Podcast appearances and mentions of dan kennedy

In Part One of this special Dan Kennedy series, we explore three foundational principles of wealth attraction for contractors, breaking down why you must become a marketer first, how tracking your numbers draws in cash, and the secret to building your financial fortress through dedicated wealth and giving accounts.

Years ago, I tried something in my own practice that seemed like an obvious win: a 24-hour call center to make sure every call got answered. It made sense on paper. It failed in practice, and not for the reasons you'd expect. In this episode, I tell the full story of why the call center didn't work, what it taught me about the relational nature of chiropractic, and how that exact same lesson applies to the AI tools showing up in chiropractic offices today. I walk through a real conversation I had with a client who was being pitched a dynamic phone number system, essentially the modern, automated version of the same mistake I made years ago. From there, I lay out a simple principle for evaluating any technology in your practice: if it's only benefiting you and not your patients, it's worth reconsidering. I break that principle into two practical questions, transparency and frequency, and use some uncomfortable personal examples, including my own dentist, to show what happens when a practice gets either one wrong. This episode is not anti-technology. I use AI constantly in my own work. It's about making sure the tools you adopt strengthen the doctor-patient relationship instead of quietly eroding it. Topics Covered - The full call center story: why it seemed smart, why it failed, and what I'd do differently - Why chiropractic's high-touch, relational nature makes it different from most other businesses adopting automation - The dynamic phone number example and why "the technology exists" isn't the same as "you should use it" - The core principle: if the technology only benefits you, reconsider it or change it - Transparency: why patients should always know when they're interacting with technology, not a person - Frequency: how to tell the difference between helpful outreach and harassment - A real example of a raving fan turning into a lost patient because of over-automated follow-up - Why marketing advice built for mass audiences (Gary Vee, Dan Kennedy style "mail until they buy or die") does not translate to a practice with a few hundred patients - How to evaluate your own practice's current automation honestly If you want a free look at your website and local search, request a review at RocketChiro.com. If you want more help with the business and marketing side of practice, check out my Next Step program at RocketChiro.com.

Robert Dow buys and sells raw land across Texas and Oklahoma — mostly sight unseen, almost entirely through direct mail. It's a lean operation built on a simple idea: take infrastructure you already have and point it at a new market. In this conversation, we get into his direct mail philosophy (why novelty beats clever copywriting, why your letter should be about the reader and not you), how he thinks about capital structure and tax efficiency, and his take on AI — that it's a powerful tool but not a durable moat. The edge still comes from domain expertise and knowing immediately which option is worth keeping. We also get into personal finance: a self-directed Roth IRA structure that's quietly been one of his best investments, and why most founders shouldn't be doing private deals. Guest: Robert Dow, founder of Remarkable Land Sponsor: [wayfront.com/tmba](wayfront.com/tmba) Thanks to this week's sponsor Wayfront — the AI-ready operating system for productized agencies. One client portal. One team dashboard. All your data, AI-accessible. TMBA listeners get an extra free month on top of the trial at wayfront.com/tmba. Links: Dan Kennedy — The Ultimate Sales Letter Seth Godin — Purple Cow Seth Godin — Linchpin Al Ries & Jack Trout — The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing Al Ries — Focus John Ruhlin — Giftology Donald Miller — Building a StoryBrand Aaron Ross — Predictable Revenue Chris Voss — Never Split the Difference Robert Cialdini — Influence Alex Hormozi — $100M Offers Jack Carr — The Terminal List Andy Weir — Project Hail Mary Andy Weir — The Martian Cormac McCarthy — The Road Business Resources Upcoming DC Events

Here's the knot almost every founder hits. Things are working. Money is coming in. And then everyone around you starts chanting the same advice. Niche down. It sounds smart. It feels terrifying. Because the second you try it, it feels like you're about to fire the people funding your life. So I ran the question through The Room. I convened a council session inside Invisible Council AI with cognitive models of four people who have actually built fortunes on this exact decision. Alex Hormozi. Dan Kennedy. Dan Sullivan. Frank Kern. They did not politely agree. They collided. And the collision is where the gold was. Hormozi separated the two decisions everyone blends together. Kennedy reframed a niche as a farm you can dominate, not a smaller crowd to starve in. Sullivan made the call that your current clients are evidence, not your identity. Kern added the filter that changes everything. Pick the client you could win for even if you only got paid after they succeeded. The Third Mind that emerged from all four was simple and sharp. You don't announce a divorce to find a better date. You build a revenue-safe front door for the proven buyer while the old book of business quietly funds the transition. Tighter front door. Same cash register. This one is for any founder sitting on revenue they're scared to risk and a focus they're scared to commit to. Listen all the way through. The open question at the end is the one that decides whether your niche becomes a farm or a trap. What You'll Learn The two separate decisions you're accidentally blending, and why that blend is the source of the fear. Why cash flow is not the thing you protect at all costs. It's the thing that buys you time to get smarter. How to choose your ideal client from evidence instead of preference, using the clients you already have. Why a niche is not a smaller audience. It's a market small enough to dominate and rich enough to matter. The difference between revenue and complexity wearing a fake mustache. How to reposition without sending a single client a dramatic "we've evolved beyond you" announcement. The 90-day narrowing test that turns a scary identity change into a measurable experiment. The exact first move you can run this week with your last 20 clients and a spreadsheet. Chapter Markers (Times are placeholders. Map to your final audio in your host.) 00:00 — The founder's fear: niche down without blowing up revenue 00:00 — Hormozi: the two decisions you keep blending 00:00 — Pick the niche the evidence is pointing at, not the one you like 00:00 — "Your strategy is what you say no to" 00:00 — Kennedy: a niche is a farm, not a smaller crowd 00:00 — The fantasy demographic test 00:00 — Third Mind: the Cash-Flow Airlock 00:00 — Sullivan: your clients are evidence, not your identity 00:00 — The 10x Client Test 00:00 — Third Mind: the Two-Bank Niche Test 00:00 — Kern: pick who you could win for if you got paid last 00:00 — Kennedy vs Kern: ease versus richness 00:00 — Third Mind: the Revenue-Safe Front Door 00:00 — The Council Brief and your first move 00:00 — The open question: farm or elegant trap Lines From The Room (Pulled from the live council session. These are the cognitive models speaking inside Invisible Council AI.) The Hormozi model, on the real lever: "Your strategy is what you say no to. Not what you put in the Google Doc." The Kennedy model, on choosing wrong: "If the answer is no, you don't have an ICP. You have a fantasy demographic." The Sullivan model, on the trap of revenue: "Complexity disguised as cash flow." The Kern model, on the filter that matters: "Don't choose the ICP you can sell. Choose the ICP you can almost guarantee results for." The Third Mind, on the whole move: "You don't announce a divorce to find a better date." The Frameworks Named In This Session The Cash-Flow Airlock — keep serving the messy back room while the new front door only admits the proven buyer inside a conquerable farm. The Two-Bank Niche Test — deposit into the future bank while making zero withdrawals from the current bank. The 10x Client Test — if I had ten times more clients like this one, would the business get simpler, more profitable, and more energizing, or collapse under complexity. The Revenue-Safe Front Door — test the narrow ICP in media the legacy herd doesn't even consume, while the back room keeps proving appreciation to the people paying now. Your Move This Week Take your last 20 clients. Put them in a spreadsheet. Score each one on: Did they get a measurable result How easy were they to sell How profitable were they to serve How easy were they to fulfill Did serving them drain you or energize you Would you take them if you only got paid after they succeeded Would you want ten times more just like them The overlap is your first farm. Then write one sentence. "I help [specific person or company] solve [specific expensive problem] so they can achieve [specific outcome] without [specific pain]." If it doesn't exclude people, it isn't finished. Then point your next 90 days of new marketing at that person only. Back room keeps getting served. Same cash register.

Unlock the secrets to effective marketing in this episode where we delve into the crucial alignment of your message, market, and media. Are you struggling to get responses from your marketing efforts? It's time to discover why your marketing might not be broken, but simply mismatched. Join us as we explore how precise targeting can transform your marketing impact!Episode Summary:In this enlightening episode, Vance discusses the critical components of successful marketing: message, market, and media. Drawing from the wisdom of marketing legends like Dan Kennedy and Gary Halbert, Vance explains how aligning these three elements can lead to explosive marketing success. He emphasizes the importance of knowing your target audience and delivering the right message through the right channels to achieve maximum engagement and conversion.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The significance of aligning your message, market, and media for effective marketing.Why your marketing may not be failing, but merely mismatched.How to identify your target market and speak directly to their needs and desires.The role of media in reaching your audience effectively.Common pitfalls in marketing and how to avoid them.Strategies for refining your marketing message to resonate with your audience.Tips for choosing the right media for your specific market.The importance of specificity in targeting your market and crafting your message.[00:00] Introduction & Opening Thoughts[00:30] Importance of Market, Message, and Media Alignment[01:57] The Steakhouse Analogy: Understanding Market Fit[03:30] The Role of the List in Successful Campaigns[04:48] Crafting a Compelling Message[06:34] Choosing the Right Media for Your Audience[07:40] Final Thoughts & Action StepsTarget Audience ResearchEffective Marketing StrategiesSocial Media MarketingContent MarketingDigital AdvertisingTimestamp Chapters: In today's fast-paced digital landscape, aligning your marketing message with the right market and media is crucial for success. Many businesses struggle with low engagement due to mismatched strategies. By focusing on specific audiences and tailoring your message to address their unique challenges, you can significantly enhance your marketing effectiveness. This episode offers actionable insights to help you identify and rectify mismatches in your marketing strategy, ensuring that your efforts yield the results you desire.Frequently Asked Questions:*Q1: What does it mean to align message, market, and media?*A: It means ensuring that your marketing message resonates with the right audience and is delivered through the appropriate channels.*Q2: How can I identify my target market?*A: Start by defining specific demographics and psychographics of your ideal customers. Consider their needs, challenges, and where they seek information.*Q3: Why do most marketing campaigns fail?*A: Many fail due to mismatches between the message, market, and media, leading to low engagement and ineffective outreach.*Q4: How can I refine my marketing message?*A: Speak directly to your audience's problems and desires, using their language rather than industry jargon.*Q5: What media should I use for my marketing?*A: Choose media channels where your target audience is most active, whether that's social media, email, or traditional advertising.Related Topics:If you found value in this episode, please like, share, and subscribe for more insights on maximizing your marketing impact! Share your thoughts in the comments below about your biggest marketing challenges and how you plan to align your message, market, and media.

In this episode, Dan Kennedy and Matt Zagula dive deep into the mindset of the modern consumer, revealing three dominant trends: a spend less mindset, a spend more intelligently mindset, and a demand for more value when spending. They discuss how economic pressures, increased bargain hunting, and the rise of online research have shaped buyer behavior, making trust and personal relevance more critical than ever. Entrepreneurs will learn why creating a unique category of one and selling in a competitive vacuum are essential strategies to protect price and profit. Dan and Matt also share eight practical approaches to succeed with today's consumers, including building extreme trust, identifying buy-now customers while nurturing longer sales timelines, and delivering extraordinary benefits that compel immediate action. They emphasize the importance of authority, celebrity, and exclusivity in differentiating your business and overcoming commoditization. This episode offers actionable marketing wisdom for entrepreneurs aiming to thrive in an environment where buyers are more cautious, skeptical, and selective. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

Rob Anspach interviews Nicholas Loise on sales recruitment, Dan Kennedy, AI, math + human behavior, trigger points and adding value to the marketplace. The post Ep 397 – Sales Recruitment first appeared on Rob Anspach's E-Heroes.

A strong marketing campaign does not begin with a clever headline or a bigger media budget. It begins with a Big Idea that gets attention, creates interest, builds excitement, prompts action, and leaves a memory impact even when the prospect does not buy immediately. In this episode, Dan Kennedy and Darcy Juarez break down why the Big Idea is still the force that separates advertising people remember from advertising they ignore. Dan walks through practical ways to find a Big Idea, including legitimate news, new combinations, repositioning, relocating an idea into a different market or media channel, refocusing attention on one powerful benefit, building brand identity through direct response, attaching the right celebrity, and creating language that makes an ordinary offer feel newly valuable. From MyPillow and Domino's to Subway, home shopping, YouTube, Freedom Protection Plan, and the certified Wealth Express advisor concept, this episode shows how smart positioning can turn a common product or service into something prospects notice, understand, and remember. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

In this episode, we sit down with Ron Sheetz, Vice President of RJ Media Magic, Inc., to explore the intersection of creative storytelling and high-impact marketing. With a deep background in media production, strategic planning, and client relations, Ron shares how he has helped businesses transform their messaging through compelling multimedia content. Drawing from his years as Dan Kennedy's exclusive go-to video producer, he reveals what it takes to create marketing assets that not only capture attention but drive real results. Ron also discusses his approach to leading creative direction, scaling business growth, and delivering innovative, high-quality media solutions in today's fast-evolving digital landscape.  

Are you creating content that actually attracts the right clients… or just posting because you feel you should? Do affluent dog owners really spend more on everything — or only on what matters to them? And how can your daycare become one of those things they see as worth paying premium prices for? In this episode, I'm joined by Steven Inala-Reedy from A Content Space, who'll be the special guest at our upcoming Dog Daycare Success Academy immersion event at Lumley Castle. We talk about consistency, content mistakes, why follower count matters less than most people think, and how pet business owners can create meaningful content without spending their entire life glued to a phone. Then, after the break, I dig into what affluent dog owners are really looking for in a dog daycare. Using Tyson Fury, private jets, Asda shopping, Dan Kennedy's affluent marketing lessons, and my own experience helping pet businesses reposition themselves, I explain why wealthy clients don't spend more on everything — they spend more on what matters. And your job is to make your daycare matter. In this episode, you'll discover: Why Content Consistency Wins – How showing up regularly beats chasing viral hits and follower counts. The Real Content Mistake – Why most business owners post without research, structure, or strategy. What Affluent Buyers Value – Why premium clients care about time, expertise, status, convenience, and experience. How to Be Seen As a Pet Pro Expert – Why books, guides, frameworks, awards, and authority assets help you claim top dog status. The Power of Membership and Experience – How exclusivity, themed enrichment, and "velvet rope" positioning attract better clients. If you want to join the waiting list for the Dog Daycare Success Academy, head to: petbusinessmarketing.com/successacademy Thanks to our amazing sponsor Pawpal. To find out more about how Pawpal can help your business go to Pawpal.uk

A lot of speakers think their job starts when they walk on stage. But what if a huge chunk of your impact, and your future bookings, are being created long before that moment… and long after it ends? In this episode of The Speaking Club, I'm joined by former Disney leader and customer experience expert Vance Morris to explore what happens when speakers start thinking differently about customer experience. Because as a speaker, you have more "customers" than you think. They're: * The event organiser * The person booking you * The AV team * The audience members talking about you afterwards * And every person interacting with your brand before, during, and after the stage And every one of those touchpoints shapes whether you get remembered, referred, or rebooked. In this conversation, Vance shares what speakers can learn from Disney about creating memorable experiences, building loyalty, and turning one speaking gig into multiple opportunities. We explore how the experience starts before you arrive, continues through your delivery, and extends long after the applause. Because a great talk matters. But the experience around it? That's often what fills the pipeline. What you'll discover: • The unexpected lesson from Vance's journey — from Disney to bankruptcy — that still shapes how he runs his business today • What most speakers get wrong about customer experience (and what Disney does differently) • Where speakers are quietly "bleeding profit" — and why they don't even see it • How to turn one speaking gig into multiple opportunities (without chasing the next booking) • The things speakers do that they think build loyalty… but actually push clients away • How to create a "Disney-level" experience that people remember — without it feeling forced or gimmicky • Why combining direct-response marketing with customer experience changes everything • What actually moved the needle in building Vance's speaking business — and what turned out to be a waste of time Enjoy! If you'd like to watch the video of the episode, you can do that here>> Guest Information: Website: https://vancemorris.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vancemorris/  Books & Resources*: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill  The Ultimate Marketing System by Dan Kennedy  52 Ways to Wow Your Customer  Speaking Resources: Grab Your From Blank Page to Stage Guide and Nail the Topic for a Client Winning Talk: https://saraharcher.co.uk/newguide-tsc  Want to get better at finding and sharing your stories then check out our FREE Five Day Snackable Story Challenge: https://www.saraharcher.co.uk/challenge  To share your thoughts:                                                   ·   leave a comment below. ·   Share this show on Facebook or LinkedIn.   To help the show out: ·   Leave an honest review at https://www.ratethispodcast.com/tsc Your ratings and reviews really help get the word out and I read each one. *(please note if you use my link I get a small commission, but this does not affect your payment)

