Success Champions

Michael F. Schein is the founder and president of MicroFame Media, a marketing agency that specializes in making idea-based companies famous in their fields. Some of his clients have included eBay, Magento, The Medici Group, University of Pennsylvania, Gordon College, University of California Irvine, United Methodist Publishing House, Ricoh, LinkedIn, and Citrix. His writing has appeared in Fortune, Forbes, Inc., Psychology Today, and Huffington Post, and he is a speaker for international audiences spanning from the northeastern United States to the southeastern coast of China. His book The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable Success Secrets From the World’s Greatest Propagandists, Self-Promoters, Cult Leaders, Mischief Makers, and Boundary Breakers, published by McGraw Hill, appears where books are sold. What was the biggest turning point in your life? When I finally confronted my fear and got up the guts to leave my corporate job. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do differently? I would have left my corporate job after 3 years instead of 8. Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfrancisschein/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfrancisschein/) Facebook https://www.facebook.com/michael.schein.7/ (https://www.facebook.com/michael.schein.7/) Instagram https://www.instagram.com/scheinm1/ (https://www.instagram.com/scheinm1/) Twitter https://twitter.com/MichaelSchein1 (https://twitter.com/MichaelSchein1)

Kevin Snow is the founder of Time On Target, an Army Veteran, a sales expert and a serious technology geek who knows how to help his clients take their automation game to the next level. With a 20+ year career in business development working with brands like Frontier Communications, Nextel, Salesforce, and BNI; his knowledge, skills and understanding of communication and technology are getting real results for the businesses he works with. Kevin knows how to integrate digital technology with your sales process in an authentic, professional way. He’ll show you what’s been missing in terms of ensuring an effective system of outreach and trust-building. Part entrepreneur, part sales person, part technology master and part Star Wars fan…how can you afford not to have Kevin on your team this year? What was the biggest turning point in your life?: I've had a few huge pivots/turning points 1. Enlisting in the US Army at 34 2. Starting Time On Target as a speaking/training company 3. Deploying to the middle east 4. Moving the company from training to consulting after I discovered my business model couldn't support my deployment schedule 5. Niching my focus down to just sales process and automation 6. Finding a new badass friend and mentor that pushes me forward (shoves me kicking and screaming) and helps me get out of my own way. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? : That is hard to answer... if I did things differently there is a lot of great stuff I wouldn't have now. Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinesnow/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.snow.9659 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinesnow/

Sean Michael Crane is a family man, best selling author, motivational speaker and life coach with an incredible story of perseverance and determination. He has used his hardships and life experience to reach others and inspire them to conquer their fears and pursue the life they have always dreamed of living just as he has. What was the biggest turning point in your life?: At 23, Sean Crane was sentenced to 7 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. With nothing positive to show for his life up to that point and a massive challenge ahead he had a decision to make. Would he give up and let the rest of his life pass him by like the first 23 did or could he face his fears, fight through the pain and pursue the life he always wanted.. From a small cement box Sean was able to take control of his life. He completely transformed his mentality, his routines, and the results he got in his life. “ In that cell I started to create the life of my dreams that I am able to live today.” “ If I did this from a prison cell, I promise you can take control of your life too! You deserve it and you are far more capable than you realize” !! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cranestyle.coaching.9/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sean_crane_coaching/ Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQispS4iu5hz_2dlIZUTcsg My book “ Prison Of Your Own “ : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SQR21M4

Using her straight-forward, big-hearted style, Jane M Powers guides thousands to Speak with Confidence and Sell with Authority. With decades of successful speaking, training, and coaching, and perhaps most important of all real-life experience founding and running multi-million dollar businesses, Jane appreciates that success is truly about the power of your CORE message. With over 30 years of sales success as a Corporate Executive and Entrepreneur, she brings you everything you need to ensure a competitive edge in the market place. Jane has been changing the way people sell and how to move people into action to make more money, have more fun and most of all - make a difference. Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-m-powers/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jmpowersu Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janempowers/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JanempowersYOU Youtube Channel: janempowers

He’s been bullied at school, laughed at by his school teachers for bad grades and then he went on to fail in launching over 30 business ideas. So many years of failing caused him to feel depressed and angry at the world so he committed himself to finding out why he kept failing in business and in life. By his mid-thirties and after having completed over 200 courses in self-development, transformation, leadership and entrepreneurship he gained the insights he needed to finally start living the lifestyle he’s always dreamed of. Dan is now on a mission to use his transformational coaching to enable as many ambitious individuals as possible to pursue a deeply rewarding life purpose and realise their greatest visions. His book Dream it Choose it Live it became an Amazon best seller and it’s now recommended by the great Robin Sharma, the world-renowned leadership expert and author of the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Dan has now coached over 1000 ambitious individuals and has web spaces full of testimonials from his clients saying that they created results they never imagined possible from implementing what they learned from Dan. Please give a warm welcome to Dan Warburton! What was the biggest turning point in your life? Eight years ago when in a conversation with my coach I learned that when I was 3 years old that I interpreted the world in such a way that was the cause of my many years of struggle and failure as an entrepreneur. I then got to transform that interpretation of my self which enabled me to start achieving results as an entrepreneur that I never imagined possible. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? Invested in high-level coaching instead of so many bad business ideas! Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/authordanwarburton/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/authordanwarburton/ Instagram https://www.facebook.com/authordanwarburton/

Cheramie Law – Owner, Co-Founder and Vintner Former United States Marine, Black woman vintner and co-founder of Salt and Pepper Wine, Cheramie Law is a woman on a mission to share the beauty of Texas wine with the world. Raised in Sherman, Texas, and with a successful career as a Data Management Specialist in the railway industry, Cheramie has been advocating for Texas wine since 2014. What began as a first date to Fredricksburg with now-partner Todd Aho for wine tasting in 2013, has forged into a partnership in wine and life. This partnership is celebrated with the launch of the Cheramie Wine brand. Cheramie’s vision is simple: “My hope is to inspire those who don’t see themselves represented in the wine industry and to show them there’s a seat at the table for them. So pull up a chair and raise your glass, because wine doesn’t have to be so serious. We’re here to have some fun! “ What was the biggest turning point in your life? The biggest turning point in my life was when I turned 33 and I realized I had nothing going for my own life, but I felt I was meant for more. It was heartbreaking but the start of what turned into my own wine brand. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? If I had to start all over, I would believe in myself sooner and not let people walk all over me. Website www.cheramiewine.com Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheramie-law-04361420/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cheramiewine Instagram www.instagram.com/cheramiewine Twitter www.twitter.com.com/saltpepperwine Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1IrOOYTmQ08JsQE_g5kyNA?view_as=subscriber

Hey, what's up guys Donnie Boivin here, founder of success champion, the networking groups, the podcast magazine, the Facebook group. And this has been a hell of a ride putting the show together. Going from complete and utter failure when I first started this thing to building out this international business. It's been a wild and just a crazy damn ride. And here I am 250 episodes into the success champion podcast. And, I'm pretty stoked. This is the first episode ever, that I'm sitting in my new studio on my farm, you know, we remodeled one of the rooms, we had to put this all together. So I could set up be here and put out this content for you guys. And I'm just stoked to be here stoked to have this all set up. There's still some work to do on the studio, but we're getting there. I'm excited to hang out. It's interesting over the years, a lot of people have asked me or come at me and said, Donnie, I wish I had your drive. I wish I had your confidence I wish I had your ability to do the things you do? And my answer always is, you do you. I'm not better or more unique than anything else than anybody else. I've just simply been willing to do the shit that that gets me out there learning new things. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows. This has not been an easy damn journey. This has been a lot of work to figure me out. And to learn how to run a business and I'm still learning and shit knows I've got a long way to go, as I continue to plow ahead and make all this stuff work, and make this continue to go. I want to talk a little bit about confidence and motivation and, and all the things that people think they struggle with when it comes to life and running a business. Because here's the thing. Confidence isn't really a thing. Motivation isn't really a thing. And let me explain. everybody wants the confidence to do something or the motivation to do something without the understanding that it doesn't work that way. It's not that you need the confidence to do something, it's not that you need the motivation to do something. It's confidence and motivation are the result of an action, and oftentimes a big action. Come Hang Out on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/SuccessChampion Come Network with Badasses https://successchampionnetworking.com/

6CyTKAJFDh8zkfkx1ctnLauren Allen is the founder of Corporate School Dropout.  After 15+ years as a Project Manager Professional (PMP), she's pivoted her skills to support women transition out of their corporate jobs and launch their business.  Lauren has aligned her passion for helping others to inspire, motivate, and empower them to make changes to serve their best life.  What was the biggest turning point in your life?: I had moved to San Diego, CA and started interviewing for new jobs, but every time I went to an interview I felt dead inside. I was numb and knew at that moment I was going to do ME differently from the version the world told me to be.  Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? : My biggest struggle has been the money game. If I could start over, I would focus on my relationship with money and have a rock solid foundation for growing my money and wealth with the business.  Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenelizabethallen/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/corporateschooldropout/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/corporateschooldropoutsTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/lauren_e_allenWebsite: www.corporateschooldropout.com  

Jeremy Spann, enlisted in the USMC at age 17, from high school drop out to chancellor scholar at TCU later getting an MBA from TCU, a serial entrepreneur who has hit a lot of bumpy roads in failed ventures to succeed presently from those learning lessons. A leader in the real estate industry his team has closed over 40 million in the trailing 12 months, been recognized as closing more outgoing referrals in 2018 and 2019 for Sotheby's in the metroplex, coming up on a 10 year anniversary with Old School Pizza Tavern and real estate investor himself.  What was the biggest turning point in your life?: Which one right? Was it going in the Marines or losing everything in 2016. The best turning point was marrying my wife and now business partner.  Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? : I would have treated my body better. I have had one hell of a time, but in the end at almost 50 I value health more than ever. If you treat your body with respect you will do more in life and business.  Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-spann Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Winning-Strategies-Playbook-105781564617670/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespanngroup/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/The_Spann_Group Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9uwefszF5D-DhjYQRif65Q Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop...: Podcast Winning Strategies Playbook

Rhonda Y. Williams is an author, leadership coach and emotional intelligence strategist. With past executive roles in healthcare, such as Chief Nursing Officer & CEO, Rhonda has personally experienced the effects of overwhelming stress. After a pair of dueling life crises, Rhonda decided to Stop the Madness. Today, she is known as The Stress-Free Leader and she helps leaders and organizations embrace a stress-free culture. She is also the Host of The Coffee with Rhonda Show. What was the biggest turning point in your life? Losing my job from a company I worked with for nearly 20 years and shortly after, getting divorced from my 25 year marriage. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? - Pay more attention to how I feel Linkedin Profile - www.linkedin.com/in/rhondaywilliams Facebook - www.facebook.com/CoachRhondaYWilliams Instagram - www.instagram.com/CoachRhondaYWilliams Twitter - www.twitter.com/rhondaywilliams Youtube Channel - https://bit.ly/CWRYouTubeChannel

Cedric Nwafor is driven by a passion for agriculture and its people. He is a social entrepreneur, civic activist and public speaker who has organized, facilitated and provided keynote addresses for conferences and events across Africa and the US. He is the founder of the Maryland-based group ROOTS Africa, a youth-led organization that combats hunger, poverty and exclusion by connecting students and agricultural experts in the US and Africa. Cedric is an agricultural evangelist who has studied the approaches to farm life and management in Idaho, Maryland, Rwanda, Liberia and Uganda and believes that engaging the young generations in agriculture is vital to the future of the African continent and the socio-economic well-being of its peoples. Cedric previously served as a member of the “Power Team” and coordinator for five committees of the Afrika Youth Movement, and as a Mentor and Advocate for Streetwise Partners, an organization supporting low-income populations. He was a 2016 nominee for the African Youth in Agriculture Award and the commencement speaker at his graduation from the University of Maryland's College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, where he earned a BA in Agriculture and Resource Economics with a focus in Entrepreneurship. Cedric, who was born and raised in Cameroon, immigrated to the United States in 2010 and now resides in suburban Washington, DC and works as the Innovation Coordinator at the University of Maryland. What was the biggest turning point in your life? The biggest turning point in my life was in Idaho, when I saw a tractor till the soil. Seeing how much farming was made easier by using a tractor lit a fire in me that pushed me towards finding agricultural solutions for farmers in Africa and connecting them to farmers in the US for their benefit and the benefit of Agriculture as a discipline. I decided to work with and support farmers in Africa. I knew I had an opportunity to build a bridge between the hardworking farmers in Africa that still cannot guarantee their next meal and farmers or people that want to support those type of farmers. ROOTS Africa, supports farmers in Africa by educating them on innovative ways of growing food and optimizing their farming. ROOTS Africa’s mission is to combat hunger and poverty by connecting and engaging students and expertise to farming communities in Africa. Website https://roots-africa.org Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.cn/in/cedricnwafor/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/nwafor.cedric/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nwafor1/ Twitter https://twitter.com/nwafor55

At the age of 27, Rachel Richards quit her job and retired, living off $15,000 per month in passive income. Rachel is the bestselling author of “Money Honey” and “Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement.” She is a former financial advisor and a real estate investor with almost 40 rental units. By making the topic of money management fun, entertaining, and simple, Rachel has helped thousands of millennials work their way out of financial despair. What was the biggest turning point in your life? Buying my first rental property in 2017. Before that, I had $0 in passive income. That investment affirmed that I could retire early. Another big turning point was launching my first book, Money Honey, and overcoming the imposter syndrome. My finance business completely took off after that. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? Start investing in real estate earlier - I held myself back (things like lack of confidence, lack of money) and I didn't need to. Website www.moneyhoneyrachel.com Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelhoperichards/ Facebook www.facebook.com/moneyhoneyrachel Instagram www.instagram.com/moneyhoneyrachel

Nikole Dickman "It's not really my story it’s the story of everyone around me." That’s what Nikole would say if you asked her to walk you through her journey. Finding herself in a situation where she was going to be relocated and didn’t want to make the move, she took the severance package and walked away. The team she had been working with for the last decade were facing the same situation as well. Instead of parting ways, Nikole started a company, brought her team on-board, and they walked right back into their previous company as consultants to finish the project her team had started. Nikole is a humble CEO, never taking credit for creating anything, instead always crediting the team. She is an expert in finance and uses her knowledge to lead her IT company. https://www.envoymanagedservices.com/ https://www.envoyfsp.com/

Author Podcast Host - Win the Hour Win the Day Kris Ward - Marketing Entrepreneur Kris Ward is the leading authority in building your business by building your team. Kris is the founder of the Win The Hour, Win the Day philosophy. She helps entrepreneurs easily double their income and triple their time off. After the loss of her husband, Kris returned full-time to her work as a marketing strategist. She was thrilled to see that her business had not only survived her absence but was thriving. Now, Kris has completely changed the landscape for entrepreneurs by sharing the successful practices that allowed her absence. Kris has been interviewed by one of the original sharks from Shark Tank, Kevin Harrington, and ABC’s The Secret Millionaire - James Malinchak. She has been featured on award winning podcasts, radio and TV shows throughout North America. Free Gift For Your Listeners www.freegiftfromkris.com The Outsourcing Playbook For Busy Entrepreneurs. More Results Less You! https://www.comingsoonfromkris.com/ Win The Hour Win The Day https://www.winthehourwintheday.com/ Win The Hour Win The Day Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/now-your-business/id1484859150 Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/kriswardbuildyourteam/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/krisward.ca Twitter https://twitter.com/krisward IG https://www.instagram.com/kriswardxx/https://www.instagram.com/kriswardxx/

DO YOU HAVE A PASSION FOR DOING GREAT THINGS, BUT FIND YOURSELF GIVING UP WHEN IT GETS TOO HARD? DO YOU PULL BACK OR FEEL VULNERABLE WHEN YOU PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE? A B O U T N A T E : That was ME. I stood on the sidelines and watched others succeed with consistent work and effort. I realized, like so many others, what I was lacking was the confidence and consistency to reach my OWN goals and dreams. As a result, my goals were not being fully realized. I was getting in my own way. It’s time... Enough is Enough! I’ve decided to stop holding myself back and get comfortable with being uncomfortable. That means trying new things, meeting new people, exploring new ideas and just saying YES! to more things. Follow me as I show you how to find your true potential, do the uncomfortable things that will help you to take the risks, find your passion, and finally do the things that you were meant to do. Join me on this amazing journey as I launch THE ALL-IN PODCAST, explore the power of personal relationships and show what happens when you chase your dreams and realize your true passions. My goal with the show is to make connections with people from all walks of life that will change the way you show up in your personal and professional life. My hope is that by sharing my journey, people don’t aspire to make a living, they aspire to make a difference* and find their calling so they can live their best life. C O N T A C T N A T E : Webs ite: https ://natepeo. com/ Soc ial: https ://www.ins tagram. com/natepeo http://linkedin. com/in/natepeo Email: nate@natepeo. com 951.764.3480

Most people believe they have a sales problem. What they have is a business development problem. The sales conversation is the easy part. Getting to that conversation takes tenacity, Grit, and authenticity. In this episode Donnie walks you through how to find success in sales. Check out Blue Family Fund - https://bluefamilyfund.org/ Success Champion Networking - https://successchampionnetworking.com/ Business Summit - https://badassbusinesssummit.com/

Fill in your Bio how should I introduce you? Sammy Blindell – The Brand Builder International Ripple Maker & Brand Visibility Mentor Sammy is a multi-award winning international speaker, 7 times best selling author and CVO behind The Brand Builders Club and One Drop Movement. Having spent 13 years in branding and marketing before launching her first business in 2002, Sammy built six more companies in the business growth sector. She launched www.howtobuildabrand.org in 2014, taking it from £0 to £18,000 of monthly revenue in 12 weeks with her first book and online program. In February 2017 she launched Brand Builders Club, which has hundreds of members Internationally. Finally, her Global movement ‘One Drop’ was founded in April 2019 to celebrate the ripple that is created when Changemakers collaborate rather than compete. Sammy has created 72 online products and 1000+ online courses to show others how to accomplish in just a few months what it takes most business owners a lifetime to achieve. Now it’s your turn! What was the biggest turning point in your life? Realising that I wasn't in love with the business I built and the stress of that almost killing me. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? I would build a team immediately. Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammyblindellthebrandbuilder/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SammyBlindellOfficial Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sammyblindell/ Twitter https://twitter.com/SammyBlindell Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/howtobuildabrand Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop... I'd love to talk about our Brand Builders Thinkubators that I run every Tuesday: www.BrandBuilders.club/Thinkubator

Fill in your Bio how should I introduce you? Susan Cross is a master storyteller, speaker, and public relations expert. She helps people and organizations navigate disruption to see themselves, their work, and the world in new, positive ways. Susan is also a passionate advocate of connecting with nature to reduce stress and anxiety and improve mood. What was the biggest turning point in your life? My showstopping moment came on January 30, 2017. That’s the day my appendix ruptured while on vacation on the remote Caribbean island of Dominica. It was dramatic and traumatic, but I was lucky. Despite conditions that didn’t look anything like what I was used in an American hospital (I was bed #3 in the women’s ward), I had an excellent medical team. It took five days for me to recover enough to get on a plane and return to the US and then several months at home to regain my balance. It was the biggest disruption of my life and the beginning of a major life reset for me. Suddenly, doing it all, all the time wasn’t as fun anymore. I still wanted to do well, but my motivation shifted. I became more present in all parts of my life beyond my profession. I became a better woman, wife, sister, mother, daughter, and friend. I also removed myself from situations that weren’t supportive of my newfound sense of self. Best of all? I haven’t stopped smiling since. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? Generally speaking, I’d laugh more, take life less seriously and love even more ferociously. From an experience standpoint, however, I wouldn’t change a thing. Every single thing I’ve ever done has prepared me for each moment I’m living in right now. I came close to dying and as hard as that was on me, it was also the beginning of my rediscovery of myself and I don't take that for granted. I’ve worked as a public relations expert for nearly 30 years. I have extensive experience in crisis and change-oriented communication, but the truth is that we’ve all experienced catastrophes. I’m convinced that my purpose is to help others navigate disruption and see themselves and the world in new, more positive ways. I want us to stop defining ourselves and each other by our worst moments and see them as points in time that move us forward. I wouldn't have this perspective if I hadn't gone through my life's experiences to date. Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-cross/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SusanCrossWriter/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/susan_cross_writer/ Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpnpiCrDccEz9hCKM0VRaGw/?guided_help_flow=5 Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop... My book, The Power of Disruption: A Memoir of Discovery, is my candid memoir about my survival story in Dominica and afterward, including the five habits that anyone can use to tap into their best self in the midst of life chaos. I’ve also co-authored Chapter 11 in The Ultimate Guide to Self-Healing Techniques Volume 2, edited by Laura Di Franco. It's called Finding Your Zen: A Recipe for Natural Restoration No Matter Where You Live. In this chapter, my husband, Jon, and I share our story about restoring 20 acres of rare habitat in Ohio (where we live) and how to use nature to find peace. I love speaking about these topics! I also speak on business communications best practices. Learn more at www.susan-cross.com.

