Podcasts about stephen it

This week, Andy gets a new gun! Jeff is in the Dominican Republic so Stephen "It's f***ing Tuesday" Tomilson fills in, it's a bad week for idiots with guns in Madison, Wisconsin, spring cleaning and mouse turds, the Old Fort Shootout is cool, Marc "Modern Asian Dynamics" Casinillo joins the show, and much more! We had so much fun without Fejj. Subscribe on Patreon to get an extra episode every week! Listen on YouTube! Andy on Instagram - andy.e.605 Jeff on Instagram - jeff_the_monster_king MW Aktiv Wear - mw_aktiv_wear Not Another Shooting Show on Reddit

In this episode, we have Daniel Rosen of Bitter End on. We discussed Daniel's early years in hardcore, how Bitter End formed, their discography, and a lot of lore and stories throughout the band's existence. Thank you to our friend Stephen (It's the Limit, Sheer Force) for joining us to give some perspective on Bitter End from someone who grew up in their hometown of San Antonio. Opening Track: Near Death Experience - Dark Matter

Overview Growing up in New York in the late 1960's, Audrey Birnbaum assumed that watching Holocaust documentaries was a perfectly normal family activity. On her first day of elementary school, Audrey sat in the cafeteria, unwrapped her liverwurst sandwich, and excitedly told her new classmates about her public television proclivities. Her Brady Bunch-watching peers had never heard of PBS, but they had heard of PB&J (and they weren't too keen on liverwurst either). They made it abundantly clear: Audrey's childhood was, in fact, not normal at all. We will never know whether it was schoolyard bullying or watching tragic Shoah documentaries that was responsible for Audrey's acute sensitivity to others; but that empathy may have helped pave the way for her choice of medicine as a career. Audrey chose to specialize in Pediatric Gastroenterology - for who needed more help than children; and where could anyone feel more suffering than in one's gut? Day in and day out, she watched intricate family dynamics play out in the context of fragile health. Audrey listened to each patient's story until she could retell it with clarity and give it meaning. Through witnessing and recording these tender dramas, the seeds of writing had been planted. Book In the summer of 1941, eleven-year-old Wolf is coming of age amidst the rubble and antisemitism of war-torn Nazi Berlin. Destitute and facing imminent deportation, he must leave behind his ill sister and travel with his family across a continent entrenched in war. With nothing in hand but expired visas to the US, Wolf and his family must figure out how to sneak aboard the Spanish freighter the Navemar, a ship that will gain its reputation as the "Hell Ship of Death." But this is only the beginning of Wolf's saga. "American Wolf: From Nazi Refugee to American Spy is a heart stopping true story full of last-minute rescues, near-death encounters, and survival against untold odds. It is also a story about coming of age, family dysfunction and national identity, and is a resounding testament to the triumph of the human spirit. Using the extensive, detailed notes compiled by her father, author Audrey Birnbaum retells in memoir style a poignant and vivid account of Wolf's childhood in Berlin, his riveting escape from Nazi Germany, and the continued challenges he faced even as he reached freedom. Favorites https://thevillagebookstore.net/ YouTube https://youtu.be/if0lOOeo1O0 Transcript [00:00:00] Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmith, I have Audrey. Audrey, how are you doing this morning? I'm great, [00:00:06] Audrey: Steven. Thank you so much for having me. [00:00:08] Stephen: It is great to have you on and I'm excited to hear about this book but before we talk about your writing and your book, let's find out a little bit about you. [00:00:15] So tell us some of the things you like to do and where you live outside of writing. [00:00:20] Audrey: Stephen, I live in Westchester, New York, and I have not always been a writer. This is pretty new to me. I actually. I want to say I was a doctor, but I think I'm allowed to say I still am a doctor, but I don't [00:00:34] Stephen: think you ever stopped being a doctor. [00:00:37] It's one of those [00:00:37] Audrey: professionals that I want to hold on to that title a little bit, though. I don't walk around like I didn't put MD on my book because I thought that was, I don't know. Ex I do. I'm a pediatric gastroenterologist. [00:00:52] Stephen: Wow. That's a mouthful. That's a lot. [00:00:53] Audrey: It's a mouthful. It's people will have trouble saying it. [00:00:57] I usually say kids from here to here . But [00:01:00] people are, they're good with that. Yeah. I [00:01:02] Stephen: study kid farts, [00:01:04] Audrey: yeah, [00:01:05] Stephen: probably what the answer the kids would like, . . I'm sorry. Go on. Tell us more about you.

Get ready to unlock the secrets of Amazon-selling success as we welcome back, Stephen Diaz of the Rainmaker Family. Together with his wife, they have woven a thriving community of dedicated e-commerce sellers. Today's deep-dive episode is crammed with innovative strategies, specially designed for those venturing into Amazon's realm for the first time. Prepare to learn how to rake in thousands of dollars per month by creating videos for other people's products, and finding good products to promote with the help of tools such as the Helium 10 Chrome extension Demand Analyzer. We also walk you through the Amazon influencer program and how you can be a part of it without having to be the 'face' of video content. Buckle up as we guide you through the entire process of recording, uploading, and creating eye-catching thumbnails for your videos. Be ready to learn how to craft compelling titles and get a handful of tips to produce successful video reviews. We also brainstorm creative ideas for video reviews that go beyond the confines of your home. Stephen sheds light on his experiences and the advantages of participating in high-ticket mastermind events, highlighting how investing in yourself can dramatically influence your success in the e-commerce world. In our journey through this episode, Stephen imparts priceless insights into the keys to entrepreneurial success. We touch on the importance of focus, mindset, and budgeting in e-commerce. In the end, we delve into the strategies that work best for family-oriented businesses on Amazon, like how to utilize Amazon Associates and affiliate links to connect to other products in your shop. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned seller, this episode promises you strategies and insights to skyrocket your business to new heights. Tune in, and get ready to get some creative ideas on how you can build capital for Amazon FBA selling. In episode 495 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Stephen discuss: 01:57 - The Maldives Honeymoon Strategy Helped The Rainmaker Community 03:51 - How To Build Capital For An Amazon FBA Business 07:14 - Making 6-Figures As An Amazon Affiliate 08:43 - Difference Between Amazon Associates And Affiliates 11:17  - Different Kinds Of Videos You Can Make 17:15 - Why Joining Masterminds Are Important 21:18 - Inspiring Stories From Stephen's Community 31:18 - What Does It Take To Succeed In This Business? 36:49 - How To Get More Information Of Stephen's Community 40:20 - Stephen's 60-Second Tip ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/video Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got somebody back on the show who's got one of the most successful communities out there in the Amazon world and he's going to talk about what's been working for them, including how some can make thousands of dollars a month on doing videos for other people's products. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Are you browsing a Shopify Walmart, Etsy, alibaba or Pintu? Are you browsing a Shopify Walmart, Etsy, Alibaba or Pinterest page and maybe you see a cool product that you want to get some more data on? Well, while you're on those pages, you can actually use the Helium 10 Chrome extension Demand Analyzer to get instant data about what's happening on Amazon for those keywords on these other websites. Or maybe you want to then follow up and get an actual supplier quote from a company on Alibaba.com in order to see if you can get this product produced. You can do that also with the Helium 10 Demand Analyzer. Both of these are part of the Helium 10 Chrome extension, which you can download for free at h10.me forward slash extension.   Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we're bringing back somebody who, along with his wife, has helped more serious sellers than almost anybody else out there. Stephen, how's it going, man? Welcome back.   Stephen: What's up, Bradley man? Anytime I get to hang out with you is awesome. I know Chelsea's usually sitting right by my side, but today she's 100% mom. So she's being 100% mom, today I'm being 100% podcaster Love it. And that's how we do it.   Bradley Sutton: And in your honor, you know, I'm actually wearing the shirt that you guys gave me the Maldives shirt. I believe this came from Merch by Amazon, like what? Two, three years ago. I think, you guys, it might have been either during the pandemic or before the pandemic. That's how long.   Stephen: I've had this shirt. Well, the Maldives strategy impacted our community so much that I was like we got to give back and I didn't know Bradley's T-shirt size, so I think I sent you like six Amazon merch shirts.   Bradley Sutton: It was great. I gave one to each of my family who were all those sizes, and then I took the biggest one for myself.   Stephen: Perfect man, that's good. Well, that's that that technique is still making ripples, man Like it's. It's very cool. And title density, all that stuff we love it in Rainmaker. So yeah, I'm excited.   Bradley Sutton: Speaking of which, it is now two 10pm on Wednesday, in 28 hours I'm hopping on the plane to go to Maldives. To record episode 500. So the latest iteration of it.   Stephen: There we go. Dang man, I need to get out to the Maldives now. Like I was every time they're out there. Yeah, they got a great kids club, you know so so you know, do you go to the same place every time?   Bradley Sutton: I either go to the Waldorf Astoria or the Conrad. They're both Hillson properties, so I can use my points for it for either one, but I don't know if you're a Hilton or a Marriott person, but they got good Marriott properties out there too, okay, Anyways, let's get into some strategy. Let's just start. You know like we usually say this at the end, but we'll, we'll go and do some strategies at the end, but every time you've been on the show you've always, you know, come with some like kind of unique, uh, unique stuff. So like back in. By the way, guys, if you want to get their full backstory uh, I wrote down here or I didn't write down, I don't do much of work here. Mel, my assistant, is one who does the work here. He put in a episode of 198 guys. So episode all the way back in 198, we're about to film 500. That just shows you where, how far we've come. But 198 was their first time you can get their their backstory there. And then they came back in episode 318. So way back in episode 198, they were talking about uh doing sales on Facebook, uh market places, and then they gave some updates on that in episode uh 318 and talking about Facebook groups. And so I think the latest thing that you guys have been doing you know, especially for those who at the beginning might not be able to have enough money to to, to, to start private label, to invest, uh talk about what is one of the ways that people can can build some capital or what, what, what your community has been doing, yeah, I mean we see all different levels, you know, and and, and we really do specialize, you know, in the Rainmaker family, helping moms, and so a lot of moms like they are just like, uh, honestly, they've tried a lot of other stuff, you know, and so they're hesitant to go go big on Amazon at the first.   Stephen: So so helping them create the money to do the thing is definitely something that's in our specialty. So I would say, lately, there's a handful of strategies. Right now we definitely have a subset of our community doing the influencer strategy on Amazon. Um, and when you hear that word, I think people think, like you know, I don't know, taking pictures of your coffee at the coffee shop and like having your face all over social media, um, but the Amazon influencer program, anyone can do and you can actually do it without putting your face in the videos, which is kind of nice. And so, honestly, like, uh, this opportunity was brought to me by a guy, john, he was doing it and he kind of came to our community. I was like, hey, I'll do this for you guys. Like he was just looking for more products to review. But if any of your listeners are unfamiliar with it, basically how it works is when you go to the Amazon listing right, you see the photos. There's always like these, like videos related to the item or sometimes there. If you have a video, it'll be like the second video that plays after your video, and those are like these Amazon influencer videos and if someone watches that video and then buys the product, that influencer will get a commission on the sale, which is really crazy. So, um, you know, you've probably heard of the Amazon associate program or affiliate program where I signed up for that.   Bradley Sutton: Just, I was trying to let you just check if I can get some, um, you know, see some different data points. I was curious if, like Amazon, affiliates have different data points. So I signed up and I was just like I already shoot me or my family is going to get some of them. I might as well just make a link and and get some. You know, get some stuff. But yeah, I signed up for that one, but not the influencer. So what's the difference between the two?   Stephen: So, yeah, you have to sign up as a Amazon associate or affiliate first, and then you can apply for the influencer program. So it is an application only, uh, to get into it. But, um, uh, it's fairly easy to get in. You just need to have an audience somewhere of some sort, and then you can use TikTok, instagram, facebook. I mean, we have people even just use a Facebook page and they'll they'll run ads to the page for a little bit to just gain some audience. Uh and then they'll apply right. And so the the Amazon influencer program. Once you're in, they basically allow you to like, upload videos of of products you're reviewing, but the catch is you don't have to have bought the product on Amazon, so, like it doesn't have to be your past purchases, it can be literally any product that's on Amazon.   Bradley Sutton: So if they get approved for this, like, are they seeing something different on product pages or something that's like an extra button of of how they can upload or how they different?   Stephen: just like seller central is its own thing, the influencer or the associate program has his own dashboard you can log into. Kind of KDP, like Amazon, keeps all these things separate, you think they just link them all. Yeah, um, it's like you log into your associates dashboard. You kind of click over to the influencer page and influencers. You may see people do this on Instagram where they actually have like a storefront where it's like my favorite Amazon things and it'll be like my house hacks my favorite clothes and those are like that's one way to do it. But this kind of video side of the Amazon influencer program is really the lucrative one. And the guy I heard it from, john, he was doing six figures with this. Like that was his full time business. He did have a YouTube channel. He was reviewing tech gear and things like that, but he would just like get reached out from brands at this point. He's kind of got a name for himself and I think he was doing like over 200,000 and just Amazon money.   Bradley Sutton: Is it all on commission? Or also he'll get like a flat fee from some of the store owners to create videos.   Stephen: Sometimes they are getting like a, like a bounty, like that, but a lot of it is just commission. Yeah, he's getting commissions through affiliates so he's doing super high volume. That's like I don't know a ton of people doing those types of numbers. Yeah, but that got us interested. You know, chelsea signed up for it and she was around the house shooting stuff. So basically, what you do is just go around your house and you just review every item in your house and like it doesn't have like again, you didn't have to buy it on Amazon, it just has to be on Amazon. Yeah, so you just be like you know, uh, hey, this, I have a Apple mouse on my desk. You're like, let me tell you about this Apple mouse and you just do a review of it. But the types of reviews that work really well are just authentic reviews. If you're super polished and like, let me tell you, it looks like too professional, people don't trust it, right. So you want to just like do it like a casual, like honestly, a lot of our reviews are cell phone, they're vertical and we're shooting away from us and just like pointing and like it's like voiceover, just like like you would like your unboxing something. Yeah, show your friend and so, yeah, you just go around your house and like review everything right and you have to submit the videos. They do have to get approved by Amazon, but once they're approved, they live on that page. You know of the Amazon listing and a percentage of people will click on them, watch them and you'll get commissions and sometimes they actually go up in the carousel too.   Bradley Sutton: I think you know Norm Ferrari was showing you this.   Stephen: Videos will go up in the carousel.   Bradley Sutton: Yeah, yeah.   Stephen: Huh, it's crazy. So and then if?   Bradley Sutton: they click it in the carousel and buy it, they still get credit then. Yep, of course.   Stephen: Yeah, you get a commission. Yeah, yeah, all right, I'm a how I do that.   Bradley Sutton: I'm going to have to look into that. I always like it's fun, man, it's fun.   Stephen: It's fun thinking about like, okay, what's the most expensive thing in my house, because again, you're making such a small percentage, right? Yeah, you either want super high volume or you want expensive and helium 10 super helpful because you can go. Okay, how much volume is this product doing? Right, so if you have, like I remember we were reviewing stash your bags. They're like those ziploc bag alternatives, like they're like made of silicone oh, reusable ziploc bags basically. But there's like a thousand stash your bag listings, right, because it's like a wholesale product that'll up your wholesale. So I use helium 10 to figure out which one has the most sales because, like you can't tell which blue stash your bag I bought it could be on any of these listings, right? Yeah, I use helium 10 to figure out which listing has the highest volume, right, but also has the least amount of influencers hopping on there and making videos. So that increases the chances and that that one video would make it's like 10 to $15 a day. You know it's not like crazy, but imagine you have a hundred videos, a thousand videos, you know, that are that are doing those types of numbers Like it's. It's incredible.   Bradley Sutton: So, yeah, and so you record it with your phone and then what you? You upload it with the or you send it to your computer and then you upload it in that.   Stephen: Yeah you can upload it. Yeah, I always send to my computer, upload it. You can do a thumbnail. So if you're, you know you know anything about internet, you know you gotta have a catchy thumbnail sometimes. But I was super lazy about it because Chelsea would reshoot them and I would upload them. So I'd do the catchy title and the thumbnail. Oh, that was my specialty. So the key thing with the titles, you don't really want to tell people if you like the product or not. You want to be like five things. I wish I knew before I bought this. Right, there's like no idea.   Bradley Sutton: You have no idea if, like, do you have any that that you could like tell me you'll look at right now, and then I could like show people how it looks, or just an example of one.   Stephen: I'll shout out a friend's brand, kingsloo. Yeah, he sells a slim fit wallet and we did a video on that one and yeah, it's just a super simple video.   Bradley Sutton: $109 for a wallet.   Stephen: Good grief, I know Gucci. Yeah, he sells mostly off Amazon. He's more of a DTC but we've helped him get on Amazon and oh five videos here. I bet a bunch of our Rainmakers have done it now, and then I think you click on that like five videos underneath there and you should see like Heather's on there and Chelsea's on there. Yeah, there you go.   Bradley Sutton: Wait, well, that's, that's their video. Yeah.   Stephen: So click on, here we go, honest, awesome.   Bradley Sutton: So so when you said the, the, the thumbnail like this is the thumbnail that they chose. They just chose a random part of it. Oh, I did that. So like oh, you did this.   Stephen: Honestly like I was super lazy. So I would just screenshot and make an arrow, like I put an arrow and like it kind of like makes you think I'm talking about some specific thing, but it's just a catchy way to kind of. And then you just make it vertical, just like this. Wait, here's I didn't know it wasn't.   Bradley Sutton: Oh yeah, hear your voice in this thing. There, there we go. Okay, wow, I think. Yeah, this is one of those. I was one of the good ones.   Stephen: Heather did this one.   Bradley Sutton: She's in our community.   Stephen: She's really helped us pioneer this kind of influencer thing. She created a mini course on it. Yeah, super casual, right, like it's not like really polished. Of course, if you're doing like a DSLR camera or like the new iPhone, people want like the Marcus Brown. You know they want the Polish video, right, but we're just all the stuff around your house you can just pick, hey, you know, you can just go and get a bunch of stuff, all the stuff around your house, you can just pick. Hey, this is my honest opinion on this thing.   Bradley Sutton: And you just don't know what account could be multiple people Like. Could I have my kids do videos on my account and stuff too?   Stephen: Yeah, I'm just not like the kids, so like if you're going to have a kid, you got to have you in it as well.   Bradley Sutton: like a minor or they have to be 18. My kids are over 18.   Stephen: So yeah okay, then they could do it. Yeah, I mean one of the best side hustles, I feel like for a college kid like so so easy to do. You just need a cell phone, you just need time Maybe. I mean, we would batch like four or five videos a day and Chelsea would do some, I would do some, and we named our account like like family. So it was kind of like both of us, um and man, you can stack. I mean we, we did. Well, our goal was like to do 30, 30 videos. You know, just to get it started, I would say if someone's listening to this, they want to do this. I would commit to doing like 30 or a hundred videos to really see the effect of it. And then you can chill out and kind of just let that passive income come in and then just grow it as you want. And uh, I mentioned this before the call. But eventually you will run out of stuff to review right In your house and that's a good problem to have. Yeah, then you can start going to friends houses. You can start. You know, I mean you could even book an Airbnb and review everything in that house. I mean I've even this is really funny, but like I even reviewed something at a park one time, like that's someone else had like a stroller Cause like strollers are expensive and so like I just took a video of a stroller from far away. If someone else is trying, I wasn't showing their kids or anything like that, but I was like zooming in on my phone and I did a voiceover over it later, just talking through some of the benefits and things I was just reading on the listing, you know. So again it can get really creative with it. Um, of course we're not trying to manipulate sales or anything like that. Uh, like not trying to say something, that's not true. But I always go to the listing and I look at the reviews. Use helium 10 and you can analyze all the reviews and figure out what are the big questions people have. What are making what's, what are they loving about the product, what are they wanting to buy or what is what's drawing them to buying this product, that type of thing, and you can hit some of those things. Um, you can even throw all that into chat GPT and be like hey, write me a 30 second video review script and just literally read it.   Bradley Sutton: I'm going to. I'm going to try this, but but not not to throw water on the fire here. But this is something that later on, I predict Amazon is going to change, because, just knowing the way Amazon operates because, yeah, somebody's going to do a lawsuit or something, because theoretically, nobody's going to do a video, that's going to talk bad about it because that.   Stephen: You know, like the whole purpose.   Bradley Sutton: You know, if you're an Amazon influence, you're trying to make money. You know, unless Amazon puts something in there where if you do a negative video but that's still real that somehow you still get some kickbacks, somebody's, somebody somewhere is going to do some kind of lawsuit just because this is such a country.   Stephen: I do in a million videos or something like that.   Bradley Sutton: Yeah, but either way, guys, that's why you got to get on this now. Yeah, what they are doing, which is nice, now you can include two products in the video.   Stephen: I wouldn't recommend it when your first game started, but you can do comparison videos, which I do like where you're like. Hey, are you thinking about buying this?   Bradley Sutton: or this.   Stephen: That's good. Let me tell you about the pros and cons.   Bradley Sutton: And in the video. Does the video show up on both listing? It shows up on both, yeah.   Stephen: You can tag two products in the video. But if you do it right at the beginning, amazon typically won't approve it and they are getting stricter on who gets approved into the program and you have to submit three videos when you first start and they approve or deny those and so if they deny them you can try again, like I think it's three times. If you deny it three times, then it's kind of like you got to try open up a new account or something.   Bradley Sutton: Basically, yeah, Now, are you also? Is this the only thing you're doing under your influencers account? Or are you also maintaining, like a YouTube or Instagram where you're sending deals to? We actually are doing that.   Stephen: You know, like we've had an Amazon Associated Account for I mean since probably 20, probably before I was even an Amazon seller. So we, you know I'm always recommending stuff, even when we are back when we were wedding photographers. People are always like what camera are you using? So we have an Associated Account. And then Chelsea has, she uses the influencer page for her Instagram. So she has like her favorite things on there. You know, here's the kids toys we love, and you know that type of thing. So you definitely like Amazon wants you to be legit, like they don't want you just like do it just for the influence of videos. So and that's a better long-term strategy to is like, have a YouTube channel, have a Instagram, make a tick tock that's like you know Favorite mom finds or something like that and just like, post your videos cross, post them when you're I mean you already recorded, I'm right, yeah, post them on Facebook, post them on tick tock as well, and that's gonna not only drive more traffic to Amazon but it's gonna make you look more legit, you know. So, yeah, you could really make this a business model again. Amazon could change things. Sure, it is a new wear program, but you could definitely ride this thing for the next year or two, I bet, and it makes some good cash from it.   Bradley Sutton: Nice, all right, let's switch gears a little bit, come something completely different. Um sure, I noticed that sometimes you go to like these, you know, like masterminds for, like entrepreneurs, and, and you know you met like Saddam and and come off from a yeah, that's right, he went up there and stuff yeah and and I, I I haven't been to one, but but a lot of these you know, if I'm not mistaken, you know Some of them cost thousands, some of them tens of thousands of dollars to go to. And then so somebody you know, like me, on the outside Looking in might be like, you know, like hey, we all know about, hey, invest in yourself and this and that, but what is it about events that that has people coming out of these things and say you know what? It was worth $1000, like, like. Are you really getting that kind of value out of like these, these, these mastermind kind of events that you go to?   Stephen: Yeah, I mean, I'll use that example. You know, amz, one step. I met those guys through mastermind and I mean for us, like I would say, you want to get in a mastermind of people? Like there's different masterminds for different reasons, right? So oftentimes that mastermind was going to was probably less for the Amazon business and more for the coaching business, right? Yeah, so we teach people how to do Amazon and so meeting people at those masterminds, like those guys, that was awesome, because I was like, hey, we got a big launch coming up like what do you want to throw in, you know? And so they threw in like an awesome bonus for our people that, like people can only get through our work, like for being in Our world, and if that helps.   Bradley Sutton: I use them, by the way, too, for a lot of my photography, and oh man.   Stephen: Yeah, so like if that helps a handful more people come in our program, like that, that so the networking itself.   Bradley Sutton: Like like that you know they weren't the organizers of the event. But the people you meet can give you invaluable thing.   Stephen: Okay, yeah yeah, like we met another guy who does like LLC creation and all like the legal entity stuff which, like our people need all the time, you know. So not one relationship basically paid for the match.   Bradley Sutton: And that's a good point, because now it's like you know, it's not like you couldn't Google to find companies that do this kind of stuff, but but you know, you don't know if how legit they are, but you know somebody who is Gonna invest in themselves and pay a huge money to actually be at that place. It's almost like pre vetting them. Yeah, yeah, a little bit in itself.   Stephen: I'm gonna do a lot of conferences, right, and like conferences you get a lot of gold out of, but it's like usually a lot of time frame, right, like are there three, four days, and then there might be like one or two. Like man, that nugget Added six figures, added a million dollars on the business, like that. One thing I found in these higher ticket masterminds like we're in, we're in a 50k mastermind or 60k mastermind, like it's just like it's so much more compressed because of who's in the room and like who's paying to be in the room, that like you're in the lunch line, you know, like to get your like potato salad and someone drops an idea on you. That's like, oh my god, that's like that was a million dollar idea, you know. So, and I think it's the connections of like everyone who's paying there like to be in the room. They have a lot of awesome connections to you know. So that network effect. I think like, yeah, like sometimes masterminds are more teaching and training and like you know, but, but the best ones I've been in are more relational and it's just like how can we build partnerships? How can we leverage each other's resources? How can we work together? How to serve our people at a higher level. So that's where I found the value. And just there's something about getting in person with people. You know you do it all the time, you know. It's just like it's different than zoom, right yeah.   Bradley Sutton: Yeah for sure, all right guys. So that's something you know. Regardless of what field you're in, you know there's always different masterminds that that can help you, you know, grow as a person, as a you know there's inspirational stuff and or or as a business, if you're entrepreneur, I mean even a helium tent as a mastermind. So so you know the helium 10 elite program. You know people can meet. You know can meet other high-level sellers. So if you think that some of you guys want to look into, look at h10.me forward slash elite. But on the other hand, I think there's a couple masterminds like non-amazon masterminds I was thinking of mainly for me might want to. You know, look into, maybe I can see if helium 10 can help me out with the With the bill because some of these are pretty expensive, but that's interesting. Always bet on yourself, always improve yourself and sometimes it takes takes money to do that. Going back to the your community now, any cool stories. You know, every year there's always cool stories coming out your community. I remember the one Person who I was doing some demo a couple years ago about it's right football product or something, and then I was just like making a joke, like man, if I this would probably be totally something that I would, I would sell and then she ended up selling it made you know thousands of dollars on it. But any other cool like rags to riches stories or just just something inspiring that you could share with audience man it's.   Stephen: I love our community because we've really like Encourages, community of celebration. I think like it's really easy and like even the Amazon space or really any entrepreneur space, to get in a Competitive mode where it's like, oh, other people winning means like I'm not right and kind of like you think about yourself and you. You either try to like one up somebody you know or you try to like kind of Downgrade their success or like I don't know makes it. People can like oftentimes in the early days of their entrepreneurship journey, go to kind of like almost like I'm not enough, thinking Like I was, like oh, like dang, like it's like you can get in just lack mindset. So we've really tried to overcome that because really when we're helping people in our program, we're helping bring them out of poverty mindset right Into abundant thinking, and not just financially but in all the areas. So when they do have the money, when they are making the money, they don't just let those old mindsets hold them back still, you know. And so we found the way you celebrate other people really shows a lot about that mindset you developed. And so we just like kind of our community is just a thing, like when someone is winning big or small, they post it in the group and like everyone just goes crazy over it. You know, and it's just a really cool like contagious momentum and we had one the other day that I just I loved because she said, like she was posting, I think she had done like her first like $3,000 day on Amazon. She had, you know, was doing about $10,000 weeks at that point in her business. But she said, like you know, when she started the program she was in product research for like so long. You know, like you kind of get stuck in that analysis, paralysis, and she was just getting discouraged and she said she'd always come to the group and just look at the wins every night and she would just like when she was feeling discouraged she'd go look at everyone else's wins and she just be like this is gonna be me, this is gonna be me, this is gonna be me. So it's so cool to see her, like it was probably a year after she started posting the screenshot and being like now I get to be the person you know that like encourages you and like if you're in the dumps, right now and you're feeling discouraged, like here.   Bradley Sutton: It is, you know, and like, which I think is the reason why, yeah, you should be part of a community. You know, sometimes like if that person was trying on their own, I would say odds are they might have just given up because they weren't getting that inspiration. You know from other people. You know nine out of 10 times that person who's stuck in the analysis paralysis they just go ahead and give up. You know perhaps, but being part of a community you could see, you know other people succeed and it inspires you to move on. So I think that's important.   Stephen: Yeah, it's incredible man and I. That's what gets me fired up. I mean, yes, it's cool when we have a student make $40,000 in a day on it. Like we've had these crazy like people like crush huge numbers. Again, it's not the normal, sure. But what gets me more excited is the people that, like you know, we got flowers in the mail from someone who said, like I was depressed, I was suicidal, like I was, I had no hope in life, and then I found this, you know, and this community, plus the training, plus the mindset, like it gave me hope again. Like that, yeah, that's like beyond the money. So we kind of sometimes joke, we're kind of like you know, amazon's kind of the front, you know it's like, yes, we're teaching Amazon, but like entrepreneurship in general, I think is one of the biggest transformational, like vehicles that you can ever like go on. It's like it's like a roller coaster ride that like changes your life right, yeah, and I love it for that. That it's like who it makes you in the process. It's so powerful. So we love celebrating those. We call those the bubble over benefits. Like it's cool when people hit the numbers and make the money, but the bubble over benefits of like I retired my husband or you know, I was able to quit this job. That was soul sucking. Or I got hope again Like that is so crazy, so Right.   Bradley Sutton: Now you know we can talk Amazon strategy all day long and stuff. But you know somebody like you who's dealt with so many sellers. You know and you help people, not just on the Amazon strategy but like you know mindset and you already handle a lot of that with a community and helping people. When we talked about the benefits of community, but what? are some other things that you see is is like the difference between those who succeed, and again, success doesn't mean a certain revenue figure. You know success is very subjective, but from those who succeed to those who you know end up, you know failing and giving up, because all the people in your community. They're given the same resources. You know they all have helium 10, you know they all, they all have you guys, they all have the same. You know training and stuff, but you know not. The fact of the matter is no program or no, anybody has a hundred percent success rate. So what are some of the things that that success or that not success? What are some of the things that differentiate the successes from the failures?   Stephen: Totally. Yeah, we try to reverse engineer this because we basically have this thing called the 10K payday guarantee, and so to claim the 10K payday guarantee, which basically the short statement is, if you don't make $10,000, we'll pay you $10,000. But there's a ton of terms and conditions. So it's an action-based guarantee and we basically took our most successful students and we reverse engineer what they did and we put it in the guarantee. So, if you want to qualify for the guarantee, do this, this, this, this, and it's just like a checklist of all the stuff you got to do. And so I'd say the biggest thing is focus. Focus is a big one, especially for mom, especially for parents. Like you only have so many, so much time, right, and so we call this nutrients. Like you only have so much nutrients to put into your garden. If you're trying to do Amazon, you're also trying to day trade. You're also trying to, like, do this other Airbnb side, hustle over here. You're putting in just a tiny bit of nutrients. You're gonna grow like a lot of tiny pumpkins, right. But if you cut off a lot of pumpkins and you put all the nutrients into one, you're gonna grow like the award-winning pumpkin, right? There's a book called, I think, the Pumpkin, the Pumpkin I don't know something about pumpkins, where that came from and it's written by the guy who wrote profit first. But he talks about just like you just focus, right, and so that's a big one. We see, just I mean, they're like you know, bradley, like there's a thousand ways to make money on the internet, right, and so we really train people on like put blinders on for like nine months, like a year, like just give this thing your all for that amount of time. And whatever Facebook ad you see, don't click it. You know, just like do this thing. So I think that's a big one. We see people try to do too much and then they just go slower because of that or they get derailed into something else. The second thing I'd see we see a lot is really and we had a PhD neuropsychologist come into our group and really start training on this because she was talking about she works with like six and seven figure entrepreneurs on mindset and just the science behind like training your mind to go beyond where you're comfortable. And you know our body I'm gonna like not say this as sciencey as she would, but like you know, our body is like running a thousand automations at once, like I'm moving my hands, I'm breathing, I'm talking, I'm looking at you, I'm blinking. Like our body is designed, our brain is designed to automate those things because, like, if we had to think about all that, it would like destroy us, right? And so anytime you're doing something, really frequently your brain goes into really an automation and it's to keep you, come to us, keep you safe, just keep you. You know all these things. So when we stretch people into entrepreneurship or like hey, go spend $5,000 on inventory, right, like it's something that is like way beyond their current thinking sometimes. And so the brain will go whoa, chill, stop, slow down. Like hold on, I'm stuck. Like I'm stuck, I'm overwhelmed. These are actually, like we reframe them, as green flags that you're actually on the right track, cause we see people posting the group. I'm overwhelmed, I'm stuck. Right, we're like, oh, this is awesome. This means that we're stretching you this way, right, cause your brain is trying to keep you here, but that same thinking will keep you there. If you want to go here and have this amazing business, you gotta stretch and take this step here, you know. So we've kind of helped reframe the mindset thing. So when people are getting stuck. They know that it's a green flag and then they also know to reach out, cause we have a lot of different ways to support people. So that's the thing we see is people get stuck and then they don't reach out. They ghost us, you know, like we can't show up at their house and do that type of thing, yeah, and then I would say, so I said, focus getting stuck and not reaching out. And then I would say, like I would say PBC definitely has gotten way harder in this last season. And so I think, not having not going after, like I would say, either going after two low search volume products because they are on a kind of tight budget so they're going to have to really low search volume products, or going for, like way too high search volume products and not anticipating how much budget it takes to really rank and maintain rank on those search terms, you know. So it's like finding that middle ground, and so we've started to more train on that like kind of even budget training, of like hey, if you have this much devoted for your business, like spend this much on inventory, right, and leave this much for buffer room and leave this much for something you don't even know about yet, you know, because what we find is sometimes people stretch their budget on the first product so far, like you got 10,000, they spend all of it on inventory and then they have no buffer room to like keep it going, and then they got it, and then, if it is going, they got a reorder and then they're stuck right. So, training on that buffer. So just for people listening, if you're like I'm doing Amazon, I got this type of budget going in. I think, padding that budget right After you're not going all in on your inventory, you have budget room. I mean, you did this with that project. You launched a ton of products for like was it $5,000?   Bradley Sutton: Yeah, so I don't know. 12 products for 5,000 project 5K. Do you have any?   Stephen: budgeting rules. I'm just curious, selfishly, because we've been kind of developing it, but like even for that, did you have any budgeting rules, like how much of that budget you'd spend on one product?   Bradley Sutton: No, like I just wanted to see how many. My budget was 5K total, like including, you know, launching and stuff. I was like, all right, what in the world can I do with? This was my challenge. And then I was like all right, a lot of them were like straws and then I launched a brand around that like stuff that had to even do with like straws and parties and stuff.   Stephen: Is there just low cost to?   Bradley Sutton: make. Was that what it was? Yeah, just low cost to make. It kind of sucks that now that there's no Amazon, small and light. So actually I started losing some money on those products in the last few weeks that Amazon took away that program, but I mean, my goodness, like I discontinued some of them. They weren't all home runs, you can't be 12 out of 12. But still, like there are some products. I think I started that thing like four, three, four, five years, no, four years ago, and I'm still selling, you know, some. Like you know, I'm even bringing back one I'm going to do a little case study on it that it was really popular around Christmas time and I haven't sold it in, like you know, two years and so it's been dead. And I just ordered, you know, some new ones to see if I can get some traction. But yeah, the budget is. It was definitely critical. But you know, I tell people like, just because, like you can do it, this is not advisable because you know nobody can make a living off of products that are retailing for like $7, $8, which is what you have to do when you're trying to get products that your cost is less than a dollar, which it was for unit, yeah, so, yeah, yeah.   Stephen: So we're encouraging people, like we kind of we kind of ask them what their budget is and then we kind of encourage them to stretch it a little bit and whether you're leveraging financing or, honestly, like we've seen a handful of people do partnerships, where you just are getting an inventory investor and that sounds fancy, but I mean that means like a friend or a family member who has heard about Amazon but doesn't really want to do the work, and so we found a lot of people doing that and, honestly, I would, I would. One of the easiest things to do is go to go to someone who has an audience too, like, if you can go to someone like you know, you're listening to the show, you have that one friend who has like an Instagram following. Go to her and go hey, I'm learning about e-commerce, I'm launching this product. Would you ever have interest in launching a product for your audience, you know, and then like, develop it with them, and then, basically, you do all the work, you do all the sourcing and then you get a percentage of the sales you know and that that's a no risk way to get into it. Or someone else is fronting the money for the inventory. They already have the audience, not only the Amazon data of the traffic there, but they already are going to promote it and that audience loves them. Buy anything they shall, you know, talk about. So that's another way we've seen people do it, where they are basically making it rain for someone else and then they're making a percentage of that and that's making their own pot and now they have their own money. Actually, that that that wallet brand Kingsloo, one of our Rainmakers, went through our challenge and she got hired by that company, oh wow, and she built their Amazon brand. I mean, they were, they were doing about eight figures like 10 to 12 million on just Shopify with that product. You know, just Facebook had to Shopify and they weren't even on Amazon. But when we looked at the helium 10 data, it was like people searching their brand on Amazon right, yeah, you'll see the Facebook guy and come over, and so she built it out and like, built a I mean they did a million dollars on just like the Amazon channel. And then we recently worked with them because I'm a good good friends with Josh and we re-did his listing cause he was just ranked on his brand keywords, like you know, but he wasn't on slim wallet for men or any of these like big keywords, and so we reworked it. Maldives launched it again and it like basically I don't know exactly but it it almost doubled or tripled his Amazon sales Like he was doing. He was doing. I remember him saying me screenshots of like right after the launch and it was like he's doing. He was doing I think 8,000 or something like that a day and he went up to like 25,000, 30,000. And this was like Q4 last year. So I don't know what his numbers are now, but it's crazy Like there's so many Shopify owners should just like they're cranking on Shopify but they have no idea about Amazon or they have false beliefs about Amazon. That's a whole nother market. If you're trying to get into Amazon, be an Amazon account manager for people on Shopify. When you have those Shopify ads for, like those DTC products, go look on Amazon. If they're not on Amazon or they're on Amazon and their listing is terrible, like there's an opportunity there and it's hard to like work that type of deal sometimes, but if you can like, that's incredible.   Bradley Sutton: Yeah, yeah. So your program, you know, before we get to the last couple of strategies you might have, I was just looking at your website. It says you've had over 12,000 moms go through the program there. So if somebody is interested in it, is that like a prerequisite? They need to be a stay at home or working mom or what kind of a requirements do they have?   Stephen: You know you just need to be motherly. No, that can be anybody. When we started, like you know, this is definitely a strategy for Amazon too. Like you want to have a niche, you know you want to, like, really focus on one person. So we, when we looked at our top case studies with our training, it was moms, and so we really made the program for moms when we first started. And when we first started was a lot of stay at home moms. Now it's a lot of working moms, a lot of corporate moms and it's a lot of non moms as well. So really we're just family first and so we're not going to tell you to just hustle your life away or going to tell you like, hey, build this business, but do in a way that protects your family, protects your marriage and all those things. So if you have a family mindset, you can definitely check us out. Yeah, and how can they do that? I'd say go to the. Go to rainmakerfamily.com. Rainmakerfamilycom that's like our, our branded website. You can find our social media there. We have a challenge, seven day challenge. You can get to there. That's what I was talking about. Like we've had people go through that and even just that launch, launch products, and you'll see, you'll see Bradley in there on a bonus day.   Bradley Sutton: If you make it like this is one of the few. Actually no, this is the only community that almost every other week I do a, I do a call with them because you know your community is one of the best out there and so I wanted to make sure that you know I give back because you guys are doing some great stuff and really great community. Like I was just set the Amazon. Accelerate in Seattle and met some Rainmakers that came up took some pictures so that was. that was cool too, so all right so yeah, rainmakerfamily.com. Guys, if you want to, you know, check out the program Now. What's a couple of you know could be Amazon, anything else, e-commerce or some strategies you can leave us with today.   Stephen: Man, I feel like I'm trying to remember the ones I said last time, you know. So, like, I think the one we've been geeking out on again we're still testing this but really is, how can we increase the average cart value on Amazon? Right On Shopify? Like you can have upsells, downsells, cross-sells, like you, you know you can have that funnel, but on Amazon it's just harder to do that. And I feel like I saw Amazon testing this for a season, like they had like a way you could like, oh, add this other thing on there, but I haven't seen it recently. And so what we've been doing is using inserts, basically upsell because, like again, not everyone's going to take an upsell on that, but if you make it really attractive and in alignment with your product, a percentage of people will click through on that thing and a percentage of those people will buy. And so the best way to do this with Amazon, honestly, is like doing a high ticket upsell of some sort. So imagine you're selling, like I don't know, a dog whistle for training, right? Like having an insert that says, like you know, get our free guide on blah, blah, blah, and that free guide leads to a dog training course that's $297. So, like I love pairing information products with physical products because you've already kind of like, spent money to acquire that customer, so to say, right, you pay the PVC, you got them, you know you, you sold them a $15 whistle. If you could Not even make money there, but then a percentage of people buy the $297 course right on the back end, then it increases your margins like crazy and you can spend more than anyone else on that product because you don't need to make money on the product. Actually, you know money in the back end from a percentage of the people that come through. So the tricky part is figuring out, like what's really in alignment with that product, that's that solves problems that that person is buying the product for, right. So yeah, every product Usually solves some sort of problem, right? It's like I, my kid is biting the rail on the crib. We, I, so like he, buy the crib rail bumper, right, like that was one of our, am our Rainmaker products. So like, what other problems does that parent? Half right as it with a two-year-old? So you just start thinking like how could I serve that person at the highest level? How could I? How could I give more value than anyone else in this industry? Right, and yet you could do other physical products, but those take time and and the best thing I would honestly do is give them something for free that you're gonna get, sir, contact information, and then you can ask more question about it, and then you can develop something for them that serves them at a high level, or you can develop future products for them, you know. So I know a lot of people take people from an insert to like a free download or something like that. But I'm kind of thinking through, like, how can we take them to Something that is actually an offer? Right, it's like it may be a free thing at first, it has to be catch it, don't? You can't just say, like, buy my thousand dollar course yeah, no, I mean her and have people click it. Like it has to be like something that truly is like oh wow, I'm gonna scan this QR code or click this link or whatever. And so, yeah, we, we another thing, our Rainmakers doing just like if you know, we're talking about Amazon Associates, as they will link to their other Products in their shop using affiliate links on the insert. So like, and they will even do this for other people's products in our community. So this is really cool. Like, oh, Rainmakers, if, like, they have a baby product, they'll go post in our group who else has baby products? And they'll find like three or four other products and they'll say basically, like, check out, check out our you know, check out our friends, and it's like three other products, but they're using affiliate links. So even if you're just making a couple dollars on that, it's increasing. I mean, you might spend a couple dollars to get the customer on PPC. So it's just this idea of like how could we steward those sales more? Um, Alex Hermosi said like if you could get one more sale ever and it had to lead to like every other sale in your business, like how would you change the customer experience you know, and like what, what does that delivery look like? Right, if you start thinking that way, like how could this one sale lead to every sale, it starts making you think a little differently of like how can you Serve someone out of Super High Level and invite them into kind of a deeper relationship with your business?   Bradley Sutton: Yeah, you know so yeah, interesting, all right, well, that's, that's a. That's a good one. I'm I know my memories bad, but I'm almost 99% sure we did not talk about that before, so that's new stuff, all right, well, steven, thank you so much for joining us again. Again, congratulations on all the success and and look forward to you know, always, you know being around there for your, your community, more and and hopefully we get to a link up. It's been a while since we've seen each other in person, so hopefully we get to link up at one of these events coming up. You know you need to make your own like, like big, like kind of like get away or event.   Stephen: We're gonna go to Cancun. You want to come? I'm down, I'm down. Yeah, I'll send you down. I'll send you to work.   Bradley Sutton: Put me to work, I'll, I'll serve, I'll serve, I'll serve the meals there. I'll do whatever you want, I just want to hang out with your communities.   Stephen: I love that. Thanks, thanks a lot.   Bradley Sutton: Please get give my regards to the family, and we'll be seeing you soon, all right.