The most sophisticated sales funnel ever built isn't from a tech startup. It's not Amazon, it's not Apple, it's not from any business-school case study you've ever read. It's a religion. The man who built it wasn't a theologian or a prophet - he was a science fiction writer who held four Guinness World Records, published 65 million words on a custom typewriter with extra keys for common words like “and” and “the” so he could write faster, and engineered a customer journey that starts with a free personality test and ends with a $380,000 offer delivered on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean. This isn't an episode about what Scientology believes. I'm a Mormon, I've got friends who are Scientologists, and I'm not here to debate theology. This is about the architecture of one of the most sophisticated value ladders ever built in human history - and I walk you through every step in the language every entrepreneur in this audience actually speaks. Free lead magnet, $35 tripwire, $11,200-per-grade core offer, $30,000-a-year high ticket back end, a premium tier only deliverable on a boat, and an “unreleased” next level that's been “coming soon” since 1986. Then I trace their closing technique back to my mentor Dan Kennedy's “find the bleeding neck” framework, and I show you why all of it actually works using a 1951 book by a longshoreman named Eric Hoffer called The True Believer. Key Highlights: ◼️The complete value-ladder breakdown - the free Oxford Capacity Analysis as the lead magnet, the $35 “throwaway” intro courses as the tripwire, the $11,200-per-grade core offers, OT levels that top out on the Freewinds cruise ship, and OT 9 and OT 10 - the “next level” that's been coming soon since 1986 ◼️The Jeff Hawkins direct-response case study every entrepreneur should study - $2,000 in production cost that generated $200 million over 35 years, and the Sigmund Freud unconscious-mind trick L. Ron Hubbard built right into the Dianetics cover art ◼️The “Dissemination Drill” - the 4-step closing technique Scientology recruiters are trained on (contact, handle, salvage, bring to understanding) - and why it's the exact same psychology Dan Kennedy taught me as “find the bleeding neck” ◼️Eric Hoffer's three insights from The True Believer that explain why intelligent, successful people stay in any movement for decades - people join for refuge not doctrine, every movement needs a devil more than a god, and conviction beats content every single time ◼️The single line that separates a movement from a cult - the techniques are identical, the architecture is identical, the psychology is identical, and the only difference is what happens to the person at the end At the end of the day, this episode isn't really about Scientology. It's about the fact that the same architecture that built a $380,000 funnel on a cruise ship is the same architecture I teach entrepreneurs to use every single day. The value ladder works. The bleeding-neck close works. The “us vs. the gatekeepers” enemy works. The conviction that makes people follow you works. The tools are neutral - the only difference between a movement and a trap is what you actually do with the person who walks in the door. So the real question I ask myself every single day - and the one I want you to sit with after you hear this - is: are you building something that genuinely helps the person at the end of your funnel, or are you building a system that uses their pain to keep them paying for forty years? ◼️If you've got a product, offer, service… or idea… I'll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event → https://sellingonline.com/podcast ◼️Still don't have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To stand out from competitors, start with what makes you different. Identify your ideal target market. It’s largely going to consist of people who want to do business the way that we do business. Then matching up our style of business with the way that they want to do it. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will ask the question, what makes you different? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you for asking me to be with you again. David. I love this question. Because if we don’t know what makes us different, I think it becomes harder to sell or to present yourself or anything else. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and playing to your strengths is key. That’s obviously something we should be doing. But I’ve met a lot of people who don’t have self-awareness. They wouldn’t be able to answer this question. So they don’t really know where to focus and they’re kind of haphazard. David: Yeah. In the promotional products industry in particular, people struggle with this. You have all these distributors who are essentially representing very similar lines of product. Often it’s the same lines of product from the same manufacturers. So a lot of people look at that and say, “how can I be different if I’m selling exactly the same products as all the other people that I’m competing with?” And if you ask that question in a rhetorical sense, “how can I possibly do it?” You’re doing it wrong. You need to actually ask yourself that question in a way where you demand results of yourself. Sit down and bullet point it out. What is it that makes me different? What could make me different? Many times I ask the question in live seminars. I say, what differentiates you from your competition? Sometimes people will shout things out and somebody will say service, right? And I’ll say, who here feels their service differentiates them and sets them apart? 40% of the hands in the room go up! And I say, okay, keep ’em up and look around. Can you all be right? Can your service differentiate you from the other people who have their hands in the air? And it’s kind of a rhetorical question, but the answer kind of has to be yes. It has to be yes. I have to be able to differentiate myself in a way that justifies my existence in the market. And so I can be different. I can be different than you. We can both be great potentially in different areas. You know, if you think in terms of the Walmart approach, you know, their thing is cheapest price. Ideally, we don’t want to be that in our market, right? But there is probably something that we can do that will better serve the clients that we’re looking for than what other people in our market are doing. Jay: Yeah, it’s such an important question if we’re all selling the same product. Then what’s going to make somebody choose me over somebody else? And we talked about it in the last podcast. Relationships can be a, a certain part of that, but our systems are turnaround. You know, there’s so many things we can look at internally to say that we live up to that. I think the other hard part, and maybe it’s an important part, is to figure out how to assess what your competitors are doing. If you’re losing sales to your competitors, can you try and assess what they’re doing that is making them win and you not? David: Yeah, and for a lot of people, the difference between an online business and an offline. Is like night and day. Very often there are offline businesses that are trying to compete with online businesses, which have a completely different set of rules and a completely different set of benefits. So very often, rather than saying, how can I compete with this website or whatever, it’s often better to say, how can I be competitive among the people who aren’t really interested in buying from a website, the people who are actually interested in buying from a human? If I’m selling as a human, right? If I’m selling through a website, then I have to ask the opposite question. But there’s always something that we could and should be doing that will differentiate us from our competitors, and that’s what we need to find out. Dan Kennedy, the marketing legend, I remember he said in a seminar one time, the question that we really need to ask ourselves: Why should I do business with you versus any and every other option available to me, including doing nothing? And I was like, wow. Mind blown. Right? But I’ve considered that question so many times over the years. And the last part of it, “including doing nothing” is huge. Because the biggest thing that people tend to do when they’re not buying is they’re deferring. They’re delaying, they’re not doing anything. So the answer to that question has to position us in a way where doing business with us is better than them continuing to do what they’re doing or doing nothing. Jay: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And such a great point. I’m just sitting here thinking about ways to differentiate myself. I personally am somebody who I don’t want to talk to anybody. I want to do it all online. In fact, I will look for every last option to do it online. But if I’m looking for it online and then suddenly I get something in the mail that is a free piece of, you know, talking about promotional products. No website is going to do that, right? And so now I have something tangible and there’s a name attached to that. And if that gets followed up by a phone call, then that’s a way in the door, that a website is never going to do. A website is going to sit there. They’re going to do their Google ads and everything else, and they’re going to be competing for the same space in those search engines. And so for you to try and rank even at a place where you’re going to get seen can be very difficult. So, the website path, I think in many ways is the harder path if you’re not already dominant in that area. David: Right, and so many of the people that we work with are individuals or small businesses that are looking to get attention. They’re looking to create awareness in their market. They’re not sure how to do it. They look at all the online solutions and they get overwhelmed by that. But it really is apples and oranges. And one of the analogies I use very often is it’s the difference between the kind of person who is going to hire a contractor to put a deck on the back of their house or go to Home Depot, buy the lumber, buy the nails, buy the tools, buy the saws, and do it themselves, right? The people who end up going to the websites are the do-it-yourselfers. And so for most business, If you don’t want to compete with that, then you need to make sure that that’s one of your differentiators. That you’re looking for the people who would much rather interact with another human being. And even those who might prefer to do business online, like you indicated. If I can do it quietly myself, I’m happy to do that. The only time that’s really different is that if you’re going to buy something and you know somebody and you trust somebody in that realm, then you’re actually kind of excited to pick up the phone. When you want to buy something from somebody that you know and like and trust, as the old saying goes, you’re excited to do that. You’d rather do that than go online and find it. Which also goes back to our last discussion about relationships. So, When we think in terms of what makes us different, a lot of it should be addressing who is our ideal target market? And it’s largely going to consist of people who want to do business the way that we do business, and then matching up our style of business with the way that they want to do it. But identifying those people and disqualifying those who don’t meet those criteria are really the quickest ways to do that. Jay: Yeah, I love that because I think so often in business, we feel like we have to sell to the whole world, like everybody is our client and that makes it very hard to zero in, very hard to market to. You’re going to dilute your marketing power when you do that And what also occurs to me, David, is that you can do both. I mean, in the business model I’m in, we have a website that gives information. But we also offer a free 20 minute consultation. So now you’ve got kind of both. If they just want information from the website, then great. If they want to talk to a human being and have specific answers to their situation, then great. And we do well off of both of those models. So it’s not like you have to pick one over the other. But one of the things I think is very important is you have to have somebody during that consultation who is good. And if it’s you, then great. But if that 20 minute consultation is a sales call, then you’ll have blown your credibility. You need to make it a legitimate consultation where you provide a value and a service. If they just get a sales call, man, I will hang that phone up so fast, you know, and move on to the next person. David: Right. And I think for a lot of people, a lot of businesses, a lot of salespeople, the website is a good place for them to be able to deliver information that will advance the sale, advance the conversation. So if you’ve got access to resources like that, you can say to someone who would like to interact with a human being you can go to the website, you can download that, or if you’d like, I’ll email it to you. And the people who want to do business with humans might say, “yeah, just email it to me. I’d rather do that.” So identifying your target audience, letting people know the way that you do things. Those are the big differentiators that people are looking for. And at that point, a lot of it becomes simply finding the right audience. Not trying to convince or persuade people who are not interested in doing business the way you do business to change their minds. You another great analogy that I love is, you can either try to preach to the choir or convert the heathens, right? And converting the heathens is a lot harder. So if you can get yourself in front of a group of people who are already singing your tune, you’re in much better shape. Jay: Yeah, and I’ll also add to that, you know, we talked about targeting the audience that will be best for your business model. But I think also assessing your strengths. There’s a great book, it’s called Unfair Advantage, and it’s where you figure out where you excel more than other people or where you have contacts that other people don’t or whatever. If you are really good at building relationships and really good at working with people, that should inform your business model, right? Because then the website is not going to be as effective as you reaching out and talking to somebody. If you’re not that way, and you’re not a people person, you don’t want to talk to people, you just want a website that converts sales without you, well then that kind of speaks to your business model. So it’s important to know your own strengths and where you are going to be the most successful. David: Yes, and the type of person that your approach is likely to attract. Because if you just want to do it all online, there is a market for that. There are people who just want to do business that way. But when you’re not doing business that way, I think it’s a mistake to try to bang that square peg into a round hole. Jay: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. How do people find out more, David? David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call to schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have the conversation if you’re having trouble differentiating yourself in the market. If you’re having trouble identifying the people that you need to be interacting with, the ones who are actually likely to spend money with you, this will be time well spent. So go to TopSecrets.com/call. We’d love to have the conversation. Jay: All right. I always love our conversation. David, thank you so much for your time today. David: Thank you, Jay. Are You Ready to Differentiate Yourself and Close More Sales? If so, check out a few ways we help promotional product distributors grow their sales & profits: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional product sales, learn how we can help. Ready to Grow & Scale Your Business Fast? If you're an established distributor serious about growing your sales and profits now, check out this case study and schedule a call with our team. Need EQP/Preferential Pricing? If you're an established distributor doing a decent volume of sales, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.

Ready to grow your clientele & revenue? Download "The 20 Client Generators" PDF now and get instant access to strategies that will fill your calendar with potential clients. No complicated tech, no lengthy processes—just real strategies that work. https://info.patrigsby.com/20-client-generators Do you want to stop chasing leads and start attracting them instead? Get Instant Access To The Weekly Client Machine For Just $5.00! https://patrigsby.com/weeklyclientmachine Get Your FREE Copy of Pat's Fitness Entrepreneur Handbook! https://patrigsby.com/feh --- You Can't Out-Hustle a Broken Business Model Pat Rigsby warns that a broken business model can be the "kiss of death," sharing a story about a smart, driven client whose effort couldn't overcome average businesses because "you can't out-hustle a broken model." He explains that flaws like bad pricing, broken payroll structure, or unsustainable rent can keep a business afloat but prevent real upside, wealth, or fair rewards for hard work. While he agrees with Dan Kennedy's idea that "money loves speed," he stresses speed must be aimed in the right direction—like using a map instead of driving fast without a destination. He urges owners to audit whether their model is durable, scalable, sustainable, and enjoyable, and offers to discuss it via email. 00:00 Why Hustle Fails 00:12 Client Story Broken Model 01:14 Common Model Breakdowns 01:44 Money Loves Speed 02:00 Speed Needs Direction 03:49 Models Evolve Over Time 04:38 Audit Your Business Model 05:02 Reengineer For Wealth

What can you do to write more persuasive copy? What to study? What are some techniques? Who is doing it well? Mentions Dave Dee, Dan Kennedy, Joe Sugarman, ...Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/adbriefing-copywriting-tips--3257924/support.