Isabelle Mercier Brand Positioning Strategist & Business Growth Catalyst Isabelle is the co-founder and CEO of LeapZone Strategies and one of the most inspirational branding, marketing and customer experience keynote speakers. She is a 'no-nonsense' dynamo, born to catapult passionate entrepreneurs and thought leaders to build businesses and brands designed to make life better. As one of North America’s Top Business Influencers, bestselling author, two-times TEDx speaker with over 2.5 Million views, and TV show host, Isabelle brings 25 years of branding, marketing and customer experience expertise. She has worked with more than 500 companies, including some influential and iconic brands like A&W, Robeez Footwear, Earls Restaurants, IMAX Corporation, and HSBC Investments just to name a few. Isabelle teaches how to grow businesses and brands that are designed to thrive in any economy by becoming and remaining The First, The Best or The Only. What was the biggest turning point in your life? There has been many big turning points in my life...however this one came to mind as it relates to "owning badassery" as we were talking about. I have recorded a short audio message as it is easier for me to 'speak it' rather than 'write it': https://www.voxer.com/v/ba30b91eb8 Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? My life has been pretty 'epic' to date (epically awesome AND epically challenging) which has made me who I am today. I have zero regrets as I wholeheartedly belive that I am doing my very best with the knowledge and the information that I have at 'decision time'. Having said that, having an opportunity to start all over again...I would definately play harder, worry less and lean into my #NoFilter personality sooner. Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/leapzone/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/isabelle.mercier.turcotte Instagram https://www.instagram.com/leapzone.strategies/ Twitter https://twitter.com/leapzone Youtube Channel www.LeapTV.com Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop... Yes, I would love the opportunity to share my 90-minute Masterclass: BRAND FROM THE INSIDE OUT – Be The First, The Best or The Only. Brand From The Inside Out is a smart and motivating way to learn the key ingredients needed to get crystal clear on what your brand stands for, what problems you solve, and most importantly, what makes you The First, The Best, or The Only: https://leapzone.lpages.co/pax-bfio-webinar-optin/

Pablo Gonzalez is obsessed with human connection, and he’s used his expertise to manage a 120 person, $15M construction business at 25, build various young professional groups for charities, and be named a Latino Leader of the Future by Latino Leaders Magazine and a Top 20 Under 40 for Brickell Magazine. He’s now a professional speaker and the founder and Chief Executive Connector at Connect With Pablo, a content marketing and community creation agency, proving that community creation is the future of business development. More than anything, he’s dying to be your friend. Welcome... Pablo Gonzalez What was the biggest turning point in your life? When my brother passed, 1,200 people showed up to his funeral, and my family was greatly buoyed by an outpouring of support that ensued. This made me realize the value of community, and set me on a path to prove it as a business model. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? I honestly have a hard time thinking there is something I could've done different that would make me any more complete than I am today. I truly believe I'm exactly where I need to be. I found out that my natural ability with people and tendency to be an entertainer (which was intentionally subdued by my parents growing up) is great for business, but if I had dedicated myself towards that sooner, I wouldn't have the business context I could apply it to. If I had a stricter work ethic (that I wish I had now) maybe I wouldn't have developed my people skills so acutely. I guess I can settle on two things- 1. I would have become a much earlier adopter of social media if I knew what the real purpose of it was 2. I would've made a bigger point to learn to surf sooner Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablo-gonzalez-4333b42/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pabloantoniogonzalez Instagram https://www.instagram.com/connectwithpablo/ Twitter https://twitter.com/BuildConscience (really not active on it) Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbx9yJRhDpBvAeKJ3u2zo9Q Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop... My podcast- Chief Executive Connector

Women Your Mother Warned You About™ is the podcast that makes business sexy again. Co-hosted by Gina Trimarco and Rachel Pitts (formerly Tipton), the show is a blend of best business practices and “real life” hacks, filled with laughter, practical advice, random chatter and some serious moments. Add to the mix the occasional guests and special segments, such as “That’s What He Said” (featuring the male point of view). Gina and Rachel stress “we love men”. This is a show for women and men, while embracing all things female – from body image issues and mom challenges to how to show value in a sales conversation while wearing the best shade of lipstick. The goal of their podcast is to break down all types of barriers in business and life, making money while making others happy … and laughing as much as possible while they do it. Meet Gina Trimarco and Rachel Pitts (formerly Tipton), two sales pros who are smart, real, vivacious, bold, not bad to look at and not afraid to say what they think … sometimes saying things BEFORE they think. These two came together several years ago when Gina was Rachel’s business coach. They became instant friends as their dynamic personalities not only raise the energy in a room together, but also take some people by surprise. They’ve traveled parallel journeys as performers and business women who have both lived interesting lives, with amazing wins and losses along the way. What makes them so similar is their resilience and optimism, with a desire to lift others up while telling them to put on their big girl (or boy) panties. Their show will (usually) make you laugh so hard at their commentary, that you’ll most likely need some new panties (or boxer briefs)! Rachel Pitts: “Before anything else, I’m Roxie’s mom,” says Rachel Pitts (formerly Tipton). Born into a large family in Martinsville, Virginia, her original dream was to be a dancer. That very first dance class led her to an exciting career on television, screen, and stage that took her to several countries and on endless crazy adventures. Her motto has always been: “Entertain. Inform. Inspire.” Before Facebook even existed, she used to post inspirational posts outside her door at the performing arts high school she attended. Rachel is the type of woman who has always had more than one thing going at a time. Throughout her early career, always holding at least one other job outside of performing, she fell in love with business, sales, and marketing. When Roxie was born, she tried to “grow up” and get a “real job” by getting her real estate license in 2009, just as the housing market was starting to recover. And for several years she owned a fitness business since her long dance career gave her a thorough knowledge of the human body. Recently married to Felix, Rachel loves to travel with her family. She plays the piano and guitar, speaks French, and was once a magician’s assistant. One thing is for sure, Rachel hardly ever stops her relentless forward commotion. “It’s too much fun!” she exclaims. She is a Realtor with BRG in Myrtle Beach, who has now made the shift to US Mortgage to work on the lender side, still performs from time to time, and always has something new up her sleeve. Rachel is a survivor with incredible resilience. She reveals how she made it through some tough moments in her past in her first book, The Gift of Wreckage which can be found on Amazon at https://buff.ly/2CskGv7 Gina Trimarco: Gina Trimarco is a native of Chicago and CEO/Founder of Pivot10 Results and Carolina Improv Company. She has 25+ years of experience in marketing, sales, operations and people training. Gina combines street smarts and improv comedy skills with her experience in the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds, which sets her apart from her competition. When the economy crashed in 2008 she lost her corporate job and decided to do something seemingly impossible to many – she started an unproven concept business in Myrtle Beach, SC instead of finding a new job. That business, Carolina Improv Company (CIC), has been #1 on TripAdvisor for Nightlife Attractions since 2010, offering improv classes and shows, similar to Second City, where she took classes while finishing her journalism degree at DePaul University. CIC quickly gave birth to a second company, Pivot10 Results, a training and strategy company that helps businesses and executives shift from people problems to performance results, using improv as a training tool for sales and engagement skills. Gina combines street smarts and improv comedy skills with her experience in the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds, which sets her apart from her competition. “Sass without too much crass” is how Gina Trimarco describes herself. A high energy entrepreneur, engager, speaker, trainer, improv comedienne and podcast producer, Gina credits most of her success on her upbringing by her Italian mobster dad and German immigrant mother. Her first “official” sales job was working for her dad Carmie in a Chicago flea market at the age of 10. “On the record”, Carmie was a truck driver by day with many side hustles, including locksmithing and selling a variety of items at flea markets on weekends. He taught her how to “cut keys” and sell everything from toasters to Members Only jackets and Jordache jeans. Rumor has it that he was called the “Merchandise Man” and did a variety of “jobs” for Al Capone. Gina also produces and hosts The Pivotal Leader podcast, is a Vistage Worldwide speaker and also a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, in addition to being a contributor to Forbes.com and TrainingMagazine.com. Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginatrimarco/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelpitts/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/womenyourmotherwarnedyouabout Instagram https://www.instagram.com/womenyourmotherwarnedyouabout/ Twitter https://twitter.com/womenwarned Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGHdAysNfLAUM4N2A7j11vA Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop... Women Your Mother Warned You About podcast and patreon page (patreon.com/warners

Billy Samoa Saleebey has led learning and development organizations for some of the most disruptive companies in the world, most recently Tesla, where he was Head of Global Sales & Product Training. He is currently President & Founder of Insight Media and host of the business podcast Insight Out. He is also an award winning filmmaker and the director of the feature film Rolling. He has a highly engaged following on LinkedIn where his content has amassed over a half a million organic views. What was the biggest turning point in your life? Transitioning to sales from filmmaking Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? Spend more time planning with trusted advisors before attempting to execute. Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/billysamoasaleebey/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/billysaleebey Instagram https://www.instagram.com/billybelieve/ Twitter https://twitter.com/BillySamoa Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCjQ9RSxYqDS4_VxBHNyQJw?view_as=subscriber Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop... My podcast - Insight Out http://insightoutshow.com

Wendy Maybury grew up all over the US as a military brat which means- she learned to make friends fast because in two weeks, she was probably moving. Her report card always said "She talks too much" Someone should have figured out I need to be a comedian. She signed with Stand Up Records and her first album "She's Not from Around Here" will be released on June 26 2020. Wendy is also the producer of "Day Drinking with Mom" a show that offers comedy, sympathy and some drinks to help Moms relax and enjoy the roller coaster of parenting What was the biggest turning point in your life? Losing 160 pounds and having a skinny girl rumspringa and making a baby. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? I would have done comedy right away--- although maybe all the crazy crap that happened to me made me do comedy? Also I probably shouldn't do anything that would make me not have my kid-- he's the best. Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-maybury/ Facebook facebook.com/wendycomedy Instagram wendymay Twitter wendymay Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAl7ua7TMd2X_OvJpGzB97A?view_as=subscriber. Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop... My album! "She's Not From Around Here" On the Stand-Up! Record label. Drops June 26th in Pre-Order now.

Wilson Bautista is a retired military officer who is currently the founder of the consulting firm Jün Cyber. His expertise is in the domains of InfoSec leadership, policy, architecture, compliance, and risk. He holds multiple InfoSec and IT certifications as well as a Masters Degree in Information Systems from Boston University. He is an INTP on the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator test with a Driver-Driver personality. As a practitioner of Agile and SecDevOps, he develops innovative, integrated, enterprise-scale cybersecurity solutions that provide high value to businesses. He is the author of "practical Cyber Intelligence" and "Finding Your Career in Cybersecurity" What was the biggest turning point in your life? It was transitioning into the civilian world expectantly. I was planning on staying in after I commissioned and due to circumstances, had to leave active service. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do differently? I'm not actually sure I would do anything different. I appreciate all of the hard lessons learned along the way. Going through these trials have made me the person I am today. ww.juncyber-ed.com

Becoming a badass in life and business requires you to stand in your power and be super comfy with being unique! Dana Pharant knows ALL about standing out and being unique. Her personal brand of the Inner Dominatrix pushes people out of their comfort zone, challenges their preconceived notions and has them stepping into a fierce determination to rock their Bold, Sexy Fun-Filled Lives! What was the biggest turning point in your life? 2006, I finally stopped talking about leaving, packed a bag and left the house to finally begin the separation process from my ex. I stopped looking for someone or something outside of myself tell me who I was or what I needed to do. This process was about reclaiming and authentic empowerment and lead me to a deeper healing in the most unusual place....the dungeon. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do differently? I would have leaned in harder to my edgy button-pushing brand, and focused on the US market earlier.

Born and raised in Iowa. He loves corn. Dane was struggling to fit in just about anywhere he went, he finally found his home in business. He had found a place he felt he belonged. He failed at 11 companies and succeeded with 5, found the patterns of what worked and taught those patterns and had 15 multi-millionaire students graduate under his wing. He only knows what works because he's failed a lot. He also left business for four years to open his heart more with music and released three albums. After releasing his third album he felt a completion in music for now, and has returned to business to share the message of entrepreneurship for all. He believes everyone should try entrepreneurship for at least 3 months because the skills you build will help anywhere else you go. What was the biggest turning point in your life? Reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and realizing I can build my brain with books. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? Believe I was beautiful from the beginning so I could serve more deeply. Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/dane-maxwell-b7105b5b/ Facebook http://facebook.com/danemaxwellprofile Instagram https://www.instagram.com/danemaxwellmusic/?hl=en Twitter https://twitter.com/danemaxwell Youtube Channel Nothing Do you have anything you would like to promote? Book, Podcast, workshop... StartFromZero.com the book, the podcast, and a special free gift just for success champion listeners. Do You Have a Good Headset with a mic Yes

Best Selling Author in personal finance and retirement planning, host of the Transformation Nation podcast, owner of 43+ companies and founder of his own martial art - Yokido ®. Damion Just released his newest book, Unicornomics, all about building a business the right way from an insiders approach. What was the biggest turning point in your life? Losing a $20,000,000 portfolio and rebuilding my networth and self worth over a 5 year period. Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had to start all over what would you do different? Narrow focus, creating a non-commodity and drive from a Mission, Vision and clear values vs. the hedonistic approach of more more more damionlupo.com

Derek Gallimore is a serial entrepreneur who has experienced the fullest highs and lows of the entrepreneurial roller coaster. He has built multi-million dollar property portfolios, has bootstrapped a $20 million dollar business, and has seen it all come tumbling down. Derek has lived and worked in five countries and travelled through dozens more. He has embodied remote, online and international work since 2008, - well before the phrases were even coined. Derek has been outsourcing in the Philippine since 2011, and believes that outsourcing is one of the most potent and transformative business tools available today. As a result, he founded Outsource Accelerator, which as the ‘Alibaba of outsourcing’, provides the gateway for businesses to connect with outsourcing suppliers. https://outsourceaccelerator.com/

Scott is the host of the Note Closers Show Podcast and CEO of WeCloseNotes.com. Scott Carson is the CEO of WeCloseNotes.com, (an Austin, Texas based real estate firm) and the host of the popular Note Closers Show Podcast. He has been an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002, focused on the niche of distressed mortgage and note industry since 2008. He has helped to create and educate thousands of other successful note investors who have closed on thousands of deals for their own portfolios through his different educational programs. He is a highly sought-after speaker and podcast guest on distressed debt, marketing, entrepreneurship and raising private capital with speaking appearances at the National Association of Realtors (NAR) Convention, Noteworthy Convention, Podfest Multimedia Expo, National REIA Cruise along with many other real estate investing clubs and groups across the country. He has also been featured in Investor’s Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal and Inc.com. An avid sports fan and reader, he spends his free time attending sporting events, concerts, and traveling to new places.

Corey is the publisher of Conscious Capitalism Press, the founder and CEO of Round Table Companies (RTC), and a speaker, artist, and storyteller. He previously starred in one of the 50 greatest Super Bowl commercials of all time (Mountain Dew, Bohemian Rhapsody), has won 15 independent publishing awards, and has been featured on the cover of the Wall Street Journal as well as in the New York Times, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Wired. Corey’s storytelling clients have included Tony Hsieh, Marshall Goldsmith, Robert Cialdini, Magoosh, Which Wich Superior Sandwiches, and Terlato Wines. Prior to RTC and CC Press, Corey earned his SAG union card by working 8 days on David Fincher’s Fight Club before starring in commercial campaigns for Fortune 500 companies including American Express, Mitsubishi, Pepsi, Wrigley’s Gum, Miller Beer, and Hasbro. Corey’s spot for Yard Fitness, where he plays basketball naked, won Belding, Bronze Lion, and London Advertising awards. Corey is also the creator of the Vulnerability Wall and the Vulnerability is Sexy™ card game. His documentary of the same name won 2017 Addy and Hermes awards for branded content. He has spoken at YPO events, business schools, publicly traded companies, and annual conferences, and is a frequent speaker, facilitator, and emcee at Conscious Capitalism events around the country.

Mr. Read is a CPA and the Founder and CEO of Get Payroll in Lewisville, TX, where he has provided full service payroll and payroll tax services since 1991. Get Payroll helps small to medium-sized businesses across the U.S. with direct deposits, debit card loads, printed checks, payroll deposits, reports and tax filings, year-end Forms W-2 and employer-employee website portals. Mr Read is an accomplished senior executive and entrepreneur with more than fifty years of financial leadership experience in a broad range of industries, as well as a licensed CPA. In addition, he is also an US Tax Court Non-Attorney Practitioner which enables him to represent clients in the US Tax Court without being an attorney. He is the author of three e-books: Starting a New Business: Accounting, Finance, Payroll, and Tax Considerations, Small Business Short Course (Employees Book 1) and The Little Black Book of the Beauty Biz, Volume 1. Mr. Read's newest book "Payroll for Small Business and Startups" will be published by John Wiley & Sons in the summer of 2020. Mr. Read is an accomplished speaker and has been featured on Fox Business News, Biz TV Texas, New York City Wired, Dallas Innovates and many more. In addition to his executive career, Mr. Read is a decorated United States Marine Corps sergeant, and a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Lori Lyons is the owner and Creative Director of Ignite Marketing. She’s an entrepreneur, author, small business owner and sports fanatic. Everything that Ignite Marketing is about comes from her 35+ years of experience as a small business owner, graphics manager, print sales rep, print production flunkie, and everything in between. Ignite Marketing just really just fell into place - a cumulation of her past and passions. She had been helping small businesses unofficially with their websites, marketing and branding for more years than she could count and finally made it an official business.

Angela W. Stillwell is the founder of Untapped Strengths, where she helps businesses and professionals create deeper connections with their audience that impact their bottom lines and overall success. She is the creator of Vulnerability Warrior, an online program for people going through major transitions and who are seeking higher levels of personal success. Angela has also created a line of t-shirts and other products called Love Is My True North. For the last three decades, since completing her MBA, Angela has been working with businesses in sales, marketing, and business development - from startups to large corporations and organizations. As a business advisor, coach, speaker, and workshop leader, she has helped executives shift into new careers, sales teams increase sales, and businesses grow to six and seven figures plus. She lives in Georgia with her Great Dane, horse, and barn cat, and can frequently be found on the tennis court, on her paddleboard, trying new foods, laughing with friends and family, or traveling.

JANI ROBERTS Jani Roberts is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Alignment Essentials, a health and wellness company spanning the fitness, self-improvement, and mindfulness spaces. She is the creator of the Warrior® Workout, Moving Meditations™, Inspirational Conversations™ and all of the Alignment Essentials programming content. Jani has over 40 years of experience in the health and wellness field. She owned and operated a large gym franchise in Florida where she specialized in health and wellness related services, products, and preventative health education, and she now owns a private boutique studio offering personal training, small group fitness classes, and private nutrition and health coaching. Before launching her own brand, RED Warrior Nation, with her husband Johnny in 2011, Jani was one of the original master trainers for another world-renowned fitness format. During her 11 years with that company, she literally trained hundreds of thousands of instructors around the world, and she was the featured choreographer and performer on numerous training DVDs. Before that, Jani and Johnny, worked as lead performers all over the world. RED Warrior Nation was the precursor company to Alignment Essentials, which Jani co-founded with Sabrina Ursaner in 2018. Jani is a graduate of the American Academy of Nutrition, and is a past presenter at IDEA, SCW, Rimini, IHRSA, CAN FIT PRO, AAAI, Lifetime EMPOWER Events, Fitness Fusion, FILEX, FIBO, Nike, and Adidas. She holds certifications from ACE, AFAA and NASM. Jani travels extensively as a speaker and presenter sharing her Alignment Essentials wellness tools and helping people find more joy in their lives. In addition to numerous awards she has received over the years, Jani was recently nominated as the Most Inspiring Instructor to be awarded at the 2018 National Fitness Day events, and Moving Meditations™ was nominated for Hottest New Fitness Trend. SABRINA URSANER: Sabrina Ursaner is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Alignment Essentials, a health and wellness company spanning the fitness, self-improvement, and mindfulness spaces that provides tools to help people “stay in alignment” and find more joy in their daily lives. Prior to starting Alignment Essentials with Jani Roberts, Sabrina was the CEO of RED Warrior Nation, and she was a lawyer in New York before that. Sabrina studied dance and psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and has danced professionally. She is a graduate of NYU School of Law and the recipient of several awards throughout her legal career. In 2018, Sabrina left the corporate world to focus on Alignment Essentials full-time. She is an Ambassador for National Fitness Day and is co-chair of the Young Lawyers Division of UJA, and she has been teaching fitness and wellness classes in New York City for the last 6 years. Sabrina is featured in all of the Alignment Essentials online streaming workout videos.

Aaron is the Founder and CEO of Raise The Bar, a firm focused on helping companies address the problem of millennial turnover. Aaron is an ICF Associate Certified Coach, a Thrive Global contributor, an 1871 mentor, the Co-Director of Startup Grind Chicago and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. He has educated, coached, and consulted over 7,000 business leaders, helping them to define goals, create action plans, and achieve sustained success. Aaron is on a mission to transform the manager role by empowering each manager with the tools, skills, and training to be leaders of people who unlock the potential of their team.

Oginga Carr is a Certified High Performance Coach, author, national seminar leader, organizational structure expert and consultant. He brings 20 years of experience in Sales, Management, and Human Resources. His passion is in the dynamic of change; dealing with it, working through it, and preparing for it. He is a serial entrepreneur and has served as a magazine publisher, radio show host, TV show host, Executive Director of a non-profit foundation and many other capacities. Oginga focuses on productivity through structure and human capital development. He has trained tens of thousands of HR Professionals in 49 states. Check out his new book, "Your LIMITLESS Life".

After earning multiple academic degrees, owning her own business, and marrying Prince Charming, Marie-Elizabeth Mali discovered that her dream life was not, in fact, her dream. She left to discover what her dream really was. She now travels the world photographing sharks and whales, writing poetry, and living with the love of her life, a man 14 years her junior who also approaches relationship as a path of self-discovery. In her 50’s, she feels more alive than ever before. As a Midlife Transformation Specialist, she guides women over 40 to give themselves permission to want what they want, set boundaries, and have skillful conversations, so they can create a life free from past inner limitations that celebrates the truth of who they are.

Known to many as Mr. Persuasion, Jeff Tippett wrote the book on persuasive communications. Speaking to international audiences through keynotes and seminars, Jeff helps attendees increase their effectiveness, gives them powerful tools to reach their goals, and empowers attendees to positively impact and grow their organizations or businesses. His second book, slated for a February 2019 release, is titled: Unleashing Your Superpower: Why Persuasive Communication Is The Only Force You Will Ever Need. His bold statement is that we all live or die based on our ability to persuade. In 2014, Jeff founded Targeted Persuasion, an award-winning public affairs + communications firm. He has worked with renowned brands like Airbnb, The National Restaurant Association, The League of Women Voters, The League of Conservation Voters, plus others. Other industry experts have validated Jeff’s work with numerous awards including the prestigious The American Advertising Award. The heart and soul of Jeff’s presentations are the emotional story he tells of adopting his youngest daughter from Haiti while the country’s government was collapsing. Through this near death experience of navigating civil unrest and institutional bureaucracy in a third world nation, Jeff learned valuable lessons on how to persuade others without ever manipulating. Jeff unpacks these secrets of the superpower of persuasion in every presentation.

https://www.andybounds.com/home/bio.aspx

She was born in the USA, but grew up in Canada. As a child she was a competitive figure skater, and ballerina, and was lucky enough to dance in the Olympics Arts Festival in the 1988 Winter Olympics.Rachel relocated several times from her teenage years on; the most noteworthy being a year in college spent studying in France, taking in the culture, language, and too many chocolate croissants! To work off all that flakey, buttery deliciousness after returning stateside, She became a Heavy-bag Kickboxing Instructor, and there began her love of teaching fitness. She progressed into training in Muay Thai, then eventually fought at the 2004 Women’s Nationals Boxing Championship, and was ranked 6th in the US!She also decided pursue a degree in Photo Journalism around that time, and graduated with a BA from The Brooks Institute of Photography in Ventura, CA, in 2006. Her graduation project was a small documentary that she filmed and produced, (along with friend and colleague Jessica Wunderlich), covering the 2006 Hezbollah (via Lebanon) attack on Israel. They filmed the war from Israel for only two and a half weeks of the 34-day conflict, but it was definitely life changing. While it may seem strange to state that it was a positive experience since witnessing firsthand the thorough, and unmitigated disregard for human life was beyond heart breaking, it did give her a profound, unexplainable lust for living. The destruction and death emphasized and restored in her a desire to help others, and respect of the fragility and permanent impact of single moments. Carpe diem. In 2008, another friend and fellow photographer (Evan Cohan), and Rachel bicycled 500 miles across the South Island of New Zealand, also over a two and a half week time period, and soon followed up by self-publishing a book on their adventure.Somewhere in between those two projects, she took up Krav Maga, (the official self-defense system of the Israeli Defense Forces), and eventually became an instructor. It is this career path that led to her to Los Angeles, CA just over a year ago, where she now manages an international Krav Maga licensing company with over 130 affiliates everywhere from Canada to Australia. She just tested for her Instructor Brown Belt, one level below Black Belt. She's also in the process of becoming a Krav Maga Alliance Training Team Instructor, which is train the trainer status. She is overseeing the StrikeFit® (heavy-bag kickboxing) program, which will soon involve travel for certifications to train others to become StrikeFit® instructors. Since relocating to LA, she has been recruited by one of the top Lagree Fitness Method (Pilates inspired strength training) studios in North America, and is proud to now be a certified instructor in the most physically challenging, (result evident) methods to perform, let alone teach, that she have ever come across.Badass in a completely different way, she was recently hired to train a well-known actress briefly in Krav Maga, consult about technique and class format on set while filming, and be in the movie. She has just been informed by the producer that she was in a lot of the footage, and it is going to be submitted into the Sundance Film Festival!The day before that filming, they did a photo-shoot a new Black Belt book that John Whitman (5th Degree Black Belt, and author) is writing. She took photos for much of the shoot with a group of really great and talented people, and got to be featured in a few techniques also. You'll hopefully be seeing her soon gracing the cover of MAXIM magazine, votes are tallying now so go vote!