This week, the panel begins by dissecting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, a zany piece of intellectual property that's been taken off the shelf by Jeff Rowe, Seth Rogan, and a slew of animators and turned into a critical darling. Then, the trio reviews The Retrievals, a five-part narrative podcast hosted by Susan Burton for The New York Times and Serial Productions that chronicles the systematic ways American healthcare continually denies, discounts, and ignores women's pain through a series of events that unfolded at the Yale Fertility Clinic. Finally, they are joined by Wesley Morris, critic at large at The New York Times, to discuss his tour de force essay, “How Hip-Hop Conquered the World,” and how the history of the radical art form is as porous and complex as the nation itself.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel commemorates hip-hop's 50th anniversary with a lightning round of personal accounts about their first encounters with the form.  Email us at culturefest@slate.com.  Endorsements: Dana: Since their conversation about Sinéad O'Connor a few weeks ago, Dana has dived even deeper into the late Irish singer/songwriter's oeuvre. One gem she found was The Year of the Horse, a concert documentary recorded live in 1990 at Forest National, Brussels. It's a fantastic snapshot of a live performance at a very specific time in O'Connor's life.  Julia: Taylor Swift fans! Julia recently attended Swift's concert in Los Angeles and was struck by the overall kind, positive, and good vibes of the crowd. Fans of all ages and body types exchanged bracelets with one another, trading “Hi Barbie!” greetings, which made the concert-going experience feel even more special.  Stephen: It may be difficult to convince a teenage girl in 2023 to listen to Tom Waits' catalog, but Stephen has done exactly that: he created a playlist for his daughter called “Broken Bicycles,” which highlights Waits' extraordinary ability to write a pop melody.  Outro music: “Spinning Wheels” by Dusty Decks. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Kat Hong.  This episode is sponsored by the podcast About the Journey. Learn more here: https://traveler.marriott.com/about-the-journey/ If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows. You'll also be supporting the work we do here on the Culture Gabfest. Sign up now at Slate.com/cultureplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdA0oZPOSZLFLOj7VoVfwspnc6iIoj0z2 I've done No Fapping for 8 Years. Watch or listen to this podcast to get my best insights and motivation. I will answer these questions from followers: Cindy:  May I ask at what age you stopped pmo ❓And how many years have you resisted? it's M Music:  I broke my streak on the night of New year—he first day of 2023. From then I've been just breaking my no fapping streak. I have no self-control. I used to go 10 days or more but now I can't even go for 2 days without fapping. I don't know why. Yash: Does it decrease the sperm count if someone masturbates for a long period and what are the chances of prostate cancer ❓ Stephen: It mainly sticks with the frequent boredom I have when I work from home and when I'm alone specifically. Jordan: What are some techniques to stop PMO before going to bed I am starting to have trouble going to sleep ❓I am having to masturbate before bed and am needing some advice on how to stop.  Debdarsha: My frequency of watching porn is usually 1-2 hours twice a week, so do you think this perhaps a somewhat controlled habit will increase my odds of quitting it for good ❓ Peng JiDion: Does nofap help with social anxiety ❓Before I really didn't have social anxiety but after 3-4 years of this addiction do I get social skills back or is this permanent❓ I try to avoid people all the time scared, to do anything in public. pieceOfmind: I am back on the first day of no fapping with a new strategy. This time I think it will truly work. Instagram and overall internet spark too much dopamine and too many triggers for pornography (sexy women etc) so in order to not relapse, each time I come home I lock my phone in a box and I put the key away. Sounds extreme but i won't trigger myself if I don't use social media and cell phone. MARRURA_3: I knew that I was addicted when I started watching gay or shemale videos and I am a straight guy

Overview Diann Floyd Boehm is an award-winning international author. Diann writes children's books and young adult books. In addition, Diann writes books to inspire kids to be kind, like themselves, and to "Embrace Imagination”. Diann's Story Garden YouTube Channel gives children the opportunity to hear different children authors read their stories.Diann is the co-host with Dr. Jacalyn on USAGLOBALTV.Diann continues to be involved in various humanitarian projects with multiple organizations.Diann was born to parents of George and Mabel Floyd in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but grew up in Texas with five brothers. She has traveled extensively to many parts of the world and has lived in the Philippines and Dubai. Her Book https://www.amazon.com/Little-Girl-Diann-Floyd-Boehm-ebook/dp/B019HNFW26?qid=1665528993&refinements=p_27%3ADiAnn+Floyd+Boehm&s=books&sr=1-8&text=DiAnn+Floyd+Boehm&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=9f78b8ffbe3a2a18a2bbf21f3a635144&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il Website Home - Diann Floyd Boehm Favorites https://www.amazon.com/Little-Mouse-Ripe-Strawberry-Hungry/dp/035836261X?crid=3D6GQV8SSH7PJ&keywords=the+big+fat+strawberry&qid=1665532115&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjAxIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=the+big+fat+strawberry%2Cstripbooks%2C112&sr=1-7&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=18bb602a98af524be14c36ffd4004fc9&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il Bookstore | Black Pearl Books | Austin YouTube https://youtu.be/lfYf0UkQV_w Transcript Today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I want to welcome Diane Bo. Diane, how are you doing today? [00:01:22] Diane: Great. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you very much. [00:01:24] Stephen: For me, I live in Ohio and it looks like it's about the storm. So we may get some lightning and thunder in the middle of our conversation, but tell us where do you live and a little bit about you and what you like to do besides. [00:01:36] Diane: Sure. So I live in Austin, Texas, and can you please send some of that rain to us? , We would deeply appreciate it, , but uh, [00:01:44] Stephen: actually the second Austin Texas author I've talked to today. Oh, really? . Yeah. That's interesting. All right, go ahead. I'm sorry. [00:01:51] Diane: Yeah no, it's okay. I just had to throw the rain out there. So yes. I'm from Austin, but I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And my parents, we moved here when I was about 18 months. And so I consider myself a T girl, even though by the rules of Texans, you're not a true Texan unless you were born on the land. [00:02:12] Stephen: It sounds like you've spent more of your life there than not. So we'll give it to you, you think? I'll give it to you. I'm not from Texas so I might try, but you can come to Ohio, We'll take you, , [00:02:22] Diane: Right? Thank you. Ohio's a lovely state. It [00:02:26] Stephen: can be even during the storms. Yes. Even during the stores, there's so much. So what are some things you like to do besides riding? [00:02:34] Diane: So I wasn't always a writer, I was actually in the classroom, but things that I love to enjoy, I love to sing. Thank you. And I've been on stage quite a bit in my younger life as well as when we were living in Dubai, my husband job took us there and it opened up a whole new world for me. So I was able to be in some musicals with the West End out of London. And I love crochet singing. I'm eccentric. I just, I love to dabble in lots of things, discover life. Enjoy gardening, listening to the birds, et cetera. . [00:03:09] Stephen: Nice. Okay, great. So you were in the classroom teacher what did you teach? [00:03:15] Diane: A variety of things. So I've taught from preschool all the way to eighth grade. In the classroom and then outside of the classroom. Meaning in the classroom means you had one grade, but then I became a curriculum director and I was self taught before there was degrees in a technology...

Overview Lisa Solod has been writing since the age of eight and publishing since the age of seventeen. Her award-winning short fiction and essays have been published in dozens of literary journals and anthologies and has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, magazines and online, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lilith, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald. Her essay “Black Boots for the End of the World” was a Notable essay in Best American Essays 2012. Four of her novels have been shortlisted for  major fiction prizes and many of her short stories have been contest finalists. With pained honesty tempered by well-exercised empathy, Lisa Solod's debut novel Shivah: A Novel from Memory connects deeply to the challenges of family and faith, and the potential for growth and peace. Constructed in seven parts to mimic the seven days of shivah, the Jewish period of mourning wherein the mourners enter the home of the bereaved and sit and pray with them, Shivah is an exploration of difficult family relationships, of mental health, and of negotiating selfhood in the face of adversity. Her Book https://www.amazon.com/Shivah-Lisa-Solod/dp/1938841727?crid=MNSPG4HNQI6N&keywords=shivah+lisa+solod&qid=1662570619&sprefix=shivah+lisa+solod%2Caps%2C225&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=53a4807c8ca2cca8a9185c46603a13d0&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il Overview https://lisasolod.com Favorites https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VMV4YY?&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=3ded04232507546311420a382a75ebf2&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il YouTube https://youtu.be/1cDAt9_pGTg Transcript I have Lisa Sok. Who's gonna talk to us about her nav. Shva Lisa, how you doing today? I'm okay. Thank you. Yeah, doing good. I've got rainy weather. Where are you at? What do you have? I'm Lisa: in Savannah. So it's it's hot, but it's sunny until we have almost a shower every day, but nice right now. Stephen: It's gorgeous. Nice. I actually paradise. I, I. There was supposed to be a writer retreat in Savannah this year. That didn't happen. Some someone up here that runs those. So it would've been nice to go visit. I haven't been down to that area for quite a while. Lisa: It's gorgeous. It is. Stephen: Yeah. Lisa, before we talk about your book tell us a little bit about you and your background and some of the things you like to do. Lisa: I I majored in something offbeat in college, I majored in semiotics, which was a hip linguistics thing many years ago. But what it let me do was read and write, which was the two things I wanted to do more than anything. And so I did those and I've always been a reader. And so it was really fun for me to be in school and be able to discuss books with other people and professors, and also to do, to parse them in ways that I wasn't familiar with. That was great. I think I always knew I would write I always, but I wasn't quite sure what I would write at any given time. I've always written fiction. But first thing I did when I got out of college was I worked as a magazine editor and writer. And so that was great, right? It was a not only did I make a living, but it also taught me a lot about deadlines and editing versus writing, write writing versus editing how to craft something for another writer that sounded like them, but was better. So now I've heard, Stephen: I've heard from a lot of other authors that did some journalism, did some magazines and articles and nonfiction and all that, that even though they write fiction, now, the skills you learned doing the newspaper, the journal, whatever really applied and helped you with the writing is you find that to be very true. Lisa: Absolutely. Because anything you publish and anything you work on is something that you're proud of and you've finished and that can only improve all of your writing. I don't think I, I still write essays.

Overview Jocie and Stephen discuss the problem of Amazon book returns. Their policy hurts authors. What are the alternatives and possible solutions? We have several and some related issues that we discuss. YouTube https://youtu.be/_bVl1Y0HdU0 Transcript let's talk some author stuff and we have a good topic coming up about people returning books to Amazon. But before we get to that you said you've written about 20 books. So what are you doing now in your writing? That's different than when you first started? [00:30:18] Jocie: I hope, I think I'm better giving a little more depth and backstory coming from a world of writing nonfiction and I've written for newspapers and things like that. So you're pretty much to the point who walk when, where, why, and you get the story done, you get the story out same way with magazine articles. And so I think that was reflected in some of my early fiction works. I was pretty much to the point and people are like but why, and so now I will stop and say the blue dress, the blonde girl, and do a little more description, depth of character where before it was like she just said this, you just make it up as you go. I don't care why dress she's got. So I think, and I hope that I've gotten better at doing that. I've really worked hard to try to get better at doing that. [00:31:05] Stephen: Okay, great. for your writing, what software and services do you Right now, I just use pages that came with the Mac or word that's on my HP and pretty much that's it. [00:31:16] Jocie: And then I just back up on an external hard drive. That's it? I'm pretty easy. Pretty simple. [00:31:22] Stephen: Okay. So let me ask this, you use pages on Mac and word on, do you, if you start a manuscript in word on your HP laptop, do you continue to write it only there? Or do you transfer it somehow between the two? I have [00:31:38] Jocie: transferred done it in like a rich text format and transferred between the two. But if I started on one, I tend to keep it on that one because keep it simple. okay. It's just easy. And then the if I go somewhere I write on a iPad, honestly, I am an old school girl, 90% of the time I have a spiral bound notebook and my notes will go in it. I have it. Separated and file foldered indexed, so to speak. And I have, I love back to school season. I ha . I have a myriad of notebooks that each one of my books is in. And so I started writing when my kids were in school and if I was waiting for them at band practice or at a sports practice or in the the moth car line, if there were days that I did that, I would be sitting there writing in the notebook and I still do that. [00:32:31] Stephen: Nice. Okay. So you go all the way from analog up to digital. [00:32:37] Jocie: Yes. Hey, when I was a kid in high school, this is how they taught me to type. Okay. [00:32:43] Stephen: Yeah. That was one of the first things when I started doing it. And I sent my manuscript to the, my editor. She said, why do you have two spaces after your sentence? That's what I was taught. No, not anymore. That is [00:32:56] Jocie: hard habit to break. Yeah. I've even had to go back through and do a find and search and take that space up. Make sure there's no extra spaces in there. Yeah [00:33:04] Stephen: It's difficult. But the good thing is I learned typing and I can still type fairly well and just, and I've actually tried dictation and I just can't get my thoughts and keep the story going by talking it. But if I'm sitting here, I can just keep typing and typing and pretty much keep up with my. [00:33:25] Jocie: Yes, I've tried. I have a recorder and I used to use it going back and forth to work. The thought would hit my head and then I would like, I think the worst thing is it's like this. I would listen to myself. I went it's and it's difficult to listen to myself. Because you see all the mistakes, you make all the ums and the hums and et cetera,

Overview When she was in her mid-twenties, debut author Diane Zinna found herself completely on her own in a new city, teaching at a small Catholic college outside of DC. She was in the middle of a long period of grief following the loss of both of her parents when she met and befriended a Swedish student at the school. Their bond deepened, and the student invited her to visit Sweden with her for the summer. This trip was a sort of thawing out for Zinna, and the start of a long-awaited healing process. But questions stuck in her mind long after she returned home: what if things had gone wrong on the trip, when Zinna was still so emotionally fragile? What if things took a turn at the school she worked at, which had been a lifeline for her at the time? What would she have had to learn to keep going? Out of these questions came THE ALL-NIGHT SUN, a propulsive, memorable debut.Diane Zinna is originally from Long Island, New York. She received her MFA from the University of Floridaand has taught writing workshops for more than a decade. She formerly worked at AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and in 2014, Diane created the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, helping to match more than six hundred writers over twelve seasons. Diane has become well-known for her popular, online grief writing sessions that have grown each Sunday since the start of the pandemic. Diane lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with her husband and daughter. The All-Night Sun is her first novel. Her Book All-night sun Favorites Lincoln in Bardo https://www.bardsalley.com/ YouTube https://youtu.be/-fCXLZ_Lyqw Transcript Diane, I want to walk him into the podcast. And how are you doing today? [00:01:38] Diana: I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. [00:01:41] Stephen: It's good to see you. I'm glad we could get on. Let's tell everybody a little bit about you tell us where you live and what you like to do besides. [00:01:51] Diana: Sure. So I live right now, right outside of Washington, DC in Northern Virginia, but I grew up on long island and went to college on long island and [00:02:00] did my masters and were pretty writing in Florida. So I've been all up and down the east coast, but I'm a Northern Virginia girl now. Other than writing. I love to travel, which I haven't been able to do much lately, but people who've read my work can really see and feel my love of visiting other cultures and countries. And part of that I think is also my love for learning other languages. And so I'm always, probably have my nose in my phone doing an app or. I am just reading a little bit of something and another language has to keep adding more and more words and sounds to [00:02:37] Stephen: my heart. Yeah. And I know a lot of people are discovering reading on the phone, actually isn't bad, which helped spark the new fella, serial fiction Renaissance. And I know authors like Kevin Tumlinson. Drafted digital will have said he's written a whole book waiting in lines on his phone and published it. [00:02:57] Diana: Absolutely. Yeah. And [00:03:00] one thing about me that I'm famous for anything is riding in my car. It's like a long story and it sounds really weird, but I just got into the habit with it after my daughter was born because I was having a really hard time separating and hubby would say go to the cafe across the town and sit and take four hours and work. But I could never really get that far. I was always afraid that something was going to happen. Back at home. And so I always just get around the corner and parked my car in the parking lot of the little mini mall. And I'd sit there with my laptop open that nowadays whenever I'm driving, it feels like the muse is like rush out to meet me. And I know when Diane's in her car and she's in movement, like that's when the idea should come. So the note section on my phone is just full of stories, ideas. Yeah.