How do you get more traffic without relying on the unpredictable algorithms of Facebook or Google? In this special episode, Darin Spindler sits down with Russell Brunson, founder of ClickFunnels, to discuss the "Dream 100" strategy and the power of pig-headed discipline. Russell shares his origin story of discovering Dan Kennedy while digging a ditch, and how he applied classic direct response principles to build a software empire. You'll learn why traffic is not a mysterious force you have to create, but simply a matter of finding where your dream customers are already congregating. Plus, discover a simple referral strategy to turn your existing customers into a groundswell of new traffic. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

Every business has principles that should never move. It also has practices that need to die right now. Most entrepreneurs confuse the two.  They change their values when they should change their methods, or they cling to methods when the market has already moved on. In this episode, Jimmy Nicholas and Dr. Dustin Burleson dig into how to tell the difference, featuring: The Logo Test: go to your website, swap your logo with a competitor's, and see if anything changes. If it does not, you have a problem. The EB White Principle: AI makes everything 10x easier, 10x faster, 10x cheaper. It does not make it 10x better. Better thinking does. The $75,000 Core Values Story: Dustin spent years and tens of thousands of dollars with consultants discovering his core values. Today, AI can facilitate that process in minutes. The method changed. The principle never will. The MARS Rocket Test (Vern Harnish): put your entire team on a rocket to Mars. You do not know what business you will run when you land. What would still be true about your company? Whatever survives that test is a core value. Everything else is a habit. PLAUD and AI Coaching: how a recording device captures sales and treatment coordinator presentations and AI immediately generates customized follow-up messages based on each prospect's or patient's specific fears, hopes, and objections. AEO vs SEO: 60% of searches now end in zero clicks. If you are not visible in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, you are invisible to a growing segment of your market. Download the free Preserve or Kill Framework and The 3 Shifts Scorecard at WealthyMomentumPodcast.com. Next month: Where Your Next Dollar Is Hiding. It is already inside your business. You just cannot see it yet. Get additional resources, scorecards, and working frameworks at WealthyMomentumPodcast.comSubscribe on YouTube: YouTube.com/@WealthyEntrepreneurHQLearn more: WealthyEntrepreneur.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When it comes to internet marketing, most people are blinded by the technology and forget the fundamentals. In this rare episode, Dan Kennedy sits down with Ken McCarthy - one of the original pioneers of commercial internet marketing - to cut through the hype and reveal what actually works online. From why the biggest mistake you can make is treating the internet as a "magical" new medium, to the critical importance of moving prospects OFF the internet and into your own controlled environment, you'll discover why human psychology and direct response principles haven't changed since 1994. If you're tired of chasing vanity metrics and want to focus on real ROI, this conversation is a masterclass in digital direct marketing. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

Parthiv Shah is a former Indian Air Force veteran, author and co-author with Dan Kennedy, and the founder of eLaunchers, a globally recognized digital marketing agency. He is a 2CCX award winner, having generated over $10 million in service revenue, and has worked with hundreds of clients across industries like healthcare, legal, and professional services.In today's episode, Parthiv joins me to break down his journey from military service to generating over $10 million in service revenue. He shares the systems, mindset, and lessons that helped him scale, including the reality behind winning the 2CCX award.We dive into one of the most overlooked concepts in business, customer retention versus acquisition. Parthiv explains how he generates much of his revenue through retention, and how to build long term relationships that make this possible for your business.Parthiv also shares the real connection between customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, and what most entrepreneurs do not understand about retention. He explains how to outspend competitors and scale sustainably without chasing endless new clients.We also talk about building recurring revenue, leveraging referrals, increasing client value over time, and preparing financially for unexpected downturns like COVID. Parthiv also shares his philosophy of becoming a “rainmaker,” which helps him focus entirely on helping clients grow.Join us today as we dive into retention versus acquisition, building long term revenue systems, increasing lifetime value, creating entrepreneurial peace, and the mindset required to grow a business that lasts.If you're serious about building a business that actually scalesRegister for the FREE training (Aug 15): ⁠eLaunchers.com/freedom⁠ to learn business growth from great minds like Dr. Robert Cialdini and Dan Kennedy.—Visit ⁠freemarketingbooks.com⁠ to get free marketing books & resources that contain real frameworks, sales systems, and client retention strategies you can actually use to scale your revenue.---Connect with Parthiv Shah On Social Media:Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@ELaunchers⁠Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/parthiv.shah.144/⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/parthivshah/⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eparthiv/⁠ FOLLOW RJ ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Facebook: ⁠  ⁠https://www.facebook.com/therjahmed/⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://www.instagram.com/itsrjahmed/⁠Get My Free Script that used to Interview Over a Billion $ worth of Entrepreneurs: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.highticketshowaccelerator.com/free-interview-script54485653⁠---★ Register For a Free 5 Day Challenge on How to Book Your Dream Guests: ⁠https://bit.ly/BYDGChallenge⁠ ★ Want to Learn How to Use the Power of Dream 100 Using Interviews: ⁠https://www.highticketshowaccelerator.com/order40702842⁠ ★ Want to Have One-on-One Support For Building Your Own Show and Building Relationships With Top Influencers in your Market?: ⁠https://shopogeniestudios.com/

This episode originally aired on September 13th 2019. This week, two stories of when technology really isn't the answer. This episode was hosted by Dan Kennedy. Storytellers: Jill Bergman, Aylie Baker To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of the Daily Mastermind with George Wright III, we delve into the concept of building massive authority in your industry. Drawing inspiration from marketing legends like Dan Kennedy and Jim Rohn, George outlines a comprehensive four-step strategy developed over 30 years of experience working with renowned figures such as Tony Robbins and Robert Kiyosaki. The episode focuses on the importance of having a strategic blueprint to control your narrative, craft a compelling message, and leverage modern trends in podcasting and AI. The first step, discussed in detail, emphasizes the need for a clear strategy to separate yourself from the competition, attract new clients, and grow your business. Future segments will further explore building authority and effectively using media.02:12 The Importance of Strategy03:44 Crafting Your Message and Identifying Your Market04:24 Leveraging Media and Trends05:25 Case Study: Building Authority with Casey FieldThanks for listening, and Please Share this Episode with someone. It would really help us to grow our show and share these valuable tips and strategies with others. Have a great day.George Wright III“It's Never Too Late to Start Living the Life You Were Meant to Live”FREE Daily Mastermind Resources:CONNECT with George & Access Tons of ResourcesGet access to Proven Strategies and Time-Test Principles for Success. Plus, download and access tons of FREE resources and online events by joining our Exclusive Community of Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, and High Achievers like YOU.Join FREE at DailyMastermind.comFollow me on social media Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin | TikTok | YoutubeGrow Your Authority and Personal Brand with a FREE Interview in a Top Global Magazine HERE.

When the world changes, most businesses panic... while a few quietly profit. In this episode, Dan Kennedy and Darin Spindler break down what separates winners from losers when market conditions suddenly shift, and why the fundamentals of success haven't changed even if the tactics have. From avoiding shiny new metrics to reinventing yourself when you're forced to adapt, you'll get a clear-eyed look at staying profitable during chaos. If you can't control the environment, learn to control your response to it. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

You're not behind because you're slow. You're behind because you're waiting. In this episode, Igor makes the case for one of Dan Kennedy's most deceptively simple rules — and backs it up with a live, embarrassing example from inside his own AI project, where his super assistant started triple-emailing podcast guests with completely different messages ten minutes apart. The bugs are real. The lessons are more real. And the money? Still waiting for the people who actually launch.

You're not behind because you're slow. You're behind because you're waiting. In this episode, Igor makes the case for one of Dan Kennedy's most deceptively simple rules — and backs it up with a live, embarrassing example from inside his own AI project, where his super assistant started triple-emailing podcast guests with completely different messages ten minutes apart. The bugs are real. The lessons are more real. And the money? Still waiting for the people who actually launch.

On this week's episode, two stories about taking shortcuts. Hosted by Dan Kennedy. Storytellers: Lawrence Wood is too honest with his book club. Amanda Egge gets creative in rehab. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chef Dan Kennedy spent over 20 years in high end kitchens, most recently as head chef at Pasta|Bar Austin before the concept closed in February 2026. He is now working on Morri, his own concept in Austin.In this episode, Andre Natera and Dan Kennedy argue that social media has replaced technical skill with aesthetic performance, and duck is the clearest casualty.Why duck is almost always undercooked and how proper skin rendering changes the entire dishWhy wagyu and high-fat cuts need more heat than most cooks give them, not lessHow to build a tasting menu around timing and satiety instead of story and egoKennedy covers proper rendering technique, skin drying and aging, heat control, extended resting, and pre-service prep decisions that determine outcome before service starts. They also cover lamb, octopus, and grilling over binchotan and wood embers, using cake testers and feel over thermometers, and finishing with fat and flaky salt. On tasting menus, Kennedy favors 5 to 9 courses with canapés, cold starters, and two desserts, structured around deliciousness over narrative. The episode closes with reactions to America's Culinary Cup, commentary on Pasta|Bar's closure, and Chef's PSA merch.This episode is sponsored by Rational USA. Learn more at https://rationalusa.comGuestDan Kennedy on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/cocinero_dk/Dan's Hip Hop Playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6WjAtI8aeONJSnk1FUAeYf?si=vvki6CM9SUSJ-k1BuOm15gLinksSubscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/Sponsored by Rational USA → https://rationalusa.com

Mitch Axelrod's BIO:  A 47 year entrepreneur, speaker, trainer, advisor and 5 time #1 Wall St. Journal, Barnes & Noble and Amazon best-selling author of The NEW Game of Business™, The NEW Game of Selling™ and the forthcoming book, The NEW Game of Service™. Mitch has delivered 4,000 seminars, workshops, keynotes, executive briefings, webinars and coaching clinics to a million people on business, entrepreneurship, sales, leadership, values, life skills and intellectual property. His clients include IBM, AT&T, Citibank, Prudential, MetLife and thousands of small, medium and home based businesses, professionals and solo practitioners. They have generated $4 billion of revenue. Mitch shared the stage with Jack Canfield, Les Brown, Denis Waitley, Brian Tracy, Mark Victor Hansen, Jay Abraham, Barbara Corcoran, Michael Gerber and Dan Kennedy. Featured on media including WABC, Best-Seller TV and Sales Talk Radio, Mitch has taught at NYU, USC, Notre Dame and is faculty at Harvard's Executive Leadership Conference. In 2020 Mitch suffered a stroke and brain aneurism that left him paralyzed on his right side. He had to learn to walk and talk again. His inspirational story of resilience, rebound and recovery has been written about in books and featured on TV shows.   In this episode, Virginia and Mitch talked about How Mitch got into selling The new game of business Big shift in how successful people sell How to turn service into a profit center Marrying sales & service as a holistic system Rejection-proof networking   Takeaways: Be the trusted voice of choice Sell them the BEST solution for THEM Your job is to find the hungry fish Your qualified buyer is either ready or getting ready The most important question: Why did you buy from us?   Connect with Mitch Axelrod on his social media accounts to learn more about his work and insights into networking effectively: LinkedIn URL https://linkedin.com/in/mitchaxelrod Facebook URL https://www.facebook.com/mitchaxelrod Instagram URL https://www.instagram.com/mitchellaxelrod   Connect with Virginia: https://www.bbrpodcast.com/

Can you shortcut decades of entrepreneurial trial and error? In this episode, Dan Kennedy sits down with Richard James and his son Michael Strauch to explore exactly that. From Richard's multi-million-dollar business to Michael's six-figure income while still in college, they reveal how two different entrepreneurial paths collided and accelerated each other. You'll hear what skills actually transfer across industries, which metrics matter most, and why most entrepreneurs fail to adapt when circumstances shift. This is a real-world look at how entrepreneurs are made AND multiplied. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

The RSAC Conference, a major cybersecurity gathering in the spring, is coming up and the impacts of agents will be on full display. Scott Crawford, Brenon Daly, and Dan Kennedy join host Eric Hanselman to explore their expectations and look at what's been taking place in both the marketplace, investments and M&A activity. Agents are automating tasks, not jobs, and there are a great set of use cases, but they're not a panacea. There will be disruption, but it will be in specific areas, rather than a universal replacement of existing tooling. Are we industrializing the automated creation of software? Will agents really replace SaaS applications? We're clearly in the early days, but these questions are causing massive market shifts. A better question is how agentic interactions will change how we interact with the applications that drive businesses today. Join the team at RSAC and get all the details we didn't have time to cover. The annual 451 Research breakfast will be on, as always, so you can meet the team in person.    More S&P Global Content: 451 Research RSAC Breakfast 2026: Beyond the shine of AI, a new cyber reality is unfolding Next in Tech | Ep. 222: FinOps – Managing Cloud and AI Costs Next in Tech | Ep. 205: Agentic AI Impacts       RSAC Conference 2025: Breaking records at the threshold of uncertainty   For S&P Global subscribers: An ominous opening for RSA AI, automation enhance SecOps by reducing alert burdens, boosting efficiency Software's bloodless evolution turns bloody Big Picture 2026 AI Outlook: Unleashing agentic potential   Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman Guests: Scott Crawford, Brenon Daly, Daniel Kennedy Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith  