Derrick was just another kid who wanted a better life and saw sports, football in particular as an vehicle that could provide it. During his football journey to and through The University of Tennessee were he completed his bachelors and masters degree in 4 years. Derrick realized that football was just a temporary stage for his permanent purpose. The adversity he endured and challenges he faced shifted his perspective; putting him in alignment with his true assignment. Now today he shares his story and the principals he learned to Impact, Inspire & Empower people; while putting them in position to transition!

Natalie spent the past 12 years perfecting the recruitment process.She tells me, "It's pretty simple when you break it all down. Treat people well, and put the best interest of others first. Now I'm the Founder + CEO of Military Talent Partners, a boutique talent consulting firm specializing in the career placement of Veterans and Military Spouses. While I've hired countless military-talented individuals personally, I am most proud of the relationships I've created with them. I have hired more than 300 Secret and Top Secret, SCI cleared technical professionals over the past year as well as negotiated successful offers of more than 100 C-level Executives. Focusing on the right match between potential and opportunity has earned Military Talent Partners a 96% placement rate in candidates submitted to our partner companies. My work satisfaction comes from empowering the potential in others so that they can have a meaningful career. So much so that I built my company around it.I use my life experiences, military transition journey, and recruitment expertise to mentor service-members, veterans, and spouses. It's through the power of mentorship that I realized my own potential and executed plans to make my dream career happen. Military Talent Partners offers free mentorship and coaching to every service-member, veteran, military spouse, and gold-star family member."

Niajae is an influencer and entrepreneur. She is a visionary. She adds art and creativity in her business approach which is one of the many things that contributes to her unique style. Her goal is to help people identify their true desires and build the confidence and sharpen their skills to go after the life they’ve always dreamed of. She is a master strategist and sales funnel expert. Niajae creates motivational videos focused on mindset and manifestation. She believes you can have it all with the right strategy and implementation. She loves holding people accountable. She’s fiery, she’s fashionable, she’ll make you laugh but also light that fire under your ass to get it done. There’s no question she’s unique and embodies the phrase, ‘When art meets entrepreneurship.’ With her unquestionable energy and spark, Niajae is dedicated to seeing as many people THRIVE as possible. She is living that purpose through the launch of her new podcast Abundance Hack and release of her new book #AbundantAF.

Jon Gordon's best-selling books and talks have inspired readers and audiences around the world. His principles have been put to the test by numerous Fortune 500 companies, professional and college sports teams, school districts, hospitals, and non-profits. He is the author of 18 books including multiple best-sellers: The Energy Bus, The Carpenter, Training Camp, You Win in the Locker Room First, The Power of Positive Leadership and The Power of a Positive Team. His latest book is The Coffee Bean: A Simple Lesson to Create Positive Change. Jon and his tips have been featured on The Today Show, CNN, CNBC, The Golf Channel, Fox and Friends and in numerous magazines and newspapers. His clients include The Los Angeles Dodgers, The Atlanta Falcons, Campbell Soup, Dell, Publix, Southwest Airlines, LA Clippers, Miami Heat, Pittsburgh Pirates, BB&T Bank, Clemson Football, Northwestern Mutual, West Point Academy and more. Jon is a graduate of Cornell University and holds a Masters in Teaching from Emory University. He and his training/consulting company are passionate about developing positive leaders, organizations and teams

Maestro Roger Nierenberg enjoyed long, successful tenures as Music Director of both the Stamford Symphony in Connecticut and the Jacksonville Symphony in Florida. Guest conducting invitations came from the National Symphony, the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, the Detroit Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the San Diego Symphony, and many other great American orchestras. Abroad he has recorded with the London Philharmonic and conducted at both the Prague Spring Festival and the Beijing Festival. He has collaborated with many of the most renowned solo artists and composers of our time. During his tenure with the Jacksonville Symphony, the seeds were planted that would lead Maestro Nierenberg to a startling departure from the conventional, through the unparalleled creation of The Music Paradigm. Through his experiences engaging with community businesses and civic leaders, he became curious about the challenges and opportunities faced by organizations in times of rapid change. He quickly realized how crucial issues of organizational development could be powerfully brought to life within an orchestra. Thus was born The Music Paradigm, which has taken Mr. Nierenberg to the podium of over ninety different orchestras, before hundreds of different organizations in twenty-three different countries. Many of the lessons learned on this journey are presented in his book Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading by Listening which was honored in 2009 as the Best Leadership Book from 800-CEO-READ.

Time management was not something that came naturally to me. I was always the wing it guy and then see what happens. This worked for me in sales because other people kept their processes and kept all my stuff moving. Get the workbook here http://successchampion.live/WorkLifeBalance But when it came to my schedule I was all over the map. When I launched my business I took that same mindset along for the ride. Guess what; it didn’t work and I had to evolve to the mindset of a business owner. I had to become something more. Through a lot of hard work, discipline and pure tenacity, I figured out some processes that worked for me and my business. I hope this helps you step into the business owner mindset and get you to that dream faster. - Donnie Boivin

Lorianne Speaks is an expert in the area of Speaker/Author support. She amplifies the visibility of Authors/Speakers/Messengers while they do what they love - SPEAK! Lorianne has helped spearhead multiple best-selling book campaigns - editing, proofing, through to launch and social media marketing to help authors create buzz and momentum throughout the social media platforms and increasing their message World-Wide. Lorianne and her team have made it their mission to empower speakers to deliver their message by handling the rest of the business details! Prior to starting her own Virtual Assistance (VA) company, Lorianne had over 15 years of professional experience supporting Top 100 Thought Leaders as they built their businesses.

Becoming a Champion Course http://bit.ly/2MYWs1e Champions Table Mastermind http://bit.ly/2YW00Yv Success Champions Podcast https://link.chtbl.com/R76Z4v0O Success Champions Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/Succe... Free Stuff http://bit.ly/2KGWwji Website https://www.DonnieBoivin.com Sponsors https://www.pointblanksafety.com/ https://bluefamilyfund.com/ Transcription: Here we go. Alright guys gonna be another fun episode, which you guys don't didn't get to hear. This is my second time trying to start this show because Bob got me giggling already. So I sound like a little schoolgirl over here, but this is going to be a fun show. So Bob and I talked a few weeks back and we just had a really good conversation and went all over the place. So I was looking forward to this one. But I'm Donnie Boivin. This is Donnie success champions. I almost screwed it up again. Bob say you're welcome to the show, my friend, please. Hey, Donnie, Listen, man, it's good to be here with you. You know, my story is probably you probably don't have enough time on your podcast to hear the long boring parts. Trust me, nobody wants to hear all that anyway. So now listen, you know, I think you're going to find this maybe to be kind of weird, and your guests might find this to be a little bit weird, but Had the the advantage of growing up on the on the border of poor. And you people look at that and go an advantage. And then listen, I don't mean we went hungry or anything like that, but man, there were no extras. And and so that inspired me. I still remember being 10 years old and asking my parents for something and then telling me you wish don't have the money for that. And I don't even remember what it was Donnie, but I remember deciding, well, you know what I want it. So I'm going to figure out how to how to make the money to buy it. And that was sort of that was sort of the start of my ambitious journey, I guess. And I, you know, out of out of five kids, I think I was the only one with an entrepreneurial gene. And I guess some people are just wired differently. But I mean, you know, my sort of entrepreneurial journey started. I spent six months selling new Oldsmobile. That was an interesting business. And frankly, I really didn't like car business a whole lot, mostly because it didn't really fit my core. And I think when something just doesn't fit, kind of your core values, personality, whatever, you're just not going to be as successful as as you could otherwise be. Nothing listeners at all. So long time ago was 1986 when I was in the car business, but one thing that I did like about it was I in that business, I started earning four or five times the money that I was used to earning. And I said, Man, I don't like the car business, but I could get used to making this kind of money. And so the car business led to my really kind of first chance I had to be in charge Myself, which is four years selling residential real estate. And then that led to a 17 year career in frankly, what I thought would be my career portal, which was in financial services, love that business. But I found that I would see both clients I work with, and reps I hired and trained sabotage themselves and their financial success. And the more I saw it, the more bothered me and it but it was kind of the impetus that led to me studying the psychology of what I call the psychology of human action in action. You know, what in the world makes people do the things they do, or not do the things that they don't do. And I learned a lot about what, what really are the drivers for people, and it helped me a lot personally. And so I ended up writing my first book, and after 17 years in that in History, I decided I was going to start my own company strictly to do personal achievement training. And wrote the book, it was sort of a has a basics of what that was all about. It's called discovering your greatness. subtitle, the higher level thinking and action guide. And, interestingly enough, a couple years into running a new company, we're doing okay. But okay, wasn't what I had in mind. And I thought, you know, we need some better ideas here. And I really started studying about creative thinking and innovative thinking. And what I discovered was teaching people how to do that. Help them get a better image of themselves. And when you're thinking better about yourself, and especially if you can have some During that process, it's just a whole different world. And so most of the work that we do now with spearpoint solutions, is really involved with innovative thinking, training on that. I do do some consulting with companies to develop strategies, you're using those principles that I teach. Because I find sometimes, you know, I talk to CEOs or managers and they go, you know, you're pretty good at this stuff. Why don't you just help us develop some strategies and instead of training our people, so either way, it's good with me, and it's kind of a long and winding road to get where I am now, but I you know, what I found there's almost nobody. Now almost no successful person that I've ever met, had a straight pathway and Okay, well, what's your experience been with that? No, it's the same brother. It's the same. Yeah, I'm really fascinated with this whole idea of these kids. Right, you know, because that wasn't me, right? That wasn't my story. That wasn't my journey. I, I didn't think about starting a business until I was 40. You know, I tell everybody, I'm a late bloomer. You know, so I'm really, you know, this whole idea that that you're born an entrepreneur really, really floors me kind of a bit because I don't fully wrap my head around how you got to that space. Do you think it's mean? I mean, I know you said it was because you were 10 years old. Right. And that, you know, there was something that you wanted to buy, you couldn't buy, you know, but how does that translate to years of creation? years ago? Well, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, no, that's a good question. And I don't know that I was necessarily born an entrepreneur. Exactly. But I think some people are common one. wired to be ambitious. And some people just are okay with just being okay. And there's nothing wrong with either, you know, whatever fits you and your lifestyle and your goals. I think what, that's fine, right? I make no judgments. I just know that, you know, for for somebody like me to aspire to average it's just not in my DNA. I love that phrase. Here's why I'm catching a lot of buzz because of something I say on stage. But I mean, you pretty much just said it. It's really just this quote, you either get okay being okay. Or you get in the game, otherwise Shut the hell up. Because because there's a lot of people that keep telling the world I'm going to be great. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in truth, they're not Taking the action to do the things they need to do, to level up, scale up and go for it. So I, I wish people would, you know, stop taking on the world telling them how awesome they would be and truly just start enjoying the life that they have, versus making themselves feel miserable, because they're not doing the things they thought they should. That makes sense. Well, it does. And two thoughts come to mind as you're saying that I heard a long time ago, a phrase that stuck with me, says, When all is said and done, there's usually more said than done. True. Right. And look, talk is cheap brother. Nope. It's easy to do. It's way easier to do than taking action and getting your nose bloodied. Right, and tripping and falling, that it's much easier. So anybody can talk a good game. Yep. Right. But it's it, but it's people who it's the doers of the world. You know, I talked about a lot about developing better ideas. And I think that's a key critical component. Right? Because a bad ideas even perfectly executed is still a bad idea. Yes, but but, you know, I think you ought to start with with better ideas and better strategies. But having said that, the greatest strategies with the most perfect plan, not executed don't add any value to anybody. So you know, so you've got to have, you know, if I could make an analogy, in physics, you've got theoretical physicists and experimental physicist, and they're both necessary to move That field forward. So, so but the the theoretical, the theories of the theoretical physicists are only proven by the experimental businesses, right. But the experimental physicists are maybe not the best theoretical physicist. So it's sort of like the symbiosis between a songwriter and a gifted performer. A this is a this is a bit of trivia here. You know, Elvis Presley had I think 38 number one songs, or 38, top 10 songs. It was a bunch, right. Okay. And and how many of those did he write or co write? Man I don't and to have an answer that but but since you're asking I'm going to say zero It is zero. Now, you can become world famous as a performer. Right? And you don't have to be able to write songs. But the flip side of that is, you can write great songs and other people perform them. And you can be great that way too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the way I look at as a at creating winning strategies for people is, you know, I'm like the songwriter, and they're like Elvis Presley. Right? They gotta go perform those strategies in order for them to be great. Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I there's and you I'm sure you've heard the hero's journey by Joseph Campbell. Oh, sure. Yeah. And I love this because one I grew up you know, watching the fantasy movies and reading the Lord ring books and all that kind of stuff. So I can totally vibe with this whole theory and philosophy out there. But but to what I love about it is this whole dynamic of the guiding the hero. And I think what you're saying is, in a sense when you're working with these companies, you're the guide but they're the hero and the hero is still gotta go slay the damn dragon. Right? They still gotta go execute No matter whatever plan you build out or anything, you know, you put together for them. They still got to put the work in and do the things to make it a successful endeavor. It's like in sales. You know, you can, you know, talk about cold calling all day long, but until you pick up the damn phone and actually dial the number, you know, you know you've got nothing is that pretty much? Hey, listen, that's that's a My apologies. I Hey guys, I failed to put my phone on Do Not Disturb. Let me let me let me correct that now. Sorry about that brother. Okay, so yeah, I should have known better. This is not my first trip around the block on. Oh yeah, we're gonna make this one though. Yeah I know I deserve it. I deserve 50 lashes with a wet noodle at dawn. You know it's kind of like in you in Lord of the Rings. These guys get these special weapons. Right Aragorn got the special sword. Frodo via Bilbo had the the special weapon his size, but they still had to wield those weapons. Yeah, right. So there's no doubt and I think you're spot on on what you're saying and You know, it's like, I've got a new book that's going to be out. By the time this airs, it should be out on Amazon. And it's and it features 101 great, sort of many business strategies. And and it's dinner can innovative thinking methods in there that people can use to come up with their own. But they still got to apply those things right, no matter how brilliant they are. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm sure you've experienced this, you know, you're standing in front of a room, you're talking to a crowd. And after the you're done talking to them, whether it's a speech or a training, whatever, someone walks up to you and says, that is one of the greatest things I've ever heard. And I take it two ways. One, my ego gets stroked, and I'm like, Yes, awesome. I did my job. And then the second thing goes through my head is wasn't great enough. And I'll usually ask that person, you know, are you going to go back and implement what we talked about today? And it's weird the responses. And I'm curious, you know, one, have you experienced it? And to have you watched the almost shocked reaction sometimes when you've asked that question? Oh, yeah, I listen, I think anybody that's done any, any keynote speaking or any training and you're in front of large groups has experienced that. Look, I think if you're a decent speaker, you can get people motivated. Yes, but the but the challenge with motivation is, is it's temporary, right? It's easy to get, you know, people's adrenaline pumped up and, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think you ought to live your life in an excited enthusiastic fashion but What I prefer to do, and this is where I think, you know, the training on the skill set of innovative thinking, especially the way we do it, where it's, you know, it's practical hands on, it's not standing up in front of a room with PowerPoints, or just about, you know, me being a keynote speaker is, you know, inspire people with, with a mindset of, Hey, you know what, I can do this, because they've actually experienced it right there. And they've, you know, when we do our training with the game I invented, which is kind of a basic innovative thinking game, but it puts it into a competitive format and it's fun and people laugh. When we're doing that. In a training. I say here, two things over and over one people laugh their heads off, and and second is your people go As people coming up with ideas and strategies, like Wow, that's really good. But I'll tell you afterwards dying. People come up to me and some people, they'll tell me overtly, and some people just kind of see by their to change in their physiology. That, you know, they surprised themselves at how they were able to think in a way and come up with ideas that they didn't expect. And, and I can totally relate to that. But they you can tell, right, that it's just like, No, I'm over sharper than I thought I was. Right, I'm all better than maybe I've been giving myself credit for. And when you get that, then you know that you've inspired you sort of, you sort of inspire something that they had inside them all along, but they just weren't aware of it. Yeah, I love those things go ahead is most people have never bet on themselves. Right? So when you can put them in an environment where they are forced to do something they haven't done and I'm not talking about walking across a rope bridge or you know, some tire swing thing or something, you know, but taking an action that will mentally allow them to grow and get them out of their comfort zone. You are, in a sense, forcibly helping them to evolve, and you can see it, and it's awesome. I mean, I it's a really cool change in people. So how does your game get them to do that? Well, the game is structured in a way that I say it has three elements. One, it's got some structure in it, there's a gameplay format to, it feels like fun rather than work. And three, it embraces competitiveness. Right? And everybody, I don't care, the most non competitive person, you know, when they feel like they've got a chance to win, they get competitive. Yes. And so what the game does is a little difficult in just an audio only environment. But you've got two teams. One is the entrepreneur, the inventor, we sort of use those terms interchangeably. Second Team is the competitor. And then the third team who's not competing in that round is the customer. And so each team A and B, gets a set of 10 words, and they use this innovative thinking process to match any of those two words together. And come up with an idea for a product, a service or business. And it gets three minutes to do that you will think three minutes is that long. But people surprise themselves. There's there's great power I found there's great power in have to. Yes. Right you when