Learning From The Experts

Learn about what it takes to be able to scale your business. You can't scale without scaling your personal level. It's like trying to beat Super Mario without ever getting a mushroom that levels you up... I'll be talking through the things I've learned from other experts that have helped me to grow personally and professionally. Such as the belief window from Hyrum Smith, founder of Franklin planners. As well as some of the things I have picked up on from the experts around me.  

What is going on, guys? Hey, this is Colton woods. Come back to you with another episode from learning from the experts. Um, now today's gonna be a little bit different. So I'm recording on the podcast. Uh, so I got my mic here and recorded on the podcast mic, but I'm also recording on a video so I can throw something up here on YouTube. Um, so you guys, if you want to see a little bit more, what I'm talking about, you can, you can come on in the YouTube channel and check it out there. Um, but I'm gonna do my best to make it so you don't necessarily have to, but if you'd like to, you can. Um, so today something's been on my mind and I actually went live in a different group, kind of about this a little bit in depth here. And it's, I don't know, it's blowing my mind, how many people are not doing this.   Like, it blows my mind how many people don't have this figured out and they're in business and they think they're going to be successful. They may be fairly successful, but then like, they, they, they could be so much more if they just understood these things. So I want to go through it. I want to explain it. I'm definitely going to be writing here on the video. I'm going to be showing some stuff as I pull in my iPad feeds. So I can like write down and show you where I'm at. But, uh, for the podcast, hopefully you guys will be able to just, you know, understand it from where I'm speaking. But anyway, so welcome to this episode. Um, let's go ahead and get started. Now, if you guys follow Steve Larson at all, um, you'll know, he talks about the three core markets. Now, when I say three core markets, there are literally three markets that anybody, any business sells into. Um, and those three markets being, let me, uh, I'm going to be writing this. So it might be a little bit of lag on the podcast. Sorry about that guys. Um, so the three core markets, literally it's health, wealth, and relationships.   Now, what does that mean? Um, essentially what that means is whatever you sell needs to fit in one of those three core markets. And if you are not, if your message or your messaging, uh, for whatever you're selling, doesn't fit into those three core markets, then you're doing something wrong. You've, you're, you're yeah. Typically any pretty much everything fits in there anyway. Um, most people may even be doing it and not realizing it. If they didn't know what three core markets were. Now, these three core markets, this is like the sum of all business right here. Um, so health, like there's a ton of health products. There's a ton of wealth products and there's a ton of relationship products. Um, and example of those, I absolutely love Steve Larson's, um, example of the Gillette razor when he came up, that one, his genius. Um, so he talks about how like Gillette razors, you would think that they're in like the health market, you know, like it's Oh, healthy.   You want to make yourself looking better, whatever it may be. Um, but in reality, they're actually in the relationships market, which is interesting because every time you see a commercial from them, um, after the dude's like done shaving his face off and looking all clean and like slick, some lady comes up behind him and just like fills his face up, you know? So like they're selling relationships like, Hey, if you get this razor, you're gonna be able to find, you know, a girl or your wife is going to love you more, whatever it may be, your girlfriend's going to be, um, won't be able to keep her hands off. You know what I mean? So like, that's exactly what they're selling, but it's a razor, like you wouldn't think razors would fit into one of those three core markets, but they do. And the reason we bring that up is because you may not think, Oh, my product doesn't fit.   One of those three markets it's possible that you may think that, but the reality is can it's all messaging. Um, yeah, there's some really good stories that I'm like, uh, I just thought of another one that I wasn't really thinking of before, but, um, some good old school marketers, uh, Steve talks a lot about our Lasker. Um, and now I'm trying to think of the other guy and I can't think of his name. Yup. Anyway, they're amazing like a dove soap, one that if you went to any of the offer mind, um, events from Steve in the past, well, I guess last one, um, in 2019, he talked about dove soap. Um, and the messaging behind that was it's, it's super genius on that one. It's not so it's lotion, like it's literally not soap. Like they literally say it's not soap the whole time, even though it literally is soap.   Like, but it's not soap it's soap, but it isn't. Um, the messaging is so key on that. They're actually selling, I would say even relationships in there because it's like, yeah, health actually. Um, that's interesting. Like, Oh my, my, um, it moistens my skin and I feel better and better. Like, and then it talks even about how like, um, one of the ads is like, it's awesome. She's like I was going to go out with my girlfriends. And, um, I got in the bath and dove, slipped in with me. And I ended up spending the entire day with dove. I'm like, I have to tell all my friends about it, you know, like it's super funny. Um, so anyway, it's soap, but it fits in one of those three. Yes. A lot of different soaps can fit into health, but you can also make it relationships thing.   Um, old spice sells soap and it's all about like ax is probably the best acts. I forgot about acts. They're probably the best example of like, yeah. Trying to get relationships from your soap. So hopefully that's kind of a little bit of a, an idea of what these three core are. Now, if you're trying to sell your product specifically, or I guess generally in this market, one of these three markets you're missing the Mark here. Um, you don't necessarily want to sell directly into this huge ocean, um, of, of all these different products and people. Now we talk about how those three oceans are like the re or those three markets are like a red ocean. Like there's so many sharks in there. There's so many people just trying to sell their stuff in there that they're like just eating each other. So there's just blood all through the water cause everybody's killing each other.   So you don't want to be in those three markets like selling directly into it. You want to, you want to, you want to go a couple deep and if you're watching on the YouTube video, you'll see this, but I'll try to explain it for the podcast. Excuse me. Um, well you want to do is like, so for the race relationships, health, and wealth, uh, whatever your product may need or whatever it's going to be. So like for me, we sell a lot of keto stuff. So if I go to the next, if I go down and if you've ever heard of like niching down, this is kind of that idea there, you want to find your pocket of your, or your smaller market of people who are looking for your product, but your, and you can position it in a way that seems different than the rest of the markets.   So you're creating your own market essentially, um, or finding a current market that's small enough that you can actually pivot and sell into. Ah, there's so many different ways, but I'll explain a little bit here. So, um, the Quito market is fairly huge. Like if I were to just, if I were to get on ad words and do nothing but paver ads where I'm talking, or I'm trying to get people on Quito where I'm like, Hey, you're doing keto by this stuff. Like anybody who searches, just the general word Quito, I'm going to spend a ton of money, trying to get them to come find my stuff because keto is going to be an expensive keyword. I mean that, that's a hot topic. That's a really big market. Now, the chances of me finding somebody who searches Quito, um, sorry about that. Uh, I thought I'd turned notifications off. So anybody that searches the word Quito,   It's going to be expensive cause it's a huge market. But if I were to go like, um, Quito for, I mean it's a little bit small. So if we go down and I find a smaller market, I'm going to try to make this seem a little bit more realistic here. If I try to find a smaller market, um, one thing like we were doing was, um, or I was explaining on different videos, like Hito for entrepreneurs. Um, that's interesting stuff like, Hey, if you're an entrepreneur, you need to be on keto. And they're like, wait, what, anybody that knows anything about keto is searching Quito and entrepreneurship or has any kind of keywords for that. Like, that's going to be a cheap keyword for me to, to get. And not only that, I'm going to find somebody who is looking for like exactly what I'm talking about.   So when they come onto my page or my sales funnel, the first page of my funnel, they're literally going to be like, he's speaking directly to me because I'm going to make the copy specifically for that person. So anybody that's searching this stuff, Hey, you know what, like I'm entrepreneurship like, uh, I'm an entrepreneurship or I'm an entrepreneur, um, Quito entrepreneurs on Quito, like different, different variations of that. Um, if they, if they're searching that they're ready essentially to buy whatever I'm selling, because I'm speaking directly to entrepreneurs who need to be doing keto or entrepreneurs who understand things about Quito. So I can pay a lot less for keyword. Yeah. There's not going to be as many people searching it, but that's the point as well. I'm not just looking for a general idea or general keyword that I'm going to try to pick off people that might be understanding where I'm going to be selling them, like might be ready for what I'm selling them.   Instead. I'm just going to go for the smaller numbers and get directly to the people who I do want to sell right away. So hopefully, hopefully this helps a little bit, if you're selling more to just the generic market and let me get into this a little bit more, if you have a generic person or a generic who everybody talks about, know who you're selling. If you have a generic who then your, your it's not very good. Um, I think it was Perry Belcher that talked about, um, I think it was him, but I can't, I gotta find this, don't quote me on that. Um, I got to find out where the story exactly is I can't remember, but he was   Pitching these two salon owners, um, these two, these two women that owned a salon, pitching them on this product that he was trying to sell them. So he goes in there, they're like the main people. And he's talking through this whole product, like giving his whole spiel, his pitch. Um, and they're like, wow. Yeah, this is great. This is cool. And then they kept like looking at each other and they kept asking each other. You think, you think Karen would like this? I don't remember if that's the exact name of the user. I feel like I, I, I feel like I used the correct name the other day. Anyway. You think Karen would actually like this? You think Karen would buy this? Do you think Karen would, um, use this product? Uh, and they kept, they said it enough that eventually he's like, all right, who is caring and why is she not here?   Cause it sounds like she's the decision maker and she should be here because I don't want to be talking to somebody who can't make a decision on whether or not this product, whether or not you can actually buy this from me. Like otherwise I'm just standing here wasting my time, trying to pitch you guys on this product. And now you're going to go tell somebody and not deliver it correctly to the person who actually makes, you know, the decisions. Um, and they just kind of laughed at him and like, Oh no, no, it's, Karen's our customer avatar. And he's like, you're what, like, he'd never heard of a customer avatar this time at this point. So, um, let me go back here.   So customer avatar, that's an interesting concept in & of itself. So the customer avatar, they literally had a paper filled out like this big poster that had a picture, like a stick figure on it. Um, I'm just thinking through what, what I saw in my head as I listened to the story, um, like a stick figure of somebody with like, its kinda drawn out into this girl named her Karen and then gave like, put on all of the things she likes to do the things she doesn't like to do. Like, you name it, like they had this person dial down. Like it wasn't even a real person, but you would have thought it's a real person. They knew their customers so well, they knew exactly what they liked, what they didn't like any of that stuff. So when he came in, started pitching them, they're like, you know what?   We just don't feel like Karen would actually like, this would be good for her. Like, we don't feel like she would enjoy this. We don't feel like she would actually buy it again or buy it in the first place. So they passed on it. And he's like, that is amazing. If you don't know your customer avatar, you don't know who you're actually like selling to. You don't know how to talk to them. If you don't know how to talk to the person you're trying to sell and chances are, they're not going to relate with you and chances are, they're not going to understand what you're trying to say or sell them. So, and if you're just selling a generic person, you're going to get kind of a generic result, which is interesting. So I just wanted to go through this with you guys. This is kind of a base level. I know Steven's got some, I think he's got some deeper, uh, three core markets podcasts that you guys can check out to you if you want to go into a little bit deeper, but I just wanted to put this out there. Like I'm seeing so many people mess this up right now. So I wanted you to run this, run through this with you guys. Um, and have you, yeah. Give you something to think on so you can like figure out, you know what my actually might talk to the right person. And chances are like, if, if you know who you're actually selling, when they ask you something or they ask you a question, you're going to be able to answer and they're going to be like, Oh my goodness, you are totally correct. Like that. Exactly how I'm feeling. You validated exactly what I'm thinking, how I felt. I feel the emotion of you taking off the problem and giving me the solution that I've been needing. So yes, I need to pay you because you provide the exact solution for my exact like scenario or problem or whatever it may be. Whereas if I'm just trying to sell Quito to anybody, it's like, yeah, you're you can still sell it, but yeah, I'm going to sell it nearly as well, unless you're like speaking directly to your customer avatar. So hopefully that helps guys. I wanted to run that through that with you guys today. Um, yeah, go out there, keep crushing it. And trust me, there's like listening to the experts and stuff. And this is a, yeah, this is, this is the way to think about it. So awesome stuff guys. Um, thank you very much. We'll talk to you all later.  

What's going on guys. Hey, this is Colton woods and you are listening to another episode of learning from the experts. And today I want to actually walk you through or talk about some of the things that I learned from the legendary Rallycross driver Ken block. Hey, what's going on guys? So a couple of weekends ago, I actually got the opportunity to be one of Ken block's guests at the rally cross, um, for red bull, which is a super huge event. Travis was drawn, if you don't know who he is, he's like, he's like the biggest man in the that sport, like in those sports, I mean period and uh, motors or dirt bikes, everything. Like he is crazy into those kinds of sports rally cross, um, especially to you. Um, he, yeah. Anyway, so he puts on the event, um, called nitro world games and I actually got to attend it and be able to kind of meet, uh, Ken block and be with his crew and see how they all work and how they do it. And not only that, I got to see a lot of like the insides of how they operate and, uh, the different issues that we're having and also like their tactics, which I thought was really interesting, really cool. Um, so, uh, the guy who actually hooked me up, that was a follower of Steve Larson, um, ended up meeting or talking to me and we kind of got acquainted and then he's like, Hey dude, I work for these guys name, uh, Ken block and Travis [inaudible]. He, I dunno if you know who they are. And I'm like, dude, heck yes. I know who they are. They're freaking legendary. Um, and so we, yeah, we got acquainted there and I'm like, that's crazy. You work with them. Like that's super awesome. Those guys, I've watched their, their stuff for years now. Um, really respect them a ton and they had both put out a ton of content, so they, both marketers as well, which is really cool. Um, so we were talking, he's like, Hey man, we're going to be racing at the natural world games and um, we'd love to have you there as a guest. And you can kind of hang out, meet the crew, uh, check out how we do it and do this different things. And I'm like, Oh man, this is like a dream come true right there. That's like stuff I dreamed of as a kid, uh, which is, which is a pretty cool, um, anyway, so, uh, his name is, uh, David Mansfield and he, he's he, yeah. So he totally hooked me up. Um, and he's like, dude, it's really cool to see because it's, it really relates to business, um, on how like we run it. It's only like a hundred times faster than it, which is pretty cool. So he actually is like, like the coach, like he kind of coaches can block through his driving as he's driving, which means he has to be super fast at it, make really quick decisions and help, can make the quickest decisions and the best decisions that's gonna make him the best time. So it was really interesting watching all of this. Um, they would get out there, they start racing and David Mansfield would be up on this stand, kind of watching everybody race around. And he had a headset on and he would talk to Ken as he's driving. And so I'm watching this and literally it's like split second decisions, um, and like, okay, like this is what's coming on up. This is going to be the best way to take that turn or so-and-so's on your outside. You need to push them out and cut into the turn here. Like you do this, Oh, you need to take this path on the next one and you get around them here, I've noticed that these people are doing this. And so it's just really interesting to watch. Um, and then what was actually also very interesting was just to see how well they were able to race. But then when like the, we're having the worst time with, uh, with tires and blowing out, like these are brand new tires, like really expensive, nice tires and they're just shredding them. I guess that that's what happens when you have 700 horsepower in a tiny little car and you are on the gas, but all the time. So it makes sense I guess. Um, but it was interesting to see how they kind of got through it and what I also, okay, so here's the kicker. Here's the biggest takeaway that I got from this. Um, besides all the little things like the coaching through the going, um, you know, going around like pushing people through this corner and cutting them here and doing all this like cool, like tactical stuff. Um, there was one, there was one spot or one time, I guess one thing in the event that really stood out to me and what is, what makes Ken block the man. He who he is. I feel like, um, so on, I think, I believe he's like the second race of the day. Now let me pre-frame this a little bit. This, this is so rally cross is there in these cars, like there, a lot of them are Subarus. Uh, Ken block drives this Ford Fiesta, which is literally not a Fiesta anymore. Like there literally is no stock parts left on it. Um, these cars cost $750,000 a piece. Yes. You heard that right? $750,000. Three quarters of a million dollars per car and they have three of them. Um, so that's, yeah, these cars are nuts. It's not a little Ford Fiesta. You would go buy at the dealership for $14,000. Um, definitely highly, insanely modified. And yeah, so they drive these cars around and it's typically, it's on a pavement track and they're burning tires everywhere. Like they're sliding sideways. All four tires are burning and they have to come around the corner sliding and make it through it as quick as they can and then come around another quarter corner as a pivot and slide the other way. It's crazy stuff. If you want to see an example of what I'm talking about. Um, the Jim Canna, um, videos on YouTube is literally like what made them big ins, kind of what he just started for fun and then became a franchise. Um, and Jim Conner being J a, G Y M K H, a, N. a, um, I believe that's how you spell it. I could totally be wrong. Anyway. Um, Jim [inaudible] like, so the latest one, they just came out with Jim [inaudible], which is completely Epic by the way. And really they just do these crazy stunts and these crazy driving around in like cities like Chicago and uh, LA, different places that are just Epic deceive and they, so they, they record these and they come out with the best as they can and then it's just, it's super entertaining for that, that area. Well this track was at the nitrile world games was mostly dirt, which is highly way different than most of them since they're all mostly pavement. This is a lot different because it's all dirt. Um, there was a payment section in there, but it really wasn't much and I don't know. Super cool. And then the jump is like a world record jump. Now this is, they're in a car and there's 110 foot jump on the track. 110 feet in a car. And by the time they actually get off the jump and land, it's usually about 120 feet or more. That's, that's like a massive jump. Like, I don't even know if you can picture that. It's huge. Um, let alone in a car, like that's, that's massive on a dirt bike, um, in a car. That's insane. So they have to hit this jump at like 75 miles an hour at least. And you don't want to be going over 80 or like 78. You want to be between like 75 and 80 or 75 and 78 or something like that. Um, he was telling me, and I forget the exact numbers, um, but he's like, yeah, if you, if I hit that jump at like 85, I'm like toast because I'll land on this flat part and probably break my back in the process, you know, because all hit so hard. Um, which he actually ended up hitting the last race of the day. He actually ended up hitting the jump like 82 and he was definitely hurting from it. He's like, man, those, it was not good anyway, so they have to hit this jump super fast. Well on the second race of the day, they're Ryan round and he's in first. And like for the first two laps he's in first. What I didn't realize at first was that he actually blew his back, right tire in the first lap, literally shredded in the first lap. Well then he kept it in first place, the second lap, and then he kind of fell behind a little bit on the third lap. Well I knew his tire was shredded for sure in the second lap. And what's crazy is like I'm watching him and he's driving around this tire and he's still just going crazy with it. Just making it happen. And I see him coming around and there's a part where you can hit the 110 foot jump or you can go to the right or you can go to the left. There's like three different ways. And typically if you have a broken tire, a shredded tire, you're going to go to the right of the left. Right. And so I see him coming up to that spot and I'm like, kind of looks like he's going for the jump in the middle. And I'm like, there's no way. Like how would he, like why? How would he ever just, yeah. Anyway, so I'm like, there's no way he's actually going for it. Probably just looks like he's going in the middle, which kind of looks similar to when they go to the right. No, sure enough he hits his jump with a flat tire and totally clears it. It makes it, and I think he hit it again after that, but I know he hit it at least once, but that one time I remember just watching it like, Holy cow, this is, this is blowing my mind right now that he is literally hitting this jump with a flat tire. Nobody does that. Nobody does that. Everybody's like, Oh, you know, I got a flat tire. I gotta make it, you know, get, take it easy. I'm going to go the right. I'm going to keep it safe, whatever it may be. Well, it's interesting to me because so many Rallycross drivers, you don't actually really know who many of them are. Literally, you don't know who many of them are. And what's interesting about that is none of them publish or get out and talk or have any videos about them or stunts that they do or rally, crest driving at all. What's really interesting is Ken block is, I would say arguably the most well known drift like Rallycross person out there besides maybe Travis was Serrano, but he had, you know, some other stuff. Anyway, um, as far as Rallycross, I almost think Ken blocks probably the most well known and known as like the best Rallycross driver out there. What's really interesting, I know I've said that like five times, um, is even though he's known for that, he's actually never won like first place in a podium on like championships. I mean he's, he's won races and he's, he's gotten like second or third and plenty of them, but he's not actually like the number one driver in the world, you know, but he's known more than any other driver out there in the world. And therefore he's associated as one of the best drivers in the world. I don't know if that maybe lights up a few light bulbs or not, but to me it did. And as I saw him take this jump with a flat tire, um, I mean I already knew this, but I, it reaffirmed to me that he knows what he's doing. He is, he's very much different. Um, and it's funny, I was actually just reading this book niche down, um, and niche down as amazing book by the way. So I was reading niche down and it talks about how being better will get you nowhere literally in business, but being different is huge. Um, any category King out there, any business that is like the number one, the top business out there, it's because they were different. They did something differently. Um, an example that I was actually walking through and I was talking to my wife about it, which is kind of funny. Um, Pepsi spent billions of dollars on ads that were just a complete flop really because the ad was, Pepsi is better than co like Coke. And so they would have these taste tests like tasty for yourself, Pepsi, you know, it's better than Coke. And what's really funny about that as the, the totally just shot themselves in the foot because now they're trying to argue that they're better, which is a race to the bottom. Really. Like it's, if you do that in any business, that you're just going to start competing on price at that point and people aren't going to really care who you are unless you're the cheapest, which sucks to be that person essentially. Um, and so it, Pepsi's doing this and the problem was is they were pitching themselves as better than Coke. Whoa. In reality, they just set Coke up to be the best because they're pushing more of their focus towards Coke. And so now people are seeing Pepsi ads for Coke, which is not what you want to do because that's your number one competition. And yet you're like showing everybody that they're better than you. That's not a very good idea. This is not a very good thing to do. You know, like that doesn't make a lot of sense because now everybody's going to see or associate that Coke is better than Pepsi because you're, you're essentially saying that subconsciously. Um, so there was another example though that I've always kind of thought about. Now you can always pit yourself against another company that you're different from. If Pepsi would have done this, it would've been a whole lot better for them. But Pepsi did not pit themselves as different from Coke. They pitted themselves as better than Coke. And that's where they got a wrong one. Good example is Apple. So Apple actually used to have these Mac versus PC commercials. And I mean, unlike Pepsi, they weren't talking about how they were better per se. It was more of how we're different. And that actually kind of separated the two. And what's was really cool about that is winter PC was bigger than Mac at the time, right? So they're, they're definitely like, they were a smaller company, um, or PCs a lot bigger than max. So what's cool about that is you can pit yourself against, so Matt can pit themselves against PC. And say that they're different now, if they would've said, Hey, we're better, they would have, that would've been actually pretty bad campaign. It could have helped them a little bit cause they were, they were a bit smaller at the time. But um, because they put in themselves as different, well it does two things. It shows that they're not trying to take the PC, um, customers essentially they're not, they're just trying to show people that we do things differently. And if you want to be different, if you want to see something different, who you want to use a different product that is more fitted to you. This, that's us. This is what we do. Um, and there's a whole lot anyway. Um, and then the second thing is since Mac was smaller than PC by a bit at that time by, so shading themselves with, with PC, by pity, the throwing rocks against PC at the time, they kind of almost brought themselves up to kind of the same area because now they're associating with PC, the biggest person out there. Um, and then once you get to about the same level, so once Mac and PC are kind of close, you can't, you can't be throwing rocks anymore cause then you'll, you'll take PC with you. Um, Mac would take them with them because now they're still associated with them and so is going to grow with them because now they're there. They're showing they're putting focus on them. Um, same thing with Pepsi. Pepsi was thrown focus on Coke and Coke still number one. You know, obviously that didn't work for them and they spent billions of dollars. Mack did a little bit differently and said, Hey, this is why we're different than them not [inaudible]. And they were definitely thrown rocks, that's for sure. But not all of the time. It was more of like, Hey, this is why we, we, we aren't the same thing. So don't categorize us as the same thing. We can do things differently in this way. And people are like, Oh, I like that. So they go there and then as peace or as Apple got to be as big as PC, they stopped talking about PC. It's the same thing with click funnels. Click funnels with thrown rocks at a few different companies. Infusion soft, which they called them Confusionsoft and a couple other ones, but they would throw rocks at them as they were smaller. Well then the got to be about the same size and that's when you stop talking about anybody that's your size or lower because you'll, you'll bring them with you, you'll add attention to them. So you always go for the bigger and then once you get to that spot you cut it. So, huh. I feel like I probably just barbed a bunch of stuff all over you guys right there. So hopefully that was good. Hopefully I helped you understand a few different things there guys. Don't create a better product. Oh, that drove me nuts. In college, people were always building a product that was better than the other one. That is a horrible idea is a horrible way to go. You're just setting yourself up for failure. Category Kings on average own about 75% of the market and the other 25% is literally left to the other hundreds of companies that try to say they're different. Don't be that person. If there's a category King out there and you want to be better than them, you're already screwed. Don't even think about it during try make yourself different, then you can create your own niche and create your own category there. So hopefully I helped you guys today. I'm sorry. It's been awhile since I've been on. Yeah, I've had lots of other distractions and things going on around me and offer mind is coming up. I am. Yeah. I feel like I've just, I've talked about way too many things but offer, mine is coming up this weekend actually, which I'm really excited about. Um, we've, we've been going kind of nuts with that and so freaking stoked about how much is going into and how awesome was going to be. Oh, for all of you that are listening that are coming off from mine or that went off for mind, you will know. It's just been, it's amazing. Um, it's an, it's a yearly event though. And if you missed out, I'm telling you, good off. remind.com check it out. You will not miss out if you do marketing. If you need to create your offer and differentiate or position yourself the way you need or differently or the way you should. Definitely want to hit hit up an offer mine. So anyway, full circle, Ken block. The reason he is the man and the reason he is bigger than the rest is because he's different. He does things differently. While like when he was, um, when he would be racing on a rally cross race, um, and that he knew he was going to lose, he would literally just drive like way different than everybody else and show off or like not show off, but like jump way higher than the rest. And people would talk about him more than the winner. That's another golden nugget. There be different people talk about you more than those who are just good at what they do. Yeah. Anyway, hopefully that's cool guys. Um, thank you so much for being on here, and we will talk to y'all later.

What's going on guys? Hey, it's Coulton, Woods here? And I know it's been awhile since I've podcasted, but I just happened to get off an interview with a guy named Christoph Merrill and let's just say he put a little bit of a fire underneath my butt and lit it and kind of stoked the fire a little bit more. And then after I was done getting interviewed by him, I realized, Holy cow, I need to really get on and actually share some things from the interview that I think you guys would actually really enjoy, insert intro. So I thought I'd get on here and share a couple of the habits that he was asking about. Now Christoph Merrill, if you don't know who he is, what he dives into is habits essentially because his habits saved his life. You'll have to go check out his channel to hear that story. It's, it's an amazing story to hear. Um, and if you want to see the interview that he did with me, then I'm sure you can find it on his YouTube channel. Um, just search habit freak. I think it's all one word and should be able to find it. YouTube. Um, but I wanted to share a couple things that centrally, some of the habits he helped me identify that I even have, which I know I'm super far still from having or developing all this habits that I need in order to be that super successful person. You know, I'm not like Jeff base of style, you know, or, uh, I'm not on that level, you know, but he definitely helped me figure out some things and think through it. And I was like, man, this is actually really good. This is gold to, to figure out so that we can kind of understand better, um, the different habits that actually help us accomplish the things that we need to in life in order to be successful per se. Now, I know I've shared this story tons of different places, but, um, obviously it may be the first for you. So, um, I, he, he asked me like, what, what's one of the habits that you have had that you feel like have helped make you a little bit more successful? Um, and it was interesting. I was like, you know what, I, it takes me back to a story of when I was younger. Not that I, I would say, um, I'm super successful at all. Um, but I feel like, you know, I'm successful than relatively more than some other people who are just starting out. I'm not that successful. Um, but he asked me that and I'm like, okay, well that's cool that you think that first off. But, um, he asked me that and it made me think of when I was younger and when I feel like I was like 10 or 11. I was pretty young and I remember the day of being outside when this, when this thought or when this kind of paradigm, this mental paradigm shift kind of happened for me. Um, and a little bit of a pre-frame to it is my dad would wake us up on like Saturday, like every Saturday. Now. He claims it was every other Saturday, but I don't really, I don't feel like it was a really Saturday, Saturday. It felt like every Saturday team to me. Um, but he would wake us up early on Saturday, which most kids, pretty much every kid's going to not like being woken up on a Saturday to go outside and work. Let's just face it. Um, nobody wants to do that. No kid wants to do that. You know, Hey, I want to stay home. I want to play video games. I wanna play with my friends. I want to veg out and do nothing, you know, or like watch cartoons. And my dad would instead take us outside to work. And I'm like, man, this is, and I remember it for years, it would bother me, you know, and I, I would just kind of be mad at my dad because he's making me come outside and do all this hard work when it was Saturday should be my data. Excuse me. How fun and, you know, do other things not work? You know, like I have to go to school every other day. Um, but I remember the day I, I can see myself outside working and I remember I was like, Holy cow, like this. Like, this is horrible. You know, like this is not fun. And I had a thought and I was like, what if I made this a challenge? Um, and I, I looked at my brothers and I was like, I bet you I can, I can do this facet and you can do that, you know, or I bet I can get this done before you do, you know, or faster than you. And it was interesting as I, I didn't know at that time or at that point what was actually happening, but I figured out a way to, instead of dreading and hating work, I started to enjoy it. And pretty soon we were making everything a competition. All of our work was a competition and we would get things done faster and then we'd be done earlier and I could actually go do things with my friends because I wasn't like dragging it out, like having a hard time and not enjoying any of it, you know, I was dragging it out, making it last longer and just the day was horrible. But when I was making it a competition, things we get done faster, but the day would, you know, like the time of working would actually get go faster as well for me. And I'm so, I'm just so thankful for my dad for making me go outside and do that because I wouldn't have had that lesson otherwise at that young age. And I just learned, Hey, I can look at this thing as, you know, I'm going to enjoy it and have a good time and just get it done. Or I could be like most of the other kids my age and just complain and make it a hard thing and fuss about it and whatever and make their, you know, make their parents mad at them. Um, instead of just get things done and things just got done and it was fun and I would be able to go move on to whatever the next thing was. Um, and I've, I attribute that to my work and working now is I've found ways to enjoy it, found ways to make it fun and to almost essentially make it a challenge for myself so that I continue to push myself. And then that will also give you, I mean there's so many men or there's so many psychological things behind it as well that help. But essentially, I mean it helps in so many different ways of your life that there's just healthy for you essentially. But um, I've added it to a lot of things I do now. Um, and uh, you know me, so if you know, I work with Steven Larson, it's funny we'll be doing stuff and like it's kind of a joke. Like, Oh man, this is like a hard thing to do. And we kind of make it a joke of make it hard coach. But really we think that way a lot of the times of like this is going to be a hard thing. All right. Make it hard coach. Like, cause I know it's going to push me and make me better essentially things I'm doing. So make it hard coach, like, yeah, let's do this, you know. So anyway, I just wanted to share that one part of it. Um, I feel like, I think we were on there for almost an hour. I don't know if that's, but as long as the interview is probably 30, 40 minutes. Um, but if you want to go check it out, go check it out and see all the other things you asked me there. I definitely want to have him on the show and kind of understand his point of view and his side of things because habits really do dictate and determine different things in our life, including the success that you have in whatever you're doing. So, um, I totally believe in that and I, I wouldn't have been able to, I mean it's, he asked me about how I lost weight essentially cause they used to weigh 300 pounds and I got down to 230 pounds. And he's like, do you feel like you've made a habit out of that? And I'm like, you know what? I never really thought about it till now. But yeah, I've made a habit out of different things in ways that I eat. It's really good interview. I would highly suggest you listen to if you're, if you want to learn more and understand habits a little bit more, but I thought I'd just drop that one main habit there that I thought was pretty cool that he pulled out of me. Um, hopefully it helps you guys, uh, and hopefully y'all do and get, and thank you so much for listening and as always, if you got any comments or questions or anything, please feel free to comment on where you may be seeing this or hearing it and let me know your thoughts and reactions as well. And, um, yeah, we'll talk to y'all later.  

What's going on guys. Hey, this is Coulton Woods and welcome to another episode of learning from the experts. And today I actually want to go over the worst haircut experience of my entire life. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is to waste countless hours sifting through, wanna-be experts who never actually help you in the end. Then to learn years later that there was a real expert who could have helped you a hundred times faster than learning it on your own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. Hey guys. So, I actually just got my hair cut on Monday and it was the worst experience ever, but then I actually had a pretty good profound lesson from it at the same time. Which obviously you can always make something into a good lesson, right? There's never failure, only learning experiences, you know, which that was definitely a learning experience for me. So, I went and got my haircut. Now normally I go to the same person every time because I found this lady that is really good at doing haircuts. She's been doing it for like 15 years or something. She knows my style. She knows what I like. So every time I go in there, she knows exactly what to do and she doesn't even have to ask me, you know, she just gets it done, which I love. Like I roll in there, she shoots the breeze with me and we just kind of, yeah, talk while she cuts my hair. So lately though, I haven't been in town and it's just been crazy. So I haven't really scheduled a time to actually go in and see her. Well, I can look on the app and see if she's actually working. So the Times that I have been able to go, she wasn't there. So I'm like, crap, I don't want to go because I don't want to go to somebody else. You know, I don't want to have a bad experience. Finally on Monday, I was like, whatever, I just need to go get a haircut so I don't care who it is, I'm just going to go in. The first mistake, well I guess it wasn't quite a mistake, but my thought was I looked at the app, there's two people available, right? One of them had their picture and the other didn't. So I’m thinking. Okay. The one that has their pictures probably been there longer because she has a picture on there. So I'm going to trust that one and go with my instinct, you know, so I book it and she was available earlier anyway, so it worked out. I get there, I show up, she takes me back, sits me in the chair and she's like, so why'd you pick me today? And I'm like, oh, that's a really awkward question. Um, well I actually picked you because I looked on the app and you were the only one that had a picture on there, so I figured you'd been here longer. Then she proceeds laugh at me and tell me that she's the newest employee there and that she's only been doing hair for two years and like, well there goes your theory. Yeah, that was a bad start. And I'm like, you realize you're just telling me that I was wrong and that you are the newest one here when I was hoping to get the person with the most experience and you have the least experience, so now I really don't have any faith in you. Good job. She's just not thinking on that one. Anyway, we'll get going. And she proceeds to, before we even started, she proceeds to sell me on this package of this haircut that is the same price as the package below it. But since they're having a deal on it, it's the same price as the one below it. And I totally got to get it because it's totally worth it. And I'm like, what even is it? Oh well it's this, this and this. It's totally worth it. You totally got to do it. Like, yeah, you just got to do it. And I'm like, ah, I don't know if I really care. No, let me tell you it's totally worth it. And I'm like, Nah, I don't know. Like I just want a haircut. I kind of got a time constraint cause I'd like to get back to work and doing some stuff. Right. No. So she continues to sell it, trying to sell me on this and why I need to get it. And then she's like, oh, don't be checking your time with me. Like you're getting your haircut. Time does not matter. And I'm like, ah, well I kinda need to hurry up, you know, like 20 minutes ish, like that'd be awesome. She's like, Oh yeah, we'll have it done in 20 minutes, no problem. And I'm like, okay, whatever. And then she kept trying to sell me on the same freaking package. So finally, I'm like, okay, let's do it. I don't care. Just do it, I'm done. I don't want to sit here and try to tell, you know, like 50 times and still not get a no out of it. Like, come on. Anyway, so finally I'd just tell her whatever, let's just go. I'd rather just start getting my hair cut than sitting here trying to barter with you about it. So, she starts to look at my hair and she kind of does this, like, I had a hat on, so my hair was really bad. It was, it didn't look good, you know, it was just like a swirl. I don't know. Anyway, she looks at my hair and she's like, what is this? And she’s like is pointing at my hair and putting her fingers through and it's like curling over, you know, kind of weird. And she's like, what is this? Uh, I had my hat on, so it probably just messed my hair up. No, this is too long. Well, yeah, that's where I'm here to get a haircut. No, we need to go much shorter than this. Much shorter than you were saying. And I was like, uh, I dunno. No, trust me. Like it needs to go much shorter. Hopefully you're okay with that. We'll go ahead and do it. I'm like, are you freaking kidding me right now? Like I just told you what I wanted on my haircut, and then you're telling me that I'm wrong and that I you shouldn't do that and that you're going to do whatever the heck you want to do anyway. No, it doesn't work that way. And I'm like, ah, no. But honestly, I used to have my hair a lot shorter anyway, so I was like, Eh, maybe she'll do something cool. I don't care. Anyway, so she proceeds to cut my hair and like she's rough about it too. Like she's talking to me and cutting it, like not even looking at it at all and it's kind of making me a little worried, you know, because she's just going at it and pushing my head over, it was really bad. It was weird. And she just keeps going. Whatever. And then she tells you or she gets me to do that package, right? So I'm like, whatever, do it, go for it. And then, as she's like rubbing my head to, oh, it was horrible. They massage the shampoo and your scalp or whatever. Oh man, that sounds kind of funny. Sounds a little weird now that I say. Anyway. She's using her nails and digging in my head. I'm like, oh that does not feel good. And then she's proceeding to tell me how great of a Salesman she is because she knows how to talk about products and stuff. And I'm like, trust me, you are nothing near a good salesman. You are the antithesis of a salesman. You are what give salespeople a bad rap. Seriously. Anyway. She's doing her thing. What was really crazy though is at the end, she decided to rub some beard oil in my beard for me. She's like, you gotta try this beard oil is the best beard oil ever. Check this out. And I was like, okay, that's cool. I really don't care. And she puts it in her palm and puts her hands together and then proceeds the smear it all over my face and just goes at it and back and forth. It was really weird and really awkward at the same time cause I'm sitting there and her hand is just all over my face. Like, what the heck are you doing right now? Are you trying to feel my face up? This is really weird right now. I'm like, why didn't you just give it to me and let me put it on. It was like the absolute worst hair cut ever. And at the end of it she put product in my hair and smeared it all around and tells me why my product that I told her I have is really bad or not the best when the other hair cut lady just sold me on that one because I asked her what would be good with my hair and she gave me a few options and she's like, you need this and this kind of mixture with your hair because of this. And I was like, okay, I really like that. That feels good. That's a great one to go with. And then this lady is telling me that it's a really bad product, and why would you use that product and that this product is so much better. And she puts it in my hair and tells me why it's so much better. And then after she puts it in, I can see hairs that are way longer than the rest of the hairs next to it on the side of my head. I mean very easy to see that those were not cut. Like they were cut a little bit, but not completely. And I'm like, wow, she really doesn't see that right now. I can see it and I'm looking in the mirror that's a few feet away from me and she's not even a foot away. Like, how do you not see that. And then there's another spot on the other side of my head. It was the worst haircut I've ever had. Seriously. She would put everything down that I was using or doing. Everything about my hair was bad and that she made it so much better. Yet it was not even cut all the way. I was really not happy. I totally got on Instagram and ranted about it for awhile. Maybe I'll add those audio files to the end of this. That'd be kind of funny. I'll have to see if I can pull them in. That'd be hilarious. It was just such a bad experience. Afterwards I got thinking about it and I'm like, you know what's funny is I told her exactly what I wanted and then she proceeded to give me what she thought I needed, not what I wanted. I was thinking about that afterwards. How many times have I done that in business where I've given people what I thought they needed when in reality they wanted something else? And so I'm not actually giving them what they want. What kind of experience do you think they're having when I'm giving them what I think they need, when in reality I should be giving them what they want instead? Ryan Levesque wrote a book called ASK. It's amazing actually, and it totally, if you do any kind of surveys in your business already about trying to figure out what your customers want or how you can better help them, which I see so many people doing it so wrong is it's an industry norm to do it the wrong way, which is really sad. He wrote a book, he's like the authoritative person on how to get the things that your customers actually want out of them and to make, to be able to make that product for them that fulfills their need or their want. If you do any kind of that stuff, I would totally recommend the book called ASK by Ryan Levesque. So, stop giving people what you think they need, figure out what they actually want and give it to them. It's that simple. Like on the Secret MLM Hacks business that we run and Steve Larson built. He literally sold that before it was even published. Like, before he was even done. I mean, it's a whole member's area with five modules and a bunch of other stuff in there. There wasn't even module one done when he sold that. And we literally were asking people what they wanted next and giving it to them. And that was the product. It blows people's minds when they hear that. We actually made a ton of money on the launch of that and we didn't even have it done and we were still just fulfilling on things. We had an idea of kind of where it was going and what we're doing, but there were some things that we thought they needed that we were wrong. Instead we adapted it to what they wanted instead of what we thought they needed or what we thought they needed. And so we adapted it to give them what they wanted, but also  in the way that it happened so that they could actually benefit from it. You know? Oh Man. Anyway, stop giving people what you think they need and give them what they want because people buy what they want. It's just that plain and simple. Anyway, thank you so much for being on here guys. Hope you enjoyed that. And yeah, let me know if you got any questions or comments on this. I always like hearing your guys’ feedback too. We'll see y'all later. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on guys. Hey, this is Coulton Woods and you are listening to another episode of Learning From The Experts and today and I actually want to talk to you about something that I learned from my dad. Something that he failed to recognize or at least I feel like he failed to recognize it. But I totally learned something from it that just shaped the way that I looked at things and the way I bought things in the future. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is to waste countless hours sifting through, want to be experts who never actually help you in the end. Then to learn years later that there was a real expert who could have helped you a hundred times faster than learning it on your own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from a real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. As a kid, I remember so many times my dad would essentially just whenever he had to buy anything, especially if he didn't want it, but whenever we had to buy anything, he would go with whatever was the cheapest option. As a kid I'm like, that's kind of weird, but I guess you get it, you know, you want the cheapest option because who wants to pay more for something that they don't necessarily need more of? Or it's the same thing, right? So why pay more for it? Well I remember we had this truck growing up and my dad just would never, never could seem to get rid of this truck. But what happened was we must have gone through at least eight transmissions in this one truck. It was pretty bad. I don't know why he didn't get rid of it after like number two. But the transmission on this truck would go out and he would just go get it rebuilt. He wouldn't buy a new transmission. He wouldn't buy a high-performance transmission. He would just go to the cheapest mechanic he could. And just go get it rebuilt. And I think it's just cause he had the truck paid off and he didn't want to go buy a new truck or go through all the hassle of getting new truck or a new car payment, whatever it may be. So his thought was, okay, well I'll just, I'll just buy or I'll just have somebody, you know, Redo this transmission for as cheap as I can cause I don't wanna put a whole lot of money into this truck that's not worth a ton of money anyway. So he would just go to the local mechanic guy and have him rebuild it first chief as he could. And then not too long after that and the transmission would go out again and it kept happening and happening and happening. Finally he's like, okay, I can't do this anymore. I just got to get rid of it. So he finally got rid of the truck. But what's funny is like, he did that in lot of other things that I saw also. Whenever we'd go to the store and he had to buy replacement part or whatever it may be for something, he would always just go with the cheapest option. Now I totally get it. You want to go with the cheap option, especially if it's not like something that's worth a whole lot. Why put some more money into it then you need to. But then I also saw the other side of it too, and multiple times he would have to go by that part again because it had broke or whatever, didn't work or it worked only for a little bit when if he would've just bought a little bit more of an expensive part in the first place, it wouldn't have broke or would have had as many issues as it did. A lot of times I look at people getting started online in the marketing or online marketing area and they want someone to help them for free or they want somebody that can tell them how to do it that isn't making any money yet. Or we'll give them free advice on how they can do it.  And so they go with those people, they find those people and they say, okay, I found this free option. I can totally, you know, learn from this person when I need to in order to make money. I see it over and over again when in reality, I mean, that can get you started and that's totally fine. I get it there. There's a lot of good information out there for free, but it's not always the most constructed information or the right information that's gonna help you out. So I think in the same way as when you're looking for someone to get you started or do a service for you or get something rolling for you that you need, you can go find the cheap person and get a cheap result. Or you can find somebody who knows what they're doing and get a better result and expert result or high performance results out of it. Just like as if my dad would have spent the extra money to buy high-performance transmission in his truck, he could've gotten a high performance results out of it and not had to buy or have somebody rebuild this transmission all the time or have issues and go out different things like that when he could have just spent the extra money and had extra high performance results from it. That was actually a story that I shared in our Facebook group called Hack MLM. I shared that one and I was like, you know what, I gotta make that a podcast. That's too good to pass up. So that I would make it more of a podcast episode. I just kind of shared it fairly quickly on the Facebook live there, but thought I'd give you guys a little bit more of an insight of what I was thinking with that story and how you guys can apply it to, you know, those who you are looking at online or different experts online that you may be wanting to use for service would have remained be that we can maybe kind of think about it a little bit more on what you're actually or who you're actually going to pick. I totally look at it the same way. I don't want to go find somebody online that to follow that has no success or know anything. I'm totally gonna go find somebody that does have success in that area or is an expert in that specifics, that specific area. So I just thought I would share that with you guys. Hope you enjoyed it. As always, if you have any feedback or a review, that would be awesome. Love to see that. Please feel free to drop me your view anywhere on iTunes or whatever platform you may be on at this time. But thank you so much for following and thank you very much for listening to me today and we will talk to y'all later. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