It's the premiere episode of the Help on the Way Podcast! The music may never stop, but it sure does start. This week, two out of our three co-hosts, Fig and Knob, discuss the Grateful Dead's 4/23/69 show(s) from The Ark in Boston, MA. Discussions of the oddball jams from the early show and the total party that is the late show. Enjoy a nice preview of the late show as well!    He Was A Friend Of Mine Dark Star -> St. Stephen -> It's A Sin -> St. Stephen -> Cryptical Envelopment -> Drums -> The Other One -> Cryptical Envelopment -> Sittin' On Top Of The World -> Turn On Your Love Light Morning Dew Hard To Handle Doin' That Rag Alligator -> Drums -> Jam -> The Eleven -> Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) -> Feedback -> And We Bid You Good Night

If you agree that losing patients is off purpose and bad for business, then this is the episode for you! We studied thousands of our most successful patient relationships – and then studied hundreds of our Coaching Clients' practices and discovered the #1 key to patient retention: Solid Expectations and Agreements. We found that all long-term, productive, successful relationships begin with clear expectations and honest agreements. When you start strong, patients are FAR more likely to stay. You are in the partnership business, setting expectations and making agreements is the bedrock of these long-term successful relationships. This culture must be established by you – the CEO – and executed by the team. If you want your patients to follow your recommendations for care and stay under care, then join us for this episode and discover how to partner with them and start with Clear Expectations and Honest Agreements. What We Covered: 00:38 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen introduce today's topic, Expectations and Agreements05:51 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen take a moment to promote Innate Radiology08:01 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen talk about the Story Analogy14:03 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen explain why expectations and agreements are part of a leadership conversation20:27 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen take a moment to promote Chiro Match Makers & CLA22:41 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen provide some incredible resources to support you EPISODE QUOTES “We want successful long-term relationships. And all of those successful long-term relationships always begin with two things in common: clear expectations and honest agreements.” (02:41) (Dr. Stephen)“It's absolutely vital, Dr. Stephen, as we dig into this conversation that it's about defining the relationship and what is chiropractic going to be in their life? ” (05:40) (Dr. Pete)“I'm gonna tell you right now, to have successful long-term relationships, you gotta focus on the beginning of the story, the early part of the story.” (08:42) (Dr. Pete/Stephen)“Expectations and agreements is a leadership conversation. It's a mature conversation. It's that, ‘I'm gonna have the conversation now because I have vision for where this relationship will go if we don't. So, ma'am or sir, let's slow down and let's start right here.'” (14:03) (Dr. Pete)“Don't try to build a practice that;s going to create and collect ideal patients using fantasies and assumptions. We create ideal patients by leveraging expectations and agreements.” (20:11) (Dr. Stephen) LINKS MENTIONED Dr. Stephen's LinkedInDr. Peter's LinkedInThe Remarkable CEO WebsiteDr. Stephen's Book – The Remarkable Practice: The Definitive Guide to Build a Thriving Chiropractic BusinessChiro Match Makers WebsiteSchedule a Brainstorming call with Dr. PeteJoin us for the US Retention Immersion. Register Now!

The purpose of a business is to solve a problem for another human being. What problem does YOUR business solve? In this crowded, noisy, and confusing healthcare marketplace it is critical that you and your TEAM can answer this question – and convey it to potential customers (patients). If you don't, you will not attract, convert or retain Ideal Patients. When this goes wrong, you can end up in a place where you are selling one thing and they are buying another thing. This will lead to confusion and frustration – and worse – patient drop-out. As the CEO, you and your team are responsible to be crystal clear on what problem you solve, what your product is and the process you use to deliver it. Get this right and you will attract, convert and retain more Ideal Patients. What We Covered: 00:37 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen introduce today's topic, Are Your Customers (Patients) Buying What You're Selling?05:26 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen list the seven major reasons patients drop out of care06:45 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen take a moment to promote Innate Radiology09:46 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen discuss The Blockbuster Analogy12:34 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen break down the purpose of a business and the importance of maintaining relevance22:21 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen take a moment to promote Chiro Match Makers & CLA24:34 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen talk about the importance of fostering patient relationships and meeting them where they are27:31 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen break down the four agreements of the Remarkable Conversion Process31:55 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen share insights on creating clarity for your consumers EPISODE QUOTES “Our premise in our practice has always been that the families that are in our practice are safer and healthier than the families that are not in our practice.” (03:06) (Dr. Stephen)“Don't be a Blockbuster in a Netflix world.” (09:46) (Dr. Pete)“Embedded in your understanding is that there's gonna be a step for them to get there. We've got a path for you. The product, with the end in mind, is this: Lifetime family wellness care.” (11:24) (Dr. Pete)“People are listening because they're looking. People are actively looking for a solution, so they are looking .” (14:10) (Dr. Stephen)“We can't miss the opportunity to build a bridge between ‘Now' and ‘Next,' because this next generation will be Googling, ‘Subluxation Correction.'” (15:23) (Dr. Stephen)“It goes back to a premise, right? Retention begins at conversion.” (19:03) (Dr. Stephen)“I'm not listening just so I can give them what they think they want. I'm listening so that I can know exactly what they want and they can get what they need. And what they need is what they want, which is the outcome. That's what they really want.” (26:01) (Dr. Pete)“If you start the relationship right, it's not a guarantee, we are setting ourselves up for that long- term success.” (29:03) (Dr. Pete) LINKS MENTIONED Dr. Stephen's LinkedInDr. Peter's LinkedInThe Remarkable CEO WebsiteDr. Stephen's Book – The Remarkable Practice: The Definitive Guide to Build a Thriving Chiropractic BusinessChiro Match Makers WebsiteSchedule a Brainstorming call with Dr. Pete

00:38 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen introduce today's topic, Marketing Audit02:52 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen take a moment to promote SKED and Big Life Financial09:19 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen expound on two attributes of a great CEO12:14 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen break down five audits to assess your practice14:59 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen stress the importance of having a 12-month long marketing calendar22:18 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen take a moment to promote LVRG Media and Spinal Hygiene24:36 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen speak to the value of engaging your tribe of patients31:30 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen talk about digital marketing and social media43:16 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen encourage listeners to download a copy of the Clinicoscopy Attraction Success Score PDFEPISODE QUOTES“It's either gonna be death by a thousand cuts or growth by a thousand beams of light. And we're hoping that we're gonna give you an opportunity to take these boxes and see your practice growing where incremental changes make geometric growth.” (09:03) (Dr. Stephen)“We want to get into the practice as CEOs of having a plan, especially when it comes to marketing. It's not just enough to have a plan for the next week or month. What we recommend is that you have a plan for the next twelve months. This is really important especially if you want to have a remarkable life as part of a remarkable practice.” (16:07) (Dr. Pete)“There's never been a better time or even easier time to be able to not only have engagement but measure engagement and manage engagement of your patient than it is right now.” (24:51) (Dr. Pete)“As human beings we want to be connected, we want to be accepted and we want to be respected. And your place of business could be where that happens. You could be that magic place.” (28:12) (Dr. Stephen)“Reviews are as powerful, if not more powerful than a referral.” (35:13) (Dr. Stephen)“It's all about who's gonna be number one in town. And we know that the person that ranks number one in Search is getting forty-three percent of the leads.” (42:27) (Dr. Stephen)LINKS MENTIONEDDr. Stephen's LinkedInDr. Peter's LinkedInThe Remarkable CEO WebsiteDr. Stephen's Book – The Remarkable Practice: The Definitive Guide to Build a Thriving Chiropractic BusinessDownload your copy of the Clinicoscopy Attraction Success Score PDF hereChiro Match Makers WebsiteSchedule a Brainstorming call with Dr. Pete

00:38 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen introduce today's topic, Onboarding the Right Associate – Part 306:45 – The importance of setting clear expectations and honest agreements14:41 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen take a moment to promote Chiro Match Makers15:24 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen expound on the Energy Equation20:13 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen analyze two chiropractic avatars: the Business Builder and the Care Giver30:29 – Dr. Pete and Dr. Stephen encourage listeners to reach out to them for supportEPISODE QUOTES“All successful and productive long-term relationships always start with two things in common: clear expectations and honest agreements.” (06:51) (Dr. Stephen)“It is about the expectations and agreements with every single member of your team. If I looked at your Organizational Chart and I look at your Accountability Chart, I want to know, ‘Have there been clear expectations and agreements set with every player and every position on your team.” (09:39) (Dr. Pete)“This brings us right back to the energy equation, which is the law of the jungle. Your practice – your business – will always be a reflection of your energy, your team's energy and your associate doctor's energy.” (15:24) (Dr. Stephen)“The retention person is such an important strength – such an important skill. There's a high level of maturity that's needed here to have great retention. There's a high level of capacity you have to have to love people and serve people.” (23:59) (Dr. Pete)LINKS MENTIONEDDr. Stephen's LinkedInDr. Peter's LinkedInThe Remarkable CEO WebsiteDr. Stephen's Book – The Remarkable Practice: The Definitive Guide to Build a Thriving Chiropractic BusinessChiro Match Makers WebsiteSchedule a Brainstorming call with Dr. PeteGet more information on the REM Associate Program here