you have to get something done, you will. And when you don't usually want this Chan. Yeah. So so then each team, you know gets a separate set of words, they're coming up with an idea in three minutes and at the end of three minutes. They each take one minute and present to the customer team, what their product service or business is, how it works and what the benefits of the customer is. And then the customer decides, hey, do I like this team's idea better? Do I like this team's idea better. there's a there's a scoring system and play moves around the board where everybody's playing each Roll, you know, at any given time, and listen, I had a client come up to me after a training session once and he said, you know what the greatest part of this game is? And I said, What says a with David? So let's that David, he said when you when you were and when you lose, you still win, right? Yeah it's a blast. I love that you know, and here's something else that that I think your game is is getting people to do. It's forcing them to make decisions and and you know, a lot of life people get stalled with the inability to make a decision. So when you put them in a group atmosphere and you say you got three minutes to come up with a service, you know, a product or anything else. That's awesome, because I mean, that's a fast decision. And a lot of people struggle with making decisions at that speed and living and dying with the consequences. That's brilliant, but I commend you for for coming up with something innovative like that in a training format that, you know, one brings people together makes them think outside of the cliche word the box but also forces them to make those fast decisions because you know, studies have shown you know, the faster you make decisions, the better you can do in life and business because you don't get stuck. Good. I Where did this whole game evolved from? It was it was it? Yeah, that's no, that's a good question. For most of my adult life, I really didn't picture myself as a creative individual. But as I alluded to before, it's great power and have to and and in aspiring to take our company to a better level. I said, You know what? I don't really think I'm great at coming up with good ideas, but probably some books written on creativity, right? And I've got a book, which I highly recommend you have in mind that's coming out. I highly recommend this one the most. It's called Tinker toys. sinker is thinker toys like the child's toy Tinker toys. Okay? Think toys, and they're probably, they're probably 12 dozen different creative thinking techniques in there. And I tell you, if you are not used to thinking creatively, and you don't really view yourself as being a creative person, some of those look a little bit complex at first, but I discovered one in there called combine a story play, which sounds complicated, but it's not. That I learned later was both Einstein And Da Vinci's favorite creative thinking method. And look, all it is, is combining two things together and seeing what a third four possibilities occur. Do you mind if I give you an example? Please do I'm fascinated. If I let me, I first have to let you know that people don't think in words they think in pictures, true apps, right? So if I say the word dog, you're not thinking about the characters for the letter D, oh, and G you're thinking about a dog that you know, have no right and probably a dog that you owner have. If I say the word kitchen, you're thinking, the the image of the kitchen pops into your mind, right? Yep. But if you start combining words together, especially nouns, if I combine dog and kitchen together, or kitchen and dog together the new possibilities, start eliminating From my imaginative ability, you know, here's what's crazy about that is kitchen dog, I didn't have a whole lot of thought process around. But when you said dog kitchen, the first thing that popped in my head was, could there be a company I know there's our that that could make dog biscuits, or you know, you know, dog food, things in it. I know there's a ton out there, but I would never start one of those type of companies. But that's where my mind went to really cool thought process. And if you have an imagined you had a set of those nouns, right, not just a couple of work from, but if you had a set of those, and you had a direction to work with those. That's the whole point of come up with an idea for a new product service or business or an improvement on something that already exists, right? And some of the stuff that emanates from from just that little simple method and playing that game is It's practically astounding. Have you had anybody come to the game leave their company and because they started a business? I have had, I've had a number of people tell me stories about the things that they're working on. But look, it goes back to the challenges you were talking about before. You know, just coming up with an idea. Even if it's a multimillion dollar idea. It doesn't do anybody any good, even you right? If you don't act on it. Like, I have people tell me all the time when they when they find out. I have written a book. Our company published another one that I curated the content for and I have another one coming out. And so I can't tell you it's hundreds probably people told me Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about writing a book to write right now. How long you gonna think about it right? Now so and yeah, it's it's the inaction and people man it's a we're all guilty in some regards I mean, with our businesses and things we need to be doing, you know, and then help, you know, for me going from an employee to business owner was such a damn leap because I didn't realize how badly ingrained I was, you know, ingrained with this employee mindset before I started running my company, and I still find it, you know, not creating a job versus a business for myself. And, you know, it's it's that when when you get mired down with all the stuff, it's remembering to put one foot forward and start knocking things down. So you can keep moving forward because what, as soon as all those spinning plates like you're the clown with all the plates Getting up in the air. You can sit there and be mesmerised, how pretty all those plates look. But until you start knocking those plates off the frickin sticks. You're not gonna be able to move anywhere and go anywhere, you're gonna stay mesmerised, and action takes care of all that. And the biggest thing people always say, Well, what action do I take? I'm like the first one in front of you. Hey, listen, amen to that. It's hard to steer a car that's in park. Yes. Said. Right. So, look at start taking some action. You know, in my first book, there's a after, after you set your goals, then what should you do when you start taking action and what you think is the best direction, right? Because I found that as you begin to take action, you can Little signals and clues on which way to go. It's like, it's like your goals, the destination you've determined to get to. They act like a GPS that you get off track. You're going to figure that out as you go. Right. But that phrase as you go, is the critical one. Yep. Yeah, yeah. This is gonna be fun. So I love it when people bring up goal setting. And here's why. You ready for this? I'm ready. Goal setting doesn't work is actually a D motivator. And here's what I mean. And I love having this conversation is when somebody sets a goal. They are nine times out of 10 setting a goal they already believe they can achieve then They're going to fake it till they make it, in a sense lie to themselves that they're going to get there. When you set yourself up immediately for failure, not planned failure, but to fail, you lose. So I quit setting goals A while back, and I flipped it. And I set milestones and here's what I mean. I believe you should have a general vision of where you want to go. Okay, General vision, what you want to do. But I'll always take it back to sales. Let's say you've sold $10,000 a month. And you come back to your sales manager and that last year, you sold you know, $120,000, you look at your sales manager and say, this year, I'm going to sell a million dollars. And that manager is going to ask you a cool how you going to do that? The answer is always I'm going to work harder. Right? You know, which never works. Right, you know, so what I would tell if I was that sales manager tell that young sales person is let's do this, instead of setting that million dollar quota let's see if you can do 11,000 Let's get you to 11,000 get there, and then we still do 11,002 months. Can we then get the 12,000 and then 13 and you start teaching incremental growth and start getting people to learn and evolve, how to level up and then start moving forward. And and I'm curious now hearing my philosophy of course, it's my show so I have to be right. Your opinion make it mine. Right, exactly. Right. thoughts. I mean, because I mean, for you We were brought up in this world of set goals, set goals. And as you get this executive area, and it's a big, hairy, audacious goals and all this stuff, but people don't do the work. Right goes back to our whole thought talking around action. They're not doing the work. So that's why I flipped everything over to milestones because people can wrap their head around. How do I just get to my next, my next small level so I can grow? Well, this is my philosophy on goals. goals should be two things. Now, I'm not saying that you should not have a one year, five year 10 year vision. You should, but five years is a long time. Right? Especially in this age, unless there's over 1800 days in five years. So there's no sense of urgency. So I think you should set your You should have a vision for one year, you should have a vision for five years, maybe even for 10 years. But your goals ought not to be any more than 90 days at a time. For the second thing, and here's why, because there's no sense of urgency. If you miss one day out of 1800. That's not that big of a deal. But if you screw up one day out of 90, much more of a big deal, right? Right. So there's a so there's a, there's a an urgency of action in that. But here's the other thing and you you alluded to kind of a 10 x goal, which I know is kind of a catch phrase in today's world. But the problem with a 10 x goal is it's not believable to you right? Right. And I tell people look set stretching Lee realistic goals. And while I say stretching Lee realistic, I use those two terms again. For reason, you know, the most you've ever made in a year. And this funny, I just laid a couple different mastermind groups. And we were just talking about this very concept and in a mastermind group session an hour ago. And I said, you know, it's the most you've ever earned any year. Or let's, let's break it down to a quarter most you've ever earned in a quarter is 50 grand. And you set a goal to make to 50. The first thought you're going to have when you look at that as go, there's no way Yeah, right. funnel, see how I can get there. It's too high of a plateau. But the example that I was using in in that group, I said, you know, $100,000 in a year, used to seem like all the money in the world to me, right? until I got there. And that became anyway Listen, once you hit that, then you can start looking at 150. Right. And once you hit 150, you know, it doesn't seem like that far of a stretch to 250. And you get to 250 and 500 doesn't seem too far of a stretch. Now I have a friend of mine 2018 and I think he made about two and a half million. And I remember years ago, we were together in the financial services industry. And I remember he had he had just hit his first hundred thousand dollar month and income. And he was going to hit over a million that year. Total. And he said, Bill, he said his bill, he said Bob, earning a million it. I don't work any harder than when I was struggling to make 60 grand. Right. But the thought process, the focus, the execution was way different. Right. Right. So, so that I, it's been my experience, you know, everybody has their own philosophy and I think you're, whatever you're doing that works for you. That's what you ought to keep doing. So, I think we're saying a lot of the same things because you were talking about, okay, you know, if you did 50 a quarter, you know, getting the 250s a leap. What if you're going from 50 and 60? Alright, cool. Next back believable right, next quarter, can I get to 70? And, you know, because you have to evolve as an individual because the person you are right now is not the person you need to become to get to where you want to go. You have got to level up or get okay being okay. Because because, yeah, there's so many people that are They're, you know, telling the world how awesome they're going to be, and not executing. And all they're doing is making themselves miserable. Enjoy the life you have. And understand that your income level if you live inside your means you'd have a very happy life. But most people don't want to do that. Right? Yeah, they look, most people would rather grow their income to meet their dreams instead of tricking their dreams to meet their current income. True, was it right? So, but look, so many people are trying to go so far they're trying to make quantum leaps. And I'm not saying that you can't do that because I've done that a couple of times, right? But it's not the quantum leaps that matter as much as the consistent growth. system it can be consistent, small group, right? What if you're What if each month or maybe even each week, you try to get 1% better? Just 1% right mean 1% that it sounds like nothing. And yet over time, if you got 1% better, even a month, right 1% better a month, over the course of a year or two or three. That's massive growth. Very much true. And you know, but people want to believe in the overnight success, which is there's no such thing. They want to believe that there's an easy button. They want to believe that there's, you know, some magic pill or something. They don't want to do the work. You know, and they don't understand that you've got to go through it to become it. Oh, that's a great phrase. Absolutely, I'm gonna get a T shirt, maybe with a habit. You know, but that's it. I mean is people want the soft and easy and sweet and fluffy route when they don't realize that if you go in to fail on purpose, you can actually level up faster. Wow, that's where you learn the most. Right, right. I mean, when you screw up it, I tell people, Donnie, the reason I know how to do a lot of things, right? It's because I've done a wrong almost every possible way. Right? Right. I've screwed up so much. Right. And you alluded to this before. Your most overnight successes take at least a decade. Yes. You know, but people Well, people don't see that right? Or maybe they're willfully blind. And so I will No, I don't see that you know this person. You'll put in all this extra effort that they, they did things I like to tell people look, you got to do stuff to be consistent about about progress, even when you don't feel like it. Yes. Right. Even when you feel like sitting your butt on the couch and watching that episode of Laverne and Shirley that you've seen three times, right? You just age the hell out of yourself. Just so you know. Well, okay, how about that, that that that rerun of Grey's Anatomy. There you go. There Big Bang Theory. Yeah, frankly, I'll gonna make happen. Your audience mad probably I don't get the appeal that show. Oh, I love it. Love it. Yeah, but you know what? That's why they make different colors of car exhaust. Everybody don't like the same stuff. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. I never know this show is gonna go sometimes it's always fun. It's always fun. You know, you've been really doing some cool things on your ride. some really cool things on your journey. I mean, you've done some cool stuff. Where's all this taking you? You know, you got new books coming out. You've had a couple of books, you're doing some speaking. You know what's what's being on the horizon for you. Then the next big thing is happening in 2019. Hopefully in the first half of 2019. I'm not 100% in control of this. So I can just tell you this is my intent is We are launching up to this point all the training that we've done has been face to face. But we are launching an online training portfolio or a portal I should say. That is going to train people up on how to think innovatively. But listen, the, the most exciting part of that is, is we're creating a, an interface where that small business person out there who might have 25 or 50 or 100 people that are working for their company. They'd love to be able to be like Procter and Gamble or International Harvester GM, some of these big companies that have thousands and thousands of employees and, and they can sort of crowdsource innovation internally. Well, if you got a company that has 100 people, you can crowdsource Internally, but it's not a very big crowd, right? So what if what if there was a way for that small entrepreneur to access the knowledge, experience and imagination of this vast army of people that have been trained how to think innovatively and they don't have to add anybody to their payroll? Right? They don't have to, nobody's taken up any more room in their building. They're paying no more benefits, and they only pay for the solutions that fit them. Well, that's interesting. That would be kind of a big deal, wouldn't it? Be that level the playing field for them, it would make them able to compete and have all that talent, access to it, just like big companies do. And on the flip side of that, Donnie is these people that have been Train to think innovatively, they bring their own set of knowledge and experience to the table. And they can look at that and they can exercise that entrepreneurial gene without having to go start their own company. Because it gives them potential extra source of income. So, the win for everybody? Yeah, yeah, no, I like that a lot. Was this was this concept born out of y'all need or you saw a gap in the marketplace? No, I just see that that look. There's a yo you got now this advent of so much automation, especially with AI. that a lot of jobs that are being done by people now are going to be done by people in the future. They're going to be done. And I don't mean the final need mean along the way future I mean, the near term future right, the next 135 years 10 years at the most. And so those people are going to need different skill sets. I think, as I was telling him on his podcast recently, it's temporarily terrible for those people when they lose their job, right? But it's only temporary, right? Because once they acquire the new skill sets needed to do the 21st century work, they're probably going to end up doing work that's more fun. It's probably more fulfilling, and frankly, because it brings more value to the marketplace, it probably pays more. And so they've got to learn these new skill set. And Chief among those, I believe, is how to think innovatively and apply that to practical solutions in business in life. And the sad part is, is our traditional education system isn't doing that. Yeah. So, you know, you can complain about that. But as opposed to complaining about things, I like to do something about them. And I see this big gap that's unfilled that companies like ours, so I'm sure we're not gonna be the only one are going to fill in the gaps there to get people trained in the skill sets that they need, you know, to thrive in the 21st century instead of just barely survive. Absolutely. That's well done. But it's a it's a really, really, really cool concept. I think you're going to help you know a lot of people on their journey level up. Good on you. Good on you. Thank you. We have a goal to help millions. Yeah, I know I should. I know I shouldn't set a goal Donnie, but can be taught this whole time. I wasn't sure but dang just proved. That that's my vision. Anyway. I love it. I love it. I love it. You know You know, here's here's the thing. There are certain individuals in this world that can set a goal, like a guy like Gary Vee Gary V's biggest thing. He tells everybody he's gonna buy the New York Jets. Right? Right. Right, like Gary Vee may very well get there, because that drives him that motivates them that charges him up. But it's such a few minority of people that are that driven, you know, innately to get there. So I like your big vision. Now bust your ass to get there. Well, if you're right, it can do you mind if I throw out sort of another thought in terms of goals? What I have found is that people don't set goals based on what they really want. They don't set their true goals. If they set goals at all. They're setting them based on what they think they ought to want. what somebody else wants them to want. You know, my sales man, my sales manager said, This is my quota. So that's my goal, right? What does that mean? There's no, if you're not setting goals that are your true goals, then there's no emotional power to them. So there's no driver for action. So you're setting yourself up for failure. If that's the kind of goals you're setting 100% agree. Hundred percent agree. Well said, Well said. Well, brother, can you believe it's been almost an hour already? Time flies when you're having fun, brother. Well, you know, I mean, when you're around me, you have no choice but to have fun. So So. Yeah, well, no, I this has been a blast. And by the way, time flies when you're having fun or not, so you're exactly right. Exactly. Well, my friend, how do people find you? How do they get in touch with you? How do they reach out? How do they make funny Yeah, you know, look, LinkedIn. Like my home on the internet, I just I love that platform. If it's done right, I think it's extremely productive. And, and you can meet people from all around the globe. And so LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. It is linkedin.com slash IN slash Bob Sager VOB SAG on. love it love it. Well, this is how I like to wrap up every show. And I do stump some people on this. So So stand by, if you are going to leave the champion to listen to the show entrepreneurs, business owners, people from 78 countries around the world that tune in Listen to this. If you are going to leave them with a quote, a saying a phrase, a mantra or a motto, something they can take with them on their journey, especially if they're stacked up against it and going through it. What would be that quote or phrase you would say? Remember this? Remember this this is from Arthur Ashe. Arthur Ashe said, start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can Love it. Love it. That's Sage sage advice, my friend. It's been so fun having you on here. I've really really enjoyed it. Thanks for you know, coming in sharing your story and having some fun conversations and some laughs So So thanks for doing this but hey, Donnie, it's been fun being on what you Thanks for having me. Awesome. Well