All right, well welcome Coulton.   Dude, thanks for having me brother.   Yeah, no Coulton esteem is actually - if I can give a few seconds background, probably the people who pushed me the most to actually get started on Retailer Secrets, so it's a big honor to have you on as the first guest.   Dude, I didn’t know I was the one that pushed you the most, that's pretty good.   I guess the past few months we've had the chance to cross paths a few times and increasingly in the last few weeks too. So, I take it as a sign and yeah, such a thrill man to have you on and being able to spend some good quality time with you.   Yeah dude, I’m super stoked for this, thanks a ton for having me.   Yeah, totally. Actually, when I met you first at the conference, it was back in February I think. One of the thing I messaged you, I was like "dude, I want to hear your story man".   [Laughs] That's totally weird huh.   I never thought it would actually happen in a podcast interview, so you know, I thought it could be actually great to start with kind of your back story of how you got started in retail or what got you to start there. Kind of like the context of what happened that you decided to go in to retail.   Dude I love it and honestly I love your podcast cover too, like the Retail Secrets. I was like "oh, it looks so good".   Thank you.   So, how did I get started? Honestly, it's kind of a crazy story; I was in college and it was kind of weird being in college because I was a bit more of an entrepreneur and college was more like, follow these rules and guidelines and do this and that and then I just happened to get one class from a teacher who's actually an entrepreneur too. So it was like fate brought together you know?   Yeah.   And I had been thinking so much on like a business that I had wanted to start. And I mean, this is like my freshman, maybe sophomore year of college, like I’m ready to go you know? Like I’m taking all these classes, I have nothing to do with like business and this was like my first one. That was actually like kind of like business like tied in and related. And it just so happened that this was the teacher's like first class he'd ever taught and he was - he has his own business that he's running on the side, so I think I kind of got lucky with that because he wasn't straight textbook, he was more entrepreneurial.   That is rare.   Yeah, it's very rare actually. I was pretty lucky to have that happen. And the whole premise of the class was actually to start a business online and I’m like "OK, Wow!" like that's a big step, I know nothing about online business you know? Like I’m just like barely started a business and alone. And he kind of let me slip with actually starting a business more of like locally instead of having to go straight online, but it was - we'd create kind of like a WordPress, very basic site.   Was it a choice of yours to actually wanting to do something more local than online based?   Yeah, because I had no idea how to do anything online at the point. At that time, online was just so foreign to me. I knew the potential of it and knew these stuff but I didn't understand how far I could go with it. So I’m like, I’m gonna start locally small and then grow it online, that was my goal, right. And so, you know what, I wasn't even planning on sharing this story but I’m walking around campus trying to figure out this business idea and I would think through all these things - I literally was thinking about near my biodiesel at one time. I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like you go collect like the fryer grease from like McDonald’s and those place and then you refine it into like diesel. So, I was trying to just think of something, like anything I could do and I was walking around and I pull out my phone from my pocket and it was back then when like iPhone 4 was like the thing you know?   Yeah.   Like those things are straight glass, right?   Yeah, for sure.   Yeah, I pull it out my pocket and it literally like fly out of my pocket, just like is soaring through the air. I just like chucked it like this.   Your slow motion moment.   Yeah, exactly. I don't know how it happened but for some reason like it caught my pocket and just - all I remember is seeing it fly through the air totally just slow-motion and it just smashes dude, just slides across the cement. And it's like icey out too you know, so it slid extra-long and it didn't even like roll, like it literally landed like face down and just slid. And I’m like "there's no way that thing made it" like, "there's no way that it is okay". And I’ve had some pretty lucky drops in the past but -   That was not it?   No, sure not dude. I pull it up and it is just completely demolished, like just shattered all the way across. And I’m like you know what, I’m kind of a - I like to fix my own things, I like to understand how things work and so when I see an opportunity to like see how it works, I’m all over it dude. So I’m like you know what, "I’m gonna pull this apart and see if I can fix it", why not? And so I bought the screen, I bought like some tools with it, some cheap stuff and it shows up and sure enough dude, like two hours later I’ve got it fixed and it was great.   Damn!   Somehow like sweet lose you know? And then it was literally that week that I had to have like this business idea 100% down. I’m like, "what if I just start fixing phones for people?" like I can do it, like I did it to my own, I can do it for other people you know?   Totally.   So that was my business plan, like my business idea and I kind of wrote up the plan a little bit and I ordered some inventory, some stock and I had some screens on hand and my teacher happened to have like a marketing agency that would send out text messages locally as well and he's like "bro, I’ve throw it on there for you" like, "do a deal". And so I came up with this deal, started marketing it through his text messaging thing. He gave me like one free one you know, and sure enough, I got like five customers off the first.   Oh, damn, OK.   Dude, I was like sweet! And you know what's funny, the first guy I ever fix something for, he was like a lifetime customer. I probably fixed 20 of his thing.   Oh yeah, really?   He was breaking them all the time, it's kind of funny but - dude, I was so nervous the first time, I’m like pulling apart this phone in front of this guy dude. And he's like watching me do it, I’m like this like [Inaudible] you know. Pulled it apart, and like it took me a while and I got it back together and it was fixed and working for him, he was all excited. So, that's kind of like how I started and then it just kind of took off from there, a little bit a little bit and I worked on it as I went through the semester. But you're asking about like retail; well, that's where I started. Two years - I think it was two years later... A year and a half or two later, I had a buddy of mine come to me and he's like "bro, I want to partner with you and like make this big".   OK.   I was like "alright dude", because I literally by that time, every night, I had one or two people coming by and I was fixing stuff for them and I literally had my own home office, like all this stuff, all this tech -   Boxes everywhere.   Yeah, it was bad, like it was his total mancave, like just stuff everywhere. And something like you know what, yeah totally. Like he was an awesome guy, I really respected him and we opened up a shop together and had a - while going to college, had our own like retail store and sure enough, we were fixing phones, we were selling phones, we were selling different things.   How did that feel?   Dude, it was awesome man! It was amazing! There's no better feeling than walking into your own business like -   Yeah, I bet, yeah for sure.   Dude, I mean like I built this you know.   Yeah and you were younger too right?   Yeah.   So, it must have felt like you're the man.   Exactly yeah. Honestly like I got out of it like four years ago. I think it was like four years ago. Yeah, so I haven't been out of it for too long but yeah.   Really cool.   That's kind of like how I got started and how I kind of got into it a little bit.   And did you have like any desire, kind of hidden desire when you started apart from you know being a school project? Like what do you expect for it to be when you started? Or I guess what's the the drawing you had in your head?   Yeah, you know what, that's funny because I think a lot of people will like kind of dabble in something and start it and then do a few things and like, "uh, that's not really working as well" or you know, it's not going as far as I’d like it to be and they give up at that point. And for me I’m like "no, I’m gonna keep at this and I want to make it - I want to make it big enough to where I’m in my own place". And yeah, it took a year and a half ish to get there yeah, but I was going to school full-time at the same time. And when I first started, I was also like doing a part-time job on top of it, so I don't even know how I did it but I did.   That's awesome.   But like, my idea was, I want to make this something and I don't want to just start one business and then keep starting another one, another one and not get anywhere. I want to actually make it something where I can go with it. And I really enjoyed it, so yeah, that helped a lot too.   OK, yeah definitely and I’m assuming that when you started and you know, at that age and you have to - like you got like an actual place, like an actual store where people walked in and like - I’m assuming it's a lot of pressure too and like probably some like doubts, a lot of doubts coming, like kind of struggles with juggling with everything you're doing on the side. How did you deal with that?   That's a great question man. It was definitely stressful times, it's definitely hard. Even in the beginning when I’m putting so much time into it and my wife's kind of wondering if it's gonna go anywhere farther and I’m like totally like it's gonna make it huge and I really don't know. But like, it definitely can be more of a stress than you can let it be. How do I rephrase that better? You can focus on the negative parts of it and we would address about it or you can plan out what you need to be getting done, what you need to have on hand for cash and kind of plan around it and we go around a lot of those stresses that you're gonna bring upon yourself if you don't. And so, honestly like the way I got around it is we knew what we needed, we knew what we could spend and we knew what we needed to put into marketing different things to go bigger. And so, that helped a lot but still, there was plenty of times where it's stressful but I loved the heck out of it doing it, you know, like it was just so fun that it almost took away a lot of that stress.   Yeah, for sure. So it seems like you had a game plan already. Like you had an idea how it would work, you knew where you wanted to take it. Like how far the reality was from that game plan though?   Oh dude [Laughter], you know what's funny, us entrepreneurs, a lot of times we'll kind of think of something like "I can accomplish this in this amount of time". I feel like every time I say that, it's never ever anywhere close to that. And you know, actually I was listening to Grant Cardone the other day, and he's like "guys, you need to like 10x that time a lot of the times". Like you need to pull the plan for being able to like stay in business for 10 times longer than what you think, you're gonna be getting return on investment.   Totally.   And I totally believe it. Like it took us a lot longer to be revenue positive, like that good revenue positive after paying for the store, paying for the parts, paying for wages and salaries, that kind of stuff. It took us a while longer than we expected but we planned it out pretty well and we had to skim at first for a while. So, just make sure that you're not planning on - or like whatever time you think it's gonna take -   10x that.   Make sure you have a little bit of leeway on top of that. It's gonna help a ton and, that'll reduce the stress a lot for sure.   And I think like everybody can relate so much to that because - and business owners and entrepreneurs in general, like we want things to happen so fast, it is so frustrating to see I guess at the beginning how things actually take so much time, right?   Yeah.   And the little activities need to happen again and again and then again before it actually starts to form into something that you can see grow, right?   Yeah. And one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make too is they expect everybody else on their team to be just like them. To be like married to it as they are and it's just not gonna happen, like that's not the way the world works you know?   Yeah.   Yeah, you can you can do some different stuff there.   Was that one of the real first challenge that you faced?   You know what, funny enough, I didn't quite expect - I feel like I had seen it enough in other people, I knew that it wasn't quite like - it was more of a dream than reality for a lot of entrepreneurs to like hire somebody that's just gonna be awesome and amazing. And if you like - like my business partner was awesome, the guy that we had working for us, just like younger kid in college as well, he was awesome like we got lucky with him. But honestly, they're not gonna know nearly as much as you. They're not gonna be as invested and I understood that before then and so I think it helped a ton knowing that, hey, he's gonna be good but - or like he may be really good but honestly, you got to account for him not knowing nearly as much as you do.   Sure, yeah. I think definitely partnerships are hard but the expectations you have in people is actually - it is pretty insane I think for everybody. How do you adjust though? Like from this.   How do you adjust from like expectations of those around you?   Yeah, as a starter I guess. When you just start and you're I guess disappointed or just raging because it doesn't - people are not putting in the same amount of work as you do right?   Yeah, you know what's funny is um, I’ve always been a little bit more of a laid-back kind of chill guy and so I’ve - so that like for me, I knew not to go in with too many expectations. But you are gonna have those times where it's like "come on people", like "you seriously didn't catch this?" you know, like that's easy and it is easy to you. But like communication is huge. Other times it's a lack of the communications. A lot of times it's your own fault that that happened because you didn't put the time into training, you were too busy doing what you thought only you can do. I see that a lot of time with entrepreneurs like "oh, I’m like the best at this, nobody else can do like I can". Actually like yeah.   Actually a lot of people can.   Yeah, people can take things off your plate that you didn't think they could but [Inaudible] that way. And honestly like the biggest thing that I saw too was showing - in a way like showing the gratitude for what they're doing. Because a lot of times, I’ve seen it happen so many times with entrepreneurs, like they're always upset with everybody that they work with because nobody's doing what they wanted them to do or is working as hard as they wanted them to and so they're just mad about it. Well like, first off when you understand like their expectations, it's different but when you work with them, you communicate and you're like being grateful for what they are doing, it changes the whole scene. Now they don't see you as a dictator, they see you as like somebody they can actually work with. And then a lot of times they're happier, which means they get more done too. But too many entrepreneurs are just stressed out of their minds stressing about everything else that's going on instead of thinking about what's actually going good for them.   Yeah, that's a great point. And just for context, at this point, so you were in business for four years, about four years you said?   I stopped about four years - I think it was four years ago. It's like three or four years ago. I had been in business at about a year and a half before we got the store and then we had it for about a year after that before I sold it.   So, the ending is you sold it though. OK, well let's not spoil it though, we will be getting there. But you know what I’m curious about... And this is a very selfish interview by the way, like I’m really trying to just get in your head and trying to figure out exactly like what happened, how it felt and all of this. And all the questions I ask is just... I’m really trying to put some traits around the person, right?   Yeah.   And I’m sure around the experience as well like, when you got the store, I’m assuming it's when things picked up a bit or the good stuff which is that stuff right? Like are there any challenges that you faced that you actually didn't expect at all that would ever be a thing?   You know um, plenty actually.   Oh, I thought.   I thought that it would be easier to stock the retail place, well, buy inventory in the first place and holy cow, it was a huge investment upfront just for the inventory that we did get and then the management system, trying to manage what you've sold and how to like reorder, I thought that would be a lot easier, keeping track of everything and then also like the stock that I had in the back, like the parts, I will tell you, I learned a ton about what not to do.   [Inaudible] too.   Yeah, like there's a ton of small parts, we had way too many of some stuff and then not enough of other things and one thing that I did that I - oh, I really wish I would not have done this but I did it because I thought it was smart at the time; every time we'd get like a new phone like screen or you know, like a new phone would come in that had parts that we didn't have on hand, I would order two of them. So I would price it so that I could buy two parts and my money on the sale. So like, I wanted to make a little bit of money and be able to pay for two parts. So that means, after I would fix the phone, I’d make a little bit of money and I’d have an extra part still in hand. Smart right?   Totally.   Now [Laughter] dude, I had so many stupid parts in there that I didn't use for months dude, and they were just lying on the shelf and like just depreciating in value, just going down and going down and going down. And then you don't want to turn around and resell it because that takes a lot of time to like get all the pictures, like you know, type out the listings, put them on like eBay or wherever it's at and then try to resell. And then you got to ship it out, like that's just annoying. And so, I had all of these parts that were just like garbage essentially at the end. And what I didn't realize was most people were okay with waiting in a few days for the part come in. Like "hey, you have a specialty phone, we don't have the part in here, I will order it right now, let's get you to pay for it and then it'll be here in a few days, I’ll give you a call".   Right.   Holy cow! When we started like - you know what's funny, the - I probably shouldn't go too far but the guy I sold it to, I ended up - we like kind of sold it to and I like transitioned into working for him, to like become a general manager and like [Inaudible] and like help him open up more. So it's kind of - yeah, it's interesting but I learned a lot from that too, that was definitely a learning experience. But like his system, when I saw it, I was like "bro, this is way better than the system I had". Like, they didn't buy any extra stupid parts, they knew like "okay, keep this mini [sp] on hand of this this this this and this" and I’m like - just like "oh, maybe I need yeah, to -". Well, back when I was running on myself, you know I’m like, "oh, maybe I should just buy a few more because that's probably what I need to have on hand", but when I sold out, it was like "wow, this is so much more simplified, so much better", and the profits were way higher because of it.   For sure yeah. And it makes total sense that I guess, looking backwards you think or you need to look at what the sales actually or what people in majority need and that's what you need to invest more in and the rest is like, "I’m sure they can wait a bit".   Yeah, exactly. But I was just trying to stock up so I could have stuff in stock for them and then just that I am -   How did you deal with like splitting budget? Did you find like finding customer was an easy thing for you or like did you invest a lot for acquiring customers?   Well, I mean, initially I put some money into ads and it was more of like that local marketing using those text messages. I think I did some Google Ad words and I was like "this is dumb, I’m just wasting money", which is kind of - for local businesses a lot of times it is you know?   Yeah, for sure.   And then what's funny is that it grew pretty fast actually by word-of-mouth. But not just that, like I had a strategy for getting more word-of-mouth, like -   Okay, viral.   In a way yes, so we would do competitions. We would actually - they have people post like their pictures of their broken phone and see like who had the worst phone and then like get as many people as you can to like it and the one with the most likes wins. And so we'd have people just flooding into our Facebook group, going crazy, dropping all these things because they want a free fix. We told them the winner gets a free phone repair.   That is brilliant.   And you know what's funny it's like we had a Facebook group and I think I have like a hundred people in there and we did one competition and at the end of it, we had like 800 people on it. Like it was just damn! Like instantly you know.   How to get all the students in one spot, right?   Yeah, exactly. And then like it spread too and then people were like "bro, check out this phone, like it's totally demolished", you know, and so like it was fun to see. So that was like one thing that we would do. We'd pay in the parts but honestly it was like, it was really cheap because - I mean, granted we lost out on a sale but who knows if they would have actually came in and got it repaired themselves. But then other people that had broken phones knew where to go now, so that's cool but then - so that was one of our kind of strategies that we'd do. And then another one that I do that was my favorite was - I was kind of a little bit of like the monopoly in town. First off because people like - I knew a lot of like kind of the bigwigs in the town because I had worked around it pretty good and so I had become friends with a lot of them. And it's like new people would come in, they'd be like "don't go to that guy, this is your dude, this is the guy you need to go to". So, I kind of had that reputation as well which was cool, but the most favorite thing I do, that really worked very well is I would literally walk into Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, all of like the cell phone places, all the cell phone stores that - like the computer place, whatever it maybe, that were around me, I’d walk in with like a 12-pack of Mountain Dew, a 12-pack of dr. Pepper and like another 12-pack of coke you know and I’d be like "well yo, what's up guys! Hey, I got some like - I just thought I’d come over introduce myself, I got some pop for you guys, I ordered some pizza, like hopefully you guys didn't eat yet, like I got some pizza for you guys for lunch. Just wanted to come and introduce myself and give you guys some snacks since there's some pop and some Pizza and stuff and if you guys ever got anybody that's got a broken phone you wanna - if you need somewhere to send them, like I’d love to help out, so I’m just kind of here for you but here's some pop, here's all this" and like I’d be friends with all these guys.   That is smart, yeah.   And then, they're like "holy cow, this dude is bringing us like pop, soda, like pizza like -" and I did parties too. Like I’d bring them all in and like - yeah just you know, whatever. And pretty soon, like that one move, I had every store in town referring to me and like me only and they loved me because I gave them like what they wanted. You know, it's cheap bro. Like some pizza and pop, I’d spend like 30 bucks maybe you know.   Yeah.   And then now all of them are sending all their traffic over to me. And dude, that actually blew us up pretty quick which is pretty sweet.   Yeah, I guess you figured out quickly where to go to get the biggest return on investment right?   Exactly, yes.   Because, I mean, this compared to bidding on keywords one by one click, I mean, that is definitely something.   There's no personality in keywords man. Like there's no personality.   And you're a local business.   Yeah. Now, online it's different and I still don't believe in Adwords I’m gonna say for online stuff but you have to have the publishing part and attractive character part for what you're doing and that's the key.   And that's actually a great point. In the new world of entrepreneurship online, we talk a lot about those things, but it's actually true for offline too. I mean, you are the attractive character online or offline, in real life like we actually don't think about this but you are.   It's true. And a lot of online strategies like the Dream 100 that I was doing for these stores around me, a lot of those online strategy you can use as well for -   And Dream 100 is, to give a bit of context, it's definitely something we actually will touch on a lot in this podcast. But essentially it's playing around with influencers in your space. And if you're a local business, it's got to be the other businesses around you. It's got to be the people who knows your customer, they don't necessarily are competitors. It can be a lot of different types, schools - I mean, we'll talk a lot more about this. This is really powerful stuff.   Huge, huge. That made my business, yeah.   Yeah, that's what fueled your business and that's what I guess allowed you to make mistakes with ordering too many parts.   Yeah exactly. I tracked that, I’d ask people "how did you hear about us?" and a lot of times it was "oh, it's down at the Verizon store and they were like; you gotta go to this dude. It's a modern firm, it's the best", so yeah.   That's actually so interesting and I’m thinking of a lot of questions that are actually are a little bit of ahead of this thing. So, I’m sure we'll come back a bit to this because this is so interesting. But one other thing I think - every time I talk to business owners, at one point in the conversation, they tell me about something that drives them nuts. And I find it just hilarious because - in fact, when you deal with people a lot, you've got to be like droven nuts so many times and I wonder what it was for you or for your partners. Something that drove you nuts.   You know what's funny is um, there's just always something specific in each industry that people do repeatedly that's like "why? How do you not get this?". You know what's funny for me, like it kind of drove me nuts but I also like laughed at it at the same time, I don't know how many people would come in and literally be like "I don't know what's wrong on my phone, it just died. Like it's dead. Like it won't do anything." and I’m like "oh, that's really interesting, let me look at it." and I would literally like plug it in and turn on, like literally. People would come in or I do a hard reset which is literally like - most people know how to do that, you just hold down like the home button and the top button and that resets it. And I would do that like multiple times a day almost. Like it was sad how many times I would have to do that. Like people who come in and then for like a lot of the Android phones, like it just died. I’d pull the battery out and put it back in and turn it on like all the time. And so like people come in you're like "great, another customer!". Nope, they just don’t know how to use their phone.   Yeah and you know what's funny is that it's totally the friendly neighbor type of thing to do you know?   Oh yeah.   Because for many people, I mean business is built the community we live in right? Through our neighbors and you've got to play that game too, right?   Yeah.   It's part of building a nice place we all live in.   Yap. And you know what's funny is some people will try to capitalize on that. And they'll be like "oh yes, what's wrong with your phone?" or whatever, like "let me go look at it. Oh, that's like 50 bucks", for like me having to [Inaudible] or whatever. And sometimes like I’d clean out the port, like the charging port because they have lint in there and they didn't realize that it wasn't going all the way. That happened a lot and so I could clean it out and I’d plug it in and they're like "oh, you fixed it!" like "holy cow!". And they'd ask me like how much do I owe you and I’m like "oh no, don't worry about it", like I didn't do anything. You know like "don't worry about it" like "you're good to go. If you need anything else let me know". I don't know how many times people would be like "yo, someone told me like you know how to take care of stuff really well and like they loved it when they came in and you helped them out, so like I needed to come over this place and like see you". So it definitely pays back I feel like. For me it did a lot because people knew that I wasn't there to just sell them or make money off of them. Like I didn't see them as a dollar sign, I saw him as an actual person that I wanted to help, so yeah.   Yeah. No, totally yeah. Do you feel like - after these three years I guess of business, do you feel like you achieved what you wanted when you got started?   Yeah actually. I have achieved - well, since then, I’ve achieved more than I - when I first started, I was kind of limited on what I could see because I didn't understand the whole lot of the online world, I didn't understand a whole lot of that. I guess I wouldn't say I’ve achieved what I was dreaming about totally, but I’ve accomplished - I feel like a more than I was even expecting to you in a way. It's a fun road, I really enjoyed it.   That's awesome.   I honestly didn't think I’d have an actual store within a year and a half. I thought I’d take longer than that, so yeah.   And I loved about what Steve Jobs says when he says that "you can only connect the dot backwards" and I’m sure - and it's some of the questions I totally want to ask. It's about like, now that you connect the dots, you know what I mean, like you've been through it once and I’m sure you have a ton of things that pops in your mind when you talk about those stories you're thinking like "oh dude, I could have done this or I should have done like this right from the beginning". Those are some questions I want to get to but first, I want to understand, why did you stop or why did you get out of retail, what happened?   You know what's funny is um, I started listening to this dude named Russell Brunson and it was my dream to go online. And what's funny is I actually sold the company in hopes of starting it online, like business part. So, what's funny is, I don't know if you actually even know this but I had met Steven Larson just like months before I was going through like the sell and transitioning over to working with him.   Oh yeah.   Just a few months before that even happened, and what's funny is like, we were talking one day, we would talk a lot just on marketing stuff, I’m like "this guy actually gets it, I love it". And one day I was like "bro, do this guy named Russell Brunson?" and he was like "dude, you know who Russell Brunson is?" like "yeah I know who Russell Brunson is". And he's like "nobody knows who Russell Brunson is". This was before ClickFunnels you know.   Yeah.   So, nobody really - like yeah, he had a following but nobody around me knew who he was in college. It just wasn't a thing then. And so, we had gotten - like we were talking and I really wanted to start a smartphone insurance, like an online website for that and I had been talking to him and he's like - it's funny, we were sitting down in his living room one day and we're talking and I know Steve like... And in college, there's so many opportunities and so many things and so many people trying to get you to like selling you on doing something with them you know?   For sure.   And I was like "bro, you have like a talent for online stuff that I don't have yet" like I’m working on it you know. And I was like "let me tell you about this business". Yeah, it's not like - it's funny, a lot of people think they're just gonna - like people will steal your business idea, you know, like -   I know right, yeah.   A lot of times you're the expert that they would need in order to accomplish it, to pull it off. It doesn't happen like that, you know. And so I’m like, "let me tell you about this idea that I have"... And so I kind of ran him through it and I was telling him about like how I wanted to partner with repair stores across the U.S. but have it all online and it would just work online, I would never have any stock, I wouldn't have anything, it would all be taken care of locally. And so, he was like "bro, this is awesome". And yeah, so we actually started that. That was like our first funnel ever. Like Steve's first funnel ever, just like ClickFunnels itself.   That is awesome.   Yes. That was my hopes, was to blow that up, make it huge, we like broke even and that's cool. We just like shut it down yeah.   Well and it makes total sense when you think about like a repair store, I was thinking like a lot of the challenges I guess in retail is like having recurring customers and putting somebody on a continuity program, like insurance for phone repair, like this is pretty freaking cool.   It is, yeah, great idea, I loved it.   But yeah, I’m happy you mentioned Russell Brunson actually. In the second episode of this podcast, I mention Russell Brunson and the thing he talks about which is " Amateurs focus on the front end and professionals focus on the back end", right?   Yeah.   And he tells the story of the group on citysmart.com and the vacuum cleaner guy who had this ad on CitySmart and who complained about it working pootie because he didn't make any money.   Yeah, I don’t remember this one that much.   And it's such an amazing story because it's basically telling about how a lot in business, we think everything we do to acquire customers is the final result, but really the dude probably had to 150 leads from there. Russell Brunson and his wife was one of the leads -   Oh wow!   And he hired him like seven times after that. And the guy was complaining about how it was a waste of time and money to do that ad. But really, what was fueling his business was literally all the backend of all those people who came in right? Through that offer. And I have a feeling in brick-and-mortar businesses, it's huge right? And we always see like the holiday sales and those stuff and - they're made to bring people in but if you think about repair stores, one of the following problems people gonna have is, it's gonna happen again. And it can be as small as my little like charger thing is broken and you just need to clean it, right?   Yeah.   And I’m just bringing this up because, first I like to bridge the fact that you've brought in Russell Brunson and Steve Larsen and that's awesome, I love it and I think it brings a lot to think about when you have a local business and you can actually do stuff but they're solving some problems that people have when they come in in the first place right? But you can go further than just why they came in for.   Oh yeah.   And it's definitely really cool that that was your second business then.   Yeah, that's true, oh man. I wish it would have gone - well, we didn't know quite nearly as much as we do now back then but yeah, wish it would have gone a little better than it did but -   Yeah. No, for sure. And so um, this is really where the fun is for me, I’m really curious about this part because I know that - we know that you got out of the business but I’m very curious to see if you were to start again, what are some of the things you know you would do differently right away?   Ooh, interesting. If I were to restart the repair business?   Yes.   Not necessarily like a business but the repair business?   Yeah or a local business.   OK local yes. I actually would have built a lot more hype than I did. So if you follow Jeff Walker, he has a book called "Launch". If you follow him, if you read that book, it helps you understand how businesses do their Grand Openings the right way. Like it's more online but it totally applies for local as well. I wish I would have put way more emphasis and gone around and done the Dream 100 part with all those people a lot earlier than I did.   And start a Fire Festival.   [Laughter] Not that much. I would make sure that I had things lined up. Oh, that's funny dude. Yeah that was pretty sad. Anyway, so yeah, I totally would have built that more of like the launch of the business, like the opening of it. That way when it comes in, I would have had a more of a solid foundation for like just customers in general coming in and knowing about me. I would have done a lot more ads, different things locally as well to kind of push it. But then, also I wish I would have researched a little bit more about like how inventory, like kind of like figure it out right. Like how to not only manage it but like -   Leverage it.   Yeah, leverage it and know like - I wish I would have looked at other people's businesses that applied to mine more, so I’d have better ideas, better like kind of direction and know where I’m going. It's so funny like, you're saying Steve Jobs says you can always connect the dots backwards but you can't really connect them forward because you don't know where the heck you're going.   Of course yeah.   Well if you think about it, like I always - so there's a saying on the internet marketing world with like Russell and Steve, "get a coach, be a coach". Like you want to get a coach and part of like looking at those other people's businesses where they are at, it's almost like getting a coach and kind of seeing the dots that got them to where they're at. And if you can get a coach that's ahead of you, farther ahead of you, they can look backwards on those dots.   That's right, yeah.   You can look forward to where they're at so easily and so if you get their direction, they can say "hey, I’ve been at that same point that you're at, I can help you connect the dots to get to where I’m at".   Totally.   Instead of just me shooting from the hip trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing you know. I had kind of an idea of what to stock because I’d been doing it and I only really stock like the iphone parts before I started like the actual brick and mortar and I thought it was smart to stock more and that was a total just dumb idea really to do that. So, if I would have seen that, it would have helped me revenue a ton more and to be able to put more into, not inventory but more into marketing, more into growing the business. I was putting more into marketing or more into inventory than I was marketing and that's a huge mistake. So, I would have done a lot more marketing. I would have done a lot more because a lot of times, we have this like limiting - like mind - like belief that there's only so many customers out there, when in reality, there's way more than you even realize.   And so much applicable for when you're local.   Oh yeah, totally. They think "oh, I’m local, like it's small, like there's not a whole lot of people out there". There's a lot more than you think there are and if you can be that attractive character, like market the right way instead of just "hey, come buy it from me", like so much better.   Yeah. I totally need to put some resources, links for this interview because, I mean, you mentioned Jeff Walker and you're "Attractive Character" and all those stuff are just actually so relevant to building a business rather online or offline and it's big.   And I’m sure you've talked about Expert Secrets as part of like Active Character, that's -   Totally, Expert Secrets - dotcom Secrets is actually very interesting when you think about it because, it's supposedly the underground playbook for a business online but really, it is much more applicable also offline than we think.   I literally read that like right after I had sold the business which makes me mad but - that's right when it came out, I wish I had read it way before that.   Yeah. This is probably the one book that I had epiphany after epiphany after epiphany.   It's just straight gold bro.   Crazy.   Both of them.   Yeah. Rethink the whole business game um, super super interesting. I have a bunch of little questions, little rapid-fire question I’d love to ask you and yeah totally. So, one thing I guess could be... What is the piece of advice you have given the most or would give and why to business owners?   To business owners?   Entrepreneurs, yeah.   Man, I feel like I’ve given so many different ones. Thinking on the context of this interview though, honestly kind of what I just said a little bit earlier is find those who are successful and model them. Don't try to reinvent the wheel, find somebody who's been on the path that you want to go on. I guess that's actually pretty much what I preach on like my podcast. I try to give people information on there about experts in certain areas of business so that they know who to go to and I think that’s key because like I said, the coach. Like they know, they've seen the path. You have no idea, you're just one foot at a time trying to get there and so, I’d totally say find somebody who's super successful in it, figure out why and try to model it.   Totally and that's pretty much what happened when you got - I guess when you sold the business in; you had somebody who came in with more experience and showed you ways to do that, you didn't think about right?   Yeah exactly. I had no idea then when I saw it was like "what the heck have I been doing?" like, "you know how much better this would have been?" like "oh man!".   You could have sold this business for twice more.   I know, right? Like I honestly did not make like very much at all on that sell and it was a very big learning experience, so I’ll just say that.   That's awesome.   Learn from your experiences, that's what I would say.   Yeah, for sure. Any bad recommendations you had in your profession or industry?   Ooh! Any bad - you know what's funny to me um, I’ll tell this in a little bit of story. So, as I was in college, I actually was literally going to school in business, my degree was in business management and my emphasis was in entrepreneurship. So I was literally going to be an entrepreneur. Which is kind of funny because college isn’t really like entrepreneurial focused... I don't know. I learned a lot, I didn't learn like a ton of the marketing skills that are out there now. But what's funny is people would ask me, they'd be like "hey, what's your name?" "I’m Colton", whatever or like "where're you from?", you know, all those questions, and then they'd be like "well, what's your degree? What are you going into?" and I’d be like "Oh, business management." and they're like "oh yeah, like what's your emphasis?", "well, entrepreneurship". And dude, I don't know how many times they would look at me and be like "entrepreneurship? Like really?" and I’d kind of get that like look like "oh man, I’m so sorry for you right now". Kind of like the pity look, like "oh, you got to entrepreneurship, like that's kind of suck" you know. And they would literally like - they would - no joke, they would say this to my face. They'd be like "oh, don't they're like 90% of businesses fail?" and I’m like "you're seriously telling me this right now? Like you don’t think I know that", like huh, you know? And honestly if you look at the numbers, 90% of them are like some mom and dad that just started a business for their house or whatever like - and then they shut it down. So there's a ton of the little startups that people are dreaming and then don't really work at it. But at first it like bugged me, you know. I’m like "holy cow! They're right. Like 90% of businesses fail. Like what am I doing? Like I only got a 10% chance and then like a 1% that ever make it past like the million". And so like that got to me at first and then, I remember one day I was thinking about it, I was like "wait a second, I would way rather be at the top and know when the business is gonna fail". But then, literally what I would say back to people and I loved it, I loved saying this, I don't know why like I just - because man, nobody ever thinks about like the next thing. They always think "oh well, based on what I known and the statistic, 90% of businesses fail", right. They never think about like what that means for them, they just know they want to give you the advice. And so, I would literally look at them and be like "oh, don't you know you're gonna be working for one of those 90%?". Like dude, like do you not - like what do you - you will work for a business. If you get a job, it's a business and if you say 90% of them fail, that's no different for me and you, like it's no different.   [Crosstalk] chance you lose your job.   Yeah, and like, I would way rather be at the top because it's a pyramid, I would way rather be at the top and know when it's going down and have the choice to change it and try to get it from not failing or knowing when to get out, you know what I mean?     Dude, this is awesome.   And like [Crosstalk] on top of it, so yeah.   This is awesome. So a bad recommendation you got was, don't do it?   Yeah, a lot of people are like "no, like you can't do that, like businesses fail" and I’m like "obviously not all of them" like people have - there have to be entrepreneurs for there to be businesses in the world. I mean, we wouldn't have any businesses if people were too scared to even start one. But there's gonna be so many people that are just gonna say "oh well, I know based on these numbers or my cousin who has no idea what he's doing in the business, I know that it doesn't work, so you should -". So, don't listen to people. If they haven't done it or if they're not making a ton of money and they're very respected, I would not listen to them because you can get the poor mentality a lot.   Yeah, totally agreed. And I mean, I couldn't agree more. I mean, this podcast is really about talking to the people who do their work and not the rest and there is a lot of content out there.   Oh yeah, there's a ton and you're gonna get told a lot of stuff that - yeah. Find somebody who's actually doing it yeah, making it.   For sure. I know, I find myself a lot of time in situations when I get super overwhelmed and when I get overwhelmed and unfocused, I get nothing done and that makes me really sad. What's some of the thing you do when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost focus? Like what do you do to get it back or I get reset?   So, there's a few hacks that I have. It still happens, there's still days when I can't like get past it, yeah totally. Everybody's gonna have those days, you're human. There's a few hacks though; we listen to a ton of music because music - you know what's funny, I just wrote this quote down actually "all learning is state dependent" and I think all work is also state dependent. Even just slouching back in your chair and like kind of uh... You're naturally like kind of have - it's almost like the endorphins are released for like - not endorphins but like the chemicals are released for - like I need to get tired because I’m like slouching but when you've got high energy music going on, a lot of time we listen to higher beat music that keeps us going. A lot of it is what you eat as well; if you're eating some crappy stuff during the day... I feel like crap after I eat a pizza, you know like - it's natural. But one thing that me and Steve do every day that's kind of interesting is every morning we drink ketones, so there's like keto supplements out there. So we literally every morning drink ketones and we try not to eat until like noonish and then we have more of like a balanced meal because I don't know how many times - back in the day when I was in like high school, like "oh, I’m gonna go grab a pizza for lunch" you know, like eat the whole thing, I’m OK, and then I’m like just dragging afterwards, like dying because my insulin is getting pumped out like crazy and like my whole body's shutting down because my stomach needs all the blood flow. You know what I mean?   Yeah, totally.   That's like one of the biggest like hacks we do is making sure that you're not putting yourself in the situations that's gonna cause the energy drop.   Yeah, totally. Prevent instead of repair, right?   Exactly man, that's true, so yeah, totally.   It makes sense. What's the thing you love to go buy from the store directly? What's the one thing you like to go buy from the store? You know, I’m not as long as big, but what do you still go do and you love, you know, that thing is your thing, you love to buy it there.   Oh that's interesting, that's a good question. This is kind of bad, I had to like stop this for a while but literally like I love switching it up and changing, like mundane everything's the same kind of day it is, driving me nuts, so I love to switch it up every now and then and it feel like really diving and we can't get it to stay back up. I’ll head to the convenience store or whatever and just like get out and get some Sun or whatever it maybe. Hopefully my total crush, like my kryptonite is really like I pick up like an energy drink a lot of the times.   Dude, that's awesome.   You know a lot of times, I don't feel like caffeine actually affects me that much. I do drink a little bit of it, so maybe that's why it doesn't affect me because I drink a lot it anyway, but I just - for some reason, that's my - and don't get sugared ones, this is sugar free, 100% like you know.   Right, yeah.   I just will go pick up something to drink, that's not super bad for you even though it would save energies for you which I totally - actually I agree in a way.   No, but I get it.   That was the best I found.   Yeah, that's awesome. What's Coulton up to?   What I’m I up too?   Yeah.   Dude, a lot of things right now. So, as I kind of mentioned earlier, me and Stephen Larsen worked together, we did this stuff. It is funny that we met in college, split up and then came back together. Yeah, so right now honestly like I do a lot of the operations part for Stephen on his side of business. I run a lot of the - we have a whole nother side that teaches MLM [Inaudible] actually do it without bugging their friends and family, how to actually market. I manage like all of that, the group, like I do the lives in there, I do all that stuff. And then honestly, other than that, like I have my own podcast that I keep doing. I’m trying to start a second one which I don't even know I’m gonna have the time for it but I’m doing it.   Yeah, that's awesome. Well, look, because you guys pushed me to start so much, I’ll say you should start it too, the second one.   Yeah. I’ve already got a bunch of the content, like recording and getting it together, so I’m excited about it.   That is great, yeah. OK, so the next big thing is the podcast coming up soon?   Yeah.   Cool. And what is the impact that you would love to have in this world or in your neighborhood?   That's actually funny because I’ve been trying to get clear and clear on that and I think one of the biggest - one of the things that drives me, that I would love to have an impact on is literally helping - not helping but showing the beginners, a lot of the people who are getting started online, that they're really the person that's in the way and helping them understand - it's hard to say this because I don't want to get into mindset stuff too much but like, you dictate how you're gonna end up going. Like you're - what you believe you can accomplish has a lot to do with what you actually accomplish. And so, if I can help people get past their own crap and like understand how much they can actually do and actually accomplish, that would mean a ton to me, to help people go farther than they think they can.   Totally. And that's something you already do, so that's great that you get to do it more and more and I’m sure you'll be able to help a ton more people.   Dude, I hope so, I hope so yeah.   What's a good place people can find more about you?   You can find me on Instagram and my name's super weird, not super weird but it spelled different so it's Coulton, it's C-O-U-L-T-O-N. A lot of people drop the "U" and in fact, a lot of times they even spell it without the "U" because people like you don’t want to have the conversation every time I say my name. So you can find me on Instagram, it's Coulton.woods, my podcast is "Learning From the Experts, find me on Facebook", wherever you know, like I’m pretty available on a lot of the social platforms there.   Awesome. And I’ll definitely drop some links and the transcripts, the blog post for this episode so that people can actually find the stuff without the "U" and yeah, totally.   Yeah, don’t forget the "U".   Don’t forget the "U". Thanks so much man for showing up on this interview, it was a blast and I’m happy I finally got to hear the story of Coulton.   You didn't know I was in retail at all, did ya?   I didn’t know.   Uhh, it's funny. It's all good dude, no worries. I’m glad we got to meet up a little more and yeah.