Do you need a place to rent? But you can’t complete or submit your application because you don’t have the required information and documentation for the property manager? This is a common and frustrating problem.  Today, I am talking to Stephen Arifin of The Closing Docs, which offers automated income verification in the property management industry. The Closing Docs is a modern way to help applicants prove their net income, which is the best indicator of their ability to pay rent. The Closing Docs provides property managers with income information needed to make a decision that can be defended. You’ll Learn... [01:48] Early Entrepreneurship Experience: Stephen started solving problems using technology to make money from the time he was in kindergarten through college. [02:50] First Job Out of School: Full-stack Web developer at Microsoft, where a small team taught Stephen the fundamentals of how to build a Web application from scratch. [03:08] Missing Entrepreneurial Spirit: Stephen leaves Microsoft to pursue broken industries in need of technological innovation to save time and money. [03:31] Mortgage Lenders: The Closing Docs was founded to fill in the gaps of loan application processes by automating income verification. [05:21] How it Works: The Closing Docs receives permission from applicant to prove their net income, the money that goes into their account to pay their rent. [07:00] The Closing Docs has developed integrations with property management software, including Buildium, AppFolio, On-Site, and Yardi. [12:18] Why switch to The Closing Docs and not follow the status quo? Information collected directly from banks is better and trustworthy for an approval recommendation. [13:38] Operational Cost Savings: People and software are expensive, so what can property managers/applicants expect to pay for The Closing Docs? $10 per screening.  Tweetables Broken Industries: Paper-and-pencil processes are ripe for technological innovation. Net income is the best indicator of applicant’s ability to pay rent.  The Closing Docs doesn’t ask or expect clients to change their software. The Closing Docs’s standardized information helps people close more deals faster. Resources The Closing Docs Automated Income Verification Process: How It Works Stephen Arifin's Email Microsoft AppFolio Propertyware Buildium Rent Manager On-Site Yardi The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to expand the industry, transform it, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception of it, expand the market, and help the best property managers win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. I am hanging out with a special guest today. My guest is Stephen Arifin. He is with a company called The Closing Docs. Stephen, how are you today? Stephen: Good, Jason. How are you? Jason: I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for being here on the show. Stephen, before we get started, give us a little bit of background on you. Tell us a little bit about you, your entrepreneurial journey, your adventures here, and what led you to The Closing Docs.  Stephen: Sure. First thing, I'm a tech guy. I've always been around technology and computers growing up. My dad was a programmer and started his own banking software company. I was always around entrepreneurship and technology. Even at a young age, I would always try to solve problems with technology. For example, in kindergarten, all my classmates were really upset when the school installed the website blocker that prevented them from playing their online games. I created my own website and hosted all of my classmates favorite games so that they can play at school. Of course, I took the nominal donation, and made a little cash. I studied software engineering in college. I love building apps. I was in a fraternity and we were having some major issues collecting and organizing our finances. A buddy and I built a better invoicing system, launched the company into our fraternity, and help streamline their finances. That was probably my first real entrepreneurship experience. My first job out of school was at Microsoft, where I worked as a full stack web developer. It was a small team and taught me a solid fundamentals of how to build a web application from scratch. I consider myself really lucky to be in a team with so many talented engineers, but at Microsoft, I really missed my entrepreneurial drive.  While I was working there, I've began investigating broker industries. I started with industries that has many paper and pencil process, and were ripe for technological innovation. An obvious contender was the mortgage industry. I started finding gaps where technology can save time and money. After talking to a few dozen lenders, it was clear there was a breakdown in the [...] application process. Typically, their proof of income. Why were they taking screenshots of paystubs in W-2? In 2017 and even today, why are loan officers forced to review these data sources in so many different formats? It's cumbersome, it's time-consuming. It invites human error and judgment. Honestly, it's just downright painful. There had to be a better way.  Thus, The Closing Docs is born to provide automated income verification. I started in the lending industry. I really tried to help verify their applicant's income. But my lack of industry knowledge made it really difficult to sell. After speaking with folks in the real estate industry, I learned about similar problems in the property management space—a far less regulated industry and one that is even more disaggregated than the lending universe. At this time, it made sense for me to combine forces with someone familiar with the startup landscape, someone familiar with starting and operating businesses, and all their direct industry knowledge.  The Closing Docs other founder and my partner, Mark Fiebig, had started a handful of companies, successfully raised venture capital, and also happened to have deep real estate industry knowledge including owning a property management company himself. Together, along with my technical knowledge, we combined our assets and knowledge, and created what The Closing Docs is today. Jason: Cool. Explain what is The Closing Docs today. Stephen: We provide automated income verification. Essentially, a modern way to help applicants prove their net income. Here's how it works. With the applicants permission, we can obtain a years worth of deposit history directly from their banks, and share a report that illustrates an applicant's net income. Why are we reporting net income? It is the best indicator of an applicant's ability to pay rent going forward. The money going into the applicant bank account is the money that will be used to pay rent.  Our message to property managers is clear. We'll provide the info you need to make the decision you can defend instantly. So often, applicant provides incomplete information. Whatever info they do share, it comes from so many different formats from so many different sources. At the closing docs, we streamline the process significantly. Based on our client's usage data, we are seeing time spent from applicant screening fall by as much as 30%. That means that three hours screening timeline turns into two hours. We're saving our clients real money. If you do the math, that's one full-time employee for our property management firms seeing around 2000 property.  It's honestly fun for us to be on the phone with our customers and have them jumping for joy because they're super excited. We help them simplify and expedite their workloads. In essence, The Closing Docs is standardized information delivered right into your inbox or pushed directly into your property management software through our integration. We help people close more deals faster. Jason: All right. That sounded very pitchy but it sounds cool. Tell me which software does your software integrate with, that some of my listeners might be familiar with? A lot of them are using AppFolio, they're using Propertyware, they're using Rent Manager, they're using Buildium, some of these tools as a back office. Stephen: We've developed a number of integrations with Buildium, AppFolio, OnSite, Yardi. Those are many of the popular property management software systems out there. We're continuing to grow that list. We don't ask or expect our clients to change their software or stop using what they love or what they're used to.  We know that property managers pay multiple logins and switching between apps, so we made it as easy as possible for them to use our income screening. If they want, we also create an online rental application as well. Jason: So, they're going through this process of using your application (probably) instead of maybe what's built into their software. This is helping to gather all the documentation or documents (The Closing Docs) that they might need in order to verify their net income. What happens next in this process? How easy is it for them to use the software and figure out whether somebody is a viable candidate for this particular property? Stephen: There's two different entry points that property managers can use in our tools. One, if they are a firm with around 100 doors (usually), they can use our standalone web service. Essentially, they type in the applicant’s email and it sends the applicant an email to our site. The applicant authorizes their banks and they authorize us to pull all the information needed to aggregate metrics like net income—yearly net income, monthly net income.  We also count non-recurring deposits like bonuses, W-2 tax returns. Once that information comes in, the applicant gets the chance to review the information so that we remain FDR-compliant and they know the information that's being shared with their property manager, then they click a button. What we do is we print an income report. We deliver that directly to the property manager's email. That's the first way we do it. The second way is for bigger property management firms around 1000 doors, we actually integrate our income verification directly into our online rental application. We have an online rental app and it has different controls. All the information that the property management firm requires, we can require it to the applicant so they don’t skip it, and the income verification is built into the rental app. When the rental app is submitted, the property manager receives the rental application along with our income report. It's all in one combined package. That helps the back-and-forth issue that property managers so often get into, where the applicant doesn't submit all the necessary information and they have to go hound the applicant to, "Hey, can you submit this paystub? It's from two years ago." We save a lot of property managers time that way. Jason: I imagine, even one piece of back-and-forth is costing probably, sometimes even a day. Sometimes, 10, 15, or 20 minutes minimum. If there's pieces that are over and over again that are missing, they're working a one application, this adds up. You have 5 properties that are vacant that you are working on right now, 10 properties vacant that you are working on right now. Your staff are going to be really busy. It feels like it's such an essential, critical thing that just has to be done to move these things forward to get things rented, but what you're saying is a lot of it can be automated. Stephen: Right. When you’re trying to get more information about the applicant, that unit is in a limbo state. It's not really on the market. It's not really off the market. We're trying to prevent stuff like that. Jason: And the renter gets frustrated. Everyone's been in a situation where you have a key providing more information. They keep asking for more information. It just starts to get frustrating. I'm sure there's instances where they just decide to move on to something that's easier. Stephen: Right. One of the sites that want to [...] from starting this company, the property manager loves us, but their customers, their applicants, actually love us as well. They get approved faster, it's super easy, and they save a bunch of time. Really, everybody wins. Jason: Ultimately, that's why every business exist. It's to create some win-win, maybe win. You're solving a problem. You're shortening the [...] the time. What are some of the other benefits why should property managers pay attention to this instead of just doing what they've been doing and following the status quo?  Stephen: We receive our information directly from the banks. We support about 15,000 banks which is about 99.9% of all of the banks in the United States. We get trustworthy data. We get better data. Since the information is digitized, we're also able to produce and approve a recommendation. We use 2.5 times the net income to rent ratio. If the applicant makes 2.5 times more, then the units rank and we give them a thumbs up. If they don't, we give them a thumbs down. Property managers can make a decision really easily. Their applicants qualified. If it doesn't qualify, we'll give all the details of the transaction history and deposit history. They can drill down and see a little bit more detail where applicants [...]. Jason: All right. So, they’ll be able to have a little bit of information is to why they maybe didn't qualify, that sort of thing. I think another issue here that were a benefit to any piece of technology is that there's going to be an operational cost savings. If you have a staff member that's manually doing this, they're doing phone calls, they're texting, they're emailing saying, "Hey, we need this piece," they're trying to get stuff out of an email. They're trying to store documents in a certain way. They're asking people to send things, "Send me a picture of this," they will go into your bank, download these bank statements, and send them to us.  The challenge is, you're going to be paying somebody to spend the time to do this, somebody on your team. People are expensive. You're spending (for a decent team member) probably $15–$30 an hour. If you have hundreds of properties that you're dealing with, vacant properties, you're going to be spending hours and hours of money towards something that could easily be handled by technology. Help those listening understand, if you will, maybe a little bit about the cost of the software. Just get them a ballpark or help them understand if this is something even feasible for them to be doing in their business. Stephen: Our pricing is super simple, $10 per screening. There's no implementation cost. There's no sign-up cost. There's no minimum fees. It's just $10 per screening. The time that you save, especially when we have clients with a lot of doors and there's just a lot of applicants, especially during busy seasons like the summer season, applicants are just piling in by the truckload, each minute count. Each mental step that you actually even skip, it all adds up. It's really great. We have a lot of clients saying, "Man, we love your software."  Jason: This $10 application fee, they're probably passing on to the renters, I would imagine. Stephen: We support both the property manager or the applicant. We have clients that do both workloads. It's a business that's usually up to your [...]. Jason: Okay. They can do it either way. They can build it in as a part of their application process. Most property managers are going to have some other steps besides just income verification as part of their application process that they need to take into anyway. This would be one piece of that puzzle. This would be the income verification portion. Just to make screening even more solid. I would imagine that the financial aspect is probably one of the number one indicators as to whether they're going to be able to afford it and pay for it. They're going to be looking at things like credit. They're going to be looking at other things. Bottomline, if they don't have the funds available, it's okay. They're likelihood of making rent every month is going to be pretty slim. What are some of the frequently asked questions that some of the people may ask when they're looking at your software? When they're looking at your solution? What are some of the most common questions that property managers would probably be curious to hear about here on the DoorGrow Show? Stephen: Something with our income screening is that it requires the applicant's permission and the applicant's involvement. It's not like a hard inquiry on credit where you can just type in a social security number then they automatically pull credit without the applicant's involvement. We need the applicant to authorize their banks. That's how we remain FDR-compliant. Our data showed actually that we have around a 97% quiet rate which is honestly awesome. We do have some applicants in the older generation that is a little unfamiliar with technology. They get a little worried when authorizing the banks.  We're FDR-compliant, we have the same security protocols of banks, and we never see any of the sensitive credentials. But sometimes, applicants worry about that. Whenever we incorporate our income verification in an online rental app, we give the option to go the route that we've all come and known by uploading bank statements and pay stubs. We give that option. But like I said, 97% of the applicant go for the more streamlined option because it just saves so much time. Jason: Okay. So, if they get a conspiracy theorist grandpa, that's been living in a basement, he's freaking out, wearing his tinfoil hat, he's worried about giving his password through your software tool, he can still do things the old school way if the property manager's willing to tolerate it. Stephen: Right. If you think about it, they’re still uploading all the sensitive information. They're uploading their [...].  Jason: It's less secure. Let's be honest. Stephen: It's a perception. Jason: Yeah. If they're sending these stuff through email, that's even more ridiculous. Some emails open and passes through multiple servers. We understand that as nerds. That's okay. We need to help out our less technological brothers and sisters out there.  Stephen, it's exciting to hear about your tool. I hope people will check it out. How can people get in touch with you or with The Closing Docs and learn more? Stephen: Our website, theclosingdocs.com, has got a lot of great information. It also has a contact form. You can get in contact with our team. You can also email me at stephen@theclosingdocs.com. If you sign up at theclosingdocs.com on our site, you'll get three free screenings to try out our tool.  We're pretty confident that you'll be hooked by the first screening. It'll give you a chance to try out this new workflow. In the end, it is a new workflow. As a business, you need to adjust your business processes to accommodate for new tools that you incorporate in your business. Jason: All right, cool. Somebody was asking a question. They're asking, "How do you integrate with AppFolio since they don't have an API?"  Stephen: We use a Chrome extension, a browser extension. That allows people to create screenings directly from their browser no matter what website you're in. They're still using AppFolio, they're still using the tools that they love, but they can access our income screenings through our Chrome extension or a browser extension. Jason: It's a clever solution to that. If anybody has any other questions, reach out to stephen@theclosingdocs.com. I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrow Show. Stephen: Thanks, Jason. Thanks for inviting me on the show. Jason: Yeah, you bet. Those of you that are watching, check out theclosingdocs.com. If you are watching us for the first time or maybe it's the 50th time, be sure to like and subscribe. Check us out on YouTube or leave us a comment on Facebook. I want to see people that are involved and see who's interested in the show. I love seeing that feedback. If you're on iTunes, do me a huge favor and leave us a review. I would appreciate it. We'd love some real feedback. Be sure to test out your website. You can do that at doorgrow.com/quiz. If you're doing any cold lead marketing, advertising, go to doorgrow.com/coldleads. Go through that calculator. I want to give you a gift and show you some leaks in your business that you may not be seeing right now. I would love to help you out, so reach out to us at DoorGrow. Until next time. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Alex Charfen is one of the very select few coaches I continually plug into...    I have wanted to get this individual on here for quite some time, and Alex Charfen has been one of the reasons why my stuff is blowing up so much.    I have learned that I need to listen to less people, and I'm very, very picky on those that I choose to dive deeply with…   So for marketing and sales, I've really dove deep with Russell, (obviously) and you all know that.    For systems and business systems, I've dove very deeply with Alex Charfen... he's the other coach that I pay a lot to and listen to as well.    ...and I have other various ones that are very carefully selected... and I don't listen to ANYBODY else!    I'm extremely careful about the content that I consume - so that I can spend most of my time just moving, rather than gathering MORE information…   ... which I don't think many of us need more of.    So anyway, I'm excited for you guys to understand more of why Alex Charfen, for me, has been so key…   So I asked him to come on the show and to teach a little bit more about the systems that all businesses need, regardless of whatever you're in.    A lot of these are the systems that a brand new entrepreneur needs when they finally get that revenue coming in.    ...and then there are systems that he creates for those who have an existing business and are ready to scale.    Alex answers the questions…     How do you know if you should be scaling or not?        What are the five reasons why most companies fail to scale?     If you guys like this interview, please reach out to him, (he did not need to do this) and say “Thank You!”    At the very end, we have a special little thing for you, and so we're excited!    Boom, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, welcome back to Sales Funnel Radio - we're really excited to have you guys here.    I'm with one of my good friends, who's become an amazing friend and definitely a mentor... I would call and consider him a brother as well.    I want to introduce everybody to Alex Charfen.   Before I really bring Alex on, I just want you all to understand, Alex Charfen was one of the guys that helped me understand why I am who I am... and that, it’s okay… and helped me lean into that.    I talk to you a lot about leaning into your obstacles, leaning into those things that have been crappy in your life…    … because they end up becoming your superpower.    You all know my story of going to the first Funnel Hacking Live, Alex Charfen was one of the first speakers, and I took so many notes…    I ran back home, I showed my wife and she goes "That's why you act the way you do?" And I was like "YES, it's because of this guy!”    He had a crazy deep gravelly voice and I loved it. He was the man!" ...and I'm so excited to bring him on the show here:   Guys, please welcome Alex Charfen, “How you doing, man?”   ALEX: Steve, it is so good to be here with you, man. Thank you, and I echo your sentiments completely, and I consider you a brother as well, man.   STEVE: Oh thank you so much, thank you so much.    You know it was like two weeks ago;  me and my wife were chatting about your material and going on through it, and she goes "Oh yeah, I have to remember this is how your brain kind of works."    I was like, "Really naturally, yeah! You should really know that" so we'll go back through your stuff.   You know, I've got that Capitalist Pig shirt that I wear all the time, but I really want one that just says, "Charfen will explain," or something like that, you know what I mean?    That should be the next shirt…   So much of what I do in this world just is NOT explainable without you.   ALEX: Yeah, it's unique, you know, Stephen…    I think when you characterize it that way, so much of what you do is different than what anybody in the world would ever expect... and that's what I've found from the day I met you.    I think I walked up to you and said something like:    "Hey man, I think we should talk. You're a really unique entrepreneur and I don't think you understand just how unique."   STEVE: I remember you said that.   ALEX: Or something like that.   STEVE: Yeah I remember, and I felt like, you know in the Matrix when he's talking to that lady with the spoon bend... I felt like I was talking to her, and I was like:    "What does he see in me? What are you looking at?" You know, and "Please dissect me!"    So anyway, I really am pumped for you to be here and just massive incredible love.    You have to understand, your name; it's NOT just a noun, it’s a verb in my vocabulary.    People are like "How did you do that?” "I just Charfenized it, baby!"    I say ‘Charfenation’ all the time.    I was hanging out with the other ‘Charfenites.’    I'm going over the ‘Charfenation.’    "How did you do that?" “Oh, I ‘Charfenized’ it, baby!”   Anyways, you're very much a verb in my vocabulary, and with my family... so it's really quite an honor to have you on, it really is.   ALEX: Thank you Stephen, it's an honor to be here man, this is awesome.   STEVE: This is really cool. Well hey, I wanna just start right out and just, I wanted to ask…    My audience has heard a lot about you. I've talked about you a lot because there’s so much that ‘veI learned.   Just recently, I was going through some of my old notes, from two years ago, from one of your events, and I was like "Gosh, you're so right, this is so cool!"    It really has created additional leverage for what I'm trying to do.   It works, it's real, and I want everyone to listen to this and listen to what Alex has to say here.   Understand that *this* is how I've been doing what I’m doing.   I learned marketing and a lot of sales from Russell... but how to have a life, systemize, and make my business an asset from Alex Charfen.    So, anyway, could you just tell us how you got into this? 'Cause I know you weren't always…   I mean I call  it entrepreneurial optimization, I mean it's really what you do - it's not just the systems, but like:    I'm wearing glasses now   I'm drinking more water than I ever have in my life    I'm doing all sorts of stuff I never would do, because of you    How did you get into this?   ALEX: - You know Stephen, I think if the question is, "How did I become an entrepreneur?”    I didn't find entrepreneurship, it found me.    This was really the only thing I ever felt comfortable doing in my life.    Ever since I was a little kid, I was always the kid that was different than everybody else, crazy socially awkward, like what you see today…    I don't try to be socially awkward, it's just natural.    I was always different than the other kids   I didn't really get along   I had trouble in school   All the systems in the world told me I was broken.    … and then, when I was eight years old, my family went through kind of a financial downturn; my father lost a company.    He didn't go bankrupt, but he went really close, and to make money for the family we were selling stuff in a swap meet on the weekends.    I remember going to the swap meet for the first time and standing behind a folding card table, and a woman walked up, and I sold her a pen that had an LCD clock in it…    (Like that was big time for 1981 or whatever or '78 or '79, or whatever it was).   Stephen I can remember thinking at that moment, "Holy crap, I'm good at this. This is something I'm NOT terrible at."    … because up until that point, I really hadn't found anything where it was like, "Hey, that was good."  It was always’ "Almost got it, kid. You don't suck as bad as you did yesterday."    I was the kid who consistently got *MOST IMPROVED* all the time, 'cause it's the award you give to ‘the kid who sucked the worst!’   And when that woman walked up, it was like "Hey, this is something I can do over and over again."    And the more that I worked with my Dad, and the more that I experienced business, I loved it.   The world is so random, but when you get into the world of business there are rules.   …. there's an outcome.    People are in it together, and you actually have to work together to accomplish and achieve.   …  if everybody cares about the outcome, it'll happen.    And so *this* is where I feel comfortable.    You know, it's funny, when I was a kid I used to create businesses, create business plans,  write out time cards and all this other stuff, and as an adult, I thought that was like ‘the weirdest thing.’    I would reflect back and think like, "Man, I was such a weird kid."    Now, that's exactly what my daughters do.    My daughter this morning was at the kitchen table for three hours writing out a schematic for a water park she wants to build one day.   STEVE: Wow!   ALEX: And you are who you are, and I think, from the very beginning, this is who I've been.   STEVE: That's amazing, and when did you decide to make a business around this and go actually help other entrepreneurs, like myself, who need these systems?   ALEX: Well, the business that I have today, we started…    So let me give you a little brief history.   So in my twenties, I was a consultant, and you know, a lot of people ask about that.    I did some consulting at a very high level at the Fortune 500 level...    I built a very large business that almost killed me.    And so I can tell the story really good...    I can give you all the highlights and make it sound great:   $250,000,000 company   I've worked with Fuji and TDK and Memorex and Logitech, and all international business.    Or I can tell you the other side of that coin…    I had a $250,000,000 company   I made less than $2,000,000 a year    my margins were razor thin   I had a bleeding ulcer   I was probably over 300 pounds    STEVE: Wow.   ALEX: And so when I got out of that business, I wanted to do something completely different.    So in my early thirties, I got into real estate, and we were taken out by the real estate market in 2007.    Cadey and I introduced our first information product, and that's how we got into this world.   We created a product called the Certified Distressed Property Expert Designation.    In 2007 we were bankrupt, we introduced our product at the end of the year:  In 2008 we did $500,000 in sales   The next year we did $7,000,000   The next year we did $10,000,000   Over the course of the life of that product, we did about $70,000,000    We went from bankruptcy to liquid millionaires in a year.    In 2013, the US Treasury came to our office and did a broadcast with us, where they said that, according to their research…    Our company had pulled forward the foreclosure crisis five to seven years   ….so it was intense.   STEVE: Oh, yeah...   ALEX: Really intense!   And what happened was, right around 2011…    A lot of our clients who were buying our product wanted help growing their business; so I took all of the stuff that I used to use as a consultant; the systems and structure Cadey and I used to run our business, and we started training it.    And so since 2011, we've been training it in classes/ courses.   In 2017, we started the products that we have today. So now we have :   An entry-level coaching program called Billionaire Code Accelerator - for people who are doing over 300k a year   A high-level coaching program called The Billionaire Code Grow and Scale - for people doing over 3,000,000 a year.    STEVE: That's awesome! That's so cool.   ALEX: Yeah it is the most fun I've ever had, Stephen…   It's like every day, I wake up and here's what I get to do:    I get to play in this playground with game-changing entrepreneurs that are starting businesses that are doing things that are just unreal.    ...and our systems, our structures are kind of the backbone for how they're doing things.    So on a daily basis, me and everyone on my team, wake up knowing that we are helping the game-changers change the world, and we recruit people who want to do that…    We recruit for people who are passionate about our mission…   Everyone on my team feels like their life's mission is being fulfilled through being in this business right now.    It's the greatest thing I've ever done.   STEVE: That's incredible, and I can tell everyone else who's listening and watching this now, it's exactly as he says it.    I think I've been to three of your events now, and they have just been life-changing.    I go through and it gives structure to the idea, but then, also, how I behave against the idea. So I can actually go in and breathe; I can live.    I watched my Dad create this awesome company when I was a young boy, but it took him too.   But everyone does that, it's super natural - so you to go in and…    Remove the entrepreneur   Create systems    Create processes and procedures, and people that actually push forward their vision even further.   ... it's incredible.    I know it's not magical, but it feels magical, to me! I'm like "Oh my gosh!"    I've actually had a tab open with your course open for like the last month and I'll just dive into another video, and I'm like "Oh my gosh! Back to the drawing board, that was so good!"    And I go back to it again and again and again... it's just always up, everybody who's listening to me, it's always up.    That's really what's teaching me how to run a company, rather than ‘me’ being the company, and I've loved that.    *Just so powerful*    I wanted to ask you kind of a key question here, and it's a question that I get asked a lot...    People come through my programs, I'll help them make money. They go and make a lot of cash, and it's awesome... but then after that, like what do you do?   What are the first systems that you find that new entrepreneurs with a sizeable amount of cash should actually go create first?    What are those first few moves?   ALEX: You know I think I definitely want to share a couple of systems Stephen, but first, I want to just share a thought process. ..and this is a tough thought process for most entrepreneurs to take on, and it's interesting 'cause I've watched you go through this shift too, right? '   Cause at the beginning, (and I just want everyone to know)...    When I met Stephen Larsen, he was ready to take on the entire world solo!   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: Like all alone, right?    And here's the thought process…    After you start making money, the next thing to ask yourself is:    How do I sustain this?    How do I make it real?    How do I make it last a long time?   How do I make it so that I'm not the only driver here?   when you get to the point where the momentum you're creating on your own isn't enough, and believe me, we all get there...    Like I know that if you're watching me, watching Stephen, you're one of those entrepreneurs... and in the back of your mind, you have this crazy voice that has always told you:    You're meant for more   You're gonna do more   You're gonna change the world   You're gonna make a massive impact   ... and if you've always felt that, then there's a shift you have to make in your thinking.    Because here's the issue for people like us; I call it the Entrepreneurs Dilemma.    For people like us…    We need far more help than the average person to reach our full destination, but any request for help or support that we have to make, leaves us feeling vulnerable and exposed.    Stephen, you with me?   STEVE: Yes, yes, yes, yes, 100%!   ALEX: And so here's the shift…   We have to realize that if we're gonna change the world, that is a group activity, and leadership's a contact sport.    So we have to wake up to the fact that when we start to:    Build a team   Create a structure   Pour into the people around us    Invest in those people   Make them important   Build relationships with them   …. we will build the company that we have always wanted.    That's the only way it's ever been done.  The myth of the solopreneur who's changed the world is a myth - it's a joke.   STEVE: So true   ALEX: It's one of the most damaging things out there in the entrepreneurial world today.    Because the fact is…    Show me anyone that looks like they changed the world on their own, and I will show you a massive team behind them.   STEVE: So true!    There's this idea that gets pushed around now, and it's like, “I'm gonna go and be this person that does all this stuff. I'm the gift to the world...”   ...and it's like “Okay….” but you can't do that on your own.    In the last six months, I have begun to experience and feel burn-out.   ALEX: Yeah.   STEVE: I have never in my life experienced that, and it's been hard.  The only way I've been able to create leverage is by listening to what you say and create those teams.   ALEX: Yeah. Well then, Stephen, that's the thing…    Here's the deal I want everybody to understand this:   If you're an entrepreneur, you have a job, and that job is to…    Stay out of burn-out   Lower pressure and noise in your life   Increase the protection and support that you have around you.    Because if you don't work with that equation to constantly lower the noise and increase the support, lower the noise, increase the support…    Here's what ends up happening…     You are in an equation that doesn't work.    … and it's not like anyone can come and argue against me here because this is like gravity.    This is like you know the facts of life, this is like taxes. We're all gonna pay 'em. There's no way to argue against this, you're going to lose.    And so in that situation, as an entrepreneur, you have to be really cautious about doing too much yourself, and about loading yourself up, because here's our instinct…    (You know you have this, I have this, we all have it.)    If there's something to be done, the first thought we have is, “How do I just get it done without telling anyone else,” right? Oh yeah!   STEVE: Yeah   ALEX: And it's like "I'm gonna conquer!"   STEVE: Freedom baby!   ALEX: We forget that humans are tribal animals, man.    We are all terrible at most things. Let's get real…    If you're good at a lot of things then you have a liability because you're not gonna be able to choose what you shouldn't do.    I'm very fortunate, I suck at most everything, and that's like an honest reality.    Anyone on my team will tell you like "Oh man, don't let Alex fill out a form, use the calendar, "send emails. We keep him out of all of our systems."    Seriously my team actually knows when I have a password for a system and they monitor me using it, 'cause I'm so bad at that stuff.    But on that same token, I know what I'm good at.    I'm good at vision    I'm good at where we're gonna go   I'm good at putting the frameworks together    I'm good at assembling a team   … and by doing those things, we can grow a massive organization and have a massive impact.   So for every entrepreneur, the key is to figure out what you're good at and do that to the exception of everything else   ... and it's the hardest thing you'll ever do as an entrepreneur.    Here's why…   The second you start doing that you feel like you're being egotistical. You feel like you're being self-serving.    But here's the fact:    When you drive your business to get easier for you it will grow like crazy.   But driving your business to get easier for you will feel like you're doing the wrong thing.    It happens all the time.   There's a discussion right now on our Facebook group, one of the CEOs in our group made a post, and I'm paraphrasing, but she said something like :   "As I offload and reduce discomfort and get a team around me, I'm feeling less and less significant, am I doing this right?"   And my answer was "Yes! You're absolutely doing this right. That's exactly how it's gonna feel!"    Because we need to attach significance to the total contribution, NOT to your day-to-day activities.   STEVE: Mmmm, that's powerful.    You know it's funny I was It reminds me of …   You know when I first got to ClickFunnels, it was just he and I. There wasn't like a copywriter, a videographer... it was just he and I!    So we did every single role in getting these funnels out, occasionally there was an exception where he'd go "Oh someone's really good at X, Y, and Z,"  but then, by the time I left...   ALEX: - Probably design or something… but everything else was you guys?   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right! I knew enough Indesign and Photoshop, I was the one doing it most of the time... and doing first copy rounds, and it like, it was nuts!    But by the time I left, it was funny because he had started implementing these types of things.    I remember watching him during these funnel launches just laying on the floor, bored out of his mind.    I've never seen him like that in my life, and he was almost going to a state of depression. He was like "I'm not needed in my own thing now. Ah no-one needs me anymore."    It's a funny thing to realize, we're just the orchestrators. We don't play all the instruments.   ALEX: We shouldn't, we shouldn't.    And so, you know, back to your question about what systems should an entrepreneur start looking at?   Now, I'm gonna talk high level, and I wanna share...    You and I are really close friends, and I wanna share the most critical content we have for entrepreneurs with your group.   STEVE: I appreciate that.   ALEX: This is what we normally share internally once somebody joins our program…    We share the five things that keep companies from scaling.    The reality is, there are really five things that keep companies that should scale, from scaling.    And here's what I mean ‘companies that should scale…’    You know, if you go talk to most consultants, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers, whatever, they'll give you this laundry list of why companies don't scale:    They didn't have enough money   They didn't have the right people   They didn't do all of these things   The reality is, if you look at most companies that should scale, there are five clear reasons why they don't…    So let me share them with you, but let me give you this caveat…    Here's what I mean by "should scale..."    If you've got a market    If you're capable of selling   If you could do more    If you know you're leaving money on the table   …. you should be scaling.   If those things aren't there for you right now, go resolve that and then start scaling.  Far too many people try and scale before they actually have all the steps in place.    Then you just build infrastructure that does nothing.   So let me tell you what the five things are...    #1: So number one, first and foremost, absolutely most crucial, is…      Most businesses don't have any type of strategic plan.     So as a result, there's no go-forward strategy, and here's what happens in a business when you don't have a go-forward strategy.    If you don't know where you're going, neither does your team   ... neither does anybody around you   And so you will, by virtue of math, become the biggest bottleneck in the company.    Here's why…    If there's no forward plan where all of us can point at and go get it and help you chase it down, every time we want to know what to do we have to ask you, and we have to go to you... and it's a death of a thousand paper cuts.    You're literally in a place where you're:    Telling people what to do   Checking that it got done   Telling them what to do again.    And if you've ever been in that situation as an entrepreneur, you know that somebody only has to ask you twice before you're ready to flip out and lose it.    Am I right Stephen?   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, usually once.   ALEX: Once, right, right, but by the second time you're like "Are you kidding me?"    And so the way we get past that is we create a clear strategic plan, we share it with our entire team…   ... and if the team knows where they're going, here's what happens.    I want you to understand something about the people coming to work for you.  If you're in a small business, you're hiring entrepreneurs.   I know that there's this saying in the market, "You're either an entrepreneur or you work for one."    I call complete and total BS - don't even bring that crap around me.   STEVE: Yeah!   ALEX:    Every person on my team is an incredibly talented, hyper-motivated, world-changing entrepreneur, they just choose to be part of a team.   And so you're gonna hire entrepreneurs, and the way you keep entrepreneurs absolutely and totally focused and excited, is you show them what they're hunting, you give them the kill.    You say:    Here's our plan   This is what we're doing   This is how you win.    And if you hire the right people, they will walk over hot glass to get to that destination for you.   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: But if they don't know where it is, you're gonna demotivate them and completely de-leverage them.    So number one, you have to have a strategic plan.    In my experience, less than 1% of businesses do. Also, less than 1% of businesses ever hit $100,000,000. In fact only 3% ever hit 1,000,000.   STEVE: Jesus. ALEX: So when you look at that, it's not 1% of businesses that hit 100,000,000, 0.01% of businesses ever hit 100,000,000,  and the reason is...    Most businesses don't know where they're going.    And Stephen, by you having the tools to build a strategic plan in your business, hasn't it changed how you approach things?   STEVE: Oh gosh, you guys remember when I tell you those stories of I left my job...    I created 200 grand of revenue really quick but there were no systems   I was the…    Support guy    Fulfillment guy   Sales guy.    I did every role, and I voluntarily, very painfully, had to turn down revenue to go build these structures.    And I want you all to know, it was Alex Charfen's stuff that helped me go in and actually set those systems in place... and so, please understand my affinity for this man and what he does.   About halfway through the year, I was only at like 300 - 400 grand, which is pretty good, but that last huge sprint came in because of the things that Alex Charfen and his team were teaching me.    All those planning things that I use, and all the things that I've just lightly mentioned, they've all come from Alex Charfen, and it helped scale me.   ALEX: That's awesome Stephen... Man, that makes me so proud.   This is so cool! Like there's only one Stephen Larsen in the world, and I told you that the first day I met you…    I'm like, "Dude you are completely and totally unique and I think I can help you build the company you really want."   STEVE: Yeah, you said   ALEX: And for us to be sitting here, and for you to say that, I got chills Stephen, that's so awesome. Thank you, man!   STEVE: Oh man, I'm so jazzed about what we do, but it's because of what you teach I'm like "I can do it... "    The first time I ever saw Stephen at an event, I did not leave the event until I'd cornered him and told him what I needed to tell him... because I knew you were gonna be exactly that type of person.    ...and here's why it's so important to me, Stephen.    I could tell the first time I saw you,  that you were gonna have a massive effect on the world.    But here's what I know about entrepreneurs; you're gonna have the biggest effect on the people closest to you - the people who are most proximal, your team.   And when I see an entrepreneur like you Stephen, I'm like:    "Man, if that guy builds a team he's gonna change hundreds of lives internally in his company. They're gonna change millions of lives externally, and I know those hundreds of people will build your legacy."    And when I see somebody like you, I'm like, “Man! That is the path, let me show you how to do this.”    The fact that it's working, is like, “Ah, it makes me so excited every day.”    This is why I get up out of bed every morning and do what I do.     STEVE: Ah, it's so fun man, feeling's mutual. You walked up, it was from that FHAT event that you were at.   ALEX: Ah ha.   STEVE: And you walked up and said, "There's a huge company in you and I don't think you know it, and I'm gonna help you pull it out of you."    I remember when you said that, I was so scared. I was like, "There's no way that this is real! I know who you are, are you kidding me?"    It freaked me out, and I had to own my own vision for a while. It actually took me a while to practice that.    Anyway, so much has gone on in mental clarity and development from what you've taught, not just these systems and things around, it's really cool.   ALEX: - So let's give the second one, Stephen   STEVE: Yeah, sorry, sorry.    ALEX: oh don't apologize, shit I love this part.    So first you have a strategic plan…    #2: Second, the thing that you need to have is      A system to communicate that plan.        Let me tell you something about us as entrepreneurs…    We think we're good communicators, but we're lying to ourselves.    The fact is, we are haphazard and emotional, and we're pumped one second and we're not the next, and we're all over the place…    Here's what happens…    When we have a team that has to deal with a personality like ours, and there's NOT a system for communication, it's random and haphazard and overwhelming... and it comes from all angles, and they're waiting for word from on high. Here's the fact, if you're the entrepreneur in charge, you're the MOST important person in the building all the time.    You're the most important person on the team, in the tribe, in the group, and they're all waiting to see what you say.    And if they're waiting for days and nothing's happened, they start thinking:    Is something wrong?    Did something go bad?    Did we do something wrong?    So you need a system.   As an example:    My team knows every Monday at 4:00, we're all gonna be on a weekly meeting together.  They also know every day at 9:27 a.m. we're gonna be on a daily huddle, and I'll be there.    They know that once a month we're gonna have a meeting where we show our strategic plan.    They know once a month we're gonna have a meeting where they all get the results.    So they all know when they're gonna communicate with me and how.    From the first day you're on our team there's a system that  controls how you hear from me.    Not just me pumping stuff out there haphazardly.    As a result, my team knows they're gonna hear from me, they trust it and here's what happens.    I set the expectations, I meet the expectations, we create trust. I create trust with my team every time I do that.    And here's the fact:   If your team trusts you, you get way more out of them.   If your team trusts you, they will do more for you.    If your team trusts you, you'll get discretionary effort   ... which means when they're driving, when they're showering, when they're doing something else, they're gonna be thinking about your business.  Why?    ...because it gives them momentum.    So if you have a strategic plan and a system to communicate it, you're ahead of 99% of companies out there.   And Stephen, same thing for you with the system, the structure?    Like…    We all fight structure, but once you put it in place, isn't it incredible?   STEVE: Oh, it's amazing! Stuff's getting done right now, that we set in place once. and then, I'll be like "Oh, podcast episode just launched,!Oh, what day is it? Oh, that's sweet! Everyone just put it out, all right, cool!"   ALEX: Right, I remember when I started getting messages like, "Hey, I love the new podcast!" And I'm like "Oh, we put a podcast out? Nice!"       STEVE: I didn't do that, what are you talking about?   ALEX: So you have  #1: a strategic plan, then #2: a system to communicate.    #3: Here's the third one, now this is BIG, really big, and most business owners just, they don't look at this ever and it's the biggest struggle is, or one of the biggest struggles is;      You have to have a system to consistently document the right processes in your business.     And by documentation, I mean having:    A flowchart   A process document   A checklist   Something that shows you how the important things in your business are done over and over again.    For example:    If you walk into a McDonald's, and you look above the fry cooker, there is a process to cook fries above that fry cooker.    Anything that happens in that McDonald's, there's a process for literally every single thing, including:    Unlocking the door   Turning off the alarm   Sweeping the floor   That's why there's a consistent experience at McDonald's; I'm not saying it's a good experience, I'm saying it's consistent.   In most businesses, in most entrepreneurial businesses, there's no process.    In fact, it's even scarier than that...    The process lives either in the owner's head or in an individual's head - so you lose a person, you lose the company.    You lose a person, you lose a big chunk of what you're doing.   STEVE: Hmm.   ALEX: So you have to have a system in a business to consistently evaluate what processes are in the company, and then on a monthly and weekly basis document the right ones.    The way that I would suggest you start, is you look at your customer experience:    What is the customer experience in your company?   What process documentation do you have to back it up to make sure that is completely consistent?    If you do that, you're gonna beat most people out there...   99% of entrepreneurial companies have little to nothing documented in any type of process.   STEVE: They're just shooting in random spots 24/7.   ALEX: Or they're doing stuff like, "Here's how we do our customer on-boarding…”    I trained Suzy   Suzy trained Annie   Annie trained Bob     John does it now   ...and you're like "Oh, cool! Let's go and see what John's doing?"    Well, John's doing nothing close to what Suzy and Bob and everybody else was originally doing, and so you have these degrading processes in your business.    And here's what happens…    When you look at entrepreneurial businesses, they tend to…    Go up in revenue   Come back down in revenue   Go up in revenue   Come back down.    If you're inside those companies, hundreds of times like I have been, here's what I can tell you…    Revenue goes up as the process is working, and then when it breaks, it comes back down.    *PERIOD*    That's why businesses don't continue to go forward - there are processes breaking in the business.    Whether it's marketing, sales, delivery, whatever it is there's a process breaking.    When you document your proceses, you make them bulletproof.    So in our business, we actually use:    Lucidchart Flowcharts   Sheets in Google Sheets    A new product called Process Street  -  a distributed, automated process document system, which is incredible.    So we have all of our processes in Process Street, and we have a distributed team around the world.   We have somebody in Ireland who can do their part of the process, as soon as they hit the last button it transfers to somebody here in the US who can do their part of the process.   STEVE: That's awesome.   ALEX:    Documenting your processes + Putting them in place = Game-changing   STEVE: Holy cow, okay I wrote that down.    I'm taking tons of notes so everyone knows, I hope they are as well…. And I'm not sharing! ;-) Process.st is the company, and we are so happy with it because... Stephen, here's what I want everyone to know,...   Cadey and I have had five businesses get over $10,000,000 a year, and all five of them ran them with paper checklists.   This is the first time we have automated checklists in Process Street.    The last information products business that we had, we literally had three-ring binders that we would carry around the office and check stuff off.    Having a three-ring binder with a process was so much better than having somebody trying to do it from memory.    Now with Process Street, we can distribute that three-ring binder, and I can get reporting on who's doing what.   STEVE: That's amazing.    Yeah, I've actually seen the three-ring binder and I've thought, "Holy crap, that really is how he's doing it.”    You would teach it and then I watched you actually do it.. 'cause you would record your stand up meeting calls in the morning   ALEX: Yeah.   STEVE: And I was, "Oh my gosh, that's so cool! I'm NOT doing that, interesting."    Then I’d go back and take notes and start it.   ALEX: And then implement.    Well, and you know, there's this phrase in the entrepreneurial world. Ah... I kind of get a little triggered, right!   STEVE: Let it out, baby!   ALEX: You know the thing that people say from stage:   "Here's what I want all of you to know. All you have to do is stop working in your business and start working on your business."    And I'm always like:    "Oh, good, thanks. Thanks for solving it all for us dude, that was awesome. You just solved all my problems with that really cliched BS thing that everybody tells entrepreneurs."     When I was in my twenties, my instant thought was like, "How do I get on stage to punch that guy in the face?"    And my then my second thought was like, "What a load of crap!  If I don't work in the business nobody's answering the phones, sucker."    Like, what's going on here? I don't know how to make that change.    And so the way you make that change is…    Working on the business means documenting processes.    By making it:    Clear   Repeatable   Real   And so you have…    A strategic plan that everyone understands   A communication system everyone knows is gonna happen    A system for documenting processes so everyone can repeat what's going on with your clients   #4: The next step,(and this is BIG), is..    A consistent system for identifying, documenting, and then prioritizing the right project in the business.   STEVE: Ah, this changed my life. *HARDCORE*   ALEX: Whoa, Stephen, you know how game-changing this is because, here's the problem in most businesses…    Projects are selected emotionally.    Period, I can't tell you that they're done any other way - they're emotional.    You go to an event and somebody says "I'm doing this thing," and then, the next day, you're doing that thing.    You listen to a podcast or you hear a webinar, and the person says "Hey, I added this thing to my business," and the next day, you're trying to do that thing.    In our business, if I have a really great idea that I want to implement today…    If I'm like, "Man, this is a really high sense of urgency, we should get this implemented."    It'll probably be somewhere around 45 days, and I'm totally okay with that.    That's the timing it should be in my business.    Now if there's an emergency we're gonna fix it that day, but if I'm like, "Hey, I see an opportunity here with something," it's probably a 45-day event…    Why?    I have a team and a structure, and a plan, and we have a system that's moving forward. We're already hitting our numbers, why would I mess with anything?    I actually protect what's going on in the business   I add things gently   I add things carefully   I make sure my team's into it too    I make sure we have consensus    In just in the last 60 days, we've gone from two million recurring to two point three million recurring,   STEVE: That's awesome!   ALEX: So why would I mess with what we're doing?   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: Yeah, so when somebody's like "Hey Alex, I got this "great idea for your business." I'm like "Awesome, get in line."    And we'll put it into our system to see if we want to actually do this…   Because the fact is…    If you're getting sold as an entrepreneur on what your next project should be, you're probably in the wrong place.    STEVE: Yeah, that's fascinating. I really agree with that.    It was your planning system for figuring out which projects, I still do it.    Top of every three months and it has guided everything we do.    And while I do follow a few rabbits and I'm practicing bringing it back in, we still largely follow the plan as to what the business needs, and that's ‘grow and scale’ rather than this impulse of like:    "Yeah, oh shiny object, shiny object, "that looks good, that looks good!"    And it's been that discipline, that's the other thing that's always up is my waterfall...   ALEX: Yeah, yeah, always! I mean mine's up right now. I mean I could share it right now.   And the reason is I always have my strategic plan pulled up in front of me, I'm looking at it every single day.    I'm asking myself:   Is the team doing what we need to do here?   How do I support people more?    How do I help them do this more?   Because when you look at our strategic plan, here's what it's made up of.    Our one-year outcomes   Our client-centric mission - which is our Superbowl, our hall of fame, the long term   The 90-day projects we're focusing on right now    What we're doing this month to hit those targets . So that waterfall of long term, to one year, to 90 days, to 30 days, I can see it all on one document and it tells me EXACTLY where I should be supporting the team and what we're getting done.    And so here's what happens…   I went to an event a couple of weeks ago, and I had an idea that was like "Oh man, we have to do this."    Then I come back to the office, I look at the waterfall and I'm like "What do I want to kill in order to do this thing over here?"    And you know what the evaluation was? *NOTHING* I'm not going to take anything off this, that would be crazy.   There's no way I'm gonna go to my team and say, "Hey guys, in addition to all the other stuff you're committed to, here's a hot potato."    I just backed down and I waited till the next time we had a planning meeting and I said, "Hey, there's this thing I think we should do."    We evaluated it   It went into the system   It went into the plan    There is very little knee-jerk reaction in our company because we are going so fast in a forward direction, that for me to challenge that in any way it has to be game-changing at a different level - so it rarely even happens.   STEVE: Yeah, black-ops right? Call them black-ops?   ALEX: Black-ops.   STEVE: No black-ops!   ALEX: No black-ops, baby!  If it's NOT on the plan, you don't do it... or it's black-ops.    And usually, the biggest creators of black-ops are guys like Stephen and I.    So my team has an open license to tell me if I'm doing black-ops.    They will actually call me out in a huddle, in a meeting, they'll be like "Ah, this sounds like black-ops," and then we'll make a note, we'll put it in a parking lot and do it later.    STEVE: Oh, that's so cool, okay.   ALEX: Yeah,  that's one of the most important things you can do when you have a team Stephen…    You train your team to criticize you and then you congratulate them when they do.   STEVE: That's really cool, then they have a license to actually flex their brain instead of feeling like they're in a box.   ALEX: Absolutely. You know I heard a story once about Larry Page, who runs Google,   He was in a meeting and he really strongly stated a point. and one of the team members got emotional about it and started yelling at him.    She was like, "I think you're wrong and this is why you're wrong," and Page was smiling…   Afterward, she asked somebody "Hey why was he smiling?"    ‘Cause she backed him down, and he actually said "You know what, I think this deserves more investigation. Let's do this."    She walked out and she was shaking and all adrenalized up, she had just yelled at the CEO of Google, like, “What the heck's gonna happen to me?”   She turned to somebody next to her, and was like "He was smiling, is that because he's gonna come down hard on me?"    And the person was like, "No, he was smiling because you confronted him, he loves it, he wants it.”    He knows that if people aren't confronting him, he's in a bad place.   So I look at it in my team and I'm like, "Hey, if my team's not challenging me a little bit, then we're all just marching behind a duck."    You know, I don't wanna have ducklings behind me. I want people who are saying:    Hey, this might work   This might not work   We might have a better idea   So you give your team license to criticize and license to call you on stuff.   STEVE:  Gosh, I love that.   #5: So here's the fifth one...    So we have:    Strategic plan   Communication system   Selecting and documenting the right processes   Selecting and achieving the right projects,   ….and then, this is *BIG*   Finding the right people     It's NOT just finding the right people, its…    Evaluating the company   Understanding what the company needs right now    What can you offload that is going to create the most momentum, not just for you, but for the team, for everything that you're doing together?    What is the position that you need to put in place next - so that the company moves forward the fastest?    And unfortunately, just like everything else I've named, planning, projects, process, all of those... people also become emotional.    An entrepreneur wakes up one morning and says, "I'm doing too much, I'm gonna hire an assistant."    Then they have the assistant sit next to them for three weeks, and they wonder why this doesn't work out?    It's because you had the thought to get help, (which by the way I congratulate you on), but there was no process there to actually make it work.    And so here's the process you need…   Evaluate what's going on in the company   Understand what the company needs   Turn it into a job description    Then you use it to recruit   You do tons of interviewing   You drive it until you have three people that you can select from    You hire one of them and then you do at least a 90-day onboarding, high-intensity onboarding.    When I'm onboarding an executive team member, I meet with them every day for the first month, three times a week for the second month, and two times a week for the third month.    People tell me, "Hey man, doesn't that "feel like overkill?"    I'm like:    You don't understand what it means to have an executive team. Your job is to build relationships with those people.    You want to know how you build relationships?    There's one commodity that builds relationships. One!    *TIME* - that's it.    And so when I'm onboarding, when I'm bringing somebody on, (whether it's on my executive team or anywhere in the business), somebody is doing that high-intensity onboarding with them…    Up close and personal every single day for the first 30 days making sure we have no drift.    And so, when you have a system to select the right people, bring them on and then onboard them the right way…    Here's what you avoid, (and Stephen this is like, Ah, this statistic drives me crazy)...    In corporate America, I know because I used to be a consultant there.    In corporate America, they would say things like, "Well we just hired so-and-so in that position so they'll probably be productive in four to six months."   The first time I heard that I was like "Did he just say four to six months? Does he mean four to six days, or does he really mean four to six months?"    Because in my business, even way back then), if I had to wait four months for somebody to be productive I would have been, “They're gone”!   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, they're gone!   ALEX: And so in our business, we actually have this experience right now.    We recently brought on somebody else, a new person to help us in marketing, and with our onboarding process, he was actually achieving products within the first five days of his first week.   STEVE: That's so cool!   ALEX: And that's how it should be.    You want somebody to come in, be effective and start contributing and creating momentum.    Because here's what will happen…    As an entrepreneur, if you're wired anything like I am, (and I know Stephen is), if you have somebody on your team that starts to feel like they're not carrying their own weight, you won't sleep.    You won't sleep, it will rip you apart, Stephen am I right?   STEVE: Yeah! ALEX: It will destroy you…    And so here's the question though…   Are they not carrying their own weight because:   They're lazy? They don't want to?   They aren't the right person?    Or is it because it's not clear what they’re doing?   STEVE: They have no idea what they're doing. They don't have confidence...I didn't help them!    ALEX: Right, 'cause here's the thing.    Your team needs three things in order to ultimately be effective and to be the type of team you want.    And here's what I mean by that…    As an entrepreneur here's what you want, you want a team that just does stuff and asks permission later.    You want a team that achieves and lets you know how things worked out.    That's it!  I just know this is how entrepreneurs work.    You want people who make really good decisions.    You want people who move things forward.    You want people who don't stand around waiting for stuff.    And if you want to have a team that actually moves things forward as an entrepreneur…    You gotta spend the time with them and let 'em know what your ethos is, and let 'em know how you make decisions…   That's how you duplicate decision making.   STEVE: Hm, gosh I love that. Okay, so…   Strategic plan   System to communicate   System to document processes that can be shared inside the whole biz    Documenting projects and the ones you're gonna work on   Finding the right people   ...and I actually personally just went through your onboarding training and it's so awesome!    'Cause it goes through and it's like this, you basically create a runway for 'em, right?   And if they don't land, don't worry you've got parachutes and there are jumpy cords all over the place...   - you're doing everything you can to help 'em win fast and lots of small tiny wins that build that confidence, and I was like:    "That is brilliant. 'Cause that is not the way you're taught anywhere else.”   ALEX: So Stephen, check this out, man.    We recently fell out of the lucky tree on recruiting and we hired this guy named Greg Duby and he is, ah, amazing.    He's like, he's just one of the most exciting guys I've ever worked with because he's so solid and so centered, and just so good at what he does.    Greg is a former nuclear propulsion tech in the Navy, so you know what that is, that's the guy who rides the bomb around in the submarine, okay?   STEVE: Yeah, that's amazing!   ALEX: Yeah, you have to have advanced degrees in Physics, advanced degrees in Math.   He's literally a rocket scientist.    So he worked in the Navy, then he worked at NASA, then he worked for some of the larger consulting firms out there…    I mean, he's done incredible stuff in his career.    He's just one of the most solid people I've ever worked with, and within about two or three weeks into our company, in one of our daily huddles, we said, "Who got caught being awesome?"    It's where we call each other out, and he said:    You know, I just wanna call this company out for being awesome.   “ I've been here for three weeks, I've never had an experience like this getting on-boarded anywhere...    I'm up and running, I'm excited. I feel like I'm really part of the team. I feel like I've worked here forever and I'm three weeks in."    And this is somebody who worked at some of the best consulting firms in the world, NASA and the Navy!    And our little tiny company has impressed him so much because we did onboarding because he knew what he was supposed to do.    And as a result, Greg, I think we're about three months in with him, and dude, there are projects that I thought were gonna take a year or two that are getting done this week.   STEVE: That's so cool!   ALEX: It's crazy.   STEVE: It's just a completely different way to do it. One thing I hated in the military, I love the military, but you know, some things that are rough and that is that there are no clear guidelines on how to win ahead of time.   The way you're instructed is by hitting barriers and then you get punished for it, and you're like:    "Just tell me ahead of time and I wouldn't do it! But all right, let's do more push-ups."    Anyway...   ALEX: Something tells me you did a lot of push-ups, Steve!   STEVE: I just want to say thank you so much for being on here.    I asked for 30 minutes and you just completely over-delivered, and I just really want to say thank you to you.    My audience already knows very well of you.    Where can people go to learn more about you but specifically also get your help inside the business?   ALEX: So the best place to learn more about us is to go to our podcast.    I publish a podcast four days a week, which is essentially a one-on-one conversation with an entrepreneur growing a business.    And the way that I create each one of those episodes is when a question or issue comes up in our coaching groups, I create an episode around it, we distribute it to the group.    But then also we distribute it to anybody who's listening, so you can get the same coaching that I'm giving my high-level clients right on our podcast…    It's called Momentum for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type, and you can check it out at momentumpodcast.com.    And then, if you want to understand more about our products, about our coaching groups you can go to our website charfen.com, but better is to just reach out to me or to one of my team members through Facebook.    The easiest thing, is just reach out to me, and I'll connect you with the right person in our company, and we'll go through a process with you to help you understand if we can help you.    You know Stephen, we're pretty neat, we don't sell everybody. We actually get on the phone with a lot of people who we sell later, but we won't sell you unless it's time.    We know exactly what solutions we provide, and if you have those issues and they link up, then we'll work together... but we go through a personal inventory in order to help you do that.    So if anybody's interested in getting on a call with a member of my team, you can also shortcut the entire process by going to billionairecode.com…    Answer a few questions and you can just set up a call link and you'll be on a call with one of my team members and they'll help you qualify and understand where you are.    And just so you know, we don't do sales calls, they are all consulting calls.    When you get on a call with my team, you won't ever feel like you're being sold, you'll feel like you're being helped.   STEVE: Which is exactly what I have felt when I started doing that as well.    Just so you all know he's very serious about that - that's very real.    I always feel like I'm being helped by anyone on his team.    ...and come to find out later, "Oh that was the sales guy!"    ...You know what I mean?    They dare to go in and actually they want to change the world and they're very serious about it.    So thank you so much, appreciate it.    Check out Billionaire Code.    The Momentum podcast is a goldmine, it is one of those gems on the internet that is actually worth all of your time and attention.    Thanks so much for being on here, Alex, I really appreciate you and love you, and thank you for being on here.   ALEX: Stephen, dude, this has been an honor.    I hope to be able to get invited back again, and as a Sales Funnel Radio listener, this is really cool. I appreciate you, man!   STEVE: Thanks, I appreciate it!    Hey, awesome episode right?    Hey, once I figured out the simple patterns and formulas that make this game work, I had a new problem…    Back when I eventually left my job and launched my personal business, I sold about $200,000 of product in around three months-ish…    And while I thought I was King Kong, a new problem started.    I was the business, there weren't any systems...   I was support   I was fulfillment    I was the one in charge of getting the ads around   I was the sales department    I was the marketing department    And I knew I wouldn't survive it alone…    Better yet, I knew I'd never seen a rich solopreneur.    This game takes a team.    Contrast that to now, and my company does tons of stuff that I don't know how to do...    What changed?    His name is Alex Charfen, check him out at charfenrocks.com.     So I usually don't bring tons of people on Sales Funnel Radio, but you should know that his programs, combined with my marketing skills, are why my business is killing it in revenue today, and NOT killing me personally.    Alex Charfen's programs and training have been life-changing for me and my family... and taught me who I really am and what I'm meant to be.    So when you're ready to build an actual business, an actual asset and NOT just make this another job…    When you're ready to keep the role of entrepreneur but learn the role of CEO, go get started with Alex Charfen at charfenrocks.com. That's C-H-A-R-F-E-N rocks.com.

Another one of the top 10 guests of 2018 is returning today to review the SBA process for both buyers and sellers. We'll discuss what's changed and things buyers and sellers need to look out for in 2019. Stephen Speer of ECommerce Lending, based in Florida, is a specialist in eCommerce acquisition deals. He offers a superior financing experience to buyers and sellers. Stephen urges sellers reach out to him to get their game plan ready and advises buyers to get pre-approved in order to get the ball rolling in the right playing field. Episode Highlights: What Stephen looks for in a business when prepping SBA on the seller side. Why co-mingling of multiple business can be problematic for a seller. His recommendations for cleaning up and consolidating financials when preparing to sell. What the the “debt service coverage ratio” (DSCR), also known as “debt coverage ratio” (DCR), is all about. Where the add backs come from and where Stephen's team looks for them. He advises companies to use an external bookkeeping outfit – for a great ROI! How Steve and his group think outside the box when it comes to SBA lending and refinancing in order to make the purchases happen. What he looks for in an SBA financing candidate. Just because you can write a check doesn't mean you don't have to be likeable. Situations or factors that can stop an SBA loan. The importance of reaching out to Stephen before starting to shop for the business that falls into your price range. Stephen reveals his lending sweet spots – the floor, the ceiling, and his averages. All the financing details – down payment, terms, and interest rate. Why sellers and buyers both need to go through the vetting process. Transcription: Mark: Joe last week we aired the episode with Shakil Prasla and we started out the episode with me basically having you fess up to the fact that I have the number one most downloaded and listened to episode. Joe: You're amazing Mark. Let's just say it right now you're incredible. Mark: But you're [inaudible 00:01:07.9] with Stephen Speer and at the risk of becoming a rethread podcast where all we do is bring back our top guests. We are having back one of our top guests this week again. Joe: Stephen Speer that's right. He's an SBA lender which is interesting in that the top two podcasts that we had had been about buying online businesses and we're brokers that sell online businesses. But hey … look you are amazing and you started this company 11 years ago and your focus was education and helping buyers understand the process and helping them as much as the sellers. So it's worked. And the fact that our top two podcasts are about buying online businesses has proven out that theory. We had Stephen back because last year there were a lot of changes in the SBA policies and guidelines. The dollar amounts came down a little bit, seller financing wasn't required on certain deals, and we recapped some of that and we reviewed the process both for if you're a seller what you need to do to get yourself in good shape to be SBA pre-qualified. And if you're a buyer out there looking to build that portfolio of businesses or buy your first one what you need to do in order to connect with someone like Stephen and get yourself in a position that you best be able to act quickly when that perfect business comes along. Mark: So yeah these rules do update on a yearly basis but fortunately this year it doesn't sound like there's a ton of new changes. With that said there's a lot of good information in this podcast because we get these questions over and over and over again about what does it take to qualify. And I think one thing that … I know we talked to Stephen the other day as a company. We had him and a couple of other SBA lenders come into the company and just— Joe: Yup. Bruce from [inaudible 00:02:47.2] bank, yup. Mark: Yup. Bruce from [inaudible 00:02:48.8] bank. You know I think it's important for people to understand that there is SBA guidelines. Yeah, that's one thing, but then outside of the SBA guidelines, there are some individual bank guidelines as well. And to understand that even though these rules and these guidelines that we're going to cover in this episode might be out there they're not hard and fast when it comes to finding an individual lender. Did you cover any of those guidelines from Stephen's group with the podcast? Joe: Yeah, we went over some specific things that he looks for and his firm looks for. He's with Bank One now … or I'm sorry First Home Bank but some of the topics that we touched on on the podcast and even when we talked to him separately and that you and I talked about is why is it important to pre-qualify your business for an SBA loan? Sellers may be thinking well it doesn't matter why should I do that. And the answer is because it casts a broader net and not a broader net of buyers. There are definitely some buyers out there that only want to use SBA funds because that's … they only have 10 or 15% to put down. And then there's another pool of buyers that could stroke a check for one, two, three million dollars but they're building that portfolio like Shakil and using SBA money so they're only putting 10 or 15% down each time. So it's really important from a seller's standpoint to understand the value of clean financials and getting prepared so you're pre-qualified for an SBA loan. And from a buyer's standpoint, it's a great way to go if you're comfortable with that option. Mark: Absolutely. All right let's get into the episode, let's find out what's changed in 2019 and then also recap some of the rules and some of the things that both sellers and buyers should know about SBA loans. Joe: Let's go to it. Joe: Hey, folks, it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage, today I have one of our top 10 guests back for 2019 Mr. Stephen Speer. Welcome back Stephen how are you? Stephen: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me Joe I appreciate it. Joe: Awesome. Man, well listen I want to go through all of the SBA lending practices, what it takes to qualify for a business, what buyer's should be looking for, and I also want to get an update on you and your team. I think you made some changes in 2019 … I'm sorry '18 I want to cover those as well. But for those that have not listened to you in the podcast in the past can you give us a little summary, a little background on yourself? Stephen: So I have an e-commerce lending team at First Home Bank. The bank happens to be located in St. Petersburg, Florida. Our team are lending throughout the country. As a matter of fact very few of our loans are actually in Florida but I made a transition months ago with the privilege of being able to grow my e-commerce team and we provide a level of support as we go into the new year. So I'm pretty excited about that. Joe: Yeah, it's exciting and I know that we've done a number of deals together and you've done a lot of work with Quiet Light and some of the other website brokerage firms. How big is your team going to get to? Where are you at now and how big are you going to be compared to where you were before? Stephen: So my team comprises of four people. Myself, a gentleman named Bill [inaudible 00:05:55.9] who is kind of my right hand man along with my underwriter and closing team. So I'm pretty excited about that. I plan to add an additional person in Q1 and another person who I have identified for Q2. So I plan to have three people do what I do. In other words, myself and two more and then stick with my underwriter as well as the closing team. Joe: That's huge. I always worried about you getting hit by a bus. Now you can get hit by a bus and we'll be fine. Stephen: Well yeah, my wife would love to hear that so. Joe: We don't want her listening to the podcast [inaudible 00:06:32.5] buy a bus and start driving around looking for you. That's great man, that's great. One of the things that I want people listening to this to understand is that we've dealt with a lot of SBA lenders over the years and you're a … you're not a banker. You don't come across as a banker. You don't have certain boxes that you must absolutely check every time when you speak our language. And you hang out with e-commerce entrepreneurs which is great. Let's talk a little bit about what it takes to qualify for an SBA loan from the sell side of the business. What do you look for from a business? When I send you a listing and say “Hey Stephen will this qualify?” what things are you looking for? Stephen: Well, first I'd like to … I would say I'd request financials. So first what I look for is what type of business is it? Is it FBA driven, is it 3PL, or do they provide their own fulfillment? So I look at that. If it's a product based business I look at the number of SKU's, type of product. I really do dive into that because one thing I try to avoid is having … trying to finance a single type business that's [inaudible 00:07:45.1]. So that's one thing I look at. So once I get past that I really kind of dive in to the financials. When I mean financials, the holy grail of financials are the tax returns. So for example now that we've entered 2019 I look for tax returns for 2017, maybe 2016 [inaudible 00:08:05.5] year, solid tax return for 2017, and solid year ending financials for 2018, and as we continue down the path of Q1 obviously 2018 tax returns. So basically back to your question a wrap up of … in 2016 of the business, solid year of 2017, and a strong trailing 12 month or strong and the word strong – Joe: Lots of people listening that are on their business will say “Hey that's not a problem. I got tax returns. Everybody files tax returns.” and then they give you a tax return and it's co-mingled with four other businesses that they're selling and they're only selling one … I'm sorry four other businesses that they run and they're only selling one. That's a problem isn't it, the co-mingling of multiple businesses under one tax return? Stephen: That is a problem and unfortunately, it's a problem that seems not to go away despite your best effort and your team's best effort as well as my team's best effort. They just seem not to follow that advice so that is a challenge. Now I do … with that coming up so often I do have a set of things I'm able to put in place, for example, I direct this seller back to his or her accountant and be able to income streams and expenses done in a professional manner. It can't just be Quick Books and I've been able to still get financing for businesses that do have co-mingling within a tax return. Joe: Does it just take a little bit longer to get those worked out and closed? Stephen: It does take longer. Generally, it adds roughly two months to the entire process. Joe: Woah. Stephen: It does take time depending on the responsiveness of the accountant. Especially as we enter Q1 and then start working on returns and start getting buried because [inaudible 00:09:52.5] season. It does take a little bit of time but it's not something that's not doable. The biggest recommendation I have either if you're thinking about selling a portion of your business now is to get on that and have your accountant provide or put together what I call consolidated financials. And basically what we do is we take the tax return and compare it to the consolidated financial which show a delineation of the different businesses and we're able to perform. Joe: Okay so for the sellers out there listening to that and going well I don't have to have an SBA buyer I can just sell to a cash buyer. You're absolutely right, there's a ridiculous amount of money out there in the landscape for people buying online businesses. The reality is though that you want to cast this broad of a net as possible for potential buyers. And we see this over and over again somebody that's from another country that is selling a business if it's a multi-million dollar business but you're not US based, not filing US tax returns. It is more difficult to sell because the buyer pool is not as large. There are buyers out there that I know personally that have the ability to stroke a check for five million dollars but they're smart and they don't want to. They want to keep as much money as they have … as they can and buy multiple businesses and maybe use someone like Stephen and SBA lending and only put down 10 or 15%. So you do cast a broader net if you can do the consolidated financials. If you're just starting off in business your best approach is to have one LOC for that line of product that eventually you may sell. We had Syed Balkhi on the podcast as well and Syed has a number of different businesses and every time he says “okay I'm done with this one” we're able to list it and sell it very, very easily. And the last one I think we did cash … actually, I think we did two SBA loans and it was very easy because he files separate tax returns for each business. That's the ideal situation. How do you feel Stephen about someone selling a business and they're coming to you with Excel spreadsheets for their profit and losses versus Quick Books? You don't really care about that you're looking at the tax returns and a P&L anyway that's in excel format right? Stephen: Primarily if we're talking just a single business, single return, single P&L's yeah that is fine. So that's not a problem at all. Obviously, the more … accounting is all about substance over form, it's kind of an accounting term. That is true but it can't be hand written or something very unprofessional I mean because ultimately underwriters look at that. If that's just kind of run together and it doesn't make much sense it's not done by someone who knows how to do a P&L or a [inaudible 00:12:47.0] but as long as it looks presentable that's fine. Joe: Well, you and your team are betting on the future success of the business. So first you want to see that the business is run properly. And if somebody is not using Quick Books or Xero or some form of accounting software it's an indication that it's not being run in as professional a manner as possible right? So that … okay, and the buyers look at that that way as well. And I could tell you from a brokering standpoint when you're using Excel spreadsheets for your financials and co-mingling it's much more difficult to get maximum value for it because no matter what things are missed. I had a call this morning where there was several thousand dollars that was buried inside of a marketing budget that was actually a personal thing. We had to dig very, very deep to find it. And that times three adds nine, ten thousand dollars up to the value of the business. So ultimately your view is you want to make it a safe investment in financing this loan and make sure there's a success down the road for the future. Is there a … some sort of multiple barrier that is a ceiling for you? Is it … how do you … it's … I can guess you call it debt to income ratios right? Stephen: Debt service coverage. So let's say … okay, so debt service coverage is primarily what we look at. We really don't look at EBIDTA multiple. I mean we do and we don't. The valuation piece definitely we look at that but primarily we look at a debt service coverage. So for example, if the overall loan is the obligation, annual obligation for a loan is $100,000 let's say, the bottom line number on the tax returns needs to reflect at least $115,000. Giving us a debt service coverage of 1.15. Now a lot of sellers run their similar personal expenses through the tax returns. I'm able to add those back so you can't just take a tax return and say okay it's a bottom line of 115,000. You got to take whatever the bottom line number is and then their add backs. Standard add backs would be interest, [inaudible 00:15:02.7], depreciation, amortization, those are primarily some of the add backs. Some of the seller discretionary add backs might be … especially if it's an FBA setup type business where there's run expense, well, the new owner probably will just run it as a home based business, some people add that back. Some people tend to run their car expenses through even though it's a home based business. I'm able to add that back. And any one time expenses, the revamping of a website or other ancillary things or a one time they could add those back. And I take that number and determine the means and debt service coverage. Joe: Do you pull those from our spreadsheets because we have add backs and do you look at those or do you dig into the tax returns for the add backs? Wouldn't it be hard to find them in tax returns? Stephen: Yeah so both, I look at what you provide in terms of your spreadsheet but some of those I'm not able to add back like typically insurance would be really hard. It'd be hard fought to have an underwriter add back insurance expense for example. Joe: It shouldn't be added back. I agree. If it's an expense that's going to carry forward it shouldn't be an add back. Stephen: Yeah and really those … so of your add backs, the ones you reflect typically on your spreadsheet I'm able to add most of those back and those … I use that spreadsheet as a roadmap. But I do go into the tax returns and make sure that the numbers are aligned. And then I'm able to really dig into a tax return and see if there's any other type of add backs that I'm able to find. Joe: Okay, so from a seller's perspective they want to do the best they can not to co-mingle multiple businesses under one tax return. Obviously, have tax returns and a good financial so we can dig into the add backs and make sure that debt to income ratio is going to work, anything else that they should be considering? I think you said obviously you don't want a business that's balanced on just one SKU doing 90% of the revenue. Ultimately the bottom line is you want to make sure that the bank is going to get paid from the person buying the business and it's going to be a success right? Stephen: Yeah and another thing we look at if there's any sort of declining revenue or a blip where … for example I had a client last year that completely lift Chinese new year and didn't have inventory to sell. So there was a blip but I was able to explain that to an underwriter. And obviously with the new buyer who felt that this business [inaudible 00:17:38.3] little bit higher. He was able to avoid any blips in the coming [inaudible 00:17:42.9] for example. So it's also an explanation there. The key for sellers is even if you're not considering selling your business now get these things in place so when you go to sell you're going to get the most amount [inaudible 00:17:58.5] of your business. I had a lot of sellers come to me and it's kind of like they want to list now and their financials are a disaster now. So I recommended that buyers kind of get on the ball. Maybe it's a new year's resolution to fire your current accountant and hire a good one and to really get the financials in place and put certain financial things in place now or pay dividends in the future. Joe: Yeah, I'd refer people to certain e-commerce bookkeepers, two or three of them on a regular basis and have them go back … they'll go back in this case to 2019 and import all the bank statements and vendor invoices and everything and get things updated and accurate. And Quick Books actually helps the CPA do their job better. On a go forward basis, it's the best thing in my experience for a decent sized business to use somebody else. Let them focus on the bookkeeping and you focus on running the business and doing … driving revenue and maximizing profit. I think that's really going to work. Stephen: Oh absolutely. And the return on that investment Joe, I mean you had a podcast recently that— Joe: I'm touched. Stephen: The return on that investment is enormous. Joe: And it's incredible. I've seen it happen firsthand where we've had P&L's in Excel spreadsheets and the deal fell through three or four times and then the guy took the same information, hired a bookkeeper, they put it into Quick Books and we sold the business for 50,000 more of that … I think we had again three or four LOI's and it sold quickly which is fascinating; a fascinating study. Let's talk a little bit Stephen about you. About e-commerce lending and your group and how you think outside the box. Because I want to talk about this a little bit. Not all lenders are created equal. You and I have a transaction going on right now where you had to really think outside the box. And I'm going to summarize it and I want you to then just talk about what your thought process was and how you approached it. We have a buyer at Quiet Light Brokerage that again has the money to stroke a check but he is in a situation where he's building a portfolio of businesses and he's using the SBA lending process. Buyers can take up to what … five million dollars in money right? Stephen: Primarily. Joe: So somebody could buy five … I guess that would be one million dollars I'd then be putting in loans right? They're liable for up to five million. So he's buying multiple businesses— Stephen: One loan or 10 loans it doesn't matter. Joe: Okay perfect. So he has two under a letter of intent with Quiet Light Brokerage now and mine is in the process first. And he's got the wherewithal but I think he had some pretty sizable loans that threw off his overall debt to income ratio. How did you work that out? Stephen: So … and that definitely took a lot of out of the box thinking in the sense that he had … he has an Amazon loan and I can't divulge too much personal information but the monthly payment on the Amazon loan was staggering. It was five figures on a monthly basis. I looked at debt service coverage and throw in a very large five figure monthly payment through all the numbers ROI. Joe: And this is on a separate business that he owns. Stephen: Separate business that he owns. Joe: Right, okay. Stephen: Because it does affect what's called global debt service coverage. So on a separate business that he owns which happens to be an online business. Joe: Right. Stephen: He has very large payment and then he purchased a bunch of inventory and financed it through Amazon. So it threw all the numbers off. So you kind of have to dig deep and say okay how about we refinance at that, take that monkey off his … that large knot off his back and be able to incorporate, be able to reduce that monthly payment and still get the new purchase done. And that's what I'm in the process of doing. His new purchase, his loan on his new business acquisition was just approved and I'm going to process at refinancing his Amazon loan. Joe: Now the Amazon lending loan is very prevalent these days with Amazon based businesses. And you and I have done just for the record content site, SaaS business, all sorts of [inaudible 00:22:00.5] certainly not just Amazon. But in this situation, this particular individual had several hundred thousand dollars in loans and the money gets withdrawn out of their Amazon deposits. Do you recall what the interest rate was then? What his payments were? What the interest rate was and compare it to what you're going to be able to do for him? I just want to emphasize you thinking outside the box and how much money you're going to save this guy on a monthly basis. Because he's thrilled right now I got to tell you he's thrilled. Stephen: So his monthly knot with Amazon was 48,700 and something. Joe: Holy cow, okay. Stephen: It's going to be a couple of grand. Joe: No way 48,000 down to $2,000 … that's amazing. Thank you for thinking outside the box. You're helping him and you're helping a couple of the sellers of the businesses that were doing deals on now. That's fantastic. Stephen: Yeah, and you touched on something really important now. I do have a fair amount of buyers out there, actually, currently 347 buyers out there looking for businesses to buy. And quite a few of them can easily [inaudible 00:23:03.5] for a two three million dollar business but they're building a portfolio. So back to your comment about portfolios a lot of buyers out there right now are building portfolios. They want to buy two, three, four different businesses … online businesses for the course of the next two or three years. And they don't want to use up all their cash. And the fact remains is that when you're trying to scale a business cash is king. You need cash to scale a business. You need to buy additional inventory. You need to grow it. And if you're cash strapped it's really hard to grow an online business. So I'm helping several of those buyers accomplish that. So an SBA loan is not just for the person who needs a little bit lower barrier to entry. An SBA loan is also for the person that could easily pay cash but chooses not to, to stay in line with his or her business goals Joe: Absolutely. Well, let's talk about the buyers a little bit and what you look for in a buyer? You and I have never had a situation where we brought a buyer and you said yes and then it turned out they weren't qualified. But I had a situation a few years ago where I had a couple of Harvard MBA graduates. They literally just graduated a month before from Harvard. They got their Master's in business and they decided to partner on an investment in an online business. And they had some funds. One of the graduates had some funds from a parent. It went through the process. They're pre-approved from a different lender and then underwriting said these guys have absolutely no real world experience we're not betting … I think the deal was two million dollars. We're not betting two million dollars on these guys. Yeah, their pedigree is good, their education fantastic but no and the deal fell apart. What do you look for? Are you looking for real world experience? Is there a certain asset value that they need to have? How do you handle it when somebody comes to you? What do you look for? Stephen: So first I look at … I try to determine and I do interview my buyers. So once you refer them to me I do interview them as you know and one of the first things I really touch on is experience; so first determining if they have direct experience or indirect experience. And then as I mentioned in a previous podcast it's almost like going for a job interview, even if you don't have direct experience you need to make the person real comfortable with hiring you. The same goes with a loan is that even if you don't have direct experience what business … what skill sets do you have that's transferrable and also who's going to fill the void of having direct … let's say SEO experience or direct experience in the space? So those two things I look at. So if the person has direct experience, pretty much a no brainer. A person that doesn't have direct experience it's putting together the narrative like paying underwriter even though here she doesn't have direct experience but indirect experience in these categories. And additionally, they're going to have support via an employee or a contracted employee that that fill a void. Joe: I got you. Stephen: So I'm able to … I've never … honestly, I've never had a deal where an underwriter has said gosh that's great they went to Harvard but they have no direct experience. Joe: We had a situation … I'm going to name a name here but I'm only going to use their first name; a guy named Rocky. Rocky was I think he was in his 60's. He retired and ran a General Manager for some car dealership something … somewhere in the country. I loved the guy. I thought he was amazing. Just as a broker, as a lender you just … you connect with somebody like I want to help this guy. I want to find him the ideal business. Although let me say I told him he's crazy. He didn't need to buy a business. He was retired. What for? You have plenty of money I'm like you're crazy just go play golf or something. But he ended up buying something from us and he didn't have any direct online experience. He was a GM for dealerships that yeah they had websites but he didn't run them himself. I find there are a lot of people in the corporate world that are putting in 60 hours a week that look at the e-commerce entrepreneurs that are selling a business when they're working 20 hours a week and they're making more money and they want to live that life. They want to spend more time with their family, with their kids, travel. Are a lot of the folks that come to you these types of people, and is that in direct experience still okay? Stephen: Yeah so to answer your question yes a lot are. Be it Rocky or any other, they don't have direct experience. So the thing about Rocky is that … first, off he is incredibly likable, incredibly well spoken, and have a very strong resume. The guy was successful in his professional career. Joe: Yeah. Stephen: And then unlike somebody working at a low skill job the guy ran the car dealerships which he was 60 hours. Or he was probably working 90 hours a week now but with a transferable skill set. And also he filled that void of not having direct experience in running an online business but was able to fill that void by bringing somebody in. So we felt very comfortable with that and he ultimately was approved. And the last time I talked to him he's doing very well. Joe: Yeah, I think he bought a business from Amanda. I didn't have one for him at the time but Quiet Light, in general, had one. And I think Amanda loved working with him as much as you did. So the likability factor that Rocky had, when buyers come to you is that important? Do you have to like them to do business or? Stephen: Well not like … I think— Joe: Make a difference with human right? Does it make it a better—? Stephen: They are human. So an underwriter is human and if they have a good dialogue with the buyer, for example, Nathan was incredible as well. Joe: Yeah. Stephen: One of the reasons Nathan's loan sailed through is because he was very well spoken and had the incredible background to be successful. So yeah it does. Joe: Okay so we're going to just touch on that thing that everybody knows but they don't talk about and that is if somebody comes to me, if somebody comes to you and they want to buy a business we want to sell you a business. But if you are 10 times more difficult than the next person and they also want to buy a business, my client … my seller is going to say okay well I've got an offer from each which one do you like more Joe, talk about the plus and minuses. And we've got to do that. And in your case you just said you've got something like 354 buyers on your list. They're looking for a business, they're not buying it from you, they're buying it from the likes of Quiet Light Brokerage. Stephen: Right. Joe: But you still have to work with them on a regular basis and you still have to go through the process with them and be likable. Simple thing guys, everybody listening just be likable. Just because you've got the ability to stroke a check doesn't mean that you can push a guy like Stephen around. There's lots of people that are trying to buy a business, lots of people that are trying to sell businesses and being likable is so-so key because this is an online world. We're not sitting across the table from each other and it makes a huge difference being likeable in the process. Stephen: We've kind of touched on that. I was recently … I have a buyer who's been looking for a year and a half. Not to scare new buyers out there but sometimes it does take a while. But he's not likable. Joe: Okay. Stephen: And he was on a phone call … I was on it as well with the seller and he was beating up the seller on the phone in front of me like I wasn't on the call. I don't know but … and the seller chose another buyer. Joe: It's not hard. I'll talk from personal experience. When I sold my business I remember being on one of these buyer conference calls. I had three or four. Jason Yellowitz here at Quiet Light sold my business way back in 2010. And I had three or four calls with potential buyers before it went under contract and sold it. But I remember sitting … I was in the car on a call and I'm sitting in a parking lot and I've got this guy just belittling my business and talking about all the negative things and I'm just to all I can do to end the call. It's you know … to not end the call and to be polite and it was really hard. And even if he made me a full price offer … all cash, full price offer I have to take into account, sellers have to take into account how difficult that particular type of buyer is going to be in due diligence and in the training and transition period. There's a cording, a relationship it's … it ends at a certain period but you're going to be in a relationship with that person and you want to make that as pleasant and as enjoyable as possible. So being likable is critical without a doubt. Stephen: Absolutely. Joe: What are the top two or three qualities that you look for aside from good financials from the buyer? Like, do they have to have a certain debt to income ratio? Do they have to have certain assets in order to buy a business? Stephen: As I would say assets it's more present driven unlike buying a house. I think we definitely look at what's called post-closing liquidity. For example, when all the dust settles is it broke after closing or still has a fair amount of cushion. So we definitely look at that. Is there outside income? Does [inaudible 00:32:09.5] have a … what I call a day job to … for outside income? That's another thing we look at. So those are two very important variables. Credit score is important but it's not like buying a home where you get to really perfect your lending terms. It's pretty much either get a loan or you don't get a loan in the SBA world. A recent issue … if the person is being down with a ton of personal debt that's something that we look at. Generally, that's a character … it's the ones living beyond their means that's generally not liked. So those are just some of the variables. And also what I look at is does this person have the skill set to be able to scale a business or is the business going to go stagnant as it transitions over to him or her. So that's another thing we look at but [inaudible 00:33:00.5] just some of the variables. Joe: So when someone comes to you and says I want to buy a business part of what you do is you look at their financials. You look at all those variables and you say okay great you qualify to buy a business up to a certain amount. Is that the process? Do you say okay … do you give him a guide as in terms of you can buy something up to a million or two million [inaudible 00:33:19.8] like that? Stephen: Yes and a lot of the determining factor is based on their … is it direct, do they have direct experience or indirect experience? So that is going to move— Joe: Noted. Okay. Stephen: Secondly, post-closing liquidity that's really what I focus on. If the person is trying to buy a million dollar business he has to inject or put down a hundred grand and he has 110,000 in the bank that's not going to work. So we kind of have to move the needle down. Joe: And in that situation, they wouldn't … it's not that they don't qualify to buy a business but in that situation, they wouldn't qualify for a million dollar business maybe a half a million dollar business. Stephen: Right, it would move the target price down a little bit. Joe: Okay so just let me clarify that so that somebody has a $110,000 and they want to buy an SBA business and put 10% down, for those listening that's generally the number 10 to 15% down, 110,000 you're going to be left with 10 grand; not going to work. So you got to look at a half a million dollar business. Stephen: Or 800, 750 something like that. Joe: Yeah and then you look at their debt, what they have, what they need to live off of and that smaller business is not going to cash flow as high especially after the debt service from your loan. So you look at all of that and help them with what they're capable of buying first and foremost right? Stephen: Yeah, most of my buyers have what I call a day job so most of their … in most cases their day job covers their personal debt so that's rarely a real factor. Now I do have an individual recently who didn't have a day job and had tons of personal debts so that kind of blew her out of the water. But generally we do look at that. So again back to post-closing liquidity what I do is … so for all of you out there once Joe refers a client to me for pre-qualification I'm able to have an interview with that person on a scheduled call and ask some questions and also they provide me what's called a financial statement. And then I'm able to in most cases issue a pre-qualification and give them a target amount. In the case … in the example that was well over 800,000 for example. And then that person goes back to Joe and says okay I'm pre-qualified with Stephen, he told me to look at businesses around 800,000 let's go. Joe: And then they have a path which is the most important thing. Somebody that doesn't know what they're looking for, doesn't know what they're buying capabilities are is less qualified from our view. So one of the things we want you to do folks if you're out there as a buyer reach out to someone like Stephen and get pre-qualified so that it will help you narrow your focus. And then the next step is to look at as many listings as possible from the online world and figure out what you like and don't like about the business. When you find the right one if it's a great business you want to be in a position where you're already prequalified to act quickly. Because if it's a great business guess what other people are going to be looking at it and making offers as well, really important there. Stephen: Absolutely especially since there are a lot of buyers out there and if you snooze you're going to lose. So you need to kind of get your house in order before looking. Joe: Absolutely, I agree 1000%. So let's talk quickly about the qualifications of the buyer. Do they have to be a US citizen? Stephen: They could be either a green card holder or a US citizen living in the United States. Joe: That green card holder or US citizen living in the United States, the business itself does it have to be a US citizen or a green card holder filing US tax returns? Stephen: In most cases yes depending on the structure of the business. Joe: Okay, there's always a sort of gray area in the situation. Stephen: Yes, it depends on the structure, you kind of different components as in the past few company on the foreign entity— Joe: Right. Stephen: Things that does affect that answer. Joe: Right. Okay and then your business and the size of loans that you guys generally do, are we're looking at you're looking for a half a million and up two, three million, where is your sweet spot in terms of lending? Stephen: So generally my personal loan floor let's call it is half a million dollars. But obviously, if it's a client I've been working with and happens to just look at $800,000 businesses I would grant one for 400,000 on that person. My average loan amount is about a one and a half million dollar range. So … and you know looking at my 2018 numbers that's close to 60 million, 40 transactions, that's about that number. Joe: I got you. I think we have 38 of them that were directed at me I think right? No, I'm kidding. Stephen: 41. Joe: So you're loaning on the value of the business. And what about if it's an inventory based business are you loaning for the value of the inventory as well? And then working capital … does somebody, do you always loan … give working capital money so that they— Stephen: Always. So a very good topic here so obviously I'm going to finance the business itself. I'm also … if the purchase price of the business does not include inventory I finance the inventory, the on-hand inventory. And what I do is I work with you Joe in determining what that number is going to be at closing. So I finance that. I also include working capital. And that working capital I generally work it into a loan in a sense that I'm able to include it in your market … not directly your market, so okay of that 100,000 working capital 50 is going to be for additional inventory above and beyond what's being purchased with the business. And the other 50 is going to be marketing campaign or advertising campaign, it could be for hiring support staff. Joe: Okay and then lastly I want to talk about the term of the loans. We're talking five years, 10 years, 30 years, what are we looking at? Stephen: It's a 10 year loan and of all those components, by the way, it ends up being all in one loan. It's not where you have separate loans for each. So it's all incorporated into a 10 year SBA loan. Joe: Okay and 5, 6%interest rate somewhere in that range; five to seven? Stephen: Base prime plus two and three quarters, right now it's 8.25. Joe: Prime plus two and three quarters. Okay so for those that want to run their own numbers 10% down, 10 year note, prime plus two and three quarters, do the math on that. Stephen: Yeah. Joe: The seller note in 2017 and prior to that in most of the transactions that we did or did together you required some sort of seller note. And that changed in 2018 so for … got a business that's a million and a half and somebody wants to put down 15% are you requiring a seller note on a deal of that size or are you not anymore? Stephen: So up to 2017 a seller note was required by the SBA and not by the invidual lender. Joe: Okay. Stephen: So typically it was 10% down payment let's call it from the buyer, 15 from the seller or vice versa in terms of the seller note for a total of 25% down payment rejection. Joe: Okay. Stephen: In '18 the barrier to entry was lower. The overall requirement paying on a deal is the minimum 10%. In terms of what lenders require, some lenders require a seller note. We do not. Sometimes I incorporate a seller note to strengthen the loan especially if the buyer does not have direct online experience. So it gives kind of the underwriter warm fuzzies in the sense that the transition will most likely go smoother. The seller has a little bit of skin on the game. So there are situations where I do incorporate a seller note for approval purposes. Joe: So for buyers, sellers, even other brokers listening to this, this is you know you're hearing Stephen say I incorporate this or I incorporate that to help the underwriter feel better about the loan and make sure it goes through. What I do personally is when I have a deal that's pre-qualified by Stephen or someone like Stephen when I get an offer on the business A) I want to know if Stephen knows who they are and if they're working with him and how they look qualification wise. But B) I really like to send the deal structure to you Stephen and say this is the deal structure is this going to float with your underwriters? And I think that's critical to the ultimate success of the loan and the transaction process. Because the last thing that we want … it's happened once or twice and I don't recall if it was with you or not but … where you've … actually no it was with you where the underwriter looked at something and they had to tweak it just a little bit, had to increase the seller note by 5% or something like that. That's not what we want to do so now I run everything by you prior to having a letter of intent signed. I recommend everybody to do that if they're going to do an SBA loan through Stephen and e-commerce lending. Stephen: Absolutely, so that's a very good point as we continue down the path of e-commerce lending I am constantly tweaking the way I do things. And that's one thing I do is I bet really hard upfront so there aren't changes on the backend. Fortunately some of my buyers don't [inaudible 00:42:26.4] the businesses that they're looking at prior to signing a letter of intent. It's kind of an after they do that they come to me and say hey I just bought this business and here's the deal structure I want you [inaudible 00:42:38.3] well that's not going to work. Joe: Yup they don't do that with Quiet Light they have to [crosstalk 00:42:41.7] so the whole process we require that conference call. Because we … it's not, we don't want people to go under a letter of intent just to tie it up and then make a decision. We want them to make the decision, go under letter of intent, and close and go through that process. It just saves everybody a lot of time and hassle. Stephen: It really does. Joe: Okay, any last thoughts about … you want to share with the buyers or sellers that are listening to the podcast today? Stephen: Yeah in terms of sellers even if you're not selling a business now please reach out to me in general and have us put together a game plan for future sale. It's really, really important and again it will be dividends on the backend. And then for you buyers out there reach out to me. I'm more than happy to pre-qualify you for a business. You can reach me at stephen@ecommercelending.com and the first name is spelled ph or call me at 813-766-4524. Joe: Thanks. I will put that on the show notes as well. The last thing I want to say is just to reiterate what you're talking about there with the sellers and it's called choose your pain. Go through the pain of getting your financials in good shape now and having a great transaction and a sale or don't do it and you're choosing your pain later because it's going to be difficult. You're going to be … you're bank account is going to be in pain because you're not going to get as much value for your business. So make the choice and hopefully you'll choose that first one. It's not fun, it's not exciting but it's the right thing to do. Do some valuation exit planning, reach out to Stephen; reach out to anybody at Quiet Light. Go to inquiries@quietlightbrokerage.com myself, Mark, anybody on the team is happy to help you even if you're not planning to sell your business for another two, three, four years. That's what we're here for. Stephen, you're awesome as always. Thanks so much for your time. I look forward to a great 2019 with you. Stephen: Absolutely, Joe. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it as well. Joe: All right man, talk to you soon.   Links and Resources: ECommerce Lending Email Stephen Call Stephen 1-813-766-4524  

My guests today are Ann Green, EVP, and Stephen DiMarco, Chief Digital Officer at Kantar North America Insights Division. Kantar is a multinational market research firm known for innovation. They actively manage Brand Z, which is an annual Top 100 Most Valuable Global brands ranking; and in 2015, announced a partnership with Snapchat to provide the first analysis of advertising effectiveness on the Snapchat platform. FIND ANN AND STEPHEN ONLINE: Linkedin: Ann/Stephen Kantar FIND US ONLINE: www.happymr.com Social Media: @happymrxp LinkedIn [00:00] On Episode 201 of the Happy Market Research Podcast, I’m talking with the dynamic duo, Ann Green and Stephen DiMarco from Kantar. This is an exciting episode. We unpack customer experience from Kantar’s position, one of the leading insights professional companies in our industry. But first a word from our sponsor. [00:25] Today’s episode is brought to you by GreenBook. The GreenBook directory helps you find marketing research suppliers, facilities, and consultants. Additionally, GreenBook helps modern marketing researchers understand industry trends via the Grid Report and the IIeX Global Conference Series. To find out more, please visit GreenBook online at GreenBook.org. [00:48] Hi, I’m Jamin Brazil, and you’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. My guests today are Ann Green EVP and Stephen DiMarco, Chief Digital Officer at Kantar North America, Insights Division. Kantar is a multi-national market research firm known for innovation. They actively manage BrandZ, which is an annual, top 100 most valuable global brands ranking, and in 2015 announced a partnership with Snapchat to provide the first analysis of advertising effectiveness on the Snapchat platform. Ann and Stephen, thank you very much for joining me today on the Happy Market Research Podcast. [01:23] Ann – Thank you. Stephen – Thank you. Nice to be here. [01:25] Our chat is going to center around one of today’s hottest topics: customer experience. But before we dive in, I’d love to know a little bit about each one of your backgrounds. [01:35] Ann – [laughs] Well, I think it’s fair to say that no child grows up and actually says, “Mom, Dad, I want to go into the field of market research.” It was a bit of a fluke for me. I ended up at a liberal arts school where I studied marketing with a math minor. At the time, I really didn’t have a good sense of what I wanted to do and a saw an ad, an actual newspaper ad, for a position in the field of market research, and it just so happened I thought, “I can do this.” And the rest is history. [02:08] You know it’s funny. Several people that I’ve interviewed wound up in market research through an advertisement in the paper. For those who don’t know, that was the jobs listing for local opportunities. [02:23] Ann – Yes, yes, I have just revealed my age. [laughter] [02:27] Don’t worry. I’m ahead of you. That’s fine. So, Stephen, you managed marketing at Comedy Central FX, and you co-founded a startup during the height of the dot.com bubble. How in the world did you wind up in research? [02:42] Stephen – It’s funny. I don’t see myself in research, but I will tell you how I got into the role I’m in right now. Like Ann, I studied marketing in college and, when I wasn’t studying or doing other things that college kids do, I was actually a DJ for the campus radio station. So I’ve always had a strong interest in marketing and music. I started my career at a record label doing everything you can imagine and decided that, while I like music, the music industry isn’t for me. So I thought long and hard and really committed myself to marketing and helping marketers becoming better marketers. What better place to do that than a company who’s got a treasure trove of consumer data that you can use to make difficult decisions about all of the things that marketers need to, ranging from which consumers to target, how to engage them, how to measure ROI.

Haha, what's up, guys? This is Steve Larsen.   This is Sales Funnel Radio, and before we cue the intro here, I want you to know, this episode for me was really special.   I interview an incredible entrepreneur. Her name is Natalie Hodson. She's fantastic. I love learning and studying from her.   She's gonna talk about some things that went on kinda crazy in her life, and how to leverage the crazy things inside of your life for your audience - particularly around the subject of vulnerability.   So this is how to be vulnerable without looking like you're weak, right? And for a lot of guys, that's super important.   For a lot of selling in general, that's super important - the purpose is not to look like you're weak.   So anyways, let's cue the intro here. I hope you guys enjoy it, and if you have liked this, please reach out to her and say thank you. She puts some really amazing things out.   Thanks, guys, so much, and see you on the episode.   I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million-dollar business.   The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.   Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.   My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's going on, everyone?   Hey, it's Steve Larsen, and I'm really excited to have you here today.   Stephen: I have someone that I've been trying to get on the podcast for a very long time - because I just think the world of her. It's been super amazing to get to know this person. Anyways, I'm excited about it.   The first time that I got to hear this story,  it was heart-wrenching for me to see, not just everything that had happened, but the inspiration that it's causing in other people's lives.   The way it's changing other people's lives is a huge deal.   It was fascinating for me to see that this is real, you know, this is a big deal.   I already knew that, but just to continue to watch it in application... I was like, "Gosh, the thousands and thousands and thousands of lives that it's changed."   It's my incredible honor and privilege to have you on the show. Guys, I wanna welcome Natalie Hodson. How are you doing?   Natalie - Hey, thank you so much, Stephen. That was an amazing intro.   Stephen - I mean it.   Natalie -  I'm so excited to be here too. I've watched your stuff, and I've binge listened to all your podcasts. Your advice has helped me so much, so it's like a win-win. I'm excited - you're excited. It's awesome.   Stephen - Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.  I know a lot of people may not know about you yet, and frankly, it's just a matter of time... I think everyone's gonna know who you are.   Natalie - Aw, thank you.   Stephen - Could you tell us a little bit about your story, and kind of the background, 'cause it's inspiring, and...   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - There's obviously funnels in there, but that's a vehicle for this whole thing. You're changing people's lives, and I'd love you to grace my audience with that... that'd be great.   Natalie - Totally. Well, there's a long version and a short version. I'll try to keep it towards the short version, but I tend to be long-winded.   So at any point, if you're like, "Natalie, take it this direction," you know...   Stephen - We have happy ears.   Natalie - So I'm in the fitness space. But I always say that I accidentally fell into the fitness industry because I was a history major in school. I didn't know:   #1: That there even was a fitness industry   #2: That I ever wanted to be a part of it.   After I had my son, I gained 70 pounds when I was pregnant with him. I was like big, out here. He was a 10-pound baby.   Stephen - 70 pounds?   Natalie - Yeah, I was really big. And after I had him, I remember feeling lost. I remember looking in the mirror and feeling like, "I don't even recognize myself... I just wanted to feel like myself again," and it wasn't even so much about the weight. I just didn't feel like me.   So I started a blog, and honestly, it was like an online journal - just as a way to keep me accountable for my fitness stuff.   I didn't tell a single person that I knew in real life, because I was embarrassed.  I didn't want the people I knew to know what I was struggling.   This was when Pinterest very first got started, about eight years ago.  I just started sharing...   I like to cook, so I started sharing healthy recipes, and I started putting them on Pinterest.   And honestly, if you look at my first pins back then, they were taken with a flip phone, just awful photos, but luckily for me, now people are taking gorgeous pictures for me.   So I started to get a lot of traffic to my website.   Stephen - You were just kinda documenting what you were doing?   Natalie - I was just documenting what I was doing and sharing.   This was right when Facebook groups weren't even a thing, and I started a Facebook group with this training program I was doing. I started sharing my ups and my downs, just because I felt like it was a safe space.   I was really vulnerable and telling, you know, my struggles; like I got called out of the gym daycare again - just like real struggles, you know?   I was struggling with all this stuff. And so, I did that 12-week program, and had awesome results, and got some recognition from bodybuilding.com.   I was getting a lot of traffic to my site. So I was like, man, if I'm getting traffic, I might as well monetize it. So I got certified as a personal trainer and started writing - I wrote a couple of ebooks.  I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't how to write an ebook. I just kind of figured it out as I went.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - And then, I started recognizing, basically, like, long story short, what happened is one day...   I was at an event, and this girl came up to me. And she's like, "I love following your stuff! I could never do what you do, because I have stretched skin after I had my babies, and I could never look like you."   I got really confused in the moment, 'cause I was like, "What are you talking about? I have tons of stretched skin."   And then I started realizing that, I don't share that. I have all these beautiful professional photos where I stand up straight, and I angle myself just right so you can't see it, right?   Stephen - Right, yeah.   Natalie - Posture and perfect looking. I started realizing, like, "Holy crap," in my head, I look down, and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I have stretched skin, whatever," but I wasn't like, showing that to anybody else.   And so, that night, I pulled out my camera, and I filmed this video,  just saying to people, "Look, I recognize that I've never shown you... this is what that looks like."   People talk about that a lot, but this was six years ago, and really, nobody was talking about it.   I remember the first time I posted that video, my hand was shaking. I thought I was gonna lose every follower I had. But I was like, "I know that if I'm struggling with this, other people are too."   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - And I posted it, and I shut my computer down. I wouldn't look at it, 'cause I was like, "everybody's gonna hate this."   When I opened it up an hour later, there were just thousands of comments, and that video went kind of viral.   Then I started realizing that the more I talked about things that felt scary or uncomfortable, it was actually more of like a magnet. People started to feel like, "Whoa, she gets me. Whoa, she's talking about things that I think in my head, but nobody's really talking about."   And then what happened is it started to  heal broken parts of me too - because I started to realize that those fears and insecurities weren't even real. It was just the story that I was telling myself.   So the more I talked about my story, the less power it had over me.   And so, total side note here, fast forward to right now... 'cause this was years ago... but I feel like I worked through all that body image stuff kind of on accident.   Stephen - Sure.   Natalie - I was being vulnerable, and it's crazy, 'cause right now, I'm going through a very similar process. I'm trying to do a lot of self-work. Learning to be perfectly imperfect with the body stuff - I feel like I did that, and I'm okay with it.   Stephen - “Perfectly imperfect” - that's cool.   Natalie - Yeah, and now it's like, "Okay, how can I...?" I've always struggled with this idea of perfection, and now with relationships, I'm trying to recognize that it's okay to not be perfect in relationships. That when you work through the hard stuff, when you talk about the hard stuff, it actually...   So anyways, I'll turn back now. I skipped a big chunk in there, but...   Stephen - No, that's fascinating what you just said... We will come back to that.   Natalie - Okay.   Stephen - Keep going, 'cause there's this whole spot... I'm like, "This is so cool."   Natalie -  I might not have the right words for it, because I'm just starting to figure it out. It's what I was talking to my friend Yara about last night.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - So, anyways, I built this big audience, all organically. I had about 400,000 followers, but I wasn't really monetizing it.   I was selling ebooks and making decent, good money, probably  around six figures as a stay at home mom - so it was good. Like, it was awesome, and I was enjoying it. I was writing.   And then I went through a divorce. And then it got really scary, because I was like, "All right, I don't have child support, I don't have alimony.  I have to figure this out."   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - And it just so happened... like, you know, I swear, a lot of times, things fall in place when they're supposed to, or you meet people when you're supposed to.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - It just so happened that... I don't know actually what happened. I don't know if my name got thrown around in a mastermind or something, but all of a sudden, I got emails or phone calls from eight different people wanting to build a funnel for me in ClickFunnels, and all this stuff.   I was like, "What? what is a funnel? What is this?" And so, I started researching and googling, and I kept seeing this name, Russell Brunson.   It's so embarrassing now 'cause I know what a good, honest, genuine hard-working guy Russell is... but honestly, at first, I was like, "Is this a scam? Why are people promising me the world, and like telling me they can..."   Usually, if somebody tells you something that's too good to be true - it is, right?     ...And they're like, "With that audience, you can make all this money." And I was so skeptical.   But the embarrassing part is, Russell wrestled in college with my cousin, and we live like just right down the street from each other. So we had all these mutual friends.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - I messaged him on Facebook, and basically just... I mean, I didn't say, "Is your company a scam?"... but that's basically... I mean it was rude!   And now that I know who Russell is, I'm like so embarrassed, and I'm so grateful he didn't just say, "See ya, I'm never talking to you again."   So I started finding out about ClickFunnels, and then I read his DotCom Secrets book, and I was like, "What?"   'Cause  I'd built this big audience, but never in my life had I even spent a dime on Facebook ads.   So, I started reading his book, and I was like, "What? These are real secrets. Why is he sharing this?"   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - Look, this is my original notepad.   Stephen - What?   Natalie - That's crazy. I was organizing my office, and it happened to be sitting here.   So what I did, this was cool. I pulled out this notepad, and as I went through the book, I started saying, "How can I apply that to my business?" Like, five variables of successful campaigns:   Step one, who are your competitors? And I started writing down who are my actual competitors? This is cool. Blast from the past.   Stephen - That's so cool. I just found mine the other day.   Natalie - No way!   Stephen - Yeah, it's just right over here - the exact same thing. I was just showing it to somebody else. But, yeah, I found mine. It's like going way back.  "I remember the first time I realized this!" This is a huge deal.   Natalie -  I was mind-blown, and I was like, "What?" And so, I started implementing it, and I was like, "This works!"   I brought somebody on to help me with building the funnel at the beginning. Now we've since split ways...   So we launched the funnel. So, okay,  this story's getting very long, so we'll wrap it up, but...   Stephen - No, it's awesome. Super valuable.   Natalie - Okay, so, basically, at that point, I was like, "Hey, my back's against the wall. I need to figure out, how am I gonna monetize what I have here?"   So what I did was, I looked at my Google Analytics on my website.  I was like, my audience is telling me what they're interested in through my analytics, right? So, I took my five most popular blog posts, and I said, okay, I'm gonna make an offer around each of these.   Stephen - Wow.   Natalie - So the first one was this weird word called Diastasis Recti. Which is basically ab separation.   When you're pregnant, your abs can separate to make room for the baby, and in about two-thirds of women, they don't always come back together the right way. So it can cause you to look pregnant, even if you're eating right or exercising. It can cause you to have like just core weakness.   The other post was this thing called Pelvic Floor Dysfunction, which in layman's terms means like, if you laugh, cough, sneeze, jump on a trampoline, exercise too hard, a lot of times, women, after they have babies, will pee their pants a little bit.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - And so it just so happened that one of my good friends from college had just gotten her Ph.D. in this specific area.   So, I reached out to her, and I was like, "Hey, Monique, I am getting a massive amount of traffic to this blog post. Do you think we could do something together?"   And that's when she told me. She's like, "Oh my gosh, Natalie, the peeing your pants stuff doesn't have to happen! Just 'cause it's common, and happens to so many women it doesn't mean that it's normal or healthy. It can be improved."   And I was really skeptical again at first. I was like, "Yeah, right!" I was like, "Yeah, I've had two 10-pound babies." I got kind of defensive.   Stephen - Your kids were 10 pounds?   Natalie - Yeah, both of 'em. Isn't that crazy?   Stephen - Oh my gosh. Our first two were five and a half.   Natalie - Oh, wow.   Stephen - We have little kids.   Natalie - Yeah, and I had 'em at home too, with midwives, yeah.   Stephen - Oh my gosh.   Natalie - It was crazy. So crazy.   Stephen - Amazing.   Natalie - So, long story short, last year, it was November of last year,  I talked to her. It was that first conversation. And it's funny, 'cause we have the Facebook messages still with the date.   And I said, "Hey, do you think we can write a program helping women?"   Because she put me through a program, and it totally worked.  I knew that if I'm struggling with this, other women must be too.     We started talking about it on Thanksgiving. We began writing it at Christmas. We launched on January 31st.   It was like, a month, a month, a month.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - And we launched it through ClickFunnels, and within four months, we'd sold a million dollars of this $37 ebook.   Stephen - Do the math on that, people.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - How many people? That's crazy.   Natalie - Yeah, it was really crazy. We don't sell the physical version, but this is the physical version, and it's just an ebook. I mean, there's nothing super fancy about it. It's kind of text, parts of it are kind of textbooky.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - I partnered with the doctor to write that. I'm glad I did because she has the credibility, and I have the connection, so it's kind of like a one-two punch.   Stephen - I love that, yeah.   Natalie - I don't think I could have created that program 100% on my own, because when you're talking about the body and anatomy - there are so many things that I wasn't qualified to talk about, but anyways.   So then, it was this whirlwind of like, "Holy crap." Before this, it was just me in front of my computer answering emails.   Then all of a sudden, it's like, "whoa," we have this big company and this big machine, and I need to learn how to hire people and scale and be a CEO of a company instead of just like, a little solopreneur.   Last year was a real whirlwind of a year. I had to learn how to be tough with business. I had to learn the value and the importance of contracts and of not let people take advantage of you.   I had to grow and scale - and create value. I mean, just everything was...   Conceptually, I knew what I needed to do, but applying it was kind of a whirlwind.   I still feel like we're still... we'll always be working on our businesses, but...   So, that was the world's longest answer to "How you got started," but that's how I got involved in the ClickFunnels community.   The one thing I will say is; if anybody is watching this and is skeptical, "I understand," 'cause I felt the exact same way.   But if you just do what Stephen teaches, what Russell teaches it works. It really, really works! It's not scammy.   If you have a good product and a good message to give to the world, follow the system and don't try to change it, and it will work. That's all I did.   I didn't do anything fancy, other than I came up with the idea and the program...  I just did what you guys say to do, and it worked.   Stephen - That's so cool. That's so awesome.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - That's so awesome. Yeah, sometimes people look at it. I had a buddy who looked at it once, and he's like, "That looks like it's scammy," - you know, the same kind of thing. I'm like, "Ah, no, we actually end up delivering more value than if you don't do it this way."   Natalie - Yes, 100% agreed.   Stephen - Fascinating.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - You gave a speech at Funnel Hacking Live which was incredible.  I was so excited. I think we were sitting in the front row, or something like that, I was pumped.   I was like, "Yeah, Natalie's next!" You gave a speech about vulnerability. And you talked about some of the ways you build in vulnerability - and this isn't a weakness.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - Right, but how do you find the strength to be vulnerable?   I guess, first of all, can you tell us what it means to be vulnerable?   You're such an... I don't know if you wanna call it vulnerability secrets, vulnerability expert, or hacks? Whatever, like, but you're really good at doing this in a way that doesn't come across, you know...   It seems like most people are like, "I'm not gonna be vulnerable 'cause it means I'm weak."   Natalie - No, it's not.  I get that, 'cause I felt that way for a long, long time.   So first off, I think a lot of times, especially if you're talking to guys, they will hear the word vulnerable, and they'll be like, "I'm a man. I am not vulnerable," right? And I get that.   So, another way of saying "be vulnerable" is just "be real," right?   Look at Russell. He shares the ups and the downs, and because he shares the downs, you wanna champion and root for him on the ups.   If somebody only shares the good times, then you don't connect as much.   It's almost like we naturally, as humans, have a tendency to...   If you think somebody is only always doing good, it's harder to wanna cheer for them and root for them, you know?   Stephen - "Yeah, the cards are always in that guy's favor... are you kidding?"   Natalie - Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, when it comes to being vulnerable, it's not about crying all the time, and it's not even about being vulnerable all the time.   If you look at my content, 80 to 90% of it is just really good quality content, and then occasionally, I'll add some real honest truth or raw moments into what I share. And what it does is it brings, this isn't my phrase... it from an author named Brene Brown, her books changed my life.   *Natalie looks for books* I don't have them here, but "Daring Greatly" and "Rising Strong" literally, personally and professionally, changed my life.   Brenee is a shame and vulnerability researcher. She teaches that vulnerability is the ultimate human connector because vulnerability and shame cannot survive together.   And so the more vulnerable you are, the less shame can survive, and the less power that story has over you.   And so, you know, we all have moments that we feel embarrassed to talk about, or we think that people will judge us, or we feel ashamed, and what's crazy.   I've found that the more you talk about the hard stuff:   #1: The less shame you feel talking about it, and you start to feel more comfortable with it   #2: People start to open up to you and say, "oh my gosh, me too. I didn't think anybody experienced that."   And so what happens is it creates a different level of trust with your audience.   However, there's a fine line between being vulnerable to get sales and actually being vulnerable, right? That's kind of hard to teach. And so, you know, I didn't start this off saying, "I'm gonna be vulnerable so I can build a big audience and make all this money."   I genuinely have a heart to help people, and selfishly, it helped me along the way, too, because it made me feel less insecure about these things.   People always say, "Okay I get it in theory, it makes sense to be vulnerable, but how do you actually do that without coming across as that crazy person on Facebook that puts all their drama there?"   Stephen - Always crying, the person like, "Oh, crap, unfollow."   Natalie - Yeah, and you're just like, Where's the popcorn. Let's watch their drama unfold." And so I kind of have this four-step system that I didn't mean to create. It's just how I naturally write, but it works really well.   The first thing that I do is #1, remember that you don't always have to share your vulnerable moments in the moment.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - So, if you haven't worked through something and you're still feeling very fragile about it - it's okay to wait to share. Because, I've made that mistake before.   If you get criticism back and you haven't really worked through it yet, that criticism can be shattering to your confidence.   And so, one of the tricks that I have...   For a long time, I struggled, 'cause when you're going through the vulnerable stage when you're really sad or excited or happy or embarrassed or feeling ashamed when you're in the moment, the feelings feel very real...   But sometimes it's hard to sit in front of your computer later and remember the real emotion that you felt during that moment.   So one of the things that I do now, a trick that I have, is I'll pull out my phone and pull up the notes section when I'm in that moment feeling, you know, small or hurt or scared or whatever the feeling is, right? It can be good or bad.   And I'll just shorthand write out the raw feelings. Not like full paragraphs, but, now I have this big catalog of feelings, so if I want to tell a story that relates to this, that relates to body image, or that relates to whatever,  I have all these raw emotions to draw on.   I'm not faking vulnerability. It's my real stuff.  It's my real moments that I can draw from and turn into actual stories.   Another tip: A little family joke is that I'm really bad at analogies, and my family calls them "Natalogies" because a lot of times, like, you know...   The whole crux of expert secrets, is you have to be able to do epiphany bridges and analogies. And my analogies do not make sense half of the time.   I'll say them, and people are like, "that didn't make sense?" I'm just not good at them.   I hope someday, I can learn to be better at analogies. So what I try to do instead is just pull on these stories that I have - and kind of weave it together instead - 'cause my "it's kind of likes" never actually make sense.   So that's like my trick, you know how Russell talks about in the soap opera sequences, to start with the drama - to start with the most dramatic point, and then you tell the back story...   In my posts, a lot of times, I do that.   I start with like the hurt, the pain. Whatever you're feeling, the run moment, start with that, 'cause then people will automatically be like, "Whoa. She's talking about something nobody talks about."   And then what I do is I, and this is just my style. Everybody will find their own style.   But my step number two is to show myself some grace. Remind myself "perfectly imperfect, it's okay," or,  just show yourself some grace, and in some words, type that out.   Then the third step is to try to remind myself of a time when this has happened before and I worked through it -  or when somebody else has gone through something like this and worked through it.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - And then the fourth step is; I always finish up on a positive note.   So like, either how I worked through it - if this is a past experience, or if I don't know how to work through it, I share what my plan is to try to work through it, even if you fail trying, right?   So what it does is it puts people, like, when you're, when you start with the raw stuff, it makes people feel like, “whoa, like, that could be me, because I've felt that exact same way.”   And then you're giving yourself grace, and you're teaching other people how to show, how to give themselves grace if they're in the same shoes, and then when you talk about how you work through it.   It's like, somebody else could look at you, look at your situation and say, “Whoa, I'm in that situation too, and if she can work through it, I probably can, too.”   And so, I think that's why a lot of my content has gone really viral, is because I make it relatable by sharing, it's not fake. I mean, they're the real moments, and then I come up with like a positive, and it's not.   Stephen - End with hope at the end.   Natalie - It ends with hope, yeah, but it's not like, talking down to somebody.   It's not like, you have to do x, y, and z, or I'm so perfect on my high horse here.   It's more like, we're in this together. We're all in the arena, and we've all fallen down. Let's dust off our knees, and this is how I'm gonna try to stand up. I might get knocked back again, but like, this is what I'm trying.   I don't know if that makes sense at all, but I think that's why... there's an underlying subtleness of talking down to somebody or being on the same playing field and championing everybody to come up together.   I don't know if I have the language to always describe how I do it, but that's kind of the feeling behind it.   I have written and deleted and written and deleted, 'cause I'm like,“This feels like I know everything,” or you know, I'm like talking down, and I never want that to come across that way.   Stephen - Right. Absolutely, and you know, you know what it reminded me of is so like, you know, we always tell people, like, start publishing before you have a big following.   Natalie - Mmhmm.   Stephen - So that you can bring them with you and you become the expert in front of them.   Natalie - Exactly.   Stephen - Rather than become an expert and then start publishing, 'cause it's so less believable.   You've done the same thing with the vulnerability, which is fascinating. Like, yes, start it. Don't be afraid to talk about the low moments, not that it always needs to be low, and it probably shouldn't always be, but you know...   Natalie - Totally.   Stephen - But being open about what's actually going on and doing it in front of 'em rises everyone together. That's fascinating.   Natalie - Well, and what's crazy is that it never gets... well, it's always a process, right?   So, what's weird is that eight years ago, for me to talk about the body image stuff, it was so hard for me, 'cause that's where I was. I was in that phase of my life where I was really struggling with that, right?   And so, I did the work, and I went through the process unintentionally.   I didn't know I was doing the work at the time. I was just being vulnerable. I was sharing.   So what's cool is that, fast forward to now, I don't really have all of those body image insecurities that I had then, and I think it's honestly because I was willing to talk about it in the moment.   Now, fast forward to today, and the issues that I'm struggling with are different.   I'm a different person than I was eight years ago, right?   So when I built my audience with talking about the body image stuff, now, it's like, "okay, I don't feel like I have to talk about that as much, 'cause I've not grown past it," - that's not the right word, but  it's not my main focus anymore. And now it's...   Like, okay, you know, I went through a divorce, and I haven't really talked about that very much publicly.   But now it's like, "Okay, now I'm sitting in this moment where  I'm at a crossroads." Am I gonna do what has worked for me in the past and be vulnerable and open up and share these things that feel uncomfortable to me again, right?   It's not the body image stuff anymore. Now it's personal development and relationships and the struggles that I've had with my business.   Like, it's always changing.   So vulnerability is never like, you just learn how to be vulnerable and you've got it. Like, it's always easy.   It is easier for me to be vulnerable on the body image stuff, but now it's shifted to "how can I grow?"   And the only hope I have is that I know that it worked with the body stuff. So  I'm hoping that five years down the road, I can look back and say, "Okay, I was scared to be vulnerable.  I was scared to talk about these things, but it got me into this confident, comfortable zone because I shared."   Stephen - No, totally, totally. Like, I went through a lot of the exact same, you know, it's funny because I feel like it's the emotion that binds people.   While I haven't gone through a divorce, there are other times where I felt really vulnerable as well. And so whilst that person may not have gone through a divorce, if we didn't have the same experiences, we did have the same emotions, and being able to expose the emotion, I feel like, is what binds people. I think it's interesting what you said.   Anyway, quirks, the little quirks that you have or the little vulnerabilities you have, that's your superpower. That's the reason people follow you. They don't follow you because of pure perfection 24/7. That actually annoys people after a while. But you actually get personal healing along the way. Like that's so, that's so amazing.   Could you tell us a little bit... I mean, this is Sales Funnel Radio, and you're talking about your sales funnel. Like, what does this have to do with sales funnels? Why does it matter? 'Cause it totally does, but just for everyone else, you know.   Natalie - Well, it 100% matters because the thing that I've learned is although I'm not the best trainer in the world. Like, I will be the first to admit that. Yes, I'm a personal trainer, but like, people don't buy my programs because....   I mean there are probably people that can talk science better than I can. I stumble over my words. I have mild dyslexia, and I mix up scientific terms all the time. But the reason people follow me and the reason people buy my programs, the reason we were able to sell so many of this book, is because of the connection.   I owned a company called Dollar Workout Club a couple of years ago, and we would film our workouts, and we never cut the cameras. And we would always be joking and be like, "guys, if you're at home you can relate to the doorbell ringing or whatever, right?" And it was very relatable.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - Well, in one of the workouts, I happened to be wearing gray shorts, and Drew, the only guy, the other trainer, wrote the workout, and it was all jumping exercises, right?   So, we're doing the jumping, and I'm like, "Oh, crap." I could tell I was like, peeing my pants a little bit, right?   It was so embarrassing.  I'm wearing gray shorts and you can see this little tiny spot, then by the end, my whole butt was just... it was so gross. It's just covered in pee. At the end, I'm trying to stretch and turn sideways so you can't see.   Anyways, I could have never shared that, and I didn't for a while. I was really embarrassed about it. But we have that footage. So then when I went to go create this program, I could take screenshots from that video. I could take the actual video and put it in my funnel.   So what happened is people were like, "Whoa, this woman actually peed her pants." Like, this is embarrassing. I mean, truth be told, this program almost didn't come out, 'cause I had to have a heart-to-heart with myself really, and say, "okay, Natalie, are you willing to tell the whole world that you used to pee your pants," you know?   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - But what happens is then you can put those real stories in your funnel. You can put the photos. And it's kind of like instead of social proof this is your real story and your real-life proof.   "Whoa, this woman understands me and this woman gets me." Because the truth is that real change, like, I can give you the best meal plan and the best workout program in the whole world, but it's not gonna have a lasting, long-term effect until you make that internal change and have that belief in yourself.   I feel like that is my gift, is helping people see their value and their power. And so, you know...   Stephen - People kind of have an identity shift with the vulnerability that you have, almost. That's fascinating.   Natalie - 100%. And so that's the psychology behind it.  I think that when you are willing to be real vulnerable, not fake vulnerable... If you're willing to be real vulnerable, people can relate to that. And once people relate to it, they begin to trust you, and then once they trust you, they'll buy from you.   My biggest fear is that when people listen to me talk about this, they're gonna be like, "Oh, I see dollar signs. I'm just gonna like, figure out how I can be vulnerable." But the truth is, people are smart. Your customers are smart, and they will smell out fake vulnerability.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - And so.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - The biggest thing... If you're sitting there and you're thinking, "There's no way I could ever talk about this," then you're on the right path. That's how you know it's real vulnerability.   If you seriously feel nervous to share it and talk about it, and you think: “Everybody will think I'm a fraud. Everybody will think I'm a bad parent." Everybody will think I'm a bad husband or wife. Nobody's gonna find me attractive."   All of these things, these stories that we tell ourselves that you feel if you start talking about, people are gonna think you're terrible... Guess what? That's the real good stuff that you need to be talking about and sharing if you wanna create real connection and live a wholehearted life.   Stephen - Totally believe that yeah. 'Cause I struggled. Anyway, when you got up, and you were speaking about that on stage, I was like, "Man, I know, I feel ya, holy crap."   I had like, zero confidence. So rather than choose not to be active and do this game, I just called out my fear publicly, and that became a theme for a little bit.   It was like, "Look, guys, I don't really wanna be doing this, although I got something cool to show you, all right?"   And for a while, that was the theme of it. And then as I grew up and healed, (I like how you said that) I passed certain things in front of the audience.   Then it was like, "Whoa, I've gotta wait for this new episode," or "what's he doing now?" And it was crazy, crazy. That was worth more than me putting hundreds of episodes out of just the best content ever.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - It was crazy, crazy what that did.   So, what would you say is, like...   So you tell people, go ahead and start recording down things that are going on in the moment. Don't feel the pressure to go ahead and say it in the moment, which I totally agree with. I don't know if I can handle that.   Natalie - Well, and it can be whatever platform you like the most, right? Mine happened to be Facebook, but some people are better at YouTube, or some people are better at podcasting or Instagram.   There's not one that's better or worse. Just find what feels the easiest for you and start there.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - I will say too...   So, one of the downsides of being vulnerable is, and I don't let this scare you from being vulnerable, but it does happen. It still happens to me.   So when you're open and transparent about your life, for some reason, and I get it. We're that way with celebrities, right?   You're like, "I wanna know why they broke up." And both sides of the story; people feel like they know every aspect of your life. And I do share a lot, but I don't share everything.   And so what can happen is that you get harsh people on the internet. And we all get that anyways. Even just last night.   I get mean from people messages every day pretty much.   Luckily, I have my team now to kind of shield me from it, just 'cause it's like silly.   Stephen - I have to do the same, yeah.   Natalie - Yeah, just 'cause it's hard for me to continue to be vulnerable if I'm always reading the negative messages.   Stephen - Yeah, I'm the same.   Natalie - But one woman was like, "You are so different from how you used to be. You used to share your progress photos, and now you just talk about your life."   The truth is, we all change and grow as people, right? And so for me, posting an ab selfie now, I don't get validation or fulfillment. I don't need that like I did six years ago. So, yeah, if you look at my feed, I don't post as much like, like, body image stuff, because I'm kind of like in a different space.   And so what will happen is that as you're transparently sharing what you're focused on in your life, sometimes, you will get people that you don't attract anymore.   Like, they're still in a different area, and they want to follow people that are in that area, and that's okay.   What I've had to learn is that the number-one thing when you get mean people on the internet, and it took me a long time to figure this out, is that it's so much more about them and what they're personally struggling with than it is about you, you know?   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - Okay, so, for example, my peach tree. So we had a big wind storm. I'm sure you saw it 'cause we live in the same town.   So, this tree that I've nurtured for two years, finally had some fruit coming off of it, well the storm completely broke the tree, and I was really sad. I posted about it on my Insta Story, and she wrote back, and she was calling me all these mean names, and she's like, "To think that your biggest worry right now is that your peach tree died. My mom just died, and my brother is sick."     And I realize she's hurting because of that, and she's lashing out at me, right?   So it's a reflection of her. It's not a reflection of me. And so that was the hardest thing I had to learn, being open and vulnerable in the online space, is that you will get critics.   I always say it's like the people in the peanut gallery out there who aren't, like...   I'll listen to criticism from people who are in the arena with me, right, people who are battling and fighting and trying and working hard, but if it's just a critic out in the peanut gallery that isn't there fighting along with me, then their opinion doesn't matter.   It's probably more about them than me.   Stephen - You're better than I am, then. There are times I just, I don't know.   Natalie - Well, I did block her.   Stephen - I like to fight with 'em sometimes. And I shouldn't, and I'm growing past that, and there's me being vulnerable. I like to stir the pot sometimes when it's already brewing.   Natalie - You should talk about that, Stephen. So you should talk about it-  not just like the fun, "I said this, and he said that" but the real issues, "why did that trigger you?" And what's the story behind that insecurity?   Those are the things that people love. Not just the story, but going deeper into the feeling or the "why" behind it - you know?   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - I don't know.   Stephen - I told you, yeah, some of it's going on right now still with some other people. Like, it comes in waves. I don't know if that happens for you too.   Natalie - Yes.   Stephen - It's like the criticism goes down, whoa, and then it goes away, and you're like, everything rocks, and then you try something big again, and everyone's like, "whoa!" Not everyone, but there's like, anyway, the talking heads, as I call them, come on out. It's the armchair quarterbacks.   Natalie - Uh-huh, 100%.   Stephen - Yeah, I told you, and I've been planning on doing that. Funny you say that. I just haven't quite formulated how to do it yet, so.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - It's top of mind.   I wanna thank you for being on here with everyone, and guys, Sales Funnel Radio, we're talking about vulnerability.   This is everything, especially if you are the attractive character in your own business - which I hope that you are, and you choose to be.   This is not a tiny subject. It's something that you will not have the choice to go around. You will address it whether it's through haters or your own personal growth. You're gonna get it.   So, please, please go follow Natalie. Natalie, where should people go to follow you?   Natalie - My website is nataliehodson.com, or Facebook is Natalie Hodson Official. Instagram is nataliehodson1   Stephen - Cool.   Natalie - If anybody has any questions, you know, you can leave 'em, and I'll keep checking 'em. I'll answer them and stuff.   The books that I talked about are Brene Brown's Daring Greatly and Rising Strong.  I think they're books every single human being on this planet should listen to.   I call the books magic, 'cause I've listened to them probably six times now, and every time, I need to hear a different piece. I gain something different from them every time, you know? They're good books.   Stephen - I wrote it down. I'm excited. I'm gonna go get them right after this.   Natalie - Cool.   Stephen - That's awesome. Everyone, guys, thank you so much.   Please reach out to Natalie and say thank you and go follow her, and watch her practice what she preaches on this stuff. It's fantastic and amazing - and that lets her audience open up as well.   So Natalie, thank you so much for being on, and it's been a pleasure.   Natalie - Yeah, you're so welcome.   Stephen - Woohoo, hey, thanks for listening.   Hey, many don't know that I actually made my first money online as an affiliate marketer.   If you wanna know how I funded my entire company without using any of my own money ever, you can learn to do the same for free at affiliateoutrage.com.