https://youtu.be/47bH911YFF0 Vance Morris, consultant, coach, and speaker, helps service-based businesses break free from the ordinary and create extraordinary customer experiences that generate loyal customers for life. After spending more than a decade working for the Disney Company and learning its powerful systems and processes for customer service, Vance launched his own businesses and built them around those principles—eventually creating companies that run largely without his daily involvement. We explore Vance's Customer Experience System, a framework for turning ordinary interactions into memorable moments that create lifelong customers. The system focuses on mapping all customer points of contact, ideating experiences for each boring touchpoint, prioritizing the biggest impact moments, and memorializing those experiences in systems or playbooks so they can be delivered consistently by the team. Vance explains how businesses can create “tellable moments,” recover from service mistakes in memorable ways, and build repeatable marketing systems that generate referrals and long-term customer loyalty. — Get Customers 17 Ways with Vance Morris Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Vance Morris, a consultant, coach, and speaker, who helps advisor-based businesses break free from the ordinary and step into the extraordinary. Vance, welcome to the show.  I appreciate it, Steve. Thank you so much. Your background is very interesting and your whole idea of making customer experience unique, and also you have unique ways of acquiring customers. So let’s get into it. But I’d like to start with my favorite question: What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business?  My personal ‘Why’ is very strong, and that is I never want to be an employee ever again. I make a lousy employee. I don’t like to be told what to do. And so knowing that has kept me on this entrepreneurial path for the last 19 years.  Okay, well, I can relate to this. I can relate to this. That’s a big thing when you are in charge of your own time. It’s a big blessing. Some people make a lot of money, but if they don’t own their time, it’s not ideal. I agree 100%. Yes, sir.  Yeah. Love it. Let’s talk a little bit about your journey. I mean, how did you end up being a non-employee and being your own boss and advising companies, what the route led you down this path?  Sure. Well, the long and short of it, I spent a little over a decade working for the Disney Company down in Orlando, Florida. Magnificent experience. Great company to work for. Towards the end, I was starting to get that inkling that maybe I should be doing something on my own. So I went out and worked as an employee and a consultant at the same time for a couple of different restaurant concepts. And then I had a couple of high-profile positions. I was catering director for the Smithsonian Museum System, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, things like that. And along the way, I realized that I do indeed make a lousy employee because I got fired a couple of times. So I own up to it. I’m okay with it. But I said to myself, let’s put something together that will be your own and we’ll be able to afford the lifestyle that you’re looking for. So about 20 years ago, I started a couple of home service businesses. I took all of my Disney knowledge and Disney systems and processes—both on customer experience and customer retentionShare on X and importantly pricing—and put those all into those businesses and started to grow them. And people started asking me, well, geez, Vance, you don’t look like you’re working very hard. How are you doing that? So I back in 2013, I started consulting with other companies, primarily professional services, on how to really deliver extraordinary customer experiences that will lead to what I call raving fans for life, or customers for life.  I love it. No better place to learn than at Disney, right? Yeah, I mean, it was great. And one of the first things I learned there was that Disney operates 100% on systems and processes. I mean, I ain’t sure we learned how to pick up trash and smile at people, but the biggest lesson was Disney has a process for everything. You want to carry a tray in a restaurant, they got a process. You want to change a bus tire, they have a process. So I took that everywhere I went, which has actually led me to be fairly autonomous from my home service businesses because I put systems and processes in place, and I only spend about 90 minutes a week on those businesses.  That’s fantastic. So let’s talk about these processes, particularly the customer experience processes that you have installed. And actually you have a process for installing processes, which is kind of a system to enhance the customer experience and then keep customers for a long time. You talk about keeping them for life. So tell me about that system and how do you delight customers on a schedule?  Sure. So the process is called Systematic Magic, and there’s seven magic keys to this system. And it’s designed to really look at all different parts of the business in order to surprise and delight folks. Some of it is not very sexy. I will admit that ahead of time. Some of it you'll be like, oh my God, I get it. So the first thing that you have to do, though—and this is the unsexy part of it—is you have to map out your customer journey. And you have to do it from the point of view of your customer. So what is the first point of contact a customer has with you? Is it a phone call, a visit to the office, a website? What is that first contact? And then figure out how to create an experience out of that. And then what’s the second contact? Now in between first and second contact, let’s say you’re a financial advisor, and in the first meeting you get all the numbers and all their information. You say, okay, it’s going to be about seven to ten days, I’ll get you a proposal or a plan a week and a half or so. So while the financial advisor is working, they’re actually doing something. What is the customer doing? Absolutely nothing. They’re sitting there waiting. And waiting is painful. While waiting, things start to go through your head. You start to possibly have buyer’s remorse. You’re rethinking this purchase. Is there somebody out there better? Is this guy even paying attention to me? I just met him and I haven’t seen him in a week and a half. So Disney—people wait for a lot of things at Disney. You wait for the rides. You wait for transportation. But they figured out that they need to entertain you while you’re in line to make it not feel so bad. And they call it “linertainment.” So this is something that I’ve brought to other businesses is how do you entertain your customer while they are waiting for you to do something? It could be as simple as a maybe a sequence of a handwritten note that goes out in the mail on the first day. A follow up call from your assistant saying, Hey, Bob’s working on your plan. He hasn’t forgot about you. And then maybe you’ve written a book. And so getting that book in the mail to your client would be another step, really trying to make that wait period not feel so long. And also remind the customer that you’re still thinking about them.  Yeah. Love it. That’s brilliant. So you talk about this process of mapping out the points of contact, and then you talk about the boring touch points. You talk about ideating experience in each boring touch point. So tell me about boring touch points. I understand waiting is definitely boring.  Sure.  It’s such much a touch point. It’s more of a boring time period.  Disney has figured out how to create an experience out of all of the boring and mundane things we have to do to keep our business up and running: answer the phone, greet a guest, show them how to enter a building. So I’ve brought that to the real world. Quick example. So I have a insurance broker. And he’s got Allstate agent, and he has about 17 other Allstate guys in his area, in addition to all of the other regular insurance guys in his area. And he needed a way to stand out because insurance is a highly commoditized business. You don’t really know what’s the difference between one guy and the next. One has a lizard, one has a something else. So I got to his office. I noticed that he was a rock and roll fanatic. I mean, he had autographed guitars on the wall, gold records, posters, and everything. And I said, well, I think you should lean into your personality a little bit and be the rock and roll insurance guy.Share on X And his receptionist was the one that came up with the way to answer the phone. Before, like most companies, they would say, “Thank you for calling Dave's Insurance. How can I help you?” Boring. Everybody says that. So his receptionist suggested, well, we should probably, let’s sound like a radio DJ and really make it an experience out of answering the phone. So now they say: “Thank you for calling Dave's Allstate, the agency that rocks.” That’s a little corny the first few times you say it, but if you think about it, your marketing is designed to do two things: repel the people you don’t want and attract the people you do want. So just by answering the phone this way, they sift, sort, and screen out anybody who would be a bad customer.  Yeah. Love it. That’s a good example. How do you know which are the biggest impact points in this series of touch points, and we have to focus your energy?  Well, what you want to do once you've completed journey mapping is look at points where you may have the most impact on either the experience or on your profitability. Or is there something glaring that’s like, “Oh my God, we have to fix this”? And so you look for those opportunities within your journey map, and so it’s going to be different for everyone. The one place that I see most businesses falling down is after the sale is complete. So after money exchanges hands. So you get the check and that’s it. The customer never hears from you again because you got the money. It’s like going into the department store and you want to buy a shirt, you walk into the store and you’re immediately accosted by a salesperson who will follow you everywhere. Get you all set up, get your shirt, you pay for the shirt, and then that’s it.  Nobody talks to you. Nobody escorts you to the front door, holds the door open for you. Thanks you for coming in. They got the money, and off they go. You have to look at, okay, I got your check, or I got your credit card. Now we’re in a relationship. We need to continue to nurture that. Most businesses will think, well, you know what? I did a good job, or I’ve got a great product. People should remember me. And that is so far from the truth. It's not the customer's job to remember you. It's your job to remind the customer that you exist. You need to have strategies and tactics in place after the sale in order to keep them engaged.Share on X  Can you give some examples? Sure, certainly. And this really will work for any business, either online or offline. B2C, B2B—it doesn't matter. One thing I strongly recommend is a newsletter, preferably in print and sent through the mail. Newsletters designed to do a couple of things. One, it's to entertain them, because you don't always want to be selling to people. If the only time your customer ever hears from you is when you want to sell them something, well—that's not really nice. All you’re doing is just asking for money every time. So you want to be able to provide value, provide some entertainment, be a welcome guest in their home when your newsletter arrives.Share on X Now you can then supplement that with postcard or a series of emails and have calls to action, sales, or promotions there. But not everything should be a sales item. It should be there to reinforce the relationship or the emotional connection that you put together.  Yeah, love it. Some companies used to do this really intensively. I was part of Dan Kennedy's inner circle in the 2000s, and they were sending CDs in the mail, all kinds of different postcards and funny mail, and copy. And they were really intense with it. They had lumpy mail—this kind of stuff—but it kind of went out of fashion. It seems like people don't send stuff in the mail much anymore, or what you get is 90% of it lands in the trash unopened.  I mean, people have gotten lazy, I think. The internet is there—oh, I can just send an email, click, and it's done. There’s a certain art to putting together lumpy mail. I certainly still believe in it. I use it almost every day. And Kennedy was a tremendous mentor to me as well. And I think that something he said it has always stuck with me is look at what all of your competitors are doing and do the opposite. Opposite. Yeah.  So if all of your competitors are marketing online, well, how do we go and market and find our customers offline? And really, I mean, if you look at your mailbox, I mean, I got the mail today. I had a newspaper and a credit card solicitation.  Yeah.  That was it.  Yeah. Incidentally, Kennedy was a big Disney fan. He took tours of members to Disney every year, showed them around, and used it as an example.  He loved it.  Yeah. Let’s switch gears here a little bit and let’s talk about your marketing system because you don’t just have a customer experience system, you have a marketing system as well. And it kind of blew my mind when you told me that you have 17 different systems to acquire a customer. And you actually have 52 ways to connect with a customer as well, or maybe I’m confusing the two. So tell me a little bit about the different ways of acquiring customers?  Sure. So you got the numbers right, just in the wrong section, but that’s fine. What you need is a CRM, or customer relationship management system. You need to be able to automate this. There’s no way that I could even think remotely that I was going to be able to manage all of that. So if you look inside—like I mentioned, I own some home service businesses—we currently have probably about 70 marketing campaigns running. Everything from Google pay-per-click to referral campaigns, to reminder campaigns, reminding people they need to be cleaned and things like that.  And you don’t want to rely on just one thing, because as we all know, one is the worst number in business. If you only have one way of getting clients, and that way goes away, you’re in big trouble. So I don’t like to rely on the internet because that goes down, and Google or Facebook change their algorithms every other week. It's a big guessing game. I would much rather have boots on the ground, so to speak, and go out and get my own customers. So we have a salesperson or a marketing person, and her job is to go around our entire area, creating referral partnerships and then maintaining those referral partnerships. So when people say, “Oh, we get all our business from referrals,” I ask them, I say, well, do you have a system for that, or you just get one or two every now and then? And most people don’t have a system. And a system is what's going to, one, add tremendous value to your company when you're ready to sell it. But two, it's something that is repeatable and replicable. So if you want to step away from your business for a period of time, you have systems in place that your employees just have to run.Share on X In eight years, I spend about 90 minutes a week on my home service companies. I've got three businesses, and I spend 90 minutes a week on all three. An hour of that is just a meeting with the general manager that I put in place. The other 30 minutes, I keep control of the bank accounts—I never let go of that. So those systems have given me freedom to be able to come and go as I please from those businesses. And the businesses run without me. So without a marketing system in place, or a marketing checklist, we hear the story: would you ever get on an airplane where the pilot decided, “You know what? I'm not going to do the pre-flight checklist today. I'm just going to wing it”?  Yeah.  You don’t want to get on that airplane. Well, same thing goes for your marketing. I’m forgetful. I got a lot of stuff going on. Here’s the checklist, here’s the system. Follow it and get it done.  Love it. So yes, I think you’re right, I mixed it up. So 52 ways to acquire customer, 17 systems to acquire customers. What type of systems are we talking about? You mentioned the CRM, obviously that’s a system. What other types of systems do you have?  Sure. So certainly, the customer acquisition systems that we have in place—as I mentioned—we have the salesperson, we have Google pay-per-click, we have direct mail, we have shared mailings. And for customer retention, we also have a ton of different systems. Again, of them is, every month we take the top five customers we have and we send them a cake. I mean, when was the last time you had an electrician, a carpet cleaner, or somebody come to your house, do some work, and then send you a cake in the mail? It's probably not happening. We do a lot of things like that because we want to be tellable. We want people, at the end of any interaction with us, to say, “Oh my God, you'll never guess what happened when and [insert profession here]. So, “Oh my God, you never guess what happened when the carpet cleaner was here—they mailed me a cake after the cleaning.” So you want to get people thinking, “Oh my God, what can I do to really get people talking about me?” How can we—not so much viral—but genuine postings of things? I mean, we do handwritten thank-you notes for everybody. That’s one of the systems. It's got to the point where I had to subcontract the handwritten thank-you notes because I don’t have time to write a hundred of them every week. So I went out and “rented” some grandmas. I went over to a local senior center, and there was this group of three ladies just sitting there having coffee. I asked them, “How often do you get together?” “Oh, we get together at least three times a week. We have coffee and we talk.” I said, “Do you ever get bored?” She said, “Yeah, sometimes.” I said, “Great. I'll be more than happy to buy you coffee and donuts and whatever. Would you mind writing some thank-you notes for us?” And now I've got three grandmas who write all of the thank-you notes for one of my businesses.  Fantastic. So these are some the systems. What are the 52 ways? I think you also have some kind of a freebie for listeners.  Yeah.  Could share it for us?  So the 52 Ways to Wow Your Customers. It's one “wow” for every week of the year, and most of them are low or no cost.Share on X One could be just, “Hey, when was the last time you picked up the phone and actually called and talked to a few of your customers?” I mean, nobody uses the telephone anymore. They send a text or something impersonal like that. Pick up the phone and talk to them. Are you contemplating a new product? Go to your existing customers and say, “Hey, you know what? I'm getting ready to launch this product. I'd love for you to test it. Would you do that for me?” 99.9% of people want to help you. So yes, they're going to say, “Yeah, I'd love to test your new product or service.” It's things like that that build up the 52 Ways. You don't need all of them—certainly pick one, two, or ten—so that you stay in front of your clients and really stand out. One of the things I talk a lot about is service recovery—like when you screw up something. One way to wow your customer is, what do you do if you're late? So if we are going to an appointment and we’re running behind, our technicians know that they are to stop at a grocery store or a florist and buy some flowers for the house that we’re going to. I mean, you can't yell at a guy. The client answers the door, and there's a 20-something-year-old standing with a bouquet of flowers. You really can't yell at him. And then again, that’s tellable. We know we made a mistake or we were delayed. We want to make it up to you. Here’s some flowers. And then we may do some other kind of discount or something. But yeah, it's about looking for what would make you happy.  Love it. Yeah. I had a client who was a construction company, and what they did was for every client that they had, that was one of their jobs is to figure out what they would really love having the new home. For example, one of the things that they did was one of the customers had the house in Hoboken, and they kinda loved the New York skyline to see from the yard, and then they moved down to Richmond. This came up in conversation—they mentioned this was something they would miss. And then what they did was they basically did a wall-to-wall poster. They took a picture of the exact skyline position, and they put a wall-to-wall poster on one of the rooms.  Oh, that’s brilliant. Oh, that’s fantastic.  Yeah.  I mean, construction and trades can easily do this. I've got a kitchen and bath remodeler as a client. Remodeling can be a disaster in somebody's house, so he knows that maybe on a day when there's not going to be a stove in the kitchen, he actually brings a gift card for a local restaurant so the family can go out to eat. Or if it's lunchtime and there are people in the house and they can't use the kitchen, he'll order DoorDash for his clients. Now, of course, all this is built into the pricing. But it’s the matter that you’re thinking about doing these things is what really counts.  Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Alright, so if someone would like to learn more and connect with you—maybe they have a home service business, a retail business, or any other type of business—they could use your suggestions. I think any kind of business, even business-to-business, would work because, at the end of the day, it's mostly people, if not AI, that you're connecting with. So where should they go? How can they connect with you, and how can you help them?  Yeah, certainly. So I only do one social media, and that's LinkedIn. You can find me there. I'm the only Vance Morris Disney guy floating around out there. You mentioned the 52 Ways to Wow Your Customers. If that's something people are interested in, it's a free download at www.wow52ways.com .  wow52ways.com. Alright, so I’ll definitely download it. So, Vance, any parting words or wisdom for our listeners before we wrap up?  Well, you probably heard a couple of ideas on this podcast—at least I hope so. Maybe you read something today, maybe you heard something else. You're not going to move the needle in your business unless you actually do something. You're not going to profit unless you implement.Share on X You've got to take an idea, try it, and put it into play before you can move the needle in any direction. So my big message is find one thing and go and implement it.  Love it. This is so true. I mean, it's the definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right?  Right.  Well, listeners, if you enjoyed this discussion, stay tuned because every week we have a wonderful entrepreneur or thought leader coming and sharing the best ideas with you. And Vance, thank you for sharing your gold nuggets. And do reach out to Vance Morris on LinkedIn, or get his freebies on wow52ways.com, right? Yes.  That’s the website. I’m going to do that. So thank you Vance, for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Vance's LinkedIn: Vance's  website:

On this episode, Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy talk with Barbara "Bob" Allen, an LA-based journalist, trainer and consultant who founded CollegeJournalism.org in 2025. The site provides resources and news for journalism educators and student media advisers across the country. Allen is also the editor of the Student Press Report, a brand-new national news desk covering the state of the college press. The debut piece — "Cash-starved and censored, America's student press is in crisis" — lays out the financial and free-press challenges facing campus newsrooms. Allen also writes the weekly College Journalism Newsletter. Allen brings decades of experience mentoring student journalists. She was adviser to the student newspaper at Oklahoma State University and most recently served as director of college programming at the Poynter Institute in Florida. She holds a master's degree from the University of Missouri, home to both a campus paper — The Maneater — and the Columbia Missourian, a lab newspaper covering the city of Columbia. Allen has also led an ambitious project to map every college newspaper in the country, in collaboration with the University of Vermont's Center for Community News. That effort found more than 1,100 college newspapers, with 766 located in or adjacent to counties with little or no local news access. Dan's Quick Take stays close to home. The Huntington News, Northeastern's independent student newspaper, just celebrated its 100th anniversary. Ellen's Quick Take is about a three-bedroom, three-bath condo in Provincetown. The Local Journalism Project, a nonprofit that partners with the Provincetown Independent, raised money from more than 100 donors to buy the condo to house reporters. Ed Miller, editor and co-founder of the Indie, told Mike Blinder of Editor & Publisher that housing was a major barrier to attracting staff to his well-regarded newspaper on the Outer Cape.  