Okay. I am seriously going to skip the intro. Yes, it's another episode, but I'm choosing to skip, the intro because I'm dying right now. It is literally 2:00 in the morning and I just spent the past hour reading through this book that I just got a couple of weeks ago and finally picked it up tonight, which was a bad idea to pick it up at midnight pretty much, or I guess one o'clock but I'm dying right now. I'm like, holy cow. I don't know if it's just because it's late, but I got to tell you about it. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through, want to be experts who've never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me a hundred times faster than learning it on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from an interview, real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods, and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. What's going on guys. So, backstory. I went to Jeff Walker's product launch formula event, right. And as we were sitting there, a few rows back from the front, we were just paying attention, watching the event, hanging out me and Steve trying to figure out how everything's going with them, how they're running it. And Pretty Soon Jeff Walker has us turn around and talk to people around us and get to know them and what they're doing. Well, it turns out that Stephen starts talking to the guy in front of us and his name is Jack Turk. And if you know who Jack Turk is, you'll know exactly where I'm going with this. But, his name is Jack Turk. I actually didn't know who he was at all. He writes for, I don't know if I can even really say who he ghost writes for, but he's, he's like a legend, a legendary ghost writer. He ghost writed for a really big person that I probably can't even name, I don't even know if it's legal or not, but he is very huge in the online marketing space. Anyway, so we got talking to him and he's like, yeah, I ghost wrote all these books, all this sales copy, all of these different offers, you name it, for this one really huge person. So that kind of intrigued us a bit and he's like, yeah, I totally know exactly what you do Stephen. Like, I know your industry and what you teach so well, cause I've literally written books on it myself for other people. And if you don't know what a ghost writer is, it's a writer for a certain individual. Like if Steven got somebody to write a book for him, but not giving that person the credit for the book, that would be a ghost writer. So essentially they'll come in and say, Hey, I know your stuff, or give me access to all your stuff. I will write a book on your stuff. That will sound exactly like it's coming from you. So it's almost like they wrote their own book, but somebody just kind of helped put it together for them and write it. So he's a ghost writer and he was like, Hey, I'd love to write some stuff for you. So that was pretty awesome actually, especially since he's been writing for some really huge people, which is crazy. But anyway, so we're sitting in an event and he actually had his own book, on the chair below him. And before we even met him and talked to him, I saw sitting on the ground and I was like, that actually looks like a book that I would really like. So I told a few of them, like, I actually took a picture of it, literally took a picture of it like right there beneath this chair so that I could remember like, you know, look it up on Google or Amazon and buy it and get it shipped to my house so I could check it out. It was funny. I was like telling Steve, dude, like I want that book. And he's like, no way. I saw it too. Now I want it as well. So we totally bought a couple of copies for us. And also it was kind of just to say that to the guy like, hey, we bought a couple of copies of your book. It looked pretty interesting so we thought we'd buy a couple. And he's like, oh sweet, I'm glad. It's hope you guys really enjoy it. So I've had it sitting on my desk for the past couple of weeks since the event, cause literally the day you get back from the event, Amazon's got it at your door. So it's pretty quick stuff. Right, man, anyway, I could feel a side rant coming on, but I'm not going to go there. So it's been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks and I finally picked it up tonight and I was kind of getting tired and I was like, I'll probably go to bed here soon. It is one o'clock in the morning. And I was like, you know, I'm going to look at that real quick and kind of see what it's about. And I literally opened it up and the first couple pages I started just reading through it and I was like, what the, this is freaking gold. This is like everything that I've seen even Russell and Steve Teaching things, but in copy, just laid out. It's super easy to go through and read and get what you need from it. So pretty soon I realize I'm on like page 90, there's only like 123 pages in the whole book. So it's not very much, but I'm on like page 90 and I'm like, holy cow, this is just straight gold. Obviously I'm kind of skimming through some of it and then reading pretty good on heavily on some parts of it, but I'm just diving in right now. I cannot believe how much is given in here. And I can tell that he's been writing for some really huge people by the way, that he literally has written this and how easy it is to just see it. But then also like the straight up just golden nuggets on every freaking page. If you guys are writing anything with sales copy, if you guys are writing ads for any kind of ad platform, it doesn't matter, anything on your website. literally, if you're creating mailers, I remember I saw something in there about creating or writing an actual Mailer, sales copy for the mailer, the mailer itself. Hopefully I'm saying that right. It is two o'clock in the morning. So if I slur my words, I'm sorry. So if you guys do any kind of writing for sales on any level of that, you need to get this book, you need to figure out who this guy is. I'll drop you the headline of the book cause I know you're probably dying. I hope you're dying because you should go buy it right now. In fact, let me actually pull it up on Amazon. I want to see how much it is so you can even know how much it's going to cost you on Amazon. let's see here, it's called the "101 fast, good cheap hacks to writing a killer sales letter" it's pretty awesome. I can't, I just can't believe it's $14.95 paper back and you get it in two days, which is awesome. So if you guys write any kind of copy, if you write anything on websites, if you do any kind of, even just social media posting, whatever it may be, I cannot believe how easily this is laid out. I mean it's 101 like hacks to writing a killer sales letter and it literally is on this page it's hack number seven, you know, and then the title of it, it's like hack number seven, make it so good It hurts. And he talks a lot about offers in here and different parts of the offer and the sales copy with it. Oh Man. Anyway, I know I could probably go on forever just talking about, not even really talking about what it say it says, but okay, check this out. Here's one, hack number 45, use the right words and headlines. This is really interesting. He says, make sure your copy uses the top 10 money making words you should use in your headlines, John Capitals, hopefully I said that right, who was head of the third largest AD agency in the US for 40 years. If that doesn't say something, I don't know What doesn't, the most commonly used words in 100 successful headlines. Here's what he found. You want to use the word "you". Okay. Okay. So in 100 successful headlines, here are the words, the top, words used in those headlines. Man. Hopefully that makes sense. So I'll list off the top 10 words used in those headlines. So the word "you" was used 31 times the word "your" was, so "why", "oh", "you" "are" "your" was views a 14 times how 12 times and new 10 times who? Eight times money, six times now, four times people, four times want four times. And why four times. I never would have guessed that you your how new who money now people was or Wasn’t. And why would be the top 10 money making words that you should be using in your headline? That almost sounds too simple stupid to be true, but it actually makes sense when you look at it. So the most common words of course were you and your, it should be obvious, when you're writing to sell. The biggest mistake most often made is to focus on we and I. I Looked through the Valpak ads you get in the mail, how many times do you see ads? They only tell their story. Do you care? Me Neither. Using the right words is critical to making a sales letter do their job. I saw that one. It was like what? That's so stupid, simple and easy, but it makes so much sense. Like how many people were writing like, oh, we have 30 years of experience in business. Who the freak cares, they want to know about how you are going to help them, not the fact that you have all this great, awesome, cool experience stuff like no, instead of saying that, twists around and say something about how your experience is going to get them what they want anyway. So I know I've been going on this longer than I even expected to, but I just wanted to take a minute and drop this real quick. I don't even know how I didn't hear about this book before. It's probably super underrated. I don't even know when it was released. That would actually probably be a good, I don't think it would be it on Amazon, but that might be a good indication. Oh, Independently published November 12th, 2018. Oh well that makes sense. It just barely came out. This thing is going to go huge and you guys want to know about it right now. So I would say hurry up and get your copy, I wonder if he has a funnel for it, he's got to have a funnel. Anyway, if you find a funnel for it, let me know cause I'm totally going to go through here and yeah, figure out what he's doing. I'm going to find everything I can about him because every headline that he has written, I'm totally going to be getting ideas from and modeling. So that's just kind of what I wanted to drop on you guys today. Hopefully that is something that you guys like and something you want to hear. If you're into sales at all, if you're in anything business related, you should like that. If you have somebody that does your marketing for you in house than I would 100% say, get this book, have them go through it, use it. Often. I can already tell this is going to be like a Bible for sells copy. Anyway, that’s what I have for you tonight. I will let you go and I'm going to go to bed. Well, hopefully here soon. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learning from the experts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody. This is Coulton woods and you are listening to another episode of Learning From The Experts and today I actually want to respond to one of the reviews that was left on my podcast in iTunes. Someone asked a question on there and I thought, I'd respond. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wanna be experts who've never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me a hundred times faster than learning it on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from an interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. If you actually go look at one of the reviews on learning from the experts, one of them is by little pig 177. Just wanted to give you a quick shout out and say thanks for the review and thanks for asking a question there too. You asked the question and said maybe for an episode idea, you could talk about how successful people have tried and fail and how it's okay to fail as long as you keep trying until you've reached your goals and beyond. It's actually a really great question and something that needs to be addressed because so many people are afraid of failure and don't even start in their business or don't even get going because of the fear of failure. When I was running my repair store, I actually, I learned a lot from failure on that one. I essentially just took the bull by the horns and got started in the repair business, without even really known anything about it. I just started and I every time I failed, I literally had to find the solution myself and I didn't even know that there was that problem or that issue until I had failed at it. And then would Google the solution for it. And because I had failed and gone through that experience and then found the solution, I learned from it that much better and that much quicker. But what's really interesting is I had no idea how to run a business. I had no idea how to fix phones. I had no idea how to even, you know, do the whole brick and mortar thing until I just kind of got started. And as I overcame one obstacle or failure, I knew how to adjust for that in the future and not make the same failure. I continually had failure after failure until I had less because I knew certain things that I could do to correct my path or correct what I was doing. So I wouldn't have that failure again. I'll tell you what's interesting. A quote by Robert Herjavec, one of the sharks on shark tank says, "experience is your most valuable asset", which is actually kind of interesting to think about. Experience is your most valuable asset. Now, if you think about that, how do you gain experience? Obviously by doing something, by getting started, by just trying it out. You can't gain experience by just reading about something. It's kind of interesting if you think about like a marathon, you have to have a lot of experience behind you in running before you can accomplish a marathon. You can't sit on your butt, watch TV and learn about how to run a marathon the best way you know, and do nothing and then expect to be able to go and run the marathon. You have to have experience and you have to be doing things that are going to give you that experience that you need in order to be able to accomplish the marathon. So it's interesting to me that people think that they can learn all this stuff and just spend their time learning and that is the experience they need in order to be successful. Another interesting thought to me too, actually that just comes to mind is if you look at people who are successful, you typically look at them and say, oh well they're successful because of x, y, and Z. And I can never do that because I don't have x, y, and z. What's interesting to me is, are we born successful? Is Anybody born successful? Nobody's born successful. Nobody's born with just the genius of knowing everything that they know. It's not until they go through the experiences that they do in order to get to where they're at. Nobody is born with a following either. I mean, unless you're like the son of a king, or something, then obviously has a huge following or whatever may be already, but you still have to gain the following for yourself. So it's interesting to me that people will look at these big successful people and say, oh, well they are just successful because of they were given that stuff. Or, they just got lucky or whatever it may be. When in reality it's because they literally just started doing it, started going and as would gain experiences in fail, they would overcome those failures and gain more experience and become better at what they're doing. And if they hadn't had the experiences that they had, if they hadn't just started, they wouldn't be where they're at now. It's interesting to me that people think that you can just learn your way to success and that actually doesn't quite work. I'm back in school. So when I was going to college, I remember taking an entrepreneurial class and this is while I was running my business already and being successful in it and the teacher would be teaching certain things and students wouldn't understand it in the least bit. It just didn't make any sense to them. And to me, having had experience already, even though I didn't know exactly what some terms were for what I had been doing, I've had the experience already. I knew exactly what he's talking about and it made sense to me. Now, I can tell you right now, if I hadn't had those experiences or if I hadn't been already doing something that I could tie what I was learning to the experience, I would not have been able to learn it as much as I was. I wouldn't have internalized it. I would have literally listened to the teacher said, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then forgot about it because I hadn't actually experienced it. I hadn't actually done it. That happens to a lot of us. But the best thing you can do is fail and fail fast. You don't want to fail slow because that means you're going to be taking more time to be learning the things you need to in order to become better at what you're doing. So fail fast and get pushing towards it. Hopefully that helps you guys today. And those a little bit of a shorter one. But um, I'm trying to be a little better at making them a little bit shorter instead of these longer ones. But that's kind of the message. The thing that I wanted to talk about today. And honestly, failure is so essential to becoming successful. If you don't even start, you don't have the option to fail, which means you don't have the option to become successful. So yeah, there it is for you. Hope you guys enjoyed that. And if you have any reviews or questions, please leave a rating on the iTunes podcast. I'm on soundcloud as well. If you want to go there, or, Google play, different places, please feel free to leave some ratings, reviews, and if you've got any questions, go ahead and throw them on there too. That would be awesome. Thank you very much for listening. Are you looking to jump start your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.

What's going on guys hey this is Coulton Woods and you're listening to another episode of learning from the experts. And today I'm actually coming to you from Phoenix, Arizona. I'm sitting in the hotel room right now, actually brought my recording Mic with me so we can have it for some Facebook lives we were doing in our hack MLM group and helping a bunch of people in there. But anyway, so I brought my Mic and I wasn't planning on recording any episodes while I was here, but I have something that I want to share with you guys that I totally was just like, I have to share this because it 100% agrees with what I teach and my philosophy on learning from experts. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through, want to be experts who've never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me a hundred times faster than learning it on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from an interview, real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. I'm actually coming to you tonight because I wanted to go through something that I think is super key for everybody in all of your Business, whatever you do, whether it's online marketing, even if it's a brick and mortar, whatever it may be. I was just sitting on my hotel bed actually and I was working through some stuff on my laptop and I was like, holy cow, I gotta record this episode like right now and get it out to you guys. So that's what I'm doing. I'm recording it right now and getting it out to you and I hope you guys enjoy this, but I wanted to walk through something with you. So we are here at the product launch formula live event from Jeff Walker. And if you haven't read Jeff Walker's launch book, I highly suggest you do. So if you sell any kind of products and you want to really increase the revenue of your launch of any new products that you're putting out there, um, his strategies have worked for hundreds. I mean thousands. I should say thousands of companies, to actually launch their products successfully. So we are here because we want to hack his event essentially. So we're modeling after his own event, the event team that runs his event is one of the best and we really want to hire them and they're kind of not really giving us the time of day right now. So we are here to hack them essentially. So we can figure out the little things they do, the little isms here and there and how many people they have going here and what the structure is and how they frame everything. The registration tables, like everything down to the detail. We're here to figure out for our OfferMind event so that we can make it that much better. Just give it that extra little touch. But as I've always said, if you want to learn how to do it right, you go to the expert, you find out the person who is doing it right right now. That's what we're doing. We're following that model, the model that I've seen so many experts do. They find the expert that is the best, and they say, that's the person we need to go to. That's the person we need to hire. That's the person we need to figure out, to get the right stuff from them so that we can upgrade our business to the next level. So that's exactly what we're doing. That's such a huge hack, I mean, I don't feel like I really illustrated that well enough for you. But that's such a huge key to getting to the next level in whatever you're doing. If you guys haven't read launch by Jeff Walker, I highly suggest you do. He's helped thousands of people launch their businesses, and their products and be successful in it. He has a very good system for that. Steve's really good at launching all of his products as well. And he learned from Jeff Walker quite a while ago in the beginning and that's why he's good at what he does on the launch campaigns for his products because he learned from him in the beginning. So we're here to learn from him again and I'm like, I have to let everybody know what we're doing here and why we're doing it because you guys need to be doing the same thing. If you guys want to get to the next level, you need to find that expert, you need to find the person that's going to get you there. And look around, kind of check it out. And that's exactly why I interview people on the show and I'm really excited for the next interview that I'm going to be putting on here. I have recorded it already. I've got it all together. I'm actually going to do a launch. I wanted to come to Jeff Walker's launch event first so that I could get a little bit more of a deep dive into the launch campaign stuff so I can do a bit more of a launch for that episode and kind of Redo my podcast there cause I really haven't promoted this a ton yet. So I want to start promoting it and kind of do a little bit more of a launch with this. So that's one of the reasons why we're here. But I just wanted to go through that real quick, make it a little bit of a shorter episode for you guys today. If you need to get to the next level or if you know where you need to improve on to get to the next level, find the expert who has already done it, knows the path and can take you along that path to the right success or the right point that you want to get to.  And that's all I got for you guys today. Thank you so much for listening. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody, hey this is Colton woods and I want to welcome you to another episode of Learning From The Experts.   And today I want to talk to you about a couple of the secrets of success.   So here's the deal, I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wannabe experts who never actually help me in the end, then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning it on my own.   I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business.   My name is Colton woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. Awesome!   So, I’ve been reading a lot of books recently and I’ve been going through a lot of different materials and I'm starting to see a few different things that are the same in multiple different books about secrets to success.   Obviously there's a lot of different parts to success, there's a lot of different secrets there but a couple that I’ve been seen recently, I'd love to share those with you.   And one of those is actually - and you're gonna be like "this is really simple, like why is this a secret to success" but think about it.   One of them is literally to learn from your mistakes.   How many of us learn from our mistakes nowadays?   I feel like we're in such a very like failure driven - not failure but like, in our world today, failure is looked so down upon.   Failure is like the end of everything. Failure is - if you fail, you should be embarrassed, don't ever do that again, that obviously didn't work for you so why would you ever want to try it?   Just like I’ve said so many times to so many different people, just a story of when I was in college and I would tell other students that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.   I would tell them that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and they would just kind of look at me like I was stupid or like I was crazy for even wanting to be an entrepreneur in the first place.   And then the thing that they would say was "oh, well don't you know that 90% of businesses fail?" and I'm like "yeah, I get it, 90% of businesses fail, okay, like small businesses fail".   And at first, it used to really affect me but as I thought about it and kind of pondered on it, I'm like "you know what, that's stupid, that's hogwash".   I mean, 90% of businesses fail yeah, the majority of those are literally just people starting something where they never do anything with it and then obviously it fails because they didn't do anything with it, you know.   They just had an idea, they started a business and never actually took any action and so that's part of the number, you know, the 90%.   But as I started thinking about it, my response to those people became - whenever they would say "yeah, don't you know 90% of the businesses fail?", I would just respond and say "yeah, don't you know you'll be working for one of those?".   Like think about it guys, whatever you do, any profession you go into, you either own the business or you work for the business, that's it.   I mean, those are the two different ways you can go.   It doesn't matter what you're going to be doing in life, you will either work for a business or you will own a business or you'll be running the business.   Obviously there's a lot more risk involved in running the business but there's also a lot more reward.   Elon Musk said something about... "you get paid in comparison to the amount of problems or to the size of problems that you solve".   Obviously if you're running a business, you're going to be solving a lot more problems and bigger problems than if you're kind of just an employee doing mundane, everyday work stuff, you're not going to be solving very big problems, not getting paid as much because you're not solving those kind of problems that equal the pay that you're getting, that you're solving.   So, learn from your mistakes.   Like there's so many people that just are so driven now by failures.   As soon as they fail, they think that that's it, like I can't do that again. Instead of thinking, okay what can I learn from that failure? What can I take from it?   I see it so much in the world today and it drives me nuts, like people, if you fail, that's awesome, now you know one way not to do it, now you know something that didn't work, why did it not work? Think about it, look through it, figure out why it didn't work.   Thomas Edison gets quoted so many times on this and I’ve actually seen him in multiple books just even recently where people are talking about him and how he failed a thousand times and one of his associates, you know, after failing a thousand times trying to come up with the light bulb, the incandescent light bulb, after failing a thousand times, his associate asked him like "do you feel kind of like defeated, you know, do you feel sad that you've failed so many times or even disappointed that you failed so many times?".   His response, Thomas Edison's response was like "Are you kidding me, I haven't failed a thousand times, I've just learned how to not create a light bulb a thousand different times.   It's not about the failure; it's about what I learned from those failures.   And because now I know a thousand ways not to do it, I'm not going to redo those same things and try to make them work".   That is the definition of insanity. I mean, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.   Obviously Thomas Edison understood that part.   But as I was reading, I thought this was really cool actually and I want to kind of make sure I get this right.   As I was reading a part in the book called The Obstacle Is the Wayby Ryan Holiday, he was talking about Thomas Edison and he said...   Let's see here. "Including closer each time to the one that would finally work" - okay, so that probably doesn't make - there's like no context in there, my bad.   But he essentially said like, "eventually, he found a light bulb that worked" and then he said this afterwards, he said "proving that genius often really is just persistence in disguise", that kind of struck me, I was like "oh man, that's so - that is so gold, that's so key".   A lot of us think, "oh that person is a genius, they know so much.   I could never be them because of how genius they are or how good they are at what they do", but in reality, genius is often just persistence in disguise.   Meaning, that person is at that genius level to you because they pursued through the path.   They continued taking steps that got them to where they are now and they learned from their failures as they went along the way.   It is not bad to fail, in fact I say, fail often fail fast.   I mean, that's - you'll read that in so many different books and so many different experts will tell you the same thing; fail often fail fast and learn from it.   A lot of people forget the part to learn from it.   Seriously, like think about the things that you failed in your life and what you can learn from those instead of just like dwelling on the fact that you failed or feeling like the depressed part of it because you failed at that.   A lot of people when they fail in certain things or even in school growing up, like "oh, I failed in football, you know, throwing that pass" whatever it may be.   I was never a quarterbacker so I don't know.   But I failed to like throw that pass correctly, I suck at this, I'm gonna beat myself up like I just need to give up, why try anymore?   When in reality, the best quarterbackers have failed way more times than that and it's because of those failures and learning from them that they are the best now, because they have learned from those failures.   So, I didn't want this one to be like too long of a podcast but I just wanted to get the point across as much they could.   Don't feel bad about failing, it's going to happen, it's inevitable.   There's also another quote that I say all the time, "pain is inevitable, misery is optional".   Like, here you may feel some pain and there have been plenty of people who have gone through some crazy pain in their lives because of something that they failed at or because of a business - a big business that they had that they fail at, that's super painful. But are they going to let it be miserable, like let it dictate their life so they're miserable or are they going to learn from it, adjust in the future, and create something even better.   So yeah, that's kind of like my two cents for today and what I'm reading from a couple different books actually, so one of them that have been reading a lot lately and I just had to do a podcast on it was The Obstacle Is the Way.   Honestly there's so many golden one-liners in that book.   And then another one that I was actually referred to by a friend of mine, John Ferguson, called The Advertising Solutionand it's just got a bunch of just golden nuggets in there laced throughout.   I'm not - I’ve only just started in that one but it's got some great stuff in there.   So, one of the secrets to success is to learn from your mistakes.   So, fail, fail often but learn from them and adjust accordingly and move on, so yeah.   Thanks guys, that's what I got for you today.   Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts?   Go to learningfromtheexperts.com to find pre-approved experts that I’ve hand-picked for you.   Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing and rating and leaving feedback.

What's going on everybody. Hey, welcome to another episode of learning from the experts.   Today I'm actually going to talk to you about something I'm learning from an expert named Ryan Holiday. And if you don't know who Ryan Holiday is, he is the freaking man. If you haven't read his book, trust me, I'm lying and you're in marketing, then you're missing out huge because this book is going to just blow your mind when it comes to different techniques and how people's minds work. When Writing taglines or headlines, Hooks, different things and how people react to a certain things in the marketing world. But I want to actually talk to you about a different book that he wrote that I've been reading recently and I've had a lot of thoughts in my head because of this book. And so I kind of wanted to go through some of those thoughts and talk about what I've learned from him in this book, but also what I'm learning about myself that you can take from and use in your own life. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through, wanna experts who've never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me a hundred times faster than learning it on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from and interview, real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. Thanks for joining me today. I'm actually talking about the book called the obstacle is the way and the tagline on it is, the timeless art of turning trials into triumph. If you don't know Stephen Larsen, he talks a lot about the obstacle is the way. He kind of, he has to remind a lot of people that the obstacle is the way, because a lot of people just don't want to go for the obstacle. They don't want to, they don't want to go overcome the obstacle. They want to look for a different way around the obstacle. To kind of illustrate this a little bit more, I want to talk to you or tell you about a story of my own and how I see this in my own life and how you guys can learn from it as well. It's a little bit more of a personal story. It's a little bit more of something that you're probably not used to for me. And I don't share it a ton. My wife shares it with people who are asking, but we don't share it a ton just because it is a little bit more sensitive. But I think it has such a huge point to it that I decided that I just need to share it. About eight years ago me and my wife got married. When we got married and I remember telling my wife, I do not want to have kids for like at least a couple of years cause I want to be able to get things rolling and started before we start adding kids to the mix and not being able to afford to take care of them. So I remember telling her that and she's like, oh yeah, totally get it. And then about six months into being married, she says, you know what? I feel like we just need to start trying actually. And I'm like, Oh man, I don't know if I can start trying six months into being married. Like, I don't want to be that person, you know, I'm not saying that's bad, but that was just my thoughts back then. So I remember talking to her and kind of thinking about it and pondering on a bit and I decided that, yeah, let's go for it. Let's start trying to have kids. So we started trying. Months go by, nothing. More months go by, nothing. So I'm like, okay, well maybe that's why we were supposed to start trying now because who knows when this is going to happen now. So we go to a doctor and they're like, oh, well let's, let's put you on some of this medicine. It helps people get pregnant. It'll help with like different hormones and things like, and trust me, it definitely helped with the hormones, so I won't lie about that one. We took this medicine for months and still just nothing, nothing, like nothing different, nothing new was happening. So we're like, okay, this isn't working. We would go back to the doctor and take a look at some things, see what we can figure out. And by this time, over a year at least has passed, year and a half, maybe two, I don't even know, it's been a little while. So we go back to the doctor and he's like, okay, let's take a look at some different things that may be causing this. So they look at some stuff, they try to figure it out and they're like, okay, yeah, you have some issues. We need to have surgery on you in order to possibly fix this. Well if that's what we gotta do, let's do it. So we schedule it and it's like forever out there cause yeah, you know how it works. We have surgery, well apparently it didn't quite fix it all the way, which we didn't learn for another year or so later. But in between then we tried different other procedures in different things and then learn that it didn't quite fix it all the way. So we had to do it again. So she had surgery again. Other issues popped up, it's crazy. I can't even begin to tell you all of it, and I don't want to take all day. I just want to let you understand a bit of what we went through for this. So you have a little bit of an idea, but I could spend all day on all these different stories in between every one of these surgeries and different things. It was just an astronomical amount of things that happened in between everything. So multiple surgeries, multiple procedures and I'm talking not one of these is covered by insurance and we're like poor college students. I had to figure out a way to provide and cover some of this stuff. Which was probably a good thing that actually to push me a little bit more. But nothing was working, nothing was happening. We've tried several doctors, we've tried several procedures, we've had several surgeries and nothing is happening. Fast forward five years later, still nothing after all of this that we've spent on so many surgeries and so many procedures and not to mention it is killing my wife. Not just the fact that she's having to go through all of these surgeries, but the fact that she's always wanted to be a mom her entire life and she can't not be a mom and nothing's working for her. So what's going on? What do we need to do to make it happen? And you know, one lesson we actually learned in between, there was so many people told us just to quit and give up. So many people told us, you know what, you should just adopt, adopt a kid. It's probably not going to work out. Or Hey, I've heard about these people where they adopted a kid and then they got pregnant right after. So you guys should do that too. There's your solution. That doesn't really quite work that way for us. So the lesson from that though is in this entrepreneur game, in this online business, marketing, all that stuff, is there are going to be so many people that tell you to just give up and quit and take a different route that other people have seen to be a successful as well? I just want to implore you to continue to go. I want to encourage you to just not listen to all of the naysayers along the way. I remember plenty of times in college just as I would tell people that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, they were like, why would you ever want to do that? You know you're going to start a business that has a 90% chance of failing. Like all LLCs, all businesses, 90% of them fail. And at first they got to me, but then I realized that you're going to be working for a business, no matter what you do, no matter what work you're in, no matter what area of business you're gonna be working for. So I would get that response and then I would, ah, man, it drove me nuts so much. I would literally respond and say, oh well don't you know, you'll be working for one of those businesses. Would you rather own it or would you rather work for it? Like it bothered me so bad, I would just be straight up with people. And it was like the first time they'd ever thought about it, they're like, oh, you're right, I will be working for a Business. I will be working for somebody in a business. And I'm like, yeah. And if it fails, you're gonna lose your job and have to find new job, I'd rather be at the top and know when it's going to fail or have the option to help it not fail and to do what I need to do to keep it going instead of being on the bottom and not knowing when it's going to fail, not making that much money. And then having to just switch jobs in between like, anyway, so that little rant is over. But all of these procedures, everything just all out of pocket, all just horrible things to do. All of these horrible surgeries, none of them are fun, lots of pain that she went through. Hopefully that kind of helps you just understand a little bit of what it was like going through all of that. But finally we found, I mean the biggest procedure you can do is called IVF, for trying to have kids and if you cannot naturally get pregnant. So IVF is literally like, they just kind of help your body do it. In the certain way that your body should do, cause a lot of times your body just doesn't do it correctly. And so they just help guide your body to do it the right way and then they do a couple of different procedures that are going to help you. Your chances go up even higher. So there's nothing that's not really, like, I wouldn't say it's not against the body or not natural. It's just sometimes your body doesn't quite work correctly, so this is going to help it work correctly. And that's going to be your best chance for getting pregnant. So that was like the big thing. That was the next step. I mean, it costs typically on average $20,000-$30,000 to do this procedure. So it's not a cheap procedure and we just didn't have the money for it and so we kind of decided that that was going to be too much and we weren't gonna be able to do it. Well instead of just saying that's the obstacle, that's like the thing that's going to get us there, but I can't do it or it's not possible. We started asking, how can we make this possible? How can we make it happen? I'm not going to lie. My wife started a Go Fund Me for it and just kind of put it out there and said, hey, like we really want to do this. If you guys are willing to help at all, like it would be, it'd be fantastic. It'd be awesome. That's really hard to do. It's not easy to ask people for help. It's not easy to be vulnerable like that and say, hey, we can't do this on our own. We would love your help. That's not easy at all. And I'm actually surprised how much people helped on that. It was a huge blessing in our lives at the time. Huge, huge blessing and lots of help. Lots more help than I even ever imagined getting, which was really awesome. But because of that, we were able to confront that obstacle. We were able to go forward with IVF. And because of that, we now have, I mean, he's nine months old now. The whole time was not easy, but it's so worth it now that we have him. And if you and your wife or your wife or you as a woman is going through that trial, I'm so sorry. Nobody really understands it unless they've been through it and I'm sorry to hear that. I don't wish that upon anybody that is not anyway, it's just, it's horrible. So because we pushed through it though and we tried, it's now possible that we have our baby boy. So this book that I've been reading is called the obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday. And it made me think of that and it makes me think of all of the different obstacles that I've had in my life and the ones that I've overcome and gone through and pushed through that I've made so much more impact in my own life. If you guys are trying to start a business online, a lot of the times what I see is people will see the obstacle and say that's too hard or that mountain is too tall to climb or I'm not capable of doing that, so I'm not even going to try. Not even going to start, not even going to go anywhere. Well honestly, we didn't know that IVF was the thing that we were going to have to do in the beginning. We just saw the obstacle was, these different procedures and as we overcame one obstacle, another one would come and then another one would come and pretty soon we're just overcoming all of these different obstacles. And then it became the way, it became the end result that we were looking for. If we would not have gone through those obstacles, we will not climb those mountains. We would not have the results that we have now. We would not have our baby boy. So I say that because I've seen it in business too. It's the same thing. There are so many obstacles that you're going to have in front of you. You don't know the entire path. You don't know every obstacle that's going to come your way. But the fact is that you just need to take a step, work on it, and then see what the next step is and go from there. Then you will naturally climb that obstacle, that mountain and overcome the obstacle. So that's my drop to you guys today. And hopefully you get some encouragement from it and start looking at the obstacles that you need to overcome in your business, your life, that are gonna help you go that much farther and become successful in what you're doing. So that's my 2 cents for you guys today. Hopefully you enjoyed that. And hopefully you can overcome some obstacles. And honestly, I would suggest reading the book. The obstacle is the way, is huge. I totally bought the coin that says the obstacle is the way on one side. And it was cool to get it, it has the quote on the backside that says the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. I kind of want to read you this card. They send this card with it too, that says the obstacle's the way. Then it says that same quote that's on the coin right below it. And then it says, "the stoic grows stronger and better with every obstacle they face. They rally to every challenge and thrive as a result. So can you." And if you don't know what stoic means. A STOIC is a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining. Someone who's able to go through hard things without showing that emotion, or complaining about it and will grow stronger and better with every obstacle they face. That's the same thing with business. Like, you are going to have so many obstacles in it. As you overcome each and every one, you get that much better. And pretty soon those obstacles, even when you face the same kind of obstacles again in the future, you will now be able to face them so much easier because you've already done it and you know the path. That's one reason why I pushed so much about finding experts because they've pushed through those obstacles, they know the path and they can help you get through it as well. So follow the expert in your field, in your area that's going to help you understand what obstacles are in your way and how to get through them. That's all I got for you guys today. Thank you very much. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody. This is Coulton Woods and welcome to another episode of Learning From The Experts. And today I actually want to talk to you about a challenge that has been changing a lot of people's lives. I've been watching this very closely and I'm like, I have to publish about that. More people need to know about this challenge that is happening right now. It is changing so many people's lives on making money for the first time on the internet or even making more money with what they already have. Their websites or their sales funnels that they're using online to make even more money with it. So I want to tell you about this challenge today. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through, wanna-be experts who've never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me a hundred times faster than learning it on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview, real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. Awesome. So before I tell you about the challenge, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever seen the movie, the karate kid? It's like a 1980s movie old school movie. I saw it when I was a kid. A lot. It was awesome. I wonder if you've ever seen it or even heard about it. That's ok if you haven't seen it. You've probably heard about it though. Most people have heard about Mr Miyagi, the wax on wax off guy. But the reason I ask you that is I want to ask you, how much do you think it would cost to get a Mr Miyagi, that would train you on how to make money online for the first time? Like a Mr Miyagi that knows exactly the system, the frameworks, the different things that you need to do, like wax on, wax off, follow me here, follow me there, um, and do this and do that. And you will have the frameworks and the systems that will help you make money online for the first time. Or if you are already making money online, how to better that system, better those things so you can make even more money online. That'd be pretty awesome to have a Mr Miyagi guiding you through the whole process. Um, and the reason I ask that that is because there's this challenge that has been happening like I mentioned earlier where it's practically a Mr Miyagi guiding you through the entire thing. In fact, it's like three Mr Miyagi's guiding you through the entire thing. Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds kind of expensive. Especially getting that kind of attention from an expert, probably pretty expensive. That was my same thought, but listen to this, I'm going to actually, okay, so it's called the one funnel away challenge and it's from clickfunnels. You can go to onefunnelawayoffer.com and check it out. But I want to tell you about the whole offer, the whole thing that you get with this challenge before you come up with a price and everything in your head. So what you get on this challenge. They send you a box and in the box you get a physical copy of the challenge workbook. So it's a 30 day challenge. So you get a workbook that walks you through the 30 days, you get an MP3 player with all of the recordings from the first one that they did, which is like over a hundred hours of recordings. I don't know. It's crazy. And then you get the 30 days hardcover book. Now let me tell you about that book. So Steven Larsen actually wrote a chapter of that book, so did 30 other amazing people, they wrote a chapter in this book. So it's a huge book of 30 different people and they wrote about how they would get started online again or how they would get their money back if they lost everything. They're following, their name, like everything out there and they just had to start over from scratch with the knowledge that they have and a click funnels account and what would you do in 30 days to start making money online again, just having a click funnels account and the knowledge that you have, no following, none of that, no email list, nothing. It's incredible. It's like gold in there. Just if you're looking at finding some tips and tricks of how to really kill it online. This book has got 30 different people's versions of that, like of those tips and tricks that you can check out. And I'm talking some big people too. I mean, even like John Lee Dumas is in there, Peng Joon Peng Joon, Myron Golden, Liz Benny, Dan Henry, Dana Derricks, Akbar Sheikh, there's so many people in there. I think Brandon and Kaelin Poulin are in there too. I'm not 100% sure on that one but yeah, it's huge. It's just crazy. So you get that and then you also get unlimited access to the 30 days interviews. So they interviewed each person that wrote a chapter in this book and you get access to those interviews. Then you also get behind the scenes two comma club interviews, which is crazy value. And then not only that, you get 30 days of video missions from Russell Brunson. So it's a 30 day coaching or 30 day challenge. You get a video each day from Russell walking you through what you need to do that day, like wax on, wax off, what you'd need to do that day. And then you get 30 days of coaching from Steven Larsen and Julie's Stoian in which I think most of those days, they go live, so you can hop on live with them. And then you also get the one funnel away challenge customized kit. So that's like the 30 day plan. It's crazy. If you think through everything that they've given you, everything that they're doing for you, not only what they're giving you, but what they're going to do for you. It's just crazy Insane value. When I first saw that, I was like, okay, this has gotta be thousands of dollars because it's going to help you make thousands of dollars. So that would make sense if it's going to cost thousands of dollars. Right? Well, they added up the value of about $3,126. That sounds about right, but not only that, they took it from the $3,126 down to just $100 bucks. So you can actually join the whole freaking challenge for just a hundred bucks. It's crazy stuff. When I heard $100, I was like, you gotta be kidding me. There's no way. There's no way that they're actually going to give you all of that for 100 bucks. And sure enough, they do. It's freaking crazy. Stephen Larsen goes live like every day and trains you through everything. It's just the amount of gold that you get from this is well worth like thousands and thousands of dollars, but they give it to you for a hundred bucks. I don't even know how they're making any money on it. Anyway, so I just wanted to like, if you guys are struggling to make any kind of money online, if you guys are making some money online or looking to make just even you're first dollar or if you're making, you know, thousands, but you want to up it and see the frameworks that people are using to make even more money than that. You've got to take this challenge. You've got to go through it. It's changed so many people's lives. Just the amount of stories that I see from people where they're like, hey, I made my first thousand dollars this week and it's like week two of the challenge, you know? And then, hey I used this one system and I blew up this part of my business. It's amazing to me to see how many people's lives have changed. And because of that I thought, I have to share that with people. I mean if you go to onefunnelawayoffer.com and check it out, you'll also be able to see all the testimonials and kind of get an idea of what people are saying about it. This guy says "this is the stuff that no one ever taught me." Cause it was like the beginning stuff that no one ever taught, like teaches anyone. Somebody else was like all this "stuff is magic". This person said, "thank you so much guys for providing so much value", which is true. I can't even believe how much value Steven alone gives you and Russell... Like the 30 days of Russell's training that people paid thousands of dollars for the information that he's giving, just on this $100 challenge. And so the guy says "it's a smile of a conqueror and the coaching throughout the Ofa challenge has been the icing on the cake". That's pretty cool actually. And then there's like a hundred testimonials down below, it's crazy how much it is changing people's lives. I went through it guys. It is well worth thousands of dollars. If you're looking at changing your business online or making money for the first time online and you need a Mr Miyagi to help you, like wax on, wax off, do this, do that and follow some frameworks that are proven frameworks to make money online. This is the challenge that you've got to go to and you can check it out at onefunnelawayoffer.com and go from there. And if you guys have any questions about it or anything, feel free to reach out to me. I'm not afraid to give you any more details on it. It's pretty sweet. But if you just, yeah, if you just go to onefunnelawayoffer.com you can see the whole thing right there. And that's all spelled out. So that's just one funnel away offer spelled out .com. So yeah, not spelled out.com but you know what I mean. That's all I got for you today. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing and leaving feedback.  