Termites Destroying Your Board? Problem:  Non-Profit Boards are filled with well-meaning volunteer leaders, whose various reasons for joining are unfortunately, more competing and less collaborative than everyone may realize. Far too many Boards fail to invest in the simple, yet proven and powerful strategies that the most successful and thriving Non-Profit Boards live by every day. Therefore, meetings are dysfunctional, true consensus decisions are almost impossible to achieve, volunteerism and Board involvement declines and staying focused on the most important mission and results of the Non-Profit becomes exceedingly difficult and exhausting. Good News:  It doesn't have to be this way. There are simple, proven powerful strategies, when used effectively and consistently, which eradicate much of the dysfunction, build trust amongst the Board Leaders and enable Leaders to make better decisions, save time and achieve better results, with less stress and drama. Question 1: Steven, as a change management consultant, and after 20 years of serving on Boards and helping Non-Profit Boards become more effective, what do you see as the overarching challenge when Board Leaders are struggling? Fail to Live in Community with Authenticity, Transparency, Humility and Collaboration Definition of Success for the Organization is Not Crystal Clear The Board Leaders Do Not Adequately Understand the “Why” Behind Each Board Leader's Reason for Joining and Staying Involved Question 2: With the long list of challenges that any Board Leadership can struggle with, are there patterns or distinctions that stand out for you? Most are People Issues—Communication and Interpersonal Relations, especially when the Board Chair or President lacks adequate leadership skills to address these people issues Culturally, not just in the US, we suffer far too much Political Correctness and our cultural norm of avoiding conflict and difficult conversations makes it all the harder for people to wiggle their spinal cords and practice Managerial Courage Organizationally, meetings are run poorly, authority and decision making is not clear, and standards in a variety of ways are simply lacking or non-existent Question 3: What are some examples of a successful use of Standards in Board Leadership? Definition of Success for Organization and Board Leadership Behavior Standards are Clear and Consequences for Failing to Adhere to Them are Real and Crystal Clear—No Triangulation, Carry Your Weight, Humility, Managerial Courage, Failing Forward, Mission First When Dealing with Me—Strengths; Behavioral Styles Question 4: Thinking of the Cultural Challenges you mentioned earlier, what are some proven strategies that you have seen work within Board Leadership and what improvements are made because of them? Mad, Glad, Sad/Stop, Start, Continue If You Could Change Any One Thing Immediately About __________________, With No Limit on Resources, What Would You Change? Understanding Behavioral Styles  (DiSC, Platinum Rule, True Colors, Myers-Briggs, etc.) Everyone understands what each other's greatest needs are and what drives their thinking and thus their behaviors Difficult Conversations are far more easily surfaced because everyone understands the importance of honoring others' behavioral style Question 5: What are some of your best strategies for Board Leaders running better meetings and making better decisions? Understanding Strengths  (Gallup and Strengthsscope) Meetings—Discovery, Distribution and Decisions; AHA Sheet; 2 Commitments Saying No—Standing up and “Saying No” to things that we don't need to be doing right now, is oftentimes even more powerful than “Saying Yes” to doing the right things Urgency—What happens if we do nothing and keep the status quo?  What are the benefits or quick wins when we address this issue and no longer settle for status quo? Finding, Harvesting and Celebrating Quick Wins Along with Establishing and Fully Understanding the URGENCY of the Need for Change is the Most Powerful First Step that Board Leadership Must Identify, Communicate and Keep Communicating THE CHALLENGE? Everyone is volunteering/investing their time, energy and contributions for the Mission of the organization. Building trust, getting everyone on the same page with crystal clear understanding, and living and leading based upon behavior standards, behavioral styles and strengths, takes work and serious commitment to the long-term success of Board Leadership. Sadly, far too often, Board Leaders quit mid-stream, after only implementing a few of these proven building blocks. Tragically, the cancer of “see I told you nothing would change” rears its ugly head far too often, resulting in Board Leader turnover, disengagement and festering dysfunction. However, when Board Leaders embrace these strategies with humility and a spirit of servant leadership, and implement and practice them consistently, the changes, improvements and results are often transformational for the organization and everyone involved. Keep Our Why's, Definition of Success, Behavior Standards and the URGENCY of Change at the forefront of everything we do! For our people, honor behavioral styles and strengths, remember “When Dealing with Me”  And in daily practice, maintain, Asking Better Questions (Stop, Start, Continue); Running Better Meetings; Allowing “Failing Forward”; and, Committing to Make Better Consensus Decisions and Owning Our Decisions   Steven Rowell is a Change Management Consultant, serial entrepreneur and executive coach who is obsessed with leadership effectiveness that drives business growth and profitability, leads organizational change and creates a company culture of legendary service. Steven's unique combination of leadership experiences with The Walt Disney World Co., Compass Group and building his own companies translates to powerful and practical consulting, training and speaking services for his clients just like you. Steven's HCAHPS Patient Satisfaction program is now in use by more than 1100 hospitals nationwide. For the past 25 years Steven has worked with contract management, hospitality and service management companies in facilities management, healthcare, home services, theme parks, casinos and resorts. Key areas of expertise include leadership effectiveness, building effective teams, accountability, managerial courage, leading change, conflict resolution, strategic planning, personal effectiveness, and delivering legendary service. Steven has delivered more than 1100 keynote speeches since 1995, andhas facilitated more than 130 multi-day conferences for his Clients. Steven is the author of The Five Minute Secret (2017); Jumpstart Your Creativity (Sept 2013); Success from the Inside Out (2010-295,000 copies sold); Connections™ Orientation in Action for Real Results and Retention(Abundance Publishing, Fall 2007); and Clean Is Not Enough! : Revolutionizing Environmental Services (October 2004). The Transcript Nonprofit Chat with Stephen Rowell Hugh Ballou: Greetings, everyone. We are doing a live recording as we do on Tuesday nights for the Nonprofit Chat. We have an energy-filled evening for you. We are going to talk until we're done, which is usually an hour or less. But the man on this call tonight is Stephen Rowell. Russell Dennis is back with me as co-host, and we will interview Stephen. He and I have been acquainted through a mutual friend, and we have a lot of synergies in what we believe in and what we do and our experience. Stephen, tell us about this experience with Mickey Mouse and that part of your history, and take it forward and tell us what you do today. Stephen Rowell: Sure, thank you so much for having me. First thing, I thought about the title for today's talk to be “Mickey Mouse and the Boardroom” or “What would be different if Disney ran your board?” sort of like the book What if Disney Ran Your Hospital. Basically, I spent almost eight years at Walt Disney World in Orlando. I spent five years working in sales, at Disney University, the training division, human resources, and really fell in love with organizational development. I ended my career in the organizational development group, which ran Disney University and Disney Institute. I come from an operations background; I am a serial entrepreneur. But what is really exciting about tonight is- My father was an assistant dean of a very nice university in Texas, and my mother was a schoolteacher, believe it or not. They were so civically minded my whole life. I grew up as the norm with the notion that Mom and Dad were always gone in the evenings at board meetings and volunteering and whatnot. I think that is where it all started for me. When I left Disney, I had a few more entrepreneurial successes and worked in corporate life. Over the last 20 years, my wife and I have been drawn to organizations in South Africa, three of them specifically. They all do different things. One is sustainable support for an entire village. The others are helping orphans in South Africa. I really come tonight with not only a spirit for nonprofits, but also as a change management consultant, what I am also doing is not only serving on boards myself and participating in what we would call trainwreck meetings and seeing some of the most dysfunctional groups, but I have also been privileged, both in terms of small nonprofits and huge big-name organizations, to see what works, and that is what I am excited to share. It's not about me, but what I have seen that really works around the country. Hugh: Russell and I are what we call in the SynerVision Leadership Foundation, which is a 501(c)3, WayFinders. We are coming full circle from the consultant answer-man to the WayFinder, who is a partner who asks questions to empower and enable people. Part of our methodology is running power-packed meetings. As a conductor, you never saw a conductor use an agenda for a rehearsal. We do away with words like “agenda” and focus on deliverables. You and I are going to have some lively conversation. We have moved away from the consultant model. I went through a phase where I decided a consultant would be an insultant, and then I moved to resultant. But really, in my persona, it's about the integration of strategy and performance. You spent some really good years with Disney. Was that in California or Florida? Stephen: It was in Florida, and then I ended up in the Northeast. Hugh: Uh huh. And you're in Pennsylvania now? Stephen: Yes. I was going to come here for three years, do grad school, and leave. Now I have been married 15 years. I have a 13-year-old boy and a Goldendoodle and a Corgi, and the rest is history, as they say. Hugh: Life goes zoom. Anything else you want to say about yourself before we get into some of the hard content? I have interrupted you there. Stephen: No. I am just excited to be here and answer questions and serve in any way I can. Hugh: I took your title verbatim: “Termites Destroying Your Board? How to Exterminate Board Dysfunction Once and for All.” We are talking about getting more done in less time. You are singing my song so to speak. Bigger impact and lasting results. You said you have participated in nonprofit boards for quite a while. Part of the expertise Russ and I have is working with boards and helping them build a culture of high performance. What is your experience? Do you work externally with boards, or have you just sat on boards as a boardperson? Stephen: I have sat on boards, and then as a consultant, I helped a couple of the nonprofits in South Africa, which are both 501(c)3s and American-based as well as South African-based. I helped them from the ground up get crystal clear about their mission, what they were going to focus on, and what they were not going to focus on. That brings up one of the key points for me, which is so often I see people struggle with saying no, and they wonder why their board is sitting there with 17 items on their strategic plan. I was trying to help those two organizations benefit from the beginning. I am excited to share that one of those organizations is now 14 years old and has 25 homes for orphans in South Africa, which is exciting. Hugh: That is very exciting. You said in passing the term “change management consultant.” What does that mean? Stephen: For us, change management consulting is coming alongside senior leaders, organizations, nonprofits, CEOS, C-suite groups, and helping them in a few different ways. One is: What are the best practices to get adoption and people to embrace the change, not be afraid of it, push through their fear, but really how to implement change that is not so painful through the first year of the introduction, and what also sticks and lasts and what really makes it work. We focus on three different parts. There is the larger organization, there is the group component, and there is the individual and the leadership piece. What I would say is where we spend most of our time with nonprofit boards is acknowledging the cultural norms and realities of what they are dealing with. I am talking about what the cultural norm is as it relates to leaders and what they are bringing into their room—call it bias or cultural norm—and then there is organizationally what the organization wants to do, and then there is the people stuff. We really work on the triangle of the organization, the group, and the leader. We try as best we can to get people to start from a place of humility, which is we don't know what we don't know. We really try to start from a very humble place. Hugh: The triangle is the organization, the people, and I forgot the other one. Stephen: The culture. Hugh: The culture. Stephen: I will give you an example. What South African colleges and universities consider a graduate degree skilled proficient educator or teacher would barely be equal to an undergraduate American professional in education. Hugh: Oh my goodness. Stephen: There is a great example going globally. South Africans will talk about the challenges they have and why their teachers are struggling. When you bring Americans or Europeans over to help, they are aghast and saying, “Wait. You're talking about basic issues like Teacher 101.” What we have learned on the global stage, and why we really struggle with the humility piece, is what we have experienced on the African continent—and we are about 15 years through this journey—and not to offend anybody, is this notion of white, American, faith-based organizations landing in Africa and saying, “We have the solution.” Friends of ours have spent the past 11 years starting their own nonprofit organizations in Africa. They have discovered the notion of let's show up as first-world human beings and ask, “What do you need?” instead of saying, “We have all the solutions.” The organizations in sub-Saharan Africa that are European- or American-based that have done that have found far greater success and far less challenge upfront. Hugh: That is so spot-on with our SynerVision philosophy. What do you think, Russ? Russell Dennis: I think that's marvelous and that is my philosophy when I go into work. I ask a lot of questions. Something I picked up as an IRS agent is that it's like Colombo. You ask questions like a second grader until it gets clear. The more you can get people to talk about themselves, they often give themselves their own answer because they talk it through. My whole gig is to pull the genius out of people that is already there. Stephen: Russ, you had a great conversation with my consulting partner Dennis who has dedicated his life to being the drama-free guy. He really focuses a lot of his time on how to ask better questions. Hugh: That is the secret of the coaching of what we do as WayFinders. You mentioned books. Stephen is prolific and has written a lot of books. He has written The Five-Minute Secret: How to Connect with Anyone Anywhere at Any Time. You have Success from the Inside Out. Clean is Not Enough. You're a good title guy. You have co-authored a book called Jumpstart Your Creativity. Some people are boring with titles, but you got it down. You know how to do an interesting title. I am excited about the synergy. By the way, I named our company SynerVision, which is the synergy of the common vision. There is so much resonance of what you are talking about in what we stand for. Let's talk about boards. As this change management consultant—I think I heard you say you have had experience with nonprofits for 20 years—I know you helped them be effective at what they are trying to do. What do you see as the overarching challenge when board members and nonprofit leaders are struggling? Stephen: To start off with the big umbrella, it's just the synthesis of my life journey, this doesn't mean anything I am about to say is right or wrong, but from a change management perspective and having had two teachers as parents, with a father as a Socratic teacher who asked me questions constantly, from that lens, what I would say is it starts with this: Boards that struggle, no matter how big or small or complex or simple that is, tend to fail in what I call the overarching idea of living community. What I mean by that is within that notion of living in a mission-based, volunteer world to make a bigger impact, the notion of authentic genuine, open communication, having the trust and the managerial courage to deal with tough issues, failing forward, a lot of that safety and trust is absent in the boards that struggle with community. I know you all know this, as you are experts far better than me in how to help boards with the vast experience you have all had, but I think you would agree. You have one meeting with a board, and halfway through or a third of the way through the meeting, you have a sense of what the culture is as it relates to community. One of the most powerful examples, and I am sharing this simply hoping that someone will think about themselves. As you are listening to this, think about who you are and how you show up. But I will share this. There is an organization I have worked with that is 20 years old and just recently a big, big name has joined the organization. Because of the absence of the tools that I am going to talk about tonight, or the effective managerial courage and leadership to drive it, guess what has happened in the last year and a half? The organization has made massive strategic shifts, not because the group wanted to with consensus, but because the billion-dollar family wanted to do it. They have now expanded. As an example, using operational financials, 50% of their entire annual fund is now deployed in new strategies. Why? Because it happens to be near where the homes and the properties are that are owned by the billion-dollar family. All of a sudden, you have this massive dysfunction of one family comes in, and because they are billionaires and so powerful, the cultural norms of avoiding difficult conflicts and conversations. So what has happened is as big-hearted and well-meaning as this family is, it has become dysfunctional, and now you are seeing donations go down. They just did an Indiegogo campaign that was not as successful as the past ones. You have seen volunteerism go down, as rated by the number of days people are volunteering with the organization on a routine basis go down. And they have lost three people who were members of the board, drumroll, who were involved with the board for ten years and have exited in the last four months. One of my passions is helping the original founder of the nonprofit and the chairman/president be skilled enough so that when the train is coming down the track, they can at least have better skills than most. When they see that train coming, they can assess and determine if that train is going to run us over or pick us up and take us somewhere really special. I think that's the secret. Hugh: I'll let Russ weigh in here a minute, but in my 31 years of experience, I see very few boards, if any, function up to the expectations of the leader or even to their own expectations. You take really good people who are successful in their lives and put them on a nonprofit board, and you duct tape their mouth and tie their hands, so to speak. The system itself does not promote all the good stuff that you just articulated. The culture is so key. I'd like you to comment on a couple of the methodologies we use at SynerVision. We have people weigh in on the board covenant. What is it they promise to each other? It's interesting what people come up with. It's their commitment to each other as peer-to-peer accountability. Too often, the leader feels they have to hold everybody accountable, whether it's the board chair or the executive director. They think it all revolves around them making things happen. But really, if the culture creates the standards, they are going to enforce them. The other piece we go into is what we call guiding principles. I don't know this, but experiencing Disney from the outside, it's really clear that their principles for employees is very clear, how they make decisions. We are the guest. They are always going to help us. Ask somebody sweeping the streets a question, and they can take you there and answer that question. Southwest Airlines is the hospitality company. Companies like that have a very clear set of guiding principles so they know how they are supposed to function. I don't find either, the covenant or the operating guide of how we are going to function as a team or how we are going to make decisions as a team with your guiding principles. Stephen: Bingo. That last one, how we are going to make decisions and the authority and all that, is gigantic. That is where the failure comes because of the absence of all of this. What I would share with you very quickly is this. The Disney version of that is safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency. It's in that order. Van Nam was a consultant that worked with Walt Disney in the 1950's to figure all of this out before Disneyland opened in 1955 in California. The concept was that safety is first because without safety, you don't have anything if it's going to be a theme park. Safety, courtesy, show, we're all a part of the magic. And the last one is efficiency. You have to get 1,800 guests an hour through the attraction of the Haunted Mansion. Let's say we had 19 guests in the last hour that were in wheelchairs, so we had to slow down that conveyor belt because the Haunted Mansion is loaded with a conveyor belt. All of a sudden, you look at the numbers in the control center and you see you are not going to make your 1,800 count. The fourth value is efficiency, not the first. So here is the secret. To your point, hourly cast members were raised- I used to teach perditions, the first three days of orientation at Disney University. What I would teach is you can never go out of order: safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency. So you could never be rude to guests or hold back people that needed assistance to enter that attraction because you are going to get your number. That hierarchy of thinking is exactly what you are talking about. Sixteen-year-old kids who sit at home and never say anything to Mom and Dad at the dinner table, all of a sudden, if that same kid is now at Disneyworld and he understands safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency, then we sell happiness is what we train all the new hires to understand. Backstage, we sell happiness. The way we do that is we create magic. The standard, which is the covenant, as an example using the covenant language, one of the standards is consistently seek out guest contact. Those words were all very definitive and intentional. Consistently (not just when you want to) seek out (don't just let the guest walk over you, you seek them out, make eye contact) guest contact. To wrap all of that up, what I would share with you—and this has carried over into my consulting and my own life as a parent and husband—I have thought about what are those standards I want to live by and behaviors I want to commit to. Here is how powerful this is. You have this 16-year-old who sits at home and never looks up from their phone, but you put them in the culture at Disneyworld, and what happens? They see a father in the Magic Kingdom walking with an Epcot Center guidebook, and the same kid walks up and goes, “Oh hi, are you headed over to Epcot Center later this evening to see Illuminations, the fireworks show?” They say, “Yes, how did you know?” Well, that's the secret, the magic. This guest doesn't realize that this kid has been taught that if you are in the Magic Kingdom in front of the castle and you see a father or mother with an Epcot Center guidebook, that is an opportunity for magic. So what the kid says is, “Would you like to know the secret best place to go inside the world showcase to see the fireworks?” “Sure, that'd be great.” What happens then to wrap all of that up—I still get goosebumps telling you this—you can take the person out of Disney, but you can't take the Disney out of the person—but what I would share with you is absolutely part of the secret of Disney is safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency, we sell happiness, we create magic, and then there is the standard of consistently seek out guest contact. Here is the big one. We also then teach the why to the cast member to understand why you're doing this. Do you know what magic is? The last piece for me on this on the Disney benchmark is then showing them ways they can make magic. So you see a family walking through the park with a camera. You will see teenage cast members run up to that family and say, “Sir, can I take that picture for you so you can be in it?” Well, why is that such a treasured thing to do working at Disneyworld? Because, when you are a new hire, we would tell story after story that the Christmas card is going to be the picture of the family, and in the old days, this will date me, but it used to be that American families spent 36 rolls of film in one trip at Disneyworld. Hugh: Oh my goodness. Stephen: They would get home, and the average for most families is there would be three pictures of the entire family in the 36 rolls of film. To wrap all this up, what we do is teach that the holiday card is going to be that picture of the whole family at Disneyworld. The one that is huge today is when you go to a funeral, and Grandpa has passed away, the tradition in America at least is you go to the funeral and what do they have? Pictures up on an easel. At the time, we had 81,000 guest letters of people writing in saying, “Four months after we were at Disneyworld, my grandfather died. I want you to know the picture at the memorial service was the picture in front of Splash Mountain. I wanted to say thank you to the kid Skip who took that picture.” The magic was then to go back as a company and find Skip and say, “You made magic.” Hugh: That's lovely. What if we had that same mindset? We use the word “nonprofit” because we gotta make profit, and we start dumbing down to the lowest common denominator. But what if we were able to, and we settle for less than excellence, less than efficient, less than safety. What gift do you have to inspire board members? I think it's up to the board members to step up and say I want to do better. Stephen: Great question. One of the ways that I think you can really help these volunteer board members as well as leaders, whether it is a member of a committee or the chairman, is to make it personal. Here is what I mean. 1,100 hospitals have licensed my Patient Satisfaction Program, and one of the things that both Quint Stuter and the Stuter Group and myself really made famous in hospitals is behavior standards. One of the things I would give you as an example is imagine your covenants. Go back to what you said, Hugh. Imagine if you had these covenants for these board members you were speaking to. We are talking about how to maintain excellence and inspire them to that. What if the standard was no triangulation? If the banker is upset with the CPA who is upset with the multi-millionaire retired business owner who is upset with the schoolteacher, and you have all the baggage and crap that goes with those labels in our society, no, no, no. It doesn't matter who you are. The issue is no triangulation. What does that mean? If you have an issue with anybody, you go to them. You don't run to me. Or the chairman says, “If you do have an issue, come to me and check in. That's fine. I can help you navigate this.” That is where your WayFinding is so brilliant in terms of what you are teaching because you can help them navigate a constructive conversation. That is one. Another is take 100% responsibility for everything you do and say. Take 100% responsibility. That is a success principle that Jack Canfield has really focused on. Another one is keep your agreements. Hugh: Oh my. Stephen: What is really neat is if you think about language, so be humble at all times. Remember we don't know what we don't know, the humility piece. Managerial courage is caring enough about the other person to say something, to not cower away. Embracing failing forward. The big one that is always so cliché is mission first. What does that mean? That is what I would do. If you don't care about triangulation, then you won't achieve excellence. If you don't care about taking 100% responsibility… It could be as simple as the person in the role of secretary is supposed to have the notes at the meeting sent out by the next morning because we are all busy people. But everybody talks for years now that the secretary gets them out the Thursday after the week after the week after the meeting is over. Now what I have opened up, Hugh, is what do you do then when those types of behaviors fester, which is against the standard of excellence? That is where I think boards fail and struggle in the moments of difficulty and failure. But you have to start with the standards. You have to have the language. You have to start somewhere. You have to wiggle your spinal cord. Hugh: Yeah, we are in the same place. A lot of it the leader lets happen. We think it's going to go away. I have an e-book out on Amazon called Creating Healthy Teams. It's all about this intervention piece of managing conflict. Russ, in your work with the Indian reservation and some of the charities, what do you tag here in the brilliant stuff he is giving us tonight? Russell: This is all really excellent stuff. He is preaching to the choir here. I know in my case, I have worked some insane hours. You get a few drivers that are dedicated, and they don't take care of themselves. They burn out as a result. You have to have an open communication where you can have those tough conversations with the board or course-correct. When something is not going well with a project, folks don't want to talk about it because they want to look “good” for the funding sources. It's best that if you have some sort of problem, you have to be transparent and talk about it as quick as you can. Even if it's just discomfort, you need to go to your leader and express that instead of sweeping it under the rug. A lot of this is having those conversations. That is a culture piece. If you don't have that culture in place where you can do that, you will have some difficulties. Also what you were talking about is what I would call the solid foundation, which is step one of the four steps of building a high-performance nonprofit. That is the process I will work with people in corporations through that I am still fine-tuning. Building that foundation is looking at what you have and what you need and being able to establish that communication, culture, and ground rules. It's easier when you start. But you are probably used to going in and finding stuff in every state of operation, being a change management consultant. It's tricky, and it's a lot of fun when you ask a lot of questions and you generally bring people to a place where they figure out they don't know what they don't know. Nobody likes to be told there is something wrong with them. But I ask enough questions that people after a while are dropping these gems on themselves. Once they come to that point, you can continue that conversation and move forward. But it's tough to get there sometimes. There is a lot of conflict. When you walk into some situations, you are going to find a massive amount of conflict because things have gone the way they have gone. How do you start off when you walk into these situations where you have some strong personalities and a lot bubbling under the surface because you have let this strong personality dominate? Stephen: There are a couple things. There is a soft approach. It's all about winning the war, not the battle, right? We all know that. One principle that guides us is people don't argue with their own data. The magic of what you all are teaching with asking the better questions is you are helping people realize that when they make it their own and identify it, they solve their own problems, as we talked about earlier. I do behavioral styles training. For years, I have been using Tony Alexander's Platinum Rule. There are four quadrants. It's a simpler, cleaner version of Myers Briggs. The concept is I start with understanding: Did you know there are four statistically proven, research-based styles? Did you know those four styles each have a deep driving need, a way they see the world and what they value in that world, and the one thing that is the risk or the weakness? The real principle for me there is teaching people any strength taken too far can become a weakness. The overuse of a strength, as this group Strength Scope, which is a brilliant group, they are taking what Gallop did with Strengths Finder- The concept is that the overuse of a strength is the overuse of a skill. That is the soft approach. If I were to leave this fine earth tomorrow, what I am about to say is the tool I hope people would embrace. There is a very simple one, and there is a complex one that has a process that is not that complex. All these tools are in the book Success from the Inside Out, which I'd like to offer your group access to the PDF version as a way to give back. It was written as an action guide format. There is a chapter called “What Makes the Disney Difference?” There is a chapter talking about behavioral standards. And there is this chapter that I am talking about here. Very quickly, this is the concept. This is the single most powerful exercise I have ever done. If I need to level an organization, or if a CEO hires me and says, “I need to reach into the belly of this beast and wake my executives up,” this is what we do. You get people together, get an outside facilitator, and collect feedback in writing, not public discussion, but individually on pieces of paper, and what they are doing is opening up their head and heart and answering the questions: What are you mad about? What are you sad about? What are you glad about? Working here as part of this board. When you think about coming here every month, with the way this board works, what are you mad about? Or what are you mad about with the way the chairman interacts with us? Or what are you mad about, sad about, or glad about? You make them think about those things. What you do is have them all write it down on a piece of paper. The outside person collects all those pieces of paper, types it all up, and looks at the trends. The concept is no one else sees the handwriting of the participants. It's anonymous. Mad, glad, and sad is only the emotional side, but it's the way to start. It's what opens the door. Here is where the $150,000 of free consulting comes in. When you ask the people these questions, “We can identify the things that frustrate us, but now let's talk about solutions.” You have them take out another piece of paper, and write down when you think about the chairman of the board or the committee leaders or all of us as a group collectively, what do we as mature, grown adult members of this board need to stop doing, start doing, and continue doing? The brain science magic on this is when you ask a human being who has now emotively unloaded and are feeling good about getting that off their chest… By the way, about 10% of the data you gather from the sad/mad/glad will be surprises to the chairman. If they are really an ostrich with their head buried in the sand, 25% of the data will be a surprise to them. They will say, “I didn't know that they were that upset.” We have only been talking about that every single meeting when we wait until you leave and get in your car and then complain about it behind your back. Russell: Break room, yes. Stephen: Stop/start/continue is where you transform the organization, to answer your question, Russ. If you could simply get organizations, even if it was just the C-suite group, the top senior leaders, to simply sit twice a year and go, “What do you and I start doing, stop doing, and continue doing to make this a better place?” If you want to go and really transform the nonprofit organization, go ask your volunteers, “What do the leaders of this nonprofit need to stop doing, start doing, and continue doing? They are not going to see your handwriting. They are not going to see your name. Just tell us.” When that data comes pouring in and you look at it, what I do is type it up into PowerPoint slides. You can see that 18/34 said, “We don't start meetings on time.” 27/34 people said, “There is no accountability here, and there are three people who have so much favoritism and nepotism that they get away with murder.” Okay. Now you have people surfacing a difficult issue. Just like anything, as you talked about with process, you need a safety net. You don't want people to get hurt and stir up and trigger events. There is a best practice on how to do it. Here is where I am going with this. Anybody listening, if you could do this in your marriage, what do I need to stop doing, start doing, or continue doing to be a better husband? What do I need to stop doing or start doing this summer to be a better father to my 13-year-old boy who is really thriving and doing exceptionally well with tae-kwon-do? How can I better support him? I need to start making more time to go to tae-kwon-do practices with him. I need to start more consistently practicing with him at home. Great example. The other day, I bought a 70-pound body bag to hang from the ceiling. How many months do you think I have ben thinking about buying that body bag for my son? When you do stop/start, that is where you get off your duff, drive your car to Target, and buy the bag. The interesting thing is that today, body bags are only $60 now. How many times do boards complain about how expensive it is… I am using this as a metaphor. You go to your local Goodwill store, and somebody will have already donated their body bag back to the local Goodwill store. It will be hanging in a corner. You ask Goodwill if you can buy it for $10. One of the principles I try to help organizations with is there is always a way. The other thing is that N-O = O-N. No=On. When you say no to things, it keeps what matters most on. You stay focused on the things that matter. The one thing is the one thing is a great principle. I am going back to both of your questions. Safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency was a way of trying to figure out the language, which everybody is picking up now. A lot of what you are hearing from me tonight is about language. I know this is huge for the two of you as well. It's really about language. Hugh: It is. Underneath communications is relationships. You have covered a lot of territory here, and you have answered the questions we posted. Except I'd like to hear on this meeting thing. There is a fifth unposted question out there. I like this mad/glad/sad/stop/start/continue. This is similar to tools we use, but it is distinctively different. Pretty brilliant. Will you give us the link for that free book? Stephen: Go to talkwithstephen.com, and what they can do is go in as if they were scheduling an appointment, and put in the comment box they would like a copy of the book and I will send them the books of Jumpstart Your Creativity and Success from the Inside Out. They won't be enrolled in any email list or any autoresponder messages from me. I don't do that. I don't even have opt-in boxes on my websites. Just go to talkwithstephen.com. Book the appointment, we can cancel it later. Simply make a note that they want the book. If they want to ask a question, that's great. I will get back to them. But they can also just say, “Send me the book,” and I will send those two. Hugh: This last one is a real zinger. I wish you lived closer so we could have coffee and talk more. There is this thing about meetings and making decisions together. One of my e-books out there is Conducting Power Impact Meetings. I approach it like a conductor builds ensemble, so meetings in my world are the number one killer of high-functioning teams. But they are the number one empowerment vehicle for high-performing teams. We can go either way. The difference is how the leader builds the culture through the DNA of rehearsal together. We rehearse for excellence, or we rehearse for mediocrity or even less. Give us the Stephen snapshot of decision-making. What are some of the things that are important in meetings to you? Stephen: Delivering a promise I made a minute ago: If mad/sad/glad/stop/start/continue is a process piece, the one I want to give everybody as a gift that you can share with your loved ones but also with yourself is a mini version. Hugh, let me ask you a question. If you could change any one thing immediately about the way you are spending your private time—say you used to have a hobby but no longer—what would you change? That question is a really powerful question. I use that to answer your question because one of the best practices in meetings for me is being able to facilitatively know when to ask that question. “Okay, I hear everybody complaining about the payroll system and the clocking in system and that you are frustrated about the accuracy of paychecks. If we could change any one thing immediately, what would we change?” That is an example of a powerful facilitative question. Number two: I believe that standing meetings, no chairs, no food, and no meetings longer than an hour unless justified by the seniors. There are some process pieces, too. But the one I would share that is critically important—this is my life work and John Connor's life work, the Harvard professor—he wrote a book called Urgency—John Connor is one of the really sage experts in change management. In his original books around change, he identified the nine key principles that you have to press in order to have lasting successful change. People don't argue with their own data. When you ask great questions, and when you ask that above question, now you start to get a group moving forward. What are the secret tools in the toolbox? If your group does not have a crystal clear understanding of the urgency of addressing this issue or the urgency of the need for change, if they do not understand the pain of continuing to do the status quo, then you are, according to John Connor's life work—and I have experienced it myself after 20 years of change management—missing the single most powerful lever for success that is research-based and proven. If the leaders do not establish amongst themselves the urgency, the why is it so urgent we have to fix the payroll system, why is it that paychecks have to get mailed out on time. If they cannot get together about the urgency and the why behind that urgency, they are missing the fundamental, most powerful lever you can start with to effectively drive change. I will wrap up with this. In meetings, one of the most powerful tools I have come across over the years is the three D's. I want to hear your thoughts on this, too because you all have dedicated time to this. One little tool is three D's. It could be a part of a meeting, the first twenty minutes, and the last forty minutes is another topic. Or you could have one meeting with just one D. There are Discovery meetings, which is where last month, seven different people left with topics to research. They come back and you will dedicate 20 minutes. Each person will have two minutes to discover or talk about what they discovered out there in the universe. Another example would be Distribution, which is okay, you went out and gathered this, but now let's distribute amongst ourselves what we need to do, leveraging the experts in the room, to take all the discovery information, distribute amongst ourselves to move this forward, to get to what, a decision. What I have found is whether it's for profit or a nonprofit, I believe personally the reason meetings suck is nobody wants to make a decision because if we don't make a decision, then I don't have to be held accountable for any expectation after the meeting is over. If we can subconsciously keep this ball bouncing… I know we are doing dinner next month with the board, but what I would like to have you do is come in 20 minutes early and have a meeting about the meeting we had last time and then we will talk about what meeting we need to book for that meeting because nobody wants to make a decision. So discovery, you focus everybody. What do you all know? What do we need to distribute amongst each other now that we have done that discovery process? The last one is time to make a Decision. The decision piece hopefully is not the first time the group is bringing up the urgency conversation. To help everybody with a concrete technique, what happens if we do nothing? I love this question. If you want to see silence in a board room, they will surface an issue and are fuming, ask them that. What you will see in that moment is people will either come fighting for their cause or people will look back and say honestly,” I think we have bigger fish to fry. Rome is burning. I don't think we need to worry about that. You are talking about golf course issues and the grass on the green.” Boom. Thank you. By simply asking that one question, if we do nothing, what happens? It helps people stop and pause. People don't let boards sit and quiet. Hugh: You hit that a minute ago. The silence piece. It's powerful. Russell: I am a big fan of silence. It's part of my meditative routine in the morning. Instead of using something guided, it's silence a lot of times. It's really powerful. I have sat in meetings, and silence makes people uncomfortable. They are not used to being. They are used to doing. They feel like they have to do something. I consider silence a power tool. There is one question, and I think you may have covered it. David Dunworth posed a question. He said, “We used a similar process with employees in large organizations we call the 360-degree feedback system.” He posed a question about a smaller organization, and he says, “How can smaller social enterprises instill that spirit you are discussing into a tiny nonprofit that is struggling to find effective board members?” Stephen: The first part of that question is how they can instill which spirit? Which piece of it are they talking about? Russell: We were talking about motivating board members. That was at the point we were talking about motivating board members. Stephen: Okay. What I would do is do you know the why? If you look at your most successful, invigorated, excited people who are supporting you, whether it's donors, community leaders, influencers, or board members, do you know the why for each of them, and are you looking for the distinctions of the patterns? Here is what it could sound like. If they do that homework as a small nonprofit, they could say, if you are at lunch with someone and you want to plug someone in: “You might find it interesting that 40% of our raving fans, the people most committed to this organization, the thing they are really drawn by is what we are doing with policy-makers to change the healthcare code as it relates to geriatric patients. That is what is driving them.” The fact that you know 40% of the people who are most engaged are most excited about this one thing, at least you are now putting a voice, safety, concern, show, efficiency, you are putting a language to those fundamental building blocks. Number two, quickly off the cuff on that, is do you have your own story clear enough? This is the piece I would talk about. I'll do it this way. I will do two things simultaneously quickly here. Imagine if at the beginning of our talk today, instead of me talking about my past and what I did with Disney and all of that, imagine if we had started this talk tonight this way. “Stephen, where are you headed, and what are you most passionate about when it comes to nonprofit boards?” Well now I will share with you what Dennis, the drama-free teams expert, would say: He is on a mission between now and 2020 to create 10,000 drama-free teams in healthcare in hospitals. He is about to launch drama-free nursing, and he wants to help nurses, the largest department in hospitals, eliminate their drama. What I would share is this. Imagine if we could focus on where we are headed. What is the goal? What are we trying to do? What is the result? Bring that story forward along with consistently seeking out guest contact, safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency. Now we have something more compelling, and you are drawing people to it. One other thing I want to take a moment to say is that “imagine” is a very powerful word. It's called an imagine statement. Imagine in just three short years we eradicate polio from the continent. Think about that. Everybody uses the JFK example of going to the moon. Why was that so profound? He cast a vision that was so profound it almost… How are we going to do that? I used to run mastermind groups for small business owners in home services, plumbing, electrical, and maid services. I need everybody to hear this. I am not selling this service. I am not doing that. This is an Imagine statement. People would say, “Stephen, what do you do? I understand you work with small business owners.” I am translating what I am about to say as a framework for you. You are a small business owner, and I respond, “Imagine doubling your sales, tripling your net profit, and retiring in 3-5 years, guaranteed. Imagine doubling your sales, tripling your net profit, and retiring in 3-5 years, guaranteed.” Here is what happened. I interviewed 1,700 business owners in plumbing, electrical, and maid service in 2004, and what I discovered was that they worked hard but didn't make any money, they worked hard but didn't have a growing company, they wanted to retire, they wanted to turn over their business to their kids. If you translate that into what you are trying to do in the future and figure out what your imagine statement is… Think about the Gates foundation with mosquitoes and mosquito nets. Imagine eradicating malaria by 2020. The other thing I have modeled for everybody was the power of a pause. That is that moment for leaders. Next time you run a meeting, folks, let me ask you a question. *pause* All you do is sit at that board table, look down, and break eye contact with them. If you could change what we are doing immediately about this golf tournament, is this really the best way for us to make money this year? Is there another way? If we could change anything immediately about how we are raising money for this organization this year, what would it be? All of a sudden, you will have the audience in the palm of your hand. I turn it over to you, Hugh. I'd love to get your reaction to some of this. Hugh: This is profound stuff. We could talk the rest of the night. I want to do a wrap here. I will come back to you in the end, Stephen. I was trying to capture that. That is one of the most useful things you said all night. That one is an eye-opener. I want to let you think for a minute as a parting wish, thought, tip for people. Russ, do you have any closing comments you want to make? I want to make a couple announcements. Russell: No, I don't have anything to add, except my thanks. I want to make sure we get his question. I took copious notes. I have learned a lot from you. I look forward to talking with you again in the future. It has been marvelous. Thank you so much. Stephen: Thank you. An honor. Hugh: It's a gift to have you with us, Stephen. Russ shows me up all the time. I have to be careful. He has taken really good notes here. He has a way of summarizing key points and putting them in. David Dunworth who asked the question was on this series a while back, and he had one of our great interviews as well. Thank you for being on here, David, and others. What parting thought would you like to leave with people? Stephen: Folks, life is short. I just turned 50 years old, and I have a 13-year-old son, an 8-year-old dog, a puppy, and a 52-year-old wife. What I would invite everybody to think about beyond all the clichés of why we are here, what we are doing, what is the meaning of life, beyond all of that, I would make it a little bit simpler. It's 2017. In 2027, ten years from now, summer of 2027, if you are still with us here on this earth, God willing, as true as day, you will be standing there. You will be alive and living your life. Here is my simple question. Between now and then, how do you want to spend it? How do you want to spend it? Do you want to spend it as the person who gets consumed by all the things in the media, the news, and the press, with everything that is wrong with the country and the world? Or do you want to be that light of hope and be a role model for others? Even beyond that, live the best life you can live? My question for you is: Between now and next summer, one year from now, how do you want to spend it? Hugh will have this podcast next June, and you will be here next June after a year's worth of podcasts. Give yourself the gift today or tomorrow and simply think about how do you want to spend it? If you do that, that is time well worth spending. Hugh: Good words, sir.   Learn more about your ad choices. 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