch? Like, how do they? And I just want to understand that like, sequence, I guess, a little bit?

Dan Doyle 19:30
Yeah, no. So what we would hope a typical client would do is they upload their file. Yeah. And at least on an annual basis, they are looking at their data and doing a fundraising assessment. So they’re looking at growth and dollars and donors, they’re looking at retention rates, and if that’s increasing or decreasing, so it’s a multi year analysis, so they can look back five years, let’s say they can look back as far as they have data that would say they look back five years, they can see if their retention rate is improving or decreasing.

If it’s decreasing, what loyalty level is at the increasing what strategies and tactics do we need to develop? So it helps get clients into the sort of analytic loop. And so they’re constantly evaluating. We then like to drive our clients from moving from an annual assessment to semi-annual and then hopefully, that the best use of it is quarterly, people are looking at their programs on a quarterly basis and assessing their their tactics against the strategies they’ve developed.

Adam Force 20:26
Right. Interesting. And and you could see in the data does it show? I guess, over time, as you do these things, it shows tactically, like what, what’s working and what’s not, or is it just showing loyalty of certain channels of donation?

Dan Doyle 20:44
It shows fundraising success or failure. And so what then has to happen is the professional fundraisers on the team, whether it’s a consultant or the organization itself, what they need to do is then assess what strategies they put in place.

So if they had a problem in 2017, they need to ask themselves, what strategies we have in play. What tactic do we have in play last year that caused retention to go down? Right, if someone so you really still do need a fundraising professional at the helm? We can’t replace that.

Adam Force 21:14
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I got it.

Dan Doyle 21:16
There’s no robots doing that work.

Adam Force 21:18
Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay, so you got all this data, you could see your your growth and donations, and then based on the trends you would look at, okay, well, then here’s the campaigns that we ran, obviously, we can align, like, if this, you know, shows the uptrend or downtrend?

Dan Doyle 21:37
Absolutely. You know, one of the demos I do is with one of our mid sized clients, I have their data uploaded, and there was a year in which they lost their major giving officer. And so for about eight months, they didn’t have a major giving officer. And it just shows dramatically in their trends, you can see the year where they lost a major giving officer and for a while Oh, we can just kind of scoot along without one.

And clearly, the evidence is No, you cannot you can’t raise major gifts without a giving officer. And it’s all right there for them to see. And you know, other things show up, too. So for example, if a client, you know, nonprofit has a very poor new donor welcome series, it’ll show in lower first time retention rates. And, you know, if they improve that we have case studies where they see that data, and then they implement a tactic like a new donor welcome series that’s actually thoughtful, they can see their rates increasing in the coming years.

Adam Force 22:30
Got it got it. Interesting. And what was the role that you mentioned that they removed and noticed a big difference? What was that title?

Dan Doyle 22:38
It was a major giving officer. So that’s the person it was actually the staff member who was responsible for raising gifts at 5000 or above for that group. And the person moved on to another organization, and they struggled to hire someone, and they ended up not having someone for about eight months. And when you look at giving at the 5000 or above level, it just disappeared.

Adam Force 22:57
So how is that translated? And sorry, like, I’m super not in the nonprofit world. So that’s why when I hear titles like them, like say what? But so that translates, though, just by seeing the numbers like you would have that’s not you don’t see in the system, the the changes of like losing someone of your personnel, you just see that flows and trends of donations and growth. And if you see a big dip, you would say, Oh, well, that was during the time that we lost our major giving officer.

Dan Doyle 23:28
You bet. Yeah, it’s it’s black and white. It’s in color, but it’s, it’s in black and white. Yeah. And that’s part of the beauty of data visualization. And part of the beauty of sharing this, with so many nonprofits or around the country around the world, frankly, is now that they now they can actually see this stuff. And when you see a big dip, it almost always will know the answer.

Oh, we converted our database, we moved you know, we did a database conversion. And we lost a lot of records, or we lost a major giving officer or we cancelled an event for you name it. They’ve almost always had the answers to why things improved, or did not improve.

Adam Force 24:07
Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. And it looks like you guys have a nice visual design, as well, which is it was helpful. And I’m just looking at your your website. And yeah, I mean, so it sounds It sounds like you helped to really organize data, give it a visual representation, so you can understand it more clearly and make decisions that are smarter.

Dan Doyle 24:31
Yeah, that’s, that’s it. But it’s really a tool that helps fundraisers do better and raise more money.

Adam Force 24:38
That’s pretty awesome. And I know that can be a challenging part of nonprofits is raising that money. I mean, that’s like, you know, it’s, it’s an ongoing one way or the other nonprofit or for profit, you’re you’re always fighting to get your next round of dollars.

Dan Doyle 24:53
Absolutely. And there’s an old saying in fundraising: No money, no mission. You know, if you don’t have money, all the good intentions in the world will get you nowhere in helping your cause. So you’ve got to actually have money in the door. And so fundraising critical, it’s the engine that keeps the organization focused on mission. So we’re playing a little part in that.

Adam Force 25:12
Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, it sounds like you have you know, and just reading your, your resume and stuff, it sounds like you have a lot of background and incredible experience in the nonprofit space. So just thinking of our, you know, early phase nonprofit entrepreneurs, any advice from your experience that you might have on the fundraising, you know, front?

Dan Doyle 25:39
It all starts with investment. And so some of the things I know having been consulting with nonprofits for almost 30 years now, is that we can often be investment shy. And they are nonprofits that are small and starting can see that as losses of money, where it’s really an investment in the future of the program. So have an investment mentality. And I think that’s a key factor to kind of startup nonprofits is really having an investment mentality.

And then be willing to try things that are new and different. We find, as organizations grow beyond the sort of startup phase, they get lulled into the same old, same old, so we’ll just do what we did last year, we’ll just do what we did last year. You know, they keep going back to that well, and so I challenge people, yes, you need to go back to what you know, worked. But you need to keep in within your toolkit, new and different things that you haven’t tried sort of experiment. And so I think those organizations that will be most successful, enjoy investing and are not shy. Yeah, and are willing to try new and different things and assess the risk.

Adam Force 26:46
Calculated risk.

Dan Doyle 26:48
Exactly, exactly.

Adam Force 26:49
And you say investment, you mean to get investment from people or to be willing to invest in what you’re doing,

Dan Doyle 26:56
willing to invest to find new donors to support the organization. And that’s the, you know, the, all my years of fundraising that was in number one constraint on the organization was how much they were willing to invest. And so, you know, I think that you have to have an investment mentality.

Adam Force 27:14
Interesting. And any, I guess, you know, as you in the donor in the world of like finding donors and stuff, where does the nonprofit even begin to start finding a donor?

Dan Doyle 27:27
Oh, my gosh, there’s so many different channels, you know, you know, the tried and true ways they do direct response to find low dollar donors, whether it’s digital marketing, or direct mail marketing, and so they find $15, $30, $35, $40 donors, and then grow them up the pipeline to become mid market donors and major donors. So there’s that that’s a channel that has been around for ages. A lot of organizations use events as a as a way to find new donors. So whether it’s a black tie event, a special event or a challenge event, a bike-a-thon, walkathon, something like that. That’s another avenue they use to find new donors.

Adam Force 28:06
Interesting. Okay. Well, I want to make sure we have a minute here just to let people know where they can find the Fundraising Report Card. So I think it’s just fundraisingreportcard.com, right?

Dan Doyle 28:19
Yeah. couldn’t be easier.

If you if you can type and you have a browser open, you can find us at fundraisingreportcard.com.

Adam Force 28:28
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a good piece of software. And I was interested in talking about it, because I think there’s a lot of value and you know, the more that we grow Change Creator and stuff like that we know. Wow, like you really do need to see what your data is doing. And the more clarity you have around that. Yeah, it’s worth the investment of your time and energy because it really accelerates your growth when you have that clarity.

Dan Doyle 28:53
Yeah, knowledge is a pretty important thing and in fundraising, too.

Adam Force 28:57
Exactly. Awesome. Awesome. I really do appreciate your time, Dan, and

Dan Doyle 29:03
Thanks for having me.

Adam Force 29:04
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well keep up the good work and supporting the nonprofit world. And guys, you can check out their awesome software and hopefully it’s something that will help you grow your fundraising.

Dan Doyle 29:15
Thanks so much.

Adam Force 29:17
You got it. Take care.

Announcer 29:18
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meeting intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

interview

Sydney Sherman: How to Build an Online Marketplace That Combats Poverty Through the Things We Buy

Listen to our exclusive interview with Sydney Sherman:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Sydney Sherman is on a mission that many social entrepreneurs share: to do good in the world while making a living. And she’s making it happen through Faire.Shop, her online marketplace where conscious consumers can find ethical brands.

Faire.Shop was born out of Sydney’s desire to do her part in alleviating the extreme poverty she has seen in her life. She compares the website to Etsy in terms of function, and explains that they vet all of their vendors according to the wages they pay their workers, the working conditions, as well as environmental stability. Brands are promoted within the site and each vendor controls their own shop.

Helping Ethical Businesses Grow

As her business grew, Sydney realized that the vendors she was featuring on Faire.Shop were not utilizing technology as well as they could — something that can easily hold a small, ethical business back. So, on the back end, Faire.Shop is helping vendors improve their business by developing technology to help each individual merchant collect metrics on their business such as what their best-selling product is, where most of their products are sold, and where they’re making the most money. Sydney refers to the site as a “double-sided marketplace.”

Our main focus is on extreme poverty and how to help eradicate it.

Not only is Sydney on a mission to do her part in eradicating global poverty, but she also recognizes that the solution needs to be a sustainable one. She stresses that in order to deal with the root causes of extreme poverty, the solution needs to be self-sustaining. The way in which ethical vendors use Faire.Shop lends to their independence. They manage their own “mini shop” through their own portal. They fill orders and ship everything themselves. And they have the freedom to pull or add new products if they want.

Advice for Early Fundraising

Those early days served as a great learning experience for Sydney. She was kind enough to share with us some amazing bits of advice she has for people who are just starting out and are looking to optimize their fundraising:

Before you do anything, figure out whom you’re going to ask and what you’re going to ask them for. Sydney put together a spreadsheet to organize a list of potential supporters. She listed each person as well as exactly what she needed from them, be it business connections or money.
Be specific when asking for something. When Sydney was raising money, she found that people didn’t just want to hear her “spiel.” They wanted to hear precisely what she wanted from them.
Know that you’ll make mistakes in the beginning. Sydney told us that she made a complete fool of herself in her first meeting. She suggests practicing with people as much as possible. She got some outside help and enlisted the advice of experienced business owners to put her slide deck together.
When raising funds, start with friends and family. While it’s incredibly hard to ask those closest to you for money, Sydney advises that this is the way to go. Through her experience, she found that potential investors were more likely to lend her credibility if her grandmother’s money was on the line, too. It was as though they understood that Sydney would have to face this group of her investors at Thanksgiving so there was extra pressure there for her to invest the funding wisely and for her business to succeed.
Know your potential investor well. It’s important for your potential investor to know your business idea well, but it’s even more important for you to know your potential investor well. Do your research before reaching out to someone and use that information to send personalized emails, etc.
Know your numbers. Go to meetings well-prepared. If you don’t know your numbers by heart, write everything down and don’t be afraid to refer to them if you need to. At the very least, be familiar with the math.
Connect with potential investors often. Sydney is the first to admit she doesn’t like doing this because it takes up time and she has a million things to do. However, she finds it incredibly helpful. Every week, she connects with her LinkedIn contacts. She makes sure to add them to one of a few lists she has: people she needs to update on investor information, people she has recently been in contact with (including what she could potentially ask them for in the future), and so on.

Next Steps

Just a little over a year into her new business, Sydney is looking at a business merger. She was introduced to her business partner by a mutual friend and coincidentally, each wanted to start doing what the other was doing. While they each have different approaches, their end goal is the same. Her advice for anyone considering a business merger, especially this early on, is to get a good lawyer. The legal component is complicated and you need to know what to expect under any given circumstance.

In addition to the merger, Faire.Shop’s second year will focus on improvements on what they’ve already done. They’ve never done any sort of branding, so they are looking at doing a complete rebrand in order to make the customer-facing marketplace more attractive. A main focus for year two will be to determine ways in which they can optimize sales for their vendors and really focus on marketing. Lastly, Sydney admits that the backend of their website needs a lot of work. There are a lot of plugins that they can provide for their vendors and they plan to focus on improving their vendors’ user experience and business success.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by OtterAI; there may be errors.)

Adam Force 0:12
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. It’s a sunny day here in Miami. And I’m excited to let you know that issue 27 with Nasreen Sheik is out now on iTunes and Google Play and of course at changecreator.com if you like that desktop reading experience. Wow, what a powerful, powerful story from Nasreen. We’re really excited about this edition we also have some incredible motivating content from a no holds barred interview with Laura Gassner Otting.

She’s been rocking stages around the world these days and has her latest book “Limitless” out now in Amazon. So really good content there, guys. super inspiring. So get a chance check that out. If you missed last week’s interview, it was with Moe Carrick. And she is also a rockstar. She’s done several TEDx talks. And she has her latest book. And it’s all about cultivating a good culture in the workplace. And making sure that it is a place where people can thrive. I mean, how important is that?

I spoke to, you know, Blake Mycoskie not too long ago, and this is something he mentioned, too, is getting the right people in there. It’s a game changer. So if you’re an early phase entrepreneur, and you’re starting to build a team, you know, even finding those co founders and things like that, it’s really important to know, like people come with baggage, and you need to also know how to lead and cultivate an environment that will help people thrive because they are going to be your number one resource. And so yeah, building that is really important. So that’s a great conversation with Moe Carrick, she has a lot of expertise to share in that area.

So if you haven’t caught it, go back, check that out. It is available on Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud, all that good stuff. So today, we’re going to be talking with the one and only Sydney Sherman. And she actually is the founder of an online marketplace. The company is called Faire.Shop. And it is an online marketplace where they’re connecting conscious consumers directly with ethical brands, she comes from a family of entrepreneurs, it’s in her blood, this is what she does. And she basically, she encountered… and she’ll talk about this her experience, of course, during the discussion, but she came across a lot of extreme poverty at one point in her life and decided to help do something to fix that problem.

And that’s where the Faire.Shop, you know, was born. So she’s going to walk us through it. Now they’re in their earlier years. But she’s starting to build this team, she’s starting to cultivate this business. And she has lots of interesting experience from that front lines perspective of those early years. And I think what she’s doing is actually really cool. And it certainly is never easy. So we’ll hear about some of the challenges and successes and things that are working for her as she gets traction for Faire.Shop.

If you guys haven’t stopped by Facebook, in a while make sure you catch us in our group, if you go to our Facebook page, you’re going to get lots of good insights over there. That’s our primary place right now. And from there, you’ll see a link to jump over to our group. And that is going to be a group to talk about marketing from a storytelling perspective. So its storytelling strategies to grow your impact business.

We’ve been getting a good uplift over in that group. And we try to make it a more intimate community to really get into the nuts and bolts of marketing and the power of storytelling to do that, so that you can connect with people and grow your business. So jump over there. We’d love to see you guys. And that’s it, guys. Leave us a review on iTunes, Spotify, all that good stuff. We appreciate it. And without further ado, we’re going to get into this conversation with Sydney. Hey, Sydney, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How you doing today?

Sydney Sherman 4:01
I’m great. How are you?

Adam Force 4:03
I’m doing very, very good. And I love the work that you are doing. And I’m also excited because you’re just breaking into year two. And I know those early years are something of great interest to people in our audience — to learn how you’re getting through them, the ups, the downs, and all that good stuff. So before we get into some of your background and things like that, can you tell us just what’s going on with your business today?

Sydney Sherman 4:31
Yes, of course. So, basically, we are a marketplace for ethically produced products, we vet all of our vendors according to the wages they pay their workers, the working conditions, and then environmental sustainability. And so the second component of that is that our vendors, our shops, function very similarly to Etsy. So we actually promote the brands within our website, and they control their own shop. So on the back end, we’re trying to develop a lot of technology that can tell them a lot more about their businesses like what is their best selling product?

Where do their products… Where are they making the most money, what marketplaces their own store, just in any technology like impact reports, even because they found a lot of ethical small businesses aren’t utilizing technology and the way they could. So it’s kind of a double sided… It’s very much a double sided marketplace. So that’s what we’re working on.

Adam Force 5:30
Okay, awesome. And let’s just talk a little bit about just to ground people listening here, why you decided to start your business.

Sydney Sherman 5:42
So it really started I mean, I think there was something that I was always interested in around these kinds of issues. And one of the, our main focus is on extreme poverty and how to help eradicate it. And so I don’t know, like, you know, sometimes you just grew up with something that is like, it’s like a little like, it started as a little seed, probably, when I was, like 10. But then by the time 2010 hit, I was traveling a ton and seeing a lot of really extreme poverty en masse.

And that’s when, like, it really started to like, take root. And I started to think about, like, what I could do to contribute to like helping these issues that I was seeing. And I was also realizing like there was so much poverty in the world so that it had to be a sustainable solution, right? Like nonprofits, charity, they’re amazing. And they do amazing work. And they’ll always be needed on some level. But like to truly deal with the root cause of these issues, it has to be something that’s self sustaining. So that’s just when I started thinking about, like, what I could do, and like what was already out there, and like how I can support what already existed. And so that’s what led me to the marketplace.

Adam Force 6:56
And did you have background doing other work? Like, did you do the whole nine to five for a while, like, what was your experience?

Sydney Sherman 7:06
Yeah, that’s always an interesting question. So I worked for like six months. And then I started a company that connected like administrative assistants by the hour to small businesses, in Austin, Texas, and my parents are entrepreneurs. So I guess I just grew up with that. But I have very little work experience. So yeah, I ran a business for three years. And I went back [unintelligible] my always knowing that this was what I wanted to do, but at that point, it was very overwhelming. I knew marketplaces had some, like, unique challenges as far as creating a business goes. So I went back and got an MBA in entrepreneurship. And from there, I finally launched this.

Adam Force 7:48
Okay, did you find that helpful getting MBA, do you feel like I could, I could have done this differently?

Sydney Sherman 7:55
I found it extremely helpful. I mean, it was an interesting program in the sense that it was for entrepreneurship. Yeah, I think with you know, if I had worked maybe in other businesses, for a little bit longer than six months, of course, you know, I worked in college or high school, but not, it’s not the same. So I think that, given the little work experience I had, and like the first business I ran was very small and very different. It was incredibly helpful just to know, like, what kind of existed as far as options and like, yeah, like, we’re, I told you, before we got on the phone, like, we’re in the middle of a merger right now, I would not have known anything about that. Or how to go, you know, so for me, it was incredibly helpful.

Adam Force 8:43
That’s good. Yeah, I’m always curious, because I know, you know, schools don’t lean in too much. And I, I’m seeing it more and more obviously, even with just specific, like social entrepreneurship, you know, courses, programs, and curriculums, and stuff like that. So, and I haven’t talked to too many people that have gone through them.

So that’s, you know, what piqued my curiosity when you said that. So I guess that you know, the model you have is interesting. So I want to talk a little bit just about your business model. Because obviously, there is…you’re pulling in different brands and kind of becoming the face like, the collected like sales portal for them. Why did you take this approach instead of trying to develop your own products? I’m just curious on the thought process around that.

Sydney Sherman 9:31
Sure. So I actually a friend approached me in college and wanted me to help her start a dress company. And we did, we started it, we created products. And I realized pretty quickly, that is definitely not where I should be. I’m not very detail oriented. So one thing I know, like that would be really helpful in any business. But like, especially when producing products, like there are so many details to consider. So that was like, just not for me. And I knew that after that little experiment. But then, just in general, when I started after 2010, all the traveling, I started to really like research what was happening in the industry.

And what I found is that a ton of brands already existed, but sales were a huge issue, it was still a really fragmented market. And there are a lot of ethical — not a lot but — there are ethical marketplaces that have been created. But a lot of them were more niche, like, they’ve mainly carried clothing, beauty, accessories, and that was kind of it. And as a consumer, I also wanted more. Like if I it was a lifestyle for me, like how can I buy everything ethically? Like phone cases and cleaning products? And sweaters? GIFs? Whatever? Yeah. And so yeah, that’s what kind of planted the seed I guess, for this marketplace.

Adam Force 10:55
Yeah. And so it seems like so and I’m only asking these questions, because I really don’t know how these models work. So I’m actually quite interested in learning more. And I am curious to understand, I’m sure people listening are, too, is, when you look at a model like this, and you’re going you go out and you vet brands, right? You have like a certain level of like a quality standard and ethical like, you know, standards that you try to abide by, which is awesome.

And and anybody listening, you could see the outline on their website. And so when you find a brand, or Oh, I would love to help them sell this product, how do you create a partnership with them? Meaning is this like an affiliate type-like partnership? You’re now selling it on your website? Can you just help clarify some insight around that?

Sydney Sherman 11:47
Yeah, sure. So it’s basically it’s not affiliate, like they just sign up for the market. But will we vet them, of course, first, if they already have a fair trade certificate easy, we don’t have to do any work. But if they don’t, we know it’s really expensive and time consuming. So that’s always step number one. And then once that happens, we upload the products and they manage their own little like portal, when they get orders, they ship everything.

So they can pull their products whenever they want, they can add more products if they want. So it’s totally up to them. And we just take a percentage of every sale. So and there are other things we could charge for, of course, but like until we’re a new business until we’re really generating value for them. We’re not going to charge anything, like even any marketing we do with their products. Like it’s all on us for now. So, um, but yeah, it’s not really affiliate, they just upload and like manage little shops within our website.

Adam Force 12:47
Interesting. And so yeah, obviously had to do some real tech, I guess, work to build that kind of thing. So on the back end, it seems like there might be a lot of custom work, or did you find technology that existed that was helpful?

Sydney Sherman 13:04
Oh, yeah, we started on… So back in, let’s see, September 2017, is when I started working on it. By December 2017, I just put up a Shopify site and had asked like a few brands to join us. And just like threw open the doors. But then we realized very quickly, that there wasn’t something that existed that did everything we wanted. And it was creating a lot of issues like our Shopify site randomly just only sell [size] smalls. We know it was like stuff like that constantly. And so, and we’re not technical, like I’m running a technical company, and I’m not a technical person.

And we’re also you know, we got investment, and people are like, Were is the technical person on your team? And so it was definitely a challenge. But we did end up switching over and building our own software. And we just contracted with an awesome team that’s going to help us build because I mentioned like, it’s two sided. So there’s the customer facing platform. And then there’s also like all the technology, we want to offer it to the vendors on the back end, and they can develop all of that. So yeah, we’ve become a very technical company. And that was one of our first pivots.

Adam Force 14:20
Yeah, I mean, I find that to be exciting. And it is overwhelming. Like when you’re not a designer or you know, a website engineer or like developer of some kind, it’s like these things, can they hold a lot of people back, right? So and then if you can’t do it yourself, the dangerous part, and for a lot of people is they have small budgets. And if they don’t have investment, it’s like, How do I know it’s going to actually give me an ROI if I invest in this, right? So it becomes a huge gamble. So you mentioned that you actually were able to raise some dollars now. So you did a seed round?

Sydney Sherman 14:52
Yes, we did. It took me all year and was so hard. So I feel for any, I mean, not having money is also really hard. Like you said, like how, you know, like, we wasted a lot of money on technology, because we didn’t know what we’re doing. And we had like, I mean, you never want wasted is kind of a strong term. I know tons of people that are way more experienced business owners that have also spent money on technology that didn’t pan out for them. And so for us, it was a rather small amount, but it felt like a lie. But yeah, we raised a million dollars last year, and it literally took me all year to do that.

Adam Force 15:32
Well, congratulations. That’s pretty exciting.

Sydney Sherman 15:35
Thank you. Yeah, it was, it was definitely wouldn’t Yeah, I guess when you ask big wins, like that was — that’s a big one.

Adam Force 15:44
Yeah, I mean, this is a huge stress point for a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, you have ideas, especially when you’re doing something like you’re doing because you do need the right technology. When you have the right tools, it works a lot better, right?

Sydney Sherman 16:00
Oh yeah.