What is going on! I am actually coming to you from my car right now. I had this crazy idea which was to - yeah, essentially just publish or make a podcast... not necessarily make a podcast but to just teach the things that I've learned for the day and so you guys can learn from what I'm learning from sitting next to Steven Larsen like every day. So yeah, it may not be a very long podcast, it may not be super huge or anything and yes, I probably won't do it every day. There will be some days where I may just be doing some very mundane work but they're definitely gonna be plenty of days where I'm gonna learn some freakin' awesome crap and publish it and teach it because you can't learn something... you actually don't know something until you know how to teach it. If you can't teach it, you don't know it. So here's the deal, I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wannabe experts who never actually help me in the end, then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to, "Learning From the Experts". I'm gonna try to teach everyday what I'm learning so I can internalize it, better understand it and progress even that much farther. I hope this sounds good, I have no idea if this is gonna be super loud or if it's gonna be really bad or not. So, mainly because I'm in my car literally driving, stopping, starting and lots of noises going on around me, so if you can hear those, I'm sorry I will try to be a little bit better at them. I do have this little mic that I've plugged into my phone and I'm using that to essentially just talk through that but it's got this like little foam thing around it on the outside so, hopefully that helps with the sound. Man! I just got stuck behind some chick that was like staring at her phone, totally not paying attention. Come on guys, I know I'm using my phone right now but I'm not looking at my phone, there's a big difference. So today, craziness like, it was interesting I was talking to Steven right before I left, I was like, dude! I was thinking about it, we get to do some pretty crazy stuff, some awesome stuff, some fast-paced stuff, some highly stressful stuff and some just cool stuff. You know, we get to do a lot of stuff but most people would actually run from this. Like a lot of people would just want to get away. It's too much outside of their norm, it causes them to think outside of their natural thinking too much or it's too much stress at times or just so many different things. A lot of people - it's interesting, people just like to follow just somebody else, just kind of just - just leave me and I'll just go there and not have to think about it. Like the less I have to think about, the less I have to do, the better. I've been thinking about that a lot lately, I don’t know why but I look at some people, what makes me really sad is when I see - I want to say this in the nicest way I can; when I see an older person doing a manual labor, not even manual labor job but just a job that obviously doesn't take a whole lot of skill or technical knowledge or anything to do, like a high-school job. I don't know exactly where I'm going with all this but [laughs], like a high school job, like it's sad to me that they're in that position and they're that old or you know, they never made it any farther. Maybe they did, I don't know, maybe there's something else going on. There's so many different things that I don't know, I can't judge just by looking at them. So obviously there could be a whole lot of other things that have happened but it's surprising me how much people don't try to push them to go farther. They don't push themselves to do more, they don't push themselves to learn. The pain is too much for them, the pain is too hard. Obviously if you're listening to a podcast, you enjoy learning, you enjoy pushing yourself farther than most people do. Like the majority of people do but then again like, some podcasts are not painful. This is more of like, I mean, business podcasts where you're trying to learn business strategies, things that are going to help you mentally, even physically and like professionally. That's gonna have some pain to go with it, it's gonna push you somewhere. Obviously there are podcasts that are purely entertainment based and have no really growing potential there. So, I think the fact that you're listening to this podcast and you're trying to get insights from experts or different people as I am trying to gain these insights from the experts that I have around me or the people that I'm seeing or being in contact with so often, that's huge, that means a lot, it means you're actually trying to go somewhere and build yourself to become better which obviously is gonna help you go places. I actually published a quote on my Facebook page, not even the page, it's my profile, a couple days ago that says; I'm gonna try not to butcher it but essentially says "formal education will get you a job that's gonna get you by, self-education will make you a fortune." and obviously there's a lot of - there's some contingence there. Self-education just for the sake of Education not to take it anywhere most likely won't be making you a fortune unless you use it to publish or do different things or become better in your profession. So, self-education; I would say self-education that is focused to a point of making you better, to become better in your profession or to grow yourself, that's gonna help you know, grow those bounds that you have, that's what's gonna make you the fortune. Not just general education, not just general self-education, sorry about that. So, yeah, just - this is good stuff. I was actually listening to an interview from Tom Bilyeu and I could probably - I'm probably totally butchering his name right there. So I'm listening to this interview of Tom Bilyeu from doctor - oh man, I'm totally gonna miss his name. Damn, I can't remember it. Anyway, so, it's this neurologist guy and he's talking about how all of these different issues like Alzheimer's, dementia, just all these bad chronic illnesses that you can get especially in later years, even autism stem from the food you eat, your gut. Your gut drives everything in your body. You eat like crap, you're gonna get really bad results essentially in the rest of your body, you're gonna have these issues. If you eat more healthy, if you eat stuff that's actually good for you and there's a big difference on a lot of things there, your gut is gonna be healthier which is actually gonna help with everything else in your body. Super interesting, it was like an hour long, super interesting interview. The guy had some crazy stories about some different things that we're - it blew my mind. They actually use fecal matter to cure autism. Yeah, think on that for a second, like if that doesn't sound crazy, I don't - yeah, that's... like what! You did what! Like how do you even think about that? But essentially, it's because if you find the right fecal matter that has the right bacteria, it'll cure the problems in the gut and bring those right bacteria into your gut which then helps everything else in your body. That's pretty insane if you ask me. That's a very short version of it but... knowledge like guys, be pushing yourself to gain more, to become more. Teach the things that you're learning so you can internalize them. Be listening to content that is actually there to help you become better who you are. It's so interesting to me, if you take care of yourself, other things happen, you can do so much more. I drink Keto drinks every day because of the power it gives me to be cognitively there and to be able to think more straight and clearly and to keep my mind going. That's so sad to be - I think so many people - a lot of people that - and I'm not a doctor, I don't know but based on what this guy was saying, a lot of your gut stuff has to do with Alzheimer's but honestly like, if you think about it, a lot of people that don't push themselves. They just come home after they work and they honestly don't try to do much at work. They just kind of go through it as easily as possible and then they come home, sit down on the couch, watch TV, eat some junk food and then go to bed and repeat. And then on the weekend you're doing drinks whatever, all this stuff. Honestly, I think a lot of your mental health comes from that style of living, that life - that lifestyle and because you're not pushing your brain to develop more, you're not actually like helping it be more cognitively there. It's interesting, every thought you have creates a new neural pathway and the more thoughts you have on the same idea, the same subject, the bigger that neural pathway becomes and the stronger it is and then it helps you actually be able to create new like answers to questions that you didn't have before. It helps your brain naturally be able to go back to it and if you don't use that neural - if you stop thinking on that subject, that specific subject, that neuro pathway will kind of decrease over time. So, do you want to be good at something, I think it was something like 10,000 hours to become an expert in a certain field. We can't just become an expert looking - doing something for an hour. Yes, you can understand some things but it really takes a whole lot longer than that and there are ways yes, I believe the shortcut but it's - you can't be an expert in everything. You find somebody who's an expert in it, you have them help you. You find another expert that's good at this area and you hire them to help you. I mean, it's so much faster that way; you can grow and do so many more things that way. Anyway, so that's kind of my - that's my rant today is; guys, be self-educating, push yourselves, be always trying to - if you're not listening to new content which I do believe is not a good thing to be always listening to new - listening to content, you need to also be thinking on that subject, to be growing that neural path, to - yeah, essentially become better at that specific subject. You actually find answers to questions that people have been asking if you think kind of enough. It's kind of interesting, there's some studies about meditation on how that actually helps you create, like become in a space where your brain can help you understand and answer questions. Super interesting. I've seen it done guys, like Steve Larsen went into a pretty much headphones on, focus mode for weeks straight before Offer Mind, our event, is where he taught everything about offers for you know, creating offers for your products and selling them. Literally for weeks straight like just meant like mentally in that and nothing else, like just thinking on that and while he was doing that, I kid you not, I saw so many things that he had learned and understood so much more because of that. He was building - not only had he built that neural pathway before then but now that he's focusing on it 24/7 for weeks, it was just going nuts and like building so much that he was answering questions and things that nobody had really answered before. He was figuring things out that people hadn't figured out before. He was connecting things that hadn't been connected before. I saw it done right before my eyes, I know it happens. The more you think on something, the bigger that neural pathway comes. So, if you're even thinking on something that you're like "man, I need to stop, I don't like that", like even like TV shows and things like, "I think too much about that or -" whatever it may be, you need to find something that draws your attention that you enjoy, that is going to help build that neural pathway even more. If you guys want like a hack to getting your brain focused and centered on things that are - that you need to be focused on and be able to like think so much faster, you need to change your diet, you need to stop eating so many carbs and drinking sugars and you need to drink some Keto... some ketone supplements, that's what I do. I don't eat carbs at work, I stay away from carbs as much as I can because I know mentally, cognitively I will slow down and so I just stay away from it. I mean, I'm not saying that don't eat carbs because I definitely eat carbs. I need to not eat carbs and I wish I didn't, I wish I could just stay away from them 100%. Not 100% but you know, because I know it'd be so much healthier for me. And literally when I did Keto, when I got on to the Ketone diet, things in my body that I had issues with like heartburn and different things, I can't like say Keto cured me but when I did that, there was a crazy difference in my body since then. I stopped having heartburn, literally didn't have a problem with heartburn before that or after that. Before, it was every day. I would wake up in the middle of the night, burning heartburn, can't sleep. I even remember, there's plenty of times, I remember like just waking up choking on like acid, like heartburn, it's so bad. So, like guys, educate yourself, you'll find things that are actually going to be a huge huge benefit to you, your life, everything. But you don't know that unless you're searching, if you're understanding or you know, you're finding things that are gonna help you understand that. So, that's my - that's my rant for today, hopefully you guys liked it and we'll talk to y'all later. Are you looking to jump-start your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learningfromtheexperts.com to find the pre-approved experts that I've hand-picked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by Subscribing, Rating and leaving feedback.

What's going on everybody, this is Coulton Woods. You are listening to "Learning From the Experts" and I'm actually gonna do another - sorry, this is another episode that I'm bringing to you from Miami. Just got done with the Growth Con - 10X Growth Con in Miami and I'm actually gonna go over the three easiest ways to make $10,000 a month according to Tai Lopez and what he taught us here at the event. So here's the deal, I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wannabe experts who never actually help me in the end, then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to, "Learning From The Experts". So, if you don't know who Tai Lopez is then maybe you've been living under a rock... no, I'm just kidding. He's pretty freaking huge in the social media world, he has some - yeah, he has a few different things that he sells but Tai Lopez, I totally get it, a lot of people hate him, a lot of people love him, I totally get it, he throws a lot of rocks and he's a little arrogant and can definitely come across as a little... yeah, self-centered or he's always standing by a Lamborghini or something. So, I totally get it but he - I'm actually gonna go through the three different ways to make $10,000 a month that he says are the easiest ways to make that much money a month. So, he got up... spoke at 10X Growth Con and honestly it was actually really interesting to see. He totally crushed a bunch of people's websites, talked about funnels on there and yeah, how Russell Brunson is like the funnel man, which I'm actually going to talk about Russell Brunson on the next one or maybe I'll do it for this one [laughs]. Anyway, so he got up... and I'm actually... really honestly I'm gonna make this one a little bit shorter, I'm just gonna give you guys the three easiest ways to make $10,000 a month according to Tai Lopez. He says the number one easiest way to start making $10,000 a month as an entrepreneur just honest - yeah, working your own thing is through a social media agency, honestly. And I see these things coming up everywhere. Everybody needs social media; advertising, positioning, how to grow your following, what you need to be posting, like all these different things. There are so many businesses asking for that right now and there are so many people taking them up and charging like literally $2,500 just to do their services and then that's not counting you know, the ad spend or anything. So, if you get four people or four businesses running for you, that's $10,000 a month, you've got your own agency running and you're just helping them with you know, ads and grow on their following, not bad at all. So, that is a very easy way to do it, I've seen lots of people be successful in it and if you know how to grow it right or manage people or get virtual assistants that actually know what they're doing, you can even scale that pretty far actually. So, that is the number one way according to Tai Lopez of how to make $10,000 a month, easy. The second one is actually through Airbnb which I thought was really surprising. I did not expect that to happen but he... I was not expecting him to say that. When he said people are making a ton of money right now by literally going to rich areas or rich people and that have bigger houses and saying "hey, I can put your house on Airbnb and I'll charge you a flat rate of you know, fifteen hundred bucks a month to rent it out or fifty percent of whatever we make on it", because a lot of times there're... other people have houses and they're not staying in them all the time right? They have multiple houses, so they rent out the house on Airbnb and he'll come in there, he'll say "hey, I want to help you get your house on Airbnb and I take this fee" or whatever maybe and you don't have to own any real estate, you don't have to put any capital into it, you don't have to do - like you don't have to put anything into it yourself other than time. That's actually a really interesting idea and a pretty easy one at that like you could start doing that pretty quickly and if you know how to do any kind of ads, even you can find people, you could do ads to be getting people coming to you, getting leads about putting their house on Airbnb and you just take a cut and you list it and get it all done for them. Honestly that's pretty cool idea. So, that's - I mean, that's the number two way of how to easily make $10,000 a month doing your own thing. So, interesting stuff, I thought that was pretty cool. I never would have guessed that's one that he would have said. And then the third thing which these - honestly, a lot of the social media marketing or a social media agency, that's been around for a while but it's really starting to grow, it's very - it's a very growing industry right now. The Airbnb thing, that's like a totally - that's a very small part - not a very small part, that's a very small portion of people doing that right now. That's a very very open thing to be able to get into you right - you know, at this time. So, this third one is actually - I don't feel like there's a whole lot of people in this space either and it wouldn't be that hard to get into, but the third one especially with ClickFunnels, you could rock this thing so easy, just... you can make it happen pretty quick. But the third easiest way to make $10,000 a month is through an E-com Agency. So literally, you are helping people who have an E-com business, an e-commerce business, you are helping them... and I would say with funnels is the easiest way, to be able to increase their revenue. You can even have a social media company helping them grow through social media or a social media advertising company, Facebook advertising company, excuse me, and then... you can even have a funnel building company or honestly just helping them build a funnel for their E - like whatever they're selling in their e-commerce. It's interesting, E-com is so slim on their margins because they don't know how to upsell, they don't know how to offer other things on their E-com page. Shopify is actually really bad at this, like Shopify is great, like you can do this but if you add a funnel instead of doing just a Shopify page, you can literally 540% increase your revenue on an E-com business through a funnel and it's actually been proven. I know it has, you can watch - I don't know if that webinar is actually up anymore from ClickFunnels. They went through... and they actually like went through tons of funnels, tons of funnels and found out that, just by simply having an order bump, which is like on the Order Page, you say "hey, click this button right here and you'll also get this for this price", okay, so a simple order bump and then after that when they order, the first - whatever they're buying you know, if you got a shirt, they're buying a shirt and then, hey, order bump is like; "you know, buy this hat or something with it, whatever it maybe that is related to it" and then if you simply have one upsell which is just like, "hey you bought this, you can buy this now" and then another upsell which is "hey, you might also like this if you bought these",  which is not - honestly that's not pushy, that's not that - people freak out over this and they're like "oh, I don't want to sell them too much, I don't want to be pushy". Honestly you're just offering them more or something that's gonna accommodate or work with what they just bought. You're not pushing it on them; they can say no, you're just giving them the option and you - if they say no to that, you have one down-sell. So, literally it's like "oh, you didn't want that, maybe you would like this instead.", that's it, that's all you got to do, that's it and 540% increase your revenue. 540% increase in revenue! Like that's the number, that's what they've gone through and checked it out. So, instead of simply having an E-com page where they click "Yes, I want to buy this" and they're like, "okay, cool, I'm done", checkout, whatever. If you just added a funnel to that instead where they say click on, I wanna buy and then it puts them into the funnel where they are gonna buy that and they look at the Order Form and they're like "oh, maybe I'll get this too with it" then they upsell upsell down-sell. Guys, it's like... nah... anyway, I'm just trying to [laugh], just trying to get that out there. So, ClickFunnels, if you have a business, you've been selling a product, I mean you can - you can do so much with a funnel but if you have an agency helping E-com people sell, you could literally - literally like five times their business revenue with just a funnel and people would go nuts over that. So, just saying, that's the third easiest way to make $10,000 month doing your own thing and really honestly, you don't need any employees for that unless you get bigger. Like it's not that big of a thing. So, those are the three easiest ways according to Tai Lopez. Hopefully that was little bit more shortened to the point and yeah, hopefully you guys like that. Don't forget to rate and subscribe and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. I'd love to hear from you guys, so we'll talk to y'all later. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learningfromtheexperts.com to find the pre-approved experts that I've hand-picked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing and rating and leaving feedback.

Hey what's going on everybody? This is Coulton Woods and today I'm bringing to you a special episode of Learning from the Experts. I'm actually in my hotel room right now in Miami, just got done with 10x Growth Con, the event from Grant Cardone. And I want to split it up into a few different episodes here, but I'm going to talk to you about something that I learned from Bethenny Frankel. She is one of the sharks on Shark Tank. It's interesting. I've always had a hard time listening to her and kind of relating to her on Shark Tank. So when I found out she was a speaker I was kind of like okay, I don't know if I really want to hear that one or not, but I did. And I actually learned something really cool from it. So here's the deal, I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sitting through wannabe experts who never actually help me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me a hundred times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning from the Experts. So I'm going to be 100% honest with you, whenever I see Bethenny Frankel on Shark Tank I always kind of like wonder if I want to actually watch that episode. And I mean it's nothing against her but I feel like she kind of always has to like prove something or prove that she's the smartest person in the room for some reason. She's always got an opinion. She's always pushing her idea on it or she's trying to give advice. And then she's like fighting with the other sharks and I'm kind of just like, I don't know to me I'm like just chill. Like it's okay. So when I found out that she was speaking I was like oh that's cool. She's from Shark Tank. She's going to be on there. That's cool, but I don't know if I really care to even watch it because I've seen her on Shark Tank and I have a hard time watching her there. So what's going to be any different. Well I'm there anyways so I'm like okay well I'll just pay attention. And I had this thought. I like to ask myself questions. I like to kind of just ask questions in general, but ask questions that most people don't think about asking. So I try to do that. I'm not the best. I mean I'm sure none of us are the best or perfect at that, but I had this question or this thought, what if I just ask the question while listening to her, what can I learn from her. I mean that's going to be hard. If I'm in there, not that it's going to be hard, but if I'm looking at her and I'm saying I can't. There's no way I'll ever learn anything from her. I don't think she has anything to give me that I can learn from her. Well, she's a billionaire so I mean I should probably pay attention to her. But in my first thought was I'm not going to learn anything from this woman because I've seen the way she is. But then the thought crossed my mind. I asked myself the question. What can I learn from her? So I paid attention. I didn't pay 100% attention, but I paid more attention than I was going to. And as she started talking I kind of think man I don't know how this woman ever accomplished what she accomplished. I don't know how she figured it out. Honestly, and I'm not trying to be super bad about all this or be harsh or anything, but I honestly don't know if she knows how she became successful. I don't know if she knows what she did in order to become successful. I don't know if she actually understands that. I mean that's kind of maybe rude, that's kind of a little blunt there, but honesty that's my thought. Is like I don't know if she understands this. So what did she do to become successful. What was it that helped her become successful? If she didn't quite understand it. And maybe she does totally. I don't know. That's just kind of the thought that I had. So I'm watching this and I'm thinking about this question that I have. And as she's talking I start realizing that she pretty much just runs like she just runs with something. She had the idea for Skinny Girl. I don't know if you know Skinny Girl, if you see the dressings in the grocery stores or not. Or I think she started with the margarita, right? Some calorie, low calorie margarita and that's how she got started. She introduced this great tasting margarita that's low calorie for Skinny Girl and that was her brand was Skinny Girl. So I'm like man, I don't know if she really knows how she did this. Well, she's telling her story and as I have this question in my head and I'm listening to her story, I realize that she literally just ran. She just got stuff done. She would just do things. It's really interesting. She didn't waste time. She had the idea. She wanted it to happen. She pitched it to people. They said no like that's a stupid idea. You're never going to go anywhere with it. She didn't agree with them. So she said, okay well I'm going to do it myself. I'm just going to run with this. I'm going to make it happen. And pretty soon she's got people investing that probably wouldn't have invested in the first place. And now those people that she first contacted see that she's putting skin in the game. She's investing her own money, her own time. She's getting people to come in with her. They see that she's doing this and they're like okay, I guess we'll invest. You're running. You're making this happen. We will invest because we see what you can do. And that teaches me before I get to that, she told a story about a relief effort that she put together for I think it was Puerto Rico somewhere. So I don't even remember exactly if it was a tsunami or hurricane anymore. I'm sorry. That's probably really bad. But I don't watch the news so I don't really keep up with anything that's going on outside of where I'm at really. Honestly, I know how marketing works and I know how the news is and they are businesses and that's what they want to do is make money off you so they are really good at making things seem more dramatic than they actually are. So side note, total side note but she wanted to help Puerto Rico in the relief effort. So she literally found people with a jet that she's like you know what I need to find a jet or a plane or something. I need to figure this out and get anybody I know that has a jet on board. And she's like calling all these people and they're like you're crazy. We're not going to give you a jet to fly down to Puerto Rico for whatever and pretty soon as she's putting all of this out on social media, on Twitter, and different places. People are reaching back out to her saying hey I own a small clinic or I own this place. I can give you these kind of things that would help everybody there. I'll just give it to you. You can fly it there and she's like, "I had no idea how to put on a relief effort”. I had no idea how to do any of this. I just started doing it. I just started asking people and getting people's feedback. And pretty soon we've got like five six jets flying down to Puerto Rico with all of these materials and all of this stuff to help with the relief effort down there. And we were helping out a ton of people. And people were literally coming up to her saying we were praying that somebody would have a jet so we could get this stuff over to them. And when she got there they needed like planes to fly stuff and people out of there. So that honestly guys that teaches me a huge lesson. So many people over complicate things. So many people think they have to accomplish so many things before they do anything. Guys, just start. Just go, just do something. If you've got an idea, start doing stuff with it. Start figuring out people that maybe want to help you out with it. Do some stuff. If you need to be growing a following or want to be putting your name out there, you just start podcasting, start publishing, start doing videos. Honestly, putting videos on YouTube is such a huge thing now. You can get so much content out there and it's like a searchable video place where people search things and your videos can pop up and people watch you. Then they like what they see and they follow you. It's so, just start doing stuff, guys. She has made millions. I think she's a billionaire. Like billions just by doing something. Just go out and do it. She doesn't let anything hold her back. She just starts. So just start. That's really like all I have for you today from that one talk. I was not expecting to get anything from her. And then I asked the question what can I learn from Bethenny Frankel. So I decided to actually listen and figure out what I can learn and that was a huge lesson. I'm glad I listened to it. I'm glad I was there. I'm glad I asked that question instead of just shrugging it off and not paying attention. So guys, just start. Do something. Like just get going. I played around with the idea of doing a podcast for a while. And I'm not going to lie. I pushed it back and then pretty soon I'm like I'm just going to put it out there. I don't even care if I'm not 100% ready. I'm just going to start doing it. And I did. And it's out now. And I'm excited.  This is episode 15. I've got hundreds of episodes to come. I'm going to keep doing this because first off well, I'm not even going to go there but guys just start. That's my lesson for you today. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts. Go to learningfromtheexperts.com to find pre approved experts that I've hand picked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody? Hey, this is Coutlon Woods and I want to welcome you to another episode of learning from the experts. On this episode I actually want to go over a few of the things that I learned from the best voice coach in the world, like in the entire world. The number one voice coach... I got to spend last weekend with him and his team. Me and Stephen got to fly out there and help them through our program called offer lab. And I just want to go over some of the crazy things that I learned from them while I was there. There's definitely a reason why he's the number one voice coach in the world. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wanna be experts who never actually help me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning it on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. All right, so last weekend, I had the most awesome opportunity to fly to Hollywood with Steve Larsen, who's the man. If you don't follow his podcast, you need to be listening to that one as well. But I got to fly out there with him, which was a super awesome opportunity and meet with the number one voice coach in the entire world. I got to see him give Steve Larsen voice lessons right there. Which is pretty awesome to see how much he was actually able to help him in just like 10 minutes. But before I get to any of that, let me just go over a couple of things here. Well, a few people that he has coached. Now when I heard this, it blew my mind and I'm pretty sure it's gonna blow yours too, so here are some people that he has coached himself, literally himself. I mean he's been doing this for a very long time. He originally started way back in the day with a coach, I'm not going to tell this whole story here, but he was working with a coach and he ended up having to leave for weeks so he took over couching his students, which was like the Jacksons and Madonna and lots of other people like that and was coaching them as like a 16 year old, he was super young and these people actually were learning from him at 16. He was able to help them, his crazy ability to listen to your voice and know what you can do to improve it. Crazy stuff. It was pretty awesome to see. So not only like Madonna, the Jackson's, he works with crazy professional actors. He just helped Bradley Cooper in the Star. He was helping him with his singing for that movie, but he's worked with Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Jay Abraham, Jeff Bridges, Reese Witherspoon, Will ferrell. It just goes on. And then singers like Selena Gomez, John Mayer, Maroon five, Gwen Steffani and a ton of others. Matchbox 20, which is pretty cool. I like them. The beach boys, Def Leppard, The killers. So he's definitely worked with some high end people. He lives right in Hollywood. They come to him, he teaches them how to speak better, how to sing better and how to just be an overall better voice in everything they do. So now I'm like super conscious of my voice ever since then and I'm trying to not be so monotone, which I definitely need some lessons on that. So I'm excited about his course that is coming out. Hopefully you guys will be able to check that out, but if you want to go see some stuff that he's got, just go to RogerLove.Com And you can kind of see a little bit of that stuff there, but this is what blew my mind when I heard this. I couldn't believe it. He said, okay, it's actually on his Roger Love Dot Com website. If you hit speaking at the top and then just the speaking home part a little bit down there. I think it's kind of towards the bottom. It talks about communication and he says by communication, we're not just talking about the words we use. According to his scientific study at Stanford, your words only account for about seven percent of whether or not anyone believes you. I was like, seriously? Seven percent. It's whether or not anyone believes you, likes you or thinks you're smart, funny, stronger, successful. Any of that. Seven percent of it is only based on the words you actually say, I don't know about you, but that was really shocking to me to see that it was that low. He says, by contrast, tonality, the sounds your voice makes aside from the words counts for more than 38 percent. When you understand how your physiology and tonality can unite, almost 93 percent of the incredible powers of communication and influence will be in your hand. I don't know about you guys, but that's pretty crazy. Ninety three percent. If you want to be a speaker, presenter, a communicator and an influencer... Honestly, he when we were talking, he's said people in their jobs, if they learn how to speak better and communicate better, literally I've seen so many people get raises and become better and climb the ladder so much faster or grow their audience so much quicker. All these different things, just by changing their voice and adding some tonality to their voice, which to me blew my mind and a lot of people just think they're born with their voice. That's it. 100 percent. That's the way they're going to be the rest of their life. And then I saw him give Steve Voice lessons right there and how quickly he helped him. Steve just changed a few things. It was pretty amazing. He went over all these breathing techniques, crazy stuff, and I'm like, holy cow, we're really doing pretty bad at speaking. So if that doesn't blow your mind on who he's worked with and the fact that seven percent of what you say is all that matters. If someone wants to believe you, that's huge. That's huge to me. If you're any kind of entrepreneur, if you're any kind of influencer or any of that stuff, your voice is very important. Your voice is super important and if you don't have a voice that is not monotone, has some tonality and you can actually keep people engaged. You're going to be able to go so much farther. That's with anything. If you do Facebook lives, if you're podcasting, any of that stuff, if you're doing videos on YouTube, your tonality, everything matters so much. I'm excited to see what I can do to learn from him to help myself. My own voice. It was pretty interesting. You can definitely be so much more confident with just a different tone in your voice or just a different tonality. Just a different way of breathing. Even I saw it. It was crazy. We got to go there and Thursday he gave Steve some voice coaching and got to meet with them, talk with them a little bit. We had dinner afterward. It was pretty cool to go to Hollywood and have dinner there. And then Friday we met with him and his team went over his funnel, stuff that they're going to put together. Super Awesome stuff. I'm excited to see what they're going to come up with and and have out there soon. That was part of the offer lab program that Steve just announced at offer mind. I'm excited to see how that's going to go. It's about to launch. I think you could go to offerlab.com. Hopefully here real soon you'll be able to actually apply and be able to learn a little bit more about it. But I want to go into this a little bit more. So I went over some of those stats. That made me think of a time when I was younger and I remember this- I was sitting in the front room, had family and friends around me and I remember my uncle started to tell us a story and as he's telling this story, he gets really animated, getting loud and just really into the story. And I remember thinking, holy cow, this is an awesome story, it was entertaining. I want to hear some more stories from him because that was really entertaining. And so I thought, you know what? That was a really cool story. I want to tell that to somebody else. Well, not necessarily that I thought that, but there was a time that came and I was like, oh, I got to tell this guy this story that my uncle told me because it was awesome and it totally relates to this. So I tell this story to a few people. I remember telling the story and it was like crickets. Nothing afterwards. Like they were like, wow, that's cool. And I'm like, what the heck? How is that? How is it that when my uncle told us the story, it was awesome. It was intriguing. I was very into it the entire time. I wanted to hear more, but then when I tell it, there's silence. What's the difference? Now I'm looking back at it and looking at these stats that Roger Love just gave- only seven percent of what you say is actually going to matter to whether or not they are engaged in your story or if they think you're funny or not. The story could be completely not even that cool but your tonality and your physiology can make up for 93 percent of it, making it an amazing story when in reality you could just be telling the most boring thing ever to some people you know, or other people will say it and not have the tonality or the physiology and it'll be a completely boring story. So interesting, interesting thought. If you want to listen to you, if you want people to be more engaged in what you're saying, if you want to be better in your meetings, your tonality and your physiology actually has a lot to do with whether or not people are going to pay attention to you. It's pretty cool stuff. I'm excited to learn some more and get better at it. And my breathing, man there's so many things I got to work on now, which I'm really excited about. It's going to be pretty cool. So it also makes me think of the stories when you hear it from somebody else and then you tell it or a joke or whatever it may be, and then you tell it to somebody else and you're kind of just like, oh yeah, you had to be there. You just had to be there to really experience it. And they're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. Because that was not funny. Same thing, same thing. Any actor you know of, that's actually huge, guaranteed has had a voice coach to help them not be boring when they talk and 90 percent of them that had a voice coach probably had Roger Love. So pretty cool stuff. Actually had been listening to a book lately called pitch anything and that has some other stuff to do with this that I think really ties in very well to the tonality and the physiology part of it that can help you pitch anything literally. And I think I might actually save that for the next episode or another episode later. I'm still in the middle of the book, I got to finish it, but I'd love to go over that a little bit more and how you can get past pitching the CROC brain. If you haven't heard of the CROC brain before and how to pitch through the CROC brain, it's pretty intriguing actually, so hopefully I can go over that a little bit more and help you guys with that one so you are better in your meetings and everything else in life, in pitching people around you, even your spouse. Think about that. So I'm going to go ahead and end there today. Thank you guys for being on here and we'll see on the next episode. Are you looking to jump jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learning from the experts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody? Hey, this is Coulton Woods and you are listening to another episode of learning from the experts, and today I'm going to tell you one simple thing or one simple hack that successful people do, but most people don't realize this and they actually don't see it. You've actually most likely lived your life not doing this which you should have been because you would have learned the things so much faster and you would have understood things so much more if you would have just done this one thing. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through want to be experts who never actually helped me in the end, then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. So what is that one thing that successful people do that most people don't realize they're actually doing and how can that help you and how can you actually implement that same thing in your life so that you can be a little more successful in what you're doing? I'm going to tell you that one thing, but before I tell you, I'm going to tell you a little story. So growing up I always had a very curious mind. I'm always wondered how things worked. I was very intrigued by things like the mechanical things, the way people thought, the way people did things, the way everything was done. I remember when I was 12, I literally was thinking through how it was possible that a hover car could even exist. I don't know why, where this even came from, but I remember drawing up plans on a sheet of paper, just like kid plans, like drawings of like, oh, this could do this and that, of how a hover car could work. And like, Oh, if it was air induction then maybe it would flow from all the air, but then I was like, that's really annoying, well, what if it was a magnetic pole that would magnetize against the earth? So anyways, that's me being totally just kind of a nerd growing up. I don't know why that was fun to me, but I thought it'd be super cool. Anyway, I had a really curious mind and always wondered how things would work. So I loved to play paintball growing up. It's been forever since I've even published on here. I've been wanting to publish the last couple of weeks actually. I got all this stuff in my mind. I need to be publishing more. I actually lost my voice got sick. So I wanted to get this episode out to you guys because it's been on my mind a lot lately and I'm like, why? Why do people do this? I remember when I was younger, I think I was like 13. I was really into paint ball. I used to play paint ball all the way up until I, well I still play it every now and then. Not as much as I used to, but I remember I got a brand new paintball gun when I was like 12 or 13 and it was a Tippman A5 and that was like the gun back then, you know. Anyway, so I got it. It was brand new, came in the box, so excited. I was like, this is legit, like this gun is so awesome. And the first thing I did was I tore it apart, literally tore it apart, like down to everything that I could just, pieces all over. I just had it spread out and lay it all out. So I have this paint ball gun spread across my bed and I remember my dad walked in and I got a little nervous because it was like crap is he going to be mad that I tore it apart? But he looked at me and he's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm tearing my paintball gun apart. He's like, why? I'm like, because I want to know how it works and then I want to know why things do what they do. I just want to know why. And then also if I have a problem while I'm playing paint ball, I'll probably know how to fix it because I've torn it apart and I know how it works. I understand it. And he's like, that's crazy. Well I hope you can get it back together. I got it back together and I had torn apart multiple times since then. I don't know why I have such a curiosity for how things work. I feel like the knowledge of how things work can help you understand so many other things. There's a new podcast from Josh Forti. I had him on. I had him on an interview, an episode just a few episodes back. If you haven't listened to that one, I would definitely highly recommend that even if you aren't in social media, I would highly recommend you go listen to that. So I'm on this podcast with Josh Forti, talking to him. Well, he's come out with his own podcast since then. It's called the think different theory with Josh Forti and it's not actually like a social media based podcast. It's more of like a mindset podcast. It's more of how you can actually build your mind to be able to handle the things that entrepreneurs, business owners, everybody needs to handle so they can grow and become better at what they're doing. If you've listened to any podcasts before, I'm totally about beliefs and how beliefs are made, how you change them, how they're understood. I love the psychology behind beliefs and how people come up with beliefs. It's crazy. So he had this episode about asking the question why. Why are you doing that? Why is this the way it is? Why, why does it happen that way? He goes really into depth on that. You'll have to check it out. It's a new podcast. So there's not a whole lot of episodes. You could catch up on it pretty quick. So if you, if you're looking for something like that, totally go over there. But what I've realized is successful people ask questions, not only questions, but they want to understand why things work. And they asked the question why a lot. You may think, oh yeah, well that's dumb. But not just in business do you ask the question why? I've asked the question why thousands of times growing up and it has actually helped me understand more things and had more knowledge because I've asked why. I want to know why that person did what they did. I want to know why that belief is the belief that it is for most people. I want to know why you act a certain way. I want to know why that works in this way or the best way for marketing. So they ask why, and then they understand it. They internalize it, they think about it, they ponder on it. They actually like to think about it enough to understand it. It drives me nuts. Most people go through life being told what to do and they just accept it. They never questioned it. There are so many false beliefs out there, there're so many beliefs that just aren't even close to being correct, but people believe it and they don't even ask the question. It'sinteresting to me that somebody with so much of a following that has such a big voice can say something and people just believe it. Like it's truth. Like they believe that person, they trust them, so whatever they say is truth. Nobody knows everything. Nobody understands everything. So it just kills me when people don't ever question things, they don't ever question it to understand it or to actually think about it. Funny enough, I was actually watching this youtube video of people getting roasted or owned, which is kind of interesting. Anyway, there's this one guy that was petitioning something and this guy was asking him questions and he literally couldn't even answer any of the questions that he was petitioning about. He just took whatever people were saying and just believed that to be true. He had really no idea if it was actually true. He just believed it to be true. How many of us are doing that in our lives right now? We just believed that to be true. Like that is the one and only way that we can do this or because my mom told me that that's correct. I love the story of the Ham in the oven and I tell it to people all the time because I think it illustrates a really great point. If you haven't heard the story of the ham in the oven, essentially there's a newly married couple and he comes home one day from work and his wife had cooked him a ham or baked it in the oven and she pulls it out and gets it ready and he looks at it and he realizes that the end of the ham had been cut off. Which you don't need to be cutting off the end of the ham. I'm assuming she just cut off the point there and he's like, why did you cut the end of the Ham off? Like, that's weird. And she's like, oh, it tastes better that way. And he's like, bull crap, there's no way that's true. So he's kind of a little annoyed at this. And he's like, I'm going to call your mom. So he calls her mom and says, Hey, do you cut the ends off your hand? She says, yes. And he's like, why? Oh, because it tastes better that way. And he's like, bull crap, I don't believe it. So then the grandma is still alive at this point and he's kind of a little upset about this. There's no way that's true. So he calls the grandma and he's like, do you cut the ends off your ham? And she's like, yes I do. And he's like, why? And she says, because it won't fit in my oven if I don't. And he's like, thank you. That's it. Yes, it won't fit in your oven. But because the grandma never actually told her daughter why she cut it off, the daughter just assumed that it was because it made it taste better and then that's what she taught her daughter. And then that was passed on generationa. It's so interesting to me that people just believe whatever they're told and they don't ever question or think about how they can improve upon it or do something a little bit different to tweak it. I don't know how many times I have growing up, in different jobs, different things that I've done that I have asked the question, why do you do it that way? And they say, Oh, that's just what we do, just the way we've always done it. And I say, what if I did it this way? And most of the time when I asked that question, they kind of look at me and go, oh, that's a good idea. Let's try it. And I'm like, that makes a lot more sense to me. Let's try it. Oh Wow. We saved this much time. Imagine that. Like nobody asks questions nowadays. This is turning into a rant session. Just ask questions about things, understand why they work. You're probably doing something in your life that if you just question why you're doing it that way you could find a better way of doing it. You could find a different way of doing it. You could find a more efficient way of doing it and you could save yourself a lot of time or money or whatever it may be. That's the same thing with experts. Like that's why you hire experts because they already know, they've been through it and they say, you know what, I've done that. It's not very good. Like it doesn't get you where you need to be very quickly. This is the way you should do it. Oh, thank you for telling me. This is a little bit of a side note. I feel like people just kind of just want to follow the mainstream or the rule or whatever it may be. Something that drives me absolutely nuts is when I'm driving down the road and the person behind me, in front of me, whatever may be wants to get in the left-hand turn lane. But there are two yellow lines right next to him that technically you're not supposed to pass two yellow lines correct. But a car length or two in front of them, they curve to allow you into that turn lane. I hope you understand what I'm saying. So as you turn left, like most of the time, there's two yellow lines and there's that middle section in the road that you can be sitting in and then cars are passing on both sides. So as you're driving and you want to turn left, those middle lines go the left to allow you into that turn lane. Drives me nuts that they're sitting there and two car lengths in front of them is where the actual yellow linecomes in to the left to allow people into that lane. But technically there's nothing really there stopping them from going around. And so they wait until the turn light had turned green and everybody had gone. And then they miss the light and it just drives me nuts. You can cross the two yellow lines and it's not gonna kill you.  I understand some circumstances it can be bad or yes, you could get in trouble with the cops or the law or whatever it may be, but I'm sorry like 99 percent of the time just get over and go down the road a little bit and get in the turn lane. We're so taught to just follow the rules, follow the lines, don't cross that line or something battle happen. Really, is something bad gonna happen? You know what I mean? Ask some questions guys. That's all I'm saying. Don't take whatever people are telling you for granted. I've seen so many people tell me something like, oh this person said that. And so it's totally true. Like it's gotta be true. And I'm Like, wow, just because someone said it does not mean it's true. Just because of what I'm telling you guys on this podcast doesn't mean it's all 100 percent true. I could totally be wrong.  Ask questions. I love asking questions and learning new things and then telling other people about it so that I can also internalize it myself, but just because they're an expert in a field doesn't mean they know everything. They know a great majority of it, they know a ton and they definitely will know some hacks and some different ways to do things even faster or they can get things done faster for you, but don't take everything they say as 100 percent truth. Just because someone is a famous youtuber doesn't mean they're correct on everything. Successful people ask questions and they don't just ask to know it. They ask to understand it and then build upon it. So don't just follow the rules. Don't just follow the mainstream. Ask some questions guys. It's totally cool. You're not going to get hurt if you just ask a question, so thanks for listening and please rate and subscribe and let me know. Leave a review, if I am saying anything that you're like, oh, hey, you know what? Actually I think this way, I love to hear people's beliefs on things. There are different outlooks, outtakes on different things so that I can also use that to ask a question to further deepen my knowledge of stuff. So please leave reviews. Reach out to me. Follow me on instagram. I'm on there as Coulton.woods or Facebook message me. A lot of times I get kind of buried in the messages there, but most of the time I see them. So reach out to me and let me know. I'd love to hear your guys' feedback and thank you very much and I will talk to you guys later! Are you looking to jump start your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learningfromtheexperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody? This is Coulton Woods and I want to welcome you to another episode of learning from the experts. And today I actually want to talk to you about something that has been nagging at me in the back of my mind for quite some time about something I saw on Dan Locks ad. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wannabe experts who never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning it on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. All right now if you don't know who Dan Lock is, he's actually a YouTube sensation. But he has a program what they call high ticket closers. So he essentially teaches people how to close high ticket programs or just sales in general, very sales oriented. But he's huge on YouTube, very big following. And he's been growing like crazy actually just over the past year, he's been just exponentially growing. I was actually looking into a bit of what he was doing in the past few years and honestly hasn't really been too long since he started even doing YouTube videos and talking about high ticket closing. So he's grown and gotten big pretty quickly over the past few years. Since I was looking around at him I must've gotten an ad or something that I had seen on Facebook, he was targeting me on an ad because I was looking at his stuff probably but I was looking at this ad and I love seeing the haters comments on ads or just different programs. I love seeing them because it helps me kind of understand their mentality and also what's going on in their head. And I remember looking at this and there was a couple of them that said oh he's a scam, this dumb and I'm like Man I've met Dan Lock in person and he's actually pretty cool guy. So I thought it was weird and he's in the click funnels area, he's in Russell Brunson's inner circle. And so I'm looking at this and I'm like OK well I know he's not a scam, I've seen his stuff. It's so funny to me how people can just perceive something as a scam. And a lot of times they haven't even done anything with it or even looked at it. There's a lot of hater comments on there and I even commented on it. I was like that's weird that he's making a lot of money and you aren't, like come on guys seriously. I think it's interesting that a lot of them are probably struggling in life that comment all this negative stuff and I'm like well if you're just going to keep commenting all of these negative things on people that are being successful I don't see you getting too far by doing that. Maybe you should look into what they're actually doing and figure something out. I just think it's funny because I like to see what people's thoughts are. And what's going through their head when they post on there. I'm sorry but I like getting a little bit of a rise and commenting some controversial stuff on there just to see what people say because it's funny to me. And so I mentioned like man it's interesting that he's doing well and you're not. Or you know he's making money and what about you. And then somebody posted on there and I was like What the heck, I've thought of this but like he was so night and day on that post. I wish I had it. I wish I could pull it up. I should have screenshot it. Anyway, so this guy's comment on the Dan Lok's ad, he said you know it's interesting to me because people are willing to spend thirty thousand dollars on a vehicle but yet complain and cry and moan about spending 300 dollars on their mind like spending three hundred dollars on something that's going to increase them as a person, not something physical. You'll spend thirty thousand dollars on a car but you won't take three hundred dollars and spend that on something that's going to help you become better in the things that you're doing. You won't spend three hundred dollars on learning something. I see it all the time. They're like oh that's too much money or I don't need that course, I already know it but then they're OK with going and spending 60 70 thousand dollars on a vehicle that that gives them no intellectual property. So it surprises me that so many people are willing to spend that much money on a car but they won't spend that much on something that's going to increase their knowledge to help them make more money to help them be more successful in whatever they do. That was just eating at me. I need to podcast about that because it's so true. I've seen so many business people want to increase their business or become better or do more but then they're not willing to spend a few hundred dollars for it. They look at a thousand dollars like oh that's way too much, what's it going to give me. But in reality, they don't try to figure out the ROI on it. If you're struggling in your business, it's worth money paying an expert to figure out how you can increase your business in areas that you're lacking or failing at. You can find experts that are so well versed in that area of what you're looking for in your business that it would take you years to become that good at it. So why are you trying to become that good at it in years when you can hire somebody that is that good at it already and help you blow up in that area and overcome that part of your business. There are so many experts out who can help through every stage of business you go through. Alex Charfen is the man when it comes to what you need to do system wise and company wise and entrepreneurial wise every step of the business and every step is different like 0 to 30,000, 30,000 300,000, 300,000 to a million, million to 3 million, 3 million to 10 million. Those are all very big transitions in your business and you need to start doing things differently in your business in order for it to work. Your business will fail if you don't do it correctly or if you don't do it at all. If you keep trying to run your business like it was when you started and now you're on a million dollars a year, that's not going to work. You have to figure out different systems. James P. Friel is another man when it comes to systems and different things on how you can create those systems for your business that will free up a lot of time and also help your employees do better. Think about what you are spending money on, what you value more than other things and how much are you spending on your intellectual. How much are you actually learning? I've gone through this before, I've done phases where I'm focused more on buying something that doesn't really do anything for me, like buying a car. But when I focus on things that helped me become better myself intellectually, I can be better in my business and understand things more and make more money, it's so much better that way. But I've gone through spurts, I've gone through the different times as well. I used to hate learning growing up. School is not my thing. I did not like school at all which is sad. But now sometimes I go through a book a week trying to cram it in. Always be learning the things that you're needing at the time. Don't go try to learn something that doesn't apply to what you're doing right now or doesn't apply to the thing that you're focusing on your business that's going to help you get to the next point. So I'm going to leave you with that. Thank you very much for listening and you have gone through another episode of learning from the experts. And thank you so much for following guys. Are you looking to jump start your business by learning or getting help from the real experts. Go to learning from the experts.com to find pre-approved experts that I've hand picked for you. Don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating and leaving feedback.  