https://youtu.be/_A__xfP6HBM Laurie Barkman, strategic growth advisor, former $100M CEO, M&A expert, and author of The Business Transition Handbook, helps construction, architecture, and engineering firms build scalable, sustainable businesses that create time, freedom, and long-term value. Having experienced a major acquisition firsthand and led companies through significant growth and change, Laurie now focuses on helping mature business owners navigate the complex journey of building enterprise value and preparing for future transitions. We explore Laurie's BUILT Method—Blueprint, Unlock, Integrate, Lead, Transition—a strategic framework designed to help founders of established businesses scale beyond owner dependency and prepare for successful leadership or ownership transitions. Laurie explains how aligning the owner's personal vision with the company's future strategy creates clarity, why measuring enterprise value can unlock new growth decisions, and how proactive transition planning helps entrepreneurs avoid the identity crisis that often follows a business exit. — Take 5 Steps to Transitioning Your Business with Laurie Barkman Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and today my guest is Laurie Barkman, a strategic growth advisor, former a hundred-million-dollar CEO and M&A expert who’s helping construction and engineering companies build scalable, sustainable businesses that creates time, freedom, and value. Laurie is also the author of the Business Transition Handbook. Laurie, welcome to the show. Steve, thank you so much. I’m so excited to be with you today. Yeah, it’s great to have you. And you have a really interesting niche with the business transition and helping construction or architecture engineering firms. So what brought you to this point? What is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in your practice? My personal why has been evolving over the years through my career. I think I was always an entrepreneur at heart. I had orbited entrepreneurial companies, like startups, in a big company. I was always the maverick. I was trying to be an intrapreneur and ultimately found myself in a position of finding a way to help business owners in the back part of their journey. While I love startups, I have found that my niche is in working with mature companies—so companies that are over five to seven years old—and helping entrepreneurs in the tough decisions.Share on X It’s the tough decisions that they really wrestle with, feel alone, and I’ve been in executive shoes, right? I’ve been lived that world. I’m living in the entrepreneurial world right now, but again, in this mature space where we think about life differently, we think about transitions differently, and I’ve just kind of embraced that idea, especially as a Gen Xer, of how to help other Gen Xers in that in-between. So is there like a personal reason why you are attracted to this whole idea of the transition?  I’ve lived a lot of transitions, especially in the corporate world, going through an acquisition about 10 years ago, I was an outside hire at a third-generation company, and they said, “We’re looking to hire you not for the next three years, but for the next 20,” which was really exciting, but it ended up being three. And the reason why is because a little Bluebird, who wasn’t so little, a global company who was very in acquisitive, I was interested in this business, third-generation company. It was over a billion in revenue. My business unit was about 10% of the total. So again, sizable business unit, and myself and the other executives had to work really, really hard to keep our foot on the gas pedal, making sure that the deal, if we were, was going to go through that we helped make it go through—which we did. It was out of the blue. The company was not on the market. But I saw firsthand the innovation, the growth, and the transition over the three generations of the stories of how it went from one to the next was just so fascinating to me. So when I ultimately was part of the integration team, I left the business. The short answer was that I was just there for three years. And so after that I really saw an opportunity to help other entrepreneurs on their journey. So this notion of that we’re going to grow, we’re going to innovate, and then eventually we’re going to transition—maybe it’s a family business, maybe it’s founder-led. Nonetheless, we want to create value, we want to have good handoffs, and I saw things were working well.Share on X As I mentioned, I joined at the point of the third generation. Then it was up to the corporate gods take it from there. And so I thought about ways to add value and work with inspired entrepreneurs who envision a future legacy for themselves, the people they love, the communities they serveShare on X but they’re just stuck. They feel stuck in some way. They’re kind of on their path. They’re not at the end of the path. They’re on it, and they need that support. That’s really what’s been motivating me and driving me for the last seven plus years. Yeah. That’s a wonderful journey, and it’s a very wordy thing because these entrepreneurs, they build a company, and then they don’t know how to allow it to grow up. And you basically are there and help them with the empty nesting and the pre-empty nesting, getting them into good courage. That’s also very important. So one of the ways you, I understand you do this is you call it the BUILT Method, which is kind of neat because you work with construction, engineering, architecture firms. So what is the BUILD Method is about, and how does it help people?  Yeah, the  BUILD Method is definitely an acknowledgement that we are in a physical world, and I appreciate you making that connection.Share on X And it’s not lost on our audience, hopefully. It’s such an important space. We really, in a time of AI and such dramatic change, the built environment of architecture, engineering, design companies that are envisioning their futures. There’s like any industry, there’s a lot of changes. And so this is a blueprint, if you will. That’s the “B,” right? It’s a blueprint for what is your vision and what is the firm model, what should it be in the future? It’s really that roadmap of future growth. The “U” is an unlocked. So many of us feel stuck. Maybe we’re stuck in the day-to-day because we have owner-dependent businesses. Maybe we feel stuck because our revenues are plateaued or declining. And we see ourselves as a bottleneck. Maybe we’re a bottleneck for a variety of reasons, which I’m sure we could talk about. The “I” is all about integration. And so, what do we need to do to document our systems and put things in place so that we don’t have risks in terms of not only owner dependency, but any other employees where there could be gaps should someone leave the organization or have some other untimely departure? The “L” is lead, and lead is not used lightly. Lead is really with clarity and not with chaos. And for owner-dependent businesses, people that have companies that can’t thrive without them, this tends to be a real challenge that they want to lead from the front, but they’re not. And they're so in the weeds in the business, they can't see the forest for the trees. They're not working on the business. So really helping my clients find that clarity is so important.Share on X And then the “T”, last but not least, stands for transition. It’s probably my favorite word at this point. And it’s not just transition or change for any sake. It’s good to have that confidence and to be in control, to be in the driver’s seat, and to be proactive about change. It’s why I wrote the book, The Business Transition Handbook. It’s really encouraging entrepreneurs to not think about an exit as a point in time and a finite point in time. It’s why I do talk about exit and I do talk about exit planning, but my recognition is that this is a finite action, and a transition is a journey. It's a path, and that's why my business is named Business Transition Sherpa, because I am with you on your journey. So the BUILT Method is really all about these different aspects and helping entrepreneurs on their journey.Share on X STEVE PREDA: Yeah. This is very cool. And there is a lifecycle to business, and there’s a lifecycle to an entrepreneur as well. And hopefully the business’s lifecycle is much longer than the entrepreneur’s. So someone is going to take it on, and you want to create a great legacy and a great business. So your way of the blueprint or your version of blueprint is different. Is it like what people call mission, vision, values kind of thing or there’s more to it? I think it does start with that. I mean, those are so fundamental, and my overall approach with strategic transition planning is the acknowledgement that there’s different aspects of the planning that we need to do as business owners, and one of those aspects is a blueprint for the business. And the business fundamentals of where do we want to be in five to seven years or ten years. Another part of that, which is a dovetail, is where does the owner want to be? What’s their personal future vision? And we start to intertwine those things, especially in this age and life stage. I work a lot with, as I mentioned, Gen Xers, and so we are in the mid-fifties of our lives, and statistically speaking, we’re about five to seven years away from a significant life transition. A lot of the Gen Xers, especially business owners I work with, are saying, “I’m looking ahead. I see what the baby boomers have done, and I don’t want to do it their way. I want to do it differently. I’m not going to die at my desk, and I want other things out of my life. My business has provided this and that for me, which has been valuable, but I’m ready for something different. I just don’t know what it is.” So we integrate in this blueprint. Their vision is not just for the business, but it's for themselves as well. And it's a big reason why I work directly one-on-one with the owners, founders.Share on X You and I have talked offline about the role of management team. It’s so important for me. It’s really, really important to give that private time and private space for the owner because these are such important questions that will influence the direction of many lives. And if we’re unwavering, it feels a little uncertain, and we don’t want to necessarily showcase that uncertainty to our teams. So the blueprint part of this is a bit of ideation as well. A big part of what we do is we work on what their future vision is, and it takes into account this age and life stage component of what we’ve been talking about. Yeah. That’s really interesting because maybe you find that as well, that sometimes the vision—the individual vision of the entrepreneur and the company’s vision gets confused. And the entrepreneur may not realizing that their vision may be to transition out of the company, but that’s not going to be the vision for the company because the company for them to be able to transition, has to have a much longer view and people have to believe in it, so that even with the founder, they’re going to be successful. So that is an interesting conundrum that I vision for with an entrepreneur like that. Do you find that to be the case? It is a conundrum. I think it’s just a lonely place in our heads and for owners and founders who have a lot on their shoulders. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” right? It’s a saying that means so much. I think that people want to explore options. They don’t want to lock in on something and put all their eggs in that one basket. I have found that owners who create options for eventual transition are better positioned than folks who have placed bets. I could tell you so many stories, Steve. So for example, especially in our engineering, architecture, and design-type of audience, owners sometimes are placing bets on their internal management to buy them out over time. I had one gentleman call me—I’d say he’s a baby boomer. He had a wonderful number two, had been grooming the number two for eventual. What he had envisioned in his mind was of to sell the business to him, and not only did the number two not want that; he resigned. And it felt like such a betrayal. He was so upset. I had talked to him months after this happened, and he was still upset about it. He felt like it was a starting over in a lot of ways for his own exit plan, which it was. And so we try to prevent against that. Yeah, there's a lot of things that we can do to try to figure out if we have the right people in the right seats. And that's important.Share on X I know you spent a lot of time on this as well, working with management to say, “Do we have the right people in the right seats?” And we do assessments, and those are great. Those are skills and strengths, and we should do that. But what I have found is that we don’t do that when it comes to ownership, especially if we think that the owner is inside the company. And we can talk about it—I’ve created an assessment for that because it’s a high-level way to just get your head around. Do people on my team have an ownership mentality or not? We’re not recruiting for that. We’re recruiting for the skills and strengths that we need for that time. And when we’re growing people over a long period of time, you can imagine how that becomes even more of a problem because if we assume they’re an owner, they have a owner mindset, and they don’t—and they’re more cash—oriented versus equity—oriented and other things—that puts us in a trap. Yeah. I think it’s a big trap. I read it somewhere, I know where I read it from. Dan Kennedy, who’s like a small business guru—he was big in the 2000s—and he once said that the worst number in business is one. It’s one salesperson; it’s one successor who will have to come through. I think this is a big mistake of business owners that they try to clone themselves because they think that if they just find one person who is going to be as good as me, and all my problems are solved. Whether you call it an integrator who is going to come in and run the show and I can just be up there and vision and dream about stuff, I think it’s a huge mistake. I much prefer the idea of creating mini-CEOs in your business who can really strategically own their functions. So anyhow, yeah, this is a big problem. But I’d like to move on to the next letter in the acronym, which is “U”. I really love this word: “unlock.” It’s very inspiring. Unlock—how do you unlock? How do you figure out how to open up the floodgates of opportunity or whatever you mean by unlock? I think part of it is a diagnostic around where is the business today and what are some of the things that we’ve set as goals for enterprise value. What is enterprise value? Are we measuring it? Most often we’re not, and the one big unlock is just this recognition that we have set KPIs for our business, which are great, and we’re using them with our teams, and we’re operationalizing those. Love it. Awesome. Keep that going. But what a business owner is not measuring most often is the enterprise value.  And if we are measuring that, we might make different choices in how we’re investing our resources if our objective is to increase that value. So we might say, “Well, what is enterprise value?” Okay. So we need to understand that. And then, what is it in measurement terms—either through a professional like myself who can help us understand and not just talking to your buddies at the golf club or what you think your business might be worth? And if we can really get some data around that. You know, I love my analytical entrepreneurs, which is one of the reasons I love this space. They're analytical people, and they like the numbers, and they want to have some structure around it. So that's what we do, is we start with the baselining.Share on X Where is the business today? And let’s set some targets. We look at, “Well, what’s best in class in that particular industry?” So again, the AEC industry, we have some benchmarks around that. And then we have to understand, “Well, what are some of the value drivers?” One big, big value driver, of course, is going to be financial performance. So what’s beyond that? And what are these hidden things that we don’t know that can be detracting value? And so if we dig into those things, it’s like an unlock. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. My best example of that in this conversation is enterprise value. Once you know where your enterprise value is today, you can’t unsee that. And you also can’t unsee the desire for many people, which is, “Oh wow, what if I could increase that?” Then we’re talking about millions of dollars of value at some point in the future. So aligning that with our exercise we talked about earlier, which is our age and life-stage exercise around exit timeline. It’s so powerful because now we can set some targets that are meaningful to our communities, our employees, our stakeholders, and ourselves, and aligning the personal, the business, and the financial towards this overall picture. It’s a major unlock. And do you find that—what is the level of transparency you see that these business owners allow for their team to see? So would they actually show them that this is our profitability, these are our margins, gross profit, this is our overhead, this is our net profit, this is how we calculate enterprise value, and here is how you can help me improve it. Is this how it goes or it’s more everyone is just focusing on a couple of KPIs that are within their program?  It’s an evolution. I think a lot of times in the beginning, we keep it a little close because we’re trying to understand it ourselves. And for firms that have developed a cost-of-goods-sold model, a gross profit, they’re already measuring that. Maybe they’re doing that by lines of business. That is really powerful. I have one client in the engineering space that just put that in. And they doubled revenue last year, by the way. So they’re a high-growth company in the engineering space, which is so exciting. They’re doing about $10 million in revenue, and they just put that in for the different lines of business. And how it’s helping them is it’s giving them a year-over-year perspective, which is good. They can see where they’re investing, and they can also see payback opportunities where there’s an intersection with the team. I think is on the business side for growth levers. When we talk about value drivers, and we'll just pick one that's quite common beyond financial numbers, it's our ability to drive recurring revenue, subscription models, and different flavors of…Share on X So for this particular client, we’ve been working on developing a recurring revenue program for them, and we’re at the starting line, but what’s going to be so exciting, I think, not only in terms of their core business growth that they’re seeing, but once we get that recurring revenue program up and running, it’s going to be material. Once the revenues are large enough, of course, it’s going to be material on their enterprise value. And so the dovetail is, well, yeah, he’s not going to launch the subscription revenue business by himself. He needs others to help him do that. But the idea for it and the vision for it and then the unlock right, comes from this type of exploration. Yeah. Wow. That’s great. And it is definitely a challenge that construction companies often struggle with. How do I do a project-based company primarily? How do I drive recurring revenue, subscription models? That would probably deserve its own podcast, this whole topic or maybe a podcast series. Maybe I’ll talk about it another time. I still like us to cover the last letter in the acronym: the transition. Because that’s where I see a lot of people who have sold their business. I was an investment banker in my past life, and I don’t know how many times we saw the business, and the owner was so excited that they basically neutralized the risk, and then they had this big pile of cash, and they bought the boat and they bought the car and the house. And six months later, the boat was collecting water in the marina. You know, they showed the car off to everyone, and it was no longer exciting, but it was very expensive, and they didn’t know where to store it, kind of thing. And then they were getting bored, and they were kind of disappointed because their identity got ahead. How do you deal with it? How do you help people with the identity issue and this whole thinking about transition the right way? You nailed it. That identity is a really big part of why many business owners feel lonely and a bit depressed one year after a sale. There’s many reasons why that could happen. I think the statistics are a little bit over the place, but I do believe that identity is a big part of it. And so if we are working on this together, an example with one of my clients is I gave them a book to read because I got an inkling of what he was interested in, which is themes around justice. And he’s seeking ways to have an impact in his community that are truly outside the business for lots of reasons. But he just innately wants this type of involvement, and we are going through an exploration of what that could look like. He’s in a good place with his business. We're continuing to grow it, and we're working on his growth and enterprise value growth and things like that.Share on X But this sort of sits on this in a parallel path, and it will intersect at some point because we all are human. We have an age and life stage to us, and how he’s envisioning spending his time over the next 10 years. He wants to continue to have a path forward. But we’ve created a space for when we meet, we’re meeting one-on-one, we create that space to really talk about how does he want to spend his time outside the business. And note the timeline here. He’s about 10 years away. And to his credit, he’s saying, “Yeah, I want to start doing something now.” And if that’s how we can think about it, Steve. I think it’s really important. It’s almost like this giant on-ramp. We’re not going to just sell our business and then, all of a sudden we’re going to go have this amazing thing that we’re going to create tomorrow, right? It just takes time. And another way to think about it is like a portfolio—a portfolio of how you look at your identity, how you feel about yourself, and how you spend your time—and has to align. Really, it can align with your core values, it can align with how you want to spend time with people you love. So I have one client, engineering company owner, who is very committed to the church that they support, and he spends a lot of time and a lot of resources. It’s very clear on the company’s website how the company has a policy of donating proceeds from profits to this entity. So it’s well known, and it’s just part of their culture. And in developing his 10-year view, this is part and parcel of it. It’s involving his family members; it’s involving the company. It’s helped fueling a decision around their transition path. They’ve considered lots of different options: Should they sell to a third party? Should they become an ESOP? And the dovetail, I think, for many, is to figure out what is that right fit based on what’s important to you. What’s going to give you that feeling of that completeness and balance that you’re seeking? Wow, that’s amazing. You have people who are thinking about that 10-years out. That is impressive. I’ve never seen that. If a business owner thinks 3-years out about that, it’s already much better than average. So you obviously are inculcating them with the right kind of ideas. So tell me about your business. So let’s switch gears here a little bit. I mean, you ran this a hundred million dollar business for three years, and it got sold; it got integrated. So I’m sure that you had some big challenges there. What is it that you would consider the hardest decision you ever had to make in your business? Yeah, I think in today’s world, I can try to put my coaching hat on for this answer. I’m trying to build a practice that is creating value for others. And so one big thing is to make sure that I’m doing that now with my client relationships and how we measure things. I’m confident that we are doing that, but inherently, if we have one voice, how do we reach many? And I think a lot of companies… it’s like, “Oh, that’s a marketing question.” Yes. And right, it is a marketing question. There’s a lot of things that are dynamically changing in our world. How do we reach the people that we want to reach? How do we share a message? So that is no matter what business you have, I think we can all sort of empathize with that. So I do feel like that is changing a lot. So the challenge is, how do I meet people where they are, right? I think podcasting has been a great vehicle. We’re doing more of that. We’re going to be doing more in-person things as well. I do think that we’re very much in a powerful digital age, and the more digital tools we’re putting in front of us and the more digital time we’re spending. My hypothesis, Steve, is that the value of the interaction—the one-on-one as well as group—is not lost on anybody. That it’s going to be even, probably even more important. And especially as things, and if you’re reading some of these AI articles about potential impact in our economy, there’s going to be a lot of need for us to come together, and lean on each other’s shoulders, and be good, solid resources for one another in times of dramatic change. I fully agree with you. I have that feeling as well that there’s so much alienation that is being caused by the digital stuff, and AI in particular, that people are replacing conversations with chatGPT conversations. I think people will just realize that this is all unreal, or we don’t know whether it’s real or not real. And there’s so much noise because everyone is creating all these posts with AI, and you know what is a real voice here? You won’t know unless you meet the person in person and then you hear their own voice and provided they’re not a robot because that can also happen that you have humanoid robots, but let’s not go that far. So I do agree, and I think that your personal recommendations are going to be even more powerful in the future because you don’t know what is real and what is fake. People also starve. We sit in front of our Zoom screens, and it’s not the same as meeting someone in person. There is a different quality to it, and we are going to starve for it. I was just thinking this morning that I looked at my calendar, and I’m just coming out of my season of spending days with my entrepreneur clients, and it’s over. And next couple months, it’s going to be pretty quiet. I’m going to be in my office, and I’m dreading having to sit here on my own. So I’m thinking about, “Okay, I have to get out there. I have to meet people.” So I’m recording video on this one. Last question. Well, penultimate question to you is, what do you think is the most important question that an entrepreneur should be asking themselves? I’m going to come back to kind of this AI conversation. I think every CEO needs to be using ai. And I think every CEO needs to be considering how their teams can use it and not put your head in sand. I think there’s a lot of impact, positive impact that can be had by just some basic productivity improvements, which is kind of how 95% of AI is being used today. There’s nothing wrong with that. And then from there can lead us to coming up with ways to enhance our business. I have one client that’s using it for proposal development. It’s been a dramatic improvement in quality and time, and that’s just one case study example, but there’s so many others. Following’s. Okay. You don’t have to be a leader. And just being recognizing that AI is going to touch so many aspects of our business and personal lives. And then the other thing is like, don’t stop hiring people because of AI either. There’s a lot of doomsday articles coming out now about the economy and impact of AI. There may be some scary truth to some of those things. And then I’m seeing articles from folks saying, “Look, AI shouldn’t take over your entire business. You’re still going to need smart people. You just want to give them the tools.” As an example, there’s a friend of mine who runs a digital marketing agency, and you might think, “Oh, that’s the kind of business that’s shrinking.” Well, they’re over 200 people, and they’re using AI in very efficient and effective ways. So it’s not a recipe to just dial back your human capital. It’s a recipe to do the unlock and do the think about how you can best use this information to create a scalable practice. Yeah, I think so. Also, this has been seen in history that since the Industrial Revolution, everyone was afraid of losing jobs. And the more technology there is, the more ideas there are for further services, the more demand there is because all the value is being created, and we want to spend that value on more stuff, right? And yeah, I agree that AI is just raising the bar. So every company has to now be AI-empowered and do a lot more. We can’t just deliver what we were delivering a year ago. We have to deliver more, which means that those people who are AI-enabled, they’ll just have to raise their standard. Yeah, I agree with you. So if people would like to learn more about let’s say they have an AEC-type of company—architectural, engineering, construction. Did I get it right?  Yes.  And they are thinking about the future and the transition and build the blueprint for a great company that has more enterprise value, et cetera, or they read your book and they realize that this is exactly what they need. How can they find you and how can they connect to you? Well, my website’s probably a great place to go, which is btsherpa.com. And if people are interested in that succession assessment that I mentioned earlier, just put slash succession—so btsherpa.com/succession—and you’ll get access to the assessment. You can take it multiple times for different people in mind as well. And so my book is on there, my podcast, and I really do hope that people follow up with me. If you have any questions at all about anything we talked about today. Fantastic. So do check out Laurie Barkman via btsherpa.com/succession if you want to read the materials and download stuff. Thank you, Laurie, for sharing all your great ideas and insights. If you enjoyed the conversation, then stay tuned because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur, thought leader to the show who will share with you about frameworks about growing your business and making it more valuable. So thanks, Laurie, for coming, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Laurie's LinkedIn Laurie's website