Adam Force 16:00
So you know, tell us just a little bit about your experience, like it is a brutal process, sometimes to build out the investment process. So tell us a little bit about what made it work for you — some of the learning curve. I’m sure there’s a lot of things just like anything, right, you can put your time in, it doesn’t work. So what actually advice might you give to people listening that are looking to raise their seed round.

Sydney Sherman 16:28
So I mean, first I just roll out like… I put together a spreadsheet and roll out like all the people that I was going to go to and like what I would ask them like some people it was connection, some people it was money. And a lot of the people I found when I was raising, they wanted to hear that asked like, they didn’t just want me to give my spiel, and then like sit there. And I don’t know if that is particular to the group of people I was raising from or if that’s like a thing, but they wanted to hear, like precisely what I wanted from them.

I made some so many mistakes. I mean, my advice is like I practice with people, very experienced business owners helped me put my deck together. Everything. But like, there’s nothing like just showing up. It’s like doing anything for the first time. I made a complete fool of myself in the first meeting. But there was no like, there was nothing I could have done differently. Like, I just needed to get in there and hear the questions that they had. And like everyone’s going to ask different questions. So it was very humbling at the beginning.

Adam Force 17:31
Yeah, it gets intense. And, so were you doing more local outreach, meaning you can go in person, are you like flying out places to meet people?

Sydney Sherman 17:39
No, it was all local friends and family. I mean, I think I would… I grew up in Texas. So I was going and I lived in Austin for 10 years. But I grew up in Houston. So I have connections in both places. And I was I mean, that was pretty much it going back and forth between those two cities. But then I moved to New York. And so at that point, I didn’t have any connections here. I tried to meet up with some people here that didn’t go well as a completely different type of fundraising that I was unprepared for. And I just I didn’t have the same like connection. So yeah, I started flying back to Texas, but I was already there for other things, so…

Adam Force 18:20
Yeah, interesting. Well, I love hearing those stories, because it is a pain point for people. And did you have like an executive summary or just went straight with the slide deck?

Sydney Sherman 18:32
Yeah, I had the deck, I had, like a one pager that had the summary, but I am like, so bad at over sharing information. So our one paper looked really crazy. I was cramming, like so much in there. And most of the people like, I would send them that and they would kind of glance at it. But none of our investors are familiar with ethical at all. So…

Adam Force 18:55
Ohhh…

Sydney Sherman 18:56
It was interesting. So like, honestly, I still wonder if they like, understand what I’m doing on like a really, like intimate level. Not really, you know, like they for any business they invest in, like they don’t understand that like their own businesses, of course. It was better to go in person. And like explain that yes, this is ethical and like, what that means. But like, also, the point is to make money so that we can show that like, this is a valuable business to be in whether I mean, hopefully you care about people and the planet. But if you don’t like you can still do the right thing through business and make money for whatever reason you want to do it.

Adam Force 19:34
And my last thing on this would be Is there any as you were having these conversations, does anything stand out, that would be helpful for people listening as key information that is helpful, either during the conversation or to get their attention to get a meeting?

Sydney Sherman 19:52
Um, I would say it’s, like, they like to see you starting with friends and family. And it’s really hard to ask those people for money. But like, for example, my grandma invested. And when she invested, I didn’t even know she had money to invest. And like other people at first, I was like, I don’t think people are to think that’s not impressive, but they’re like, oh, if your grandma’s money is online, like this is you’re not like messing around.

So they do like it’s scary to ask the people you’re closest to and a lot of people won’t because they’re like, I still have to have Thanksgiving with them. I don’t know, for me, I think it said a lot to future investors that I don’t know. And then also, I mean, do your research before you like reach out to someone — send a personalized email. And then in the meeting, know your numbers like even if it means and you can say like, oh, let me check, like, even if it means writing it down and like having it next to you. Just yeah, know the math.

Adam Force 20:51
Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, that’s helpful. It’s, it’s a big process. And we’ve spoken to a few people who have raised, you know, several million dollars and stuff. And one of the things that did come up that you might find interesting is, they would say, if you get a meeting and someone doesn’t invest, you just asked either advisors or investors, if you can put them on a very exclusive email list where you do like monthly or bi monthly updates, to let just say, Hey, here’s what we’re working on challenges, successes, and you just keep updating that list. And then when it’s time to do a raise, everyone’s kind of like, Oh, I know exactly where you’re at. And I’m interested, you know?

Sydney Sherman 21:30
Oh, absolutely. And I’ve started to do every single week all… And I don’t like doing this because I have a million things to do. But it’s so helpful. Every week I go through and like I connect with those people on LinkedIn. And then I add them to there’s a few lists that I have. One is like the people that I’ll update, like you said, with the investor stuff. And the other is a list of people like I’ll write out like what we’ve talked about, and like what I could potentially ask them for in the future. And knowing that like we’re in a place where we’re a startup, we’re asking for a lot right now. But obviously end goals like we’ll be able to give back at some point. But yeah, keeping track of that is kind of a pain. But like, it really pays off.

Adam Force 22:10
It does. Yeah, that’s interesting. It’s a powerful thing. And you’re right, like most people don’t do it. Because it’s just one of those things that it’s easy to say “I don’t have time for that,” you know?

Sydney Sherman 22:23
It’s annoying.

Adam Force 22:23
It is but hey, anybody listening, trying to raise money. It is bit of a dance. And it’s kind of like dating, right? So you really got to get to know people, and they may not jump on right away. But if you can get a chance to continue to earn their trust, that’s a good way to do it.

Sydney Sherman 22:38
Definitely.

Adam Force 22:40
So let’s talk a little bit, you mentioned that you’re doing a merger. So like, what’s that all about?

Sydney Sherman 22:46
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy, because we’re still a really young company. But yeah, and mergers and acquisitions. Whenever I was in my MBA program, we talked about HomeAway. And they basically started…it’s like, kind of like Airbnb. But they started their business by merging and acquiring other marketplaces, like all over Europe, and then all over the world. And for some reason, that’s always fascinated me. And I was like, if I’m dealing with a truly fragmented market, and I want to help take this like movement to the next level, whatever way I can, then, you know, “defragmatizing,” if that’s even a word is like, a good way to do it.

So mergers and acquisitions were always on the list, doing it like two months into year two, was not on the list. So yeah, just we were introduced by a mutual friend and kept meeting up and like, we have the same end goal, but we had taken different approaches. And both of us wanted to start doing what the other person was doing. And finally, we’re just like, while we could share resources, and we would each have a smaller piece, but it would be of a bigger pie. And it would speed up what we want to do. And like, it’s at the end of the day, we evaluated like, it’s not about us, it’s about the movement. And if we can help more people by doing it together, then by all means, let’s do it.

Adam Force 24:10
And how does that work? I mean, so how do you? And you know, obviously, you don’t have to give all the crazy details. But how do you set up that kind of a…what does that look like? Basically?

Sydney Sherman 24:22
Yeah, I mean, this was my first time doing it. So who knows? I could not work out — could be a huge error in judgment. We don’t know yet. But we…basically, I put together a document and I met up with a ton of advisors, people who had done this before. And I just wrote down every question they had, and I put together it’s like a 10 page document, with everything from like, every question that I had about her business, how it would work her opinion on like our future, what she had done up to this point, etc, all the way down to like personal stuff, like personal boundaries, how we work fast, like, strengths and weaknesses.

And we both just went through and like filled out the document, we kept meeting in person. And everything. We also tried to figure out like, okay, when something goes wrong, like, of course, it’s like, raising money, like I wasn’t going to be able to truly, like figure out how to get better until I started doing it. So I know, decision making, like we can’t plan everything in advance but like, how do we make decisions together? If we’re disagreeing? Like, what does that mean? So it’s a lot of just conversations. And now we’re getting into the legal component, which like the lawyers, they know what they’re doing there. So just hire a really good lawyer.

Adam Force 25:43
But you guys are not…So are you creating a parent company that would, then both of your individual companies would fall under?

Sydney Sherman 25:53
Kind of where so she would essentially, because we’ve gone to the B Corp, and we’ve gotten certified by WBENC like we’ve done some of those things, she is going to shut down her entity and join ours, but we’re coming at is 50/50 owners and then… So that will kind of be the parent company. Her marketplaces a little more curated than ours. So we will have to like version one, which is just ours, which will have everything and then like a more curated version of that. But there’s no like, parent company with two separate entities; we’re like actually merging. And we might create other businesses after this, through this, and this would become a parent, but there’s no like holding company.

Adam Force 26:39
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, that’s always interesting. And even at Change Creator here. We’ve discussed a few potential mergers. And it can get a little tricky, but it’s nice. Like we we’ve done like work partnerships with people over you know, a few months on things, to see how how the workflow is because you never know, right, until you really get into with somebody.

Sydney Sherman 27:01
Yeah, totally.

Adam Force 27:02
Although you mentioned about, you know, decision making and different opinions and how you handle all that stuff. And then just are they reliable, right? It’s like…

Sydney Sherman 27:11
Totally.

Adam Force 27:11
Yeah, it makes a big difference makes a big difference. So tell us a little bit more, then, about like the next 12 months or so, what we can expect? I think we have a little bit of sense of where you’re going with things, but just what are we looking at and anything — any big changes?

Sydney Sherman 27:29
So the next 12 months, really trying to so last year was hard. It was the first year. I mean, second business. First one was tiny, but still the first year is always really hard for me at least Yeah. And now we’ve built the basics. So a lot of improvements on what we’ve already done. So we want to do, we’ve never done branding or anything like that. We’ve mainly focused on tech and getting the vendors last year, so like doing a complete rebrand, so that our customer facing marketplace was more attractive, really drilling into marketing and figuring out like, how can we generate sales for these vendors. That’s number one. And then, of course, the backend of our website needs a lot of work. And there’s a lot of different, like, plugins that we want to provide for our vendors. So more of that, too.

Adam Force 28:22
Gotcha. Okay, cool. Well, I want to just be respectful of our time here and make sure that you get a chance to give a shout out, you guys could check out all the amazing products that they have, and how they work. They have their whole, you know, ethical production standards outline and the process, and then FAQs and stuff like that. So you could check that out under the About Us on their website. And Sydney, I’ll let you give a shout out. What’s the best way for people to learn more, get involved, all that kind of stuff?

Sydney Sherman 28:51
So yeah, visiting our website, www.faire.shop. But I mean, I’m also like a very available person. I really like connecting to people. So if there’s anything you wanted to talk to me about, especially if you’re trying to start a marketplace, I am available at sydney@faireinc.com. So sydney@fairing.com.

Adam Force 29:16
Awesome. Alright guys. So check her out doing lots of good work. And it’s exciting that you have a B Corp. status. It looks like is it still pending? Or did you guys get cleared yet?

Sydney Sherman 29:27
Still pending. We sent in our application in February. So any day now.

Adam Force 29:32
Nice. That’s a big process. So congratulations.

Sydney Sherman 29:34
Yes, it is.

Adam Force 29:35
I’m excited for you to get that cleared.

Sydney Sherman 29:37
Yeah, me too. Thank you.

Adam Force 29:40
All right, Sydney, thank you so much for your time and sharing your experience and congrats on the raise and the and the wins that you’ve had so far. It has you’ve only been doing this for two years. So I think you know, that’s pretty awesome.

Sydney Sherman 29:53
Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate it. Definitely.

Adam Force 29:55
All right. We’ll talk soon.

Announcer 29:56
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play, or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

interview

Geoff Cook: What It Takes to Win in the App Space

Listen to our exclusive interview with Geoff Cook:

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Geoff Cook is an entrepreneurial success story. He started his first company as a sophomore at Harvard back in 1997. A few short years later, at the age of 24, he sold it for millions. He then sold his second company for $100 million. More recently, he co-founded The Meet Group, a collection of online dating apps, each targeting a specific niche. Geoff also recently co-founded Podcoin, a platform that rewards podcast listeners. His accomplishments have not gone unnoticed. In 2011, he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young.

Dating Apps with a Twist

Geoff is all about developing unique apps and it’s this originality that is their selling point. A little over a year ago, he launched a live streaming video platform. He grew it to more than $80 million in revenue in just a short period of time. It boasts almost a million daily active users who are live streaming every day.

This live streaming platform goes across all four of his online dating apps: MeetMe, LOVOO, Tagged, and Skout. Geoff has essentially turned what used to be a flat and one-dimensional dating platform world into online communities where people can communicate via video in realtime. Think about the ramifications: no more wondering whether a potential date is using a profile pic from 10 years ago. Their personalities would come alive and you’d be able to get to know them much better than you would by just texting.

Podcoin: Get Paid to Listen

Geoff’s second major project at the moment involves Podcoin, a listening platform that essentially pays you to listen to podcasts. App users get paid in the form of gift cards for retailers such as Amazon and Starbucks. I mean, who doesn’t like free money? And if you’re feeling particularly philanthropic, you can donate your earnings to one of about a dozen charities, instead. It’s simple and everyone wins. Needless to say, the app has been a success.

Innovation Sells

By now you’re probably sensing a theme: Geoff Cook is a master at being innovative. He stresses that when developing a new app, a great approach is to fashion it to be a novel solution to a problem — often a problem that the user didn’t even know they had. He adds that the novel factor really needs to be high for an app to be successful. If it’s only slightly different from an existing one or if it’s been done before, it won’t sell. The key is innovation and novelty — stand out from the crowd and solve a problem most people don’t know they have.

Funding

When asked about the logistics of promoting a new or existing app, Geoff explains that just because you have access to marketing funds doesn’t mean you have to spend them. He adds that he can’t think of too many apps that became hugely successful because of the amount of marketing dollars that went into their promotion. Good apps — successful apps — speak for themselves. Consider your most used apps: Do you use them because a glitzy advertising campaign attracted you to them? Or do you use them because they work well and do what you need them to do?

As for raising funds, Geoff suggests the best course of action is bootstrapping as much as you can for as long as you can. And put off putting energy into raising funds as long as you can.

…the entrepreneurs who don’t raise and are successful — that’s always a better story than the entrepreneurs who raised that were successful.

When you eventually do start looking to get funding, Geoff suggests holding off until you have something that’s actually fundable. You’ll be far more successful at getting funding if you have something people can actually look at. If you’re just starting out and you’ve only got 500 DAU (daily active users), Geoff warns that you won’t be successful in your pursuit of funding. He recommends first churning out your app, working hard to drive DAUs and retention rates up, and then having something concrete you can show potential investors.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by OtterAI; there may be errors.)

Adam Force 0:11
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the translator podcast show. If you missed last week’s episode, it was with what I like to call the Jedi Master of Facebook marketing and growth. She knows how to build audiences on Facebook because she knows everything about Facebook. And she’s done it time and time again. So we interviewed Rachel Miller. And if you’re looking to grow your Facebook audience, and figure out how that whole big crazy platform works, she’s the one to listen to. So check out that interview.

She’s full of energy and excitement. Today, we’re going to be talking to somebody by the name of Geoff Cook. Geoff has an incredible background. He is a serial entrepreneur. And he started his first company from a Harvard dorm room. He’s Harvard educated, and he sold it for millions of dollars at the age of 24. Then he sold his second company at 100 million dollars. So yes, he’s doing pretty good there. And he is now the founder of another company called Podcoin. And we’re going to talk about what that’s all about today.

But that does have to do with some of the app world. He’s in the consumer app world. So we’re going to talk about what it takes to build these companies, how to get traction with apps and some of the keys to his success and how he’s selling these companies. So we’re going to dive into that in just a minute with Geoff Cook. And so also guys, just a really exciting time coming up because we have issue 28 of Change Creator magazine that’s going to be out soon. And it is with the one and only Blake Mycoskie. He’s obviously a legend in the social impact space. So we were really pumped and it’s like what’s Change Creator magazine without having somebody like Blake Mycoskie on the cover, right?

So finally, were able to lock that in. And we had a really cool video interview. And he even wore a sombrero during that interview. So you can check that out, we’re going to be releasing some snippets of that interview on Facebook. So make sure you’re following us on Facebook. That’s where you’re going to catch those things. And he just gave this really great discussion. I mean, he’s full of passion, this guy, he’s doing all kinds of stuff. And he talks about some of the lessons he’s learned, which are really valuable through his experience with this one for one model, but also just about life in general.

He’s on a whole new journey. So you’re going to see another side of Blake. And so we highly recommend you check out that magazine and that interview, you’re going to get a lot out of it. So we’re excited about that one. We’re almost at issue 30. That’s a big milestone. So plugging away hope you guys are enjoying it. Don’t forget to leave us, you know, reviews and those big thumbs up five star reviews on the iTunes platform and Google Play and stuff like that. We really appreciate it. Alright, so let’s get into this episode with Jeff.

Announcer 2:51
Okay, show me heat.

Adam Force 2:57
Hey, Geoff, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How you doing today?

Geoff Cook 3:01
Very good. Thanks for having me.

Adam Force 3:03
You’re welcome. You’re welcome. You have a huge resume, and you have a lot of things going on in your world. So we’re going to dive into some of that. But I’d like to just understand, you know, what’s the latest and greatest? What do you what are you working on these days?

Geoff Cook 3:18
Yeah, so I mean, the two things that I think we’re working on the most right now one is the live streaming video platform. So, you know, we started this live streaming video platform only about 15 months ago, grew it to more than 80 million in revenue in just a short period of time, grew to almost a million daily active users who are live streaming every day. And then the other thing that’s that’s pretty recent, is an incentive listening platform called Podcoin that basically pays you to listen to podcasts. So both of those things are two of the you know, the main projects we’re working on right now.

Adam Force 3:53
What was the name of the live streaming platform?

Geoff Cook 3:56
So it goes across all of our apps, we have four big apps, one is MeetMe, LOVOO, Tagged and Skout. So we have these social communities. And what we did with — they’re each, like a dating, social dating, social chat community. And what was new about it was that we added livestreaming on top of this, what had been a text based chat community.

Adam Force 4:18
Got it. Got it. Okay, that makes sense. Very cool. Cool. So, we’ll tap into that stuff a little bit more. But I want to give people and yourself just the opportunity to understand some more the background you have. So I want to give you a chance to tell people like in a nutshell, what led you to these current projects. You have a pretty extensive background. So maybe you can try to sum up some of the things you’ve done and how you got here today.

Geoff Cook 4:44
Sure. So I started my first company back in 1997. As a sophomore at Harvard, I was basically looking for a side job. And, you know, didn’t want to work at a library essentially. So just started up, asked myself what could I do. The answer that was write and edit. So I started an editing business, grew it to millions of dollars in revenue, few hundred contractors ended up selling that a few years after I graduated, then worked under contract for a couple years.

Left to start myYearbook along with my brother and sister who are 10 and 11 years younger than me at the time. This was now in 2005. In 2011, I sold myYearbook for $100 million in cash and stock to a public company. Then I kind of came back as CEO of that public company, about a year later, and continue to run it today. What I’ve been doing in the last three years has really been building this live streaming video platform out and then acquiring other apps. And in the last, you know, three years we acquired four sizable apps. Spending, you know, in the neighborhood of you know, $180 million.

Adam Force 6:04
Okay. Yeah, some pretty exciting stuff. And I — and correct me if I’m wrong, but you also won Entrepreneur of the Year from Ernst and Young, correct?

Geoff Cook 6:15
Yes, for Philadelphia.

Adam Force 6:16
Philadelphia. Have you ever lived in Philly? I see that you live in Princeton. But did you ever live in Philly?

Unknown Speaker 6:22
No. And you know that that was the area that I guess the they tie your business to. Our business is in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Adam Force 6:29
I Love New Hope.

Geoff Cook 6:31
Yeah. Me, too.

Adam Force 6:33
I’m originally from New Jersey. So I was right in central Jersey. So Lambert Ville, New Hope that was very familiar. And then I lived in with my wife in Philadelphia for six years, which is why it caught my curiosity.

Geoff Cook 6:45
Where in central Jersey?

Adam Force 6:46
I was in Flemington, which is, you know, you actually know Flemington?

Geoff Cook 6:52
Oh yeah, I lived in Pennington for a while.

Adam Force 6:54
Oh, yeah. Okay, nice.

Geoff Cook 6:56
And I’m from South Plainfield, New Jersey originally.

Adam Force 6:59
Awesome. Okay, very good. We got some roots together. Alright, so you’re working on the livestreaming. And you got Podcoin. And before we go a little further in that. I feel like because of your history, you’ve done a lot as far as starting a company, but also growing the company and even selling those companies.

And, you know, with our audience listening today, I think these are pretty hot topics. You know, everybody wants to know, right? How you’re growing the companies and stuff like that. And there’s always the real high level, you know, anecdotes around that stuff. But I’m curious, just because you’ve had a number of experiences now, have you seen any trends? Like if you were like, you are not you started Podcoin? Like, what are some of the steps besides, you know, dumping major marketing dollars into it that you would advise for people that they should be aware of when trying to grow and really get those first three years moving?

Geoff Cook 7:59
Yeah, I mean for like a consumer mobile app so most of what I think about is like consumer mobile apps. But for something like that, you know, I think it’s, it’s difficult, like there’s no, there’s no question. To get something to break through is ridiculously hard. I mean, people only use something like a couple dozen apps a month. And, you know, to break into that set is just really hard. And so I think one of the ways that I tend to think about that problem is, you know, is there some novel solution?

Like the novelty factor on an idea needs to be really high, because if people have seen it before, or if it’s just like a tiny bit different than some other thing, it’s like a feature added on to something else like that almost certainly won’t work, from my standpoint. So the novelty factor has to be high, but it also has to be a good experience as to solve some problem that people like may not know they have, but that that they do have.

And then I think the other piece of it — and I don’t think novelty is enough — but but I think then the other piece of it is like how can you…because even if you have access to marketing dollars, you don’t want to spend them right? Like the question, you know, there aren’t too many apps that are really made because of their marketing spend. So how do you get into these communities and get adopted? Like, how can you turn some of your first adopters into your sales people? And like that, that’s another thing that I think we’re trying to do with Podcoin that we’ve done in the past as well.

Adam Force 9:30
Yeah, I think that’s a big one. And I’ve seen some companies with serious success app or otherwise, that had smart Ambassador programs, basically, and really inspired their early adopters, you know, they did something unique and cool. Like the idea was cool, but once you get them on board, how do you incentivize them to be your marketer? So you know, you said that, and I think it just really kind of hit home. Because I think, you know, for anyone listening that that is a huge win. And I’m seeing it more and more I know, these affiliate programs are one thing, but these Ambassador programs can be quite powerful.

Geoff Cook 10:09
That’s right. And so like an example of this is like in the Podcoin case, right now, we you know, we know that a problem that podcasters have is getting listeners. And you know, we made it really easy to claim your podcast for free on the platform if you’re a podcaster. And then if you did, so we essentially through promotion inside of the app and how we rank podcast, we’re able to give you a lot more listening minutes, like drive 30 to 40% of our listening minutes, just to the people who the podcasters who have claimed, and in order to be claimed you essentially have to do a mid roll ad somewhere in your podcast. So so we’re finding hundreds of podcasters willing to do that. And you know, obviously that drives new users through the door.

Adam Force 10:54
Tell me about it a little bit here. You know, Change Creators is a podcast. We’re on Spotify, SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher. You know, you’re talking about bringing people on board, and they get paid to listen on Podcoin. And this is based on an advertising model, it sounds like. So you have a mid roll ad? And is…how do you align the relevancy of the ad to the topic of the show?

Geoff Cook 11:23
Yeah, so actually, we are pre revenue. So Podcoin is a is a new concept. And I think we have a good sense of how would monetize but, you know, taking it back a step: So basically, what Podcoin is a loyalty points program for podcasts. Rather than, you know, listening to podcasts and earning nothing, which is the typical experience, this basically allows you to earn this currency called podcoin, which you can then redeem for Starbucks gift cards or Amazon gift cards or various things.

And the idea being that you’re spending your time inside of an app you’re giving, you know, information about what your listening habits might be, and what other podcasts you might listen to, if you listen to this one, so the platform is clearly getting some value out of this. And the idea being while we’re pre revenue right now, you know, we’ve run enough mobile apps to know that, you know, you can typically monetize these things. And I don’t know 20 plus cents are live streaming video function monetizes much better than this. But But let’s say 20 cents per per hour, per user hour. And so you know, if you if you have your your Podcoin earning rate less than that, you know, you’re likely to have some profits.

We view kind of the Podcoin is kind of a marketing expense a reason to have people come in. But the the ultimate idea is, then the potential monetization hope down the road is…and down the road typically means like…when I build these consumer apps, that I normally I’m not thinking, Well, how do I monetize it day one, because I think if you’re, if you’re doing that, you’re kind of missing the point. Like, if you monetize day one in a consumer app, there’s really no chance at all right, like, you need hundreds of thousands of DAU probably before you even have that. That’s a lot, but you should have at least a pathway.

And I think the pathway here is, we’ve found that by making small variations in the Podcoin earning rate, like a half penny per hour, for example, that we could drive 30% of the listening minutes to a certain subset of podcasts that would ordinarily, you know, not be discovered. And so that, you know, in the future, and I don’t know how long the future is, maybe some months from now, maybe, maybe years from now, you can you can imagine how that could be powerful in driving people to particular podcasts and how that could be monetizable.

Adam Force 13:44
Yeah, no, that’s interesting. Okay, and how many…I guess I’m curious, you’re, you’re bringing on podcasters? How are you guys getting shows involved with you guys now?

Geoff Cook 13:55
You know, it’s been just very, in this is just a new initiative, it was, you know, we have probably 21 teams, at the meet group, and 20 of them are more or less on either live streaming video or subscription and one team is on this. And, and so it’s kind of an experimental concept. But you know, we, we’ve always been of the… I don’t know if you followed, like the Google, Eric Schmidt used to talk about, like, you know, 20% time and like having having 70% of the resources beyond core business 20% on [unintelligible], 10% on blue sky.

Like, I don’t know, if we subscribe to these particular percentages. But you know, I think having having blue sky concepts, and, you know, we view podcasts and audio as almost like the flip side of live streaming video, right? Because the video is really lean in, you know, you’re chatting with the, with the broadcaster, you’re maybe sending gifts, it’s, you know, kind of this immersive thing.

In the podcast thing, you know, you’re often feeling some human connection, like people often feel like they’re in the room. But it’s more laid back, like you’re driving a car, you’re maybe running like, but you’re following the conversation. So we see it as just kind of another place, like our users are sometimes driving to work listening to podcasts, and sometimes they’re interested in dating and connecting to people via live streaming. And so we view it as kind of two sides of the same coin.

Adam Force 15:23
Yeah, you know, it’s, it is interesting, and there is an interesting intimacy to it, but also that convenience factor and, you know, even ourselves, we’ve been, we’ve been audio only for a few years now. And I, you know, we started doing some of the video based interviews very selectively, just, you know.

I’m not sure…it’s almost like our, you know, beta test, in a sense, too, because I find that the conversation, there’s distraction, in the sense when you have video instead of just audio, I don’t know if that makes sense. But when you have like you’re on screen, and you’re trying to stare at a webcam, like it’s, it’s a very different experience. And when you’re just listening, I like what you said, you feel like you’re in the room, and it’s a more intimate conversation. I found it’s a very unique differentiation.

Geoff Cook 16:12
I tend to agree with that, you know, I’m a avid podcast listener, of course. And, you know, I think that, you know, you often see these changes into the industry where, like, people are trying that, well, let’s see if we can create two minute podcasts or like, super short segments or the video podcast, and it’s like, or maybe the format works for a reason, you know, this kind of long form content, that’s audio, that’s typically audio, right?

Like it works for a reason. Yeah, I think we do have some thoughts on on maybe live podcasts and down the road. But you know, I don’t know that it’s going to be, you know, the vast majority. I think the current model is more likely to be the winner.

Adam Force 16:54
Seems to be I mean, I love taking like, I like when there’s a really great question that you can use and sample like, take a quick like one to three minutes sample from the show, and then you can use them as a social media hook. Right?

And that’s fun when you have video. That’s what I love the video for. But I feel like when you do the video as the actual interview, I don’t know, like these conversations are good. But when I can, like, have my head down, and my notepad out, and I don’t have to focus on the screen, I feel like the conversation is a little bit more in depth, you know?

Geoff Cook 17:27
Yeah.

Adam Force 17:28
Yeah. So just interesting talking points and stuff and the platforming that the site looks good for Podcoin. And it looks interesting. I mean, I think the concept is interesting. So yeah, we’ll have to see how that develops and where it goes.

Geoff Cook 17:43
Yeah, no, we’re excited to see where it goes, you know, the other thing people can do, and we have an advisor on our, on our advisory board, who’s the head of, or one of the heads of the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, which is a childhood cancer charity. And, you know, it didn’t occur to me, when we were first thinking of this idea that, you know, there’s always you know, you can run for an often like, you run or you bike and, and people give you, you know, some some money per mile.

And that’s a that’s a way people raise money for charities, you know, but there’s people who can’t run and they can’t bike and through no fault of their own. And so like, is there a way for those people to potentially participate through their time and attention. And Podcoin is essentially that, you know, we do work with charities, and you can donate your pod coin to to about a dozen different charities who work with us, as well. So you don’t have to redeem it for gift cards. And and many of our users actually use it that way.

Adam Force 18:47
Hmm. That’s pretty interesting. And yeah, so you mentioned the Podcoin can go towards gift cards and things like that. So now you’re also saying it can be selected for charities and I have seen things where actually we have friends who are running an interesting business called Atlas, and they do what you’re talking about. They raise money through this app where you run for change and stuff like that. And so they’re kind of doing that. And I never really thought about, well, What about the people that can’t do that? Right? So I think it’s a good concept.

Geoff Cook 19:19
Yeah, no, I don’t think we were kind of keyed in on that. But then we had kind of had that conversation and it just made a lot of sense.

Adam Force 19:27
Yeah, that is interesting. Okay, and how long has Podcoin been going right now? Or is it just a test at this point?

Geoff Cook 19:35
Yeah. So it’s been out for about four months. We launched it in December, and then, you know, we’ve been expanding it since.

Adam Force 21:24
Okay, great. So Jeff, let’s, let’s switch gears just a little bit from Podcoin. And we know we can circle back around on that if we have some things to cover. But I kind of want to hear a little bit about live streaming. And this idea of more human connection. I think, you know, more than ever today, the the idea of live streaming, whether it’s Facebook Live, or you know, doing an Instagram, you know, live session and things like that. Even…I think …Is YouTube doing live now? I don’t even know, I’m not I’m not too big into YouTube, but…

Geoff Cook 21:55
It does.

Adam Force 21:56
Everyone’s getting into the live streaming space. And it’s like, you know, you have Facebook watch and stuff. And you can have your own shows, basically, and Jeez, who needs cable TV anymore, almost. But tell me a little bit about why you decided to get into that. And about the connection factor behind it from your perspective.

Geoff Cook 22:18
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. So we have had this fairly sizable, you know, millions of users community for some time, and people were always chatting, and a key metric for us was chats per day. And yet you log into the community, and you’re seeing people near you, that you can chat with, or that you are already chatting with. And it felt kind of flat, right? Like, it’s profile pictures and, and you can — multiple profile pictures — and you can put interesting things in your profile. But, you know, there might be 100,000 people online right now.

And yet, it seems super flat. Like you’re just browsing through these profiles. And the beauty of live streaming video is it suddenly makes, you know, personalities and makes the thing come alive. So like, it takes it from being like a collection of profiles to kind of feeling like the nightclub or the bar, you know, kind of a coffeehouse — like, this casual gathering spot, where, you know, people are having all these conversations, and you can jump in here, you go into that room there.

And you’re actually seeing someone. And, you know, in the dating space in particular, you know, I think there’s this thing about authenticity, right? Like, is that picture even them? Is it them 10 years ago? You know, is it the best picture of them taken on their best day with the best lighting? You know, what does the person really look like? Also, what is a picture really tell you about a person? What does their voice sound like?

You know, what, you know, can you get any sense of how, you know, if they [unintelligible] and you know, it’s hard to tell any of that, except through video. And so livestreaming, you know, I think kind of is such a natural for kind of dating and social meeting apps. And so we actually first saw it, though, in China.

So China was the first place where we’ve ever seen livestreaming married to a dating app, and it was on an app called Momo, a very big app in China. And so we saw that in 2015, we launched our live streaming solution in 2016. And I think we were among the first if not the first kind of Western brand in the dating space to have it. And that was on our MeetMe app. Okay. And we’ve since added it to our Tagged app, which is an African American meeting app, as well as our LOVOO app, which is a European dating brand.

Adam Force 24:42
So then it sounds like, you know, with all these different apps and programs you’re putting together there, you do keep a very niche focus with them.

Geoff Cook 24:51
Yeah, yeah. You know, I think we we know who the audiences are there we’re trying to serve. And, you know, we see live is kind of an enabler of that audience. So we didn’t see live as our way of expanding, you know, Tagged, for example, beyond the African American demographic, or LOVOO out of Europe. It’s more, okay, you know, we have this existing large base of users, can we get 30% of them to spend 30 minutes a day watching live streams, in addition to the time they already spend on the platform?

Adam Force 25:25
Got it. Yeah. And so, you know, you have this big audience, because they, you know, implementing something like livestreaming? Obviously, I have to imagine is a fair bit of development.

Geoff Cook 25:37
Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. You know, we literally have, you know, 17 out of 21 teams on the live streaming portion. Yeah. And, you know, they’re not all just working on, you know, the, the bits of live streaming, but but also, you know, as you can, I’m sure, you can imagine, there’s moderation demands, right, like, livestreaming at scale. We have about 200 people who do nothing but moderation.

Adam Force 26:03
Wow,that’s a lot. Okay. Yeah, that’s a big operation. But I think, you know, the most valuable part of this topic, you know, for our listeners is, you know, the value and benefit of live streaming, because, you know, you’re connecting people, right. And so as an entrepreneur, you know, you might use live streaming for the same benefits, because you have a chance to connect with people.

And you know, there’s a trust building factor there. Because you just like you said, you know, who knows what those pictures look like in the dating world, and all that kind of stuff, and you get to see someone, you know, live, it’s a different dynamic, and you can earn a different level of trust. What do you think?

Geoff Cook 26:46
Yeah, yeah, no, I think you can, I think you absolutely can. And I think where we, you know, are going with this is, you know, we’ve already kind of doubled and tripled and quadrupled down. But, you know, we’re right now, all of the streaming activity, we have all of the live video activities is broadcast media, it’s almost it’s like one-to-many kind of more few-to-many media, almost like a podcast, right?

Few-to-many. And, you know, dating, of course, lends itself to one-on-one. And so we actually are going to be launching one-on-one livestreaming this this summer, and that’ll take it, you know, in the whole new area. You know, hopefully, you know, maybe a few quarters later we will launch a group video, where we’ll enable maybe people to talk about topics or things that are important to them.

Adam Force 27:32
Interesting. Okay. So I something that caught my attention earlier, just about one of your companies that you started, if you don’t mind me just kind of diving back a little bit. I have a question for you, which is you said you got into an editing and writing business. Is that right?

Geoff Cook 27:49
That’s right. That’s right. When I was at Harvard.

Adam Force 27:51
And how did that I’m curious on how you grew that especially, you know, I guess, I don’t know what year that was, but it was, you know, a different time and stuff. And I’m curious how because it sounds like you built it up to a pretty substantial size? And, um, what some of the steps there were and…

Geoff Cook 28:07
Yeah. I mean, that was my first business. And so it’s kind of dear to my heart. Yeah, I started originally as a side job. And like, my first year, it was really just like, you know, the worst that’ll happen is I lear something about making a website and ecommerce because I did everything by myself. And like, I literally took a $500 or $600 advance out of off a credit card. Because I needed money, there’s a whole reason for doing this exercise was that, otherwise, you’re going to get a job.

So but I thought I even if I don’t make any money, no one wants to buy anything. It’s not really a big deal. You know, at least I’ll learn a little bit about e commerce. But, you know, my first year, I thought it was like the best side job ever. I made $10,000. And, you know, that’s probably more than I would have made if I had a side job. And then, you know, I took an internship as like a lot of students do.

But in the night, I would — it was at an internet company in Denver, they took this internship, and at night, I would work on on this business. And, you know, by my junior year, it was $40,000. But I was still doing all the editing. So then it’s like, oh, my God, this is like a chore. But it was still good money. I was probably making 60 bucks an hour, you know, something like that.

And then I was like, okay, you know, at the end of that year, I was like, I’m not going to take a job, I’m just going to go work on this. So my girlfriend at the time, and I and she’s now my wife, we actually rented a house, did nothing but work on this business. And by my senior year, I didn’t do any editing, I just hired people. And we did 300 grand, and then we grow to five plus million, you know, in the next few years.

And it was basically college admissions essays, Business School, personal statements, it was resumes, we were the resume writing to hot job and the Wall Street Journal’s career journal site for when I still was owning it. So it was a great little business, a lot of fun. And it’s one of those straight line stories, like a lot of stories or pivot stories, that was like, Hey, I needed a side job. And then it just, you know, kind of kind of got big.

Adam Force 30:13
So it sounds like you were taking on any kind of writing work.

Geoff Cook 30:17
It was really admissions and resumes. So like those key things, those key documents that people might pay for, right, like, you know, not not necessarily like the business writing or that you might do or book writing. But more like that, you know, this this thing that you need in order to get through some gate?

Adam Force 30:34
Got it? Yeah. And I’ve seen I think you can I think people can charge a pretty penny for resumes and stuff like that.

Geoff Cook 30:40
Absolutely. Absolutely. And a good resume, right is worth it. Right? Because, you know, might help you get that position and get noticed and resume writing and admissions essays like these are all just a skill. So like those services, they weren’t writing it for you. You had to bring your stories, but like be good editor can work with you.

Adam Force 30:59
Yeah, yeah. Right, you know, to frame up the language properly. And all that kind of stuff, I assume.

Geoff Cook 31:05
Exactly. And and just to invoke the right questions, stories, right. Like, and someone to tell you like this stinks. That often helps. Right, yeah, because a lot of times you’ll give it to someone and they won’t tell you that.

Adam Force 31:17
Right. Right.I guess through your experience too, what have been some of the bigger challenges? I mean, you’re talking about selling companies that are hundred million dollars and things like that, which is, you know, that’s big picture stuff. That’s, that’s big, you know, we’re talking with companies that make, you know, seven figures, but you’re talking about a million and stuff like that. And I’m just curious through the experience of now that you’ve had with these companies, you know, what were some of the challenges that you’ve had that maybe were big life lessons in business? Anything come to mind?

Geoff Cook 31:52
Yeah, I mean, you know, there’s been so many, like, I tend to look at these things as kind of chapters, right? Like, it will be…these aren’t straight line stories were like, and then, you know, I started the company, and then I sold it. It was kind of this up into the right thing that just happened until the day I sold it. Right?

Like, it’s almost never that way, like, you’re often on the brink of disaster, or, you know, you’re worried about, you know, something that’s existential. You know, I mean, I think, layoffs, you know, think things like that, you know, ad rates move against you. Investors are upset, like, I mean, I, you know, just kind of one thing after the other and I think the thing to that the kind of hang your hat on and makes you want to keep doing it is the creation aspect, right?

Like you’re trying to create something new and interesting that hopefully people like and, you know, if you’re able to do, that’s the stuff that I like the best, like the kind of what’s the next thing we’re going to be building? Why is that going to work? And the reality is that you have to also realize that like, probably it won’t, really. But occasionally it does. And when it does, it can really work.

Adam Force 33:10
Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing, though, because every time you want to try a new idea, there is a level of work that you have to put into, you know, you don’t have to go crazy, but like, it’s just you have limited time, and you got limited resources. So every time you want to test out something, there is a level of work and time that goes into it. Did you find it challenging? Were you doing things at the same time and spreading yourself thin at all and stuff like that?

Geoff Cook 33:37
Well, I mean, I mean, as a student, I would probably say, like to go back to the college days and starting the business. Like, at the time, yeah, I was probably spread pretty thin. But then by senior year, I was like, wow, this is kind of exceptional, right? Like, this is a significant business. There’s no question which should win here. Right? I’m going to go to class as little as humanly possible. And so you know, that was kind of an easy decision.

In terms of, you know, there’ll be a lot of demands for your time from from investors or from others. And, you know, if there’s key product decisions, or key things you got to do to be moving the actual business forward. Like, that’s where you should be spending your time. And like, I think, ultimately, like, a lot of people understand that. Like, hey, don’t meet with me, if you gotta go grow the business right.

Now, of course, some people will still make demands on your time. But yeah, I mean, being spread thin is, is kind of just part and parcel. And I think, you know, what helps with that, though, is just personal decisions, right? Like, if you can, you know, if I’m able to work out in the morning, that’s a good day, right? No matter kind of what happens, what happens after or, you know, if I can, you know, read to my kids when I when I, you know, at night like that, that’s that that’s good. So as long as you have some of these kind of routines, kind of humanizing routines, I think it helps with the stresses of the day.

Adam Force 35:06
Yeah, no doubt about it. And it’s hard. It’s hard to commit. And that’s something my wife and I are debating all the time, and we’re super busy people and you get so focused on what you’re trying to do each day that you may not eat, or, you know, you should run for, you know, run a mile or go and meditate or whatever your routine is. And those things are a very small fraction of your time throughout the day, yet, you still feel that you can’t tear yourself away to go do it. It takes discipline.

Geoff Cook 35:39
It’s discipline, and a lot of it really does come come down to that. But then, you know, it’s also true that if you keep it up, you know, it gets a lot easier.

Adam Force 35:48
Yeah, it becomes habit. Right. Right, you know, a part of your normal routine. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I think that we’re getting to the end of the time here. But where can people…I mean, you have a number of apps and stuff. But is there maybe Yeah, shout out for some stuff.

Geoff Cook 36:08
Sure. I mean, given it’s podcast, I’ll give a shout out to Podcoin, give you that a try. Or if you’re interested in meeting people or livestreaming, MeetMe app would probably be the good one to start with.

Adam Force 36:19
Yeah. And I’m actually just one thing. I’m curious as we wrap up, I don’t think you have but have you ever had to raise funding for anything?

Geoff Cook 36:27
Oh, yeah. I mean, I’ve raised hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of time. Yeah, yeah. So you know, I, you know, the myYearbook business. Actually, I signed a $750,000 financing deal three days after I graduated, for my first business, the editing. So I did an angel round. I raised about $17-$18 million in venture capital for the business I sold in 2011. But on top of that, I’d raised, you know, another $20-$30 million in venture debt. And then, you know, as part of a public company, now that I run, you know, we’ve raised what, well in excess of $100 million.

Adam Force 37:16
Yeah, any…I mean, you’re, you’re playing in big numbers, and obviously, with different track records, but any tips on raising funding for the entrepreneurs that were…that are on the line listening?

Geoff Cook 37:31
Yeah. I mean, if it’s an app, you know, like I, you know, I tend to say bootstrap, as long as you can; don’t raise as long as you can. Now, it’s not always reality that you can not raise, but you know, that the entrepreneurs who don’t raise and are successful, that’s always a better story than the entrepreneur raised that were successful. But, you know, some milestones I’ve heard that some investors look at these days are like, 10,000 DAU.

You know, if you can prove your thing out, if you had a mobile app, let’s say, you got 10,000 DAU, and you’re looking at day 30 retention rates of 20% or more — and I realize those are really high numbers — then you’ve got, you know, something that’s probably quite easily fundable, especially if you have a, you know, especially if you have some good backstory, or like, you should be able to figure that out.

But, you know, but like, if you’re, if you’re sitting there with 500 DAU, or, or even worse, you know, just an idea that you want funded. That’s not really the way to go about it. Like, you got to just figure out whatever the heck you need to do to get the first version out, get some users on it. You know, people want to back something they can see.

Adam Force 38:42
Yeah. And can you just for the audience, can you define DAU?

Geoff Cook 38:46
Daily active users, so like, how many users are actually on your app every day?

Adam Force 38:50
Yeah. All right. Awesome. Listen, Geoff, appreciate your time. Sounds like you’re doing a lot of cool stuff. And we’ll keep an eye out on Podcoin and see where that goes. But I think any final words on your end, Are you good?

Geoff Cook 39:08
No, that’s great. You know, I thank you for having me today.

Adam Force 39:11
Awesome. Well, thanks for being here. And we’ll be in touch.

Geoff Cook 39:15
All right, take care.

Adam Force 39:16
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play, or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

interview

Oscar Trimboli: Mastering Deep Listening for Impact Business Growth

Listen to our exclusive interview with Oscar Trimboli:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

We’ve all heard what it takes to be a good listener: make eye contact, face the speaker, and so on. But is there more to it? Oscar Trimboli says there most definitely is. He has coached and mentored professionals in a variety of leadership roles in numerous industries including the financial sector, technology, professional services, education, and nonprofits. And he wants to make sure that you, too, understand the intricacies of becoming a truly effective listener.

I’m on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the world.

He points out that only about 2% of us have been taught how to truly listen. This is a problem, since we spend 55% of our day listening. Part of the issue is that when we’re listening to someone speak, we don’t clear enough space in our own head in order to listen to ourselves before we begin a conversation.

Not Listening Will Cost You

In our podcast, Oscar discloses that he is on a mission to help people move from distracted listening to deep and impactful listening. There is a cost to not listening — whether it’s to your customers, your employees, or to anyone else you’re working with.

He stresses that it’s listening — not just speaking — that is going to make the difference between success and failure when you’re in a business and you’re trying to change people with ideas or raise funds.

Listening Across 5 Dimensions

Oscar refers to effective listening as deep listening. And in order to do listen deeply, we need to listen across five dimensions:

Listening to yourself,
Listening to the content,
Listening for the context,
Listening for what is unsaid, and
Listening for meaning.

Asking the right questions when someone is speaking also makes for a deep listener. “Tell me more,” is a great example. This phrase is not to help you better understand what the speaker is trying to say; it’s to help the speaker better express what they mean. Often, when we say, “Tell me more,” the speaker will sigh very deeply and when they do, you know you’re starting to hear what they truly mean rather than just what they’ve actually said. A distracted listener may not even be tuned in enough to a conversation to notice this, but a deep listener will.

Targeting Your Customers’ Customers

A good salesperson will be focused on their customer’s problem. A great sales rep will be focused on their customer’s customer’s problem. It’s not enough to know the organization’s problem that is in front of you; you also have to understand, who are they serving?

Deep listening requires insight. Oscar stresses that if you’re selling B2B, it’s critically important to understand the needs and problems that your customers’ customers have — that is, keeping an eye out for what’s two steps ahead, not just what’s right in front of you. He adds that a great sales rep will help their customer promote the business to their customer and understand who else they’re competing against beyond the traditional competitors.

Listening Advice

When asked for some specific key pointers to help us listen better to others, Oscar stresses the importance of being comfortable with silence.

You’ll be surprised how much heavy lifting silence can do for you in a conversation if you don’t interrupt who you’re speaking to.

During a conversation, we seem to be hell bent of filling every gap with words and become uncomfortable with the shortest of pauses. Oscar points out that in Eastern cultures such as Japan and China, long pauses are commonplace in conversations. As the Western world does more and more business with the East, becoming comfortable with silence during a conversation is more important than ever.

Oscar also shares that we shouldn’t be taking handwritten verbatim notes when having a conversation. Simply put, this type of writing shuts down the part of the brain that actually hears and understands — something no one wants to have happen when trying to listen effectively. Instead, Oscar suggests writing down graphical notes.

The 5 Myths of Listening

Lastly, Oscar Trimboli offers a fantastic resource on his website — a download called The Five Myths of Listening. It outlines the five most common mistakes people make when listening and, most importantly, the five solutions that go along with them. You can find it at oscartrimboli.com/listeningmyths.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by OtterAI; there may be errors.)

Adam Force 0:12
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the change creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam Force. And if you missed last week’s episode, it’s with the one and only Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS Shoes, and the founder of that one for one business model that everybody loves so much. So we learned a lot from Blake and his experience, we talked about what he has going on in his world now, as he kind of takes his steps towards a different path.

So it’s a pretty exciting conversation. So if you missed that interview, there’s a lot to learn from Blake and his experience with TOMS and just kind of like the insights he has for where he’s going next. So check that out, if you missed it. This week, we are speaking to somebody who is a master at the art of deep listening. You know, I have literally read books from people like Richard Branson, and the entire book was about listening. You know, like, this is such a simple thing, it seems simple on the surface. But there’s so much power behind the art of listening. And it’s a really important skill, when you want to be a leader and an entrepreneur who is you know, going to successfully grow their business and create partnerships with people, and all of those types of things.

So we’re going to be talking to Oscar Trimboli, and he has quite a background, he’s done the thing, you know, working as a marketing director at Vodafone, Microsoft, and all those types of things. And he has always been really passionate about the importance of listening to his customers. And today, he’s on a mission to create 100 million deep listeners in the world. And so during this interview, we’re going to talk about what does that actually mean? And how does that work and examples of deep listening and how you can start practicing. And so all those goodies are going to come out of it, I think you’re going to get a lot of value out of this discussion with Oscar.

So stay tuned in just a minute, we’re going to get that started. Issue 28 of change career magazine was with Blake Mycoskie on the cover. And that was a really amazing addition, we’ve had incredible feedback on it. So hopefully you had a chance to peel through those pages. Another update about the magazine is our team is going to be changing the model and distribution of the magazine. So there will be price changes coming up to everybody’s benefit. And also the distribution frequency is going to change as well. So as those details get flushed out, we’re going to be making announcements across our Facebook network, as well as through our email channels. And then of course, I’ll make a shout out here just to give those details, but I wanted to give a heads up, those things are coming down the pipeline, they’re all good changes.

And we’re going to be putting emphasis and in other areas that you guys have been telling us that are really important to you. And then access to the magazine, all of our editions will still be there. And some new editions will be coming out. But again, just a couple tweaks on frequency and pricing models and stuff like that. So we’re just working out the finer details. But there’s a quick heads up just to so you guys know what’s coming down the pipeline. And I think that’s it guys, if you’re not following us on Facebook, that’s our spot.

So follow us over there, that’s where you can get a lot of the the updates, especially in the group. So if you go to our page, you’ll see a link there to the group. And that is about your marketing. So storytelling from marketing to grow your impact business, check us out on the Facebook group. And we have a great little community there — people who are entrepreneurs in the impact space and we share ideas, we network, and there’s a lot of value that comes out of that. So check it out, when you get a chance. It’s a great way to connect with our team and others in the space. So alright, without further ado, let’s dive into this conversation with Oscar.

Announcer 3:54
Okay, show me the heat.

Adam Force 3:58
Hey, Oscar, welcome. Welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today?

Oscar Trimboli 4:04
Look, I’ve enjoyed a really full day. You’re catching me in the evening in Australia, and you’re just kicking off in the morning where you are.

Adam Force 4:12
Yes, absolutely. That’s right. It’s early and early for me late for you. And you know, as I love that’s what one thing I love about doing this show is talking to people all around the world. So always interesting.

Oscar Trimboli 4:27
Yeah, the world completely connected these days. I was doing a podcast of Boston about four months ago. And somebody one floor above me in the same building was listening to that podcast and sent me an email and said, Where are you in Sydney? And I explained to him what street I was in. And he said, I’m in that street, what floor are you on? I said I’m on five. He said, I’m on six. And that’s how connected the world is today.

Adam Force 4:51
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Awesome. So let’s, I just want to get grounded. And I like to make sure everybody knows kind of like what’s going on in your world these days, like what’s the latest and greatest.

Oscar Trimboli 5:07
I’m on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the world. And that’s no insignificant undertaking. And somebody challenged me once and said, If your goal can be achieved in your lifetime, you’re not being ambitious enough. So the initial goal was 10 million, and they challenged me to put an extra zero on it. So I’m on this quest to help people move from distracted listening to deep and impactful listening. So that means I’m spending my life doing interviews like this, but also helping people with speaking about the topic training organizations to explain the cost of not listening, whether it’s to their customers, or their employees, or the regulators or everybody else that they’re working with as well.

Adam Force 5:53
Yeah, so let’s dig into that just a little bit. So you wrote a book about deep listening and Impact Beyond Words, which I do like that title. And I think listening is such a important art, especially in the entrepreneur space, and just in general as well. Right. So how are you — I guess, let’s talk a little bit about how you are impacting people. So you’re doing these shows, you’re talking at events, and I’d like to dig into what deep listening is to you, and how this helps people just to tee that up?

Oscar Trimboli 6:28
Yeah, I think, for me, a couple of times, people would always reference me as I you know, go and talk to Oscar, he’s a really good listener. And then I remember when I was working at Microsoft, the boss president said to me, after a really highly tense meeting with some global people and some original people, some people from the Australian business. Wow, Oscar, did you realize you changed that meeting at about 30 minute mark, just by how you started to listen to what people weren’t saying? And she said to me Oscar, if you could code that you could change the world.

Now when Tracy said that she actually meant coded into software, and which I will do eventually. And that’s how we’re going to get to 100 million. But I didn’t think much of it at the time. And then three weeks later, another lady said to me, wow, the way you listen, is it impressive, but the way you see who people really are, wow, that’s powerful, that’s transformational for them. And I think for most of us, Adam, we’ve never been taught how to listen. In fact, only 2% of us have been taught how to listen, yet we spend 55% of our day listening. If you go back to school, you can probably remember your math teacher, English teacher, geography teacher. But none of us can remember our listening teachers. And the teachers we remember the most, whether that’s our math teacher, English teacher, generally people say to me, they were the teacher who really listened to me, that really got who I was.

And they were able to get the best out of me, because they were listen well beyond the words. And a lot of us have been taught to focus on the speaker when we’re listening. And that’s handy, the most important person you need to listen to, is you. And most of us don’t clear any space in our own head, to listen to ourselves, before we get to the conversation.

Our head is like a messy kitchen bench top, which has got pots and pans all over it and no room for the listening to land into. So it’s really critical that everybody understands that if you can remove the distractions, the technology, the cell phones, the laptops, iPads, away from the conversation, your ability to listen will exponentially grow. And if you’re in a business where you’re trying to change people with ideas, with trying to raise capital, it’s listening — not just speaking — that’s going to be the difference between your success and getting there as quick as you’d like to.

Adam Force 9:00
Yeah, so let’s unpack that just a little bit. You talk about when you talk about listening, I think a knee jerk reaction A lot of people have and you know, Richard Branson talks about how important is to listen, and you hear these things from people. But when you hear it, you think, okay, so you know, I’ll sit and I’ll shut my mouth. And it seems like such a simple thing. Like, just don’t talk and just listen.

But it’s but it you know, when you can write a whole book about it, and you’re in so many people talk about how important it is, there has to be a lot more depth to this practice. And so I want to see if we can unpack that just a little bit more. So maybe you can share some of the insights from the book or just from your experience about what you know, take it a little bit further, like, can we dig into it?

Oscar Trimboli 9:49
Yeah, look, most of us listen in black and white, because we haven’t been taught any different. And we’re really two dimensional in the way we listen, we listen to words, and we look at body language, and we use visual prompt sto get us moving forward. And that’s, that’s useful. But a deep listener can listen across five dimensions. And those five dimensions are listening to yourself, listening to the content, listening for the context, listening for what is unsaid, sounds like a bit of a ninja move. How do you listened to what’s unsaid, but we’ll spend a bit of time there and ultimately, listening for meaning. About two years ago, I interviewed an amazing nonprofit leader Kathy LeMay out of Boston, not too far from you.

In the US, well, relative to me, it’s not far away. It’s probably a five hour plane flight from Miami. And Kathy at that stage had raised $175 million. And when I got to interview her, the reason I did is because she said the reason she was so successful is she listened to what donors meant by their donation, not what them money was. You know, when you’ve raised that much money, she was raising money for immigration services, she was raising money for domestic violence, she was raising money for people from war torn parts of the world and refugee programs. She has to listen so much deeper than others.

And the minute she stopped trying to understand what their objections might be, and really listening to what they wanted to say, not the first thing that came out of their mouth, but ultimately what they meant, Kathy said, that was the biggest breakthrough. And the way she did it was pausing. It was using silence and not interrupting. So when we talk about listening for unsaid, Adam, here’s a really simple rule for all of us to remember. I speak at 125 words a minute, you can listen at 400 words a minute, and I can think at 900 words a minute.

Think about this very simple neuroscience in my brain, I have 900 words in my head. And the only way I can get that message out to the world is at 125 to 250 words a minute. That means that the first thing that comes out of my mouth is a one in nine chance that what I’m saying is actually what I mean.

Adam Force 12:21
Okay.

Oscar Trimboli 12:22
So there’s an 11% chance that what I say the first time is actually what I’m thinking. Now, I don’t know about you but if I had an 11% chance of success from a surgery, I’d probably ask for a second opinion. If I had an 11% chance of winning a court case, I’d probably ask for a second opinion from another lawyer. And yet, very few of us ask the person who’s speaking for what else is stuck in their head. The head is like a washing machine in wash cycle. It’s sadly it’s messy. It’s rotating, and it’s moving around. And spin cycle is when you speak.

Now, again, I don’t know how much washing you do, Adam, but even washing machines have more than one rinse cycle. So what we want to do is listen to these magical code words, you understand what somebody means when they say words like: “Well, actually,” or, “you know, what’s really important?” “You know what I should have said that I haven’t said so far?”

Adam Force 13:25
Yeah.

Oscar Trimboli 13:26
“Thinking about it, the most critical thing on this topic is… .” Now you’ve just unpicked what’s unsaid when you hear those code words. And here is a phrase you can learn if you take away one thing that’s about maths, it’s the 1 25 400 rule. And if you take away the art of listening at this question, “Tell me more.”

Adam Force 13:49
Yeah.

Oscar Trimboli 13:50
And that question, “tell me more” is not for you. It’s not to help you understand more, it’s helping them to express what they mean. And when you say to more, that will pause, sometimes about five very deeply. And when they do you know, you’re starting to hear what they really mean, rather than what they’ve actually said. So a distracted listener won’t even be present enough in the conversation to notice this. And a deep listener will.

Adam Force 14:19
Yeah, no, that’s all really interesting. And it makes me think you know, about a couple things. So you know, as entrepreneurs, we have conversations with people in our audience to understand you know, what they have going on. But we also have conversations with potential, you know, b2b clients and understand what they have going on. So I’d like to maybe just think about those situations a little bit. And, you know, I hear the things that you’re saying right now, and I’m like looking back in my brain on these conversations.

And you start to think, geez, you know, you’re in these client meetings, and you’re, you have this genuine, you know, interest in helping them do better with what they’re doing. And some of the times, like what happens to me, especially with whether it’s client meetings, or it’s like, with your potential customers, you know, there’s the irrational thoughts and the rational thoughts, what they want, what they actually need, and deciphering, you know, where to put your attention. So when you’re listening, it’s like, is this really what they need? Like? So do you have any insight on how to start listening in a sense to identify the true needs versus just what they think that they want, but it’s not really the need, you know, what I’m trying to say?

Oscar Trimboli 15:36
I think I do. So if I don’t, you’ll know me. As someone who spent 30 years selling b2b in enterprise based accounting, CRM, and call center and human resources and payroll and finance systems, I have spent a bit of time with b2b buyers, but in the last decade of my life I have spent a lot of time coaching CEOs, CFOs, CEOs, Chief Operating Officers, Head of Risk, Head of Human Resources. So I’ve been fortunate enough to get to both sides of the equation. And Adam here’s one thing that I think distinguishes good from great when it comes to selling in a beta Bay context.

A good salesperson will be focused on their customer’s problem. A great sales rep will be focused on their customer’s customer’s problem. It’s not enough to know what’s the organization’s problem that is in front of you, you also have to understand, who are they serving? And what problems can you help them solve? Because it’s one thing to sell them something that helps them; It’s quite world class to sell them something that will help their customers. The other thing that distinguishes good from great when it comes to the database, sellers is a good database seller will beat the competition. And a great database seller will help the person in front of them sell a business case inside the organization.

Couple of years ago, I was working with a customer in New Zealand, and I was selling contact center software. And they were absolutely certain they’d beaten their competition — their very traditional technology competition. But at the last minute, I will call by procurement and told that this was on hold. And what had happened was Kimberly Clark, who are very famous for making diapers, but also make toilet paper had made an offer to the CFO. If the CFO bought a whole year’s worth of toilet paper, that would give them 50% off.

And what they lost to wasn’t their traditional technology competition, they lost to toilet paper because they didn’t understand who was involved in the buying process. They only understood how to beat the competition. So there’s two tips when you’re selling b2b: Tip number one, a good seller will sell to the customer and the customer’s problem, a great rep will sell to the customer’s customer’s problem. And a great rep will also sell the business case and help the person who’s in front of them sell the business case internally and understand who else they’re competing against beyond the traditional competitors.

Adam Force 18:29
Yeah, I think that’s important. So you know, anybody listening I as as Oscar as you’re talking, I think it makes a lot of sense. Because as you’re in these meetings, whether you’re a coach and you’re trying to onboard people to support them, or you’re, you know, support an agency supporting other clients, like, you have to go in there with the intention of listening for those things. Right. So and asking the right questions too I mean, do you agree like you have to go in. And if you ask the right questions, that’s how you get to the point where you can listen and get the information you need.

Oscar Trimboli 19:00
In a lot of cases, we ask the questions too late as well. Well, a lot of time, if you think about the standard unit of the meeting is either one hour or half an hour. And if we’ll just do the half an hour, the one hour meeting because the math is easier for me. You should be asking this question at the 45 minute mark, in any conversation, who else is involved in the procurement process? And most importantly, this is this is the question you want to ask. So they might say, Oh, it’s Adam. It’s Jenny and Simon. And you simply have to ask them, so if they were in this room right now, how would you explain what we’ve just discussed to them?

And when you do, all they’re doing is rehearsing in front of you how they’re gonna sell this business case. And when they do, you can make a judgment call to go, Wow, these people are rock stars, they’ve got it all covered, or gee, they’re really strong at explaining features and functions, but they don’t realize the financial implications of what they do. So if Simon was the finance guy, you just simply have to ask, What other questions would Simon have from a finance perspective that we haven’t covered today? And typically they go, Oh, I think we’ve covered them all.

And you can simply ask, I look, when I work with other finance leaders and other organizations, they typically want to understand the payback period on this. How would you explain that to Simon? And typically they’ll stumble, and you know, okay, you need to help them out there. So that’s a lot around level three listening, which is listening through the context and understanding how things get done in an organization. Rather than just giving them the content, it’s not enough to give them an executive summary in a pitch deck, you need to be rock solid, that whatever questions they’re going to get, you’ve got covered off. That’s why I have to ask it two thirds of the way to three quarters of the way into the meeting, because you’re going to need the next 15 minutes to step them through the kinds of questions other people going to ask them.

Adam Force 21:14
Yeah, that makes sense. And so your recommendation, you know, you so it’s all kind of like ties together. So if you know what to look for, you can ask the right questions, and then you gotta listen for the information and kind of see got a guide these conversations a little bit, right.

Oscar Trimboli 21:31
Yes, and no, I think in a lot of cases, the people you’re dealing with know how things work in their organization. I think if you come across as too guided that it feels manipulative. I think being just being open to working with them and going, How do things get done around here, when a transaction of this size happened last time, how did that work? They’ll tell you the answer. You don’t have to necessarily guide them.

And then all you have to do is pull a couple of different perspectives. So what does that mean for Finance? What does it mean for operations? What does it mean for human resources? And you can use those questions no matter what the organization and the context is. And all of a sudden they’ll go, Yeah, well, Alice in operations is always going on about quality. So tell me what your quality story is, and off you go. And you tell them the quality story. I think in a lot of cases, if they feel it’s their story, and not yours, they’ll go and advocate for it much stronger than they ever would if it was only your story alone.

Adam Force 22:34
Yeah, yeah. Interesting. And is this stuff now — I have not read the book yet that you have. And I’m curious. Can we just talk a little bit about like, what you go through in the book, Deep Listening? Do you touch on these types of topics? Like, where’s the focus? And who is this really written for?

Oscar Trimboli 22:57
Yeah, so the book is small enough to sit in your wife’s coat pocket or, or in your bag, if you carry them around. It’s designed to be read in 90 minutes. The book was designed not to be a dust collecting trophy on your shelf that you never use. And because it’s so accessible, a lot of people go back to it over and over again. The book is designed to do a couple of really simple things: Unpick the five levels of listening, it helps you understand how to use silence.

In the West, and Western economies, silence isn’t used as much as it is in the East in high context cultures like Japan, Korea, China. So again, in a more global world, you’re going to interact with more of these people so understand and become comfortable with pause and silence. And then finally, help you identify which listening villain you are. There’s four villains of listening. There’s the lost listener, the dramatic listener, there’s the interrupting listener. And finally, what have I covered up dramatic, interrupting…

Adam Force 24:06
Interrupting.

Oscar Trimboli 24:08
And the fourth one should be really obvious as he looks at his fingers. So lost, dramatic, interrupting, and shrewd, of course. Sorry about that. The shrewd listener is disproportionately represented in the sales profession. So what a shrewd listener does, Adam, is they go, you think that’s your problem. But I’ve already solved that. And you haven’t thought about the three problems I’m already solving for you, I wish you’d hurry up. And while you’re doing that, you’re not really paying attention to what they’re saying.

The interrupting listener is the most over listening type because the interrupting listener just jumps in every time you draw breath and think that’s a commercial break to jump in. The lost listener doesn’t actually know why they’re in a meeting or they’re distracted when they’re in the meeting. And the dramatic listener loves listening to your story because they’ve got a bigger story. If you had a bad boss, I had a worse boss. If you had a tough merger, their merger was tougher than your they’ll love your stories, because it just builds a theatrical stage for them to continue on, on the journey as well. So helping right now Adam, which one of those 4 do you think you are the most or…

Adam Force 25:22
I think I have I try my best to have silence but I think I become interruptive.

Oscar Trimboli 25:30
Yeah. And look in 32% of people in our research database identify immediately with the interrupting listener. But listening is situational and relational. You’ll listen differently to a customer that you’ll listen to an advisor. You’ll listen differently to your parents than you will to a doctor. So we’re actually all of those listening villains, it just depends on the situation that we find ourselves in.

And if there’s one tip, I would give any men listening to this podcast right now, stop trying to fix women. Yeah, they’re not broken. And if you just listen to them, it will completely transform your relationship. I’ve got a funny story. I was coaching a guy called Mick and Mick was working with me for three months. And he said to me, we need to talk. It was a Monday and he said, this is what happened last Friday night. My wife said to me, we need to talk, Mick. And when your wife says that that’s not a good sign 12 years into a marriage. The kids had gone to bed, she sat me down across the dinner table and said, We need to talk.

And he took a deep breath in and she said, You can be completely honest with me now. You’re having an affair, aren’t you? And he took a deep breath in and he says, Wow, she says for the last three months, you have never, ever paid me so much attention in the last three months as you have in the last 12 years of our relationship. So tell me, who are you having the affair with? And she said, Look, and Mick said, I Ggtta be honest. It’s a bloke. It’s a guy. And the guy’s name is Oscar. And he’s been teaching me how to listen for the last three months. And she went, Oh my God, this makes complete sense.

And the funny thing from this whole story is Mick said, her closing comment is, in the last three months, you have never appeared to be more sexy than you have when you listen to me. So Mick’s reflection was he realized for the last 12 years of his relationship, all he was trying to do was fix his wife. And all she wanted was for him to listen to her. For all the work I’ve done and all the researchers in a workplace. But sometimes people get a bit crazy and go and use it at home as well. So

Adam Force 27:53
It’s a powerful tool for just your life in general, I guess. Right?

Oscar Trimboli 27:58
Yeah, whether it’s our home relationships, whether it’s community relationships, whether it’s work relationships, I think we’ve spent a lot of time in the 20th century learning how to speak, how to speak with influence, how to speak with impact. But I think the productivity hack of the 21st century and where you’re spending half your day, is listening.

Adam Force 28:21
Yeah, makes sense. So let’s wrap up with just one last question for the entrepreneurs on this line. Because I think this is such a powerful tool, and I want to give you a chance to kind of give your final words of wisdom to them. And if you were going to give a piece of advice for the early stage entrepreneur who’s you know, trying to get the next client, trying to get the next sale? What would you tell them about the art of listening as they try to grow their business?

Oscar Trimboli 29:00
Be comfortable with the pause, be comfortable with silence, you’ll be surprised how much heavy lifting silence can do for you in a conversation if you don’t interrupt who you’re speaking to. The number one tip I would say is if you’re in front of somebody, and you’re trying to do business with them, build a relationship, create a transaction. Keep this in mind, try and avoid taking verbatim notes. Meaning if you’re hand writing notes, don’t write up word for word or don’t write sentences or don’t write phrases. Try and write graphical notes. The reason you don’t want to take handwritten verbatim notes, or take handwritten notes is that you shut down the part of the brain that actually hears when you’re writing these verbatim notes.

But if you take graphical notes, the part of the brain that allows you to take graphical notes doesn’t shut down the part of the brain that actually hears and when you take graphical notes, you’ll take fewer notes, but you will force yourself to listen at level five and listen for meaning. Your recall from that conversation will be higher, and your eye contact with the person you’re talking to will be much stronger.

The most significant signal you can send to somebody that they believe you’re listening to them is when your eye contact is the highest. So if there’s one thing I would say is get rid of the electronic devices, go analog and just take simple graphical notes about concepts in the meeting, draw the linkages between them, but don’t take verbatim notes. You’ll be much more present in that meeting. And you will transform the person in that room because you’re paying them the biggest compliment in the world. You’re giving them your full attention.

Adam Force 30:51
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much Oscar. This is enlightening and very interesting. And I think it’s a very important part of just you know, not just business but like you said life, right? So I think the better we can understand these practices, the better we’ll be all around. So we appreciate you sharing your insights and the work that you’re doing.

Oscar Trimboli 31:14
Well, thanks for listening.

Adam Force 31:16
Absolutely. All right, Oscar. Let’s just give a shout out. How do people learn more about what you have going on? Where can they find you and information and stuff like that?

Oscar Trimboli 31:26
Look, we’ve got a really simple download for everybody called the five myths of listening, which is a downloadable. It’ll tell you the five most common mistakes people make when it comes to listening and the five solutions that go along with it. So if you go to oscartrimboli.com/listeningmyths, you’ll be able to download it there. And that will open up a pathway to the book, the playing cards, the jigsaw puzzle, the podcast series, and soon the comma animated comic strip about how to listen better in the workplace.

Adam Force 32:00
Excellent, and we will include that link for anybody in the show notes when the interview is active on the website. Again, thank you so much Oscar and we will be in touch.

Oscar Trimboli 32:12
Thanks for listening.

Announcer 32:13
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meeting intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

interview

Paxton Gray: Take Your Content Strategy and SEO to the Next Level

Listen to our exclusive interview with Paxton Gray:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

We all want our businesses to be successful, so the importance of effective content strategy and an eye towards SEO are decidedly important. As 97th Floor’s Executive Vice President of Operations, Paxton Gray knows a thing or two about both. In this interview, Paxton shares some great tips on optimizing your content strategy and how and when to focus on SEO.

Should SEO Be Your Main Goal?

Paxton explains that link-building is still an important and effective part of SEO. Links are important to outreach. He goes on to explain that there is an abundance of data that shows that pages rank well when they have good links pointing back to them.

However, a couple years ago, he and his team learned that the particulars of SEO may not necessarily be the most important thing to focus on. It’s far more important to focus on quality content. His team was using a bunch of data to determine what they should write about in order to give their pages a good ranking. Makes sense, right? And it did work. The pages ranked. However, because they were so focused on SEO, there wasn’t nearly enough focus on developing quality content.

While getting your pages to rank will attract people, showing them quality content will incite action. In fact, as long as you’ve got well-formatted title tags and good user experience, it is much better to focus on the content than on SEO.

Developing Great Content

One great way to come up with some great content is to care about the user. Focus on what it is the user is looking for and expecting to see when they visit your page.

Put yourself in the shoes of the customer.

Carefully consider how you provide them with what it is they’re looking for. Content for the sake of content isn’t going to be helpful. Make sure your content is helpful and relevant. The last thing you want is for a potential customer or client to have their intelligence insulted by content that’s nothing more than fluff. Think about who your typical user is and good content will follow. Especially if you’re a solopreneur who is just starting out, focus on what you can give your clients to make their lives better. Building a fan base this way is a much better investment of your time than figuring out SEO.

Hire Some Help

For additional guidance, as you grow, consider hiring a consultant you trust to do a quick once-over for you. Then, when you’re in the market for an agency, compare what they say to what your consultant said.

Marketing Automation: An Effective Tool

If you’re a medium-sized business and you have at least one or two people on your marketing team, Paxton suggests you get into marketing automation. Marketing automation is taking the “one-to-many” approach of advertising and making it feel like the “one-to-one” approach of sales — tools such as chat bots and emails.

If you don’t, you’re probably not making as much money as you could. But make sure you’re doing it right. Marketing automation done wrong is a quick way to make your business look really bad. Effective marketing automation is a lot more like computer programming than content marketing.

Lastly, good content is really all about telling a great story. Focus on telling an interesting and captivating story when promoting your brand and building your fan base.

As long as you can tell a good story, you will be successful in marketing and in business.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by OtterAI; there may be errors.)

Adam Force 0:12
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. And if you missed last week’s episode, it’s with Heather Dominick. Can we talk about how to scale your business as a highly sensitive entrepreneur? Really great conversation. So check that out when you get a chance. And today we’re gonna be talking with Paxton Gray. He’s the Executive Vice President of Operations at 97th Floor. And he covers all kinds of work that the agency produces for clients like Discover, ESPN, Salesforce, you name it. He’s full of incredible insights when it comes to marketing and digital work like content strategies, SEO and all that good stuff. So you guys are going to learn a lot. And we’re going to have a really fun conversation with Paxton today, which we’re going to jump into right now. Keeping this intro short and sweet today.

Announcer 0:58
Okay, show me the heat.

Adam Force 1:03
Hey, Paxton, welcome to the change, greater podcast show how you doing today?

Paxton Gray 1:07
I’m doing great. How are you?

Adam Force 1:08
I’m doing awesome, man. You know, another day, another dollar living life. You know, you have so much cool experience. And I just I actually I really liked the name 97th Floor as well. So why don’t you just tell us what you are doing today? Not today, specifically, but like what’s going on in your world at this time? And where you’re at?

Paxton Gray 1:32
Yeah, yeah. So I I’ve been here at 97th Floor for six years. We’ve been around as an agency for 14. And, you know, we focused primarily on on digital marketing. And so that’s, that’s where my head is thinking, you know, how do we leverage all the different platforms and, and tools within the digital space to get results? So yeah, that’s that’s kind of where I’m living what I’m working on trying to help grow 97th Floor to be even bigger than it is.

Adam Force 2:00
Awesome. Awesome. I am curious, you know — actually, that triggers a number of questions. But before we get into it, you know, what got you into the marketing space, what led you to 97th Floor, just a little background would be helpful and know where you’re coming from?

Paxton Gray 2:14
Yeah, so I studied advertising, actually, at a university here in Utah. And my plan was always to go work at the big sexy New York advertising agency. You know, that’s kind of where I wanted to end up at Ogilvy or shy day. I mean, those aren’t in New York, but yeah, you know what I’m saying. So that’s kind of my plan. And I started looking around for internships in New York and Chicago. And then I, you know, I also got engaged around that same time to a girl that hates the idea of living in a big city. Like, her ideal is to like, go have a bunch of horses and live on a giant ranch. So I stopped looking for internships in New York and Chicago, because she didn’t want to go there. And instead, I looked for places around here in Utah. And I found this company called 97th Floor. And I was like, that sounds like the big sexy New York agency I wanted to work at, you know, so I applied and it, anyway, so I start working at 97th Floor and back then it wasn’t even close to being you know, that big, sexy giant agency. It was a very small shop at the time. I think I was like employee number 12. And I realized, however, that if I could — like, this agency has potential, like, really cool services, the market is growing really well, awesome talent. And if I stuck it out, and I worked my butt off, I could maybe turn it into the big sexy agency that I always wanted to work at. And, you know, I don’t think we’re 100% there. You know, we’re still growing. But you know, we have an office out in San Francisco, hopefully in a couple years will be out in New York as well. So we’re getting in there.

Adam Force 4:00
Excellent. Excellent. And so my question would be, are you actually on the 97th Floor?

Paxton Gray 4:07
No, we’re not. The tallest building in Utah, I think, is 36 floors. So it’s not on the 97th floor.

Adam Force 4:18
Cool, cool. Cool. Yeah. So do you know where the name came from?

Paxton Gray 4:23
Yeah. So when our founder — so, we started 14 years ago, this September, and back then it was just our founder, you know, he was kind of running a one man show. And he wanted to give it like an LA and New York type vibe. And I believe he was planning on calling it the 100th Floor. And his wife said, yeah, that doesn’t sound very good. Like, doesn’t roll off the tongue 97 rolls off the tongue way better than 100.

Adam Force 4:48
Yeah.

Paxton Gray 4:49
And so he’s like, all right, check for the domain name. It was available, and boom, that was it.

Adam Force 4:54
Awesome. That’s cool.

That’s cool. So when you got there, I mean, what what was going on at the time? Like, can you describe for us the environment there? And what you guys were working on?

Paxton Gray 5:06
Yeah. So it was very much and still is about results. You know, we’re always focused on how do we get results for clients, not just how do we make a ton of money? Or how do we just get hours to bill. All of our contracts are based off of results. And so that leads into like a very scrappy, innovative testing type culture. And that’s kind of what I walked into, kind of anything went as long as it works. So there was no bad ideas, or just experiment trying new things. And so there are some areas, we were a little rough around the edges. But by and large, you know, we just, we were really good at getting the job done. And that’s kind of been our focus always is just getting the job done.

And so that’s kind of what I walked into. There was a time — in fact, it’s kind of a funny story — it was my third week there. We were using a couple different tools sets. And I won’t bother you with particulars. But I found this weird loophole and how to use a couple of tools with each other to get some really cool results. And it was working really well. But it ended up getting — like, I didn’t realize that we were being billed for all this — these API calls that we were making on this one tool. And we got a bill from this tool for, I guess, $6500. So with my third week there, I was like, boom, I was a huge liability.

Adam Force 6:27
You’re welcome!

Paxton Gray 6:29
Yeah. But our CEO, I mean, to his credit, it’s like, Hey, man, that’s what it’s all about. It’s all about testing and trying things. And I love that you’re experimenting. So that to me cemented in the idea of nothing’s, you know, nothing’s not worth trying.

Adam Force 6:42
Yeah. Now, that’s pretty cool. So yeah, so it was just some kind of like marketing stuff you were trying to pull off? or What was it?

Paxton Gray 6:51
Yeah. So back then, we did a lot of link building, which if you’re familiar with SEO, you know, links are important for ranking. And I was doing some outreach. And I discovered, well, we had one tool that allowed us to find the email addresses for editors and publishers.

Adam Force 7:11
Yeah.

Paxton Gray 7:11
And then we had another tool that allowed us to scrape all the backlinks of our competitors. And so I figured out that I could scrape all the backlinks of our competitors, get get thousands and thousands of URLs, and then stuff all those URLs into this other tool that was basically an email scraper. So I could walk away with, you know, 20,000 email addresses of publishers, and editors, and then I could just hit them up just all day. And what I didn’t realize is that the email scraper charged per scrape. And so when I stuffed 20,000 URLs into it, we got a giant bill, but it worked out that way. We got it. I got good results. And…

Adam Force 7:50
Right, so you got the return on it.

Paxton Gray 7:51
Yeah, we got the return. Just a little unexpected costs there.

Adam Force 7:56
Yeah, but that’s pretty cool. So like, what was your role when you started there?

Paxton Gray 8:01
So my role when I started was SEO marketer. So I basically got doing the link building, doing optimizations, kind of doing all the legwork for SEO.

Adam Force 8:12
And how have you been seeing now the evolution of the marketing space? You know, we’re talking, we got a lot of entrepreneurs listening here. And obviously, marketing is a very important part of any business. And I’m just curious from your experience, you know, we’ll just tap into the SEO conversation for a minute. Just how you see things changing, like, do you still focus on, you know, link building? Or how is the dynamic changed in your mind over the years?

Paxton Gray 8:40
Yeah, so link building is still an important part of SEO, we have oodles and oodles of data that show that pages that have good links pointing back to them do rank well, so it’s still a big part of the algorithm. It’s gotten a lot more complex than it was back when I started 11 years ago, for sure. Like back then we were keyword stuffing and putting words and meta keyword tags and all that good stuff.

But these days, you know, I think as long as you have your bases covered, and your you got your title tags, great, and they’re formatted well, and you’ve got good user experience, I think it’s much better to focus on the content, necessarily, than the particulars of SEO. Now, something that we learned a couple of years ago, there’s a system called TFIDF, the term frequency inverse document frequency analysis, where essentially, you are using a bunch of data to figure out what you should write the page about to give it the best shot of ranking as possible.

And it was working. Like, we could get these pages to rank. However, we were so focused on the content being formatted to rank well, and not focused enough on the content actually being good.

Adam Force 9:54
Exactly. Yeah.

Paxton Gray 9:56
So we’ve made a pretty big pivot over the past couple years into, hey, that’s still good to know. But primarily, what we want is great content that is going to actually incite action once a user visits and reads, rather than just merely attracting eyeballs. Because you attract eyeballs, and it’s not good content, that’s not good for your brand. That’s not that’s that’s a waste, right? So, yeah, so I’d say, from an SEO perspective, like still know what you’re doing, still, I would say consult a professional, get people involved, because you can make some pretty serious mistakes that will cost you a lot of money. But then beyond that, I think it’s really important to focus on the content, the message and the user experience once they actually come down.

Adam Force 10:38
Yeah, you know, we, my co founder is really into the SEO stuff and knows it well. Thank God, because I have no idea. And it’s not where my brain goes, right? You know, we think about our titles and stuff, but it is really thinking, like you said, it’s like, Who is this for? And what purpose does it really serve? And, you know, like, what are they getting out of it. So as long as it really speaks to them, and then she’s always like, at least have a good title in there. That can help rank and get get noticed. Because you want to, you know, you want to get picked up by by Google. And we do get like a pretty good high value on the worth of our our content. So it does make a difference. And interestingly enough, like we were running a Facebook campaign to sell one of our programs. And as people came in, on the early days, I would reach out and say, hey, how did you find us and talk to them. And I was hoping it was our Facebook strategy. And it was always the content marketing that was bringing people in. So content wins, man.

Paxton Gray 11:40
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s so many articles out there that will tell you that the market is just over saturated. And it’s not worth the investment to do content marketing, because you have to do so much to stand out. And I, you know, all the data that they pulled it say, hey, the internet is growing by 15 million pages a day, the vast majority of those pages are just computer generated pages that will never be seen by anybody. And the other half are just a bunch of crap articles that were written by people who don’t care about the user. I don’t think it’s, I mean, I think it’s definitely worth the investment to have some good content. Like, I got an iPad recently, and I was like searching for some cool creative things to do with an iPad. And so I searched for that on Google. And I can’t tell you, like, the vast majority of them said things like buy a screen protector, get get a cover for your iPad, it’s like, Dude, are you serious? Like you don’t think I’ve just thought about that already. Like, you clearly don’t care about me. You’re just trying to get my views so that your ads, you can get some ad revenue.

Adam Force 12:38
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I saw it all the time, too. Yep. Agree. Yeah.

Paxton Gray 12:43
Yeah. So just caring about the user. And, you know, keyword research is something that is used by SEO and PPC, very heavily, for obvious reasons. But it’s not used enough by content marketing. And Google is that special tool in our lives that we ask questions from Google that we don’t ask anybody else.

And so that query data that you can get from Google is so important from a content perspective, because if you see people are asking this question over and over and over again, let’s give this some great content to answer that question, let’s help make their lives better. And that will attract an audience and develop really good brand relationship. And hopefully, people will get into the funnel and convert, you know, rather than just saying, like, hey, let’s use this keyword research to so they can rank like, pick some keywords, the high volume keywords to rank for.

Adam Force 13:32
Yeah, exactly.

Paxton Gray 13:33
Which has its place it has its merits, but using it, like looking at that data from a content marketing perspective, I think is is really valuable.

Adam Force 13:41
Okay, and are there any tools you would recommend that people may want to check out to help support, you know, their efforts in in that journey?

Paxton Gray 13:50
Yeah. So there’s lots of lots of cool tools around. Ahrefs has some really great data on keywords. My favorite is Spyfu. And the reason I love spyfu because it’s actually built for PPC kind of intelligence, but they have this organic part of the site. And the data is just so fast. And Spyfu is so cheap. So if you’re, you know, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re trying to decrease the cost of your marketing stacks Spyfu is a great way to do it. It’s only I think it’s like 30 bucks a month. And they have really great data really fast and gives you everything you need.

Adam Force 14:27
Cool.Yeah, isn’t it because Ahrefs is we use Ahrefs, but it’s pretty expensive, isn’t it? I don’t remember how much it is every month.

Paxton Gray 14:33
Yeah, it is. I mean, it they have different levels, but it’s definitely more and more expensive than Spyfu.

Adam Force 14:39
Yeah, yeah.

Paxton Gray 14:40
And then beyond that, I actually have a template that is built for use with Spyfu to where you can kind of run some data, export it and then shove all that data into a template. And it will sort through all of it for you and find the best keyword opportunities. Because it kind of allows you to sort through, you know, 40,000 rows of data in 10 minutes, as opposed to one by one. So it’s a really cool template that I can share with your users. I have a URL I can give you afterwards.

Adam Force 15:13
I mean, is it like, do you have to be some kind of super user to figure it out?

Paxton Gray 15:18
No, I actually, within that template, I also have, there’s a link to a YouTube video where I can walk everybody through how to use it. So yeah, so I teach a course actually, university around here. And it’s intro to SEO and analytics, and I teach them that exact same process for keyword research. And so I’ve taught a lot. So it’s very, very easy. Anybody can do it.

Adam Force 15:42
So you know, one question I, you know, as we think about being entrepreneurs, and building up our marketing and stuff, you know, you got to pick and choose where you’re spending your time. And I mean, would you recommend like, Hey, you should have some basic understanding of these thing and these tools. You might be a small team. So you guys are like you wear multiple hats. But do you I have noticed to like it can be really tough when you try to bring on somebody, there’s a lot of like swindlers in the SEO space. And yeah, any advice on like, Is it worth hiring people? Or should you kind of get basic knowledge yourself?

Paxton Gray 16:17
I think it depends on what stage you’re at. So if you’re the solopreneur kind of stage, you’re just doing it by yourself, I think it’s far more valuable to just focus on your audience and focus on what do they need? And what kind of what can I give them to make their lives better. And in that way, build a good audience and build a fan base, that’s going to be way better investment of your time thanfiguring out the ins and outs of SEO. And then, you know, once you’ve gone past that stage, and you have some more time on your hands to focus towards marketing, I think it would be a good idea to learn, learn the basics, but just enough so you don’t get swindled, you know, and I think a really great way to dip your toe into it is to hire a consultant that you trust, to just come in and do a real quick once over, just say what are the big things I should focus on? And then when you go out to shops, shops, some agencies compare what they say against what that consultant you said that you trust what they said, Yeah, I think that’s a really great way to save yourself some time and avoid people who are just in it for a quick buck.

Adam Force 17:19
Absolutely, yeah. When I, when I built up stuff on my own, and I didn’t know anything, I had all these articles and all this stuff going on. And then Amy came in. And she was like, man, we gotta fix this, you know, so you can end up creating more work or hurt your your site, your website’s, you know, effectiveness, if you don’t always take a little bit of time just to get a basic understanding. So I think your your flow of like where you are and what you should do, it makes a lot of good sense. That’s helpful. Yeah. Yes. So you know, as you now are you obviously you’re still doing a lot of that, is that still a big focus for you at 97th Floor at this point?

Paxton Gray 18:00
In terms of SEO?

Adam Force 18:01
Yeah. I mean, you’re right now you’re Executive Vice President, right?

Paxton Gray 18:06
Yes.

Adam Force 18:06
So you’re focused on operations. So I guess you’ve expanded far beyond just the SEO focus?

Paxton Gray 18:11
Yeah, yeah, I’m not I’m not involved too much in the day to day of SEO. But I do I mean, I do, I’m very aware of kind of what’s going on in the industry. I kind of view my job rather than the execution, my job is to keep us on the cutting edge of marketing strategies in SEO, PPC, marketing, automation and content marketing. And so I’m, you know, I’m constantly consuming media to, to kind of help spark those ideas and to test out new things. And so, yeah, I’m very aware of what’s going on the industry. But yeah, I’m not from a day to day perspective involved much.

Adam Force 18:52
Interesting. And so, you know, as far as like, so you’ve gone through a process of like, building an effective team. And I guess, you know, I like what you just mentioned, which is that, you know, you’re you’re leading into the understanding what’s cutting edge for content marketing, but also automation. So I guess I like to talk a little bit about the content, marketing automation, and what you’re seeing is going on today. And if there’s anything that we can, you know, get from your insights there, that would be cool. And then I’d like to talk about well, as we’re starting to build our teams, like, what should we be looking for around these things?

Paxton Gray 19:30
Yeah, yeah, with marketing automation. So much opportunity out there right now. And that barrier to entry is, is getting so much lower than it has ever been in the past, to where, you know, if you’re, if you’re a medium sized business, you know, if you’ve got, if you have at least one or two people in your marketing team, you should be getting into marketing automation, because if you don’t, you’re leaving a lot of a lot of money on the table.

Adam Force 19:55
Okay.

Paxton Gray 19:56
It’s also a way to quickly make your business look really bad. If you don’t do a good job with marketing animation. In a sense, you know, I used to have a much more simplistic view of marketing animation, you know, the idea of, yeah, someone comes to this page, they download an E book, they get an automated email for me, Bing, bang, boom, they become a customer. Pretty simple.

And I’ve been very corrected in terms of how simple it actually is. I mean, it can be very simple, depending on your, your sales cycle and your objectives. But marketing animation is much more akin to computer programming than it is content marketing, in my opinion. Because you have to get that logic correct. Because if you if your logic is off in terms of the flow and the automation and the triggers, then you’re going to make your business look really stupid. Even if your content is great. If you don’t, the wrong message is the wrong time. Because your logic is off. Yeah, the potential for downfall is high.

So I would say, if you’re going to dip your toe into marketing automation, and you’re going to do it yourself, keep it as simple as possible, I would recommend using HubSpot. They’re very, in terms of complexity, they’re pretty simple. They build their business off of working with this small and medium level businesses. So there’s a lot of support a lot of great content out there. But keep it really simple.

And the best thing to do, and this is true for all marketing, this is actually probably true for business and product development. Put yourself in the shoes of the customer. And what what do they expect to see when they click that button? And how can you give them what they expect to see? Right?

If that’s off, then then you got to make some changes. So I think start simple and make sure that that’s true, whatever their customer expects to see. Give them that. And as long as you can keep that true, as you add more more and more complexity, then you’re gonna be good.

Adam Force 22:03
Yeah, that makes sense. And can you just define for people, when you say automation, I have a number of things, it could be a chatbot experience, it could be an email sales sequence with behavioral marketing. How were you looking at it.

Paxton Gray 22:19
Yeah, loosely defined marketing automation is, you know, the difference between sales and marketing is sales is one to one. And marketing is one to many. Or I should say like advertising is one to many. Marketing automation, is trying to take that one to many approach and make it feel like it’s one to one, so that the person is getting spoken to in a way that is very customized in it and makes sense for their particular stage of interaction with your business.

So that can be through chat bots, that can be through email. Some something that people don’t do often that is actually something that’s great is calls to action on content should change dynamically, depending on what has happened before. So for example, if you have an article talking about, it doesn’t matter was talking about but it has a call to action download this this white paper. Yeah, or this ebook.

If you use marketing automation, you can have smart CTA, where if they if it knows that that person has already downloaded that ebook, then instead it says, sign up for a demo, or download this other ebook that we know you haven’t downloaded. So having smart calls to action is really simple execution and saves a lot of waste of time, you know, from asking people to do something they’ve already done, or that doesn’t make sense for their particular situation.

Adam Force 23:37
Yeah, I like that. So the personalization is definitely, you know, something that we focus on too. It’s a great point and actually the smart CTA, I haven’t actually seen that before. We use Active Campaign for, you know, our email sequencing and automations, and it’s pretty cool with their behavioral marketing. And you mentioned HubSpot. What about HubSpot do you find compelling like what are they they can you do the smart CTA with their software? What’s the difference there?

Paxton Gray 24:06
Yeah, you can if if you’ve built a CTA, through HubSpot, or the landing page through HubSpot, then you can use smart CTAs that will change…

Adam Force 24:13
Ah, ok.

Paxton Gray 24:14
Yeah. I like HubSpot a lot. It’s not something we use. We use more complex platforms typically for larger level businesses like Lexmark Animation Cycle. But for the majority of businesses, HubSpot is a great, great suite of tools.

Adam Force 24:35
Okay, that’s pretty cool. And so 97th Floor, like who’s your typical client these days? Like I actually, I’m curious to know how that’s evolved. Like, who was your client when you started? And who’s your clients now? Like, is it changed? Or you guys have the same focus?

Paxton Gray 24:50
Yeah, so our focus is primarily on more enterprise level businesses, a lot of b2b tech, and then b2c lifestyle fashion. We have a lot in that space as well. And that’s what we’ve been pretty much since I started at 97th Floor. Our background really is, in the early days, there’s a company called Omniture, not sure if you remember.

Adam Force 25:20
Yeah.

Paxton Gray 25:21
So you know, our CEO kind of was talking with Omniture and convinced them to let us do a test on one of their keywords. And back then we were doing primarily just SEO. And the test went really well, we got the keyword to I think spot one or two. And so based on that test, they hired us to do work for Omniture. And then when Omniture was acquired by Adobe, Adobe did the review of their agency and the work that we had done for Omniture and then fired their agency and hired us.

So then we started working for Adobe, and Adobe is one of those companies that people come to work for, so they can get on their resume, and they go somewhere else. So we did such good work for Adobe that as people came and went, they brought us with them. And so we kind of spread over to the companies that their marketing team went to after they left Adobe. And so largely, the growth of 97th Floor has been organic and based off based on the work that we do, not based off of really great marketing of our own brands, you know, our sales team is really small.

And especially in comparison to our fulfillment, I think on fulfillment, fulfillment, we have probably 80 people and our sales team is three people. So we rely pretty heavily on word of mouth. Like our clients, you know, we used to do SEO for our own brand. And that’s just like, the people that we’re trying to talk to they don’t go to Google when they’re searching for their agency.

Adam Force 26:44
Right.

Paxton Gray 26:46
They ask their connections, you know, what’s an agency I should use? And so we work on trying to be that agency that people recommend.

Adam Force 26:53
Okay. Yeah. And so when you I guess I’m curious, because I always see people trying to start their own, you know, agencies and stuff like that. And I think you know, it is that immediate Rolodex that can really get you off the ground, but like, sooner or later, the Rolodex runs dry, and you’ve kind of gone through it, and you got to start picking up cold leads.

Have you guys. And I know you mentioned referrals now, and you guys are obviously well established. But there must have been a time where you had to get new clients that were cold. And I’m curious if there was, if anything stands out to you on how you guys approach that?

Paxton Gray 27:29
Yeah, referrals still represents the majority of the leads that come through today. Okay. But other things that we’ve tried, we’ve, we’ve run some ads on LinkedIn. Not a lot of success there. Just the cost is pretty high and hard to get down. We’ve run some ads on Facebook and Instagram, surprisingly, with a lot of success. Yeah, we actually just did a survey of a lot of clients and the vast majority are pretty active on Instagram, which isn’t something I would have guessed.

Adam Force 28:03
That’s interesting. Especially clients that you go after, like the enterprise clients. Yeah,

Paxton Gray 28:08
Yeah, you kind of think they’d be a little bit more maybe boring or more business focused. But everyone loves Instagram, everybody loves those pictures so I guess yeah, so it’s been Instagram has been pretty successful for us. So that’s what I would recommend trying out if you want to run some ads.

Adam Force 28:22
Yeah, we’re big fans of Facebook and Instagram and obviously they tie together there and really powerful marketing tool like just just really smart and the depth you can take it for, you know, really getting niche is and retargeting and all that stuff is pretty cool.

Paxton Gray 28:41
Yeah, yeah. Lookalike Audience is awesome, too.

Adam Force 28:44
Ah, yeah. And you know, like we and I love that they let you you know, retarget so you could do like a video sequence where, you know, did they watch, you know, 75% or 95% of that last video? I’m going to retarget those people.

Paxton Gray 28:56
Yeah, yeah. There’s other agency that I I saw, I watched one of their videos, and now I just get their videos all the time. Like, I’m definitely in their cycle of videos.

Adam Force 29:07
Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s funny, I watched. I don’t know, if you saw this documentary, you probably find it fascinating. It was The Great Hack on Netflix.

Paxton Gray 29:16
I saw it as my things to watch, but I haven’t watched it.

Adam Force 29:23
My god, it’s been one of these things that I’ve been talking about recently, because I just saw it. So I’m bringing it up here. A little off topic. But it’s interesting, to say the least. And you know that my wife and I sometimes we’ll be talking about something. And then next, you know, she’ll be looking at like Facebook, 20 minutes later, she’s like, swear to god, these microphones. They’re listening to us through these microphones, because I didn’t go to this website. But now I see the ad.

And I’m like, that is interesting. Because I know, the Facebook machine. And I know someone so I was watching this movie. And you know, these companies that Cambridge Analytica, they’re like, here’s what the said like, have you ever had the experience where, you know, you think your microphone is listening to you? And next thing, you know, you see this ad and I was like, holy shit, this is what we were just talking about.

And like, well, that’s not actually what’s happening. What’s happening is we have so much personality data about you that they can predict like, what you like want to talk what you’re going to be talking about and what you’re thinking about. And so all of a sudden, you’re getting served these things that are just predictive ads.

Paxton Gray 30:27
That’s creepy, man. That’s trippy. Yeah, I think we’re getting to a point where technology is just outpacing the capacity of the human brain to think, frankly.

Adam Force 30:38
Oh, yeah.

Paxton Gray 30:40
This kind of stuff is going to happen more and more. And, you know, in aggregate, we’re pretty predictable beings. And as long as you have enough data, and it’s the right data, you can kind of guess what we’re going to be doing next.

Adam Force 30:52
And that is scary, that is creepy because you know what, with what the whole point of this documentary was, they were showing, like so much data is being used without your consent to do things that we will never understand. Like, they basically Cambridge Analytica came out and they’re like, yeah, we made Brexit happen. We made Donald Trump happen, and they explained how it worked and what they did. And when you see it, you’re just like, Whoa, did not even have a clue about that.

Paxton Gray 31:20
That’s crazy, man. Yeah, I gotta check that out. I gotta check that out.

Adam Force 31:24
Oh, yeah, it’s definitely worth it. I think you would really be fascinated by it. And now it’s just like, so what is real anymore? What is being mass manipulated? And what’s actually real?

Paxton Gray 31:35
Yeah, I mean, I, there’s so many times when I’m on even LinkedIn, like on LinkedIn. Oh, man, this is going to get into a weird story. But it’s like sometimes I’ll see this debate that’s raging on LinkedIn. And I’ll follow someone down the rabbit hole and be like, I’m pretty sure this is a fake account. Like they’re not endorsed by anybody. They don’t have any experience or anything that seems like this is a real profile. They’re just like stirring stuff up.

Adam Force 32:02
Yeah.

Paxton Gray 32:03
Yeah, pretty crazy. We actually at 97th Floor we have a day called Black Hat day that we do every Halloween. But it’s the week before Halloween. And basically everyone brings their like dirtiest sneakiest online trick that they can figure out, you know, not with the idea that we’re never going to actually do it at 97th Floor. But I think it keeps people sharp and kind of aware of like what is possible out there when you have the right sets of data.

Adam Force 32:29
Oh, yeah.

Paxton Gray 32:30
My hack last year was to create a fake LinkedIn profile. And made her a recruiter at Ogilvy. And so she’s connected with CEOs all over the United States. And yeah, it’s crazy. And it’s just like a total fake account. I pulled two images, and I combine them to make a profile image. And then I just pulled pieces of other people’s experience and made this fake profile. It looks super legit. And because she’s a recruiter, like people hit her up and connect with her, like all every day, I get like 10 to 20 LinkedIn requests for profiles bigger than my profile. Yeah, it’s nuts. I was I was just playing around like, I wasn’t, I don’t do anything with it. It just exists.

Adam Force 33:09
Sure, sure!

Paxton Gray 33:12
As for to do something like that was easy. It was easy to build that up.

Adam Force 33:17
Wow. That’s crazy. I did want to — we’ll wrap up here in a minute. I want to be respectful of your time.

Paxton Gray 33:24
No, I love this. This is awesome!

Adam Force 33:25
Okay. Yeah, well, one of the things they mentioned is like, you know, when they have this, like when they have a campaign of any kind of something going on, they will have like a whole warehouse of people who create those types of accounts. And like an instance that they were referencing here, they’re like, there was literally like a million and a half like 1.5 million budget, going at the monthly 1.5 million a month being pumped in to trolling accounts to shift and combat, like things that were going on with misinformation.

Paxton Gray 34:00
I believe it.

Adam Force 34:00
All these fake accounts are made and all these fake websites. And all this stuff is put together as a complete manipulation machine, which is — and they know like what happened, like Cambridge Analytic is like, well, we have 5000 data points on every American. And we isolated everyone that we we called “the persuadables, and they have this huge bucket of persuadables. And then they would run these crazy campaigns that would just constantly push people to believe certain things so that they would vote their way. It’s like, Oh, my God.

And yeah, like one other quick example. And I don’t want to spoil too much, but like, they would this is what really impressed me. They were in like another area for an election. And there was two different populations. And they knew one population of — and they were going after kids. And they’re like, so we can’t talk about politics because kids don’t care. But they do like to get behind movements, and they react to things. So they came up with this thing called the do this campaign.

They would make it this thing about like, oh, like, I’m not going to vote, I’m going against the man and blah, blah, blah. And so they knew that one population of kids, they would stick to it, and they wouldn’t vote and they wanted that to happen. But the other population, which was like another race, like just to be clear, they said, Well, we know that they listen to their parents, and their parents are going to tell them you better vote and they know who they’re going to vote for. So now they got the one side to not vote, and then they got the other side to vote.

Paxton Gray 35:31
Wow, wow, that’s sophisticated.

Adam Force 35:34
That’s sophisticated marketing on a very mass scale, and you don’t even know it’s happening.

Paxton Gray 35:38
I would love to see somebody start a social platform that requires like, some kind of identification. I mean, like Coinbase can do it like. Get something where it’s like, only you can have that profile and you are verified, who you say you are, and then not let anyone else in. And I think that’d be so much healthier,

Adam Force 36:01
It probably would be and I’m surprised we don’t see things like that. I’m wondering if naturally these types of things will start surfacing just because of the environmental circumstances of what’s going on.

Paxton Gray 36:11
It does seem like the market’s right for something like that.

Adam Force 36:13
Why don’t you get on that?

Paxton Gray 36:15
Yeah, we should. Yeah. It’s my next business idea.

Adam Force 36:20
You know, everybody complains about the changes, you know, Instagram makes about the way they’re running the feeds, and you know, the organic traffic on Facebook, all these things. And I’m always wondering like, well, if you want things like, where you see every post, like chronologically, right? Well, why don’t you create a platform and test that out and see, like, maybe you’ll get all those people that would much prefer to have that and no one’s doing it though.

Paxton Gray 36:43
Yeah, I think people are just scared of that. Like, I think we’re often fed that message of, you know, you want to enter a market where no one else is where you’re gonna have no competition. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the wisest thing. You know, so many people are just tired of their current selection of social media. I think there’s still room for other platforms.

Adam Force 37:04
You know what, and that’s that I think you’re 100%, right. Because at the end of the day, you always feel like it’s too saturated, too whatever but I think that when you see it over and over again, like there’s, you can someone else will start something sooner or later, and then you’ll go Oh, I guess there is I guess you can start acting out there’s always like a niche you can carve out.

Paxton Gray 37:23
Oh, yeah. Well, I’m plus as humans, like, we’re so attracted to new and something that’s novel.

Adam Force 37:29
Yeah.

Paxton Gray 37:30
And how old is Facebook? I mean, freak. I started Facebook, back when only college students were allowed to be on Facebook, you know, like, yeah, that’s old. That’s like, I’m ready. I’m ready to get off. I would love to get off. In fact, if I didn’t have to be on for like, other reasons, but yeah.

Adam Force 37:47
Yeah. I mean, I don’t — Are there things you don’t like about Facebook at this point?

Paxton Gray 37:52
I’m not a fan of all the all the breaches, all the data security, like,

Adam Force 37:56
Yeah, yeah, that was I mean, they got they got hacked, man. And that was, yeah, that was a big, that was a big to do for sure. I’m, and I’m surprised because obviously, they have they should have pretty tough firewalls and all that stuff. But and they did step it up. Now they got all this, like two step authorization and all these other things going on, which was a real pain in the ass, by the way.

Paxton Gray 38:18
Yeah, yeah. No, I’d love to see, I’d love to see someone marry the idea of Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, in the sense of, you know, like, with Facebook, we’re selling, there are data like we’re the product right? At least on YouTube, the creators get some cut of what’s going on. Why isn’t that true on Facebook? Like, why don’t Instagram influencers or creators get a cut of the ad revenue that Instagram gets from them producing content? I think, you know, that’s that, I think is an opportunity there.

Adam Force 38:50
That’s a good question. And the platforms are — well, Facebook at least is getting more and more complicated. And I have noticed that when new platforms like this come up that like, hey, only the cool kids know about it. They — the simplicity of it is something that people tend to really like. So if you have something that’s simple, and just like it has like a very singular focus, people tend to like that.

Paxton Gray 39:14
Yeah. Well, I hope one of your listeners is a developer and does something awesome.

Adam Force 39:20
I know, I wish I you know, I always tried to get into learning development. And I’m just I’m far more of a front end like designer and creator. But as far as the coding and stuff, I just have a hard time wrapping my head around that all.

Paxton Gray 39:32
I’ve always said, like our kids, when we get old, our kids are going to tell stories to their kids about us and say like, my grandpa did this. And he didn’t even know how to code! Similar to how we say something about like people way in the past, like this guy didn’t even know how to read and he did this like Isn’t that crazy?

Adam Force 39:49
Yeah. Well, I don’t know, when you were born. I was born in 79. So I’m sharing my age here. But I always say to people, I’m like, Listen to my friends. I’m like, we’re probably the last generation that will ever know what it is to drive with a hard copy map or not have had the internet.

Paxton Gray 40:10
Yeah, Yeah, no kidding.

Adam Force 40:11
Right?

Paxton Gray 40:13
I mean, we’re getting close to the end of combustion engine cars.

Adam Force 40:17
Yeah. Yeah.

Paxton Gray 40:19
Not a long time, like our kids are gonna look back and say I remember when you guys had a gasoline car. Isn’t that crazy?

Adam Force 40:25
Yeah, I can’t believe you are burning gas every day.

Paxton Gray 40:29
Sounds so prehistoric and caveman-like.

Adam Force 40:32
You know, there’s a lot of talk about those Tesla cars. So it’s, you know, talk about a great marketer and a great entrepreneur. This is a guy who just has this. He’s a great storyteller. He has a story that everybody wants to be part of. And he’s really good at leaning into it and kind of like — he doesn’t care. Like, he’s gone bankrupt multiple times. And I forget what book I was reading about him. And he’s like, yeah, you know, I went bankrupt. And I wasn’t worried. So I started PayPal with some people and made my money back so I can fund my next idea.

Paxton Gray 41:03
Yeah, I like him a lot. He’s, he’s a cool guy. And I think that that idea of storytelling, you know, that’s what marketing is at its core. And that will never change. What works with SEO now won’t work in the future. PPC will different, it will be different, some sometime in the future, Facebook will be gone and all that changes from day to day.

But what will never change is that humans love stories. And as long as you can tell a good story, you will be successful in marketing and in business. That’s the art form, that’s the golden standard is being able to tell a story and incite action from telling a story and he is just so good at that.

Adam Force 41:44
100% agree. I think that’s a great a great note that we can wrap up on because it was perfect. And I always say that to him, like the tactics change. And there are certain things that change all the time. But there’s other marketing principles and fundamentals that are just so deeply rooted in our human you know, wiring and behavior that stuff like storytelling — it’s a skill that you want to master because it can make or break your business.

Paxton Gray 42:11
Yeah, for sure.

Adam Force 42:13
Well, Paxton, I really appreciate it man. That was a fun conversation. And let’s give a shout out you know, people I mean, you know, I know you work with enterprises. But guys you want to check out Paxton what they’re doing over at 97th Floor. It’s 97thfloor.com. You can see what they’re up to. And there’s a cool video of facts in on there. And Paxton, yeah, maybe we can get that link to that template. And we’ll share that in our show notes and put it up on the site for people.

Paxton Gray 42:41
Yeah, yeah, I’ll send it over. You can watch the video and download that template.

Adam Force 42:44
And you’re okay with us, including that there. I just want to make sure you’re cool with that.

Paxton Gray 42:47
Yep. Yeah, for sure.

Adam Force 42:49
Okay, awesome, man. All right. Well, listen, appreciate your time and good luck with everything sounds like you’re doing some really exciting stuff. And listen, if you’re in Miami, open for a cup of coffee if you’re around.

Paxton Gray 43:00
Awesome. Sounds great.

Adam Force 43:02
Alright, man, take care. Appreciate it.

Announcer 43:03
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meeting intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

interview

Drew Dudley: How to Work Less but Have Way More Impact

Listen to our exclusive interview with Drew Dudley:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

As you listen to our interview with Drew Dudley, you’ll soon see why he has been called one of the most dynamic speakers in the world. His talks on leadership are captivating and inspiring — so much so that his 2010 TEDx conference talk on lollipop moments was voted one of the most inspirational TED talks of all time.

For the last 15 years, Drew has inspired countless individuals and corporations to expand their leadership capacity. In our talk, he discusses the importance of not going overboard in the amount of time you dedicate to your business. Working countless hours each week can become addictive, he warns. We promise ourselves that we’re working an insane number of hours now so that we can work less in the future. However, as company leaders, we become addicted to working too much and end up just following society’s expectations of putting in long hours.

Leadership is not martyrdom.

Working a meager 40 hours per week goes against most of what you’ve heard about scaling your business.

“We live in a 90-hour-per-week hustle culture and if you’re not burning the candle at both ends, you’re clearly not committed to your business.”

Drew points out he is failing himself if he’s working more than 40 hours per week. “If you overdo anything,” he adds, “you don’t love it as much.”

Remember Who It Is You Want to Be

Often, we lose ourselves in the process of setting up a new company to the point that we end up forgetting who we are. Drew points out that our values — those core beliefs that govern our day-to-day decision making — should be reflected in our businesses.

Research shows that clarity on personal values plays a much bigger role in happiness, productivity, retention, and overall effectiveness in the workforce.

Drew’s Six Key Values

Drew shared with us his six key values, each of which has a specific question tied to it that helps him make sure that he’s acknowledging the leadership skills in others. These values are:

impact
growth
courage
empowerment
class
self-respect

It seems logical to make business decisions that will avoid any immediate negative consequences. But what if those decisions go against your values? Drew points out that sometimes we sacrifice integrity in order to save the company. The problem is that you will always regret this down the road. Why? Because you’ve gone against the fundamental beliefs that make you who you are.

The Five Year Question

One amazing bit of advice Drew offers when faced with a critical decision to make is this: Ask yourself how a person you respect would react five years from now. Would they support you in having gone against your values to keep your business afloat, or would they be proud of you for sticking to what you believe in and doing what you feel was the right thing to do? Drew promises us that the latter is what will make us happiest in the long run.

Good leaders live their values whenever they get the chance and great leaders create opportunities to live their values.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ca; there may be errors.)

Adam Force 0:12
Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam Force. And if you missed last week’s episode, it was with Paxton Gray. He is one of the main guys over at 92nd floor. And he’s an SEO and content marketing and strategy expert. So we got into a lot of good stuff there. We even branched off and spoke about Cambridge Analytica. So that was a fun little tangent to go off on.

And today we’re going to be talking with Drew Dudley. Drew is a leadership expert. He’s worked with all kinds of major companies like JPMorgan Chase and major universities. But also, he had his first book, “A Practical Guide to Leadership That Matters” And he’s spoken to 250,000 people across five continents, doing TED Talks, and all that kind of stuff. So a lot of exciting experience and knowledge coming from Drew, we’re going to tap into that conversation in just a minute. And just yesterday, we were talking about how some people are getting very frustrated with their, you know, marketing, not connecting, they’re doing all the social media posts, they’re doing blog posts, podcast, you know, all this stuff. And they’re just not getting the results, you know, webinars that go out there, and they’re not making sales, and we totally get it. We’ve been there; this is a disconnect. You know, there are two things that have to happen: a good product, and a good offer. And then you have to have also a third thing, I guess, which is you’ve got to have your messaging line up. And that’s part of that offer, right? So, you know, when your messaging is out of sync, these things just don’t work.

So if you see other people getting results with the same stuff you’re doing, and you’re not getting the results, that’s usually why. And you know, we we ran a beta for our captivate program in 2018, and worked with a bunch of people like Jay Shetty, and Seth Godin, and got all kinds of advice and put together a program to help solve that problem — to fill that gap, you know, using storytelling, provide clarity, but also how do we use it with our businesses and our startups, and where do we apply it and all that kind of good stuff. So we are on version 3.0, of what we call the Captivate Method now, which is really exciting, guys. So our team has been putting it together, and we’re going to start getting our plans for release. 3.0 is not out yet. This is going to be a much more enhanced program and platform with major community forums and all that kind of stuff. Lots of coaching calls, live sessions, and goodies. So keep an eye out.

I wanted to just give you guys a heads up that we are working hard to help solve for that disconnect that is causing frustration. But more importantly, is causing entrepreneurs to give up on what they’re doing. Right from burnout or just financial strain. Okay? So we need your ideas. You guys are out there trying to change the world, we want you to succeed. So we’re working really hard to make sure you can overcome those challenges. Alright, guys, we’re gonna jump into this conversation with Drew and let’s see what he has to say. Don’t forget to stop by the App Store and leave us reviews. We appreciate it.

Announcer 3:03
Okay, show me the heat.

Adam Force 3:08
Hey, Drew, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How you doing today, man?

Drew Dudley 3:12
I’m doing amazing. I’m in my happy place when I do this interview. So I’m really excited to be here.

Adam Force 3:19
Awesome. Yeah, so we were just talking before this chat, and you know, the name keeps escaping me. We tell me that happy place again. Where were you in Canada?

Drew Dudley 3:28
Oh, I’m in Cape Breton Island. So the northern tip of Nova Scotia. And if anyone out there is listening, make this part of your to-do list in your life.

Adam Force 3:37
I’m actually going to write it down so I can look it up when we’re done. Okay. Cool. So yeah, what are you doing out there, you just want to vacation, you got some stuff going on for work? Tell me what you have going on these days

Drew Dudley 3:52
Well, actually, what happened was I have a speech that is happening this Friday, and it’s Tuesday right now. And one of the things when I talk about my work, and we’ll probably get into this a little bit later, is making sure that I never lose sight of the fact that leadership isn’t martyrdom. And you know, it’s all about 90 hours a week and the hustle culture, particularly in the entrepreneurial world is just like, if you’re not burning the candle at both ends, you’re not really committed to your business and to growth. And one of the things I’ve discovered, you know, after doing things on my own now for over 10 years, is that basically, when you’re empty, you have nothing to give. And so I came out here because even though it’s only three or four days of downtime, and hiking, where I can continue to work on ideas, I can continue to work on speeches, and sort of write as I walk, ultimately, I’m so much better at my job if I take even two or three days in a place that makes me feel refilled, as opposed to trying to pack it into, you know, two weeks of vacation once a year. It really is a way of recharging. So it’s something I try to scatter throughout my work. And you know, this might be sacrilegious in the entrepreneurial world. But I’ve come to believe if I work more than 40 hours a week, I’m actually failing myself because I love my work. But if you overdo anything, you don’t love it as much. So for me, it’s sort of like as long as I keep my work organized and efficient and I don’t work more than 40 hours a week, one, I better at my job, and two, work always stays a treat. Because I mean, you could love pizza, man, but if you eat pizza for a month straight, even this thing that you love begins to lose a little bit of luster. So I’m out here to follow my own advice.

Adam Force 5:39
Well, I love hearing that because I’m with the man I’m on the train of you know, not agreeing with this, like I work 100 hours a week, it’s the only way to succeed. And like, you know, I see too many times otherwise, that people who work hard but smart and you know, you accomplish the things that you need to do in a reasonable amount out of time. Right? And you know, I always said when I was in the corporate world, I was like, just because someone’s coming in early and staying late doesn’t mean they’re getting more done.

Drew Dudley 6:09
Yeah, and I think one of the things that gets me is this idea that we convince ourselves that we’re only doing it temporarily, right, like I’m working 90 hours a week now, so that I can, you know, spend more time with my family or I can have freedom later on in life. And what happens is, it’s an addiction, right? So you tell yourself, you’re doing it to create all this time and freedom and security later on. But we never stop doing it, when we have the opportunity to start living a life that sort of is better for us. We just don’t, because we’ve never trained ourselves to do it. And I think that’s something is that we always rationalize that approach is temporary, for long term gain. But I found very few people that once they get, you know, to that place they were chasing, ever give up the lifestyle and and I was one of those people and I am much more productive, much more successful, and much happier now that I’ve sort of said, Hey, those hundred hour a week craziness that I did 10 years ago, they got me to a place where I could take that philosophy. And I actually seize that opportunity. I see a lot of people who don’t.

Adam Force 7:15
Yeah, no, it makes sense. And there is that culture today. And I mean, I guess it’s been around for years, but you hear the words “grind” and “hustle” in everybody’s entrepreneurial vocabulary. And after a while, it just drives me nuts. Everyone’s like, Oh, I’m grinding. I’m hustling. I’m like, and so I don’t know, I feel the same way on different levels with that. And I’m certainly not afraid of hard work. And I do lots of that myself. But I guess it depends on how we define that and what we’re actually spending our time doing, exactly.

Drew Dudley 7:48
Because when you grind things like if you really think about what a grind is, there’s a purpose to it, right? You’re grinding something to sharpen the saw, right? Yeah. And ultimately, if you don’t stop and say, okay, the grinding has now accomplished its purpose, what happens if you leave anything up against the grindstone for an indefinite amount of time? It just gets worn down to nothing. And when you wear yourself down to nothing, that’s a hard hole to climb back out of. And so I’m not saying don’t work hard. And I’m not saying don’t be passionate, I am saying that you need to build a business that serves your life. And by that what I mean is that you need to build a business that is going to give you the last day of work that you want. Look ahead and say, What do you want the last day of work of your life to look like? How do you want to feel? And make sure that you’re building a company that creates that and serves your life, as opposed to you creating a company that you are then a slave to forever. And yeah, you created it. But now it’s now it’s your master. And I think that that’s really important. Because if something you build becomes your master, you know, why did you build it?

Adam Force 8:55
Yeah, and I think something that you said there really stuck out, which is you build a company that serves you. And you know, everyone can have a slightly different variation of what success means to them, right? So you can run a million dollar a year company with you and a partner. And that could be more than enough for your lifestyle, you know, you don’t have to have 100 million dollar a year company. So don’t let other people define what success looks like for you. Right?

Drew Dudley 9:22
Yeah, because for me, success is being completely happy with what you have, even as you’re driven to try to accomplish more like my job and what we managed to build, I’m still driven to take on new challenges and grow. But if there was never another day of growth for the rest of my life, in terms of business, I am really happy with the life that has been created around me. And so I think that true success is when you can say I am driven, I want to get more, I want to grow more, and I want to become something bigger as a person in terms of skill and insight. But I’m really happy with what I have. Yeah, when you’re happy with what you have, and you’re still driven to want more, not because you’re supposed to, but because it’s an innate piece of who you are, that’s a successful life. If right now you say I have built something that makes me happy and I still want to do more, but I’m not sort of addicted to that need. So that’s what success means to me. And, and I think you’re right, the idea that you could make $20 million. And people look at you and say if you can make 20 and you don’t, you’re a fool because you’re not hustling. You know, I’ve lived that a lot of my life. And I’m just like, making more money than I make now means being miserable more than I am now. And as long as what you’ve got is enough to make you live the life you want, why be miserable? Right? Like because honestly, if you’re miserable doing when you work for yourself — like, is there anything worse than just hating your job and you created it? You got no one to look at now.

Adam Force 10:58
You can’t blame the company you work for anymore. Oh my god, this is my own creation; I created a monster.

Drew Dudley 11:05
Exactly.

Adam Force 11:05
So you know, we have a lot of entrepreneurs listening in who are actually — I think a lot of the people that are listening are transitioning or have transitioned from corporate to start something on their own, because they wanted to do something that served them more, meaning it’s meaningful to them, right. So, you know, you want to be excited when you wake up. And I think a tough part for people is, one, when you start a business, there are a lot of moving parts. And you know, as you get started, you have to be a leader from day one. And you have to start making decisions on what to do and how to spend the little bit of budget you might have. Do you bring someone on board or not? And so we’ve gone through all kinds of mistakes, Change Creators, my second company, and I am curious to hear your thoughts. So for that early phase, starting first few years, let’s start a conference around leadership at that point. So any thoughts jumped into your head that you want to just kind of kick that off with?

Drew Dudley 12:07
Yeah, I think one of the things to which we often fall victim when we’re starting our own company, is because it means so much to us, what happens is we start to substitute our to-do list for our to be list. You know, when we start to identify, yes, we want to build this company. But I think far more important when it comes to leadership is Who do you want to be as a person. Because I said your company should serve who you are and should give you the opportunity to create the change you’re looking for in the world. Like, how is your product going to impact people? How is it going to make their lives better? And we get so tied up in how we build the company that we often put aside making sure that we stay true to who we want to be. So one of the things that I encourage everyone, whether they’re starting a business or not, is make sure you define the things you want to define you. And what I mean by that you’re going to be faced with all kinds of decisions, some of the ones that you just laid out, for instance. You’re gonna be faced with all kinds of decisions through building your company.

My question for people is, what criteria are you going to use to make decisions because one of the things that leaders have is a set definition for what their decision making is going to be. And you know, I call it a personal leadership philosophy. And another way you could call it is a decision making philosophy. But what the research shows is, if you’re seen as somebody who has a personal leadership philosophy, or is very clear about how you make decisions, and by that, I mean, you can rhyme them off your leadership philosophy in 30 seconds or less. If you do so, it’s not the first time in the last 72 hours that you’ve done it. And if I asked somebody who knows you well, or particularly works with you, hey, what what’s this personal leadership or her personal leadership philosophy, they’re going to rhyme it off, and they’re probably going to roll their eyes when they do it. What it means is that you’ve repeated so many times how you make decisions. And what that means is that what people may not always agree with your decisions, they’re always going to know, and respect the fact that you’re consistent and how you make them. And so what I always argue is: Define the things you want to define you.

So if somebody followed you around for 30 days, and watched how you built your business, how you interact with customers, how you interacted with employees, and with people you’ve never met before, out, serving you a drink in a bar or a meal in a restaurant, at the end of those 30 days, if I sat that person down and said you follow this person without their knowledge, what three values do they stand for above all others? Like what three values do they hope to leave in their wake, personally and professionally? And what three values do they pivot to every time they have to make a difficult decision? You know, if you’ve been the man or the woman you want it, I’ll ask you, my friend. If that was what I did to you, what three values do you hope that person says they see out of you? What three values you want to leave in your wake everywhere you go?

Adam Force 15:06
Sure, yeah, I mean, one big value is collaboration, I believe in working together with people and not competition. So collaboration, I believe in putting people first. So always thinking about the action I’m taking and the holistic costs behind it. So people first, and my last one would be family. So making sure that my life incorporates family into my overall success.

Drew Dudley 15:40
That’s awesome. And what I do is I know a lot of people do that for their business, they put a lot of effort and time into saying, Here are our business values. And that’s important. But what’s interesting is the research shows that clarity on personal values plays a much bigger role in happiness, productivity, retention, overall effectiveness in the workforce. So one of the things I say to leaders as they’re building is determine your criteria for decision making. So define the values you want to define you. And then ultimately, decision making becomes a simple process, but not an easy one. So every time you have to make a decision, as you start to build your business, what you do is you look at the options available to you, and you hold them up next to your list of personal values. And you ask which one of these options is most consistent with these values? Yeah. And the challenge with that is that often the option that’s most consistent with your values sucks, like it doesn’t allow you to avoid consequences, it doesn’t let you look good. It doesn’t let you take the money or remain in the relationship or stay in the job, which I’m sure some of the people listening to this have already experienced.

But ultimately, it’s always the decision you’re happiest you made five years from now, as you start to build a company, every decision you make, ask yourself, Is this the way I want to describe this decision to a room full of people I respect five years from now. And if you make every decision, as if you’re explaining it to a group of people you respect five years from now, instead of you’re about to make it, a lot of the noise surrounding decisions falls away. Now, ultimately, one of the things I ask people is that if you haven’t defined your values, and a value is only a value, if you always reference it, when you make decisions, like if you don’t think about your values, as you make decisions, then they’re not actually values. But what I always ask people is, if you’ve never taken the time to identify and define your personal values, as a professional as a person, what criteria have you been using to make decisions your whole life? And for most people, and me, myself included, the criteria we too often use to make decisions is, which option will avoid the most consequences right now? And that’s not good business decision making. And that’s not good personal decision making.

So one of the first things I always say is, you’re going to have to make a ton of decisions, and there’s going to be a lot of uncertainty in your life. Figure out what are the core values that no matter what you do, you want to make sure you stay true to those. And make sure that you always reference them when making decisions. Do not allow yourself to make decisions based on what will avoid the most consequences now, always make them on what will stay truest to who I am. Because even if that decision causes you to lose a company, and I know that’s scary to think, five years from then you will still be glad that you made that decision. Because all the short term consequences will have passed and what you’ll be left with is a memory that said, this was the man or woman I wanted to be. And sometimes we will sacrifice saving our own integrity in order to save our company. And believe it or not, you always regret that down the road.

Adam Force 19:01
There’s a lot of good points packed into, you know, what you just talked about. And I think something that stood out to me is, you know, I like the way you phrase it go five years down the road, do you look back? Is this something that aligns to who you are, and that you’re proud of when you tell people? I think it’s important because there’s a level of consistency. So to your point, when you’re making decisions based not just on business values, but just personal life values that translate to your business decision making this then should be consistent throughout the entire digital footprint that you have. Because one thing with today, you know, we have these businesses that are making a difference in the world. And as new businesses come up from entrepreneurs that are not established yet. And you know, trust comes with established businesses. So when you don’t have that people look into who you are. So for example, I went to your website, your book page, or social media, and if I see on your personal Facebook, you’re talking out of the other side of your mouth than your business values, like it’s going to be conflicting and inconsistent to me, which then I lose trust.

Drew Dudley 20:08
Yeah, and that’s something that always bear in mind. I joke that in my book, one of the values that I want to live up to is class, which is a commitment to treating people in situations better than they deserve to be treated. And one of the things I said is that leaders always elevate, they never escalate. and elevate means trying to succeed and escalate means trying to win, which means I’ve kind of tied my arms, just as what you said, because there are times that I pissed off, and I want to tweet, and then I realized, dammit, man, you said that leaders never escalate. And, you know, and if you do look, you’ll occasionally find me not following that. But it’s almost always related to people being jackasses on planes. I’m like, I don’t care leaders elevate but don’t escalate that you take your damn socks off on a plane, I’m escalating that.

Adam Force 20:57
I earned the right to escalate that.

Drew Dudley 21:00
Yeah. So I mean, that’s the thing, right is that I have to recognize that I have made that statement. And now every time that I do not elevate a situation, but I say something snarky or I escalate, or I bitch, ultimately, what I’ve said to people is, Hey, I don’t actually buy that. And the thing is, it’s always in my head. And it really should be in yours as well. And there is no such thing as a personal Facebook page. I don’t care how high your privacy is, and like, personal business, whatever. If it’s out there, it’s out there.

Adam Force 21:32
Yeah, you better be consistent and know that everyone’s looking at it, whether you think it’s just family and friends or not, that’s not true.

Yeah, I learned that. And that’s all connected that stuff. So it’s important. And I think it ties together well with what you were talking about. So something for people to be aware of, as they’re trying to earn the trust from, you know, new people who are learning about what they do.

So so let’s just shift gears a little bit, or just use that as a segue to talk about your book, you mentioned the book, and “This Is Day One: A Practical Guide to Leadership That Matters.” And for anybody that doesn’t know, Drew has done a handful of TEDx talks. One of them was the lollipop moment, and I actually saw that one. It’s a fun story. It’s inspiring, all that good stuff. And it’s been quite popular. So things you could check out through his website. But true, let’s just tap into this book. Obviously, this has been a big part of your life, a focus this whole concept around leadership. And now you have this book where you’re, you’re putting it into practical terms for people. So give us the overview of why you decided to put your time and energy into a book and what you’re trying to convey to people.

Drew Dudley 22:41
Sure, well, the book emerged from a fact that I got annoyed about something, which was I ran a leadership program at the University of Toronto, and I’m surrounded by extraordinary leaders, we’re talking students, staff, students who are trying to foster social justice to raise money for charities, and they just would not call themselves leaders. They kept seeing leadership, something they were training for. And what I started to realize is that we’ve been educated out of seeing ourselves as leaders, because we’ve been taught that leaders are giants, from a very young age, and whatever examples you’re given to demonstrate a concept early in life, not only does it shape the way you think of that concept for the rest of your life, it also limits it.

And because we teach kids about leadership, using presidents and scientific groundbreakers, what we basically have done is educated people out of their leadership. And we created a world where the vast majority of the leadership on the planet is coming from people who don’t see themselves as leaders. Because we have dismissed the idea that individual moments of impact of generosity of kindness, of empathy and of forgiveness aren’t leadership, they’re the little things. And what we do is when we call these moments that have the biggest inner personal impact that we have, when we dismiss them as little we reinforce the idea that leadership, for it to be active leadership, it has to make you rich, or it has to make you famous, or it has to involve power, and followers. And so ultimately, I wanted to outline a form of leadership to which we all can and should aspire, I do not argue that everybody can be a CEO, or a senior executive, or even start their own business. But there is a form of leadership that we can focus on on a daily basis. And ultimately, what I wanted to do is give people a step by step process, to making sure that every day individually, they have engaged in specific leadership behaviors.

And so we created a process called the leadership test, which basically is a six-question test, that at the end of each day, we adopted the philosophy that imagine at the end of each day, you had to prove you deserve another day on this planet. And in order to prove it, you had to pass a test. But you actually were given the questions for the test in the morning. And if that was the case, those questions would be non-negotiable each day. You would not try to fit them in between meetings and emails, you would make sure that you live them each day. And what we did is we created a set of questions tied to our core values. And you can’t answer those questions without living your values.

So we said, you know, impact is a value we wanted to live. Well, in order to do that every day, we try to answer the question, What have I done today to recognize someone else’s leadership? And what we do is my work and the book is designed to help people figure out what their specific personal values are. Because you can’t just ask people, you actually have to walk them through the process of surfacing them. And then how can they create their own version of the leadership test? And it’s specifically a test because tests have questions. And what’s really interesting is when we were trying to come up with a way to make it more likely we’d actually live our values, we discovered that simply saying, Okay, I’m going to have impact, or I’m going to have class wasn’t effective. And so what we did is I actually went to a group of psychology professors, and I said, Okay, what are some subconscious motivators that we could use to make sure that this commitment we have to behavior actually translates into behavior? Because we all know that just saying we’re going to do it doesn’t mean you do. And they actually gave you a couple of psychological effects that we turned into these questions because one’s called this the Zeigarnik effect, which says, things on your to-do list that you haven’t completed, take up a more prominent space, and you’re just doing some things you have. So in other words, stuff you haven’t finished bugs you until you finish it.

And the question behavior effect says, If I ask you a series of questions about a behavior in the morning, you’re way more likely to engage in that behavior later in the day. And so if questions can drive behavior, and unfinished tasks cause psychic discomfort, one of the most powerful drivers of human behavior are unanswered questions. When presented with an unanswered question, your brain will feel uncomfortable until it finds an answer, it will seek a way to answer it. And so when you create a question in your life, and you planted it in the morning, that is tied to particular behaviors, what have I done today to recognize someone else’s leadership? How do they help someone else move closer to a goal today? You know, how did I What did I do today to be good to myself, that’s actually going to cause psychic discomfort in your brain until you answer it. So we basically made our brains uncomfortable, until they did certain actions. And those certain actions were specifically tied to specific values.

So that’s sort of where it all came from the day one concept is, the first day of any voyage is the day you’re most committed, you’re most humble and you’re most forgiving. And so the idea is that you say, this is my first day of my leadership voyage. And here are the non-negotiable behaviors that you make part of that voyage, and then you treat me every day as if it’s your first day on the voyage, which actually, you know, emerged in large part from my recovery from alcoholism. Every day you treat it like the first day of your recovery because committing to a particular behavior for the rest of your life every day is too intimidating. So the key is, choose not to have a drink today. And then just treat every day like it’s the first day because I can’t commit to not drinking for the rest of my life. I can’t, but I can commit today. And if I treat every day of the rest of my life as if it’s that first day, then I can do it. And my argument is that we can claim to be leaders and claim to stand for values. But for the most part, most of us can’t point to a specific thing we’ve done today that lives up to those values, we assume that will do it when we get the chance. And good leaders live their values whenever they get the chance. But what separates great leaders from good leaders is that good leaders live their values whenever they get the chance. And great leaders create opportunities to live their values. So the whole book is about saying, okay, you claim to stand for this. Here’s how you prove it every day. Because it’s not just about proving it to other people. It’s about proving it to yourself. And if somebody says, for instance, family is a core value, but you can’t point to a single thing you did today, that reinforces the value of family. And if you’re working 17 hours a day, you’re probably not, you know, it makes you prove it to yourself. And when you’re proving it to yourself, effectively, you’re engaging in behaviors that prove it to other people. So I wanted to write a book that says, figure out what your values are, figure out your own personal questions and create your own leadership test. And what you’ll do is you’ll start to behave every day in a way that you can’t deny is leadership.

Adam Force 29:44
Yeah, that sounds awesome. I mean, lots of inspirational stuff. I just like the way some of the ideas are framed up to help, you know, understand them and take action and things like that. So I guess the proven method of having questions at the beginning of the day, that kind of gnaw at the brain. I haven’t heard that one before. So that’s actually really interesting. And I’m curious, then do you start your day off with certain questions in mind?

Drew Dudley 30:16
Oh, yeah, I’ve got six. And you know, what’s interesting is when you first start, you really got them front and center. But the more you do them, the more it becomes instinctual. We also have an app that you can download that will ask you your questions and say noon, three, six, and nine.

But I have six key values that I want to drive me in my business every day: impact, growth, courage, empowerment, class, and self-respect. And the questions tied to those impact what have I done today to recognize someone else’s leadership, there’s so much leadership around you. And it might be the people that inspire you, it could be the person who makes you smile every day when they hand you coffee. We have so many opportunities to recognize that leadership. And if you are going to start, you’re listening to this, and you’re going to start with one, that one every day for the next 30 days. What have I done to recognize someone else’s leadership for growth? What have I done today to make it more likely someone will learn something, and that could be yourself or someone else? For courage? What have I tried today, that might not work, but tried anyway? And if you’re interested, there’s a great TED talk by John Zhang, who talks about 100 days straight, where he tried to be rejected. And that’s the whole idea of bringing courage back into our life when we’ve been educated out of it. Empowerment is what have I done today to move someone else closer to a goal?

The whole idea of being if you’re creating a business, we need to get people who’ve come out of the education system, and they’ve been taught from day one, you are competing with one another. And ultimately, that question is about creating a culture that says, Yeah, if you outperform 90% of the people in an organization, yeah, maybe you’ll make six figures. But if you become the type of person where everyone who works with you outperforms everyone who doesn’t, then you’re indispensable. And that’s so much rare. And in order to become that person, what have you done today to help someone else move closer to a goal? class is when did I elevate instead of escalate today, and self-respect is, what did I do today to be good to myself. And what happens is, sometimes you’ll plan ahead and say, you know, what, I’m going to call my former boss and tell them that they were leader in my life. But what happens more frequently, is because the questions — and I like the phrase you use, “gnaw at your brain,” what happens is when an opportunity to answer the question actually pops into your sort of daily life, immediately, your brain goes, here’s the chance, grab it now.

And sometimes that sucks, you know, like, I get pissed off over the course of a day or on a phone call. And as I’m about to sort of, you know, let them have it, the little voice pops in my head and says, shit, here’s your chance to elevate instead of escalate, and you kind of have to because that’s the rule. And it does, you know, it starts to, you know, you got a bulkhead seat on the window, and a guy says, Can you switch seats with me for my middle seat in row 32? So I could sit next to my family? And let’s face it, you know, it’s a nine-hour flight? I don’t want to do that. But in my head is the question, you know, how did I help someone else move closer to a goal today? How did I elevate instead of escalate, you know, and the big overall is this when you don’t know what to do, you ask yourself, what would the person who I want to be do in this situation? And then you do that. You know, I often say to people, when you don’t know what to do, ask yourself, what would a great woman do in this situation? What would a great man do in this situation, and then do that.

And ultimately, the option that a great man or a great woman would take, that is also an option that is available to you. And so that I think is the key to these questions is, every time you’re presented with an opportunity to answer them, you have to fight with your brain not do it. And usually, it’ll win.

Adam Force 34:02
Yeah. And you keep the same questions every day, or do you change them up?

Drew Dudley 34:08
For the most part, they always evolve over time. But for the most part, as long as those are the values I want to live, those are the questions that I personally have. Now, the thing is, I don’t try to get, as I said, all six of them every day, I try to pass the test, which means three out of six. And if I get three out of six every day of the year, that’s still over 1000 conscious pieces of value of actions that I’ve taken, that are completely consistent with my values. And on the days where everything outside of your control blows up in your face, what this allows you to do is still recognize that while the day may have been a loss, it wasn’t a waste, because you did seize the opportunity to be the person that you want to be. And that seems like a simple thing. But it’s often not something that we give ourselves. The whole concept of Day One is the idea that you’re not always in charge of what you have to do every day. But you’re always in charge of who you are, as you do it. And I think that we sometimes lose sight of that fact. And if we don’t flex that power, we forget that we have it.

Adam Force 35:11
I love it. Listen, let’s close up on that note, I think that’s awesome. And love, love what you’re talking about and some of the insights that you shared here. So we appreciate your time to do that. And let’s give a shout out to where people can find more about you and catch your TED Talks. Find your book. I’m gonna let you go ahead and shout out your website here.

Drew Dudley 35:33
Sure, it’s drewdudley.com. And on the various social media, it’s @dayonedrew.

Adam Force 35:47
Awesome. They have it drewdudley.com. You can find his book and all kinds of other goodies on there, guys. So check out Drew and his work. As you heard today, he’s got lots of good ideas, so you probably gonna enjoy his book. Drew, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it and look forward to hearing more from you.

Drew Dudley 36:05
Oh, man, thanks for this opportunity. I love getting to share ideas.

Adam Force 36:08
You got it. Talk to you later.

Announcer 36:09
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meeting intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

interview

Perry Marshall Interview: Getting to the Rock Bottom of Real Problems to Reduce Competition

Listen to our exclusive interview with Perry Marshall:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Perry Marshall is the ultimate guru when it comes to sales and marketing. Touted as one of the world’s most expensive business consultants, he is an expert at getting to the root cause of business problems. That’s why his sage advice is an indispensable tool for all Change Creators. His book, “80/20 Sales and Marketing,” was rated as one of the “5 Best Sales Books of 2013” by Inc.com. Marshall describes the book as being “as valuable as a year at MBA school.”

Among Marshall’s many accomplishments is the founding of the $10 million Evolution 2.0 Prize, with judges from Harvard, Oxford, and MIT. The world’s largest science prize, announced at the Royal Society in Great Britain, aims to solve the biggest mystery in biology — to find the origin of the genetic code. This is remarkable when you consider that his roots are neither in biology nor in marketing — he has an electrical engineering degree from the University of Nebraska.

Easy Problems and Quick Fixes

In our exclusive interview, Marshall shares with us some key elements to business success. Through his founding of the Evolution 2.0 Prize, he came to learn that “most people only try to solve superficial problems.” This issue can be applied to practically any profession. Most of us, if given a choice, would prefer to just solve the easy problems we encounter with quick fixes and just get on with our day. Marshall, on the other hand, suggests we should ask ourselves what the most challenging (business) problem we’re facing is that we actually have any chance of solving and then mount a campaign around that.

Digging Deep

Marshall likens asking the tough questions and solving complex problems to digging in a swamp. The bottom of a swamp, once you dig way down, is made of hard rock on which you can lay a foundation. In the same manner, repeatedly asking yourself tough business questions like “Why is my competition doing better than me?” and “Why can’t I afford the click prices in my Facebook advertising?” will help you get to the root of the problem as opposed to putting a band-aid on the issue. And when you get to the rock bottom of your problem, you’ll see that the competition starts to fall away. He reminds us that this is a necessary step because all of our problems are deeper than we think they are.

Are Your Business Objectives the Right Ones?

Asking yourself a lot of tough questions about your business will help shed light on where you are and where you need to be.

And a lot of times you find out you’ve been putting your ladder of success on the wrong wall.

You may very well find that you don’t even have the right objective to begin with. Marshall admits it may be a bit of a painful process, but digging deep into your business issues will hurt a lot less in the long run than blindly plastering it with band-aids.

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ai. There may be errors.)

Announcer 0:01
Welcome, this is the Change Creator Podcast.

Adam Force 0:11
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. Thank you for being here. And if you missed our last episode, it was with Drew Dudley — he talks about how to become a better leader that makes a difference in this crazy world and we know we need better leaders these days, right? So that’s an episode if you missed it, go back. Check it out. I think you guys are gonna get a lot of good nuggets out of that from Drew. This week, we are talking with the one and only Perry Marshall. If you guys don’t know Perry Marshall, he is the probably one of the most expensive and sought after business consultants out there.

— content missing —

3.0 and we are in the depths of making this baby happen. And we have gotten so much incredible feedback from people. We are excited to roll this out. So we’re looking at a September, a late September-ish roll out, maybe mid September if we can keep things going as quick as they have been. And it’s going to be really cool guys powerful stuff.

So, the application of taking what we’re teaching around marketing and storytelling and strategy and all this stuff, and really applying it to build automated systems for your business.

So that, going forward, you have sustainable growth. So yeah, that’s exciting stuff. And you guys, check that out. There is a waitlist right now if you go to the Captivate landing page, you can get on the waitlist for the announcements. Alright guys, I don’t want to hold you up any longer. We’re gonna dive into this conversation with Perry and really talk about what he has going on and tap into that marketing expertise.

Hey, Perry, welcome to the change greater podcast show. How are you doing today?

Perry Marshall 3:00
It’s a beautiful and very warm day in Chicago. And it’s there’s a nice big, bushy green tree outside my window. And it’s fun to look at it. So how are you doing this afternoon?

Adam Force 3:12
I’m doing pretty awesome. I’m in Miami, it’s also warm and the weather is nice, the sun is shining. So can’t complain over here, either. I don’t have a tree outside my window. But I do have some water! So let’s dive into what you have going on in your world today. I know that you’ve got you got a lot of incredible experience. And I just want to hear like what’s the latest right now? What’s going on?

Perry Marshall 3:39
Well, the absolute latest, which I would say is in some sense, a lesson in 80/20. I’ve had a project called evolution 2.0 now for, well, about five years, to the external world much longer than that for me internally. And, I organized a technology prize to solve one of the deepest problems in science. And something very interesting happened to me.

So as of about a couple months ago, it was a $5 million prize. We’re searching for the origin of the genetic code, which is really a very relevant problem to everything. Because if we could solve this, we would also actually have a real AI. Siri is as dumb as a box of rocks. Anybody noticed? Siri could not convince a six-year-old that it’s a real person for more than about 30 seconds, right? I think if we could actually we would actually have real AI if we could solve this problem. And so I had a $5 million prize.

Well, I get this email out of the blue from an Oxford professor who goes, Hey, you don’t know me, but blah, blah, blah, bottom line, you know, me and this other professor would like to have you come to the Royal Society in Great Britain, and talk about your prize and host a media event.

And after I picked my jaw up off the floor, because the Royal Society’s basically the most prestigious scientific organization and old, I’m like a Yes, sir. I’ll be there. And then I flew into action. And, and I went to all the backers that had turned me down before. And I got a couple more to come on board. And it enabled me to raise my prize to $10 million. And it got ran in the Financial Times two days later.

So why am I telling you about this? Well, I guess the first reason is because you asked, What does this have to do with the average entrepreneur? Well, I want you to think about it like this: I have an electrical engineering degree from the University of Nebraska and I do marketing consulting for a living.

And about 10 years ago, I was so distraught at certain things in science that I decided to write an evolution book. And the question is, how does a guy with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering who does marketing consulting for a living, get invited to the Royal Society? Okay, well, believe me, it wasn’t because of some wacky publicity stunt. Or, I know some trick I came up with on LinkedIn or any, anything like that at all.

Okay, here’s what it was, what it really was. I identified a very, very basic fundamental problem that nobody has solved. And I came up with a new way of skinning the cat, that was completely legit. That’s how I got to the Royal Society, like, well, 10 million real dollars by real investors and a properly defined definition of the problem, and relationships. So like, along the way, I get the leading geneticists at Harvard Medical School on my judging panel.

And, and so I’m a complete outsider in that business, okay, I’m not, I’m not a credentialed scientist. But and here’s what I found, what I found was that the average typical rank and file scientist wouldn’t touch my project with a 10-foot pole. And it’s not because they didn’t think it was interesting. But it was because I was too much of an outsider. And they couldn’t, you know, most of them can’t really take risks.

The ones that did take interest in did play ball were the Titans, actually, they were the big guys who are bulletproof. And now, I think there’s actually a very deep lesson in this in and here’s what it is, most people only try to solve superficial surface-level problems, right? And so, like, if you look at any profession, I don’t care if it’s scientists or chiropractors or injection molding machine makers or podcasters, or anybody, okay. Most people, they’ll only tackle the easy problems.

Adam Force 9:02
Yeah, yeah. tends to happen that way.

Perry Marshall 9:04
And then they’ll and they’ll collect a paycheck. Right? Um, I think your mission should you choose to accept it is to look around you. And ask yourself, what is the biggest, baddest, deepest problem that I have any chance of solving, and that I actually have some idea how you might go about doing that. And then mount a campaign to actually take it out.

Adam Force 9:35
Right.

Perry Marshall 9:36
Now, this is not like quick and easy advice that you can do in like three hours. Okay. This project, I’ve actually been working on it for 15 years. 10 years, in earnest in the form that it’s become now. Okay, but again, how many people do go do anything at the Royal Society? And I’m not bragging. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. Okay? I just say, when you deal with really, like when you go to the roots of things, or I like to say the bottom of the swamp, where you like you touch, like, it’s not, like the bottom of the swamp isn’t swampy at the bottom of the swamp, like, there’s granite, down there.

There’s limestone, like, there’s cement, it’s like, there is a solid rock bottom. When you get to the rock bottom of problems, you’re in a whole different playing field, and you have a whole lot less competition. And, and that is so different from the usual advice that people are giving. I think that’s what we should be talking about today.

Adam Force 10:58
Yeah, I agree. 100%. And do you have just based on your experience, and you know, I know, you have a lot of experience in the marketing consulting world and all that kind of stuff, we could talk a little bit about the 80/20. But based on what you’re talking about, and taking on bigger problems, just the thought process, because I think you’re right. I mean, there’s a lot of people that have taken it at the surface level, and they say, you know, what’s the easiest problem, I could solve the itch and get a paycheck.

And, you know, part of what we’re all about is, is getting into systems thinking and taking on bigger and larger problems that are solving real social issues. So it does take a different mindset. And I guess, you know, if it’s something that you’re passionate about, and it aligns to your values, you might have more motivation around it. I’m wondering if you have thoughts around, you know, just approaching those larger problems and the thought processes around it?

Perry Marshall 11:49
Yeah. So first of all, I just want to point out that when we’re talking about getting to the bottom of the swamp, this doesn’t just have to be gigantic global issues. Okay, this could be the immediate problems that are on your desk right now, in in the course of you know, what came up this afternoon at work. It could be that, but what I’m talking about is that you actually get to the root of the problem, instead of putting a bandaid on it. So right. So let me give you like a marketing example, that anybody listening to this can understand. So. So you say, Hey, you know, I’ve been advertising on Facebook, but the clicks are too expensive. And I can’t afford to do this anymore. And so then, somebody says, Why?

Adam Force 12:46
Right.

Perry Marshall 12:48
Well, because I’m not getting enough click-through rate. Oh, okay. Well, so we go fix that by writing better ad copy or having better pictures, and then we get a better click-through rate. And then, oh, you know, I still actually have great ads, and they have a quality score of nine. But I, but I still can’t afford the click prices. Why? Well, maybe then the next answer is you’re trying to sell $20 ebooks in a market that’s selling $5,000 Mediterranean cruises.

And the economics of the cruise companies are way better than yours. So there’s no way you could do that. Right? And then and then we go, Well, why are you selling ebooks? Why don’t you sell cruises? And you go, Oh, well, like that’s too hard. Right? Or maybe, maybe then you start selling cruises because you work out a deal with some company but some other company is kicking your ass. And, and they can pay twice as much as you can. And you go, Why? And it’s because they have a back end. And they can afford to acquire a customer at a breakeven or even a loss and not making any money because they’re going to make money three months, six months, 12 months down the road. And then you say well, why can’t we do something even better than that?

And where it’s going to usually end up taking you is — Well, you know what people, we need to design a fundamentally better, more appealing vacation than everybody else’s Mediterranean cruise. And your real problem is you’re just a look alike. Like you’re just like everybody else. Okay, so you, you can go through all these layers, right? You can read a whole book on Facebook advertising. And then you can fix that part of a problem. But you still have a problem. Like, and that might not fix the problem at all.

Because you’re trying to sell $20 ebooks and your competition is selling $5,000 cruises, and there’s no way like ever that your economics whatever, keep up with that, right? And, and so and so if you ask “why” five times, you’re probably getting pretty close to the actual root of the problem. And what I find, what I find is true is when you finally start getting to that why number four, or why number five, most people don’t even want to go there. They’re starting to cringe. They’re like, Oh, my word. Like, is that what we’re going to have to do?

And a lot of times you find out you, you’ve been putting your ladder of success on the wrong wall. Like you don’t even have the right giant objective to begin with. And then what happens is, is there’s all these shallow people going around and going, Oh, well, you know, I’ll get you 10,000 clicks to your website for only $179. You need me, right? And like, that’s, you know, if it ever works at all, it’s only a band aid, and it probably isn’t even going to work anyway. But then desperate people who don’t really want to fix their real problems, they’ll fall for it. And this happens just all the time. Right? And so if you ask why five times you will probably get to the real answer.

Adam Force 16:38
Yeah, you know, it’s funny. I love that you brought it up. And it’s such an important exercise. And it’s actually something a small piece of something that we take people through in one of our programs as well. And, you know, you mentioned that people cringe. And in our, you know, members, like private group, we ask people to share certain things so they can get feedback, and people are afraid to share their five “whys.” They don’t want to share it. That’s your point. They’re uncomfortable with how deep it goes, you know? It’s a common thing.

Perry Marshall 17:07
So yeah, you know, all of our problems are a lot deeper than we then we think they are. And but again, when when you go after the deep problems, so for example, you know, I got famous in the marketing world for Google ads, and I would have all these people come to workshops, and they’re like, okay, so Perry is going to fix my Google ads.

And so here’s a perfect example. So I had a guy. He was he was in the car shipping business. So if you want to ship your car from Dallas to Los Angeles, on a truck, then these are the guys you call. And so he had taken our Google Ads courses and gotten reasonably good. And then he signs up in this program. And I think what he thought was going to happen was we were just going to get better and better and better and better and better at Google ads. Right?

And on the first coaching call, it said, Okay, so, Michael, the name is Michael Strickland. Michael, why should I buy car shipping from your company instead of any and every other car shipper or broker out there? Because there’s a ton of them? He’s like, uhhhh… He didn’t really have any answer. Okay. And I said, Okay, dude, you’re living on borrowed time, I’d say you got about six months to figure out a really good answer to this question, and lock it in place. Otherwise, somebody is going to eat your lunch, and they’re going to replace you, they’re going to outbid you, you’re going to drown you’re going to be out of business. And so, so we went through a whole process that we call definitive selling proposition, where we started asking the systematic methodical attacking these questions.

Alright, so what can he do better than everybody else? How? How can? How can he have a guarantee? What kind of guarantee would we do? And what we ended up with was, we created this, this guarantee, so if you go to ship a car direct com, which is his website, you’ll actually see it’s got a picture of a blue Ford Mustang in the gloves. And the white gloves of somebody holding it in his hand. And it says, if your car experiences any damage, we pay the insurance deductible. We guarantee that your car gets there safe.

Okay, now, all by itself, a guarantee like that is only sort of interesting. But see this is this is where it actually kicks in because he was a broker, like he’s not a shipper, he finds the shippers, yeah, this means he’s got to get shippers that aren’t going to damage his cars. So now he’s got to have an internal rating system for all the different shippers. And he’s got to based on all his his previous experience.

And so what he did was he created a system where all the different car shipping companies, there’s a private bidding system, where every time a job comes in, they can all see that it’s come in and they can bid on it. And they rank prioritize the ones it’s kind of like Yelp except internal to them, right? Well, only the five star guys ever get a job. Maybe once in a while a four star guy might get one. But none of the threes or twos are ever going to get any jobs. Okay, well, that’s actually called network effect, because he has a way of matching consumers to vendors with the knowledge that is not available in general marketplace. And the bigger his company gets, the more that knowledge he has, and it just snowballs. And this is how he became the number one car shipping guy in the industry.

Okay, and remember, he started thinking that his problem was Google ads. And what we did was we said, Why, why, why, why? And you can follow it all the way to Oh, well, now now we have a private ranking system for all these trucking companies. And they all have scorecards and stuff. And that’s why, like, that’s why you should buy for me, it’s not even because I have a sexier Google ad. Right? It’s like, look at all my testimonials. And then you look, he’s got all these stars and all these reviews. And it all feeds itself. Right. And that’s because he asked why, why, why, why, why? And, I mean, believe me and some of these coaching calls and some of these questions that we would be asking each other, it got to be nauseating and granular and, and you know skullduggery to, it’s like, well, how do we build this thing out to the nth degree? But he’s got it built out. Yeah, it’s a really valuable business.

Adam Force 22:30
Yeah. Wow. That’s a great example. Just to show the depth because you’re right, that differentiation, especially today, and I’m curious to get your perspective on something, which is, you know, you have your business differentiation, which is powerful for the beneficiary, right for the for the customer.

And I’m curious as today as people are going through these processes, you know, to talk about differentiation, which is the founder, like, look at Blake Mycoskie, with TOMS shoes. And there’s a major differentiation that nobody can copy or steal, which is his founder and origin story, the reason that TOMS started and the value the value is it aligned to so his, which he guided all the decision making for TOMS. So he’s in Argentina, saw all these kids in poverty, no shoes on, that kind of thing. And nobody could steal that story from him.

And I’m curious if you’re seeing an evolution in companies and how consumers are interested in people who are doing good business, and they want to know, who is this person? And can I trust them? And do I want to do business with them and buy their products?

Perry Marshall 23:40
So I think there’s a yin and a yang to this. I think the Yin is, is that your own story is the most unique thing in the world, and nobody can steal it from you. And that is a great start. And the Yang is on the back of that story. You need to build a business system, that eventually nobody else’s really great story can overcome because of what it’s intrinsically able to provide. So I don’t know whether Michael had a great story for his ship a car business,

I don’t recall that he really did. But he was a little smarter than everybody else in some respects. And he had gotten ahead of everybody else. But then he had to turn that guarantee into a shipping network. And now and so now he has both sides. So it’s kind of like, you know, there, it’s like, you might need a temporary moat around your castle just to keep the cowboys and Indians out. Right. And it’s made out of plywood. And that might actually be okay, for a little while. But eventually, you need bricks. You know? And stones and moats and everything like that.

Adam Force 25:06
Yeah, I think that makes sense. And, you know, if you don’t have a great, you know, authentic origin story, then you need a great product story.

Perry Marshall 25:14
Right. So, right, right. It doesn’t necessarily have to be you. Although, yeah, your own personal story, certainly. And, and I find that, you know, and really transactional products, these, these stories aren’t such a big deal. But when when you get to highly considered purchases, or if if they’re going to be following you for a long period of time, your personal story becomes more important than the particulars of your product.

Adam Force 25:45
It’s true. And I’ve interviewed people where even you know, small companies who are having a big impact, they will have customers that say, I’m so excited when I buy your product, because I’m proud to be part of the story. I’m proud of, like, what you stand for. And so people are really into, you know, trying to make good decisions that they they’re happy about like that.

Perry Marshall 26:05
That’s right.

Adam Force 26:07
Yeah. So I know, we’re going to be closing out on time real quick. But you know, man, you got so much I could pick your brain on between Facebook and the 80/20. We didn’t get to tap into too much. I’d be curious, like, you know, you know, will will, as far as Facebook goes – you know, you kind of mentioned this, it’s kind of like the tactics don’t matter if you don’t have like a strong foundation so that if the strategy is broken, that that actual, you know, the differentiation we’ve been talking about here, and you know, what really makes you stand out? If that’s not there, then all the tactics won’t matter. Right?

Perry Marshall 26:43
That’s right. That’s right.

Adam Force 26:45
Yeah. So do you have any insights just to close this out — and I’m gonna let you go — just on Facebook marketing, because everybody does want to win on Facebook, including our team and we have certain successes with things starting a sales funnel with like, certain free downloads, right versus just trying to sell a product directly. So any any top level advice for the small budget, starting entrepreneur who wants to get small wins through Facebook?

Perry Marshall 27:14
Well, so I’ll give you a quick tip. And then and then a larger strategy. The quick tip is that I think almost all pay per click now starts with remarketing and retargeting and and you start with that. And you think of it as your inner concentric circle the bull’s eye, and then you go,

Okay, so how can I expand this retargeting out a little further like, well, it could be retargeting people for five days instead of three days, for example, or two weeks instead of one week. And then how do I go to the next step? So that’s, like, just a really quick tactic. The strategy is everything in online advertising is 80/20. It follows 80/20. So it with with one minute to go here, I’ll just tell a quick story. A week ago, I had beers with a friend of mine, not exactly from my business world, and he’s getting ready to spend $206,000 on a two year MBA program.

And I said, Hey, have you read my 80/20 sales and marketing book? And he goes, I have it, but I haven’t read it. I said, Look me in the eye. I looked him in the eye. He looked me in the eye. I said, this book is as valuable as a year of MBA school. And he goes — he’s got a PhD from Cambridge already — and I said, he goes, are you serious? And I said, I’m serious. This book will totally change your life. We sell it for $7, including shipping at sell8020.com. If you go buy it, you’ll find out why. If you understand 80/20 at a deep level, you’ll be able to figure out almost any Facebook problem at a level of principle. So, I must go. It’s been great. Great talking to you today. Thank you for having me on.

Adam Force 29:06
Pleasure to have you, Perry. I appreciate your time and expertise and keep up all the amazing work. Good luck with everything.

Perry Marshall 29:12
Thank you, thank you.

Announcer 29:13
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit changecreatormag.com. We’ll see you next time where money and meeting intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

interview

Blake Mycoskie Exclusive: The Brand that Launched a Thousand Impact Businesses

Listen to the exclusive interview with Blake Mycoskie:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

In 2006, America’s top-earning CEOs were making $240 million a year while a fifth of the world lived on $1.9 a day. It was in the absurdly vast space inside the wealth gap that Blake Mycoskie found out that shoelessness meant more than the comforting warmth of concrete beneath your feet on swimming-pool-days. For the world’s poorest, it meant parasitic infections, frostbite, and sometimes, even death. Blake wanted to fix the problem, but a constant flow of shoes would require a constant flow of money. He would have to hack a pathway to the top of a new kind of mountain, and a for-profit business model seemed a natural solution.

So began a social enterprise called TOMS: the brand that launched a thousand impact businesses. His concept was tidy and potent: to donate a pair of shoes for every pair sold. He hoped to sell a thousand pairs a year. He didn’t. An LA Times feature sparked 1, 200 sales in just a day. Then came Vogue, then Time, People, and Elle. As the 2008 recession crawled nearer, TOMS’ sales figures rose… and rose. Blake covered 10, 000 pairs of bare feet that season, but the brand did more than just change lives. It woke the world’s change creators up to the returns a for-profit model could generate.

Waking Up to Authenticity

The era of TOMS was also the era of the ultimate marketing machine and all the dishonest billions it attracted. Mycoskie was one of the first entrepreneurs to encourage startups to use their story as the thrust of their marketing efforts, but he says countless brands have used his lesson as yet another plastic vehicle for marketing lies. Today’s buyers have a fatal allergy to dishonest tactics. Their skins crawl when they hear sales spin, and they trust their spam blocking APIs and AdBlock more than they do their local charities.

In an internet era, a secret discovered is a secret spread from a grand stage playing to millions. Transparency is no longer optional because, in an increasingly-connected world, your brand’s story will be told with or without your permission. Today’s impact businesses must live in a way that creates a strong digital story. “I don’t think every business has to have a giving component,” he says, “but I do think every business needs to answer the questions, ‘What is your purpose? What harm are you doing? What are you improving in the world?’ “

This is more than a call for startups to wake up to the marketing knowledge of their buyers, though. The authenticity he requests creeps into everything, from your branding and corporate culture to your hiring practices.

The Problem with HR Superstars

As TOMS grew, Mycoskie let his HR director handle much of his head-hunting. They hired C-suite rock stars who’d learned their tricks at other companies. It turns out that you can’t teach an old executives new tricks. They were attached to their bad habits, which were firmly packaged in an unchangeable shell. His corporate culture was borne of magic, and every entrenched C-suite habit absorbed some of that sparkle.

These days, he doesn’t require a “kumbaya” culture of every company; only clarity and intent. If you want to sharpen your Wolf-of-Wall-Street claws and establish a cutthroat culture, celebrate that, but don’t pretend you’re a Sheep of Wall Street. Corporate culture is best served neat, not shaken or stirred. James Bond might be a fair shot, but magic was never his strong suit.

Magic requires new perspectives and a wealth of different data sets, so Blake thinks some of your company’s most important assets are hidden away inside your employees. If he could travel back in time and recreated TOMS from scratch, he would have hired his staff himself, keeping his focus on mindsets instead of corporate experience.

Dealing with Pressure

For the first eight years of TOMS’ life, Mycoskie held his startup on his shoulders alone. He paid for every new shoe design, factory overhead, and employee. “I think that’s a great way to run a business,” he admits because it made him more conscious of how he spent his money, but even the most powerful entrepreneur can bend under daily pressure. “I had no investors so every single dollar was like a personal check.”

The media’s early interest had forced the fledgling company to grow into adulthood overnight. That’s challenging work for any entrepreneur. Being the sole source of funding is a simple form of pressure, but when the world expects greatness of you, you need a shinier brand of mettle. Then there were the people, every one of them growing and changing and needing more.

Once TOMS had grown to $400 million in sales, he brought in a partner, keeping his position as chairman of the board and hiring a CEO to relieve the pressure of solitary leadership. That gave him the space to see a new path forward–one that didn’t require TOMS to represent his whole identity.

Beyond TOMS

Social enterprises have changed enormously in the 12 years since Blake sold his first pair of shoes. The social impact space has been normalized, and globalization has raised rich and poor enterprises onto the same high stage. Any business can grow, whether it’s founded in a dusty shack in Punjab or on a bustling New York City street corner. Marketing has evolved beyond Ogilvyesque tradition, and corporate culture has become a core part of every brand. You can no longer grow a business without considering all the stakeholders. You’re too visible, too connected, too vulnerable to public opinion to operate thoughtlessly.

Blake sees the planet and its people as the biggest stakeholders of any company, and that has knock-on effects that aren’t immediately apparent. Enterprises need to place ethics ahead of every path they choose, but the way you define business must change, too.

The Industrial Revolution ended in the 19th century, yet today’s companies are still focusing on producing to the same scale and in the same way as they did a hundred years ago. Mycoskie isn’t sure the purpose of the human experience is to be productive and to achieve financial success.

His first goal was to simply build a for-profit social impact company. He’s since discovered a passion for sharing lessons instead of products. He hopes to give others the courage to turn their own stories into real-world dreams, so he’s just founded a self-development company called Made For, which takes members on a 10-month journey into the center of their own souls. Two hundred people are already moving through the program.

Some might say this change of pace is his stepping back, but he calls it stepping forward.

“[Stepping forward] is a lot scarier because you’re looking into the abyss and you don’t know what you’ll see. I’ve enjoyed life as an entrepreneur but I don’t know if I’m going to evolve or if I’m going to just keep starting businesses. Because all I’m going to do is prove to myself and the world that I can do it again and again.”

The Power of Mentorship

Mycoskie wasn’t born this woke. He was mentored into his irrevocable success. Richard Branson taught him through the pages of “Losing My Virginity.” Howard Schultz and Yvonne Chouinard’s lessons were also delivered through text. Blake only met his heroes long after they’d showed him how to make his first million. Some of the best lessons are available to anyone with an Amazon account and an appetite for reading, and now, they’re also available through Blake’s burgeoning program, Made For.

A New Definition of Success

Any ordinary social impact business is launched for the change it can create and the viability it can achieve with its products. Blake thinks that misses an important ingredient: the authenticity of the creation process. For him, founding a business is a process of self-development. You can’t prepare a feather-light sponge if you’re not immersed in the baking process, no matter how perfect your recipe is, and the enterprise creation process must be just as meaningful and authentic. A leader must become the business, or the story the world will tell about it will be barren.

“Success is somewhat empty, no matter if you do it in a somewhat honorable way like I did with TOMS or in a Wolf of Wall Street way. The human condition needs far more than what our culture is asking.”

The Industrial machine is dying, and founders must find a new way forward. That way should do more than just spread happiness to others. It must also incite it in every philanthropist. “We’re all designed to be happy,” he says, “and the happiest people I’ve seen are the ones who are able to be in touch with the inevitable truth that all we have is this moment. And this moment is [our] entire existence. That’s how I’m defining success these days.”

Blake is one of a rare few thought leaders who are reinventing society, but his ideas are only new because the enterprise has been a Promethean fire wielded, not for human pursuits, but industrial ones. Yesterday’s thought leaders asked, “How profitable? How huge? How fast?” Blake asks, “How authentic? How challenging? How true?

Key Takeaways

-1) “If you have a really incredible, authentic story that you can back up at every touch-point in your organization, lead with it. If not, lead with your product and your product attributes.”

-2) Be directly involved in your hiring. Look for shared mindsets in your staff, and not necessarily experience.

-3) Make the most of the fresh perspectives of your staff. They’re important data sets that you might never otherwise explore.

-4) Make sure your philanthropy is designed to be meaningful to your own growth. Your happiness matters and social enterprise should never be used to shift your focus away from your own pain.

-5) Find mentorship through the writing of your heroes.

-6) Don’t let old ideas of success limit you. Think beyond profits and products.

-7) Don’t try to create a brand or corporate culture that’s inconsistent with your authentic intentions. Be true to your intent, or you will lose the trust you might never regain.

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