Donnie B.: All right, guys. So I want you to strap it in today. So we're going to get pretty deep and heavy on this one. This is a hell of a story from a hell of a guy and my buddy, Patrick Mudge said, “Donnie, you got to sit down with Charlie and let him tell you his story and everything they're doing.” So just strap it in, guys. It’s going to be a really good episode. So I'm Donnie Boivin. This is Donnie’s Success Champions. Charlie Strange. Welcome to the show, my friend. Please, tell us your story. [Music] Donnie B.: Hey, before the show starts, I wanted to jump in here and let you guys know that I could not do this show without the support of Point Blank Safety Services. Stacey and Michael McGovern over there have been a huge asset for the show, the Success Champions Family and everything we do and it's because of their support, we're able to bring you such awesome guests and such awesome stories. So do me a favor. Go check them out. Man, if you're in Texas and you need security officers or you need active-duty police officers on off-duty hours, protecting your sites, construction, security sites, commercial offices, whatever, go check out Point Blank Safety Services. You'll be glad you did. Now, guys, I'm not kidding. Strap it in today. This is a hell of a story. Here comes Charlie Strange. Charles S.: Thank you, Don. My name is Charles Strange. I'm the gold star father of Michael Strange. Michael was killed in action in August 6, 2011 along with 38 other men and 29 Americans and Bart, The Warrior Dog. It was the biggest single loss of life in Iraq and Afghan War and it was the biggest loss of life in the history of America. 22 men from DEVGRU, Navy Special Warfare. And it was the worst day of my life. Michael is my oldest son from Philadelphia. He grew up in Philadelphia. Not too far for your audience. From the Rocky Steps, the famous Rocky Steps. Michael ran the Rocky Steps before he went in. “Adrian!” We're Philly and cheesesteaks and Michael joined the military right out of high school and he took off. He took off from there and went to the Great Lakes. I flew out, seen him graduate boot camp. From there, he went to Pensacola, Florida. And from there, he finished first in his class for cryptology. Michael was a code breaker. They actually gave Michael the National Intelligence Medal of Valor. Only 17 have ever been given out in the history of America since World War II and the windtalkers. Given that at the NSA with Admiral Alexander under about five floors underground. But he went to Hawaii because he was a crypto and Admiral McRaven was there and he loved it. We flew out to Hawaii, spent 15 days with Michael in Hawaii and he became a surfer and he got really into the intel there and he started getting deployed on different missions. His buddy, I also don't want to forget about, who died with him, John Douangdara was there. John was the dog handler for the Gold Team DEVGRU. And from Hawaii, he spent a little over three years in Hawaii and then they put him on DEVGRU in Virginia Beach where he had to buy a home and he was with SEAL Team Six, the Gold Squad. His call sign was GY4, Gold Yankee 4 and I said, “Michael! How are you affording a $300,000-house here, Michael? You're 21 years old.” And he loved it and he had to be by the secret base and we still take the train down, drive down. He drived back to Philly because he missed his family, his friends and I'll tell you what, like yesterday was the day we killed Bin Laden and a lot of memories going by one night and Michael called me before that, before the Bin Laden raid. Two weeks prior, he said, “Dad, everything's getting shut off.” I'm like, “What?” He said, “I'm not going to be able to talk to you, Dad.” And I tried to get information out of him and me and Michael had a little code. Even if it was January, he’d ask me, “Are the Phillies winning?” That means, “Don't ask me any more questions, Michael.” Because they would give them a lie detector test every two or three months. And the first question on the lie detector test was, when was the last time you lied? So he wouldn't have me ask any more questions. And he said, “Look, Dad!” He was getting mad. He said, “Dad, look, if something happens, I'm sure you'll hear about it.” And that was the Bin Laden raid and yesterday was, every day is emotional. But he loved what he was doing. He loved protecting and serving his country and his family and August 6th, he came home from the Bin Laden raid in June and it was his birthday, June 6th. It was his birthday and we had a big party, his friend, Kevin and Danny and all of them and the girls. They had about four kegs and a hundred bottles of Jameson's in the pool. But he was different. He was different after the raid and something was going on. A guy by the name of Joe Biden opened his mouth and after the Bin Laden raid at the Ritz-Carlton in Delaware and told everybody, “SEAL Team Six killed Bin Laden.” Nobody ever heard of SEAL Team Six before that. And I don't know if that was one of the things that was bothering Michael after the raid. But he was different. He was different in June when he came home. He talked about a will. He never talked about a will before. A couple of other parents were telling me about the guys in Michael’s crew and they talked about a will and something was going on. Something was going on, Don. He calls me up. He goes back and he's getting deployed back to Afghanistan. I still have his voice on my cellphone here and he said, “I love you, Dad. I'll see you for Thanksgiving for Eddie and Maggie.” That's my sister. We always do Thanksgiving in Philadelphia, in Fishtown and, “I'll see you for Thanksgiving.” And I knew something was up, something was going on and he was completely different. He had just told me about the will. He told my sister. He told his buddies, his brother, his sister and he got deployed in the worst day of my life, Don. August 6, they came knocking on the door. There was like four or five different guys, CAOs, Casualty Assistance guys and they didn't really say much about what happened. They didn't know. Some of the parents said, they ran into a mountain. Some people say, you know. The guys who came to the door, God bless them. They were very nice. They said, “Your son passed along with a tragedy on a helicopter in Afghanistan.” A couple of the parents I know, when you hear that, that's a piece of your heart. Donnie B.: Right. Charles S.: You get rushed to the hospital and I was screaming and yelling and crying and it's like a nightmare. It's a nightmare that actually really don't stop. You learn to walk with a limp the rest of your life, Don. And there was a lot of questions about that August 6, 2011 and the Taliban, actually, after they killed them guys, it was on the internet a half-hour later, bragging. “We just killed SEAL Team Six.” How did they know who was in the Chinook? And there's a lot of questions and we did the ceremony in Arlington. 17 to 30 men were in Arlington. In October 2011, we went down to Little Creek and a guy by the name of, Brigadier General Jeffrey Colt did the investigation on what happened and we were in the auditorium, the 60 parents and he was explaining about the pilots. God bless the pilots and some other things. He seemed like, it took a while due to the presentation, but he was only over there for two weeks to do this investigation for 30 men dying and I know and I still don't know today, Don, about the black box which is really orange. And General Colt put his hands up in the air like theatrically and he said, “A flash flood came and washed it away.” I said, “Oh, you didn't find it?” And they said, they never found the black box and there are some people who say, there is no black box in them CH-47. These are some kind of recording device. Then he said, “An RPG hit the helicopter from 200 yards in the pitch dark and it was a lucky shot.” So I stood up and the Philadelphia in me came out and I said, “Did you just say lucky shot and all our sons are dead?” And I threw a couple of F-notes out there and a couple of gentleman from the military grabbed me. Yeah. So it was, you got to be kidding me? And I asked questions. I had some of the other parents asking questions. When we left there, Donnie, they gave us a folder, a binder and you don't look at it. Just hearing about how your son died. They told me, my son burned to death because of the fire, the fuselage which was all a lie. My son wasn't burned at all. I have pictures of him. Four months, I called Dover and asked for the autopsy and a whistleblower in Dover, God bless his soul, I still don't know who it is, sent me a disk and the paperwork and my beautiful wife, Maryanne, she took the disk. She said, “Don't look at it. Don't look at it.” And she looked at it and I said, “Pretty bad?” And she says, “Well…” I'm like, “Well, they said he was burned beyond recognition.” And it was in all the papers. All over the world, 38 skulls, 38 c-spines. No identifiable remains. So I said, “I want to see. I want to see.” And not that bad and I looked at the pictures of my son and he wasn't burned at all, Donnie. He jumped out of the helicopter or got thrown out of the helicopter. They weren't that high. They weren't that high. I have pictures of the helicopter where they gave us this binder in October after Jeffrey Colt got done doing the thing and there was 25 pages in there. In the first page, you can look at, as you open it up, you can't read it. It ran out of ink. I know the government's doing bad, but they didn't have no ink. So I called Admiral Sean Pybus. He was Commander-in-Chief and God bless him and I said, “I got a bad copy here, Admiral Pybus. Can I get another copy?” He said, “Well, Mr. Strange, we had a lot of complaints about that.” I said, “Okay, good. Send me another one.” He said, “We can't. We burned it.” I said, “You burned it? Already?” But in that packet was a disk and I put the disk in the computer and as you can tell by earlier, I'm not super suave. And there was like a hundred little blocks on this disk and I'm like … My wife, Maryanne, she says, “Let me look at that.” And she took it somewhere and she printed out 1,364 pages, Don. Donnie B.: My God. Charles S.: Which was encrypted with a virus. And the Taliban knew. The Taliban knew. Don, I'm going to read something to you from these 1,364 pages. I wasn't in the military. But in Jeffrey Colt’s investigation, he says, “For the Tangi Valley,” he says, “The next piece of reporting that I have that fits within the timeframe comes from May 11th, 2011.” And it's late May. There's no date on this and it's going to be, I'm reading it. There was a couple of blank spots. It's very brief. Again, it’s out of the task force and it says something to the fact that over 100 Talibans planned to travel from the Blank Province through the Tangi Valley to possibly shoot down the coalition force aircraft. They knew. A 100 Talibans were going to the Tangi Valley. I got it right here in front of me, Don. Right in front of me. Donnie B.: Wow! Charles S.: So these 1,300 pages, some of the other parents started asking questions and they're like, “How did you get that information? How do you know that?” And my wife wrote a letter to the gold star parents down in Florida, telling them how to download the disk to get the 1,364 pages. And then our phone got tapped and our computer got tapped and we won the first case in the history of America for the NSA when we went against the NSA and Obama down in Washington, DC. Judge Leon was our judge. You might remember, he called it, “Aurelian state that we live in.” And so we went to Congress. We went to the Senators. We went to President Obama when he was President. I met President Obama in Dover and tried over and over to try to get answers. I met President Obama in Dover. He came up to me and he said, “Michael changed the way America lived. Michael could do this and Michael could do that.” I grabbed President Obama by the shoulders and I sort of shook him and I said, “I don't need to know about my son. I need know what happened.” Then the Secret Service guys grabbed me. Donnie B.: I see a theme with you, Charlie. Charles S.: Yeah. And President Obama whispered in my ear and he said three times. He said, “Mr. Strange, I want to look into this very, very, very deep.” And we tried going back and not just me and my wife. We had other gold star parents. We’re just asking questions. We had a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. We had like 12 of the gold star parents. We had Allen West. We had General Boykin, General [inaudible] and this needs to be a congressional hearing. And we never got anything. We never got any answers and even if nobody's going to take accountability for the biggest loss of life and my son getting killed, just don't let it happen to someone else's son. Who put 38 men in a Chinook helicopter? 8 of the Afghans, Don, right before they took off, got off and no one's got on. Their names were never on the manifest. I'm like, and they told us this and then I think they wanted to not tell us that but, who were they? Who were they? They told us in Dover. They brought the Afghan bodies back to Dover and they had their flag over the coffins. My daughter said, “What's this?” I said, “That's the Afghans.” She said, “What the eff are they doing here?” That was our question. And they had to call the families from the Afghans and tell them they had the wrong people. They didn't know who they were. You don't know who they are getting on the helicopter? Their names’ not on the manifest? Who okayed all this? And then it was supposed to be a rescue mission for the Rangers and there was no … the Rangers, I’ve talked to personally, who were coming out said, “We didn’t need a QRF. We didn't need a Quick Reaction Force.” They had eight of the Talibans locked up. It's in the 1,300 pages. I got their names. I got their names. And then they said, “Well, we were after Qari Tahir.” Qari Tahir is a high-level guy. He was a big target. Qari Tahir, in the 1,300 pages, knew. Knew. He moved from village to village. Somebody was giving him all the information. Here you go, Hamad, I can't talk. I don't know these Middle Easterners. Harad, Hamad, Hamaz, Zaha, Guli, Nabi, Al-Qazar. The raid in Khawatir Village was targeting Qari Tahir, Ismael, Qali, Tahir had been located in another village during the raid, at the house of Habibur Rahim in the [inaudible]. Everything's written out here, Don. And I can't get no answers on who killed my son? Who made the call? It's crazy. So we went through all kinds of stuff. Donnie B.: Here's the crazy thing, Charlie, is one, God loved you, and I mean this wholeheartedly. I mean, I'm sorry for the loss of your son. It’s tragic. It sucks. No parent needs to go through that, right? But God loved you, man, because somebody's going to pick the fight, right? When something goes like this and I love your Philly freaking attitude, your vibe for you. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes in that room. But I love the way you've handled yourself all the way through this and fucking kudos for just picking the fight because I mean, I'm hearing your side of it. So I've got to go with what I'm hearing. And from what I'm hearing, man, shit, why the hell isn't there a further investigation? Why isn't there more people asking questions? And I get it, man. Some of the parents that have tragically lost their kids in this, they're like, “Okay. We just want to move on and get past it.” But I'm thinking, man, if I'm in your shoes, I'm still asking fucking questions. I want somebody's ass to fry because they made a bad call or they're a traitor to the freaking country. One of the two. Why the cover-up? And what dumbass put the disk in the freaking binder to you guys? Charles S.: Right. Donnie B.: Somebody's ass should get fired just for that stupid mistake on that side of things. So wow. What a shitty thing to go through, man. My heart hurts for that kind of stuff but fucking kudos for your boy for stepping up and doing what not many have the courage to do and fucking defending our country, man. Being a veteran myself, that dude is just freaking awesome. That's just awesome. So now, you guys are doing a lot of cool things for gold star families and you guys are holding events and bringing these families together and helping them get through some of these tough times they’re going through. Tell us a little bit about your foundation, your organization and what you guys are doing. Charles S.: Well, there's a lot of support at the funeral and after the funeral, everybody goes back to work. Everybody goes on vacation. Everybody is still going on. I'd be looking out my window saying, “My son died and everybody is still moving on.” And I was, the five stages of grief. Like I didn't know nothing about the five stages of grief and the first one is denial. No way. He was just sitting on my couch. We were just at a party and the second stage is anger. I was shopping in a food market and some guy had a towel around his head and he had to call the police on me for that one. My wife was at my back. Somebody was going to get it, Donnie. You know what I mean? The third one is bargain. And God don't bargain. And the fourth one they say is depression. I don't like to use that word. I think it's the Grim Reaper and the fifth one is acceptance. But like any other ones, what I learned is, with the loss of a son or a daughter or burying a child, it don't stop. It just keeps coming. I buried my father. I buried my cousin. I buried good friends. Not even in the same circle is burying a child and I ran into another gold star father named, Grant Smith. His son Tristan Smith was killed in an IED from Philadelphia three years prior. So I got in touch with this guy and we met for coffee and he started crying and he was angry and I felt good, Don. I was like, “This guy's just like me. We’re both fucked up. All right!” And I came home. I told my wife. I said, “We should bring more parents together.” And my wife, she started reaching out to some gold star parents and we did it. I said, “Let do …” in Philadelphia, we call it Beef and Beer and some guy named Drago, a Navy SEAL named Drago came along and him and his wife, great wife, Rachel and their two kids came down and we had an Irish band, of course, Blackthorne, donated their time and we raised some money and we brought like 20 gold star parents in for a weekend and we had a grief counselor there and we get the parents to talk. I want to hear from the other dads and moms. How do you get through the birthday? What are you doing in the holiday? How do you get through every day? And from there, the other gold star parents started telling other gold star parents. “When are you doing that again? Are you doing that again?” And I was like, “Well, okay. We'll do another one.” And we went to Wildwood, New Jersey and we did Thursday to Sunday and we brought some gold star parents from Michigan, Heath Robinson’s dad, he was on Team 6, Heath was a sharpshooter and we brought Debbie Anne who lost her son and they never seen the ocean. They never seen the ocean. So it was really cool and we did a lot of healing in Saturday night, whatever area we’re in, we ask the VFW or American Legion or [inaudible] Club, the hostess for dinner. We get the motorcycles, the cops, the firemen involved and my wife makes these beautiful reefs, biodegradable reefs and we go to the ocean and we say our sons’ names and we say a few prayers and we throw them, knowing that we'll see our sons again on the other side. We went to Tucson, Arizona to this guy Mike and Bonnie Quinn's house and we had a beautiful hotel out there and we had gold stars. We had Bob Huff. His daughter was Samantha Huff, the first girl killed in Iraq. My man, Bob and we had about 38 gold star parents out there. So the healing begins in meeting these other families and just to know what you're walking into, knowing you're not alone because a lot of the gold star parents go, “Don, nobody cares if my son died.” I said, “There is people that care, man. There is people that care.” I brought my buddy in, Kali Thomason. He's from Louisiana, Shreveport, Louisiana and you think I got an accent. I live about 60 miles from them duck boys. That's where I live at. “You better look for the gators, Charlie.” You can look Kali up on Facebook. He was putting up on Facebook, “My son died because of the rules of engagement.” His son was, they had to pull over to the side of the road. He was in the middle with some brass. And the van coming down since they pulled over drove right into the middle loaded with bombs and killed his son, Josh. But yeah. Meeting Kali and we brought Kali down to Ocean City, Maryland in the Royal Princess Hotel. We had 36 gold star parents and I tell you what, they put the fire engine trucks. They put it in the newspaper. Me and my wife go wherever we're going to go for the weekend retreat with the gold star families, we go down like a month early to let the VFW Post know, the police and firemen and they put it in the newspaper. There was people out in the street, Don with the flags. They brought the bugler. Each city that we've been to really rolls out the red carpet. But we're a small foundation. We need help. MichaelStrangeFoundation.org. Donnie B.: Well, hold on. Let me jump in here just one second, Charlie. A couple of things. One, you guys are close because obviously, it's your kids, right? I mean, that's not going to be something that's ever going to be [inaudible] place in your life, right? So it's really close to you. But I want to say it for all of us that aren't gold star families, man. It's not that we're not thinking about it. We're just not as close to it as you guys are. I mean, you guys are there every day. But I want you to also recognize that everywhere you've been, look at the good people that show up to support. I mean, at the end of the day, man, they're special people in this world. And unfortunately, society as it is, as a whole, likes to just paint a bad fucking picture on everything. So if you turn on the false shitty-ass news and all the other BS out there, all that you're going to see is the negative stuff. But for all of your friends that you guys are doing these amazing things for, just remember, it's not that we’re not thinking about it. It's just, we're not as close to it as you guys are. And we show up. Because there's still some of us that that sacrifice means a fuck ton to a lot of us. So I just wanted to get that out. Now, tell us about your damn foundation. Charles S.: Thank you, Donnie. Thank you. And that means a lot, man. That means a lot. Thank you. Donnie B.: You get me all freaking choked up here, Charlie. Charles S.: I make you cry. I do. My wife's over here on the side crying and tearing up. A piece of my heart's missing now, Don and meeting these other gold stars, we got a big event coming up. We got Drago coming back, November 2nd with a guy by the name of Rob O'Neill who’s coming back from his second time. One of Michael’s buddies. A lot of you guys’ buddies and we're teaming up with another foundation called Operation First Response, Peggy Baker and Nick Constantino’s. And we're doing it, November 2nd. I know you guys don't like to come to the East Coast over here, Donnie. Donnie B.: That’s cold-ass weather in November, dude. You’re crazy as hell. Charles S.: We’ll get you a Philly cheesesteak at [inaudible]. Donnie B.: That’s awesome. Charles S.: In case you do, Nikki and Joey bag of doughnuts and Rocco and all the guys. Yeah. We’ll take care of you. But November 2nd, seriously, Pat Mudge is speaking, one of Michael's close friends. Donnie B.: Just really quick, Charlie, for the ones that have listened to this podcast all the way through, if you guys go back before, I think, Episode 50, someone there, you'll hear Patrick Mudge’s story, man. And let me tell you, Patrick Mudge is the only interview I've ever done where I think I said two words through the whole thing, man. When that dude tells his story, holy fuck. That dude went through some shit. So great dude, great story. So to see him speak in person will be huge. Charles S.: Pat spoke at our little dinner event last year when he came down. He was close with Michael. It's hard, man. And you got to ask God for help. A guy opened up the Bible to me a little bit about Jesus and He died on the cross for us and His only Son and so we meet new veterans and asking God for help and we meet these other great gold star parents from all over the country, Don. We’ve had 250 gold star parents. We’ve done weekends in Pennsylvania, Jersey, Ocean City, Maryland, Tucson, Longmont, Colorado, Washington, DC, Lenox, Massachusetts and we need help with the airfare. We need help with the hotels because the parents already paid the ultimate price, right? I don't like saying that. Ultimate sacrifice. I don't like that shit. It was no sacrifice. My son had a gun in his hand when he died, you know what I mean? And that fucks with me too. He was alive for 15 minutes and nobody came to help him in my nightmares. Donnie B.: Here's the thing, man, is you guys are doing a freaking awesome thing, right? It's a hell of a thing you guys are doing and through your story, what people are able to feel, see and embrace is, this is a tough fucking thing and I personally can't relate to any of it. I've never lost anybody that close to me, right? But I will tell you, the fucking strength that you guys have to bring these families in across the world, across the US and be able to put them in one place, one room so you all can freaking go through this shit together and then you realize, you're not fucking alone is huge, is really, really, really huge and fucking kudos. I mean, there's always somebody who picks up the torch and says, “Come sit by my fire,” and you guys are doing it. Charles S.: Thanks, Don. Donnie B.: Yeah. Really freaking awesome. Charles S.: Thank you. Yeah. It helps. It helps meeting these gold stars. My friend, Jeannie Cathcart, his son was Michael Cathcart and all over, all over and we did one up in Lenox, Massachusetts, the gold star families with Derek Benson's dad there, Fred and a couple of the families from Extortion 17 came. Doug Hamburger and his son, Patrick was on there, out of Nebraska, full-time National Guard. And I'll tell you what, the one up in Lenox, Massachusetts, it's called Pug’s Farm. The guy bought a Chinook helicopter, Don. He bought a Chinook helicopter and has a memorial site. It’s called Pug’s Farm. If you're ever up in Lenox, Massachusetts, it's free. It's a beautiful memorial site. A guy by the name of E.L. Shapiro. Just amazing site. So we did a weekend up there with them. That was, going inside the Chinook, seeing the pictures but it's healing. Something else that’s healing too. You learn to walk with a limp every day and some days are harder than others. Sometimes, that Grim Reaper comes in on you and then it's good to … through the foundation, I met Mike Anderson. His son was a Marine. Fast-track, killed in Fallujah. His son got hurt. He was out, came back and then got shot right through the heart. Mike Anderson, good friend of mine. And meeting Michael and his daughter, Ally. Sometimes, we bring the siblings in if they're over 18 and they asked me to do the siblings and as you can tell, I'm not a doctor. I do have a PhD though, Donnie. Plumbing, heating and drainage. See, we learned to laugh again, bro. We learned to laugh again. Donnie B.: I get that, Charlie. I come from a blue-collar lifestyle. So I get that, man. That's awesome. Charles S.: Absolutely. I was in the laborers’ union in Philly. So that's the Michael Strange Foundation. You can see videos on Michael Strange Facebook. You'll see all the videos, all the gold star parents, different events. But November 2nd is our big dinner. Everybody's welcome. We’ll have it up on the website in about two months so you can buy tickets online. We’ll have auctioneer. Pat Mudge is going to battle for us, get some stuff donated. We need some donations for the auction. Rob O’Neill is coming in to speak. He's going to be there. Drago, Pat, a couple of veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq through Operation First Response who will talk for a few minutes to tell their stories, how Operation First Response helps them and then of course, I have some gold stars there from all over the country just to do some healing and show people that freedom is not free, babe. Freedom is not free. 9/11, man, Boston Bombing, San Bernardino and I know Michael did some things in this country to stop certain things that even went on here and you never hear about it and that's what I love about everybody who serves in the military. To sign that line and to protect us for our freedoms, man. For our freedoms. We live in the greatest country in the world. Donnie B.: That's it. That's it, man. That's it. Charles S.: President Trump had me down to the White House. He was great. He asked me to bring ten gold stars down there. It was a trip. They even put it in the newspaper in Philadelphia. “Family and Fawn Meets the Trumpster.” They put the Trumpster up. They had to throw a little shot in. But he was good. I had 15 minutes alone with him. Me and my wife. Him and the First Lady. He opened up an investigation about Extortion 17. I gave him some of them 1,300 pages. He actually read them in front of me. I said, “President Trump, my son got killed in a 1960-helicopter, man, with 30 other guys.” He goes, “You see what I did about that? I just signed a bill. $500 million gives them new damn helicopters for them.” Then I said to him, I said, “When you drop that mother bomb over there,” I said, “Next time you call Charlie Strange from Philadelphia and drop like eight or nine on them motherfuckers. Kill them all. Kill all them fucking people.” He goes, “Yo, yo, yo.” I said, “Yo, yo, yo?” I said, “Your son is still here. My son's not.” Then he gave me a hug and then he invited me back for Christmas dinner, Don. Yeah. That was cool. Donnie B.: So tell the family. You're not going to be home for Christmas. You're going to be chilling in the White House. Charles S.: We were in the gold room, the green room, the red room. They were feeding us all kinds of stuff. They did a beautiful tribute to the men and the gold star families. The First Lady, she was elegant. She said, “I don't know what you're going through. I can't understand what you're going through. I can't imagine.” She read a beautiful poem. General Kelly was there. He lost his son. And that's what the gold stars. You get a gold star pin and a folded flag. And we've had some of the parents, some of the mothers come to our weekend and they’re wearing their gold star pin now and another lady says to her, “Man, I like that pin. How do I get one of that?” People don't know what a gold star is and you don't want that gold star pin. It’s the pin that nobody wants but I wear it with honor. My son wore his uniform with honor and what he did to protect and serve for our freedoms and he loved what he did. You hear all kinds of things on our weekends. The one guy said, “I know what you're going through.” His neighbor told him, “I know what you're going through. I had my dog for 12 years.” “You lost your dog? I lost my son. I don’t think you know.” We understand. You know what I mean? Just don't say something like that to me the first year it happened. Donnie B.: Right? Charles S.: Michael Strange Foundation. Donnie B.: That's awesome, brother. Charlie, I got to tell you, I'm honored to have you come on here and share your story. I mean, because you're right. There's a lot of people that don't understand what the gold star families are. I mean, it's thrown around every once in a while but not a lot of people fully understand what it means. So thank you for coming in and really sharing Michael’s and your story, your family’s story. Thank you for everything you're doing. It means a ton and I just have so much respect for what you guys are doing. You're doing so much for other families going through it and thanks for being the light for those people. That's a really truly beautiful thing. How do people get in touch with you guys? So what's the website? What's the best way for them to reach out to donate, to get help if they're a gold star family member that maybe don't know about you guys, those type of things, how do people get in touch with you guys? Charles S.: The best way for the gold stars is Michael Strange Facebook. Message me, Charles Strange Facebook. Message me. Our PO Box is Michael Strange Foundation. PO Box 6038, Philadelphia, PA 19114. Philadelphia, PA 19114. The PO Box is 6038, Michael Strange Foundation. We got PayPal. We got PayPal on MichaelStrangeFoundation.org. You see some t-shirts for sale. You'll see the PayPal in there. We could really use your help. We could really use your support. We're a 501(c)(3). All the money goes to paying for the hotel, the food, the plane tickets and we give the parents a little present at the end, a little gold star bag and it pays for the lodging and that's what we need help for. We need to raise money for these gold star families. Because it's not like after you burry a child, you wake up and go back to work in two weeks or three weeks. I did. I went back to work like two months later, but I couldn't stay for a full week. I go every day but I'll break down and the Grim Reaper ain't no joke and then you wipe yourself off, you drink a bottle of water, you smoke a cigarette, you wash your face, you go back out, you're good for another hour and then bam! It's like, “Damn. My son, you got to be kidding. I got to go to a cemetery to see my son? Who the fuck came up with this? Who the fuck put all these guys in a helicopter?” But the only thing for me is meeting these gold star parents and learning what you're walking into, knowing that you're not alone and it is God working through me. Believe me. That’s the other thing. I give God credit for everything. If it was up to me, I'd be smoking some left-handed cigarettes and drinking, but I don't do that. I probably shouldn’t have said that. Donnie B.: You’re fine. We live in a new time, Charlie. Everybody smokes. Charles S.: I know it is God working through me and meeting that other gold star to start this off and my wife, God bless her, she was Michael’s stepmom and she's like my rock and my boulder. And like you just said, a guy named Shawn Greener from Delaware, Navy veteran, he did some of our counseling. We had another guy from Wildwood. We're looking for a grief counselor actually, Donnie. If anybody … I just interviewed a gentleman yesterday. He's becoming a doctor. He works at a couple of VA’s. He's going to get back to me. If anybody wants to reach out that does grief counseling, we could use some support on that too. My friend in Delaware is not doing too good. He's going through some problems. But yeah. We need a grief counselor. I got two on the line but they’re not sure. We're having an event, June 21st in Jersey, Edison, New Jersey. We’re having a weekend for gold stars we have gotten from Florida, Chicago, coming from all over. So we could use your support. MichaelStrangeFoundation.org. We have PayPal. You can order some shirts and also, our PO Box is on the foundation page. Donnie B.: Awesome. Awesome. Charlie, thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate it. Now, here's how I like to wrap up every show. And I do stump some people with this, Charlie. So stand by for that. If you were going to leave the Champions who listen to this show, 91 countries that tune in every day to hear the stories of the Champions that have been through heaven and hell in their life to figure out what they're going to do and where they're going, if you were going to leave them with a quote, a phrase, a saying, a mantra, something they can take with them on their journey, especially when they're stacked up against it, what's that quote or phrase you would say, “Remember this…”? Charles S.: My one phrase I would say would be, “Easy does it, but do it. Remember the fallen and freedom is not free.” Donnie B.: That's awesome, Charlie. Just freaking beautiful, my friend. Thanks so much for doing this. Keep rocking. Keep being the torch for those gold family members and we're fixing to show up to support you, brother. Appreciate you. Charles S.: Thank you so much, Don. Thank you so much for your service. And thanks for helping us. Donnie B.: Absolutely. Charles S.: God bless, brother. Donnie B.: Man, if that story didn't hit you, wow. Charles, I got to say bud, I'm really grateful for your time coming and sharing your story on the show and everything you guys are doing. If you guys would do me an honor, take a minute and just think about the guys who gave it all so we could enjoy the freedoms that we have. Think about all the guys that are deployed overseas now protecting our freedoms and by God, thank a veteran when you see them. They've been through hell in their own form or fashion and those kind words go quite a long ways and for the veterans, when somebody thanks you, take that, receive that and own that for me, because you deserve it. I know I struggled the longest time when people said, “Thank you for your service.” I found a great phrase that allowed me to continue to embrace it because it's not about them thanking me. It's about how it makes them feel that they can do something for us. So anytime they thank you, just turn around, look at them and say, “It was my honor.” Embrace that. Guys, I hope you come hang out in our Success Champions group on Facebook. Over 600 members and growing strong. It has become a family. It has become networking. It is a bunch of badasses all going forward. We are creating Success Champions on a daily basis and let me tell you, you want to come hang out because as I am a Success Champion, so are you. Just go to Facebook, type in ‘Success Champions’, click on groups and we'll see you there. [Music]

Donnie B.: All right, guys. I'm looking forward to this one. I'm bringing out a new buddy of mine, Brad Milford and dude, he's got a really cool story and I love some of the things that he's doing. So I'm Donnie Boivin. This is Donnie’s Success Champions. Brad, my new friend, tell us your story. [Music] Brad M.: I love that. You’re just like open mic day. Donnie B.: Yeah. All day long. Brad M.: I love it. I have a pretty interesting and fascinating story and I love speaking into it. So I appreciate you having me on. It's an honor to be here and let me just start out like, when I was like seven years old because I'm just a serial entrepreneur. When I was seven years old and I'm kind of a deep guy. So you'll talk me through that, I’m sure. Donnie B.: Yup. Brad M.: When I was seven years old, I came to realize, see, my Mom and my stepfather had an argument and this was one of those arguments that they ended the relationship and I also never knew my father and so when they split, I'll just be honest, I realized I needed attention. My mom was working all the time. So now, she was a single parent, four children. I just needed some attention. I really just wanted to be loved but the truth is, I didn't know how to get that. So I went on a path. I took a path and I became the class clown and I went through that stage and you know, I did all kinds of entrepreneurial things in succession with that. And perhaps, that's what has brought me here today. I went from there. I was that guy who was turning pop bottles and I had three paper routes and I was changing the marquee on the local movie theater. I mean, I did everything I could to generate, you know, to buying gum and selling it for twice the price. Those types of things, I went on to. At 16 and 17, I left home and went on to take a sales path up and down the East Coast. I hit almost all the beaches. Well, not all but a lot of beaches and that was fascinating. Then I went to the Navy. So what I came to find through this is that I was searching for something. I kept searching for something. First, I thought it was attention. Then I thought it was just camaraderie. That's why I went to the military for travel. Then I thought it was culture from around the country. Donnie B.: Wait. I can't let this go by really quick. You know, thank you for being my taxi service. I was a jarhead so … Brad M.: I love that. I love that. I knew it right away when you said that. Donnie B.: Just for our listeners and they know I'm going to do it but you know, I really appreciated being in the Department of the Navy which just happened to be the men's department. I'm sorry, Brad. Keep going. Brad M.: Great. I love it. I love it. Yeah. So I was fascinated by the Navy almost 6 years. I got out just a little bit early, a couple of months early. But it was fascinating. I learned a lot. But I also learned that it wasn't camaraderie that I was searching for and so I came out with a ton of experience. I was a cryptologist. So I studied, they call us ‘spook’. We were always in what’s called a SCIC, special compartmented information center. And they're highly locked up. We were locked up in rooms with no windows and that kind of stuff. But it was tremendous and I did learn a lot about camaraderie but I also learned that that wasn't the thing I was searching for either. Came out of the Navy, in a shortened version of this story, believe it or not, and I fell into building stadiums. So a buddy of mine from the Marines introduced me to building stadiums and I started out as a laborer. But then a year and a half into that, my entrepreneurial mindset, I looked around and said, “Guys, why are we working for a nitwit? We could do this ourselves.” And so we branched off and then two weeks later, we had our first $250,000-contract which was amazing and then we built that business. And then on to another business and a third business in that recreation industry. So playgrounds, tennis courts, basketball courts. Anything you basically have ever seen in a park, I began to become experienced in. And those businesses were awesome. But … there's always a ‘but’ in these stories, right? Donnie B.: There almost always is. Brad M.: But through this search, I still wasn't finding what I was looking for. So it came to over 14 ½, 15 years in that business which was amazing. It was extremely lucrative. It paid me very well. I made tons of money but I'm not the metaphorical guy that came to the top of the mountain, looked over and said, “Are you freaking kidding me? Is this all there is?” I mean, there's fun stories and I love telling stories. I mean, I had come from the military and I had come from a relatively poor family. I'm sure there's worse off but we didn't have a whole lot. A single parent, four children, we didn’t have a whole ton of money. I came from that poverty mindset. So I had a lot of stuff going on. I went from that to the military, heavy drinking environment, to construction, heavy drinking environment, needless to say, I had a relationship with alcohol. Not an alcoholic but I noticed around my circles that that's what everybody was doing. And I'm going to just be frank here, what I came to find when I came to the top of that mountain was, I was surrounded by people. So it looked to all my friends like I had an amazing life. I was making a ton of money. I had people around me all the time. I had a team of 22 people who work for me. They were all amazing. But I was so empty inside. When we go to the bars, there would be 40 people lined up and we'd all be “having fun”, but it wasn't fun. That wasn't real friendship and frankly, I was surrounded by people but I was empty and alone. So I knew something was wrong. I definitely knew something was wrong and I know that’s deep stuff but it's real and that's what I pride myself on is the reality of this. I mean, there's a lot of people in life who appear to us at times to be really happy or to have the greatest of this or the greatest of that. But they're carrying this thing inside them that does not represent that at all. So I went on a search, a different search to figure out what that was. So that was about 12 years ago and I gave up that company. So I was making a ton of money. I literally gave up all of that. Six-figure plus, the money is not important. But you know, high amount of income. I had no idea what I was going to do but I knew one thing. My son was just reaching his high school years. So those two things kind of came together at the same time and I decided to just make a massive shift. I said, “I'm not going to, 1, waste the time with him because I have one child.” So I'm not going to waste the time with him. I'm going to go home, be there with him through his high school and college years and I'm going to figure this thing out, whatever this thing is. So I did that very thing. So I went from high six figures to zero. Absolute zero and that was a struggle. So talk about overcoming some adversity. I knew there were a number of things going on. One, my character was and you said it was okay to swear so I love that. My character was shit. The one good thing that I had done along the way was, I had always listened to some kind of audiobook because I was traveling. Building stadiums, building playgrounds, tennis courts. You're traveling constantly. So I’m just a road warrior. So I listened to, I'm going back a few ways, so cassette tapes. Donnie B.: Oh, wow. Way back. Brad M.: Probably some listeners that don't know what those are. Donnie B.: Brad, I'm just curious, were dinosaurs really that big? Brad M.: They sure appear that way to me. Donnie B.: All right. Cool. Brad M.: No, that's awesome. So I had some mentoring via audiotape, if you will back at that time. But I had traveled so much. So from the time I was 16 to that time, up to like 12 years ago was consistent travel. In the stadium industry, one day, I was in Reno and the next day I was in, Staten Island, New York. I mean, it was real, heavy travel. So I don't like to waste time. I'm a maximizer. So that was a way that I could continue my education. So I knew based on that foundation, I knew something was seriously wrong. I just, I couldn't put a finger on it. I just couldn't put a finger on it. But I knew it had something to do with character and it had something to do with leadership. What I know now that I didn't know then is I had, yes, I was “successful” but there are levels of success. I've defined those. At least my definition of those. What those levels are, I'm happy to share those with the listeners. But I came to find that my leadership lid, as I said, was capped. So that was a successful business but quite frankly, I couldn't have taken that any higher because I didn't have the capacity to be able to do that. Even having three, you know, I was doing about $7 million for each company which is an incredible feat for a guy with what I’ll say, a piss-poor background. Not bad at all. And I think people can do that. But there are some levels of success and I'd love to share those with your listeners to drop something really practical. I believe the first level is struggle. So I see now, today, looking back, we tend to come through a thing and have a breakthrough and then that gives us the ability to look back through it and see others in that space, if you will. And so struggle is the first and I think people are reaching out because there's so many pieces to the puzzle and that's the first level, struggle. Then the second level is structure. When we begin to build a business, we begin to structure systems, all these things that people talk about, they're not so sexy. But they're real. Once you begin to get to that structure, then it becomes a real company. The third level actually is striving. So here's how I describe striving. When you wake up in the middle of the night and you have these ideas and your mind is just turning like a million miles a minute, that's what I call striving. And so every entrepreneur has had these moments of striving and what happens is, we bounce back and forth between these levels as we're learning. The next level is success. That's when you really, when you start to move through these levels and you really start to produce consistently, predictably, you start to really become successful. But there are levels beyond that too and I don't hear a whole lot of people talking about it. So I'm really passionate about talking about those levels. They’re excellence. That's above success. And then you have what I call, brilliance. There’s mastery and then there's brilliance and then there's genius. And if we look at this as like a tier or a ladder, it gives us a format to know where we are through that process. And I love speaking into those because I've heard a lot of people say, “Wow. I've never heard anything like that before.” And I can see how I'm filtering back and forth through those levels. Donnie B.: Now, this is really, really interesting. I want to talk a little bit about your background, then I want to dive into … no. How about that? We heard your background. I love these levels. Here’s why I love the levels, is I can see myself in those levels and it's not often that I can do that when I talk to people, right? When they hit me with a philosophy that maybe I haven't fully heard before and I can see where I'm at, right? So I went through the struggle because that's how I figured out who I was. I'm in the structure/success side of things right now, right? Because I do have some very cool successes. I do have some very cool wins but I'm building the structure for stability portion of the company, right? And that's really, really where I see it. So I'm curious, is, I'm looking at success and everybody defines it to their own terms, right? I'm looking at success right now by micro-wins and different win levels. Do you put a definition to success? Which I find hard to believe but I'm just curious if you do. And then, how do you go beyond that, right? If that makes sense. Brad M.: I love that. It makes perfect sense and I absolutely love the question. It’s a fantastic question. So I created those structures so that I could label them because I've come through them in different industries. Not just that one industry. So yes, I mean, I do think success is subjective. It’s relative. It's different for everybody. For me though, what I came to find is that, so I said I was on a search, right? Donnie B.: Yeah. Brad M.: I came to find that it wasn't any of those things. That my meaning, so I'm one of those guys who was searching for purpose all my life. “I want to find purpose. I need to find my purpose. I need to find my purpose,” right? How often do we hear those things? Purpose is not out there. It's just not out there. So there's too many people. I'm so passionate about this. There's way too many people and I love Simon Sinek and I think he's convoluted this, I mean, he has a great subject. He's a great leadership teacher. For anybody that has heard of him and he does this great stuff about why, right? And why has been talked about. It’s talked about all over the Internet now. However, I think they convoluted the situation. One, purpose is not out there somewhere. Purpose is inside. And I want to encourage people to actually look inside. It’s not out there. The more you're out there looking for it, you think it's, you want to be this or you have to be that or you're ashamed because you're not good enough. All these things that we carry around, we get really down deep. So I did say I was a deep guy. I tried to warn you. It's not out there. It's inside. And when we realize that, when we come to realize that and we look in, then we begin to grow. That is when I believe that you find true purpose. I mean, that's where you find true success because it's not out there. Those are all just, those are all byproducts of the thoughts that we’re carrying inside. Donnie B.: So this is interesting. I 100% agree with you. Here's my follow-up question then. Brad M.: Mm-hmm. Donnie B.: How do I find what's inside of me? Because for me, I feel like I've discovered it. But I know there's tons, thousands of people that are listening to this right now, going, “Okay, cool. That's cute.” Brad M.: Give me some stuff I could … Donnie B.: Right. Right. Right. You know? Brad M.: I love it. I absolutely love that. Donnie B.: How do I define it? Brad M.: So let me share with you, in the interest of not overpowering the audience or being like a firehose of just straight-up information, I mean, I can go through some practical steps. In fact, I could go through about 12 steps in reinventing yourself. Donnie B.: This isn't AA. Brad M.: I know. I knew that was coming. I have thought about actually making to get eleven steps just because. But the first one, I believe, I think you have to find some type of discontent. Anyone who wants change, they want to reinvent themselves, believe me, I have a PhD in mistakes. And I kid you not. I have made lots and lots and lots of mistakes in my life but I don't regret them. I'm proud of them only because they have brought me to the point of they’re the aggregate of who I am and that is why I'm able to do effectively what it is that I do today. Discontent is a huge, it's like pain. So I believe pain is an indicator of change. Just like wind is an indicator of change in the weather. Like when you're going from cold to hot, you'll get a lot of wind or when it's about to rain, you get a lot of wind. It's an indicator of change. Pain is the same thing and when we look at it that way, if I'm bending my thumb back just to be silly, bending it back, “It hurts. It hurts.” Well, that's telling me, “Hey, you should let your thumb go.” It's just an indicator change. So when we look at that, when we recognize the frustration, the discontent, then we know it's time to change. That's the first thing. Some people don't realize that so they don't go to the next step. They just swirl in that discontent. That's a mindset issue. Donnie B.: Yeah, no. I love that talk just because I often believe, you got to get pissed off to move, right? I'm going to take a stab and say that some portion of you running those companies got beyond some level of beyond discontent and went full-on frustration to mad because you didn't find what you were seeking, if we're going to bring it all full circle. And that's what forced you to leave because I mean, that's how I jumped was, I just got pissed off that I was living other people's dreams and their stories and that's … is that what you're talking about? Brad M.: That’s exactly what I'm talking about. So there's a lot of dynamics involved in that. I mean, there's lots of things that came to culminate into one point. But yes. To keep at least one thing simple here, not too deep. Yes. It was a lot of things. But yes, I was so frustrated on living someone else's life. I knew there was more. I think there's a lot of people out there that want more but they just don't know what more is or how to go about finding it. And that's the point that I had come to. I was living someone else's life, what I was told I needed to be doing. I was carrying all these mental thoughts that were not mine. So that's the point. So the next step, once you become discontent like that, here's some practical things you can do. Pick a target. So I decided there's something wrong with me. I want to reinvent myself. I want to be somebody different than who I am today. And we have the ability as brilliant human beings to be able to do that. And I think it's a great message. Like, your message needs to be heard. You need to know that you have the ability to be anybody you want to be. So the next step, once you just pick a target and you don't need to have your purpose fully defined and you don't have to have your why and all these things that people say because why is nested. That's a whole different conversation. But you just have to pick a target. Pick a general target. “Hey, I want to be this kind of person.” I tried to write out who exactly I wanted to be and I found it hard. I had to literally and here is a great exercise for people. I had to remove myself from me and do it in third person. As in, when he walks in the room, this and then that allowed me to actually describe who I wanted to be. For some reason, I was stuck. I was strolling and trying to describe me in a different light and so I offer that to people. If you happen to be in that headspace, step outside of yourself. Think of some of the people you have modeled. Maybe it's some of the people you admire. Maybe some songs you know of. Maybe some quotes that resonate with you and try to put yourself in that space and just describe what it is that you want. It doesn't have to be perfect. You only need a sense of it. Once you get to that part, you have a starting point. You don't have to be great to get started. You just have to start to be great which is a well-known quote and then begin to create a foundation. So I am a foundation guy. What I didn't know through my path then, I didn't know I was going to be in construction. That's a whole other fascinating story I love to tell in my public speaking. But I was pouring foundations all over the country for these stadiums, specifically, in these multi-million dollar projects. I was pouring foundations. What I didn't know is I was preparing myself for the foundation, the new foundation of when I reinvented myself. I learned that process. I learned how to read blueprints. I learned how to be very systematic and I use that process to reinvent to come to the point to who I am today. Part of what that taught me is and I'll throw out one other great exercise and this is so powerful and I really want to drop some serious value for the listeners. This is a great exercise. When I realized that I wanted to change, I knew I needed a foundation because I had locked that. I had to have something solid, some concrete and it had to be strong and sustainable and I just got so frustrated. I said, “What the hell do I believe? I don't even know what I believe anymore.” And so I decided to remove all my beliefs. I just played a game with myself. For two weeks, I said, “I'm going to remove everything. All my axioms. Everything I've ever been taught. Everything I've ever been told. Everything that's been discussed with me. I'm going to remove them all and I'm going to start fresh.” So I literally played that game. What do I believe? And I came up with a foundation of eight beliefs that were not proposed by someone else. So I have this little formula, SI versus PO. Self-imposed versus proposed by other. So I wrote down all these beliefs that I could come up with. It's a challenging exercise because there’s this like soup of these beliefs that we picked up so readily that we don't often think into. So I wrote them all down and then I narrowed them all down to eight and then I classified them. Were they proposed by others or are they mine? And I got rid of the ones that weren't mine and I made them. I decided what I believe and what I don't believe. It's one of the most powerful exercises I've ever seen anybody do. Donnie B.: That's awesome, man. I mean, here's why I love it. One, very few people have the mental bandwidth to dissect what they've done and turn it into something. So well done for that. Two, I love the fact that you're describing your methodology by sharing what you had to go through to discover it, right? And I love the practical advantage of that. I mean, every time I interview somebody, a lot of times, I look at it from the perspective of how it's ridden with me and my journey. Is what they’re saying, did it play out as part of what I'm going through? And I love it because yours absolutely is and what's interesting is this whole last portion you said, “Is it my beliefs or is it some of the others?” That's a deep thought and that's got to be, I mean, I'm just thinking, if I went through that process, would I be able to pull it off? Would I be able to dissect my own beliefs enough to embrace, did I come up with that or did somebody else feed that idea to me? How did you do that? I mean, how did you really differentiate between the two beliefs? Brad M.: Yeah. It took a lot of filtering. So a lot of journaling, a lot of paragraphing, if you will. I think I just made up a word there. Donnie B.: I love it. I love it. Brad M.: But it took some work. So I threw it on paper and then I narrowed it down and narrowed it down and narrowed it down. And so now, I actually am at the point where I've been doing this for a while now and I go to this area as well. But now, I have eight beliefs and my number one belief number, I can tell you right off the top of my head. I can tell you all of them. But my number one belief is, ‘making the impossible’. I believe that you can make the impossible possible and I see that sounds like a crazy statement. People, I know there's listeners saying, “That doesn't even make sense.” But it does to me because I see it in my coaching and in my clients every day. They believe something is possible when I first meet them and when we first connect and then they're able to actually work through that to the point where, what they thought was impossible becomes possible. So even a simple statement like that can be super, super powerful. So it's really just a distillation process, if you will. So taking what was complicated, and this is what I pride myself in. Taking what is complicated and just distilling it down, distilling it down, distilling it down to make it simple. That in itself is a powerful nugget in business alone. There's a lot of businesspeople. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs. There's a lot of businesspeople who make things more complicated than they need to be, really. So using that distillation process to consolidate things and make them simple is another powerful nugget that I can offer. Donnie B.: No, that's awesome. That's awesome. What's interesting is, you've done a lot of really cool things in your life. Where do you think this is all going to take you? Brad M.: That's a great question. So every influencer, I'm fortunate. I went to seven events last year all over the country. I was down in Miami. I was all over. I was in Miami, Austin and one other country. I went to California and then came back. The best event, I saw an intensity of events. So a spectrum of intensity. Some of them were low intensity. Some were just in the beginning stages. I love supporting people who do these types of things. So I went out of the country just meeting a lot of group owners and different people and influencers. Micro influencers and heavy influencers. The highest intensity by far was Tony Robbins’. That event, UPW is just unbelievable. Maximum intensity. Like, it was, I mean, if you go there and you don’t say, “Wow,” you might be dead. And I saw lower ones. So where I'm going with this is, I'm going on a speaking path. So I am on a speaking path and that helped show me what intensity level I want to be at. So I would say, if you're a speaker, you better have some tennis shoes on because I'm chasing you. Donnie B.: That's awesome. Growing up as a kid, I guarantee you that on that journey, when the teacher looked at you during your years where you were class clowning and everything else, and she said or he said, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” At what portion did you jump out of your chair, run around the classroom and scream, “I'm going to be this big celebrity on stage inspiring people to go for it.”? Brad M.: At no point. This has definitely been a succession of incremental micro-wins and losses. It is definitely … so I’m a pattern guy. Being a cryptologist in the Navy helped me tremendously. But I think that's a natural talent anyway. Seeing patterns deeply and I'm a why guy. So I like to really figure out the engineering behind something. I need to know why. That's why I wasn't engaged in school because I would ask, “Well, why is zero, zero? I don't understand that.” And the teacher would basically say, “Well, that's the way it is.” And that didn't work for me. They wanted me to do that rote memorization and that style of learning doesn't work for me because I need to take something to a deep level. But when I'm able to do that at my own pace, then I’m able to recraft it into something that can be super powerful for people so that they can understand it in a different way. For those types of people that that resonates with, I'm sort of probably a few years ago, “Yes! I get that.” But you have to really learn at a deep level to be able to do that. So I think that I'm going to continue to use that in order to serve people in the best way. For me, that's where I found my meaning. That meaning is inside me. I want to serve people. I want to impact people. I have a goal to impact a billion lives. So I want to be able to truly transform a billion lives. Now, that sounds like a lot and that might sound like a crazy statement. But if we deep dive it a little bit, it's not. If I impact one person who impacts another person, who impacts another person or if I impact one to many on a speaking stage, then maybe even 20 or 30 or potentially, maybe a thousand. And they then too impact people. Then a billion really isn't that much. Donnie B.: So here's what keeps going through my mind. I love this whole theory … Brad M.: This guy's nuts. Donnie B.: Well, that’s true. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that when I first saw you. What's interesting to me is, I think a lot of people are gunning for Tony Robbins, right? A lot of people want that level of stage. Brad M.: Mm-hmm. Donnie B.: I think you actually will probably pull it off from a process standpoint. I think you just got that in you. But here's what I'm curious about. We're having a conversation here and you're pretty mellow, down-to-earth guy. Brad M.: Mm-hmm. Donnie B.: You grew up in a blue-collar lifestyle, you go through the Navy which is blue collar still. You get into construction. Still blue collar even though you held the top title, if you will. Now, a speaker. How the hell is this guy who grew up in a blue-collar world that is kind of mellow, wanting to get that amped up and fired up when on stage? Brad M.: It’s a great question. In fact, I think that's the first time I've ever been asked that question in that style. So I love that. I commend you and celebrate you for that. It's a great question. I'm just amped up about serving people in a massive way. I am so passionate about this because I didn't have a mentor growing up. The only thing that I had available to me at that time was what I used, the audiobooks. See how we come full circle? So I'm going back pre-Internet. Yes, I remember the rotary phones and the listeners that never even heard of or maybe seen a picture of. And I don't regret that. It's brought me to who I am today. It's actually given me an ability and a passion. See, things were a little bit different back then. The Internet's a beautiful thing and I think, sometimes, we miss what's right there in front of us. It's like the fish doesn't see the water, right? We may be missing the fact that with the Internet, we have the ability to connect with anybody with this phone thing that we hold in our hand. Anybody. Billions of people across the planet which is amazing. I didn't have that ability when I was young. And so I'm super passionate about making sure that everybody that wants a mentor or a coach, I mean, a coach is just like, it's a term that people use. They take this, and forgive me, but I am really passionate about this. They take this six-week course and they call themselves a coach. I saw something on the Internet the other day about, take this course for $25. What? And then you're going to try to coach me? I'm sorry. And I don't mean this from ego. I really don't. I mean it with the utmost humility but you're not going to have a whole lot to offer me in my walk, in the walk that I've had. Donnie B.: Well, come on, man. There are 21-year-old life coaches. Brad M.: That's what I'm talking about. That's a great path. Donnie B.: You know what, to that point, because I've been zinged on podcasts for saying this and one gal hit me with a zing that I actually listened to. She's like, “Look it doesn't mean that 21-year-old cannot coach a 16 and 17-year-old about the next stage of their life.” So even if you are a $25-course coach, that whole thought process is funny to me. If you are, make sure you're teaching people to your level. Don't overstate where you can get them and what you can do for them. If you've never run a million-dollar business, don't tell them you're going to get them to a million-dollar business. You don't know how. Brad M.: There's way, way, way too much of that. I still give them credit. They're doing their thing and I give them credit for actually taking action but authenticity is huge. So when I began to reinvent myself, I began to realize all these things. Authenticity, character. I don't think character is talked about enough. Integrity sometimes is talked about in a way that doesn't even describe integrity. These things, deep diving these words, they're just words but they have meanings and stories behind them. And so I'm fascinated nowadays about deep diving these words for people, helping them discover who they really truly are. Hence, the name of my company, Build Brilliance. It's really pulling the brilliance from inside you. We are all brilliant in our own unique right. Here's a fascinating thing. My company is built on the brilliant diamond and we don't just use that as a metaphor for what I do. Inside a diamond, there's these scratches. Inside. Deep inside. There's these scratches and these little faults. They’re in every diamond. They're called inclusions. And if we would look at our life like that, yes, we're flawed in certain ways. We have these little different uniquenesses. I may have just created another word. Donnie B.: Yeah, that's twice today. Keep it up, Brad. Brad M.: These uniquenesses. But they're just included in us. They’re just a part of our life. When we realize this and we begin to really discover who we are, then we stop thinking about what other … we stop looking for validation from other people. We don't need it anymore. We just become ourselves authentically and we just show up aligned and that's not a real sexy word. But it's a powerful one. When we're fully aligned, when we're the same person at work and at home and at church and all these things that we do at the basketball game and the football game, when we're the same person in all those areas, you’re unfuck-with-able. Donnie B.: That’s another word. Brad M.: Seriously. Yeah, people can't touch you. You don't have to worry about … there’s too much worry and doubt and fear in the world. It's like an epidemic. Donnie B.: Yeah. I got to tell you, it was empowering for me because I was the guy growing up in the sales world that the best sales guys were driving the nice cars and wearing the big suits and walking a certain way and talking a certain way. So I was a replica of what these guys were and because I wanted to get where they were and what’s interesting is when I stopped trying to be those guys, my career took the hell off. Interestingly enough, same thing happened when I started my business. I was trying to be all these other people in name and everything else and when I said, “Screw it. Just be me,” my company took off. So it's very becoming that when you step into who you are, man, it's amazing about who you become. Brad M.: Yeah. I'm so 100% with you. Coming full circle, that's where my search, well, I don't want to say ended because I haven't died. In fact, my life is just beginning. But coming full circle for the journey, that is what happened. When I stopped chasing those things, what I was told I was supposed to be, I’m supposed to have a big house and a big car. That's how I show my success. I'm with you. When I let all that go, that's when I started to really find my meaning. And meaning, when we’re driven by meaning, it's so powerful. So that is why I want to chase the heels of those types of people because I think they've discovered that too. The greats, they all knew that. Jim Rohn. I mean, Jim Rohn was a mentor to Tony Robbins. Donnie B.: Yes, he was. Brad M.: John Maxwell. These people. I think they discovered that and that's when their levels of success really started to propel. So I'm with you 100%. Donnie B.: That’s awesome. So what do we see in the nearest future? I mean, for you, what's happening next? Brad M.: Yeah. I love it. So I have a joint venture with a couple of other people and we're starting what's called, UNleashed and UNlimited. So it's a Tony Robbins . Of course, this is a journey. So you don’t have to worry yet, Tony. Just kidding. I’m just having a little fun with that. I mean, what he does is amazing and what we'll do is a slight variation of that. But it's similar. We really want to help people become unleashed and unlimited. I have the utmost belief that no matter what you want to do, then it is possible. Now, there's some probability in that too. I mean, there's some chemical and stuff. I'm not going to be a running back. Let's face it. Donnie B.: My buddy’s running joke is, he's like, “I'm 6’4, 300 pounds. I'm never going to be a jockey. I don't care how many times I tell myself I can be a jockey.” And my response is, “There's Clydesdales.” Brad M.: That’s true. But within those, understanding those constraints, there are always some constraints. But the constraints in our mind and the actual constraints, there's a gap between those oftentimes with most people. So we want to be able to help people through some of those and we really want to truly just get them unleashed which I’m just so passionate about. When somebody becomes fully unleashed, there's nothing stopping them. I have this statement, “I'm going to get there or you're going to find me dead and pointed in that direction.” That's how strongly, that's how committed I am to this path. When you're that passionate about anything and we have these inclusions. We have these different brilliances. When you figure out what that thing is, there's nothing stopping you. So UNleashed and UNlimited. That's what's coming around the corner now. Donnie B.: That's awesome. That's awesome. Brad, how do people get in touch with you? If they want to reach out, they want to find out more about Unleashed and UNlimited and I love that name, they want to send you an e-mail, carrier pigeon, maybe it's the old rotary phones that you got to dial, I mean, how do people get in touch with you? Brad M.: Yeah. That's a great question. Carrier pigeon would be extremely effective, I would say because that would definitely get my attention. Donnie B.: Yeah. I just got to admit, if I walk out my front door of my farm and there's a pigeon sitting on the thing with a notarized leg, I'm going to read that message. Brad M.: If you really want to get an influencer’s attention, send them a carrier pigeon. That’s a great nugget. I love it. Now, Facebook is probably the best. I mean, I'm on LinkedIn as well, Facebook, I'm on Instagram. But I do mostly Facebook. I have a Facebook group called Entrepreneur Escalation. However, and you're going to get a preview because nobody knows this yet. That will be changing to, UNleashed and UNlimited. Donnie B.: Nice. Nice. Brad M.: So that's the best way. Just Facebook. Build Brilliance is my business page and just look me up, Brad A. Milford. Donnie B.: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, my brother, I got to tell you, it's been a lot of fun having you on the show and hearing your journey and what you went through. Thank you. I can't talk today, obviously. Here's how I like to wrap up every show and I do stump some people. So get ready. Brad M.: Bring it. Donnie B.: If you were going to leave the Champions that listen to this show, entrepreneurs from all over the world, veterans, business-owners, all people that are trying to find their own success on their journey, if you were to leave them with a quote, a phrase, a saying, a mantra, a motto, something they can take with them on their journey especially when they're stacked up against it and going through it, what would be that quote you would say, “Remember this,”? Brad M.: Who you are is greater than where you are. Donnie B.: That is a powerful statement. Who you are is greater than where you are. I love that. Brad M.: I think during adversity and we all hit it, if you really reach deep inside and you say to yourself, “Who I am is greater than where I am.” Donnie B.: I love that. I love that. I love that. Brad, brother, thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate being a part of your journey, hearing your story. Thanks again for coming on the show. Brad M.: Likewise. Thank you. It's been an honor. [Music] Donnie B.: There you have it, Brad Milford. Man, what a cool dude. I probably say it too often. But I'm telling you, the people that come on this show, I just enjoy because they become friends. They become colleagues. They just become people that I look up to and have great conversations with and I love, love the relationships I’ve formed because of this show, man. I hope you enjoyed this one, guys. Do me a favor, make sure you go check out Point Blank Safety Services. Find them at www.pointblanksafety.com and then jump over to Facebook. Come hang out with us. I am telling you, if you want to unleash your inner badass and really go for it, come hang out with us in Success Champions. Just go to Facebook, type in, Success Champions in that search box, click on groups and you'll find us there. https://www.facebook.com/groups/SuccessChampion And then guys, like and share and review this show. It means everything to me. And when you do that, it is literally like you walked up, gave me a high-five, gave me a hug, said hello, told me you're a badass and it means everything to me. Guys, seriously, go blow some shit up. Go big and loud and light this damn world on fire. We'll catch you next time.

Donnie B.: All right. So a lot of you guys have been asking for this one and I'm looking forward to bringing Landon on. This is going to be a fun time. You should see his eyeballs right now. I got them all wigged out. But this is going to be a fun time. I'm bringing on the Sales Gorilla himself, Mr. Landon Porter and I think we're just going to have a killer time. I’m going to make fun of him a lot because I dig his hairdo and everything. So I think we're just going to have a fun time with that. I'm Donnie Boivin. This is Donnie’s Success Champions. Landon, welcome to the show, my brother. Tell us your story. [Music] Donnie B.: Hey, guys! Before we get rolling with Landon, I wanted to jump in here and say thank you to Point Blank Safety Services and Blue Family Fund. They've been with us for almost the entirety of 200 episodes on this show and they've just been amazing and their message and what they do in protection of our freeways, our buildings and I'm honored that a company that takes care of our police officers and their families has been such a gem in supporting our messages, this show and everything they do and what they're doing for police officers and their families is truly a beautiful thing. I mean, we all know the stories that teachers, police officers, military, they're all underpaid for what they're sacrificing with their lives. And I love the fact that Stacey and Michael found a cool way to get them additional income so they could take care of their families. It's really a beautiful thing. So if you’re looking for security services or you're looking for highway protection and patrol, those type of things, man, do me a favor and reach out to Point Blank Safety Services and you can find them at PointBlankSafetyServices.com and tell them Donnie sent you, you heard it on the Success Champions podcast. But man, what an amazing company, amazing people and guys, do me a favor, follow them on social, follow all their stuff because I couldn't do this show without them. Here comes Landon. Landon P.: Thanks for having me on, man. So back in late October of 1977, right? My story is not the typical sales guy or finally made it big in business story or whatever. I learned early on that I was really good at a couple of things but I didn't really like doing them for a paycheck and I ended up in sales in my early to mid-20s and really out of necessity and I figured out pretty quick that the way sales is done doesn't feel very good. Is it possible? Sure. Is it easy to learn and if you put enough practice in, get good at it? Absolutely. But it didn't feel good. And even though I got really good at doing it the way that it doesn't feel good, I eventually figured out that I just don't like everybody and that eventually turned into, if I don't like everybody, there's something in there that causes some people to want to say yes to me more and other people to say no to me more. And I went about figuring out what that was and it turned out that relationships, right? This thing that us salespeople have figured out how to engineer, this relationship thing, if you understand the parameters of how it works naturally for you and who you want to deal with and you just leverage that, it's so much easier and it makes so much more sense and I'll finish that all by saying this, that's from the stance of a sales guy who was tasked with bringing on new clients, but the money wasn't in bringing that client on. The money was in dealing with that client long-term because all the money was long tail. So I had to bring on clients and then I had to deal with all their bullshit and like, I don't really want to do that. So long story short, after about 15 years in sales, I decided, “Okay, cool. I want to go do something else.” My wife and I went into a parenting thing and in that process, I was asking some people about running ads and they were asking me about, “Okay, cool. What about the sales thing?” And within a week, about five people were like, “Dude, you need to fucking teach this.” And I was like, “Dude, no the fuck, I don't.” Here we are almost two years later and our take on sales is it's all relational. Welcome to the relationship economy. People are tired of being sold to and sold at and it's a whole lot easier for business-owners and people that have a cool thing to sell to just figure out who you want to deal with and just be open and honest with the public like, “Hey, I'm a little off. I cuss. I'm weird and if you don't like that, it's okay. Go away.” So that's kind of the, that’s me! Donnie B.: I love it. I love it. So here's what's interesting about this, man, is I grew up in the sales game as well. And to me, sales success early on was, you had to talk a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way and I got really, really good at being that asshole. And here's the one difference in my story and yours is, I get really good at the transactional sale, right? I could get the deal done. This whole concept that you talked about, it's a long tail, that was not me. And my sales cycles were so wicked because you get the deal done, you’re rocking it out and then you're like, “Okay, I'm on to the next one.” And I’d pass it off to a company. So my CEO, they always encouraged me, like, “Get it done. We'll take care of it. We’ll take care of it.” Well, they weren't taking care of it. So my cycles would be way high, then all of a sudden, you’d bottom out because you had nothing sitting behind it because you were just killing deals. And it wasn't for me until I stopped being that egotistical asshole that didn't give a shit about people, who’s just trying to get the deal done that I found relationship sales. So this is just an interesting paradigm to find somebody else that kind of went the same path that I did. So here's the thing, I knew part of that story, right? Because I saw a video of something of yours somewhere and I knew part of that story. Didn't you sell like in an almost pit-like setting like it was more boiler room type thing or something along those lines? Landon P.: Yeah. And actually, you bring up a good point about the whole relationship thing and cycles up and down and I will tell that story in one second. I want to preface this for everybody that's listening. There are salespeople and if you're listening to this podcast because you're a salesperson and you're actually, your job is to go sell a thing for somebody else, do it however the hell you want to do it. I'm not here to tell anybody how to do something. What I do is I take business-owners that aren't really salespeople and I un-brainwash them from all the shit they think they have to do to get the sale done. So with all that said, yeah, let's actually talk about that. In right about the time the crash happened, I went to work for a company called COFAS and we sold commercial collections all the way through to commercial credit. And this is like business to business asset management protection and I was literally hired as a sales monkey, right? There was 30 or 40 of us on the sales floor, full-on boiler room style. You said whatever you had to, to get the deal done and it was such a turn and burn. Literally, it was like this. Every week, they hired seven people. At the end of 30 days, there was one of those seven people left. At the end of the next 30 days, there was one of those seven people left. I was in that industry almost a decade and there was one guy that I was hired with, same training class, we were hired on the same week. The next closest person that we knew in the three companies that the two of us worked for in ten years had been in the industry for like 3 years. It's just one of those industries that people can't hack it. I kind of came in and this is what I wanted to say about the relationship thing. I kind of came into that. There's an interesting story about it. I had a client that was household. They were Fortune like 10, Fortune 12. They were big. Everybody on the planet has something in their dwelling. If you live in a hut with a dirt floor, you've got their products and I had a 45-minute conversation after having them for like ten months and this guy is just m-effing me for 45 minutes, screaming and yelling and pissed because the idiot who sold them told them something that we could do that was just absolutely against company policy and it was a little itty-bitty thing and it took like eight months for it to happen and I had to tell him, “No, we're not doing that. We won't do that.” And I walk out of my office, I walked down to my buddy, Billy. He was the guy that was, we were hired together and I opened the door and he looked at me, he's like, “Feeling awfully gorilla today.” And I said, “Yeah. Because these stupid fucking monkeys will say anything they need to, to get the deal done.” That's great for getting money on the frontend but if you're trying to get money on the backend and build a sales business, it doesn't work. Donnie B.: No, I love it. I love it. I love it. So talk to me about this a little bit because you said a phrase that I haven't heard thrown around the sales game. Because typically, when you get these sales gurus through, right? They’re, “Let me bath you with my bullshit. Let me tell you how awesome I am, the millions of dollars I sold and I flew into my Learjet with my slicked back ass hair and let me 10x your ass,” right? That's the shit that gets thrown around on a regular basis. You just said something that's powerful as hell when you said, “I try and take business-owner and reprogram from all the bullshit that they've been programed and all the stuff that they've learned.” Dude, talk to me. I mean, because that's not an approach you see in the marketplace at all because you're supposed to be the grease ball. You're supposed to kill it. You're supposed to be the transactional guy and we all know in this day and age, if you do that, you're going to lose but they're teaching it still anyways. How do you take a business-owner and teach them to just be their damn self and grow a business? Landon P.: Well, your listeners can't see it. But this image behind me actually used to be a poster with our logo on it. One of my early catchphrases was, “Just be your weird-ass self.” Let's really break this down for a second. Relationships happen two ways and I was that asshole, right? Ten years ago, I was that asshole with the car and the money and the … fuck all that. We can learn how to psychologically trigger people to make decisions. Whether it's in their best interest or not and if that's you and you take somebody and you just make them understand that what you have is what they need to fix their problem, then fantastic. Go do that. I don't want anything to do with that. Us salespeople for 30 to 60 years have learned how to do that so well that we can make people do shit, right? Advertising, marketing, sales. It's just the way it has gone. Society as a whole is sick of it. The way that that works naturally, there's a reason that we in the wild are naturally attracted to some people and naturally repelled by others. Well, if you take that stance of, we're all weird and it's okay and some people just aren't going to like me and that's kind of fine because there's some people I don't naturally like and you just go about it that way. It makes it really easy to go, “That's a fit. That's a fit. I don't think so. That's a fit. That's a fit. Nope.” Right? And here's why. Business-owners that are really good at a thing that they do, they really don't want to learn how to like, what's the process? How do I enter the conversation? How do I then turn it into qualifying? Just make it easier on yourself, right? There's an easier process to that. And there are a lot of good people out there that do the sales training the right way, right? The Sandler Training for an example. In a lot of ways, they do it the right way. Donnie B.: Are you ready to laugh your ass off? Landon P.: Yeah. Donnie B.: For the last seven years, before I started my company, I was a national trainer for Sandler Sales. Landon P.: See what I'm saying? So I don't want to work with salespeople because I don't want to teach people how to sell. I want to teach people how to be their weird-ass selves, give them permission to just do that, figure out who it is that they actually really want to work with and then craft a very simple message and offer that gets those people to take notice and go, “Oh, that person might be for me. I should have a conversation with them.” So much easier than learning how to sell. Donnie B.: Yeah. But you're asking people to reprogram themselves. And here's what I mean is, most people have gone through society and been told, you act a certain way, you carry yourself a certain way, you dress a certain way. I mean, for instance, I was at a speaking engagement about a month back and this guy, when he walked up to me, he had a curled mustache tie clasp, he had a curled mustache cufflinks, curled mustaches all over his tie itself and I said, “What's up with all the curled mustaches?” And he goes, “Oh, you can't see it right now. I got it tucked underneath.” “What do you mean you got it tucked underneath?” He goes, “Well, I don't think people would see me as very professional if they actually saw.” And he worked in banking or something, right? Where you got to wear the suit and everything. And he goes, “I don't think people would respect me very much if they saw my curled mustache.” He turned around, literally pulled out his mustache. It must have been curled up into his mouth which is just disgusting to think about and we both got beards and he pulls it out and he actually combs it into these big-ass curl. I mean, huge curled mustache. And I'm like, “Dude, that is you. Let those things fly.” And then two seconds later, another guy wearing a suit walked in the room and you saw him turn around and immediately tuck it back under. Right? So what you're trying to do is actively reprogram people to go against what they've been taught by society for a long time. That's a tall task, brother. Landon P.: Well, what's interesting is society is going that way. Like, I didn't coin this term, but I've been saying it a lot the last couple of years. “Welcome to the relationship economy.” Go look at any of the people that have kind of been on the forefront of kind of telling all of us marketers where shit’s headed that have been doing it for a while, that have been proved accurate, they're all talking about, it's the relationship. Even some of the sales monkeys that I'm sure both you and I get their emails, they're all like, “If you pay me,” when they're in the conversation with but then they're telling the market, “No, it's all about relationships.” Right? Here's the bottom line. If you're being anything other than who you actually are, you've got a mask on. And our BS meters are so sensitive that people can smell that from a mile away. Just be yourself. Yeah, it's a tall order. But here's the deal, that for me weeds out all of the people that are just bullshit artists and can't even tell themselves the truth. Like, look, I've got a crazy head of hair. I've got this giant beard. I don't wear suits. I've got gorillas in all my stuff. I cuss. I am who I am and if you don't like it, that's fine. Unless you're elderly or somebody else's kids, I'm going to be exactly who I am the way I am and if you like that, fantastic. Stick around. And if you don't, go away. And my take is, everybody should be that way. Donnie B.: Well, and I love that aspect of the elderly and kids. It's still you. It's just, you're respectful at that moment, right? Landon P.: Right. Mm-hmm. Yup. To put it in context, I'm not going to drop f-bombs in front of my grandmother's or my buddy’s kids. Donnie B.: Right. Well, I will. But most of my buddies, they know me. Landon P.: They know better. Donnie B.: I’ll walk into a room and I'm usually that guy that gets a, let me tell you about Donnie before he gets there, right? Landon P.: That's awesome. Donnie B.: A lot of people don't know what their real self is because you go to work or business or whatever else and you're one person wearing that mask and then you come home and you're somebody else. I know that was a lot of my journey because I was always trying to be somebody I was not all the way through it and really, it took me opening my own company before I really realized that I was doing it because I didn't realize I was doing it living that 8:00 to 5:00 lifestyle versus running a business. Outside of doing the crazy thing that I did and jumped out and started my own company, how does somebody actually understand what their real self is? Because, man, I understand you’re going after business-owners. There's a huge market of salespeople that are doing this, right? And they're selling shit they don't even believe in. But it's the job they took that's in front of them which was, once again, a lot of my career. You don't choose a path. You just happened that, “Oh, I'm here. Okay, I'll sell this.” How do people discover who the hell they actually are? Landon P.: It's an ongoing process and really, for most, I would say, most people, it's a never-ending process. It's all about self-awareness. And here's my thing. Like, this is the epitome of everything I stand for. I'm not here to tell anybody what they should do and I'm not here to convince anybody of anything. I am happy with the people that go, “You know, the thing that he just said made a whole lot of sense and I'm not sure quite how to do it. But that's interesting.” And they stick around. It's the whole idea of, you can lead somebody to water. But if you try and stick their head in the bucket, you're just going to drown them, right? We're all to an extent becoming a little bit more aware of who we are and what life is like. This also weeds out a lot of the younger people. Like, don't take offense to this. If you're 22 and like all full of bravado and standing in front of a Bentley for your picture that everybody knows you don't own, that's fantastic. You've got your own path to go through. My take on it is, I'm not here to like forcibly change the way sales is done. I'm here to offer another way to the people that go, “Oh, that actually kind of makes sense.” And we do it through a podcast and a group and all of that stuff. So our message is getting out there and you'd be surprised how many people go, “Man, I don't even know if I can say this publicly but like, what you said on that, blah-blah-blah, like, oh my God. I didn't think that was like permissible.” Donnie B.: Right. Now, I love it because I call it letting your hair down. Landon P.: Yeah Donnie B.: And it's so funny that luckily, there's been a couple of guys that are out there that have cleared the path, if you will. I mean, you take somebody like Gary V, then his freaking foul-mouthed talking. You don’t have to agree with his philosophy but he made cussing mainstream before guys like Andrew Dice Clay and Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor, prior to him but Gary's like the first one that brought it into the scene that it is our culture because you're at home, you cuss like a freaking sailor, you're hanging out with your buddies and then you go into the business mode and you become robot boy or whatever. My parents give me hell still about cursing. My nieces will come up to me every once in a while and they’re like, “Why do you cuss so much?” I'm like, “Honey, you should know by now. That's just how I fucking talk.” There was one time and my niece had some friends over and she comes running up to me and she goes, “I need a favor.” I said, “Okay. What's the favor?” She goes, “Will you not cuss? They’re from church.” I’m like, “All right. Since you asked, I’m in.” But there's this whole thought process of being yourself and watching the world just open up and see what happens. But even so, I mean, okay, be yourself. Cool. How do you find the other people that are going to vibe with that, with you? I know how I think about it. But I have a feeling you're going to have say exactly what's going through my head but say it anyways. Landon P.: Well, it's simply the matter of putting yourself out there and like, Gary V's on this kick about a hundred pieces of content and to an extent, I agree with him from the perspective of, right now, it's all real estate. Like in the late 1800s, you could buy up New York, right? Fantastic! There are people that need to build a long-term brand doing that. But you can do that just by doing that with people that you're already talking to and here's the thing. It all comes down to this. I believe that relationships are the most important thing on the planet and the relationship you have with yourself is the most important, right? And I'm a little too woo for some people and I'm not woo enough for other people and that's fantastic. But what I think about is, if I lay down at night and I'm happy with myself and what I do and what I did and how I do things, that's the payment, right? So to me, for me, that's the highest level of achievement for myself. Beyond money, beyond all of that. Even beyond the relationships that I have with other people. It's the relationship that I have with myself and when you start doing that, you notice pretty quickly. Some people just escape your world and other people start paying more attention and when other people are like, “Wow!” And they don't even do that out loud usually but they start bringing other people to you and they start bringing other people to you and some people go, “I like this. I like this. Not for me.” And other people go, “Not even close.” And other people go, “Holy shit. This is exactly what I'm looking for.” And if you're a salesperson, if you're a business-owner, your job is to effectively build a book of sales clients who buy more stuff from you and you can do it the hard way by trying to talk to everybody and be a salesperson or you can identify the people you actually like to be around and just be yourself. Donnie B.: I love this. So I had a guy come up to me not long ago and I try and get everybody into podcasting, right? That's just my thing. I think everybody should flip and start a podcast. It is just such an inexpensive, low-hanging fruit to get so much massive attention, exposure and it's the best networking tool on the face of the Earth. And this guy, after one of my speeches and I tell everybody to get into podcasting, he walked up to me and he said, “I've got the most boring job in the world.” I said, “Okay. What do you do?” He goes, “I run an HR consulting business and nobody in the world gives a shit about HR consulting.” I said, “Okay, good. We agree on that.” And he goes, “What the hell would I start a podcast on if I were going to start a podcast?” I said, “Okay, cool. What did you geek out on as a kid? What was that thing that as a kid, you just totally did?” And looked at me and his eyes lit up and he goes, “Dude, I raced motorcycles.” I said, “Oh, tell me about motorcycles.” He’s like, “We built them from the ground up. I raced them. We did all.” And this dude goes on this whole almost monologue, diatribe of motorcycle races. And I'm like, “Why the hell wouldn't you start a motorcycle podcast?” “Because I run an HR consulting business. Why would I do that?” I said, “Why wouldn't you? Who's easier to have a sales conversation with than somebody you can absolutely geek out over something on and talk to for hours about motorcycle? And oh, by the way, I happen to do this HR whatever on the side, right?” If you go get in your world of whatever you geek out on, you're going to find other people that geek out on your stuff and I think that's what you're saying. Landon P.: I even have a term for it. It’s your Genius Zone. Donnie B.: I love it. Landon P.: Right? So there's a lot of people that do something similar to what they really love. Web designers, right? This is a perfect example. A lot of web designers really love doing the aspect of like, visually creating the most amazing-looking website. But all the other shit that they have to do for their clients, they’re like, “I don't really like it,” or “I'm not even that good at it,” or whatever. That thing is their Genius Zone. But most people, myself included for a long time, we do shit that we think we're good at, we think we're supposed to do, somebody told us that we needed to do this. We spent too much time getting a skillset that we can't not do it. But there's this other thing that I am so in love with. That's our Genius Zone and really, what happiness, here's a little insight for everybody listening to this. Here's what I found in my 40 almost 2 years. What causes happiness is simply spending your day doing whatever the hell you want. If you can spend your time doing what it is that you enjoy doing, that's happiness. Genius Zone. Donnie B.: I love it. I love it. I love it. And it's the truth. I mean, you look at a lot of business-owners and the phrase, they’re the president, chief bottle washer, trash-taker-out dude and it's because that's what they know. That's the business they’ve built and they haven't figured out how to either outsource some of that other stuff or get some of those things off their plate but this whole Genius Zone, that really, really got me hung up for a second because how does somebody just embrace that Genius Zone and not have to take on all the other stuff? Landon P.: Two things. One, many people will never take the step to go, “I really wish I could just spend my time doing that.” Most people will, right? Golden handcuffs. The people that are in their own business that are doing nine different jobs, they have their own bottlenecks, right? They've created their own glass ceiling. Most of us are only good at a couple different aspects of what we do, right? I don't know about you. You've got your own podcast. I do my own podcast. I don't do the editing. I don't do the … right? I don't do any of those things that I'm not good at, right? Well, if you own a business and you spend your time focused on your Genius Zone, the thing that you do, guess what? You get to work with higher quality clients who are higher value for you. You're happier doing it. Generally, you work with fewer of them and make way more money. And if you go that route, you can get other people who their Genius Zone is the shit you don't like to do and now, you can actually have a real business. Donnie B.: I love this. I had a … his name’s going to escape me. But I had a gentleman recently on the show and he has created the hotels.com of outsourcing. Landon P.: Wow. Donnie B.: So you can go to his website and whatever you need an outsource for, you can go through and he brokers the services, okay? He told me flat out. He's like, “Look, I don't care what business you're in. You can go get a COO for your business for $1,500 to $2,000 a month.” Which means, if you're the face of the company, outspoken guy and you suck at operations, you can literally pick up a COO. Now, they're going to be overseas, they’re going to be in another company, they're going to do everything virtually but a COO in this day and age will cost you between $120,000 and $150,000 depending on what kind of business you have and you can get one for less than $2,400 a year to take all that crap off your plate that you don't want to do and turn your business into a functional business. So you can go spend time in your Zone of Genius or a flipside of it, you can go find the other person who wants to be the face of the company, who wants that brand out there and let you be the operational Zone of Genius, the things that you geek out on for about the same price. There's no reason that your business should be functioning in any way that is not allowing you to step in and do what you love to do. This is so awesome. This is so awesome. Landon P.: Yeah. Since you’ve brought his name up a couple of times, Gary V., I'm a fan. I'm not a fanboy. I don't model everything in my world around Gary but I think a lot of what he says is truth and I think he's got a lot of real-life experience that has proven that he has an idea of what he's talking about. And it's been a while since I've heard him say this but there's nothing wrong with being the number two or the number three or the number four and most people like, “Let's face it, right? If there's 19 positions in a company, not everybody on the planet’s a number one.” Well, I think a lot of people take that the wrong way, right? That number one position and the way he brings it up is, “Well, everybody thinks it's the owner. It’s the CEO. It's the entrepreneur. Oh my God.” Cool. Well, if you like playing with numbers and that's your love language and you're a freaking accountant, then you're number one at that regardless of what you do or who you do it for and I don't think a lot of people recognize this. There's a lot of things. You and I both own a business. There's a lot of things that need to be done. And I tell you what, man, 92% of it, I can't stand doing. Donnie B.: You and me both. Landon P.: So why spend any of my time doing that shit that I don't like and for you, right? Donnie B.: Yup. The only thing I had to throw out when I bring up Gary V. is I love a lot of his philosophies. The one philosophy I hate is the grind, the 18-hour days, right? That works for Gary, right? The other thing is he says, he's going to buy the jets. That works for Gary. Most type of people can't wrap their head around working that hard. Not even that hard but that many hours. Two, people can't wrap their head around a goal that large. They already are setting themselves up for disappointment and they already believe they can't accomplish it. So they're never going to go after it. So go ahead. Landon P.: I just want to be happy. Don't you want to be happy? That’s part of his new tagline. I think that's a misconception and in the world that I play in, there's a lot of entrepreneur people that hang out of my world and a lot of people seem to play life that there's a set of rules that applies to everybody. And that's just not the case, right? I like to work a lot. That's part of who I am. But I don't want to spend 18 hours a day doing grind work. You told me before we got on here, how many of these you've done today? That like blows my mind. But then I think about it and I go, “You know what, if these are an hour-long each, I've done almost that much already today in mentoring calls and I love it.” It's work. But that doesn't mean that everybody should see that and go, “Oh, so I should work 6 or 7 hours a day, 7 days a week because so and so does it?” No. Figure out what it is that makes you happy and then spend your time doing it. Donnie B.: Yeah. I mean, that's a great way of putting it. When I do these Fridays and I'm interviewing these people, dude, I just had an interview right before yours where I talked to a guy who spent 30 years in the symphony and he's literally bringing these executives from Fortune 50 companies to sit in the symphony and teach leadership skills by screwing up conducting. I mean, it was the most brilliant conversation. This dude totally had me geek out on his entire everything he did and I would have never met this guy without the podcast. So for me, that's my Zone of Genius. I love having these conversations, networking, this, that and the other. I love being on stages. You have your platform with … you got a nice huge following of, what do you call them? Gorillas? Landon P.: Gorillas. Donnie B.: That are geeking out because you are such a straight-talker, no bullshit, let me just tell you how it is type of thing which continues to draw people to you and your story. When you find that thing, hold on and do more of it. Landon P.: Well, it’s like that guy that you just mentioned, 30 years in the symphony, do you think he's got an interest in that kind of music? Do you think he's got an interest in that kind of scene? Do you think … I mean, birds of a feather flock together, right? If that's who he is and then he goes, “Oh, you know what? When we're not all playing our part, the symphony sounds like shit.” And I can translate that to these other people that I like, these corporate people who need the leadership thing and I can demonstrate to them what I'm talking about. Do you think that guy needs 50,000 people to buy his thing? Donnie B.: Nope! Landon P.: Probably not. But he's being himself. And he's playing in his Zone of Genius and he's probably the happiest guy on the planet. Donnie B.: And when you talk to somebody like that that has their style and their thing, I mean, you can feel it because they're not making up some sort of cliché saying. They’re just speaking their truths. And it's fun to get in those type of conversations. So back to the kind of the sales a little bit, you got a business-owner that's trying to grow their business, you're telling them to just be themselves. Now, they've got to go interact and engage people and find people that are going to jive and vibe with their personality. How do they do it? Landon P.: Well, even with everything that I've said about sales, right? Here's the bottom line. There's principles and everything. There's a reason it takes X number of years to become a black belt, a 9th degree black belt in any martial arts. There's a reason it takes that amount of time to get that good at sales or engineering or being a brain surgeon. There's principles. Well, the sales world, this getting clients world, there’s still principles and fundamentals that are in play. The bottom line is, you got to get the right message to the right market at the right time. And there's a conundrum there. It's actually a riddle. To have the right message to put in front of the right market at the right time, it's got to be in that order once you get it. But you can't figure it out in that order. You got to figure out the ‘who’ first, right? Who's the right fit for this thing that I do so then I can go have conversations with them to craft my message and then I can put that out to the marketplace? Then there's some other principles. There's a lot of ways to get clients. There's a lot of ways to do prospecting, cold calling, cold approaching, cold messaging people on social media. There's right ways and wrong ways in my opinion to do those things and then there's other ways to do it. Client attraction. You can build funnels and there's all of that. If we will just use the principles to do those things, they all work. But if you're a business-owner and you need clients and you don't have an audience established, right? There's two times to plant a tree. 20 years ago and today. If you didn't do that and you don't have an audience, well, really, you should start building one. But in the meantime, you need to figure out who needs your thing and go start, I call it, social currency. You go mingle with people a little bit. You’re a sales guy. You and I used to do this, right? You find somebody. You start a conversation. You see where it goes. We’re qualifying at every stage. If you can figure out who it is that wants and needs your thing and then you can filter them against, do I like this person or not, all it comes down to is having conversations. Donnie B.: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I would add on there, discipline conversations and the only reason I say discipline is if you don't have a regiment on a daily basis to do business growth in your business, you're going to be stacked up against it too often. The one thing that … I started in January for my business. It was a minimum of 10 reach-outs every day. Do I go to LinkedIn or I go to Facebook? And I just start reaching out to the followers, right? Not even trying to go after people I don't know except for getting guests on the podcast. I do that as well. But I go to my followers and I can tell you, just having conversations with people that are already into you, maybe you know each other because you're in the same group or you hang out. Just jumping on a 30-minute Zoom call is an amazing game-changer of what it can do for your business. Landon P.: If you want to get fit, you have to do the doing. If you want to get rich, you have to do the doing. If you want to get clients, you have to do the doing, right? And a lot of people, like the people that I tend to focus with, they go kill it and they bring on five or six clients and then they've got to do all that client work, right? It’s this rollercoaster. Real estate people are a perfect example of this. They prospect all month long and next month, they've got seven deals that close and then the next month, nothing. So the month after that, then they go prospect all month long and then the month after that and they do like four or five decent months throughout the year and they're like, “Man, I should be making so much more money but I only did like $150,000 this year. What the hell?” It's that process. It's the wax on, wax off that you need to do every day. And there's a lot of ways to only put 15 or 20 or 30 minutes into it every day just to initiate those conversations. People just don't know how to do it. How do you start a conversation with somebody? Donnie B.: You say hello. Landon P.: Right. Exactly. Donnie B.: Here's a theory that I realized somewhere along my journey is people want to plateau. They want to get to a spot to where they can say, “I'm done,” right? And I did it even on part of my journey is I was always that, “If I could just get to this sales number, I can turn it off.” What I realized is every time I got to that sales number, if I turned it off, it would go the other direction, right? And so it took me a long time to quit making the gigantic leaps and start doing the incremental growth. Something I could do consistently and steadily on a regular basis. Landon P.: Okay. So let's talk about that. When I started in the commercial credit and collections industry, I was tasked like literally, when I was hired, I was told, if you take this job, you're required to make 300 dials a day. Okay. So I did that and as soon as I could figure out how to make less dials in a day, I did that, right? For everybody listening, let's kind of like paint the picture of how this looks from an actual sales guy’s perspective. Cool. I don't know what I'm doing in this new industry. I don't know anything about the products. I don't know anything about the clients. I don't know anything about even the sales pitch, the script they handed me. So I'm going to go practice and I'm going to screw it up and I'm going to do that three hundred times a day for as long as it takes to get good enough to begin closing clients. And once I begin closing clients, I look at it and go, how could I do this more effectively because I hate the grind? And then pretty soon, you're making 250 a day and then pretty soon, you're making 200 dials a day and pretty soon, you're making a hundred dials a day and most salespeople go, “Oh, one fish at a time? Go get a net full of fish. How do I do that?” And then people go, “Well, they're all still small fish. How do I get a bigger fish?” And then they go, “Fish for a bigger fish.” And most salespeople end up hunting for whales, right? Which is why it's a cliché in the industry. Most salespeople stop there. I only need to prospect 30 people a month because two of them eventually will come in. Even though it takes six months. Eventually, those come in and I've got all these whales and it's amazing and they stop there. But if you stop doing that prospecting, the new whale stop coming in because that perfect referral business doesn't exist at that level. You got to go to the next level. Who also serves all the whale clients that I want and has a problem because their whale clients have a problem that only I can solve? How do I solve that guy's problem? You do that two or three times a month and now, they're sending you whale clients and it's on autopilot because you're solving a problem at a much higher level. So I went from calling 300 times a day to, at the end, it was literally the last two and a half years, maybe ten calls a month and they weren't to cold calls. They were to people that I had already had some interaction with on either social media or through another contact and that's just it. As a business-owner, how do you perfect the ongoing lead generation strategy in your business? This is interesting. We're actually doing stuff with this right now. There's all these tactics. There's all these things you can do, right? Facebook ads, excellent. But if you turn the Facebook ads off, your lead flow stops. LinkedIn stuff. I can go hammer people on LinkedIn 15-20 minutes a day, every day. But when I stopped doing that, they stopped coming in. All of these are add-ons after you've established the stability in your business of referral partners, right? Referral partners that you're not paying them to send you stuff. You're solving problems for them that they happily send you all of the leads that you actually want and then you can scale using all of the, what are actually meant for scaling, not for stabilizing a business. It's just, I don't know if you can tell but this is what jazzes me up because this is what I like doing. Donnie B.: Well, here's the interesting thing. Most of your business-owners now, face the same dilemma that I faced is I was an employee. Going from employee mindset to business-owner mindset is a massive leap because it's turning off the, “I do a job. I do my eight to five. I do what’s expected of me,” to thinking about, “How do I scale it? How do I grow it? How do I level that up and make a bigger business?” And if you've spent your entire career looking at it from one perspective, trying to step back and look forward can be in a monstrous leap. It proved that way for me when I first launched my business and I got really good at making a good sales job and not a company as I started out figuring this all out. How do you make that mental shift to be able to wrap your head around what referral partners should I be going after? Landon P.: The truth? Donnie B.: Yeah. Landon P.: Most people have to go start at three, five, seven businesses and screw them all up before they have that because here's the thing, you and I can tell anybody anything and it can be the right advice. It can be the thing they need to know but until they draw that as their own conclusion and go, “Yeah, that's correct,” they will never follow that with the actions that take that advice. If people will understand that if you take the skillset that you've got or you take a new thing that you've never had any money generated around but you love doing it and you go do that doing and all of the pieces to that that you don't like doing, either find somebody else that can do it or find somebody else that will do it temporarily for trade. Finding referral partners is as easy as solving a problem. If you can figure out who has a problem and you can figure out how to solve it in a way that other people haven't been able to figure out, that's where you make a lot of money. And here's the thing with referral partners. It's like sex. If you have to pay for it, it's probably not the kind you want, right? So a lot of people think of this referral game as this, “Oh, they sent me a client. I'm required to send them a client.” That shit never works. “Oh, they sent me a client. I've got to pay for it.” That stuff never works. Now, marketers, we can do stuff where it's like affiliate commissions and we can do JV partner stuff. But business-owners, they need to go about it. Who can I solve a problem for that has people they can send me and I'm solving their problem by helping their clients? Real estate agents, here's one way to look at it. If you're a real estate agent, the best way to look at this is, if you're selling homes in Phoenix, who owns the best pool company in town, right? Because most of the homes that you're going to be selling have something wrong with the pool because pools suck, right? If you're a mechanic and you do transmissions, who's the best referral partner? The people that manage the fleets around town that don't have their own in-house mechanic shop, right? There's a lot of ways to look at this. It’s just getting creative. Who is already serving all of the perfect-for-me clients that has a problem that I can creatively figure out, “Oh, if their clients all had this, they benefit like this and if they benefited either monetarily or made their life easier or it made them a rockstar to their clients, that's a pretty easy sell.” Donnie B.: Yeah. You've been taking them smarten-them pills, haven't you? Landon P.: You know what, dude, it's all out of necessity. I hated the prospecting thing but I did it because if I could get somebody on the phone, I could talk them into doing the thing. And once I figured out there's an easier way to do that part, it's all based on relationships, my model changed. Then I went, “Okay, cool. What's the fastest way I can get to that next level that I want to get to?” And it was all out of necessity. I don't want to have to work doing stuff that I don't like and I might be biased but I think most people kind of feel that way. Donnie B.: Yes, I would agree. And I love the fact that you're so focused on business-owners because my mind going from years being in Sandler doing that training, I'm always so focused on the salesperson, right? Because that's the arena I knew, right? I knew how to grow and adapt and I knew what was going on in the salesperson’s head. It's refreshing to take this all to a business-owner standpoint. So good on you, brother. Good on you. So where is all this crazy-ass world going to take you? I mean, you're becoming a name in some circles. Not a good name, by the way, but a name. Landon P.: That's funny. Donnie B.: In some circles and I can't tell you how many people came to me and said, I got to get you on the show and were throwing your name around and that's fun when you get several people you trust that are throwing a guest’s name around. So what's the vision for this whole thing? Landon P.: Honestly, I don't and here's an interesting thing. As a sales guy, most of us are supposed to have this predetermined endgame or our agenda. I don't. I was basically dragged into kicking and screaming doing this thing because here's my take on it, I'm a sales guy, right? There's a lot of names that you and I can both drop that they do it the old school way and they teach the tactics and those people go make money. Fantastic. Awesome sauce. I don't dig it. I just, like, right? I think society is headed in a direction where we're kind of tired of that which is why it's … and here's … all the way down to the very bottom of it. Either you're playing the long game to win the long game or you're playing to eventually lose. There is no other way in my opinion to look at life in any way, shape or form. Whether that's your business or your relationship with your wife or the relationship you've got with your neighbors. Either you're playing the long game to win the long game or you're playing intentionally to eventually lose and I didn't want to come into this sales arena, sales training game from a, “Oh, he's a sales guy but he's got a different take on it.” No. You know what? I actually teach people how to people. I teach people how to have relationships with people they want to have relationships with. Where this eventually goes, I have no idea. Donnie B.: I love that honesty because here's something funny about me that I love telling people. I don't think goalsetting works, right? And the reason it doesn't is, as soon as somebody sets a goal, it automatically demotivates them because they don't believe they can get there in the first place. I'm all about incremental growth and milestones and knocking down a target. And once that target’s knocked down, then going for the next target. And just seeing what turns up and what comes and what relationships happened from there. I love that you actually don't know where this is going to end up which allows you to be in the moment and just go with the flow, man. Landon P.: Right. There's so many ways this can go and to your point with the whole goalsetting thing, a lot of people miss a lot of really cool opportunities and experiences because they've determined, “This is the thing I'm going to go get.” Life is so fluid and shit happens and changes so fast that if you pigeonhole yourself with a goal like that, you’re just screwing yourself. And not only do most people demotivate themselves to actually accomplish that because it's usually way too big, but other people on the other side of that, they think, now it's been accomplished and so they're demotivating themselves because they've created a goal and it's always just down the road. It's always three months. When I get here, when I get that, when I do that, right? No. It's what's going on right this minute. Donnie B.: Yup. Landon P.: I will continue to do what I enjoy doing. And right now, what I'm enjoying doing is working with people that are like, real people, down-to-earth that are like, “I do this really cool thing and it's fucking amazing.” And the people that I do it for love it and it gets them this crazy result and I don't know how to turn them into clients because I don't know who they are or where they're at. And I love walking people through that process to where they go, “Man, six months ago, I didn't know where my next client was coming from and now, I've got too many clients and I just waitlisted a guy. That's never happened to me before.” That's what I enjoy doing. And for now, that's what I will do. Donnie B.: That's awesome. Landon, how do people find you? How do they get in touch with you? How do they make fun of your funny hairdo? All that stuff. Landon P.: I have a fledgling podcast and I'm actually a little like hesitant. No, I'm kidding. I do a podcast every week on this whole idea, relational selling and relationships and all that. SalesGorillaPodcast.com or you can come hang out with us on our group, our Facebook group. It's www.facebook.com/groups/gorillajuice and if you're a fit, stick around. If you're not, go away. Donnie B.: It's really called Gorilla Juice? Landon P.: Yeah. The URL for the group is Gorilla Juice. It's Getting Clients Without Being Salesy. It's Gorilla Army Nation (Getting Clients Without Being Salesy). Donnie B.: That's awesome. That's awesome. Are you going to make an energy drink called Gorilla Juice? You should. Landon P.: Dude, we've been, yeah. Mustards and hot sauces and coffee drink. Yeah. Donnie B.: Well, you got to get the microbrew in there as well. I mean, if you're going to go, you got to go all out. I mean … Landon P.: A vodka, a whiskey, right? Donnie B.: For me, a spiced rum and I'll be perfect. But dude, this has been a blast, man. Thanks for jumping on and doing this. I was looking forward to this one. This was every bit of what a kind of conversation I was expecting out of this, man. So I appreciate that. So here's how I wrap up every show and I do stump some people. So get ready. If you were going to leave the Champions that listen to this show, 78 countries, people all around the world that are going through it on their journey and they’re hearing other people's stories of what they've overcome to get where they want to go. If you were going to leave them with a quote, a phrase, a saying, a mantra, something they can take with them on their journey especially when they're stacked up against it and going through it, what would be that quote or phrase you would say, “Remember this,”? Landon P.: Stop thinking about all the stuff you don't like and don't want and actually put time into defining what you want and how you want it to be. Donnie B.: Love it. Love it. Landon, thanks for doing this, brother. I appreciate you. One of these days, if you bring guests on your show, I'm going to come on there and make fun of you there too. Landon P.: That would be rad. Donnie B.: But thanks, brother. I really appreciate it. Thanks for doing this. Landon P.: Awesome sauce. Thanks for having me on. Peace out, Cub Scouts. [Music] Donnie B.: Well, there you have it, guys. Two badasses sitting down and just having a freaking balls-out killer conversation. Man, I got to tell you. It's a rarity that I get to sit across from a guy like Landon and really dive into some freaking tactical stuff. I mean, every time that guy opens his mouth, I swear, he's embracing the mindset of a teacher and throwing out just knowledge that the everyday Joe can use to really up their game. I fucking love talking to him. And I know I probably sound a little bit of a fanboy of the guy. But dude, I rarely find somebody who lives off life with a lot of similar philosophies of my own, man. So I really, really appreciate him. Let me tell you, if you're not hanging out in the Gorilla Army Nation in Facebook, Getting Clients Without Being Salesy, get your ass over there. It's a phenomenal group out there. I don't know how many members are but it's in the tens of thousands and he's doing really, really cool stuff. So you need to check it. Also, if you will do me the favor and go to Facebook, type in Success Champions, click on groups and come hang out in our group. We are doing some amazing things from launching masterminds, to doing some really, really cool things and the whole thing is Badasses Rise Together. So you really need to come hang out so we can all level up. We can all go for it and you can hear more from guys like Landon and other past guests I've had on the show blowing some shit up so we can step into our own. I fucking love you guys. I really appreciate you always tuning in. I appreciate the feedback, the comments, the emails, the messages. Do me a favor, share this show with somebody, send them some love, leave me a review on wherever you listen to podcast and for the love of God, go blow some shit up. Music by Freddy Fri http://www.freddyfri.com