Think your product/market is boring? Think again. In this episode, Dan Kennedy sits down with financial advisor Dave Scranton and fascination expert Sally Hogshead to reveal how even inherently mundane products/services (money management, haircuts) can become irresistible brands. From challenging customer assumptions to creating emotional attachment, you'll discover how to turn commodities into obsessions. If you're tired of competing on price, this conversation shows you how to compete on desire instead. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

Jason Geiman explains how to reach $100,000 in the first year of a pressure washing business (also applicable to Christmas lights), emphasizing that mindset and consistent marketing matter more than expensive equipment. He recommends the book "No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent" by Dan Kennedy and discusses targeting higher-paying customers by believing higher average tickets are possible, sharing examples of contractors who raised prices and scaled revenue. He breaks down the math for hitting $100,000 over an eight-month season using different average tickets and close rates, and outlines a minimal equipment list sufficient to reach $100,000–$200,000. Key lead sources include yard signs, a fully built-out Google Business Profile with many photos, reviews, five-around door hangers, frequent posting in Facebook and local groups, and optionally Google Local Service Ads; he briefly addresses mailers, websites, and AI tools like Claude. 

This week on Its The Bottom Line that Matters, cohosts Jennifer Glass, Daniel McCraine, and Patricia Reszetylo reveal how you can spark real sales results, without ever feeling pushy. Imagine winning clients or closing deals while building authentic trust… and without a single bit of “sleazy selling” energy.Together, they explore:How storytelling and real client examples subtly attract instead of chase new businessHow positioning, education, and “seeding” can make prospects ask YOU to know more (instead of tuning you out)Surprising ways to leverage testimonials, authority, and intriguing teasers for natural (not forced) engagementThis is your blueprint for making your business feel easier and your relationships more genuine. It's not about tricking people—it's about leading with value, reputation, and the kind of conversations buyers actually respect. The wins? More time for what matters, more confidence in your process, and results that stick.About your hosts: Jennifer GlassJennifer is the driving force behind "It's The Bottom Line that Matters" podcast, always ready to guide conversations with warmth and clarity. She has firsthand experience with hard sales tactics—like enduring grueling timeshare presentations—and uses these memories to champion more authentic, story-driven approaches to sales. Jennifer is passionate about helping others connect with prospects by focusing on their needs, employing storytelling, testimonials, and subtle “seeding” to encourage genuine interest. Her broad speaking experience, both one-on-one and before large audiences, makes her advice practical and relatable for anyone looking to sell without selling.Patricia ReszetyloPatricia brings a keen observer's eye to the conversation, often uncovering the true motives behind attention-grabbing stories, especially online. With a nod to legendary copywriters like Dan Kennedy, Patricia emphasizes the importance of integrating multiple sales tools to create compelling offers—even through indirect channels like social media. She encourages blending authority, narrative, and subtlety, recognizing that the best sales often don't feel like sales at all.Daniel McCraineDaniel's approach to selling is thoughtful and educational—he prefers to “drip” benefits and stories rather than press for the close. Drawing from his experience in consulting and giving presentations, Daniel believes emotionally connecting prospects to the value they receive is far more compelling than any pitch. He also highlights the importance of demonstrating versatility and a deep toolbox of solutions, leaving people confident in his expertise. His anecdotes blend care and substance, helping listeners understand how to inspire interest and trust without ever seeming pushy.Together, these speakers offer a blend of expertise, compassion, and real-world strategies for anyone wanting to make selling a more human experience.Keywords: selling without selling, hard sales, high pressure sales, sales presentations, timeshare sales, storytelling in sales, client testimonials, social proof, affiliate marketing, authority stories, sales strategies, sales techniques, business presentations, sales meetings, sales program, sales system, marketing platform, lead generation, content creation, online sales, sales education, relationship-based selling, rapport building, seeding in sales, internal consultant, sales confidence, sales tools, copywriting, public speaking, audience engagement, body language in presentations

Most marketers want simple funnels. Darcy Juarez wants profitable ones. In this episode, Dan Kennedy sits down with Magnetic Marketing's Chief Business Strategist to expose the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make in building their funnels, from lazy follow-up to one-message-fits-all thinking. If you've ever wondered how to turn a leaky funnel into a revenue machine (or why adding complexity might be the fix, not the flaw), this conversation will challenge everything you thought you knew about "easy" marketing. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

Your car wash's marketing looks exactly like your competitor's. And that's why neither of you is winning.In this episode of The Car Wash Growth Playbook, I break down the difference between institutional advertising (what 95% of car washes do) and direct response marketing (what actually produces results). I'll give you three rules that will change how you spend every marketing dollar, inspired by Dan Kennedy's direct response principles and applied specifically to the car wash industry.If you've ever spent money on marketing and had no idea whether it worked, this episode is for you.Resources:Free Marketing Crash Course: The Five Funnels to Freedom - https://fivefunnelstofreedom.comOptSpot - Marketing for Car Washes - https://optspot.com

If you think direct mail is dead, Dan Kennedy has a few words for you: It's not merely surviving. It's THRIVING. In this episode, Dan is joined by direct mail expert Craig Simpson and Agora Publishing's own Jon Alexander to reveal how some of the biggest financial publishers in the world are using mail to drive webinar registrations, upsells, and long-term customer value. You'll hear how smart businesses - big and small - are using physical mail to bypass digital noise, tie their messaging to current events, and even go negative to acquire high-value customers. This is your proof that direct mail isn't old school... It's just underused. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

When High Point University hit a wall in student enrollment, they didn't call a higher ed consultant. They called Dan Kennedy. In this episode, Dan sits down with Roger Clodfelter, the strategist behind High Point's marketing transformation, to reveal how they applied direct response principles to an industry stuck in sameness. From campus visits structured like sales presentations to retention strategies borrowed from entertainment, Roger shares how they turned a struggling university into an enrollment powerhouse. If you're selling in a commoditized market or need to differentiate in a crowded space, this conversation delivers a proven playbook. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

What do heart surgeons, pilots, and great sales presenters have in common? They all follow a proven structure to get predictable results. In this episode, Dan Kennedy sits down with Dustin Matthews of Speaking Empire - a former public speaking avoider turned presentation expert - to break down what it takes to craft a presentation that drives action, not just applause. From $97 offers to $25K programs, online or on stage, Dustin reveals the framework for turning your message into revenue. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