Hey, what's going on everybody? Hey, this is Coulton woods and you're listening to learning from the experts and today I want to talk to you about experience and how it is actually your most valuable asset. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wanna-be experts who never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning it on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. Sweet stuff. What I want to talk to you about today is something called experience. It's interesting to me that people think that you can just go through and learn things and then not actually learn them without having any experience tied to it. Robert Herjavec, you know one of the sharks on shark tank? One of the sharks on shark tank said that experience is your most valuable asset. Now why do you think that is? I actually want to tell you a story. So when I was in college, if you've listened to my podcasts before this, you'll know that when I was in college, I started my own repair store. I remember going to a class and we were learning about breaking even costs, fixed costs, variable costs, Roi, basic different things. And I remember in this basic entrepreneurial class, the teachers teaching us some things and literally would ask us a question like if your costs are this much and you have to pay for it every month, no matter what, what is that a fixed cost or variable costs. Then professor asks if you sell your products and you make this much profit on your product, how much do you have to sell to cover your fixed costs? And I thought, it's easy. I can tell you that right away because I've done it in my own business and I know what my costs are, and I know what I have to sell in order to cover those costs and how much I make by selling whatever product or service that I was doing. And so I remember I'm sitting in this class and I'm like, the teacher's asking us a question, okay, well if you sell this much, how much do you have to sell in order for you to cover your fixed costs? Just this divided by that. And I'm like, it's this much. And he's like, yeah, it's correct. And then I remember so many people in there, so many of these kids in college, they couldn't wrap their head around it for some reason. They're like, I don't really understand why or how this all actually works. And I mean going through that semester, I was the teachers favorite student, me and this one other guy. I remember this other guy had some business experience as well and it was a super easy class for us and we just flew through that. And it wasn't hard for us because we had some experience already in the field and we had already done different things and if I wouldn't have had the experience that I had doing business, it would have been just as hard for me but once I had the experience, it's so easy. How come you don't understand that? How come you don't get it? Like, it makes so much sense. That's easy. I've been through that. We forget as people that if you haven't gone through the experience,it's not as easy to understand. I wasn't even planning on talking about this, this is not totally business related, but it helps 100 percent with experience. So me and my wife went through over six years of infertility battle. We literally tried to have children for over six years. It wasn't until like seven years of being married that we actually were able to have a kid. He's four and a half months now, we just had our first baby boy, and I'm super excited to him, he's the cutest little thing I've ever seen and he's already smiling, laughing and he's a huge blessing our lives. But what's interesting is if we didn't have that experience of what it's like to work so hard or try so much and go through it. A lot of people don't even know the terms. We went through things called IUIs that we had to do, and doctor's appointments and shots and different medicine like Femara. And Clomid, like there's all these different terms and stuff. We ended up having to do ivf and if you don't know what ivf is in vitro, where they actually literally have to fertilize the egg outside of the body and then implant back into the body and it's not cheap. So it took us over six years to essentially get to that point. Whereas, like every doctor is telling us we don't know why. She had multiple surgeries on different things that may have been causing the infertility and those ended up not working and so many other issues and different things. And finally it came to the point where we knew we had to do IVF. So we did IVF and it was successful in the first round thank goodness. And I'm sorry for anybody that ever has to go through that. It is not fun. It is not a good road or battle to be going on and is very emotional. It's such a huge blessing to have that little one around now. But with that being said, for other people that are going through infertility, it's really interesting because if you haven't experienced it, you don't understand it. You just don't understand it. Don't try to understand it. You just don't. I don't know how many times my wife has had people come up to her and say, oh, I had somebody go through that. You'll be fine. They were fine, you'll be fine. That's I'm sorry, but that is not the best thing to say when you're in the middle of it. Oh, you just got shot. Hey, I know somebody that got shot and they turned out fine. You'll be okay. Don't worry about it. You got shot. Everybody gets shot. Don't worry about it. It's not something that you just kind of brush off. But having been through that experience and having had the experiences that we've had through that, we can essentially cope. Where we understand it now. Our experience has brought understanding to us that you can't get any other way essentially. I wasn't even planning on talking about our infertility battle. That's interesting. But it's the same with businesses, is same with everything that you go through in life. If you don't experience something, you're not going to learn it. I don't know how many times people buy a course or they buy a program and they're like, yeah, I bought it. It's going to make me like wealthy and rich and I'm going to be able to do this or do that, or I'm going to be the best social media person ever. The facebook ads person ever. They'll go through the material and they're like, oh, it didn't really work for me. Well, they didn't actually implement or try it or experience how it works. If you don't do that, you won't actually learn it. You have to be able to teach something in order to know it. The teacher always learns more than the student because they have to understand it at a level that's different than just being taught that material. So if you can turn around and teach the same materials that you're going through in your course to somebody else and have it be clear enough and understandable enough that they can understand it and use it and have results based on what you've taught them. Then you're at a whole nother level of understanding. You've gone through and begun to experience it. Now if you've actually implemented it and experienced it and seen it and done it and had feedback from what you're doing, then you learn so many more things when you experience it. I can think of even bad experiences when I've done business deals with people and they have completely not been ethical in their dealings essentially with me and I learned a ton from that. I experienced that a couple times and I'm like, never again will I experience this because that was horrible. Not that I won't ever experience it, but now I know what to look out for to not go through that experience again. You learn stuff very quickly when you experience it. I just wanted to go over how experience is so much more valuable than just learning something or going through a course and listening to it. You need to experience it. You have to go through it. Hopefully my very short version of our IVF story helps you understand a little bit more about experiences, not just in your business world, but also in your personal life and then those that you interact with around you. Thank you very much for being on here guys. I look forward to talking to you again. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learning from the experts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody? Hey, this is Coulton woods and I want to welcome you to another episode of learning from the experts, and once again, I have a freaking awesome expert on here today that I'm excited for you guys to get to know and your story and learn some freaking sick stuff from. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wanna be experts who never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. Awesome Josh! I'm excited to have you on here. I have Josh Forti on here with me today and he's going to drop some knowledge bombs, some truth nukes. Steve Larsen would like to say, but first off, okay, Josh, not everybody knows you, so let's, let's hear your story a little bit more. Coulton, the man, I appreciate you having me on here dude. It's an honor and I'm excited to get rockin' and rollin'. How far back should we go? Where do you wanna start? How'd you get started? We'll back up to the origin story. Born in Wisconsin at age one, moved to La, lived in the suburbs of La for 10 years and then moved out to this little itty bitty farm town in the middle of nowhere of Indiana. So culture shock, right? I'm 12 years old from there, grew up on a farm and had no social media experience and all, like I had dial up internet. I didn't have like texting or Internet on my phone until I was 20, so I mean, like really out in the middle of nowhere. And so I went and, you know, I'm a farmer and had a bad year in the farm community. I was planning on being a farmer my whole life. That was my goal, my mentality and had a bad year in that. It was like, dude, I gotta go do something else. Like I didn't realize the risk that was involved there. So I wanted something a little more. Started college for a semester. Absolutely hated it. While in college I got a job in insurance sales and kind of the requirement, the reason I was able to get that job was, hey, you're in college, you're going to finish it. Well, I was arguing with my professor one day and he was like, you're here because you want to be successful. And I'm like, oh no, that's not why I'm here. You don't need college to be successful.  And he goes, was, why the heck are you here? And I'm like, well, that's a good point. And so literally right there I got up, stood up and said I quit and walked out and walked out of the Bursar's office, quit my classes and left. And so when my boss finds out like three or four days later, she's like, you've got three months to figure out what you're going to do.  And either start something else, right? Sign up for more classes or figure out what you're going to do with your life basically or else you're done. And so I'm like, all right, well I'm gonna figure something out. So I'm pretty broke at this time and I'm looking around and I'm like how do I make money? And so we're sitting there, she's got some pretty big clients and we're at this sitting in the office of a huge company. I mean probably over $100, $200,000,000 a year at least. I mean, they got factories all over the world, right? And so he's like, sales are down and, and stuff, even though the demand for our stuff is at an all time high. And I'm like why is that the case then? He's like all the sales are coming in online and they weren't there, they weren't in that online space. This is like two years ago. And I'm like, we'll have you like tried like running ads or like being online or being on social media. And he's like, no, I can't remember exactly what he said, but it's something along the lines of like, that doesn't work or influencers, something is a fad or something like that. And I'm like, alright, well I'm broke and you're telling me that people are making money online. Right? So I go home and I just started googling it and I'm like how do I make money? How do I make money? How to make money? And long story short...  how old are you at this point? 20, 21, 22, so probably 22. I'm trying to think. Maybe this was right before my 22nd birthday I think maybe. And so I'm like googling and I'm like how do I do this? And so driving for Uber comes up and I'm like okay, that's not online but okay I get it. Flips and stuff on Ebay and craigslist and stuff. I'm like all right. And so I started doing that and just like looking around and I find facebook ads and I find a ecom and I'm like watch this. I'm sure there's a Webinar of some sort and they're like if you could just do this and this. And I'm like yeah. So I like jump in and I've spent... I just had to put it on a credit card because I didn't have any money and I spent like 800 bucks on a set of a website and econ website had someone to do it because I had no idea and like five or $600 on facebook ads. And I didn't make any sales, I tried to sell Harry Potter books because that was the only thing. I was like my friends all like Harry Potter. So maybe they'll buy it. That's awesome dude. I know. So I'm like broken out at this point and now I'm in debt and I've never been in debt before my whole life at this point. And so I'm like freaking out. And so I'm still trying to pay this off by flipping stuff on craigslist because I was driving for Uber. Then one day I meet this kid on instagram, he was like 16 years old, he's got 50,000 followers and I'm like, is this guy famous? Right. So I go and I literally googled his name and I'm like trying to figure out if he's got rich parents or if it's famous. I can't find him anywhere. And so I just messaged him and I had three questions for him. I was like, number one- are you famous somewhere else? Number two, are you making money? And number three, if so, how? He messages me back and I can't for the life of me remember who it was and I wish I would have written it down, but at the time I wasn't in entrepreneurship so I didn't know that that's what you did, right? I remember him telling me, he's like, I post cool stories about stuff that I do. People tell me what they want me to sell them. I go and I sell it to them and they buy it and I'm like, there is no way it's that easy. Right? Like how? And so I'm like thinking about this and think about this. And then I had this light bulb moment and so I messaged him back because I knew I probably only get like one more question before he ignore me. And then I'm an annoying instagrammer and I was like, Dude, you pay for ads? And he's like, no dude, they just tell me what they want. And I'm like, light bulb moment! This is amazing, right? I'm like, you don't have to have, like how do you grow without paying brands? You're not paying for your followers, they're all real. And so that was like a big light bulb moment for me because I'm broke at the time and you know many, I don't know where you, the listener are right now if you're, you know, are broke or maybe just started out. But like the thought for me and a lot of people that I run into is like the thought that me and a lot of people run into like, the thought of running ads is scary. Right? And it's like I don't know if I'm going to get an Roi on that money. And so I was like, if I can grow an audience and figure out how to grow an audience without having to pay for ads, that's game over for me, like I'm all in. And so I started looking around, looking around and I ended up buying a course. Once again, didn't have the money for it, only had like half of it, but I put it on a credit card and I was like, all right, I'm all in. And there was an instagram course and I don't want to bash on the course. It was, it was a good course, I think it was thorough in what it taught, but it wasn't anything like exceptional. I think a lot of people think that if it was not an exceptional or amazing course or whatever, it's not worth their money. The thought that like you have to have like this big drawn out course that needed to be super awesome in order to get results. That's not true. Like this course was average, mediocre, but it was thorough. And so I just did everything the course said. So I bought it on a Friday and I was like, all right, I'm going to do this from Friday when I get off work til like Monday when I go back, I'm gonna go through this whole course. That's exactly what I did. And so I started doing literally everything that the course said and I want to say, and this is kind of more like on the mindset issue side of things. My parents always taught me how to work hard and like my parents were not like, I don't have money and I don't come from a wealthy family or whatever, and not money savvy, but if you grew up on a farm, you know how to work hard. Right? And so I was like, I'm not gonna quit and I'm going to find new ways to make this better and I'm going to get my money back out of this because I've got to make my money back. And so I did everything that it said. And then some. And I tested different things and I opened several different accounts and I tried it. I tried it and it took me months to actually see results out of it. But fast forward seven months, seven months later, and I had 80- 100,000 followers on instagram just off of just doing it consistently. And for the first two or three or four months, so many people give up and I'm like, dude, I spent all my money and went and did that over this. And I didn't see any results for three months. But I followed through and I finally figured out how it clicked and so that's kind of what started me into this whole social media game was instagram and some 16 year old kid who said I don't pay for ads and I make money and that's what's lead into now, and I'm sure we'll get into that, but about 5 million followers that we've grown for myself, for clients on social media, between instagram and facebook. That's actually actually super impressive. One thing that I've kind noticed too is you say you came from a farming background, first off, that's freaking sweet because you weren't just given a phone when you were 12. So you've only been in this game for what, 4 years now? No, not even- three years. Three years. Yeah. So probably about three years ago is when I started googling this whole thing. And then I remember, October, November- that's what I want to quit classes would have been been around this time. And then I started on instagram March 1st or March second, two years ago. So it'll be coming up on three years this coming March is when I started on instagram. That's incredible dude. But I think the key to that is you didn't stop. Like most people, they don't see the Roi in like three, four, five, six months and they're like, this is not happening. I'm done right when they're at the edge of just hitting the gold mine, you know? And so I think that's a huge lesson for us to learn as well- you just got to keep pushing through it and then it will happen. If I could just stop you right there- just because a week or a month or a year has gone by means literally nothing if you're not actually working because like I have people that bought into the same course and they're like, well, I've been trying for six months and I'm only at 6,000 followers. How are you at 80,000? And I'm like, because I worked a job where I worked nine hours a day. I had a 30 minute commute each way, roughly 20 to 30 minutes. Right. So I'm like, there's 10 hours of my day that's gone. I had to be there at 8:00 AM. So I would wake up an hour and a half before I had to leave and for an hour I would work on instagram. My entire lunch break was instagram my entire time after that. And I had a girlfriend at the time. I wasn't married but it was constant. It was always, I didn't go to movies, I didn't go hang out with friends, I didn't go to parties, I didn't go to events. I went to church, I went to work, I went to Walmart and that's it. And when you do that people are like, well, you know, I have this. I'm like, dude, two years, two, three years of your life, you sacrifice for a lifetime of whatever that is. And I know Russell talks about that a lot too, so. Yeah, it's totally true. I've even talked about like when I served my repair business on the podcast and I've told you a little bit about it, but I started out and it was just a little here, a little there, not much. And then a year later I literally have a brick and mortar and I'm just busier than I could be, but I stuck with it, you know, like I just kept it going, pushed it out more and more. So. And then the other thing I want to point out is I feel like I've noticed this trend- I don't know if it's the farm thing or what, but a lot of killers out there I feel like they grew up and their parents just made them work so they've learned how to work. But with that being said, my dad had me outside working. I learned how to work outside, but not only that I learned how to enjoy my work even though most people hated it. I'm sure you learned the same thing. Like farming. It sucks when you're a kid. Right? Nothing like bailing hay, dude. 100 degrees outside the heat is blaring down on you. And then after you're dog tired, you got to go into the Hayloft and you've got to put it all into the barn and it's hot. There's no air you can't breathe. It is the worst. Yeah, no, absolutely. See, yeah, you learned some hard work, but that I feel like for me it didn't translate too much into like the online work. I had a really hard time with that at the beginning. Interesting. Then I went to college and I feel like that actually opened up my eyes that I could actually accomplish more things than I realized. And I'm sure you probably realized that even with like the one semester that you went to, like, Hey, I can actually do all this stuff. The biggest thing that I learned from college or that I was made aware of is that there's actually monetary value in the information that's in your head. But afterwards I would go and I look back at that and I understand now that there is monetary value in this stuff and I learned that through business. But I will say that there are certain elements of the college experience. I went to a community college. There was definitely valuable in that mental transition process for sure. That's interesting. That's cool stuff, dude. Well, Hey, I want to ask you some more questions here. We know that you were not just given this, it wasn't just a silver platter. Here you go. What are some of the hard things that you went through? What are some of the things that people go through as they become someone like you or they build their business like you did? So first off, the first little roadblock that everybody runs into, I think, I feel like less people run into it now just because more people are in the online space and people that are serious in this kind of like get into it. But if you're a complete Newbie, like I was, have no online friends, for sure you're going to run into this is nobody watches you at the beginning, right? Like no one. And I did a webinar yesterday. I actually showed a screenshot, like my first I used to try to publish on Youtube right when I first got started, like I had no money, so I was like literally taking the lamp shades off of lights and setting them on either side to try to get better. I got four views. The first facebook group I ever launched in the first month got three members, right? Like nobody cares. And so I think that at the beginning was really difficult. Thankfully I just liked to talk and so I'm like, well, if nobody listens to me, Dang it, I will listen to me, you know what I mean? Put my voice out there. So I think that was really, really difficult for me. And I think it's difficult for a lot because when you see that the person you're following is getting a thousand views and you're getting 62, that's a really big mental block. And so I think that was more of like an overall difficult thing. And then once I got into it, dude, I'll tell you the worst day of my life, I'm telling you the worst day and I've been through some crap in my life. But something I would not ever want to go back to December, I think it was 29th, 2016, so this is coming up on two years ago, not too long ago, my first webinar ever and we hired a guy, paid him the package, was $25,000 and I didn't have the $25,000 at the time. So we took out a payment plan on it and put down 15,000 up front, it's all the money I had. I think I had like my business partner and I combined. Mind you, we're both paying for an apartment. I don't have a job at this point. I think combined we had like $2,000 and I make it count. We put down every penny on this guy to help us build our webinar. And we were convinced that we had a good course. It was on instagram. We had grown probably over a million, 2 million followers probably at this time. So like we knew what we were doing and we told him, we're like, we're going to get a ton of people registered for this Webinar. And he didn't believe us. And I was like, no dude, you don't understand. Like we have a lot of followers on instagram, like we will push traffic. And so we went through and we worked as hard as we knew how. I talk about learning how to learn. Like I didn't know how to learn at this point. I didn't know how to receive that level of information, but I was giving it my all and this guy should've told us up front that we were not the right fit, that he didn't want our money. Like he should've said no. It was clearly obvious that we were not a good fit. But we went through and so we built this webinar, 2,700 people registered, zero ads spent. So this was a warm audience from Instagram. So it's not truly warm, but it's a warm audience. 1000 people showed up for the Webinar. Actually thousand and four. We maxed out the room and people couldn't get in. One sale. One sale? Hundreds of emails of- F you! Go to hell. You're never going to be successful. You're a scam artist. This was the worst webinar ever. Can I get an hour of my life back? You should pay me to do it. I'm talking the lowest of lows, like I would pay $100,000 to not have to go back to that day, right? It was that bad. And so I'm like going through this process, I bawled my self to sleep that night because we worked so hard and I was like, I owe $15,000 to this guy now, right? I put down $15 and 15 that was supposed to come from this webinar. I only made one sale and everybody hates me. And so at that point when you're in that moment, that's a defining moment for people's lives. And so when people are like, Josh, you know, it's easy for you to do blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, no, no, no. That's a misconception that it's easier when you have an audience and I don't want to scare anybody away from trying to build an audience. It's the most amazing thing ever. The amount of lives you can change, but everything you do is in the spotlight when you're in the audience and especially in business. The next day I wrote up. Wrote a very long email and I did a live stream apologizing to everyone there and I said, look guys, I'm really, really good at social media and I know what I'm talking about. Clearly I don't know what the heck I'm doing on webinars and I'm sorry. Right. And so we offered a followup training with no pitch for free, just sat on there for an hour. We just broke down on strategy and we turned that into a good scenario in the sense of we gained a lot of respect from the people that actually followed us, but everybody else hated us. I mean really truly hated me at that given point. And so when I see people like Logan Paul and his controversy was like millions, I can't imagine what that guy's going through. So that was the worst day of my life up until that point and still to this day, like in business, just awful. And so that was a mental game right there. Big Time. That is huge. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that's just something that people actually need to see and hear because it's so true. Yeah, it's not easy, but as long as you just keep going and you push through. There was guy named Hyrum Smith who I listen to from Franklin Covey. He said pain is inevitable. Misery is optional. Yup. I totally agree. You could have just taken that day and blamed that guy for the rest of your life and never done anything else and just ended up getting a nine to five and not grown an audience after that because you feel like you failed or you push through it just like you did and you made it happen. That's awesome dude. And I think the other thing with failure in that lesson specifically, and I love what you said there about blaming that guy because that's your initial reaction. Believe me, like the first thing that I did the next morning, because I got on Voxer with that guy and I said, here's what happened. We got issues, right? Not blaming that person and turning that into a learning experience- a lot of good, but mentally it has messed me up for future webinars and stuff. It really did. Even I did a Webinar just yesterday, dude, like you hit that Go Live button and you are in terror. Right? And you're freaking out and then when you can hit done, you're in terror because you're like, is my inbox about to explode my, about to make no money. You know what I mean? That happened, right? But you learned from that experience and you have to go through and let that experience go and not hold a grudge to that person and really learn from it and truly become that person. And if you only look at it from a financial standpoint and you only look at it from a business standpoint, you're going to have a really hard time with it. Look at it from a life standpoint. When you look at it from a wow, look what I learned from a non financial standpoint, it makes it a lot easier. And like you said, you don't have to be in misery over it. I've been through a couple of situations I can think of. One that was just, I couldn't really hold a grudge against that person for doing what they did and pretty much screwed me over on my entire business. But I look at it now and I'm like, man, I learned a ton from that and I'm glad I actually went through it then instead of later on. So yeah, totally. Just learn from those experiences. Let's get into social media. All right. Tell us some stuff. We want some gold here, some truth. You have to understand from a pure growth standpoint on social media, there are literally only two things that matter and I know people are like, what are the three secrets? You're probably looking for me to drop some hacks and we can get into that. I'm happy to do that, but excuse me, if you listened to Russell Brunson about funnels, he talks about the different elements of what makes a successful funnel on social media regardless of the platform, regardless of the message, whatever. There's only two things that matter and that number one is the story and how you deliver that story, like the content piece of it. Number two is exposure, right? Those are the two things you're going for. And so what you have to look at from a core element is if you don't know what your message is slash what your story is, then you can't get exposure on that story, right? And so the Hashtags, you use a facebook ad, you run the interviews that you do, all that is getting the exposure to your message. And so once you have that, I suppose we've gotten people that have had told the message, they'll get thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of views on their instagram profile or their facebook page or whatever and nobody will follow. And then you've gotten people that have gotten like 10,000 views on their facebook page or instagram page and like half of those people turn into followers. What's the difference? The difference is your content and your storyline behind it. You've got to give people a reason to follow you. And the only reason that makes you different or unique than anyone else is your story. And so when you have that story, and I work with personal brands. People that want to grow an audience. If you're not doing a personal brand, then there's a storyline behind whatever it is that you are trying to grow. Look at Nike. Look at Maverick by Logan Paul, look at these big huge econ stores, the ones that make it are the ones that have a storyline and the ones that really build that brand around it. So I would say those two things are the things that you need to focus on and everything that you teach and everything that you learn. It only applies back to one of those. You're either getting more exposure and I'm talking purely from a growth standpoint, not a monetization sample, but like from a growth standpoint, it either ties back to your message and story or it ties back to the amount of exposure that you're going to get. One of those two. And what do you think would happen if you kind of went off from your story into a different area? Like what if you broke from what you normally teach what you do? I just had the thought come into my head that if someone's got this story or this following and this is kind of like what they're teaching and this is what they're in,Russell Brunson in funnels, and he were to go somewhere else, like what would that do, do you know? So I would say one or two things. If you're breaking, if you're moving into something else and it's part of your storyline, then you're fine. Right? But what if you're not focused on that one, I guess? Right? Exactly. Why do you follow someone? Right? You follow someone because number one, you follow a story because you want to know what happens next, right? But you follow a specific story because of how you relate to that story. And so if this story is all over the place, are you really gonna follow it? Think about if I'm telling you a story and I'm like, dude, let me tell you this. One time I was at the beach and all the sudden we were eating ice cream and oh dude, when I was over here on this grass. You'd be like, wait, what happened? What happened to the beach? Right. I'll get back to that here in just a second, but dude, this grass. I was mowing this grass. You'd be like what are you doing? You know? And so if you're straying all over the place and you're hopping from this to this, this is really hard for people to know what it is that you're about and the story that they're trying to follow. So if you're straying from that, if you're straying from whatever it is and you're jumping from thing to thing, I try not to and people think they have to have it all figured out right away, you know? Right? If you're authentic and you're real and you put forth your passion and your why is why you always lead with why, then you can have different elements of the story and like your core audience will know that you're trying different things, but you've got to have that core message in that core story along what you're doing. And so for me right now, and I was sharing this with you before the podcast, there was a point not too long ago, six, seven, eight months ago when I was about to just dip out, I was done. And the reason you don't always share that, but the people that you do share that with, they go, okay, well they understand the process because they know your big vision. And so when you're like, Hey, I'm leading with this vision of I want to make the world a better place by providing people with information that's going to change their life. I'm all about education. And so for me right now, the vehicle, I'm using social media, that's what people know me by, but my core audience knows that my vision is to make the world a better place and change the world through education. That's what I've told my audience. And so every live stream that I'm signing off on is, go out, think different, make the world a better place. You know, James Lives. And so if I were to jump from social media and let's say make a shift to PR or make a shift to funnels or whatever that is, and that was my focus, my core audience that's actually going to follow and buy from me, as long as I tell them that storyline process, they're going to know, okay, he's shifting vehicles but he's still on the same route. But if you just jumped and you don't give them context, if you just jump and you don't share that story and you don't lead with that overall vision of what you're doing, then it's impossible for them to know what's going on and they're not going to fall. Yeah, totally. I think that helps a ton just to know kind of what the focus is on. A confused mind will not follow because they don't understand it. If it doesn't make sense to them or they don't get that emotionally attached to it, then they're not going to care. Think of it this way, right? Imagine you were following an instagram account. Instagram account was all about sunsets. You love sunsets, you love the beach. And I follow one. I think it's actually called that sunsets and it's beautiful pictures. You're following it for that reason, right? If all of sudden they went and deleted all that content one day and started posting pictures of themselves, are you going to continue to follow? No, of course not. And I actually had this example, I did that and I was building an instagram account. We had, I don't know, probably 100,000 followers or so. And it was a luxury account, like houses, beautiful cars and things of that nature. And I was like, dude, I want to be famous, right? Because at this point I hadn't really grown my personal brand. I was like, what if I just post some pictures of me up there? So like every now and then I would just throw up a picture and first off the engagement drops, like 90 percent, right? Like nobody likes it, engages on it. And then the random people that do, there'll be like Who the heck is it? Who are you? Like, why is this on my newsfeed? You know? And they'll literally just comment on it. They don't want it. It's not what they signed up for. And so people, you have to remember that the thing that you use to attract people is oftentimes the thing that they're going to remember you for and follow you for. And so that's why there's nothing inherently wrong about driving a Lamborghini or going off and having a ton of money sitting in your passenger seat for some reason, right? But if that's the message that you're putting off and that's what people are following you for, then that's the type of person you're going to attract. So as soon as you switch that up and you don't have that anymore, they're not going to follow you. Right. So like imagine if Tai Lopez stopped posting pictures of cars and girls and you know, things like that, like one of his core audience that, whose life he's changed continue to follow him. Yes. But with the mass majority of people that follow him, would you still be Tai Lopez? Like you wouldn't because that's what they follow him for, you know. So it's really important to just understand what are you using to attract people and is that really your core message? Which is why you'll, I mean, you might see me in a Lamborghini, but you're never gonna see me using Lamborghinis to attract millions of followers. That's not my style. Yeah, totally. No mine either, right? Because I don't think lamborghinis changed the world. They're awesome, but they're not going to go make the world a better place. Exactly. Right? You can have a good time and I'm all about having fun and a good time while you're working hard for sure. Is there any last one golden nugget that you want to drop? Let me drop a few golden go bombs here. Do you want to focus more on instagram or folks who are on facebook or general? Which one do you think is the better one at this time right now to be focusing on or both? Instagram, depending upon how your audience uses it. Right? Instagram drives a lot of traffic or can drive a lot of traffic. There's less buyers on the instagram platform now. I'll get to that in just a second. It's much easier to grow on instagram and you need to cultivate and nurture your audience a lot on instagram. It's hard to do that in an automated way. So instagram is a very time consuming platform, but it can be a very profitable time, which is one of the biggest problems. And actually the reason that I just got out of the instagramming, is because a lot of my clients, especially these bigger names, like they expected an automated solution because that was what they're used to, you can do that on facebook because you can place ads and do that content. You can't do that on Instagram, right? It's much more difficult. So from a standpoint of monetization, if you want to drive a ton of traffic and you don't want to have a personal brand and you don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it, great. You can go to Instagram, you can post some viral photos of entrepreneurship and grass and that's great. If you want to actually cultivate an audience, if you want to be on instagram platform, you're going to need time. Time is what goes into it. Now. That's evolving. Now on facebook. On the other hand, buyers on facebook, the same person, and this was back early 2017. So it's probably different. Instagram's got a really huge shift in 2018. But at one point the same exact person on instagram and on facebook was eight times more likely to buy on facebook. Then it was on instagram. So they see an ad for the same thing on the two platforms, they are eight times more likely to buy on facebook. So now you go, okay, well why the heck then would I even spend any of my time on instagram and it's because traffic on instagram is like 10 times cheaper than it is on facebook. So for those of you that are in the paid advertising space or are in the space of marketing, what we will do is we will acquire the initial customer or the initial follower I should say on instagram and then we will drive them to facebook as fast as we possibly can. So let's say you didn't want to grow an instagram page yourself, but you wanted to capitalize on traffic because it's cheap, right? So I'll set up a page and my only goal on that page is to get people to either opt in or really just hit the page. And here's why, I ideally would like them to opt in to our freebies, but I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever pay for an ad on instagram where I'm selling something. I'm always giving it away for free from shout outs from other influencers unless I'm going to do a super longterm deal with them. But if it's like I'm buying 10 jobs from them, I'm sending them to a Freebie offer, I'm putting a facebook pixel on that page and that facebook pixel is specific for that instagram audience. I'm going to go buy $3,000 in shout outs from an instagram influencer. I'm going to get literally tens of thousands of visitors to visit that page because they're doing swipe up. Like we were getting clicks for. I think we were getting Webinar registrations at one point for eighty three cents. We paid a thousand bucks and we got two or 3000 impressions to the page that we did the shout out from but now that facebook pixel has fired thousands of times, so you've got a lot of good data and as long as the quality of the account that you're buying them from has good quality followers, we typically buy story shout outs rather than post shout outs, photos with the swipe up. People are actually watching and engaged. Now I have an audience facebook pixel to go retarget on facebook and I can create lookalike audiences off of that. So I have a wired my 5,000 impressions for pennies on the dollar compared to what I would have paid for an initial 5,000 impressions on facebook and now I can just go retarget on there. And so from a paid advertising standpoint, that's a great strategy. From an organic, it is easier to grow fast on instagram. It is easier to grow loyal on facebook. That got interesting fast, more loyal on facebook and just the following mainly on instagram. That's really interesting because I'm guessing, correct me if I'm wrong, your audience probably don't want to be like celebrity influencers and majority of them, yeah, I'd say probably a majority of them there, they're just looking to kind of grow probably. Yeah. Mainly just kind of grow a little bit of their, uh, let people know a little bit more what they do. Not like. Exactly. Number one tip I can give for you guys, if you don't have a facebook group, you need to open one. Now. We just got an amazing testimonial back from Steven actually outside of publishing the facebook group that we helped him create and grow is the single single greatest thing that has driven his business forward. So you know, when you, when you understand that, like you need a face book group and you do it in a and for those of you that are watching on a podcast, you probably won't be able to visualize this. But if you're watching on the video, like imagine your social media as a circle, your facebook group needs to be at the center of it and everything needs to revolve around that because facebook group is the most interactive and intimate a social media platform for two reasons. They get to know you because there's an instagram stories which are great, but it's going to bring you the highest level of Roi because you can do live streams in there. You can make posts in there and 90 percent of the content in a facebook group is not your content, but you get credit for. Right? So if you have an engaged audience, they're publishing tons and tons of content. Your benefiting from that. And so if your focus is on growing rather than when you're on podcasts, be like, yeah, check out my website or check out my youtube channel or check out this. Or you just send everybody to the facebook group, podcasts, youtube channels, twitter, instagram, email, snapchat, wherever you're at. If you send everyone to the facebook group, then they, number one, see that you're awesome because you got all these members in there, they're all interacting with each other. Number two, they actually consume your content. I go in there, I go live. Yesterday I did a live and in the first like four hours I got 1.7k views in the first hour. Two hours, right? And so they watched, they consume, they interact, they engage. So do that. And this is once again coming down to exposure. Alright, my, the single greatest thing that will drive your business forward without a question is interviews and live streaming. Right? So really even talking about publishing on his podcast, I did that exact same thing except I did it on facebook live, that's only difference. And the reason I did it on facebook live is because number one, I didn't really know about podcasting when I first got started in entrepreneurship. I thought podcast were for losers. But I went and did it on facebook because that were my audience was. And so I would go and if there was a facebook group, I would go to the admin and I would say, hey. I started with one number, just like most of you will start with, I'm not that special, but when you get your first 100 members, 200 and 500, whatever you got, but once you hit that thousand number mark, you got leverage. So you can go to these facebook group owners and anybody else that has between one and 5,000 members, I hit him up. Or if you have a really good skill that a lot of people need, facebook group owners love that. All right, so you can teach something. Let's say you're really good at, I don't know, seo. You're really good at designing funnels. You're really good at anything, any skill that could potentially go find facebook groups of your ideal audience and you might be like, well why would they let me in there? I'm like, dude, it's your ideal audience, it's also their ideal audience. The more value you can provide to them. And I sat on interview after interview after interview, after interview and that's what blew me up. And then on top of that I live streamed for like 170 something days straight every single day. I did a live stream and so all the sudden I was getting tons of massive exposure and I was telling my skillset with a little bit of my story to each one of these places and luring them in and then they would come back and think about it. What's the first thing that you do when you see a live stream that somebody else is interviewing, you can click on their profile. You're going to go, where the heck is this dude? Right, so you go the profile, you've got that whole entire profile optimized for the link to your group and a call to action and all that, and then you've got 176 days of nothing but live streams. They're going to go consume that content and that is more of my story. That's more my storyline, so now I actually give them a reason on top of that 30 minute snippet, I give them a reason to come follow me and so this is true, like if you're trying to grow a facebook group or a facebook audience of any sort, exposure is your best friend and you get exposure through interviews and leveraging other people's audiences that already exists. I've never spent a single penny on ads. That's huge man. All this is huge. Why do you follow someone? You follow someone because of their story. You can be like, oh no, I follow so and so, because they're really good at photography. No, you follow that person because they told a story that got you interested in their photography because there are 10,000 photographers out there, but you follow that one, right? Why? Because of their story, so you got to have your story in whatever it is that you teach, and on top of that, you got to get exposure to that story, so go tell that story to tons and tons and tons and tons of people. That's the biggest thing, I want to end with this for you. Then I'll turn it back to you. People are like Josh, there are only so many ways I can share my story. People will eventually get bored of it. All I want to tell you to do is go look at Gary Vaynerchuk instagram page. Okay? And it will be like, what? I'm like, dude, the guy says the same five things over and over and over and over again. Give value, give value one, right? Hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. I want to buy the New York jets. It's five or six things, said a different way. You know, I value young kids. I value. It's the same thing, but you love him. Grant Cardone's the same way. Tai Lopez, the same thing. Russell's a little bit better about getting interesting, but in reality it's really just the same stuff because people need to hear it different ways and people are fascinated by it and so when you can go and you say it and you tell your story, I've told the Webinar story 20k times. It's the same storyline, but I tell it a little bit differently based on the audience, so if I know that one audience is a little bit more beginner, I use more beginner terms and if I know they're a little bit more advanced, I use advanced terms. If I know that they're real estate agents, I'm going to tell things that are only pertinent to real estate agents. Right, and so just tell your story over and over and over again and remember, most people are only going to hear it once or twice. Most people are not actually consuming every piece of content you put out and the ones that are, they're regardless. They are not going to get sick of it. Like I listened to Russell, his salesforce blog where he went to salesforce blog, 12 minute vlog I have ever watched in its entirety. Why? I knew exactly what was gonna happen. I was like, dude, this guy's going to salesforce, his competitor I want to know. Right? He's going to tell that story 10,000 times and I'm probably gonna watch it 10,000 times. Why? Something that I'm interested in. Right? So tell your story. It's so important and don't be put into this little box of like, oh, facebook ads are the where it's at, or you don't listen to me and go, well, Josh says to only do instagram. No, like go, go, go get exposure. Right? Like I didn't stop at facebook groups. There's a funny story about how I got a lot of exposure and people don't think it's possible. I got interviewed twice on grant cardone's show. I've seen it, I've seen it. He promoted the our instagram course during the first 10 x growth con on his website. You know how that came about, we did not pay for those interviews. I literally added Grant Cardone on snapchat and I sent him a message and every day for like a week, I sent a period to bump my snapchat the top of his feed. All right. Because I'm like, dude, if I can get in front this guy like major exposure and guess what? He replied and my message was something super simple. It was like, hey grant, I know that you are looking for an instagram person, right? Because I did my market research, got to know that and I went and I was like, I know you need an instagram person. My business partner and I are really good. We got proven course, x number of followers. Would love to help you out in any way that's possible. His message back to me was so short and simple. It was, this is awesome. Would love to have you. Call this number and gave me a number. I had no idea who I was calling, right? Can you give me a name? Nothing. And it was intended up being Robert Syslow, which is director of video marketing and so now I've got Robert's number. We got down there and we're like, this is awesome. Because I sent them a message on snapchat. Why? Because I was looking for exposure. Just little things, little things, dude. I think that's the biggest, like false belief mindset that people have is like, oh, I can never get big enough people to interview or they don't ever want me to interview them or actually let me do it. You know what I mean? Nowadays is so freaking easy to get into somebody's circle. It really is. What's the big main point for them? Right. I can't offer a grant cardone exposure. Right. Or at least at the time I couldn't. Maybe I could a little bit now, but like I couldn't do it, but I found the one thing that I did, He was actually probably my first start in entrepreneurship because I was in sales. He's one heck of a guy, let me tell you, so you find out one thing and if it's not in your wheelhouse, figure out a way to make it in your wheelhouse. Or for example, there was a guy by the name of Jason Stone, we used to be more friends when I was more in the instagram game. He's a big Instagram influencer. So when I first started out back when I had 100,000 followers, this guy probably had like 3 million right? Between his accounts. The biggest one was probably like 1.5 million. So I'm reaching out to this guy and there's nothing that I can offer him about instagram, which is the only little thing that I know. So I'm like, how do I go and how do I get ahead? And so I literally would just watch every one of his stories, every one of his live streams looking for that thing. And I'm like, what is it that he needs? What is it that he needs? And then I found out that he said one day he's like, right now we are thinking about getting into youtube and kind of want to do this stuff. And I was like, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding. So I went to Jose who is my business partner at the time and I was like, dude, you know, Youtube, right? And he's like, yeah, we know some stuff. I was like, who do we know that we could connect with Jason? And so we found, I forget, I don't even know who it was, but there was some video editor guy that had like a bunch of experience with youtube, Tim somebody I think. Anyway, so he reached out to Jason and send him an email and were like, dude, Jason, big fan and I'm talking about making videos. And then we're like, hey, saw on your story that you're looking into youtube, would love to connect you to our buddy over here that does this. Sure he would hook you up with a sweet deal as a referral, blah, blah, blah. Would that be interesting to you? And so he emails back and we kind of go back and forth and that's how we struck up a friendship and got to know him. And then at the event he sees us and he's on stage. He's like, what's up guys? We got pictures with him and that's how we got into his circle and now we get some good deals. It's is little things. It's not like you were huge or big influencer. No! I was a nobody. And I wouldn't say this though. And I want to say it with caution. I would super not recommend reaching out to grant cardone if you have no results. Don't waste is his time. Right? But Dana Derek talks about the dream 100 strategy and that's basically what this is more or less. I'm a big fan of the dream 100 strategy. I am not a big fan of it as an actual business model because it's not consistent. You don't drive consistent traffic that way. And so if you're trying to build a balanced business where you can know numbers, dollar in dollar out, I don't recommend this, but I recommend it in addition to that because it can bring additional massive amounts of exposure. That's just for me and take that advice more or less as you will, but when you're at the beginning, reach out to a person that you can directly affect that has an ideal audience in your area. So I made friends with Arnie guesty early on. He wasn't that big. It paid off well. But also early on I made friends with Jason Stone. I could offer him nothing. Virtually nothing, right? I had no experience compared to what it was. So I found that thing. Don't start by going, I'm going to dream 100. Gary Vaynerchuk, you got nothing to offer that guy, dude. Like I'm sorry, but start with someone. And then as you work your way up, go bigger and bigger and bigger and then every now and then once you kind of have a feel for what you're doing, take a shot. Right? I took a shot on grant Cardone, did not expect it to pay off. It did! It changed my business, right? Moved it forward in a direction. Jumpstarted a lot of things. Got of a lot of exposure from that. But I didn't depend upon that for my whole business model. I didn't go like we're with greg cardone, let's take out loans and go this and do this. I used it to drive my business forward and moving forward. And now grant cardone knows who I am and so does Robert and all that. I've been on his show. I want to say thank you so much for being on here and dropping as many gold nuggets as you did. I know my listeners will get a ton out of this and anybody who waches in the future- this is huge man and this is stuff that's going to stick around for a long time too, the stuff that you shared wasn't just like, oh, this is what's happening this week, no- it's stuff that's going to be sticking around for awhile. Sure. It changes, but the principles are all there, you know? Yeah. And on that note, I think it's really good to remember when a new platform comes out ike when I started on Instagram, there's a lot of hacks or tricks to get ahead, as any platform develops. And you look at the big platforms right now, facebook, instagram, youtube, like those are your three big pillars. When you understand that leg, they all function the same way more or less. None of those three platforms produce their own content. Okay? All of them are driven by users, meaning the longer they'll user stays on the platform, the more money that they make. And the thing that brings or that keeps people on platform is a good content. Instagram is not your enemy. People are always like, oh, the algorithm. I'm like, no, the algorithm actually would work amazingly in your favor if you actually put out good content. So understand that if a new platform emerges and evolves, yes, there's going to be hacks and tricks to get majorly ahead and to capitalize upon that. But there's also a lot of risk and there's also a lot of confusion on that. However, a lot of the social media strategies that we talk about here has very little to do with the platform. The basic stuff I don't want to waste your guys' time on like make sure your profile is optimized. That stuff is common sense guys. Right? Use your mind and think of, Hey, I'm doing my business online. I should probably look like a business owner. Right? There are certain logical things that you should do. But above and beyond the logical things, it really is like three or four core principles, whether it's in marketing or whether it's in this and I love the 80/20- rule the further along and getting business and the more I realized that it's applicable, 20 percent of this stuff drives 80 percent of the facts. Right. And at 80 percent of stuff that you do is basically worthless. When you double down on that 20 percent, I just hired an assistant actually long ago, actual full time and I pay her 40 hours a week, the whole nine yards. I'm a legit company now. Letting go of that outsourcing stuff, I felt like my business was going to fall apart. There's no way I could possibly outsource posting on instagram. I could never teach someone my skills of being able to do it. It's not true, you know? The same thing is true in social media. Eighty percent of the stuff that you guys are worrying about, like my live stream got cutoff 30 minutes in and I wasn't able to wrap up. It is not going to change your business. Stop worrying about that stuff. People are not going to unfollow you because one live stream of yours got cut out or because you accidentally dropped your phone or you accidentally made a slip up. You know what I mean? That just makes you look normal, it's happens. I think it's actually good at certain points or different times. And I think that there's a balance between being real and being professional. Social media is typically that place to be a little bit more real. As soon as you click off of social media and you enter that funnel and you enter that Webinar or you enter that sales call or whatever it is, you need to be very professional. Right now you're running a business, social media to relate, you can get away. People see me all the time and they're like, Oh Josh, you get on live streams or whatever with your shorts and your this and that, and you're just so real and authentic. I'm like, yes, but if you talk to me in person, you do what you say you're going to do. You don't mess up and you follow through. If I'm paying you money, you do your job and if you're paying me money I am going to do mine. I don't go, oh, it's okay. No, like we're running a business here, right? Social media, and this is where I think a lot of people get it wrong. Social media is just a marketing tool when you're using it for that. Right? And so people are like, oh no, it's my lifestyle and I want to be all truly authentic in this. If that's how you run your business, you're probably not going to get very far. So use social media as the tool that is designed and don't become obsessed with it like I did at the beginning. Don't make social media your reality because once you make social media your reality, a lot of your life falls apart and I've seen it happen to a lot of people. It's happened to me in certain areas, so be careful with it, but it's very, very powerful. Wow. Well, thanks again so much Josh. I'm going to wrap this up. This is a little bit longer of an interview. Thank you so much for taking your time and spending it with everybody that's going to listen to this and the followers. Thanks a ton. We'll talk to you guys later. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts. Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you! Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody, hey I want to welcome you to another episode of learning from the experts and I am super stoked about this one today. I actually have an expert on here with me... So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wanna-be experts who never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from an interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. Let's go ahead and get started. I want to introduce you to Marie Larson. I've known Marie for almost a year now. It's kind of crazy times flying. Marie Larson is a podcasting expert. She has her own agency. She knows the stuff. If you want to publish, if you need to get your name out there, if you need to blow up your podcast, this is the girl that you need to talk to you. And obviously she's related to Steve Larson, so you know she's a killer and she makes stuff happen for you. She was actually behind Steve's podcast, for quite a while from the beginning stages until it was just massive. And then he had all these other people that do more niche down stuff, anyway, but she was behind it and helped him blow up that podcast. So if you guys need your podcast blown up. She's the woman. So obviously Marie, my listeners don't really know who you are. So I'm going to tell us a little bit about yourself. How'd you get started in this? What's your story? What's up everyone. My name is Marie Larsen. Funny story, as Coulton was saying, I met him about a year ago at funnel hacking live and when I showed up to funnel hacking live this past year in 2018, I was like the poorest of poor kids, right? I had no money to my name. In fact, I left funnel hacking live with $78 to my name. With that being said, I also had a coaching program that was $22,000 that I had to pay off in a year. I had school to pay for and of course the day to day living circumstances as well, so I was pretty much in a pickle, and I had to figure out really quickly what I was supposed to be doing. Now my brother Steven, he's a Rockstar. If you guys have not heard of or know who Steve Larsen is, be sure to check him out. Kids a Rockstar. I'm not just saying that because I'm biased, but he really is super good at what he does. So Stephen reached out to me when I had gotten home from serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints. And when I got home, I wanted to be a dentist my whole life Coulton. Here's the funny thing. I wanted to be a dentist, really, really bad. But I got home and I realized that my mom had sat down and she pulled out a list. She was like, here are the people you're gonna have to talk to you. Here's the stuff that you're going to have to do. Here's the date you're going to go into a huge list of stuff. Right? And I freaked out and I looked at that list and I was like, holy crap. I have no desire to go through and actually do that and to go and do the same thing every single day for the rest of my life. Now I love my dentist, thank you to my dentist. But I realized it was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. As I was sitting there talking to my brother Steven and my dad, they looked at me and said, Marie, we don't want to tell you how to live your life, but you should look into business. And I was like, business? That's so stupid. Like, who does business that's so dumb. And they both kind of chuckled. Both my dad and Steven are pretty known within their industries. Anyway, I started studying it out and as Stephen was walking away one day, he was like, oh, by the way, while you were gone for those that past year and a half, there's this thing called clickfunnels that happened, and you should check it out. So I was like, all right man, whatever, if you want me to sell kitchenware, I guess I'll do that, you know, he was like, it's not kitchen where it's a software. And I was like whatever. Right. So I had started studying out business. I went to funnel hacking live. I had no money, coaching that I had to pay for essentially, really, really quickly with not a lot of money to my name and I promised myself that I would not pull out or go into debt over this at all. That was a big deal for me. So I really buckled down hard and started going into podcasts even more. Now I had done Stephen's podcast for a really, really long time and it was really fun. We had thought of ideas and strategies and things that we could do together and stuff like that. But it was just Kinda my side Gig, you know, a little hustle. It really wasn't helping me too much. It was helping me get by with groceries pretty much. That was exactly what I was doing. And I realized that I wanted to figure out how I can make more money off of this. I realized that there was a very profitable way to go about it. As I was doing this with Stephen, I realize that you can make a ton of money off of a podcast if you actually went about it the right way. But the biggest thing is that Stephen and I realized that as we were doing the podcast that he was getting a lot of face right, that people are starting to see him on Facebook, on Instagram, on twitter, on Spotify, on YouTube. And it was going all over the place. It was all over and his face was getting all over the place and people in his audience started to grow and it was slow and steady and it kept growing and it kept growing and we we're freaking out. I remember when we hit our first year, I don't know, I was like our first 20,000 downloads and we were freaking out. We're like, holy crap we did it. We're in the clear and now he's done hundreds of thousands of downloads for his stuff. But the first time that that happened, it was a big deal for us. So push come to shove, I realized that there was a lot that I could be doing with podcasting in order to grow these influencers in an authentic way where people can go through and find their value and use it within their own businesses. So finding out those, those influencers, those people who are just born to do that, they were there, they're crucial to find and there are a lot of them that don't know that they have this voice inside of them that is ready to explode out. But publishing consistently and really getting your voice out there a lot. So in a long sentence, Coulton, to answer your question like seven minutes ago, I started doing podcasting. I'm out of a mode of survival for sure. That's actually really interesting. Something that I've realized or noticed about entrepreneurs. First off, whenever we get into the corporate world or the nine to five, our soul just kind of gets eaten away. It just sucks the soul out of us. I was in the corporate world for a little bit and I remember every day I felt like I was dying more and more. That's just the way it is. So for us entrepreneurs, it's like we have a message or something that we have to take out to the world and we just have to get it out there. That's awesome that you're helping them get it out there as much as possible. One thing you said is Steve is everywhere now. How is that possible for Steve to be everywhere yet be working a job at click funnels? That was not just a nine to five job. He was working quite a bit there. How is it possible that he was even doing that? Steve’s not a normal kid. We'll just put that out there and if he listens to this, he'll just laugh at that, but I'm going to say Stephen was not working a nine to five. He was working nine to five by waking up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, doing as much as he could beforehand due to his nine to five. Then come home with his family for an hour or two and then work until like 1:00 in the morning. And that was his grind. That was his hustle. So he was pretty much working to nine to five jobs, just not directly 9 to 5. Totally. I know Steven's, well obviously you work with them, that dude, he can work. He's the man. So it makes sense. So I wrote down a question, how do you get people's value out of them? How do you get their voice when you do a podcast? What's the most important part of doing a podcast? Like how do you, how do you make them so that they can be relatable? So people want to listen to them. People want to follow them. Is that something that we can talk about? I will tell you first things first guys do not be the individual that tries to get into podcasting or a YouTube, channel or a Facebook group or start building out something that does it for a month, see that there's not that many results and then give up. The key is being consistent. Steven, we didn't see a ton of results until probably this past six months or so with his podcast as it was like a year and a half of consistent publishing before it exploded to the point where Steven's doing super well. But that means, I mean as we were publishing for him two to three times a week, sometimes four. It just really depended. But the more that we could push out the content and overdeliver and show people that he wasn't going anywhere, that it wasn't just on a whim decision, that he was going to do it, that he was going to be consistent, that he was going to do it, and that people could know that if they wanted the information or content from him, that he was the person to go to. Right. That if they wanted information about funnels, he would be the one that they would go to first. For sure. Now a lot of people will get really upset because they'll get three episodes in and say, 30 downloads. That stinks. And I'll just kind of laugh and say, no, that's normal. That's incredible actually, and you get that. That's awesome. I'm so happy for you. If you are a nobody with no following or anything like that, then you probably have your mom and your sister listening to your podcast and that's it. Right? But you need to go through and really push out and over deliver a ton. A lot of people, as I said before, get really frustrated after a couple episodes, then they'll get to episode 13 or so. Don't give up. If you guys have ever heard Mark Stern or anyone like that within the funnel industry, he always raves about the rule of 30, right? And I have this rule that when you get to episode 30, that's when your downloads actually start to double down. And the reason for that being is that if you can go through and consistently published at least twice a week for and get up to 30 episodes, then people see that you're not going anywhere. And I'll give you an example. Um, economics, right? If you’re the type that’s into podcasts, on your podcasting app on iTunes or whatever, apple podcasts on your phone, and type in the word “economics”, there are going to be hundreds of different podcasts that show up there. So many that will show, but the first one you'll see is one called freakenomics. And then the other ones you'll see are one’s that's done two episodes, one that's done six episodes when that's done, maybe like 15. And then you'll see freakonomics, which has done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes. Now, from my perspective as a person who's jumping on and really does not know that much about economics, I will jump on and I will look and say, oh great. This one show called freakonomics has hundreds of episodes. This other one that's called economics for people who have no idea what economics even means, has two episodes on it. Which one am I going to listen to you more? Right? Which one am I actually going to listen to? I’ll listen to that one has hundreds and hundreds of episodes on it because I know that I will be creating a relationship with those speakers that I don't want to listen to someone that only has two episodes down. I'm not going to waste my time to go through and actually publish or listened to those two episodes as much unless I know the people. I'm not going to go through and establish a relationship with those individuals because they're not worth my time. Because I know that they're not going to be consistent with me, so why should I be consistent with them? So that's a huge thing that I see, especially within the podcasting industry that people give up so quick. If you look at Alex Charfen, Russell Brunson, Steve Larsen, you look at all these people who have hundreds and hundreds of episodes that are high quality, that are good, that have amazing content and value. Of course I'm going to go through and listen to their stuff. Of course those people I'm going to choose over, you know, some kid in his basement that has two episodes on his podcast. I'm not going to go establish a relationship with that person when I know that there is someone over here who is actually trying to provide content and value for me. Hopefully that makes sense. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much for that. I think that totally makes sense. Lots of people, and I've noticed this too, they do start out, they get something going and then it's like I'm not really seeing any return on investment on it and then they give up. But what I think is so awesome about podcasting too is you do it once and it's out there and you don't have to re-record it all the time. Russell Brunson, Alex Charfen, those guys have hundreds of episodes and people can listen to them whenever they want. They're always there. I love that part about it. Also to add in there, is that Russell often says, and it's one of my big things, is that “stories sell, facts tell”. Right? When he says that, guys, if you go listen to any of the best podcasters out there, you know the top ten and you'll go through and you'll start looking through them and you'll listen to them and it was in the first little bit. You'll realize that they go through a pretty common structure, right? I was like that weird kid that really loved English and would rather write a 20 page paper then go through and take a test. Right. And so I really understand that structure is really, really important and so when I would go through it and research and figure out these podcasts, I was realizing that their structure was pretty common and similar and with that being said, what happened is that they will go through and they would establish two principles, right? On average they have at least two principles within a podcast or they hit one to two principals or topics and then after that then they have an average of two to three stories per topic. Right? And so each story is there to sell the topic more than just the topic itself. Right. And I'll give you an example of that as well. In my origin story, right? I was going through and telling you, well I wanted to be a dentist, but actually I realized I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. There were so many of you that were probably like, man, I realized there was a time that I was trying to do something that I didn't want to do and Coulton himself even jumped on this podcast and said I was in corporate for a little bit and that killed me. There are so many people that are related to that and instantly because of that one topic, we all relate to it and our different aspects. Now, of course, our stories are not all the same, but the stories are relatable enough where it's going to sell even more. It's going to sell the topic more. This topic of, oh my gosh, I can't do nine to five. Yeah. There's this one time that Coulton did nine to five and it sucks. There's this time that Steven did nine to five and it sucked. There was this time that Maria did nine to five and it sucks, and it's like, well, by the time you build out all these cases for this one point, we're going to sell that way faster than if someone just said don't do Nine to five it sucks. Yeah. I guess there's no nine to five psych because Coulton has experienced it, Maria's experienced it, Steven has experienced so many of these people who have experiences with it. That's what's going to sell the actual topic, not just the topic itself. Man, that is awesome guys. That is gold right there. If you were listening to that, you need to go back and re-listen to it because that is gold right there. You'll notice a lot of interviews, even I started out asking about your story, like you were just saying, a lot of interviews are that way because that is how everybody starts relating to you. And then you keep listening. And then they want it. They're like, oh, I relate so well to this person. I'm going to have to keep listening. It's funny because Steve Talks about starting your podcast and how you have to have your origin story as your first podcast. So I did it on mine. Hopefully it was good, but that's totally what I did on mine. And just so I can help my listeners understand who I am and build a little bit of a credibility with them. That's cool you help people do that with podcasts as well. I've actually had a few podcasts just before this about changing customer's beliefs and I don’t know about you, but I think podcasts are such a great way for you to change the beliefs of your customers or to help them understand that maybe the beliefs that they currently have may not be meeting their needs completely. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on that? Like, about helping people just kill it on their podcasts and blown them up that way? Yep. So as far as going on that, excuse me, sorry, Just so you guys know, Marie did like four or five interviews yesterday. So she's um, I'm kind of pushing her a little bit more today to give me one more interview. So she's has to throw in a cough drop real quick. I can't even imagine. Things that I've seen with customers and how a podcast can affect that guy's beliefs are a great way to do customer research and I know that sounds really funny, but what I love about podcasting is there are so many reasons, but you can go through and take that content and push it out like crazy, right? And repurpose it and take it and get transcriptions and then go through and build out blog posts and then we go on Facebook and Instagram posts and all these different things. Um, and then by going through your stats, if you have any sort of social media stats, you can see what's converting really well. I will tell you as well. Some little trick and tip that I use is that I go through and within the industries that I'm researching for, whether it's mine or for a client or something like that. Topics that are converting really well already. Go through and talk about those. Right? And so I'll go and I'll jump into other industries and I'll see what blog posts for them are converting really well. I'll go see what topics are converting really well, what podcasts are converting really well, which episodes are doing super, super well. As soon as you can figure that out and see what people are already looking for and go do podcast episodes about that, that's going to spike like crazy. That's going to help your downloads like crazy because people are already researched it for those. That's awesome that you do that for your customers. I'm sure that is huge. They probably just love you for that. Now you mentioned that it went to different platforms. Can I just ask a quick question? How many platforms do you usually push to for a podcast episode? Like how many can you even push to? I think it was for one of my clients in the past but we got him up to 27 different platforms. There was a lot that. I was using everything for it, from WordPress to Spotify to iHeart radio. Google play too, you name it, we had it on that platform. And so even now there are times where I'll go through and I'll hear someone say, yeah, there's this new platform coming out and it's called this or that. I'll be like, I can get that out, get a podcast on that platform right now, no matter what it is, I'm always trying to figure out how to get stuff onto platforms. And the reason for that being is that people are really, really concise and I guess consistent I should say with their social media platforms, right? Like I'm an Instagram and Facebook user or like I hate twitter, I hate LinkedIn, I like all those things, but I go through and I push Publish to them because it's not about what I like, it’s what my customers like. It's what people are going to listen to, you know, their desired platform. Right. So that being said, you need to make sure that you are publishing to as many different platforms as humanly possible. If you can go through and push them out to all these different platforms, you’ll boost up the seo to all of them. Right? Then all of a sudden you are going through it and you were creating opportunity for people to find you, to share your stuff, to comment on your stuff, to go through and really hype it up for you rather than you go through and publish to one place. Right. iTunes to this day is the number one podcasting platform, right, and it will be, but there are people who choose to listen on anchor and other people would choose to listen on Libsyn and other people will choose to listen on Spotify and so that being said, you have to have your stuff on all these different platforms. You can find customers that way. It will be your most loyal people, whatever it is, but they're not going to go try and find you. You have to provide the opportunity where they can find it easily. Right? Yeah, totally. Thank you so much for sharing that. I wanted to point that out because I don't think people realize the power that comes behind that and how you can click a button and all of these platforms instantly have your podcast or your episode, your content. I think that's so powerful. The whole thing with marketing and with a good business in general is that you make it as painless of a process as humanly possible. Right? Like you can't have it be this big thing where if you go through and you know, do this and this and then jumped through hoops this way or that way, people are gonna give up by the time you asked them to move their right finger. Right. And so they're not going to go jump through hoops to find your stuff. I myself have gone through the process of where I wanted to go and purchase something and just because it was a hard process I gave up and went and bought it somewhere else. And so I have to make my processes, my availability, as easy as possible for people so they can find me and that I'm easy to find and people can purchase from me easily. That is huge. That is so huge. Thank you so much Marie. I just want to say I've actually learned a lot from you myself, even with the podcast and stuff. I follow you on your Facebook group. I follow your podcast as well, which if you guys aren't following her, you should jump on and start listening to her. And I really wanted to get you on here because I wanted to help business owners, entrepreneurs, to know the power of podcasting and what it can do for them. And what's so cool is you take it like they can literally just record their voice, their episode, give it to you and you just make it happen and make it go everywhere. That's so cool. I like that. Sorry, did you have a comment on that? No, it's way fun. I love it. I love being able to get their stuff ang go through edit and make sure that it sounds good. And then add intro’s and outros and all these little things and then after that I want it to be on as many different platforms as we possibly can find that podcast can be on. Yeah. So she is the expert at this. She can tell you what you need to do with the best equipment, like the mic’s, everything. She knows where it's happening. So if you guys are looking at getting any kind of content out there, podcasting, I would 100% suggest you talk to Marie because she can make it happen for you. Mad respect for you and what I think is really cool too about you is you pushed through and made this happen. I love your story. I was there at funnel hacking live with you and I remember you going and signing up for the coaching program and you were like, I don't know how I'm gonna make this happen. Look at you now. This is awesome. I think that just goes to show what it can do for you if you push through and you make things happen. You don't give up. Not without a lot of temptation to give up, that's for sure. There were many times where I reached out to my brother Stephen or Steve or whatever people call him and I said, man, I think I'm done. Like I don't want to do this anymore. This is really hard. And he looked at me and said, well Marie, what else are you going to do? You know, like lean in and you know, if you weren't going to do this, what else would you do? And I said, I don't know. And he was like, you go back to a nine to five, that's what you do. And I was like, crap, you're right. Dang it, I'm not going to do that. And he's like, alright, well then lean in and make it work, Marie. And so I am a 22 year old college kid who has thousands of dollars of coaching under her belt. So cool. Not from school as well, but you know, I have learned so much in this last little bit. It's been life changing. Extremely hard, you know, I'm trying to balance everything from homework to client work and there comes moments where I'm like, shoot, I have a 20 page paper due tonight, or I have client work that's due tonight. Which one do I do? The client of course. But I have figured out little hacks to go through and do my homework. And if I get kicked out for this, I'm sorry, but pretty much what I do is that I'll go through and I'll take my microphone, my podcasting mic. I'll go through and read a few topics that I have to talk about in my paper and I'll go through and I'll record for 30 minutes straight and then I will get a transcription of it and then I will take that transcription and turn it in my paper. Something that takes people two and a half weeks to write. It takes me two and a half hours. So yeah, not probably the best thing, but you know, I'm just trying to be smart about it. No. Yeah. You know what's funny is I was actually telling my wife the other day, I was like, holy cow, I just did a 4,000 word podcast in like 30 minutes and that would have taken me forever in school. Right. I'm not the best writer. I hated writing. I was not an English guy. I was totally not good at that stuff, but I just did like a 4,500 word podcast that ended up turning into a transcription. I totally could have done that for like papers back in college. Oh yeah. I wish I would've known that hack back then, but that's so cool. I just, I am amazed at your story and I think it's super cool. I think back about my college days and not having any money. I had to figure out something to do and that's when I started my repair business. I don't know if you even knew that, but that got me through school. It's funny, like if you look through a lot of entreprenuers they find something they enjoy, they do it and then they become an expert in it and then they started selling their services in that area for being an expert and then they are just killing it. And then becoming an expert for the people. Yes, exactly. And defining the problem as well as you can. Yeah. Well, awesome Marie, that was awesome. Thank you so much for that. Are there any other, as Steve Larsen likes to say it, “truth nukes” that you want to drop for us today? Um, one last truth nuke, I will put out there for listeners, if you guys are looking to start a podcast, there are several things that you need to get started, one being a good graphic, right? And I can refer you to my graphic designer or to someone else that you might have. That's fine too. So that's really important. You need a hosting service, you're going to also need an intro and outro. Now there are podcasts out there that don't have intro’s and Outro’s and that's fine. However, on the ones that convert really well, I actually have a call to action placed within them, right? And so your intro should have steps that go through and explain who you are and, and kind of like your credibility stance on everything and then you should go through and make sure that you have established some sort of curiosity, some sort of question, right? As you have established a goal and said, hey, join me as I established a seven figure business or something like that. And people are gonna be like, Oh wow. Well, how's she going to do accomplish that? And people are wondering how is she going to do it, right? Literally to ask the question for them because people are going to jump on and they're going to say, who is this person? Why am I listening to them? Should I turn them off? Should I keep listening to them? That happens within the first couple of seconds? So if you answer all those questions for them, then they'll keep listening to you, right? Because they're intrigued on how the heck you're building or how you're going out and building out a business, how you're going about building it, you know, different aspects of your industry and then make sure as well in your outro that you go through and you ask people to rate and subscribe. And if you don't ask your people, they're not going to do it. So ask your people, rate and subscribe. And then the other thing is to have some sort of call to action. You want me to speak in your mastermind? Go to example.com. Do you want a free tee shirt? Go to examplecom. Do you have another question for the podcast? Go to the Facebook group. Did it end up right and go there and really make sure that you have places where you can direct people. If you're not directing your people then you just have a nice podcast, but if you can go and have a place where you're actually providing an opportunity for people to go somewhere, then you actually just might make some money off of it. So yeah, that's pretty awesome. Well, speaking to that, you guys, I'm going to have her on LearningFromTheExperts.com She will be one of the experts that will be listed there so you can go and kind of find out a little bit more about her services, but other than that Marie, where can people find you? What's the best place? Yeah. The best place to find me is probably my Facebook group, which is called profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs. I know it's a mouthful, but definitely getting those SEO words in there but check me out there or Facebook in general or Instagram as well and I can shoot those over to you guys. I'm sure Coulton has a place to put all of that. Yeah. And that'd be awesome. And what's your podcast name again? Is it the Audio Expert? Entrepreneur? The audio entrepreneur? I mean the industry of Russell Brunson, everything is experts. So I just assumed it was the audio expert, you know what I mean? Yep. The audio entrepreneur. That's right. Awesome. Thank you so much Marie for being on here and look forward to people getting to know you a little bit more and just killing it with their podcast, through your service. So thank you so much for being on. Thank you so much Coulton. It was a real pleasure. I really appreciate it. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find pre-approved experts that I've hand picked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody? Hey, this is Coulton Woods and I want to welcome you to another episode of Learning From The Experts and today. I'm going to tell you why you should be at this event called OfferMind. If you are a business owner, an entrepreneur, online marketer, if you sell anything online, even if you're an affiliate, you need to be at this event that Steve Larsen and I are putting on this next coming month. Which I know some of you are going to hear this after, but even if you hear it after next month, there is still going to be one in the future so you can always go to offermind.com and check it out. But I'm going to tell you guys why you should be there and why you're losing like thousands and thousands of dollars if you don't come. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through, wanna-be experts who've never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. Awesome stuff guys. I just wanted to drop this episode out today and especially before OfferMind happens. I know we're actually gonna be closing down registration here real soon, but we've been going crazy on this to make it super legit. We just want to make it a crazy awesome experience for you and not only that but give you some sweet, awesome content that is just going to rock your world for your business. So we've been putting together everything I've been working with the AV guy. I'm working with the hotel and getting all this sweet swag stuff ordered. I'm actually super stoked about swag. So getting all the swag stuff ordered we actually had a couple of shirts made up that we're going to give everybody while we're there. Totally giving everybody a capitalist pig shirt, which I'm super stoked about. And if you've seen Steve wearing his, we had a whole new design and everything made up with the sales funnel radio logo on the back. It's super sick. We've been putting together all the swag and getting everything ordered. We just want to make it the craziest experience we can. I remember one day we were sitting there and Steve's got his headphones on and he's up at the whiteboard, which, that's the sign of like, stuff is happening right now. He's in the zone. So he's going through all this stuff and he's like, dude check this out, and he runs through this whole process of creating an offer. And he's like, dude, I've never taught this stuff before. This is all new stuff that's coming to me and it's epic dude. We gotta make the event around this. I'm super stoked. There's no way I could even do it justice at all on how Steve is the man and just creating insane offers and how he's going to teach everybody at the event all the sweet new stuff that he's got coming in on how you can make a crazy, insane offer. Five years ago when I first met Steve in college. Actually, I guess it was only a few years ago when we first got together and started our first funnel together, which was a good time. It was actually our first break even funnel. We learned a lot on that one. I remember we got together and we were funnel hacking other companies, trying to figure out how we're going to sell our product and what we're going to do. And you know, looking back on it, I'm like man, we were just getting started, we were pretty new to it still and were learning a lot of stuff. We were totally in Russell Brunson's area, learning a lot of stuff from him, but we were just poor college students, trying to figure things out and trying to learn it all on our own as much as possible. But I look back at that and that was the beginning of trying to figure out offers, especially for Steve and I mean he was deep diving in this stuff so much. It was just cool to see. But we built an entire funnel and an entire product and we we're literally just breaking even on it. We didn't even have that much money, even putting money into the ads and trying to scale was too much. When I look back on it, we literally had no offer, I mean we did, but it was not like Steve does now. If we remade that now, holy cow, It'd be insane. So much different. We were actually funnel hacking trying to model some stuff after a guy named Trey Lewellen if you don't know who he is, he's huge. He broke records on the Internet of money made in a short amount of time. The dude was literally flying in products from China as fast as he literally could and was still weeks behind on fulfillment. He's the man, he knows how to sell products, but he was selling an actual physical products and we were selling more of an info product. But it wasn't even an info product, it was actually more like a service. So he was selling something totally different. But we were trying to model after him and trying to get things from him that we could use. We were putting together front end offers & something that we could self-liquidate and make some money back on ads and then pitch the actual product that we were doing. It did not take off like we were thinking. It was literally like pulling teeth to try to sell people on this because they didn't get it. We totally understood it but trying to explain it & when you get techno babble and you start going off on your product and just raining on them with all of this info like, blah blah blah, it does this, it does that. Which we were totally doing that. They were like, yeah, just get away from me. This is not what I was thinking. But when you create an offer and you don't get into the techno babble part, you don't even need to tell them exactly what is in it. If you're selling a product, like an info product, you don't need to tell them everything that's in the info product. They don't even need to know that. They just need to know what it's gonna do for them. So looking back on that, yeah, it was not an easy to understand offer. And now Steve's the man when it comes to offers, he can create crazy awesome offers. He knows the process, he knows how to do it and he knows where to find the information to get the best offer you can out of your audience. It’s crazy. So Trey Lewellen and if you don't know his story, you should totally look it up, he's the man. And back then he was huge and so he's kind of an icon for us, you know? Well literally like three weeks ago, Steve got to go and actually help him with what he's doing on his webinar and stuff. Like what the crap. Talk about a turnaround. That’s insane. Steve's actually going and hanging out with the man Trey Lewellen himself... So it's crazy how far Steve's come and he's just been in this offer creation part for a couple years. And you guys can do the same thing. So coming to offer mind is going to help you figure out your offer for your product and how you can just crush it. How you can increase your ROI like crazy on your products with the way that he goes through it and how to find your offer. Crazy new stuff. Oh Man, I wish I could tell you about it. It is literally is going to be mind blowing. I mean Steve charges tens of thousands of dollars just for a day of coaching, just for one day of coaching to come out and help you figure out your offer. This is like 197 bucks and it's two days. You get two days with Steve figuring out your offer. I can't even tell you the value of it. Anyway. If you can't make it to this one, I’m not sure when the next one's coming up. So anytime that you can go to OfferMind.com and get signed up or even just get on the waiting list there. Just go there, check it out and go from there. But I'm super stoked for it. Uh, this is actually our first event that's going on. We're going to have 200-300 people there. And that's just right now, we still haven't even sold everything. We still have a month before this is going to happen. So if you haven't checked out Offermind.com yet, I would suggest you go there if you are a business owner, if you're an entrepreneur, if you have products, if you sell anything online. Do you want to just blow up your offer and start getting even crazier Roi on your products? I highly suggest you make it to this event. For the price. It's just stupid. Yeah, it's stupid if you don't make it. With that being said. Thank you so much for getting on here with me today and following me. And yeah, if you have any questions, any feedback, please let me know and feel free to rate and subscribe. Thank you and I will see you on the next episode. Are you looking to jump start your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody! I want to welcome you to another episode of learning from the experts. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about why Dean Grasiozi in Millionaire Success Habits is correct when he talks about how the story you tell yourself is actually what ends up happening in your life, and also about a book called Expert Secrets and how Russell Brunson is the man when it comes to changing customer's beliefs about your product and also how you can even change your own beliefs. He mainly focuses on changing your customer's beliefs though. But I want to talk a little bit about changing beliefs today. I have a model a written behind me on the whiteboard that I want to go through with you today and help you understand how beliefs work and how you can change your customer's beliefs by simply understanding this model. So I'm super excited to walk you through this today. Welcome to another episode. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is to waste countless hours sifting through wanna-be experts who never actually help you in the end. Then to learn years later that there was a real expert who could have helped you 100 times faster than learning it on your own. I've created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. Alright, let's go ahead and get started. I have on the whiteboard written a model that I'm going to run you through and at first I'm just going to show you the different parts of it or talk about them and then we'll run through and explain how it works. This is mind blowing. When I first heard this about 10 or 11 years ago, it was about 10 years ago, it literally changed my life, literally changed the way I saw things, literally changed the way I thought about what I believed and if it was actually correct or not. I also realized why people act a certain way based on their beliefs. It's pretty crazy stuff. You can actually pretty well understanding how a reaction is going to be based on what belief or a belief that somebody has. And so I'm gonna walk you through this. The first part is actually a wheel. It's more of like an engine, I call it a wheel because it drives the rest of this and is the foundation part of it. Now in this wheel or this engine part of it, there are four different parts. Essentially, these four parts are actually your four basic human needs. Now, whether you believe this or not, I'm not going to tell you if you should believe it or not, but it's true. Just believe me on this one, you have four basic human needs and with that comes different things that you do because of these beliefs and these basic human needs that you have. The first one is to live. Obviously we want to live. Now, if you're walking down the street and someone pulls a gun on you and says, give me your wallet, your going to give them your wallet because you want to live. Unless you're crazy and don't feel like living, you might fight with them a little bit. That's the first thing in the wheel, we all want to live. That's a basic human need. That's why we don't all just give up every day and decide to not live life anymore. That's a basic human need. Now, the second one is to love and be loved. That's why we have relationships. That's why growing up as a kid, you want to feel loved in your family, which is a basic human need. If you don't get that love from your family, it can actually have a lot of harmful effects on you. The next one is to feel important. Now this one may sound a little bit different, but it's important to feel important because if you don't feel important, then you would almost run into the other part of wanting to live. That happens a bit, but everybody wants to feel important whether you believe that or not, you want to feel important. If you don't feel important, you don't feel like you're being successful in life, or adding to life that's going to be really hard on you and thus comes depression. Then the last one is to experience variety. That one's a little bit different, but it's super true. That's why we don't all just wear white everything, you know, like white shirt, white pants, white shoes, just walking around in all white. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie The Giver, but that actually shows and talks a little bit about how none of them really have variety and it's all just set for them to not see color and that sounds like a crappy life to me. So, we all have a very basic human need of experiencing variety. It's why we go on vacations. It's why we like to change things up, go different places, move to a different house, like whatever it may be. We all liked to experience variety, buy different shoes and yeah, I mean that's why my wife has 100 shoes. Just joking though. She actually doesn't buy as many shoes as I feel like the stigma is for what my wife or wives or women buy for shoes. Anyway, so that's the wheel that drives those four basic human needs and drives the rest of this model. Now after the wheel, we have a window and I have a window drawn up and we'll show you a little bit more as I go here. This is called the belief window. Now essentially this is like a little piece of glass in front of your eyes and it's there 24/7, 365 days a year.   It doesn't move. It doesn't leave you ever. It is always there and you see the world through this window and you accept information in from the world through this window and on this window are etched multiple beliefs or principles that you have and the older you get, the more principals you end up having just because you experience life and you gained knowledge different ways and you come to understand different things. So you gain more principles on this belief window as you grow older. I mean, thinking about it, when you're first born, you don't have any beliefs or principles. You actually get a lot of them from your family and friends and could even be wrong, but it's a belief that you have. You start somewhere and you start with a belief on your belief window or principle that you see the world through. And I'll explain why this is important here in just a second. But bear with me. Okay? This is a little bit technical, I understand, but once I get through this, it'll make a ton of sense. So after the belief window is a bridge. And with that, the reason it's a bridge. We call it the rules bridge because it's the "if-then" rule and bridges your beliefs to your actions. So if you have beliefs on your belief window, there is a rule that if you believe this, then you will have a certain action based on that belief that you have. After the bridge is a play sign, like when you press play on a video, that triangle sideways kind of sign. That's the action that you get from your beliefs and that ends up being your behavior. What's going to come about from your belief. After the play symbol is a box called results. Essentially this is the result you get from your belief and the action from the belief. It can be either good or bad. Which is a very basic way of saying it because we don't always know if it's going to be good. It could always change. There could be a better one that could be the best one. There could also be different grades of how good that belief actually is. So here's the wheel, here's the four basic human needs, which then leads to the belief window that you see out of, and has principles written on it. Then you get to the bridge, which is, "if you believe this, then the action will be" which the action is the "play symbol" after the bridge. I'm explaining this a little bit more for those who are listening on the podcast, but I am recording this on video so that you can see it on YouTube as well. Then we have the action which then goes to the results box. This is where your results get categorized or placed. Then I have a line that goes from the results box all the way back to the beginning where the wheel is. That is the feedback. The feedback is to help us understand that yes, we may have a good result, but if it isn't going to meet our needs over time, is it going to be a good result over time? Is it always going to be a good result or not? Now here's something to know, if the results do not meet our needs, then there's an incorrect principle or belief written on our belief window. So if the results aren't meeting our needs, then we have a bad belief or bad principal. Now with that being said, I'm going to tell you a story about ham. I like to cook. I don't know if you guys like to cook or if you even knew that about me, but I actually really enjoy cooking. Cooking is awesome. I love to cook. I heard this story and I was like, that's hilarious. Oh, by the way, I first heard about all of this from a guy named Hyrum Smith who started Franklin Covey. If you remember Franklin Covey, like day planners back in the day, that's the guy that talks about this and where I first learned it and man was it gold! It was ridiculously awesome when I first heard it and it changed my life. So he told the story about ham and I've since told this story because I feel like it breaks beliefs very well about family beliefs on your belief window. Now there are principles or a set of beliefs that are personal. There are beliefs for nations. There are beliefs for corporations. There are beliefs for families. There are beliefs for a lot of different categories or people. We have different beliefs in the USA than a lot of other countries cause we believe in free capital, a lot of countries don't tho. So we actually believe that free capital is better, whereas other countries don't believe it's better. So there are different beliefs per country. Now ham, this is actually a really interesting one because it's a story about a newlywed couple and the wife cooks a ham for the husband. And she, she cuts the ends off the ham before she even sticks it in the oven to cook it. Well that's Kinda weird she cut the ends off. Well she cooks it and the husband's like, why'd you cut the ends off your ham? That's weird because in his family growing up you didn't cut the ends off the ham, which if you are married, then you have realized that your family and your wife's family have different beliefs. That's just the way it is. And you guys will see things totally different. And you have to work through those beliefs until you figure out who's right or... I'm not gonna go there. But anyway, so he's like, I don't believe this. She's like, well, it tastes better that way and he's like, I don't believe you. So he calls her mom and says, Hey, I understand you cut the ends off of your ham. Why? And she's like, oh, because it tastes better. And he's like, no, there's no way. It dries it out. It does not taste better if you cut the ends off the ham, that makes no sense to me. And Luckily enough the grandma was still alive and he's perturbed enough to call the grandma just to figure out why they cut the ham. Maybe she'll have a different answer. So he calls the grandma and says, all right, I understand that you cut the ends off of your ham when you cook your ham. I don't understand this. Can you tell me why? And she's like, yeah, it won't fit in my oven if I don't... Thank you! That's exactly it. So what happened was this ham won't fit my oven if I don’t cut the ends off of it, so I'm going to cut the ends off of it, stick it in the oven and cook it. Well then the daughter believed that it was just to make it taste better, which then she passed that belief down to her daughter and now it was a tradition that had been happening, which they had the wrong belief about it. Interesting story, but if you think about it, the belief window here. The girl has a belief that you cut the ends off the ham to make it taste better, which is a different belief than what the husband had. Now, if she believes that, then she's going to cut the ends off the ham. As we're going through this model. She'll pass through the bridge and the action will be that she'll actually cut the ends off of the Ham. Now are the results going to meet their needs? Well, for the daughter, yeah, but for the son in law it was not, it wasn't meeting his needs and he had to figure out why. Which then came back and they learned that there was a bad belief or a bad principal. Now the daughter was even like, oh, okay, I was wrong. Whatever. Now I won't cut the ends off the ham because it doesn't actually make it taste better. That's just one scenario. That's just one belief. Now let's go through one here. This is a good one. Now let's walk through this belief. There are a lot of people, and I used to believe this growing up or as a kid, but there's a belief that the news always tells the truth, which if you've read, "Trust Me, I'm Lying" by Ryan Holiday. You'll very soon understand that that's actually not true at all. Now I'm not saying they don't always tell the truth, but some people believe that everything the news says is truth. And you have to believe it. Who runs the news? People do! Are people always right? No, they're not always right. They in fact are wrong quite often. So Ryan Holiday... In this book he talks about how he would actually develop false stories that were negative because negative stories actually get a lot more reads, get a lot more clicks on the website and get a lot more people following it because apparently for negative things people are just drawn to it more. It's kind of interesting, but he talks about how he used to leak a story about things that weren't true. Even negative stories about something he wanted to promote or get the word out about and would leak it to a small news stations or a small magazine or publisher or blog or whatever. Then it would kind of get passed up the chain until it got to the big news sites and now the news is covering the story where they got from the place below them that apparently is getting a lot of attention and would actually drive a lot of viewers or advertising for whatever he wanted to, based off of what the negative news was. He was literally making up stories or doing things just to get reactions out of people so that he could get the word out a little bit more about something so interesting. Now here's the thing. If you believe that the news always tells the truth and the new says, Hey, guess what? War is probably going to happen in like three weeks. And so if you believe that the news always tells the truth, what is your reaction gonna be? If you believe that, then your action will be, you're going to be getting ready for war, you're not going to be focused on other things that may be important in your life at that time. You'd be focused on preparing for this war that's going to happen. You're going to either be buying guns or buying ammo or like building a metal shelter or whatever. Or you're going to be leaving the country, you're going to be moving. And then in three weeks when it doesn't happen, you're like, what the heck? They said it was going to happen, but it didn't. And Yeah. Now are those results going to meet your needs? Maybe someday later after you've built a metal shelter, it could serve as something good for you, but the result is not going to meet your needs at that time or then. You'll then start to realize or understand that, hey, maybe the news isn't always correct, or isn’t always telling the truth. Honestly if you've ever read millionaire success habits and if you've ever listened to a lot of other experts that are successful in life, they will tell you to quit, or to stop watching the news. Quit watching it. It doesn't do anything for you. And if it's something really big, you'll hear about it from somebody else. Why waste your time watching the news? It's a business. All they want to do is keep you watching. They need viewers. So anyways, that is kind of an example. Now here's another, here's a simple one. You have a belief that all dogs are vicious. Some people have this belief, some people don't, but some people do. And so if you have that belief based on this principle and we go through the bridge, if you believe that all dogs are vicious, then your action will be when you see a dog you're running for your life because "to live" is the basic human need that will be driving that action. You're going to be jumping fences, you're going to be running as fast as you possibly can and probably faster than you could run track when you were in high school. Now are the results going to meet your needs on that? Well, I say yeah, the results will meet your needs. For the person who doesn't think all dogs could be vicious or are vicious and ends up getting into a bad situation with a dog will be wishing they had the same belief. Whereas you were like, hightail it out of there. You would live but the other person could have some issues. So that'll meet your needs. But then is it going to meet your needs when you run away from it and everybody's looking at you like, what the heck? It's a little tiny Yorkie. Like that thing's not going to do anything to you. So you're going to feel dumb after that. Anyway. It's really interesting to me about how, when you grew up, some kids believe that whatever their parents tell them, is truth, 100 percent. And I get that I was probably the same way because that's all you know. I'm actually going to quote Myron Golden, who's the man! If you can learn from him. He's awesome. Crazy awesome stuff. But I have a quote over here on the wall from Myron Golan that I had to write down because I was like, yes, that makes total sense. He said "People would do better if they knew better". People don't know better. People have beliefs on their windows, but they don't have a belief or correct principle in their window because they've never been taught that or never been around it or heard it or exposed to it to gain a correct principle for that belief. Here's a good one. Websites. So, I'm a huge clickfunnels fan. Love clickfunnels. I would seriously go to every clickfunnels anything if I totally could. So I love clickfunnels. I use clickfunnels. Learning from the experts is made with click funnels. It's amazing. And if you think about it, like they can totally throw rocks at websites, which is totally okay because if you think about traditional websites, they don't work anymore like they used too. A Traditional websites is like, here's my homepage and whatever, read some stuff and then maybe you'll end up finding where you need to buy and I'll drive traffic to my home page so that you can see everything. Just kind of figuring out where you need to go from there is a mess. Now, homepages don't work like they used to. They just don't. There are too many. There are too many homepages out there. There's too much going on. You need to help walk them through the sale or help walk them through what you want them to go through and see and give them an experience that is actually tailored to what they're looking for. I mean, nobody has time to try to figure out where the heck anything is at on some websites. I mean, some sites have like millions of pages and you're like, yeah, it would take way too much time to figure it out. So clickfunnels, they actually help you build a website or a sales funnel that helps you walk the customer or the person through what you need to walk them through instead of, here's my website. Good luck. So they throw rocks at websites all the time. Well, if you believe that websites are the best thing available, you're going to just find a website guy or editor and make it. But if you have been taught that websites are outdated, old and don't work anymore, you'll then look for other things and you'll believe that there's something better. And then you'll happen to come by click funnels and see how much better that will actually work for you if you have a business. Especially ecom, even if you have a business and you're not using a sales funnel or using clickfunnels for your business, you're missing out by a ton. Yeah, it's crazy. I think they even went through and talked about how having a sales funnel can increase your Roi by like 540%. Crazy stuff. So get a click funnels account, make a sales funnel. Yeah. So that is the reality model. That is something I wanted to go through. Now think about this. What beliefs do your customers have? Expert secrets is totally the book for this. If you don't have a copy yet, you can find a link on learningfromtheexperts.com under Russell Brunson. So this book is awesome about that. He goes through how you can run an ask campaign, you can come up with the beliefs, the false beliefs that your customers have about products in a certain area, and how you can actually change those beliefs. Now I'm going to talk to you a little bit about how you can change a belief. If you think about it, every belief, essentially as you grow up, you gain beliefs. And I can almost tell you that a lot of the times when you have somebody ask you where you got that belief, you can tell them the story of when it happened or why you gained that belief for pretty much everything. Think about this, your earliest memories as a child, think about your earliest memory you still have from your childhood. Is there a story tied to that memory? 100%! Is there an emotion tied to that memory? 100%! Emotions, through stories, change beliefs. I'm going to tell you a story actually at the end of this that totally changed my belief on how. Yeah, I'll get to it anyway. So, stories change beliefs, stories without emotion or an epiphany will not change a belief. It just won't. So you can tell stories all day, but unless they start to have an emotion that causes that epiphany in their brain, like, oh my goodness, what he's saying is so true, I've been seeing this wrong. It's actually this way. I need to change my belief because my old belief was wrong. The results of that old belief are not gonna meet my needs, whereas this one is going to give me better results. So I need to change my belief to what this person's story is about that's causing this epiphany in my head to change my belief. That was probably a lot of technobabble... I hope that makes sense. So there's an emotion tied to it. Now, interesting study. They found that women are generally better at remembering stuff than men are. And I know for us men that's really hard to swallow. Like wait, you just agreed that women were better or are better at remembering stuff than men... My wife's always talking to me like, yeah, don't you remember I told you that. I'm like, um, you didn't tell me that. So anyway, they've done a study that generally speaking women are better at remembering things than men are. And then they figured out why. The reason is because women tie everything to emotion... Whereas men, we don't tie anything to emotion. In fact, we don't have a ton of emotion anyways. And it's kind of a bad thing in our society. Even like men don't cry, you know, like that's just the way we teach it. But for women it's totally fine... Well, women tie everything with emotion. When you tie a memory with emotion, it sticks, you can remember it better. So if you're telling a story that helps them get that emotion, they will remember it better. That is why on Steve Larsen's podcast, sales funnel radio, he actually tells a story per episode on every one of them. At least one story. That's why Russell Brunson tells stories all the time because it creates an emotion which causes an epiphany and gets you to change your belief and help you understand that your old belief sucked and it's not good anymore. It won't help you get the results that you need. So that is why Steve Larsen always does that for every episode. And he's even said that, if you listened to his podcast, you will understand that for sure. And same with Russell Brunson's. He tells stories all the time on his podcast. On everything that he does. So get good at telling stories. Tell them stories that cause an emotion, which is going to cause an epiphany to change your customer's beliefs on your product. Now, there you go. That's like the secret sauce. I know that's probably super simple and it might seem too easy for you, but it's actually a lot harder to do than you think. If you look at expert secrets, telling a good story, there's a process to it. The epiphany bridge script is awesome and if you go through how stories work and the two journeys, it's crazy. There's a ton to it. And if you can learn how to tell stories correctly... Man, I'm still trying to get good at telling stories. I'm not the best at it yet. I remember growing up my uncle was the best at telling stories and I'm like, man, I want to be able to tell stories like that guy someday. So hopefully I can be there someday. With that note though, I want to end with this story. I heard this story quite a while ago and I think it's become a bit more of a legend now, but when I heard it, it completely changed a lot of beliefs for me and it changed everything for me. What Dean Grasiozi talks about that I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast is the story that you tell yourself in your head is kind of what ends up being the story that you live out because you're telling yourself this story or you believe that maybe you're not good enough or that you're just doomed to work your nine to five at this really crappy job for the rest of your life. So you'll end up doing it because that's just what you're believing or what you're telling yourself is your story that you believe in. That'll happen then. That's a really bad way of explaining. But I would suggest reading that book. So I heard this story and it's about a guy who worked on the railroad and he was assigned to go do something in one of these boxcars on the railroad. The train's moving and he has to go to this boxcar, that's a refrigerated boxcar. So it's for frozen goods, has like a freezer hooked to it and it's got to freeze everything inside of it and keep it frozen. But it was just empty. So he goes into this box car to do something, I don't know what it was. Ends up locking himself inside of the boxcar on a train. Who knows, how long he is going to be in there? Right? He kind of starts freaking out because he's inside of a freezer and doesn't have a coat. So he's now locked inside of this boxcar on the train. Eventually he finds something that he can like etch sentences and words on the wall with. And he starts etching on the wall, like "tell my family I love them". "Tell my family I'm going to miss them" and etching on the wall "these are probably going to be my last words". "I don't know how much longer I can live". "I can feel myself dying". Which if you're in that kind of a situation and you've been stuck in a box car overnight, which he was stuck in there overnight. I don't know exactly what time of the day he may have been stuck in there, but he had a whole night in there. No coat, no nothing. So he's etching these words on the wall. Well, the next day he's found, and he's found dead. It's a little bit of a dark story. But what happened is they actually found him the next day dead. But there was no reason why he should have died in the first place because the boxcar wasn't even working and it wasn't freezing in there. And based on the way it didn't work, there's no reason why he should have died because the temperature was not that cold, but he believed it so much that he was freezing to death, he literally killed himself because he believed it so much. I know that may be kind of hard to believe, but when I heard it I was like, holy cow, your beliefs can literally kill you. That's pretty big. My dad actually told me a story when I was younger. He said, one time he was trying to surprise my mom with something and he acted like he was sick. I don't remember exactly the reason why, but he was acting like he was sick to not give away the surprise. So he's acting like he's sick. And then he's like, oh, we gotta go here because I'm not feeling good. We need to pull over, because he's driving somewhere to like surprise her with where they were going. Well, he said: It was really weird because I was acting like I was sick. And then when I surprised her and told her, I still felt sick and I actually ended up feeling sick the whole rest of the night. And I knew I wasn't sick, but I felt like I was actually sick. He told himself he was sick enough, that he actually believed it and he actually had those feelings based on his belief. Yeah, pretty crazy. My mom was actually a volunteer firefighter and EMT. So she rode on the ambulance all the time. She was always volunteering for that and for the fire department growing up. She loved to serve and loved to volunteer, which she was pretty good at it too. So I don't blame her, you know. She actually told me how when someone is in a blizzard or a storm and they start to get really bad hypothermia and like they're getting too cold. She said, sometimes what'll happen is the brain will actually trick them to thinking that now they're on like a sandy hot beach and they'll actually start to take their clothes off because they believe they're sweating. It's almost a mechanism of like, you're gonna die, or you're on the edge. So it just kind of helps you get there faster, which is crazy. I've never even heard of that. How is that even possible that your brain can trick you into thinking that you're actually hot and you're delusional, you're seeing this stuff that actually isn't even happening and you actually believe it and you take off your clothes. So there are some pretty crazy things out there about how powerful your mind is and how much it can affect how you do things every day. How you react to things. I see people reacting like crazy in some situations or different places. And I'm like, man, they have a bad belief on their belief window, like that is not the same belief that I have, I would not react that way. So think about that. That's what I wanted to go over today. Honestly, this could change your life. This could change the way you see things. This could change the way you sell things. If you don't believe in the product you're selling, you're not going to sell it. You're not gonna be able to sell it because you don't believe in. You're not going to have that enthusiasm. People see that. People know that you need to have the enthusiasm about it. You need to have the actual belief in it. So that's what I got for you guys today. And yeah, what beliefs do you have on your window and are they right or are they wrong? You tell me. Alright, we'll see you guys later. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've hand-picked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody? Hey, I want to welcome you to another episode of learning from the experts. And today I actually want to talk to you about a quote that Dan Kennedy said. When I first heard this, I was like, Oh man that is genius. But the quote by Dan Kennedy is the higher the income, the more the person paid for who they are rather than what they do. I'm going to say that one more time. The higher the income, the more the person paid for who they are rather than what they do. I think that's so genius. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through, want to be experts who've never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. Awesome. So if you think about that, the higher the income, the more the person paid for who they are rather than what they do. So for me, when I think about that, the higher the income, the more the person has actually paid to go through things or paid for courses or even books or experts to help them better themselves and upgrade themselves for who they are rather than what they're actually doing. When I was going to school growing up, I personally didn't feel like school was the best investment for me. I didn't plan on going to college actually. Which is kind of weird because I actually ended up going to college. But I wasn't planning on going to college while growing up and going through school. I mean none of my family had really gone through college before and it was kind of a different thing for us. So I just didn't plan on going to college and honestly when I was in high school I was thinking about becoming a firefighter, which I haven't really told too many people that. One of my buddy's dad was a firefighter. I had an uncle that was a firefighter and I just thought it was kind of a cool thing. I'm a little bit of a bigger guy and I thought, man, I could really storm in there and run up those stairs and save people and then it would keep me in shape too at the same time. And I could lift while I'm not fighting fires. Which is kind of an interesting thought on why you would do a certain job, but you think some weird things growing up. Nothing against firefighters. I think it's really cool, but I am actually not built for that at all. My knees are pretty well shot and if I had to run upstairs I would probably, yeah, it would not be good. I would definitely have to be doing a lot of lifting and a lot of cardio to keep myself somewhat in shape in order to be a good firefighter at all. So I learned that really wasn't the case for me and actually ended up having knee surgery my senior year of high school. My knees are that bad. Probably not the best idea for me as a life job. So I didn't plan on going to school. I just thought well, I'll get through high school and then I'm going to become a firefighter and I don't really need to go to college for that. I can just go do that after I'm done with high school which is funny because I actually ended up taking an EMT class my senior year of high school because of that, thinking it'd be cool. My mom was actually a volunteer EMT for like 20 years and she was volunteering on the fire department as well, which I guess maybe me wanting to be a firefighter also comes from that as well. Never really thought of it before. She totally volunteered for a long time and was a huge help to the community. But so with that being said, I didn't quite try as hard in high school because I wasn't expecting to go anywhere else or do anything more than that. And honestly school was difficult for me. It was not the easiest thing to do. And I remember seeing kids where it was just so easy for them to do things and in certain classes It was just a breeze to them and to me, I'm like racking my brain trying to figure this out. That was Algebra for sure. For me, I am not good at Algebra. Well I'm a lot better now than I was then back then. It made no sense to me at all, which honestly I think the teacher taught it in a way that other kids got it pretty easily. But then for me I dunno, once I got a different teacher that taught it in a different way, it totally made sense to me. But before that it was like, Oh man, you're speaking Chinese. I have no idea what you're talking about. So yeah, I didn't try to hard in high school, I didn't really invest in myself. Other kids were reading books and I was like, I'm gonna go do something outside or whatever. And looking back on it, man I really wish I would've had that belief because man, I could've done so many more things or I could have pushed myself so much more than I did. But after I started going to college, I thought, you know, I want to learrn this. It was interesting after high school, I served a mission for my church, I'm LDS and as I was serving we have somebody called a mission president and he kind of just directs all of the missionaries in this area and helps them stay focused and get the work done. He was a business guy and it was really weird to me. I didn't realize how much I was into business or how much I was an entrepreneur growing up until I was around this guy and we would get together in conferences and meetings and he would go over numbers and man, I would just eat it up. This is the coolest thing ever. Like he's talking about how this number goes into this and if we can do this, it's going to come over to here and it's going to help with this. He's totally total business guy. But it helped a ton with our work and what we did. I didn't realize how much of an entrepreneur I was growing up and how much I actually really enjoy business. So after, going through this, I'm like, I need to go to college, I need to go to college and learn more about business so I can be in business. So I can start my own thing because I've seen the successes that other guys have had in business. That's what I want. That's where I want to go. He was a huge inspiration to me and a good mentor really about all of this and I should probably reach out to him and ask him some more stuff and talk to him a little bit more. With that being said, I know he invested a lot into himself and a lot of these successful people, they invest a lot into themselves and who they are. Growing up in your family, you are being taught beliefs and different things that honestly aren't always true. Not all of them are true. And as you invest in yourself, you start to see other ways of doing things and you start to learn things that break down those false beliefs that you've been told or taught growing up. The more you invest in yourself, the more you're learning and you're growing yourself. The more you're investing in yourself, the more you start to break down your own false beliefs and the more beliefs that you bring to the table as well as you start learning and ingraining it into yourself. For me, when I think about what Dan Kennedy said, when you're investing in yourself and you're breaking those false beliefs that you have with yourself and you're starting to see more of what's actually possible, that your income will grow rather than you just focusing on learning how to do your specific job better. That's not always going to grow your income because you still have your own beliefs, your own false beliefs that you have to get rid of or overcome or put a new belief in there that's going to help you get so much farther. Honestly thinking about growing up, we had 4-wheelers and we were always outside. We were doing a lot of outdoor stuff. But nobody ever told me that I couldn't fix anything, I was never told, you can't do that. And so my belief was, I can fix whatever I want, if I just look at it and try to figure it out long enough, I can probably figure it out and it's really not that hard. So I remember buddies would have their 4-wheeler stop working or their dirt bike or whatever. And to me I'm like, well, lets figure out why it stopped working. And honestly, small engines are pretty simple when you think about it. They just need air, they need spark and they need fuel. And if they're not getting one of those three things and the mechanics are working correctly, then it's not going to work. Those are the three that you need to check. So if your car stops working, what would you do? You check for gas? Are you out of gas? Oh yeah I am. Well that makes sense. Typically you don't have that issue with your car not getting air. But spark does happen as well. So, growing up, the 4-wheeler would breakdown or something. And I would literally tear that thing apart and I made it so I knew how it went back together and nobody ever told me that I couldn't do it. Nobody ever told me that I wasn't smart enough to do it and I just believed that I was, I just believed that I could figure it out if I really wanted to. I mean nowadays there's youtube, there's so many things out there you can literally Google something and probably find an answer on how to fix an engine pretty quickly. Those mechanic things are easy to google stuff for. That's why when I started my repair business, it was not that hard because it's a very set process that you do to tear a phone apart and put it back together. It's a very straightforward process on how to get that done. There are different things when it comes to a business and marketing or ads. There are a lot of different point of views or a lot of different things that you can learn. There's a lot of different things that you can you can actually do to get certain results or different results, or you can do one thing that somebody did and get totally different results from that. So somebody who's actually done it and been through it more, can actually give you a little bit better of a review or a little bit better of an instruction on how to do that. Now going back to my belief, I didn't really get in the way of myself fixing the things that broke down around me because I already believed that I could do it. Now, if you don't believe that you can start a business or you don't believe that you can actually be successful in business, it's going to be very hard for you to do that because if you don't believe in it, you've got a belief or false belief there somewhere that's going to hold you back. Now, if you start investing in yourself, whether that be books, podcasts, and I mean that's a great place to start and then actually pay experts or buy courses or going to events, doing those kinds of things. That's when you're going to start actually breaking those beliefs and becoming someone that's playing on a higher playing field. Invest in yourself, you now are able, you've now broken down these false beliefs that a lot of people have and you've become a little bit more in the know or the knowledge of what you're trying to accomplish or what you're doing. Now that you've done that, you become a person who is actually worth more. You now know how to do things that actually make you worth more. And your beliefs are not limiting you to not making as much. This is something that I go through all the time. I constantly am looking at my own beliefs on how I view different things. I wish people would do this more often because if you think about it, people sit there and argue with you to the death of them about something they believe when it could totally be false, when it could totally be wrong, but they believe it so strongly that it is governing the way that they act, the way that they do things when they didn't win. Honestly, if they could just change that belief, they would do things differently that would get them a different result. I go through this with myself all the time, like, man, is that a correct belief? Well, I dunno, let me study this out a little bit more and I can change that belief if needed. I can grow my own beliefs or my own thoughts to be different and give me different results. So the higher the income, the more the person paid for who they are rather than what they do. So, thinking about that for a sec, honestly guys, how much are you investing in yourself? How much are you trying to grow yourself? How much are you putting into or how much are you paying to, get yourself to a higher playing field to understand things differently or better yourself. What are you doing about that right Now? Podcasts and books are great way to start, but they don't always get you the best result. It's interesting, you can read one thing and then the person next to you can read the same thing and you can get something totally different out of the same thing. Now it's hard for that to happen when the expert is sitting there in front of you telling you the thing that you were reading in a book and then you asking a question and then him actually go through it and explaining it more in depth for you because you didn't know exactly what he was talking about. Or when you're hiring an expert to help go through your business and look over things, there are things that they will know that you don't know yet because they've been through it and they know where you're going. They know that you're trajectory. If you want to better you, if you want to become better paid, if you want to better your own personal self, if you want a better income than you have, you need to be investing in yourself more than just the job that you're doing or the one thing that you need to do as a job itself. That's what I want to talk about today. And honestly, looking back about high school, I was not investing myself at all. It wasn't until college when I was like, I need to invest in myself. That's when I started really getting interested in books and courses and experts and things that actually helped me change beliefs that I had. Just my last episode I was talking about how people would tell me, Oh, you're an entrepreneur, you're going to start a business, don't you know they fail. Well, that's a false belief that they have. Yes, businesses do fail, but that doesn't mean that they're not going to fail in their job because they work for business. It's the same thing, but if you were to look at it, if you were to upgrade the amount of investment that you put into yourself, then you would change those beliefs. You would find actual different beliefs that would help you create a different action or gets you different results that would actually meet more of what you need. I was not putting in the time or the effort to study and to learn things in high school that would give me the results I needed in order to be successful in life. It wasn't until I started investing in myself that I started on that path to gaining a higher income for myself too. I'm finding or changing or getting rid of those false beliefs that I had. Those thoughts are things that I actually believe were true about business until I started putting in the time and investing myself and realizing that I was not right. I was wrong. I believed things to be true that were not true at all. The higher the income, the more the person paid for who they are rather than what they do. How much are you paying for who you are rather than what you're doing? That's what I want to leave you with today. Thank you very much! Are you looking to jump start your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