Kiera is joined by Dr. Paul Etchison to talk about changing the mindset of turnover = failure. This transition is part of the evolution of leadership. Both Kiera and Dr. Etchison share their own experiences in remaining true to core values, and keeping their definitions of success separate from whether a team member stuck around or not. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is an extra special day. I have one of my faves and every time we podcast, people say, you two just seem like you love each other so much. And I really do. I've been to this man's practice. We've been friends in the industry for I don't even know how many years pre-COVID. That's a long time. And we've been on each other's podcasts a lot. He has an incredible podcast. He's an incredible human, incredible friend, incredible mentor. I got the one and only Paul Etchison on the podcast today. Welcome. How are you today, Paul?   Paul Etchison (00:28) Hey, I'm good. And I was just thinking about how you mentioned like the pre-COVID thing. You texted me a picture of when you came into my practice for two days. And it was like before COVID. And what was funny about it, and I don't know if it's funny or not, but like I looked at it and half of my team has turned over. They're all new people. So I know. ⁓   Kiera Dent (00:36) cute.   Mm-hmm.   It's real life, Paul. That's real life. It is funny and isn't because I go back and I used to   be embarrassed about that. So let's just kind of highlight on that. I used to actually be very embarrassed of like, my gosh, I don't have senior team members. And like, I hate the question. There was a hot minute. The Dental A Team felt like I was Johnny Depp in the middle of the ocean and my boat was full blown on fire. And I was like, I just hope another one shows up soon. Like I hope something comes. ⁓   And then I realized that's business ownership. Like that's real life. And yes, we built these great cultures, but you outgrow team members and team members outgrow you in life circumstances. And I'd rather be honest and real rather than perfect. And so the fact that like teams shift in a lot, mean, shoot, I used to have this vision board, Paul, you want to hear how ridiculous this was? And I took the team and I put them in the one year, the three year, the 10, and I just had this like same team follow with me. That lasted me for like six months. And I was like, rip this thing up.   Paul Etchison (01:31) Yes.   You   Kiera Dent (01:40) It's   gotten better, it's stabilized, but I think that that's real life. So thanks for talking about it.   Paul Etchison (01:44) It's hard,   yeah, I mean, we look at it and I think like the beginning of my practice career, I had very little turnover, but it was, I had to put so much into keeping that. Like it was such a hard thing to keep going. there was a lot of team members that I kept and I was able to make them happy and I was able to have it be a productive relationship and they were good at the practice. But sometimes I look back on it I'm like, man, it was just, that was a lot of energy I put into one person. I should have just moved on.   So that's how I practice now. It's different. There's a little bit more turnover and I think that's normal and that's part of business ownership. So we're okay.   Kiera Dent (02:16) What changed in your mindset for that? I have so many questions for you today. You guys, Paul and I, when we get on the podcast, it really is just like a free for all. And Paul has no clue. I have a full plan of what I'm asking you today, ⁓ but it's going to be a free for all rift of business ownership of teams. How did you change that perspective? Because I think so many people chalk that up to, I'm a failure of a boss if I've got turnover. Like I had a doctor the other day on a coaching call and she's like, Kiera,   Paul Etchison (02:19) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (02:42) What am I going to do for PR? Like I've got people turning over and how do I PR this? So anything is twofold. One, how did you get like mentally change that mindset? Cause I think it's a big mental game.   Paul Etchison (02:54) Yeah, for me, was everything that I've done in my career as far as like leadership growth and stuff, I think has always stemmed from some period of just struggle and burnout to some extent. It was like, I got to the point where I was taking everything that happened at the practice personally, every upset person at upset employees, they're bothered about something. They're they always, I mean, they're telling you how you should be doing things that not realizing that there's very complicated solutions. And sometimes there's not perfect solutions. A lot of times there's   perfect solutions. So I think what changed for me is I started looking at it from a point of my mental sanity saying I can't attribute my feelings on the happiness of all these team members anymore.   And all I need to do is just be very clear on what I want, be very consistent with the way that I treat them and hold them to that standard. But ultimately, I'm putting the ball in their court. It's up to them. And if they want to play ball, cool. If they don't, that's cool too. We can still be friends and you can go to some other office where it's more to your liking. But the biggest change for me was just realizing I can't be everything to everybody. And I did it for a long time and it was really exhausting. And I worked through that and I feel a lot better   it.   I think my team   is better for it.   Kiera Dent (04:08) Yeah, no, I don't disagree. And I'm glad you talked about that. It's been fun. think Paul, you felt like, I don't know, a big brother to me when we met and I came out to your practice and the fun things we've been able to do together and just the differences. ⁓ I think as we've grown up in the industry together, but I, I admired that because I always thought you had this amazing team. And I think to hear your version and then my version at the same time was very similar. I just realized like,   We got a killer team. Like this is an amazing company. And I think when I evolved to you're so lucky to work here, you're so like not in an egotistical way, but I think in a confidence way of like, this is a great place and we're going to attract people. I started realizing like I had confidence to make offers of what we actually wanted to pay versus what I felt like I had to chase to get people to be here. ⁓ we pivoted and I used to like chase all the time and try to be everything for everybody. And then I'm like,   Why am I doing this? Kiera, like you have built a company and a culture and a space that people love. And yes, there are changes and I will continue on forever evolve. I don't think that we're a perfectly set company, but I think that we're a pretty great, awesome place to work. And I think when I became centered, confident in me and what I was providing in the culture without having to be everything, I noticed I actually attracted a way different type of employee. I attracted somebody who wanted that same style. They, it,   It was like no more like games. think in like compensation and all this, it was more just centered. It was like, this is what we do and this is who we are and I want great people. And I also think it was very much attributed to like, got dialed in on core values. And I was like, I'm sticking to these. These are like rock solid. do not deviate from that. And if you don't fit. Fantastic. There is another opportunity, like go find your dream place and we're going to find our dream team member. And I say that in a very like confident, hopefully not egotistical. And I think you, sounds like you did a similar thing, but I.   I will say, I think you go through a space of realizing you're not a failure. It's an evolution. I think of, of leadership. It's almost like going from, I don't want to say immature. It's more like children and how's they grow. Like, I don't think a little baby is a failure for having that knowledge and that mindset. And I think some of us, are toddler baby owners. Like we've never done this before. We don't know. So we're going to have a different mindset. And then you just start to morph and evolve just like   Children grow up and they morph and evolve into these teenagers, into these college students, into like the prime of their life. To me, that also feels like a maturity of leadership as well to being confident with that.   Paul Etchison (06:42) Yeah,   I love that you point that out too, because we do, we hear a lot of complaints from our team members and then we start to, it starts to add up and then we start to really doubt.   Did we really create a great work environment? I mean, we just had an all day meeting maybe about two months ago, maybe six weeks ago,   like that. And one of the questions I asked, we use this thing called Slido. It's just in real time, you put on a PowerPoint slide and everybody can vote on their phone. There's a million like programs that do this. But I asked the whole team anonymously on a scale of one to 10, how fun is it to work at Nelson Ridge Family Dental? And I was terrified to throw that   Kiera Dent (07:03) Thank   Paul Etchison (07:19) there. I had no idea what people were going to say.   Kiera Dent (07:20) I don't blame you.   Paul Etchison (07:22) It was everybody was like eight, nine. There was like three or four sixes. Now I have 30 something team members.   So the   Kiera Dent (07:29) Yeah.   Paul Etchison (07:30) of it was very good, but it was, it was scary.   if you would have asked me what I thought it was going to   Kiera Dent (07:35) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (07:37) I did not think it was going to be that good because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This, you know, that's what we hear. That's what we focus on. And it reminds me of this one coaching client I had, cause I coached dentists as well. had a coach coaching client named Isaac and he did very similar to you.   choir practice, he really got deep into the foundational core values of this is what the practice is. And   turned over his entire team and he said, I feel like such a failure. I feel like everybody's leaving. I feel like I'm just turning everybody off. Patients are coming in and asking where everybody is. I just don't think my leadership's good. And I told him, just hang through,   Hang, you'll find your people. And then six months later, he was like, I cannot tell you how much I love my team. And so I think the message of what you and I are saying, Kiera, is that no matter   Kiera Dent (08:12) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Right.   Paul Etchison (08:22) what you want to do with what kind of vision you have for your practice, your team's out there. They are there. They are waiting for someone to take charge and just make it a big deal that that's the type of people we have at this practice.   Kiera Dent (08:26) Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (08:33) So if anyone's listening thinking like, have this issue at my office, get those core values out, talk to the team about it. Don't just like leave it on a document, bring it up with ⁓ a meeting and say, guys, this is what I truly want.   And sometimes apologize. I'm   I haven't been holding everyone to the highest regard or the highest standard, but I'm ready to do it and I need your help. So I love that you brought up those two points. Those are amazing things and I think everybody struggles with that.   Kiera Dent (08:55) Yeah.   I think, and I think that that's something that I feel you and I both strive to do is tell people feel like they're not alone. I think so many doctors feel like I'm the only one out there. I'm the only one who can't keep my team there. I'm the only one who has team turnover. And like, this is not the path that we were even on my radar to head, but I think it's obviously the most important path for people to hear. ⁓ I think Paul, it's the no judgment. It's the hang through it. It's, ⁓ having a guide, a mentor who's been there, done that, done that successfully. I mean, you and I can both like,   Gosh, you like grit through that and it's painful. But I also believe that while yes, painful, I feel it's an evolution of soul that you actually internally are craving. I don't believe that we rise to the call until we're ready. Like Kieran 2020, when I'm sitting on Johnny Depp like boat in the ocean, it was on fire. I was not ready for the call and the evolution that came in 2024 for me.   Like I just, wasn't ready for it, but come 2024. And I think it's a, it's a shedding, it's a shifting. It's a, like, I call it like the skin sloughing. Like it's like a snake, like you're leaving it behind. It's, I watched penguins when I was in Antarctica, like small flex there, Paul. Like the Antarctica trip was pretty rad. And we watched it. Right? We went to Antarctica. Penguins are so cute and they smell terrible. Like they're like little ketchup bottles that just squirt poop all day long. And it's disgusting.   Paul Etchison (10:11) I was just going to follow up on that. Whoa.   Kiera Dent (10:25) but they were molting when we were there and they just looked absolutely miserable. Like they sat there and they told us like, please don't touch the penguins. like, these look just, they're like, it's very painful for them. They're having to completely molt off all of these feathers. And I think that that's how I feel a lot of business owners are like, are you going through that molting process? But again, just like those penguins, just like us, I really do believe that when we're ready to be called to that higher level, one, you're not alone, two, you don't have to go through it alone.   Three, it's normal and it's part of growth, but like, there's also, you don't have to grow until you actually want to. Like, it sounds like Isaac was just ready. Like, I'm ready, I'm done. Like, I've hit my limit. I was ready, I was done. I was like, we are having a complete culture shift. Like, we're done and like, it needs to evolve. Sounds like you had it. But I also feel, and I don't know how you feel, Kieran 2020, Kieran 2024, even into 2025, leadership culture company.   keeps evolving. don't feel like I have as many of those like huge molting in 2020, huge molting in 2024, 2025. It's more of a shift in a refinement rather than a full molt. But that's, think how, at least for me, that's how I think I view leadership is.   Paul Etchison (11:37) Yeah, totally agree. It's like we go through these stages of leadership growth. And I remember for me, like leadership all the way up to COVID was like system, system, systems, consistency with team. And my team grew to like 35, 40 people and it got really unmanageable. And then when we came back from COVID from being shut down, I really wanted to try to do something different. And I wanted to keep that. ⁓   I just loved when we were shut down for COVID. I loved how it felt. It felt easy. And I said, I want that, but I don't want that craziness when we open up again. And when I did, I started to feel that same craziness. And I was going to therapy at the time. And like the therapist will tell you, just change your expectations. Don't take everything personally. And what I learned through that is there's no amount of therapy that can   broken leadership   Is that I had systems, I had consistency, but my team   had outgrown those systems. We needed more systems of leadership. So the next stage in my leadership was learning how to lead leaders and truly delegate and truly give them the autonomy to do everything. And when we did that, everything got so much better. there was parts of me that was like, I'm not the right person for this level of organization. not the right person for this size of a dental office. I'm just too anxious. I take   Kiera Dent (12:41) Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (12:59) too personally. And ultimately, I think it was just I   Kiera Dent (12:59) you   Paul Etchison (13:02) set up, I didn't set up my organization the proper way. So that was the next level up for me. And I think that's me shedding my skin finally once and for all to learn how to lead leaders. And who knows what's   Kiera Dent (13:14) Paul, I think that you are actually a really good example of letting go of control. How do you do that? Like,   I remember talking to you one day, this is offline, hopefully I'm not oversharing. And you're like, a lot of people say, like, what are you going to do if you retire? And I know you sold your practice to a DSO and you're like, I've never looked back. Like it was great. Um, you're like, I'm actually the person who's okay to just like sleep in and do nothing. Like I really am okay with that. Like, how did you let go of that control with your team? Um, knowing that they weren't going to do it exactly like you, like, I think people have this in theory. They try to do it, but.   Paul Etchison (13:23) No, of course not.   Kiera Dent (13:49) Like that's another molting. That's another really hard gap to go from full control. You're in charge of everything to I'm stressed out. Now I'm going to let team members take over and maybe you're, maybe you're an anomaly, maybe you're a unicorn, but how did you do it?   Paul Etchison (13:59) Yeah.   I think it's like we talked about the growth, but I think where we screw up as practice owners when we do this is we get upset that the team members are not doing exactly the way that we would do it. And there needs to be some wiggle room. There needs to be a lot of forgiveness. But ultimately, there's got to be clarity. And not enough practice owners are having the conversations with their team members. Like I always say, like, I'm coaching dentists all the time, and they're telling me about these issues they're having at their practice. And I'm saying, well, why do you think that is? And the answer is like, well, it might be this.   kind of think it's this and it's like, well, get curious, ask, ask your team. So for me, it was about telling my team what's expected and when   Kiera Dent (14:36) Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (14:42) didn't meet expectations, instead of like dancing around it, just going right at the   getting curious, what is going on with this? What is, why is this not happening? And then always like, you know, if you ask the right questions, the next step for any leadership, any leader is to validate their perspective.   no matter what it is and that will go so far. If you take one thing out of this podcast, do that. When your team members share something with you or if you're getting curious, asking them why things are happening, how they're feeling about something, validate their experience and watch how much they open up and they're.   open to behavior change and other options. And then that allows you the opportunity to then ask and invite participation in the solutions. What do you think we should do?   I noticed our cancellations are getting up there. Like, what are we doing about this?   What do you see happening? Getting curious. And they're saying, well, I don't know. Like, I got to ask some more   OK. And then validate their experience. I totally see how maybe you got busy with your other things and you haven't been asking your team. But we've got to ask the team and find out just so many little things.   For me, was getting out of the way, being clear with expectations. But then instead of trying to go around my leads and my leaders, my practice and go around them and deal with the other other teams myself, I let them do it and I let them fail and I help them and I support them.   And I think I know there's a lot of like team members that listen to your podcast, Kiera. I would hope if you're listening to this and you're team member, I would hope you understand how valuable you are to an owner. If you can take things, find solutions and hold your, your team members, your fellow coworkers to a certain standard, like you would be so valuable. Everyone's like, well, how can I get a raise? How can I contribute more value? I would people on my team, my leaders that do this for me, they are so valuable to me and every owner.   is just waiting for somebody to step in and fill that role. I mean, every practice could use   Kiera Dent (16:38) team members, their number one objective is to make their doctor happy.   every day, all day. That's like what my job is. That's what I want to do. That's how I want to serve. That's how I want to help out. ⁓ And I think as owners, I think it can be easy to see all the problems in your team. But I think it's what pair of sunglasses do I want to put on? Do I want to put on the one where I see like, what's wrong is just as available as what's right. Both are always available in every single scenario, every single situation. And so what are we bringing to the table and how are we looking at these different things?   How are we guiding our teams? How are we guiding our leaders? How are we showing up as leaders? How are we like, what is the filter I'm putting on every single day? Like those, those two sunglasses are right there as you walk out the door and which pair are you choosing to put on? Cause you're going to influence impact and create a team. No matter what we see what we want to see. And I believe that we create our own realities. I believe that reality is what we believe it is. And so, ⁓ I think shifting that seeing that, and I think having just a bigger plan, a bigger vision. know when I got very crystal clear of where am I headed?   What is my role? Like, this is gonna sound funny, Paul. I literally Googled like, what does a CEO do? I think doctors come out of school, like you're a doctor, like you do the dentistry, like that's what I'm supposed to do. And I remember one day I was sitting there and I'm like, what is the CEO even supposed to do? Like, I don't even know, like, like really, like where is a CEO, like dictionary, like job description, I realized, got it. It's profit, vision, and culture. Like those are really my main things. Stay out of the weeds and like go for it. And...   Paul Etchison (17:43) you   Kiera Dent (18:04) That's what I'm bred to do. Bring the great ideas, bring those different pieces. That's my job. That's my responsibility. I think dentists also have the second tier of you do dentistry too. So you are a clinician in there and then you have those pieces. But driving culture, driving a culture of accountability of fail, fail forward. like, gosh, I just read this really awesome book and they said, we measure it by outcomes, not activity.   Like just stuff like that. Like you start to become this person who wants to evolve your culture, evolve who your team is, evolve who you are as a person. And I think Paul, even in just knowing you, I think there's been an evolution of who you are as well. ⁓ I think that is just, and hopefully I've evolved too, like fingers crossed there's been an evolution and I'm not as quite, I don't know. I think we keep the best of ourselves. And then I think just evolve into our 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 levels. I guess I just asked the questions of   Paul Etchison (18:42) Absolutely.   Kiera Dent (18:58) I think you've got a fascinating story. You were full, full practice owner. You were in there. You sold out to a DSO. You're still in your practice. You still train. You, you've evolved. If you were sitting back when I met you, what would you tell that Paul of what you know today that would have made that whole experience, whether you're selling, whether you're growing, evolving. I mean, you have a very large practice. It's been real fun to watch you and your practice and everything. What would you have told that Paul?   Paul Etchison (19:27) Yeah, and this comes up a lot with my coaching clients. A lot of people ask me that. And one of the things, if we're looking at our practice, and I'm going back to the beginning, is if we want to sell our practice, if we want to cut back our days, if we want to have the most profitable practice ever, a lot of the times the strategy is identical. We're just trying to go through and create more freedom for ourselves as practice owners by empowering our team, getting them to do a lot of the responsibility.   Kiera Dent (19:48) Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (19:57) to be accountable for a lot of the stuff. So I think if I could go back and tell myself again, man, first of all, just stop taking everything so personal. And you come in and you look at it with these different lens of leadership and maturity and all these leadership skills. It's not just at the practice. It shows up in your relationships with your spouse, with your friends, with your kids, like all these things. Like it's all intertwined. But I would have much earlier got the leaders going in my practice because one of the things   Kiera Dent (20:16) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (20:27) happen through my practice sale is I just like I mentioned I felt like it wasn't I'm not cut out for this I'm sick of being miserable I'm sick of being stressed I'm sick of taking it home and I'm sick of taking it out on people that I love and so when I sold it I said okay I'm on my three-year exit plan I'm getting out of here I'm moving on I don't know what I'm gonna do but I'm gonna move on so I said you know my associate partner Dr. Kathy she owns part of the practice too   I'm gonna pass it to her and maybe she won't be able to do it as well as me. But I need to set this up so she is just, I wanna bless her with this amazing practice that runs on its own. And in the process of setting that up with my leaders, I realized, dang, I don't know if I would have sold. And I'm still happy I sold, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I would have, but that's what I would have tried to do early in my career. I would have went, who are the leaders? ⁓ The whole thing with like the Dan Kennedy of the who, not how. Not how do we do it, but who's gonna do this?   Kiera Dent (21:11) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.   Right.   Paul Etchison (21:25) And I would have leaned into that a lot more because I think I would have been a lot happier. I would have been able to enjoy the journey more. But at the same time, it's like we learn from our mistakes and you got to make the mistakes to learn from. So it's like, so that whole Catch-22, would I change anything? I don't think so because I wouldn't be, if I didn't have the same experience, I wouldn't be the person I am today. But man, I wish I had learned it earlier. That's for sure.   Kiera Dent (21:45) Sure.   It's fair. And I'm actually happy to hear that because I feel like this is like the DSO conundrum and like the cell. And I'm happy to hear you say that because it validates what we try to coach on to. So many doctors are like, I'm just going to sell. And I'm like, well, let's just look at this. If you sell, let's look at what your life will look like on the other side of it. Let's look to see where you are today. And really, let's get to the root of why do you want to sell? And I think, Paula, if we would have asked you that same question.   Why did you wanna sell? My hunch is it was all these problems, all these issues. It was just like, I'm sick of it. Like, let's just pass this on. Let's move on. When a great leader, a great office manager, a CEO, a CFO could have easily come in, taken over for you. You could have had the exact same scenario. You just would have owned it and had more options on the table. Like you said, it's not right, it's not wrong. But I think like for everybody listening, I think today is a good reflection of one, are you going through a molt? Like, are we molting anywhere?   ⁓ and do we, or do we need to molt? Like, is there something we need to shed, let go of identity wise? And then two, I like to do this reflection a lot. And I encourage a lot of people to do it. It sounds like Paul, you do it. Like when we're in these issues in these problems, are we stopping and pausing and asking like, what is the root? Not the symptom, the top line symptom is like, I'm so stressed. And I got this and this and this, but like, do we ever stop and pause to dig to that route and find out   what is really at the root. For me, I often have many journals that are like this, this, this, and I just like list it all out of all these things are frustrating me. But what I'm trying to do is find what is a thread? What is the piece in that that's causing the chaos because then we go fix that. And that's what I love in practices because 99 % of the time what people tell you on the top line, so coaching offices, coaching doctors, coaching teams, like Paul, you know this, I know this. What people tell you at the top is not really what's the problem.   It's the bottom layered, there's something rooted, there's something under there. These are just symptoms on the top. Same thing with patients and case acceptance, right? It's the up at the top, what they're telling you is not really what they're feeling. And all you gotta do is just dig under, find out what that root is and stress and that will go away. And so Paul, thank you for, I just am curious. I've always been curious, like, would you have done something differently? Of course we never can, like, no, we're not going to. But if I could go back and tell that younger self things, like,   Kyri, get rid of your ego, honey. Like trust your team, trust that team to do amazing, trust them to do better than you are, trust them to be better than you, trust them to make better decisions than you do, because I want to create that kind of a team and me believing that is going to ultimately turn my team into that. They have the whole study about teachers with kids and IQs and like if they believe that they have a stronger IQ without doing anything different, that child actually ends up with a higher IQ. Well, why don't we take that same principle and apply it to our teams and see what happens.   Paul Etchison (24:23) Yeah.   It's so true. And I love that you say like the reflection that you did, because I noticed this with my coaching   is that there's a lot of, there's a lot of how, how do we do this? How do we fix this? But I think anyone listening, if you just sat down in a dark room, maybe not dark room, but you're sitting down in a quiet room for 30 minutes and you reflect it, what do I really, you know, I do this with my coaching clients. We call it a practice clarity and frustration exercise. What do we, what really bothers you with the practice? What is it that really just, you know, grind your gears,   it down and it sounds simple but once you write it down you can like visually see it and start to brainstorm for solutions and you start to make this progress that not only affects the way your practice runs but the way that you're the way that you feel and I think ultimately as practice owners we need to realize that the CEO hat you mentioned what does a CEO do we need time for that and we don't have time for that when you're doing four or five days of dentistry that's why when I'm working with clients the first thing I'm gonna do with a practice owner is I'm gonna get them down to three days clinic   Kiera Dent (25:10) Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (25:27) And it always works. so inefficient. There's so many things we can do with scheduling and efficiency and production that we can get you down to three days clinical. But now you've got that extra day to put on that CEO hat, to reflect on the things, to write down and figure out what your plan of attack is. I mean, that's what I've got a workshop coming up in February that that's focused on that. How do we get you down to three days? And that's all I want to do in this three day workshop. We're, of course, doing these reflection activities. But I think this is over the course of my career and working   Kiera Dent (25:27) Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (25:57) with people, that's what I've seen moves the needle the most. We need time and we need to give the energy where it's due. And it's not, we   be 100 % clinician. It just doesn't work that way.   Kiera Dent (26:09) Yeah, no, Paul, I love that. And think that's such a fun thing. I think dentists need this. Dentists need to have their vision, have their clarity. But I think from today, the wrap is it started out with a photo, unexpectedly, of this is what we're ⁓ kicking the day off of, going from where we were to where we want to be, ⁓ looking at that, reflecting back, seeing. Because   Paul Etchison (26:23) Yeah. How do we get here?   Kiera Dent (26:34) There's a client that you and I both know. They're pretty well known ⁓ that we work with. whenever I work with, gosh, it's so many practices. I think there's like 300 employees and I'm like, gosh, I remember all their names every time. ⁓ But they talk about how sometimes the best learning is just remembering. Remembering where we've been, remembering where we're going to go, remembering things that we've learned looking there. So it's like remembering where I've been so that way I can kickstart and project into where I need to go.   using your team to get there. Your team wants to be your best asset for that. So Paul, those are kind of my wrap thoughts. I know today has just been a real fun day. Always enjoy a good podcast with you. Any last thoughts you have?   Paul Etchison (27:15) No, you know, I would just close it off with   having the listener just believe, just believe in the possibility of what's going, what is possible with your practice. ⁓ There was a point where we talked about reflection. I reflected and I said, I wrote down everything I do at the practice and I wrote down how many of these activities bring me joy and how many of them I hate. And I believe it was something like 80 % of them I hated. So that's no way to live your practice life. You spend a lot of time at work. So why not do the reflection and put the time and energy into   Kiera Dent (27:38) Mm-hmm.   Paul Etchison (27:45) Making your practice a better place to be at it's not just gonna affect you. It's gonna affect your family. It's gonna affect your team ⁓ There's big your ripples that come from this little thing So I would say sit down find a coach find a mentor read some books it is possible believe in yourself and It all starts with the planning so sit down and write down some things journal love it   Kiera Dent (28:09) Journal it up. Well, Paul, I appreciate you so much.   I ⁓ just love what you're doing for our community. I love the things that we're able to accomplish together. ⁓ And yeah, guys, check him out in Dental Practice Heroes podcast. He's got some great stuff over there as well. ⁓ Paul, so good to have you on the podcast. I think you mentioned the event in February. If people want to know more about that, how do they connect with you on that?   Paul Etchison (28:35) Yeah, go to DentalPracticeHeroes.com slash freedom. So that's where the information on the three day workshop, it's going to   awesome. And I'm doing a money back guarantee. If you don't think you liked it, if you don't like what you signed up for, I'll give you all your money back. I believe in it that much. And I know from me coaching for the past six years, I know this is what produces results. So go check that out,   more about the courses, check out the podcast. And I'm always happy to talk to any listeners if they want some help or they just want to find out what we're more about. Please just go to the website, DentalPracticeHeroes.com.   dot com.   Kiera Dent (29:06) Amazing. Paul, thank you so much for being on the podcast. For all of you listening, I hope you do take the time to reflect. I do hope you think about where you want to go and what you want with your life. And just appreciate you guys all being here. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Most people don't fail because their offer is bad, they fail because they're trying to sell what people should want… instead of what they're already willing to buy. In this episode, Igor breaks down the mindset shift that changed everything for him, and shares a Dan Kennedy example that proves how one positioning tweak can turn a “hard sell” into an easy yes.