Hey, what's going on everybody? This is Coulton Woods and you are listening to learning from the experts and today I actually want to talk to you about how bad advice is the most costly thing you can pay for. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wanna-be experts who never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from and interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. Speaking about advice. I remember going through college, I actually majored in entrepreneurship. At first, I was majoring in business management with an emphasis in marketing and they switched it to entrepreneurship later on. But as I switched it to entrepreneurship, I remember people would ask me, "do you know, what are you going into?" Well I'm going into a business management degree. And they're like, okay, yeah, what are you emphasizing in? Well, I’m actually emphasizing in entrepreneurship and I remember the look or the reaction that I would get from people like, Oh, you're going into entrepreneurship?! That's kind of weird and really scary at the same time. And people would actually look at me and be like, don't, you know that 90% of businesses fail. It really bugged me for a while because a lot of people would say this to me and I thought maybe they're right, you know, like, what am I missing? But I had created my own business at this point and I was running my own thing and it Kinda got to me because they had no idea that I was actually running a business. After a while of thinking about it, I thought, wait a second, don't they realize that they are actually working for that business that they just said that 90 percent of them fail and every job in the entire world is for a business and that business has the same chances. I mean, obviously it changes after how many years the business has been in existence. But yes, a lot of startups do fail, but I think that's because of a lot of them have a lot of changes and a lot of pivoting here and there. I've seen a lot of people start up a business and then say, that's not the direction I would take them and they go start something else. And it's not like they had a ton of employees and it was huge and then it failed. But so after awhile I realized that those people don't understand. So I would actually tell that to people. I would say, I'm in entrepreneurship, and they'd be like, yeah, don't you know businesses fail all the time and I would actually respond and say yeah, don't you know that you work for those businesses or that you're going to work for a business. I remember getting a lot of reactions, like "I've never thought of that...". I'm actually going to work for that business that could fail. Oh man. Wouldn't you rather be at the top knowing where the heck the business is going to go and be getting paid a ton more? Or would you just rather work at the bottom and think that your job is safe and then when the business goes under or when they don't have enough to pay for everybody and they have to cut down on people and start firing people and you get fired. I mean it's no different. Obviously, yes, there are a lot more risks when you are the owner. There's a lot more time and a lot more energy involved at being at the top, but there's a lot better compensation involved as well. And honestly, some of these jobs nowadays that I'm seeing, people are working their guts out for not much, and they literally put in 60 - 70 hours a week for their corporate job and they're making $60,000 - $70,000 a year. Does that really add up? I don't really see it. I see so many people doing side hustles on the side, even while doing 9 to 5’s at the beginning and they ended up making way more than that on their side hustle. It's interesting to me nowadays, there are so many opportunities out there. And that's another thing I hear people saying, nowadays it's really hard because there's so much going on, you can't really do much because there's just not a whole lot of opportunity because there's so many people already doing it. Are you kidding me? This is like the best time in the world to like be alive. This is the best time in the world for opportunity. And I mean, look at it. It's so much easier nowadays to get big. I mean people that you didn't know two years, or nobody knew about two years ago, everybody now knows about them. I even think about Stephen Larsen, like two years ago when he first started publishing, nobody knew who he was, nobody knew anything about him. And now he's huge. But honestly, he's worked his face off, he's also published a lot as well and now he's huge. I seen a lot of the older generation as well that think change is too much. Back then to make changes, it was different. It was a lot harder. Took longer. A lot of people are tied up in that false belief that change is too hard and It takes too much time. They think you can't just start up a business and you have to have all this capital and you have to have investors and blah, blah, blah. That's not true at all. I didn't have any investors for my first business. I started from literally nothing. I think I put like 100 bucks into it at first and quickly got my money back and then just kept rolling the money into it until it got bigger. I mean, that's a little bit of a slower way to do it, but you can find a little bit of cash to get started. Boot strap it! There are so many more options and tools out there and they're not expensive, they're really not that much money to get going. So I just wanted to go over that a little bit. I know this is probably gonna be a little bit of a shorter episode today, but if you're listening to those around you that aren't doing what you want to do, they won’t be able to tell you the correct things to do. They're not going to give you the best advice because their advice will be "don't do it" or "that's too hard" or "it's not possible" because they've never done it. They don't know. And so if you're listening to them, and they can be very close family members. I remember even my wife would was not very keen about me doing my own thing for a very long time until the day happened when we couldn't make bills in college and all of a sudden I sold something or somebody asks for repair and it brought in some cash and then we could pay for bills and have some extra money to go do something with or pay for other things. And it wasn't until then that she was like hey, this is actually really cool and you're making more on this than you are your other job while going to school. Obviously going to school, you don't get paid much or it's hard to find a good paying job. And that's why I started doing stuff on my own. But those around you, those closest to you can be giving you bad advice. They can be giving you advice that is totally against what you believe were totally against where you want to go. Whereas there's an expert out there or somebody else who has done it, that has already been through it. They can tell you the good advice and help you get to where you want to be. It's not impossible nowadays to do anything or to accomplish some huge things. If you look at clickfunnels, I was listening to Russell Brunson's podcast and he said today's our four year anniversary. They've only been in business for four years and they are way past $100,000,000 in revenue for the year. It's crazy. If you listen to people who have done it, they can tell you the past. They can help give you the ideas or, the advice that you need in order to get to where you want to be. That's what I wanted to get across today. don't let those people who are negative takeover what you believe. I was definitely hard for me. Took me a while because I mean, I was hearing it in school and I'm hearing it from all these people, all these friends. And every time I'd say I want to be an entrepreneur I could just see their face like, oh, I'm sorry, you're not gonna make it. You know? And I'm like, dude, if there weren't entrepreneurs, if there weren't people out there building these businesses. I mean agencies are huge. That's a big thing now. They employ a lot of people. Agencies are awesome for that. If there weren't those entrepreneurs doing that, if there weren't people building the businesses, we wouldn't have businesses. We wouldn't keep cycling the businesses through to become the bigger businesses that employ people. If we just stopped creating businesses now, we would probably end up losing a lot of businesses that are open now, and over the years we'd probably end up losing a lot of businesses and then the unemployment rate would go up. So what do you guys want? I just that thinking. That drove me nuts while I was going to school and just hearing so many people be negative about entrepreneurship. Like, oh my goodness, you're not going to make it. I'm like, yeah, well neither are you... You know what I mean? That's what I wanted to say. But obviously I'm not rude like that, but think about it guys. If you're going to go to work, you're working for a business. Now if you're going to create your own business, you're going to have the choices and you can change the direction of your own business when you manage it. But when you're the at the bottom of the pyramid, you're not gonna have the opportunity to change a whole lot. So yeah, that's just kind of the idea that I wanted to go over today and I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast and please do not listen to the bad advice around you. Start listening to books, podcasts, whatever. Find the people who have the right advice for you, follow them, learn from them and go from there. That's what I have for you guys today. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learning from the experts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody? Hey, I want to welcome you to another episode of learning from the experts. On this episode I want to tell you a little story about how I was making a fraction of my potential and I had no idea. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is to waste countless hours sifting through, wanna-be experts who never actually help you in the end. Then to learn years later that there was a real expert who could have helped you a hundred times faster than learning it on your own. I've created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. So I know talked a little bit earlier in one of my earlier podcasts about how I was running a phone and tablet repair business while I was in college. But I want to tell you a little bit more and go into a little more detail about how everything was going and how the business was going and things that I didn't realize I was doing / not doing. I could have been doing so much better than I was. First off, I really had no marketing experience. I had taken some marketing classes in college, but it seemed like those classes were for a bigger company and marketing tactics that are a bit older than new strategies. So I really didn't know much about marketing at all. But I was growing this business and I actually was paying for some marketing and I even ran a facebook contest and didn't even realize what I was doing really. I thought, hey, we'll run a facebook contest, see if we can get some followers. We actually got quite a few followers and then didn't really run anymore contests. I think we ran one more, but I should have just kept it going. What I want to tell you though is with the money that we were making and were not making very much really honestly. But we were putting a lot of money into our inventory actually. And the problem with that was we had all this money in inventory but phones are getting outdated pretty quick. Tablets get outdated pretty quick as well and a lot of times you don't end up using the extra inventory for quite some time. But I didn't realize until later that it actually still worked if we only carried the parts that were used more often and then special ordered the ones in that we're one time fixes and we could have saved a ton of money that way. Anyway, so what I realized since I've ran that business is I've learned a lot from different marketers and experts. One of them, the main one being Russell Brunson. And if I would have known back then what I know now, I know that I could have made at least 10 times as much as I was making back then. But the problem is also I didn't know back then that I didn't know what I didn't know. If that makes sense. Honestly, I was still kind of getting into learning from all of these experts and so now that I've gone through and learned different things and applied myself and gotten better at different marketing tactics and techniques and learned from lots of experts in that field. If I could go back to that time, I would have done things a lot differently as well as more things that I wasn’t doing and I would have structured things differently. But now that I’m looking back on it, I have also learned what I can do better in the future. So my point is that there are still things I don't know. There's still things I don't realize that I don't even know. I feel like it's an almost daily, if not weekly occurrence where I'll hear Something when I'm listening to an audio book or a podcast or reading a different book or I'm sitting next to Steve Larsen and he's doing a podcast or teaching somebody something and I’ll learn something really valuable from that. From all that is going on around me and I'm like, Oh, I never actually realized that before. And Wow, that's a really cool concept. So write it down and I'll try to teach it so I can internalize it a little bit better. That's actually why I am doing this podcast. So I can teach the awesome things I learn from the experts around me. I don't know if you've noticed these golden nuggets or as Steve Larsen would put it, truth nukes. We're trying to change that term to truth nukes… As I learned these awesome little bits of marketing knowledge, I try to teach them on this podcast so that I can better internalize them, but also so that you can also learn them for yourself and use them in your business. Great experts out there, like Russell Brunson's, I’ve been following him for a long time. I think it's been like five years now before ClickFunnels was even around when I stumbled upon him. He totally sold me on something on a Webinar when I was brand new into college. I was even brand new into business online. I was just barely starting to apply myself back then. I was just getting into all this stuff and he totally sold me on a Webinar. It had to have been the perfect webinar script. I’m pretty sure I was like, I don't really know what this is, but I know I have to have it. So I totally bought it and I really had no idea what it was. So that was the start of following Russell Brunson, before he had click funnels Obviously now he's done pretty well in ClickFunnels. We use it daily. Obviously it's what drives our business. So my point is though, as of right now, even for Russell Brunson, someone as big as himself, there are still things that he doesn't know or hasn't realized or may have not come about yet. And there's things that I know he publishes about like new things, new ideas, that haven't really been in the industry or been taught before. And so there's always something new coming out all the time. And if you're not actively in that realm, or actively listening, or actively paying attention to the things that are happening, you're going to miss those golden nuggets or the truth nukes that come by. So my point is you have to be staying current. And yes, these experts are people that are just so well ingrained with marketing or what they're doing. Even in your industry. With what you're doing in your industry, like when I was in the tech industry when I was running my business, fixing phones and tablets, I was actively researching phones and repair guides and different things that people were seeing issues on. And as a new phone came out I was watching the tear downs or people tearing them apart and then things that maybe going wrong as they tore them apart. So in your industry you have to be actively studying and if you're not, you'll fall behind. I haven't been actively studying the tech industry and I can tell you that I am like a years behind now because I haven't studied it for well over two years now and two years in the tech industry, that's huge. It would take me a lot to catch back up and get going on that. So you have to always be actively studying and learning. A great thing Tony Robbins talks about is net time, “no extra time”. I live by this rule 100%. When I'm driving to work or driving somewhere else, especially when I'm by myself, I don't just drive with nothing playing from my phone. Occasionally I will play some music when my brain may be a little fried or something. But other than that, I always have a podcast on. Or I have an audio book playing, no matter what. And the reason behind that is because I'm always studying. I'm always increasing my knowledge. I'm always upping my game. And if you're not doing that, you're going to fall behind pretty quickly. One thing kind of crazy thing I learned in school was, the reason big corporations actually go bankrupt or just cease to exist or won't be able to keep going the way they are or downsize or shut down is they can't innovate quickly enough. It's interesting because there may be someone in the company that is studying and keeping up with the times, but then as they try to make changes, it doesn't happen quick enough and so a huge corporation can go bankrupt or lose all of their market just based on not being able to implement something or new strategies and innovations in time. That has something to say about the importance of keeping up on your game in your industry or in marketing because if you don't it's going to be really hard to stay relevant. It's going to be really hard to just be staying above the water and nowadays things can change so quickly. You have to really be on your game. So that's the podcast idea that I wanted to talk about today. And I have a good quote here that I think applies very well. When I heard it I thought, that is so true. It's by Dan Kennedy. That guy is the man. If you haven't studied Dan Kennedy, I would highly recommend you do so. But the quote is "the higher the income, the more the person paid for who they are rather than what they do." I'll say it again. "The higher the income, the more the person paid for who they are rather than what they do." I think that has a lot to say about the importance of always educating and staying relevant. One last story to let you go. I work with Steve Larsen and obviously Steve Larsen was (if you know Steve Larsen at all) Russell Brunson's lead funnel builder for two years. He was telling me his story. I think he's actually told this on his podcast and other places, but he's telling me a story about when ClickFunnels moved offices. When ClickFunnels moved offices, Russell had to throw away a ton of books and courses. Steve said it was interesting because as they were throwing stuff away, Steve would hold up a book and ask, do you want this book? Russel would look at it and go, hmm, no, he's not relevant anymore. Throw it away. Then he'd hold up another book and Russell would say, yeah, he's relevant. He's good, keep it. That's really interesting to me that Russell would base the keeping of a book on whether or not the person was relevant. Meaning if the guy is actually producing content that still works for today, but almost wonder if he meant that he is still putting out content, he's still a up on his game. That's really interesting to me and I hope you find that interesting as well. So that's a big, big thing for someone like Russell Brunson to base the keeping of someone's book or course on if they are just relevant or not. Some good things to learn from that. I'm super excited for you guys to be on this podcast and look forward to sharing more things that I'm learning and things that I'm coming by, from experts around me as I'm around them and in their areas. So thank you very much and we'll talk to you later. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learningfromtheexperts.com to find pre-approved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing and leaving feedback.  

What's going on everybody? This is Coulton Woods and I'm excited about this podcast today. I want to tell you how I increased prices 20% on average and only lost about 3% of our monthly paying customers. I’m pretty excited about it. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is to waste countless hours sifting through, Wanna-be experts who never actually help you in the end. Then to learn years later that there was a real expert who could have helped you a huundred times faster than learning it on your own. I've created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. So back when I was living in Phoenix, I was actually working with my brother and he owns a pool business there in Phoenix. I mean that's kind of the thing to do there. There's plenty of people who have pools in Phoenix. That’s for sure… I told my brother that I wanted to do marketing for him. So we got together and I started doing a lot of his marketing and building funnels for them and creating some emails and helping them with different things to help his business and increase his revenue. At one point we had a lot of the customers were on different prices. They were quoted whatever they felt like at the time and a lot of them were actually at the same price that they'd been at for eight years. They hadn't actually increased any of their prices and obviously the cost of doing business had gone up and they're still charging the same amount for the service. But the cost of that service had gone up. So my brother says, dude, we have to increase prices and I don't really know how we're going to do that without losing a ton of our customers. We've been anxious about doing that because we don't want to lose customers. We don't want to lose everybody. But some of these people actually need to, they're paying way too little and we really need to get them up. I said I'm on it, no problem. I need to increase prices and I need to figure out how to do that. I mean, going to school and going to college, I had learned lots of different pricing strategies and done case studies on how people price things. And maybe that'll help me with helping them do this, but I bet you somebody else has done this. And so I wanted to up my learning or up my understanding of how to do this. And I was doing it in the moment, I'm learning in the moment. That's a key thing. I bet somebody else has already done this. So I do what I've learned how to do best in college. I googled it. I'm looking through and I'm finding all these articles and different things and I found this one and this company that was a legit company, a big company and they did a whole case study and said just what they did to increase prices. They talked about how they went from a Beta to actual full launch, but they had hundreds of thousands of people already, and so they're trying to figure out how they can increase their prices without losing their following. This is perfect, this is what I need. And so I'm studying this whole case. And In my mind, my thought was, okay, we need to increase prices for everybody and this is a monthly service and so they pay per month and we have to up the monthly price of what they're going to pay every month, it's not just a one time price increase then we're done. If I were to do it based on knowledge and different things from school that I kind of maybe remembered but I hadn't actually experienced, so I didn't actually remember it that well because you don't remember too many things that you don't have an emotional attachment to or an experience with. For me, I would first off blame everything else. I’d blame the price of things going up, obviously the minimum wage has gone up, I blame a lot of other things and we haven't increased prices, ever. And it's been eight, nine, 10 years? I can totally blame all that. But as I was reading this case study, it was telling me the exact opposite. Instead it was telling me that what you should do is create an offer, but not only that, you need to tell them that the reason that you're increasing prices is so you can better serve them and here's how you're going to do it. So I figured out all of what we do in the monthly service. I laid it out on paper, this is what we do in our service and we're adding this to it. Which we had actually recently added some stuff to the service but we didn't make it too publicly known or make a big deal about it. So I put that in there as one of the reasons why we're increasing prices so we could better serve them is because of this feature and these things that we're doing that's going to better their experience and better the plan that they have for their pool cleaning. We just essentially made what we were practically already doing, look way better, but nobody had actually even really explained this to most of the customers before. They didn't even really know what they were getting anyway. We added a couple things that we kind of already had in there and then we also added to other plans that were a much higher monthly price. Initially we thought nobody's really going to go for this really high one, which was actually about 100% higher than what some people were already paying. But we thought hey, maybe we'll get a few. I'd been through enough of the ClickFunnels world and seen average conversions on things that are higher ticket. I definitely did not know how to do this. At first I didn't know if it was gonna work. It gave me a little bit of anxiety because you could lose a lot of people here, but how do we do this the best way possible? We found some different articles, but this was the main one. We put it all together. We're going to send it out, we're going to give them these options, we're going to create some urgency and scarcity with it and say you've only got a week, but we will really give them two weeks max to respond and if they don't it's going to automatically increase in price.  We made sure we contacted everybody though. I mean he's got hundreds of customers, hundreds and hundreds of customers. If they've got a problem with it, we're going to have a lot, and I mean a lot of support to deal with. We were all freaking out a little. We decided to send the email out to our customers at the end of the day so that we could just leave and then they can go crazy on us and call and leave hate mail and voicemails throughout the evening… We can just pick it up in the morning and get working on that and so we can have a full day to be able to reply. I send out the email and I’m thinking that the phones are going to be blowing up tonight. We leave and go to bed and head back to the office the next morning. I’m just hoping they took it well. I get into the office and I think literally two people called, the rest of them just email us back and it was literally nothing but positive emails really. It was the craziest, weirdest thing. Everybody just told us which plan they wanted to go with. I thought this is freaking working. And this is crazy. Some of these people were increasing their prices 30%. The average was 20% and the lowest was 10%. Nobody was getting increased less than 10%. So everyone’s price is going up and at the end of it, we only lost a little over 3.7% of the customers. I couldn't believe it. It was crazy. I think it was also because we added in a little bit of urgency and scarcity, along with other perks and different things. But super crazy, we only lost almost 4% of them. That's not much for increasing 20% on average. That's huge! Which most people would think- you're going to lose 20 percent of your customers if you increase it that much. Well, the craziest thing was that the majority of those that we lost were actually the hardest customers, the ones that would call in and be needy and we were losing a lot of money on. The majority of those who cancelled were those customers that I was wanting to cancel service on anyway. But what I learned in the end is, if I would have done what I just knew myself, if I would have just wrote an email blaming this, that, and everything else. I guarantee I would have lost more than double that of the customers. And we would have had a lot of angry people. And I mean obviously because we're blaming, we're kind of being negative. But instead I searched out for an expert. I searched out for somebody who had actually been through it who had the experience of it themselves, and so by doing that I was able to use their experience, create my own experience, learned from that experience, and now I've internalized that forever. That was a couple of years ago and I still remember that whole thing and I still remember everything I learned from it. Crazy quote actually I want to give you guys by Jay Abraham, this guy knows his stuff. It's cool. He said there are only three ways to grow any business. First off, you can increase the number of clients you have, such as get more new prospects into paying customers. Second, you can increase the average transaction, so just increase the prices. And third, you can increase the frequency that the average client buys from you. Those are the three ways you can increase revenue. One of those was to increase prices and that's what we did and definitely increased the bottom line revenue quite a bit a month over month from that. And then every customer that we brought on, we could sell even better because we had that plan laid out and that offer for them already. The people loved it and they saw exactly what they were getting. A lot less issues, a lot more good customers. That's what I wanted to drop on you guys today. There are experts out there who have already done this. They've already been through what you're needing to go through at this time. If you go through it yourself, sure you can learn from it, but if you learned from somebody else as you're going through it, man, I mean instead of losing 20 percent of your customers, you can only lose three percent. So thank you guys for hanging on here with me today. Hopefully this wasn't too long and I hope you guys got some good stuff out of it. Are you looking to jump start your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learningfromthexperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

Hey everybody, this is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. So here's the deal- I know how frustrating it is to waste countless hours sifting through wanna-be experts who never actually help you in the end. Then to learn years later that there was a real expert who could have helped you 100 times faster than learning it on your own. I've created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learn from real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. I'm so glad you joined me on my second episode here. I'm super grateful to have you and I'm excited to kick this off and I'm going to tell you guys a little bit about how I got started in business and how I epically failed at it and had no idea that there was so much more that I could have done. But obviously you just learn from it, right? As I started college I always had a really high interest in business. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I always wanted to own my own business and work for myself and make it happen. My goal was to go into marketing and get a business degree through marketing. I didn't even know that they had an entrepreneurship degree at the time, which is what I ended up graduating in, but at the time, I'm trying to get a marketing degree and I remember all these classes that I had to take and none of them were teaching me business stuff. You have to take the foundations that just give you your base foundation for life. And you know what, I just want to take one business class at least a semester even though I've got all of these foundation classes, who cares, I'll just take a business class and try to kick it off a little early or as early as I could, you know. So I took an online business class and technically we were supposed to start a business online, but really we were just supposed to start any kind of business and try to make any kind of money to get the grade. And so I remember racking my brain over this, what can I sell, what can I do? And all these ideas that I had, I just didn't have money for. I was a super poor college student. I didn't have money. We're living in the cheapest place we could find and trying to pay the bills. I remember all of these ideas. No, I can't do that… I don't have money for that... I'm just killing myself over this idea. One day I'm walking from one class to another. I mean it was cold outside and I think I had a big coat on and you know, you're just trying to get from one class the other and not be outside as much as possible. Well I remember I need to check my phone, it vibrated or something, I have to see what that was. So I go to pull my phone out and as I pulled it out, I don't know if you've ever done this or not but I pull it out and it catches on your pocket or your jacket and you end up flinging it through the air. It's almost like you meant to throw it and that’s kinda what I did. I pulled it out and somehow just threw it as far as I could in a way and I just kind of watched it as it floated in the air and just kept floating in the air and then smashed on the front of it and slid for 20 feet on the concrete and I don't know about you but if you have ever done that, you just don't even want to pick it up because you just know it's demolished. If you haven't experienced that yet, good for you, but I just knew it was going to be totally toast so I go over there and I thought oh man, there's no way it cannot be broken, it would be just a miracle if it wasn’t because I don't have money to pay somebody to fix it. I'm just hoping it’s not broken. But I knew it was broken. I pick it up and sure enough the front of it is shattered to pieces. I could barely see anything on there. It's just so shattered and you can see scratch to from it sliding for 20 feet. And I thought man, I do not have money to fix this. You know, I'm a poor college student. These things are expensive. Back then I had an iPhone 4. I don't know if you remember those, but they're glass on the front and the back and the corners. So no matter what you did, you just broke it. Yeah. Good Times. So I thought, I need to fix this. I really enjoyed taking things apart as a kid. I don't know why my dad always thought it was weird. I remember I bought a new paintball gun, I love paintball and I bought a new paintball gun and the first thing I did was take it home and I took it apart and disassembled the entire thing just to see how it worked because I like to know how things work. I don't know why and I never had a problem taking things apart and putting them back together. It was just fun, I’d take it apart, put it back together and then knew how it worked. That way when I was paint balling and something went wrong, I knew how to fix it and take care of it. So I thought I'm going to fix this. I can do it. So I ordered a screen off eBay or something and it comes in and sure enough, I had to watch 20 YouTube videos just to try to figure it out exactly. And I'm taking it apart and I got this little dinky screwdriver that the screen came with that's half plastic and it was just not good cause I have really big hands and it's a tiny screwdriver. That probably wasn't the best idea anyway to do it myself.  So I take it apart and I mean it took me an hour and a half for sure. Took me so long just to pull it apart because I'm being so careful. I mean it's my phone and if I screw it up, I'm done. I pull it apart. I'm having so much fun, checking everything out, looking at it, seeing how things work, you know, just kind of seeing it and I get it back together and sure enough it works. I'm like holy cow, I just fixed this. And I learned so much about how the phone works and how it comes together. I can fix these things, this is cool. Then I thought, light bulb! I can do this for my business, for class, right. I'd never broken a phone before that. I haven't even broken one since. So I don't know, it just happened to break it at that time and it worked out cause that became my idea for a business. I got to submit the idea tomorrow for what I'm going to do anyway, so this is perfect, this is what I'm going to do. I got it all together. I bought a couple of extra parts that I could afford because I couldn't afford a whole lot. My teacher had this local marketing business and he's like hey, you know what? I'll get you a little bit of exposure for free. So he sent some stuff out, kind of got the word out a little bit for me. And sure enough, I started getting calls. I created a free google voice number so people could call me on that and wouldn't have my cell phone and so I got a few calls from it. I was shocked and I would literally meet up with them. I lived at an apartment complex. I would literally meet them at the clubhouse and I'd just say hey, meet me here at club house of my apartment building. I was super open about it, you know, and the first guy that I ever repaired anything for ended up being my longest term customer, my best customer ever. It was crazy. I fixed a lot of his stuff, but the first time I was super nervous. He'd say "my phone screen is broken." I got a part for that and then he'd say "okay, my iPod's broken." I got a part for that too! And he's like cool, can you get it done right now? And I'm like, yeah, I can do it right now. So I'm literally trying not to sweat bullets while I'm fixing this guy's phone and trying to have a conversation with them and not act like I'm super nervous. So it takes me a while. He's just hanging out, he's having a good time. I put it all together and he's like, Oh, dude that looks good. You did a good job, here's your money, here's your cash. And we'll see you later. Then I said, Hey, you know what, thanks so much for bringing it in and if you got any problems, or if you have any questions just let me know. I'm here to help you know. And he was like, Hey, I like the job you did, you know what? I got three other broken devices at home. Do you want to fix those too? And I'm like, yeah! Let me order the parts for it, we'll get it fixed. And that was the start of my phone, tablet and computer fixing business. I'm in college, my first year of college, I was really excited and I'll tell you more of the story of where it went after that, but essentially what I wanted to talk about is everything that I learned, I learned through YouTube. I learned it through blogs and just reading up, I really had to dive deep to learn all these things and then whenever I had a problem or an issue I would google it to try to figure out what was going on and sometimes I just happened to find this crazy weird thread that someone told or said something that ended up working for me because there's a lot of issues that can come from working on phones. But what I noticed is a lot of the repairs that I would do, the experts on YouTube, either they wouldn't quite say everything or wouldn’t show all of what you were really supposed to do in order to make it a smooth repair. Honestly I think they did that so that they could get more business because people would screw up their phones, you know, thinking, oh, I can just do exactly what he's doing but not look out for all these other little things that you had to just kinda know about. If you didn't, you could screw up a lot of stuff. And so I think some people did that so that they could get more business and get people questioning, sending questions in and then hopefully just have them send the phone to them so they could fix it. And then two, I noticed that some experts just knew what they were doing so much that they didn't quite understand what they were doing in a way. They were showing you how they're doing it, but they didn't realize that if you were new to this you need to be taught how to do X, Y and Z before you do it. They were so used to it that it wasn’t a big deal to them. It just seemed like something small that you just wouldn't really even know or that most people would just kind of know about it, you know? And so I learned that it's just interesting because some people purposely don't tell you everything and other people don't tell you everything just because they know it so well. There's so much of an expert in it and it's amazing to me because as I would teach other people how to do it like employees that came in, first off, I'd do it in front of them and then have them ask any question they could and then I would have them do it and then ask any question they could. There's such a big difference in questions when they are doing it versus when I do it and they're just watching and when I'm not there. Even when they're watching a YouTube video or reading about it, they don't understand it enough to know what to look for exactly. And then it made sense. What I've realized is, it is the same thing for online experts, for a lot of businesses, there're so many books, there's so much material out there and yes, a lot of them do give a lot of value. But there's a huge difference in the environment that you're in between reading a book and trying to apply it and just learning it through the book versus actually doing it and applying it and then having questions about certain things that you can't really find an answer for or there's so many different answers from all these other wanna-be experts that you just can't tell what is actually the real one. There's just a huge difference between the actual environment that you're learning in and I've just learned for myself that I can read a book, but if I applied it and actually was doing it while reading that book, I internalized it so much more. And then I've even realized that if I could have the expert with me as I'm going through these things such as a coach, it's even more applicable and gets the job done faster. It's even more insane how well it works but what's interesting is in my business, what I didn't realize was I went through YouTube and I had learned everything I needed to in order to make money through the labor side of my business to just accomplish the work that needed to be done. Whereas I didn't understand how important it was to understand the marketing side of my business to get people into the door so I could do the labor side or have somebody else do the labor side for me in my business. So that's also something else to think about. What are you focusing your time on? Are you focusing on learning from actual real people or real experts that are going to help you grow your business. Or are you focused more in your business, working in your business instead of on your business. That's a big, big difference there. So what can you do? Where can you go? What can you learn? Where can you apply it? What expert is out there that can help you 10X your business? I have been listening to a lot of Grant Cardone lately and 10X has been in my vocabulary recently just because of how much I've been listening to him. That's what I have for you. Think about where you're at and I hope that helps you guys and if you want to check out some of the resources and tools and some of the experts that I have preapproved, just head on over to learningfromtheexperts.com and check it out. Thank you very much guys! Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learningfromtheexperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.    

What's going on everybody? This is Coulton Woods and I want to welcome you to my podcast, learning from the experts. So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is to waste countless hours sifting through experts who never actually help you in the end. Then to learn years later that there was a real expert who could have helped you a hundred times faster than learning it on your own. I've created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to learning from the experts. I'm so stoked to have you guys on here. And really honestly, I really appreciate you guys being on here and I really hope to provide some awesome value for you guys and provide some really cool things that I'm learning from actual experts around me. So I created this podcast mainly for entrepreneurs or I guess you could say business owners as well, which we all know they're entrepreneurs. So, the reason for that is because I believe that entrepreneurs are actually the key to our success in society. With that being said, I believe that entrepreneurs are actually the most important people in society or in the economy to help make it run because if you think about it, if we didn't have entrepreneurs to start businesses and grow them, then we wouldn't have businesses. And without businesses, well, you know, things don't work. So, I know you're probably thinking like, holy cow, I can't believe you just said entrepreneurs are the most important people in society, but I would say I guess in the economy or for the economy. So entrepreneurs are definitely very important for the economy. But with that being said as well, those who aren't entrepreneurial minded definitely are just as important because we know entrepreneurs can take things or create things, but they're not always the best at scaling it or I guess you could say managing it or you know, just kind of taking care of all the other tasks that need to be taken care of in the business. So, yeah, with that being said, if we didn't have entrepreneurs, we wouldn't have jobs essentially. How's that for the very first podcast? I'm just kind of laying it out there and anyway, so also with that being said, I think the reason they call it the American dream is because of the way we're structured and how capitalism works for us. We can definitely do some awesome things and free markets are awesome. It definitely inspires competition and helps it so that we don't just kind of, you know, we're not just kind of lazy about it, but we actually have to be creative and do things better than the next guy or we won't be around for the next guy. So, that's what's great about our society and being able to even be an entrepreneur. But I mean if we also, with that being said, like I really truly believed that if we didn't have entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, we wouldn't have the inventions we have today, like phones would not be where they are at today without creative minds and entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs. There's a ton of different areas, a ton of different entrepreneurs who are creative people that have built many other industries today that are just awesome and have helped us get so much farther into the future with all these great things that are being created. So my goal in this podcast is to really just help entrepreneurs and those who have a business or running a business or starting up a business, and for them to have the tools to better do business or to better market and better grow their business and be successful. I believe that there are so many tools out there right now and so much information that there's not enough time to consume it all. That's actually one of the things that actually kind of bugs me. Like, I really wish I had more time or could even just like freeze time for a little bit so I could consume more and take the time to actually consume enough for what I may be doing at the time or for project that I may have at the time. When growing up and going to school I was not that way at all and I did not consume much at all and I didn't read a whole lot of books growing up, which is sad. But now I really wish I would have caught the bug. Because once you start and you start realizing how much awesomeness there is out there, you just can't stop because it's so amazing. So I want to help business owners andentrepreneurs, better market, better sell and also better know of the tools that are available to them as well as the experts that are available out there so that they can grow their businesses faster. I mean honestly, I believe so many businesses fail because they don't know how to market or they just focus on the product and think that the product is gonna sell itself. Or they didn't realize that there's actually an expert out there that could have helped them. Then obviously they fail because they weren't able to scale or grow or manage their business the way that they should have when they thought they were managing it the right way. So there are a bunch of marketing strategies and tools out there nowadays and if you know where to look, you can find some awesome people that can help you. So that's my goal. And yeah, obviously if you're listening to this and you're an entrepreneur, you own a business or sell a product or you want to start selling a product, then you definitely fit in the category of the people that I'm looking for on this podcast. So I've been around a lot of tools, I've been around a lot of experts, I've seen a lot of strategies and there's a lot of them. There's just so much out there and it's becoming more readily available and it's just ramping up so much faster and there's so many more tools available everyday. But because I'm around this all the time and I'm in the world of entrepreneurs and marketing and I see a lot of tools that come available, I want to kind of teach about the things that I'm learning from those experts who are talking about different tools that are becoming available or that are available and that I've used and am using. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm in the online marketing area and we sell a ton of stuff online. I was actually a bit of an entrepreneur growing up. I don't think I actually realized it until later, but I would do things like buy boxes of candy bars and my dad actually ran vending machines at his work and he'd go pick up boxes of candy and I remember one time telling him, Hey dad, can I borrow money through you and buy a box of candy bars that I can go sell at football games and soccer games. So I ended up doing that and would make a little bit of cash that way. It's amazing. I remember being like, wow... you can mark these up pretty good when you sell them at games and stuff. But when I really got started in business and I got a more focused on it and really focusing on being an entrepreneur was right after I was married. It was probably before that. But after I was married I was like, okay, I really need to get this going. My wife was in school, I was going to school for business management with an emphasis in marketing, which a later changed to an emphasis in entrepreneurship in the business management degree. Right after we were married was the time that I got really focused on it and I was taking a class in college and where we had to come up with a business idea. So long story short, I ended up breaking my own phone, which I hadn't done before. And I've owned multiple phones before that one and I just completely demolished the screen on my phone. I'm a bit of a do it yourself kind of guy. And I really enjoy puzzles. Anyway, so I was like, hey, I can fix this myself. So I looked it up, got my youtube education on how to fix it and ordered some parts and fixed it myself. And I had a blast doing it. I thought wow, that was actually really fun and since I'm trying to figure out what business to do for this class in college I thought this is actually a really good idea. So I started a cell phone repair business on the side. Honestly tho, we were just poor college kids who Probably shouldn’t have started a business. I had a job already on campus that didn't pay much and my wife had a job that didn't pay much either and we weren't taking student loans, so it was definitely very tight on money. I remember plenty of times the account would go negative and we wouldn’t have anything to our name. It was definitely tight. Well I started fixing phones and what I essentially did was I would just order the very minimum amount of parts I could to start fixing phones with so I could turn around and take the money that I made and reinvest it. Anyway, so I had just started this and I remember one Saturday morning my wife and I were still laying in bed and we're just talking and she's like, you know, we really need some groceries. But we have like $10 in our account. Yeah we really can't really buy groceries with $10 in our account. At that point I don't know what to do. Like we have no money and we really need some food. As she's saying this, I remember thinking about this phone that I had put on Ebay and I remember it was for like a couple hundred dollars. I thought man, if we could just sell that we could have a little bit of cash to go actually get some groceries and have some food. So I thought about this for a little and she got talking about other things. As we were talking, I remember hearing my phone ding in like the Ebay notification noise that Ebay had. I thought no way. There's no way this could actually be happening right now. And sure enough, I look over there and the phone on Ebay had sold. And I was like, what the heck? Wow, it actually sold. I looked over at my wife and I said babe! The phone sold! No way! Yeah, we have money now and we can go get some groceries. I remember that feeling before it had sold, like I'm failing as a man, you know, I need to provide for the family but we have nothing. What kind of provider am I? I'm trying to start this business or start doing my little side hustle and make some money there and then the phone sells and we make a little cash and I thought, this is awesome! After that I was totally hooked. When you start making money and when in a split second you sell a phone that makes you more money than three days of working it makes you think, this is sad that im spending so much time making so little. So you're totally hooked after that. I built this business up and I started getting really busy. It was essentially every night I'd have two or three people every day dropping phones off at my house. And I mean when we first started, I was in an apartment and I would literally go meet them in the main lobby area of the apartment and do repairs out of there. I got to know the apartment lady that ran the place pretty good and she totally didn't even care. Then we moved into a little townhome and pretty soon people were stopping by the house every day and dropping phones off and I got so busy. So I found a buddy that I went bowling with and we were on a Bowling League together and no I'm not very good at bowling, but I love it. So we got talking one night and he's like, hey, you know what, I have some cash and I really like what you're doing. I want to buy into it and see if we can make it big. I knew the guy pretty good at this point and said, heck yeah, let's do it! You put some money in, I'll bring my assets and my knowledge and I'll train you on repairs and things and we can run it together. We ended up starting a brick and mortar store fixing phones and tablets. It was definitely a good time. Every month we were growing it, getting it bigger and bigger and getting the word out more and more. One thing that I started doing is I would actually go to all of the local cellular places like AT&T and T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, all of those places. I would literally just walk in with like two cases of pop in my hands and say I have some Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper and I just want to introduce myself. I'm Coulton Woods, I run the phone and tablet repair business down the street. Anyway I just wanted to come bring guys some treats and stuff and order some pizza or something and get to know you guys a little bit more. And if you happen to have anything that some people need some help with, I'd love it if you sent them my way, but you know, no worries if not. I just wanted to come over and get to know you. I literally would walk into all these stores and just give them pop and a different treats and then buy pizza every now and then and I'd go back after a while and take them pop again. That way I would keep the relationship up. And what I didn't realize was I was actually doing what they call a Dream-100 strategy. If you don't know what D100 is, you essentially write down a list of 100 businesses or people that would be able to help your business grow if you were to be able to develop a relationship with them and partner up. It's a strategy that is used in a lot of businesses nowadays and is insanely worth every minute and penny of it. I use it in our business now and it does a ton for us. It's huge! And I had no idea that Dream-100 was even a thing. I didn't even know it was a strategy back then, which is pretty sad. With that being said, there are so many more strategies out there that I had no idea even existed until now. And there's still more that I don't even know about yet and I will be learning in the future still. But the thing is, if I would've known what I know now, back then, I could have done so many more things and I could have literally 10X'd my business. I could have exploded it so much more than it already was. The reason I'm doing this podcast mainly is so that I can help you guys know where to go for legit experts, tools, trainings and courses. I can help you actually 10X your business. One of the things nowadays is there are so many "life coaches" that are literally 23 years old, like, yeah... you've really been through life. You're 23 and you're a life coach?! So I want to help you guys actually have a place where you can go to find real experts and obviously I'm still creating it. I'm still putting it together and I'll always be adding to it as I go. I would love any feedback or let me know if you know any experts that aren’t on my list. I have a page on learningfromtheexperts.com that they can apply to become an expert. That's essentially where I want to put everything together so that people can know where to go to find help for their business and find real experts and actual tools that will help them 10 x their business. There are always new tools coming out and I don't even know of everything out there right now. I'm around some awesome experts right now as it is, but I don't know everything and everyone out there. I mean I work with Steve Larsen and I've actually known him since college. We did some business stuff together in college. That's a whole other story for another time. But I literally get to sit next to Steve Larsen everyday and learn from the man himself, which if you don't know who Steve Larsen is, he sat next to Russell Brunson for two years and was his lead funnel builder at clickfunnels. If you don't know who Russell Brunson is, then you're gonna want to check out the site and figure out who he is because that guy can really help you blow your business up. Interestingly enough, his business clickfunnels is devoted to helping people grow their business to a million dollar business. And I don't even know how many it is, but I think it's like 200+ some businesses that they've helped create a million dollars or more in their business. So if that doesn't get you excited, I don't know what does, but yeah, Russell Brunson is definitely the man. So that's the reason I'm creating this podcast and website. I'd love to hear your feedback. I'd love to hear reviews or your feedback through reviews and definitely feel free to reach out to me if you have any ideas or suggestions. I'm always open to that. So thank you very much for being on this podcast and I hope to provide some awesome value for you in the future. And I hope you got some value out of this as well. Thank you very much. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to learningfromtheexperts.com to find preapproved experts that I've handpicked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.