Most entrepreneurs know how to sell a product, but struggle when it's time to raise capital. In this episode, Dan Kennedy sits down with attorney and entrepreneur Larry Pino to cover what business owners need to know before approaching investors, lenders, or even family and friends. Larry breaks down the practical and legal realities of capital raising: The difference between 506b and 506c offerings, when crowdfunding makes sense, and how to structure your pitch to be taken seriously. Whether you're raising your first round or closing your next deal, this conversation delivers the strategic moves that separate funded founders from wishful thinkers. Note: This conversation was originally recorded in 2015. Laws and regulations may have changed. This episode is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Always consult a qualified attorney or financial professional before making legal or investment decisions. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

What happens when a teenage computer whiz discovers Dan Kennedy... but ends up building a church instead of a tech company? In this episode, Dan sits down with Nelson Searcy - Pastor, marketer, and founder of one of the largest coaching programs for church leaders - to unpack how Magnetic Marketing principles helped him launch a church from scratch and scale a coaching empire that's reached thousands of pastors. From direct mail outreach to "seasonal promotions" to retention and stewardship systems, Nelson shares the exact strategies he teaches faith-based leaders to grow their reach without compromising their mission. This is a masterclass in message, media, and multiplying your impact, no matter what business you're in. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

How do you go from running a top-performing home inspection business... to building a million-dollar info business empire that runs without you? In this episode, Dan Kennedy sits down with longtime Magnetic Marketing insider Mike Crow, who reveals how he scaled and sold his first business, THEN turned his expertise into a thriving coaching platform with masterminds, member ascension, and a business structure that allows him the freedom to take weeks off at a time worry free.. You'll hear how Mike markets, manages, and multiplies his income across two businesses WITHOUT losing his mind or his freedom. If you've ever wondered how to build and spin off your success, this is the roadmap. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

If you thought getting customers was the hard part, you haven't paid the price of losing them. In this follow-up episode, Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer reveal the second half of their 14 strategies for keeping customers glued to you emotionally, financially, and even psychologically. You'll hear why making it painful to leave is smart business, how to spot a defection before it happens, and why triggering a customer's ego might be your most profitable retention tool. Miss these strategies, and you'll keep paying to acquire one-time customers... while someone smarter keeps them for life. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

In this episode of the Grow A Small Business Podcast, host Troy Vance Morris, the founder of Deliver Service Now institute, joins the podcast to share his journey from a decade at Disney to building and scaling multiple successful home service businesses. He talks about creating premium customer experiences, growing his companies to a point where he now works only 90 minutes a week on operations, and the strategies he uses to retain loyal clients. Vance also explains how he transitioned from employee to entrepreneur, overcame major financial challenges, and built a strong team culture. His story highlights resilience, smart marketing, and the power of systems in business growth. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: 1. What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? Vance Morris has shared that the hardest thing is simply sticking with it. Most people give up too early when they hit financial pressure, setbacks, or slow periods, but long-term success comes from pushing through those tough moments. 2. What's your favorite business book that has helped you the most? Vance Morris has shared that his most valuable business book is "The Ultimate Sales Letter" by Dan Kennedy, which transformed how he approaches marketing and communication with customers. 3. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Vance Morris has shared that he regularly uses MasterClass for high-level learning from experts, and finds it extremely useful for expanding mindset and gaining inspiration from top performers in different fields. 4. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Vance Morris has shared that every small business must have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) to track clients, marketing, and follow-ups — it becomes essential once your customer base grows. 5. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Vance Morris has shared that he would tell himself "Don't give up." There were many moments when quitting seemed easier, but staying persistent through financial challenges is what led to long-term success. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Deliver an experience your competitors can't copy and your customers won't forget — Vance Morris You can't grow a business you're not measuring every single day — Vance Morris Freedom in business comes from systems, not from working more hours — Vance Morris      

Most business owners obsess over getting customers, and then give almost ZERO thought to keeping them. Don't be one of those people. In this episode, Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer expose the high cost of customer churn, reveal the real reasons customers vanish and deliver 7 no-fluff strategies for turning one-time buyers into loyal lifetime customers . From avoiding the lazy trap of price competition to engineering real engagement, this episode is part 1 of a masterclass in building customer allegiance that actually pays (big time). MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

Does selling feel awkward or inauthentic? Today, we're covering how you speak, teach, and bring a conversation to a sales conversion in an ethical, authentic, and effective way that feels good. Your expertise, wisdom, and life experiences could help people transform their lives, but you are leaving money on the table! We will bust through the myth that you “need to find your voice.” You already have your voice! Let's strip away the mask and the layers that cover it so you can show up authentically!Joel Bauer has trained some of the world's top income-producing speakers, presenters, and online marketers to monetize their life experiences, both online and offline. A few notable trainees are Russell Brunson, Alex Hormozi, Dan Kennedy, Jordan Belfort, and Peng Joon, among others. For decades, Joel's principles have set the bar for speaking, teaching, and closing at the very highest level, and there are over 2 million graduates of his program. By applying Joel's strategies, you can break free from limitations, design your destiny, and monetize your expertise like never before. You'll learn why implementing Joel's strategies requires no talent, only technique. Joel explains how to give massive value without expectation, how to package and position your life's work in high-ticket offers, and why you should never give away your consulting time for free. Show Highlights:It's not about talent; it's about technique!Podcasts, like the STaR Coach Show, are the most valuable social media platform.Undervaluing your timeJoel's philosophy of NEVER taking anyone's money unless he knows he can help them succeedExamples of unbelievable success from those who have implemented Joel's strategiesThe value of accountability partnerships3 moves for success:Preframe (Project them into the solution.)Verification of the Silent Salesman (It's how you “wrap” the package.)Your Call-to-Action (What are you offering? The key is your money-back guarantee.)Being the greatest mentor in the world for the person who chooses you, trusts you, listens to you, and succeeds by implementing your techniques How love and like are different “Permission to reveal” technique as a transformational strategy in offering your serviceValue of letting people know what they CAN doPresent, Persuade, and Preserve techniqueAI is never going to replace coaches and mentorsWhy you don't need a large audience Don't pass up Joel's free gifts!Resources:Connect with Joel BauerWebsite and InstagramGift #1: Visit Joel's Website to get Peng Joon's “10 Moves to $10 Million.” It's a free PDF download in audio and video versions.Gift #2: Visit Joel's Instagram, @JoelBauerMentor, and DM the comment “5 Moves” to receive the complete “5 Moves to Authority” program, a $5000 value! Connect with MegGet Meg's FREE download, Finding Your Perfect Match: A Coach's Self-Reflection Guide.Explore past episodes and other resources at www.STaRcoachshow.com. Explore the STaR Coach...

On this episode, the perfect hair and the perfect donor. This episode was hosted by Dan Kennedy. Storytellers: Diavian Walters has a relationship with hair that is shear madness. Lori Gottlieb searches for the perfect donor and the whole package. Podcast # 537 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices