Podcast appearances and mentions of steve okay

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with serial entrepreneur Steve Reynolds for his perspectives on innovation in corporate travel tech. As CSO of Embers Inc., Steve shares his journey developing TripBam, an early pioneer utilizing algorithms and robotics to optimize hotel rates. He explains TripBam's strategic transformation from consumer to enterprise software, strengthening the company and positioning it for seamless integration under Embers. Steve offers valuable lessons on championing passion within high-performing teams. The importance of actively engaging customers and development staff to creativity solve problems is emphasized. We discuss the challenges of maintaining innovation at scale versus smaller startups. Steve's experiences navigating acquisitions and a turbulent industry offer cautionary advice. A theme emerges—embracing flexibility positions leaders to overcome challenges and achieve lasting impact. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In this episode, I spoke with Steve Reynolds, Chief Strategy Officer at Emburse Inc., about his journey in corporate travel technology and entrepreneurship. Steve discussed the origins and evolution of TripBam, a platform he founded that uses algorithms and robotics for hotel rate monitoring, which eventually pivoted from a consumer-focused to a B2B model. Steve shared insights on navigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the strategic decisions that helped TripBam emerge stronger, including cost optimizations and product enhancements. We explored the importance of fostering a passionate and innovative team, highlighting the value of listening to customers and involving development teams directly in problem-solving. Steve explained the critical difference between passionate programmers and those who are merely formally trained, and how assembling a team that shares the company's vision and offering equity can drive success. The episode delved into strategies for managing company growth and financial stability, such as quick decision-making in right-sizing staff and optimizing operational costs through cloud environments. We discussed the benefits of subscription-based pricing models over transaction-based ones, particularly during economic downturns, and how this approach helped maintain cash flow during the pandemic. Steve reflected on the evolution of workplace environments and leadership styles, noting the shift from rigid, traditional settings to more flexible, results-oriented cultures. We talked about the challenges of maintaining innovation in large companies, contrasting startup environments with big company mindsets, and the importance of hiring the right people for each setting. Finally, Steve shared his thoughts on the future of the travel industry and the innovative approaches that have set new standards in modern practices. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Emburse GUESTS Steve ReynoldsAbout Steve TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Steve Reynolds, chief Strategy Officer for Emburse Inc. Steve has built his career in corporate travel technology and in starting various companies over the four-decade career. Steve looks for opportunities to be disruptive. Steve, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure to meet you and appreciate you taking the time. Steve: You bet Chris Glad to be here. Chris: So you know there's a lot that I'd love to get into with you. I know that you know currently you're with a company called M-Burst Travel, but that you started a company before that called TripBam. Tell us a little bit about, I guess, those companies and what they do. What is the business they're known for? Steve: Okay, and just to back up a little bit further, I guess what you could call a serial entrepreneur. Tripbam was my third or fourth venture kind of lost count, but I've been in the corporate travel tech space for 40 some odd years. And TripBam when we started 10 years ago, we recognized that hotel rates change a lot more often than people actually realize. If you were to create some robotics that went out and grabbed the rate at a particular hotel for a certain date in the future, you'd see that rate changes just about every hour and what we found is if you just keep watching it, eventually it's going to drop, especially as you get closer to check-in. So we created some algorithms, robotics, whatever you want to call it that said okay, I've got a rate of $2.99 at the Grand Hyatt in New York. I'm arriving on the first and departing on the third. I want you to just let me know when it drops and if it does, I want you to rebook it for me If everything is the same room, same bed, same cancel policy, blah, blah, blah. So that's what we did. We originally invented it for the consumer market. We put out a website and we got mentions in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today and so on. But sort of my corporate travel buddies called up and said, hey, Steve, we really need you to apply this to corporate travel. And they started writing some pretty significant checks. We followed the money, we pivoted and went all B2B at that point. And so the company grew 40% year over year for the first six years, cashflow positive within just a couple of months. I mean it was great. It was great. And then COVID came along and kind of took our knees out from under us for a bit. Chris: COVID kind of wiped out the fundamental business model for at least a little bit. Steve: At least for a little bit. But fortunately a lot of our customers were paying us subscription fees rather than transaction fees, so we were to stay afloat. We got through COVID and we actually came out on the backside of COVID in a much stronger position, both financially and you name it, because we were able to do a lot of just cost improvements, right-sizing the organization. We kind of got a little bit ahead of our skis, I think, in some areas and created some new products, just all kinds of things, pushed everything out to the cloud and such that dramatically reduced our costs and just were firing all cylinders. Chris: And then we worked out a deal with Emburse in July last year to buy the company. Okay, how does I guess what TripBand does fit within the Emburse excuse me, overall, maybe suite of products or company strategy. Steve: Yeah. So Emburse provides travel and expense to the largest of companies, to the smallest of companies, and what I mean by that? Everybody. When you go, you have kind of a booking tool to start with. Most folks are familiar with Concur. We have our own. The reservation gets created. It then needs to be watched, monitored, audited, improved upon. That's kind of where we fit in. So before the money is spent we actually see if we can actually do better than what the traveler did on their own. Travelers are not going to check the hotel rate every day. They're not going to check their airfare every hour. They're not potentially going to book the preferred property within a particular city. We fix all that before the money's actually spent. We then push all that to mobile. So you've got a companion app in your pocket where the traveler gets a ton of destination content specific to that company. So I'm going to New York, I'm staying at headquarters, what hotel should I stay in? I need to go take a client to dinner, what restaurants do you recommend? All kinds of other stuff, including safety and security perspective and so on. Then the data is all captured and fed into an expense report so that your expense report if the traveler is compliant. It's kind of pre-created and pre-approved, so the traveler in a lot of cases doesn't have to do anything and if they're compliant all the way throughout, they could actually kind of be paid as soon as their plane hits the ground. Then it all feeds into reporting and analytics so that we can improve your travel program, identify additional savings opportunities, find some fraud issues, detect all kinds of other stuff that might be a problem. We also offer a card product if you don't have one, and that's kind of the travel plus expense ecosystem that we provide. Chris: That's fascinating. I obviously wasn't aware that something like that existed, but I can see how large companies with a lot of employees traveling could see the benefit and realize a lot of savings from those services. Steve: Yeah, when you combine travel with expense, some kind of magic happens in that we have enough data and insight to be able to start pre-filling out that expense report. Otherwise, all we're counting on is card transactions and receipts, and that's really not going to do the trick. But if we can get that card information augmented with the receipt scanning and everything else that we do now, we can really do a nice job of pre-filling out that expense report. So really all you have to do is add mileage, hit, click and you're submitted. Chris: So you mentioned that you've been in this industry for 40 plus years. I'm curious how did you first get started in the corporate travel tech space 40 years ago? Steve: It was just by happenstance, I guess you could say. I was originally started as a programmer for Texas Instruments, got accepted into their executive program, which meant I could go off and get an MBA and then come back to TI, but quickly realized that the consulting firms were paying a lot more. So I ended up with Ernst Winnie, at the time with Ernst Young and my first assignment was with a travel agency in Houston, Texas, called LifeGo Travel, which doesn't exist anymore. The owner of that company hired us to come in and build some technology. It really put him on the map and he got tired of paying the bills and seeing the hourly checks that we were charging. And so he approached and said, hey, you know, do you want to come work for us? And I'm like, well, that never thought about working for a travel agency. That doesn't sound all that exciting. But he said look what if we created a company, We'll spin it off and we'll give you some equity. And I'm like, okay, now you're talking. So we left, we started up a company called Competitive Technologies and all of it was bought by American Express Travel two years later. Chris: Oh, wow. So unquestionably you had a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit going way back then to see an opportunity. Put you in it. Steve: And a lot of it is just kind of, I guess, my personal. I don't do well at big companies. I really struggle because I get so frustrated at just the lack of progress or the lack of innovation or the speed at which things happen, so I tend to sort of find an excuse to hit the exit button, usually within a year or two. Chris: Right. So you said something in that response that I want to talk to you about, and that's innovation. I think that's there's such a common theme, I think, with entrepreneurs about. You know, and innovation can mean so many things. What do you think that you've done, as you've built several companies, as you mentioned, to create or foster and nurture a spirit and environment of innovation? Steve: You know a lot of it is just becoming a really good listener to the buyer, to whoever the customer is. And then when they say things, there are certain kernels that are aspects of what they say that you just go oh, wait a minute, okay, can we go back to that? That sounds important. You know this level of frustration. Why does that frustrate you? And if you have engineering and development in the room when those things are said, oftentimes some real magic starts to happen and we just the creativity, the innovation just comes out naturally as wow, we can solve that problem. That's not that hard, you know, let's go do that. So that's on the B2B side. That's kind of the formula, that conversation. Something falls out as far as a new feature, product, something like that, that we can start working on the B2C side. Chris: Go ahead. Well, it sounds like there's a function there of asking the right questions and really listening. Steve: Well, and just most big companies or companies they try to protect the dev engineering. They're like oh, we're not going to let you talk to customers. You guys sit over here in the back room and we'll come to you with sort of a priority or roadmap of what we think is needed. And I feel like that's just the wrong way to do it. You've got to get the dev and the engineers and the programmers in the room to hear the story, otherwise you get this telephone tag of what actually gets built isn't quite what the customer wants or was even asking for. And for most companies that's really hard. I don't know why, but they just. It's like we can't allow that to happen, but that's just not the way I operate. Chris: Well, I mean, it makes sense that people you're asking to solve the problem probably need to hear what the problem is firsthand, right? Steve: Exactly. And then it's oftentimes the dev guys are like they're coming up with much more creative solutions. If you just hand them a requirement sheet or spec sheet, they're like, oh okay, this is going to take a month. But when they're involved with the client and they actually hear what the true problem is, oftentimes they're like, oh, I can knock this out overnight, I'll have a solution to you by tomorrow. It's just a night and day sort of sense of urgency or sort of the emotion around creating the solution. They're bought in. At that point, when they hear it directly from the client, they can be the hero. Chris: Well, when you think about kind of that and getting the right developers and the right kind of team together, what have you found to be successful as far as what to look for in building the right team and then keeping the team together? Steve: Yeah. So fortunately for me I mean through all of these different companies that I've started I've been able to kind of get the band back together multiple times. A because I, you know, I'm a big believer in sharing the equity. You know, let's get everybody, if not equity, at least options, so that when there is an exit, everybody benefits, and they've all seen that so far today, knock on wood, I haven't had an unsuccessful exit where we've had to, you know, turn out the lights or whatever. My shareholders have all made money, you know, typically around 5x to 10x on their investment, which has been great. So it's easy to get the bad back together. But what I also have found out is there are certain programmers that are passionate about programming and others that are just taught programming, and there's a night and day difference on the result. If they're passionate about it, the results come out quick. I get creative solutions that nobody would think of. They're usually extremely low cost and it's just so much better than if I have someone that's college taught. I'm doing this because it's a paycheck and I took this degree because that's what somebody told me to and I was good enough to get a B in college on all my programming courses, but at the end of the day, if their heart's not in it and they're spending their time, you know, just on the side weekends and nights learning new stuff, they're not going to be very good. So give me one or two of those that are passionate and I'll put them against 10 to 20 of those that are school taught and will kick their ass every time. Chris: So yeah, well again, I think that transcends all industries and disciplines, the key being passion. Right, I think you, as the leader, are the one that has to start with the passion and then find people that share that passion to get to where you're talking about, where there's that flow within the organization. Steve: Yeah, I think development's a little bit different. I mean, you're not going to find anybody super excited about accounting or I don't know the other aspects of it, but with development there's guys that just get so into it. You know they're programming on the side. They get into hackathons, they want to prove that you know they're smarter than the guy next to them and just constantly looking for the next challenge and just coming up with those creative solutions. I don't know of any other discipline that really has that level of it, but there might be. I mean, I could be wrong. Chris: So, just going back and maybe not the first venture where you and the travel agency in Houston started, but maybe I'm just curious to know as you began some of these startups, maybe sharing some of the lessons learned through some of the challenges you found in starting that venture, whether it be raising capital as an example, or any other challenges that may come about, but I think that capital raise can be one in the startup that some entrepreneurs find daunting and maybe can't solve and never get anything off the ground. Steve: Yeah Well, I think, first off, just wait as long as possible to raise capital. You know most of them kind of build an MVP which just kind of barely works and then go out and try to raise money on it. And whenever you go down that path you just end up way undervaluing what you have. And I know people get in certain situations where they just need to have a check, you know, or it's you know, lights out. But if you can wait until you actually have a client actually generating revenue, actually having positive cash flow, whatever, and then you can show someone, look, we just need to add fuel to the fire here. This is not about keeping the lights on, this is about generating growth You're going to have a dramatically better outcome. The other thing I found out is when you take the big check too early, you start making really stupid decisions. You start hiring attorneys that are expensive, you hire a CFO before you need it, you have a head of HR, all kinds of stuff and overhead that's just not necessary and over time it makes you less and less nimble because you're so worried about payroll, you know, and less focused on just delivering a product that has a you know, a bunch of value. Keep your day job, keep working nights and weekends, wait as long as possible. I mean, I always said, look, cash is like oxygen. If you run out you're going to die. So hang on to it with both hands first. I mean beg, borrow and steal from friends and family and whatever to just get stuff. If you need a contract, go out on the web and search for a capolar plate contract. It'll be good enough to get you started. Or find someone that's a buddy, that's a lawyer, that's willing to do some pro bono work in return, maybe for a little bit of equity stuff like that. Just hang on to that cash as much as you can, for as long as you can. Chris: Well, I think there's a lot there that someone can learn from. Obviously, speaking as a chairman of a law firm, I can't endorse legal Zoom for the startup, but I understand your point. We talk to clients a lot about especially know, especially in the startup phase. Maybe you know helping them get going, but you know and being smart about how they spend their money. But make it an investment in getting at least a sound structure and they may not need right the full-blown set of legal documents, but I can promise you I've seen people start on legal Zoom and wish they hadn't, you know, a couple of years later when things were getting a little tight. But I understand your point there. But conserving cash is important to get off the ground. Steve: Yeah, I mean you don't need to come right out of the gate being in an Inc. You know and incorporated in Delaware and pay all the fees, whatever to make that happen. I mean, just start out as a low-cost LLC and then, when you're ready to sort of raise capital and become a real company, you know you use part of that capital to convert at that time. Chris: So you had mentioned earlier, you know just, I guess, going back to kind of trip BAM COVID having, at least initially, a pretty profound impact but then turning it into a positive, and I'm kind of want to take you back to that time and you maybe dig in a little bit deeper. I think it's a beautiful lesson of something where you know a lot of people just throwing up their hands because travel stopped, et cetera, which decimates your business specifically to you. But then you said we actually learned from that and became a better, stronger company because of it. And you've mentioned right-sizing, the organization stuff. But could you share a little more detail and some stories from that our listeners can learn from if and when their business faces something similar? Steve: Yeah, I think, first off, being fairly quick. You know you can always hire people back, you know. But if you keep them on the payroll and you start burning up cash just way too fast or you're starting to trend towards in the red, you just got to pull the trigger. Nobody wants to, nobody likes to do it, but it's really nobody's fault. It's just something as an executive or CEO you have to do, or a founder. So that's one. Second is, as companies grow, you kind of make stupid mistakes along the way. You get kind of inefficient. You don't anticipate the level of growth that might have been reality. So going back and saying, all right, take a step back, let's catch our breath. You know, what should we have done to kind of handle the scale better? And so, for example, just moving everything to a cloud environment, you know, putting it out to bid, switching from one cloud provider to another, whatever it is, you know you can just generate or reduce your costs dramatically. You know, rather quickly, if you just focus the time on it. Everybody gets so white hot, focused on growth and the next client and the revenue they forget to look at the rear view mirror about. You know there was a lot of costs we could have taken out, you know, which could generate even more cash going forward. Advert: Hello friends. This is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at BoyerMiller. com and thanks for listening to the show. So we pulled the trigger pretty quick. We right-sized the staff. We had a pretty good and, fortunately for us, this is the other. We kind of lucked into this. Our customers, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to pay a subscription fee rather than maybe a percentage of the savings or a transaction fee, to where what they were going to spend would fluctuate month over month. By paying a subscription fee, they could budget it and they were going to get a better return on investment. So we did most of our deals that way and thank God we did, because when COVID and everything went into toilet in April of 2020, we still had cash coming in the door. So we were actually stayed cashflow positive because we kind of right-sized the staff fairly quickly. And then, coming out of COVID, as the revenue started to ramp back up and our sales started to continue, we were just on a much better platform that would scale after it because it was just all right-sized and efficient and whatever, and at the same time we added new products. So we had a two-year kind of all right, just keep the lights on, market will come back around. We added an air reshopping solution. We added a bunch of analytics to audit contracts and to benchmark performance, so that we had a whole bunch more to sell coming out of COVID than going in, and so that caused another year of kind of explosive growth as a result. Chris: That's great. So, yeah, obviously part of that is give some deep thought to how you price what your product right. So that subscription-based versus transaction for you sounds like a very. Maybe it didn't seem as meaningful at the time you made it, but it turned out to be. Steve: You know that's a tough one If the ROI of your product is pretty clear, like reshopping. If you've got a rate of $2.99, I drop it to $ to $250. I've got $49 per night in savings If you pay me a couple of bucks. Okay, here's the ROI. And we could run some pilots and all kinds of stuff to prove that out. So that makes it really simple and we try to hit look, I need a ROI that when they take it to their boss the guy that's doing the budgets, you know, won't cause all kinds of frustration and concern. So four to one is usually the minimum. A lot of our customers, the larger ones, are getting eight to one, 10 to one, you know. So you could say like you've probably underpriced it. But that's okay, you know we'll claw back some of that. You know, over time when it's a product that's the ROI is a bit fuzzier. You just got to somehow convince the client that this is the potential savings. They're going to guesstimate and then from there work backwards to a price which kind of gets you back to that four to one ROI. So if I think I'm going to save you five bucks a transaction, I'm probably going to charge you a dollar to $1.50 is what I'm going to aim for. Again, to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate for Relagate. Again to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate. Chris: So part of that goes, I think, in building that customer base, really focusing on strong relationships. Talk a little bit about that and what you've done, because it sounds like over the course of the various businesses, you've done a good job of creating some very good partnerships and alliances. What are some of the things you think that have helped you foster that and keep those for so many years? Steve: I think one is you know you got to under promise and over deliver. So if they're going to sign up, you know, don't make them look bad or stupid to their boss. The other one is identifying the influencers in the market. So I'm sure every industry has some individuals that are kind of on the bleeding edge, willing to try new things. And if they do and it works, they've got the microphone or the megaphone to tell a whole bunch of others. So fortunately for me, I've been able to identify who those influencers are. I've got a reputation for just delivering as promised. So when they sign up they have confidence and then they tell their peers and a lot of our sales in the large enterprise market are peer-to-peer networking. It's not from email campaigns or other stuff that we do. Chris: The kind of part of that, the old adage of just do what you say you committed to do when you said you committed to do it right. Steve: It's just delivering as promised. Don't sell me a can of goods and all this great wonderful thing. And then when the reality is just not there, you know, don't make them look stupid. You know that's the key one. I mean, these are after 40 years they become. We have some pretty tight relationships with these folks and I want them to keep their job and we want them all promoted and moving on to the next big role, because when that happens they just take us with them and we just keep getting bigger and bigger. Chris: So you mentioned that about kind of keeping this, your words, the band back together. You've been able to do that, hiring some of the right people and incentivizing the right way. Any insights into. You know what people could think about when they're looking at their team one, trying to, I guess, evaluate whether they have the right people and then finding the right ways to incentivize them to kind of keep that core group together. Steve: To me it's if they feel like they're a part of a team and they understand the value they're providing to the customer and they see that customer's appreciation. You know they're in the conversation with the client, you know, and that's easy to do at a small company, because who else are they going to talk to? Right, you got to bring the dev and engineering. But when you start layering and bifurcating and have people you know in engineering back there in the back room, kind of stuff that don't talk to clients, that's when it gets a lot harder. But when you get them into the conversation and that sense of this is my company, this is my reputation. I'm a part of something here, you know, that's growing and doing well and whatever. It's not that hard, it's really not that difficult at all. It's just everybody wants to be appreciated and feel like they're, you know, part of a team. So that's the formula, right, I mean I could throw money at them. But I ask my employees I mean I am not the guy that's writing big checks to hire people right? I'm like look, we're going to pay a reasonable salary. You know this is not, you're not going to be broke, but you know we're in it for the long term game, and so we want to keep the cash in the company so that we don't have to go do another capital raise which is going to dilute all of us, and so your equity just keeps getting smaller, you know, over time, and the guys that actually make the money, or the investors this needs to be a collaborative team effort so they get that. Chris: I think that transparent communications is key right. So they again they understand their role on the team, they understand what the goal of the organization is and how they can help further that. Steve: You know it's always been kind of fire slow, fire quick as well. You know the people, everybody makes hiring mistakes. It happens all the time. And you know when you hire someone within like a couple of days you're like this is not feeling right. You know, don't let it just sit, don't let it be two years later when you actually kind of work them out. You have to kind of pull the trigger fairly quick because it messes up the whole culture of the company. Oftentimes, especially at a small company, it can create some real problems. Chris: Yeah, I mean that may be the most sage advice and, I think, maybe the most consistent that I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners. It's been my own experience too, that that kind of fire, you know, don't be slow to fire when you know you made a mistake and it's the hardest, maybe one of the hardest ones to do because you're dealing with people. I spoke to someone yesterday and they were like hired, someone had some uncertainty and literally what I learned was to trust my gut because on day one that they started in a conversation went oh my God, this is a huge mistake. Tried to play it out, tried to make it work and guess what? It didn't. Steve: Yeah, the thing is I don't believe resumes anymore and I don't believe LinkedIn pages at all, especially when it comes to higher dev and engineering. It's just anybody can put whatever language they want and say they've got a ton of experience. You've got to figure out a way to validate Most of our hires. There's kind of referrals and peer-to-peer sort of networking. If I find someone, I can usually find someone they know, especially in the Dallas market where we are, that's worked with them at a prior company. That sort of thing and do some back-channel checking is what really pays off for us. And we know the rock stars. We know the rock stars. We know the rock stars, but they're not that hard to kind of pick out. It's the ones that are kind of questionable. That you know. You just got to do your homework and don't count on the resume. Chris: That's a really good point. It's a hard thing to do, though, and it may be easier in programmers. But, to you know, I totally agree with resumes, and profiles can be, you know, massaged, but it's sifting through and kind of through the smoke to really get to what's behind the curtain. Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean. And Zoom calls, I mean people hire on Zoom calls or whatever. Like dude, you got to get them in the office face to face, go to lunch, have a couple of face to face interactions before you actually bring this person on board. You know, make them pass a coding test or something. You know something tangible. Don't just look, they're very nice people. You know they all have a. You know look great on a phone call or Zoom call, whatever, but that doesn't cut it. Chris: Yeah, I mean no substitute for personal interaction and seeing how people show up. Right. Steve: Yeah, the other thing is, since we're, you know, on a startup mode where everybody's looking at kind of the potential for equity, I'm like, look, if you're as great as you are, why don't you come on board for a month on a contract basis? Let's see how it works out, you know, and we'll go from there All right, and you really get a feel for someone and how well they're going to. We try it, we like to try it, before we buy. Let's put it that way. That's one way to do it. Chris: just talk about you know specific kind of leadership styles and and how you would describe your leadership style, and maybe how you would describe it today versus maybe 20 years ago as you you were emerging as a leader, and how you think it's changed oh, my god, it's night and day. Steve: so first company way back when. Maybe it comes as a surprise or not, but it was a coat and tie environment. Okay, guys, we've got to put on the ties and whatever. That was just so stupid. Checking office hours and all that crap and tracking vacation time just seems so silly. Now, if you can get the job done, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care where you do the work, I don't care if you have to take vacation on a pretty regular basis for whatever reason. I don't care if you're going off and disappearing to watch your kid play soccer, I do not care anymore. Just here's the job. Here's kind of an expectation. You know, as long as I understand, you're trying hard to get it done as quick as possible. We are good. You know, it's kind of a thing. So all that other stuff was just noise. That was just stupid, anyway it's. I mean back when I started in this, I mean programming and development and all that and the whole tech world was fairly new, so nobody knew what they were doing or how to manage these folks and it evolved over time, but fairly quickly. I mean, by company two, ties were gone. By company three, office was gone. I mean I've been virtual for 25 years. Unfortunately, we had offices but we just I think they were a waste of money but we did it for optics more than anything. Chris: Yeah, so it sounds like more kind of a traditional and somewhat of a command and control, starting out to now a little more, much more flexible and providing autonomy as long as people deliver on the expectations that they're communicated with. Steve: Which comes down to you just hire the right people, right, if you can get kind of get that sense for what the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see, if you can get kind of get that sense for what are the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see that you've got you spent 20 years at a really big company, you are not going to do well at a startup. I could guarantee you You're used to other people doing work for you. You know you're just kind of the sit back in your office and sort of you know, tell folks what to do. That ain't going to happen. You need to get your hands dirty. You might have to write code. You got to do PowerPoints, you got to do Word docs all that stuff yourself. Big company folks just tend to lose that ability, let's say, or it's beneath them and that's not going to work. Chris: Yeah, I mean it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality, right, it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality right, it's about getting a job done, no matter what it takes. Steve: And I think that drives me crazy at a big company because, you know, unfortunately for others, I tend to poke my nose into others' lanes and I get told a lot Steve, stay in your lane. Nothing bugs me more, you know, than to hear that. But that's the big company way. Chris: So you've gone through a few companies and you're now, I guess, inside of a larger company. Now Are you finding it easy to kind of have that mentality of flexible leadership and innovative environment? Steve: In the new company? Yes, I would have to say no, it's kind of as I expected. You know, with other acquisitions you start. You know, this kind of here's how it happens. However, embers, I believe, is trying hard to carve out a role where I can exist, let's put it that way. So my title right now is Chief Strategy Officer, and it's a bit nebulous, kind of by design. I can sort of make it what I want and as a result of being chief strategy officer, I can get outside of my lane and people can question it. I'm like everybody needs strategy. That's my title, I'm going to get in your lane, kind of stuff you know. So I tend to kind of bounce around to lots of different projects, objectives so on. I kind of help make sure that it's cohesive, you know, across this travel and expense story, you know. But at the same time I don't have a lot of direct reports, which is great. That usually doesn't go too well either. So so far, so good. Chris: Fingers crossed, that's great, yeah, we we kind of covered kind of the challenges of COVID If you think back prior to that, any other challenges along the way with the first two or three companies, everybody, yeah, yeah, I think people some of those are the best lessons we learned or some of the challenges we go through. I'm just curious to know any kind of lessons from a challenge that you could share with the listeners that might help them when they face something similar. Steve: Oh my God. I mean everybody's made mistakes and if they got lucky along the way and if they don't admit that they're lying, I mean some of the bigger ones. 9-11, we had a solution that was processing about 80% of all corporate travel reservations made in the US. 9-11 hit and we went to zero within about 24 hours, so that was kind of a gut check. Fortunately, travel bounced back fairly quickly, but it made us take a step back and realize how nimble we were If something like that were going to happen again. So that's one, and you know, and there's all the kind of day-to-day stuff. I mean there's fraud, there's employee HR issues that happen. You know there's. I'm not going to get into details on that, but you know you just kind of all right, let's deal with this. You know, don't just look the other way and take care of it. I think the latest I mean the big one right now is just, you know, the whole third party hacking and getting into your network and holding you hostage, stuff like that. You know that's made everybody just super anxious and nervous and to the point where companies are kind of shutting down their network so much that individuals can't do the job. You know, which is causing concern and it's what else are you going to do? I mean, if some employee can click on a link and bring down your network, do? Chris: you just turn off email. You're right, it's creating such a challenge. Everybody, all companies, are being attacked every day from all kinds of angles, and it just takes one and but you also? You can't operate out of fear and you can't let it stop you from doing your business. Steve: Well, they say there's two kinds of companies out there. There's those that have been hacked and those that don't know they've been hacked. So just kind of keep that in mind and I think it's fairly true. I think, you know, it's just almost too easy to get into someone's network and poke around and kind of see what's going on these days. Chris: It's so scary, but I thought you were going to say those who have been hacked and those that will be hacked, but I guess already have you, just don't know it. Well, see, I really loved hearing your story. It's a fascinating industry, and one that you don't really hear much about, but you definitely. It sounds like for 40 years you've been crushing it at it, so congratulations to that. Well, thanks for that. Steve: But also the one thing people don't know about corporate travel is that it sits on a backbone of legacy technology that's probably 40 years old. That has not changed. The GDSs are antiquated, the travel agency systems are antiquated. It's not that hard to come up with something innovative and new in this environment. So I just got lucky to where I got into it and I'm like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems and it just kept evolving from there. Like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems, and it just kept evolving from there. Chris: Yeah, that's really. You know so many entrepreneurs I've talked to. It's what you just said solving the customer or client's problem. Because what I said earlier, it goes back to asking the questions and listening and then trying to solve that problem. Steve: So many great ideas that come from that across so many industries. Yeah, and just to set up a little process to where you talk with your customers on a regular basis or a group of clients or people you trust and it just happens naturally, it's really not that difficult. Chris: Well, let's turn to a little bit on the lighter side before we wrap this up. I always like to ask people like yourself what was your first job? Steve: oh, my first job, let's see. Uh, I worked at a pet store at junior high. Well, actually first job was mowing yards, right? So everybody every kid did that just to get my allowance money. Then I worked at a pet store in junior high for a short period but fairly quickly realized waiting tables made a lot more money. So I told a guy I was 18, when actually I was 16, and they never really checked. They hired me as a waiter. I was actually kind of a part-time bartender, so I was serving liquor in Houston the strawberry patch I'll probably get them in trouble back when I was 16 years old and just made a ton of money as a, you know, a high schooler. So that was kind of the first. And then, you know, got into computers and writing code at a very early age. I was part of a program at Shell where they gave us mainframe time to go in and kind of play around and then went off to Baylor for computer science and then went to TI and then went to A&M for grad school. Very good, very good. Chris: So okay. So, being a native Texan, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Steve: That is not a fair question, because both are pretty dang awesome, but, being in Texas, I think we've got some of the best barbecue on the planet. So Pecan Lodge here in Dallas is, I think, kind of the best, and there's a lot of Tex-Mex, though that's really good as well, yeah, I agree on all points. Chris: I haven't heard of Pecan Lodge before, so I'll have to check that one out. Steve: Yeah, it's in Deep Ellum, so next time you fly in, go in out of Love Field, and it's not too far, it's a 10-minute drive from there. Chris: Deal Noted. And then last thing is you know you've made early in the career, probably never did this and maybe have done since. But if you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Steve: I actually got a 30 day sabbatical. So a guy hired me or not hired me, but when he brought me on board to run a company he said hey, you know, I threw in there. Just, I read it in a magazine that it was the hot thing for techies to ask for, so I threw it in there and they accepted it. I guess they thought I'd never make it to my five-year anniversary. Anyway, I did and I took the kids and family, went all the way throughout through Europe. So we went to Italy, paris, france, austria, switzerland, whatever you know, just really unplugged for that 30 days. Actually it was a 90 day sabbatical. That's what I took. Wow, so I got a little bit more time. Yeah, it was great, it was great. So if that were to happen today, I'd probably look to do something similar, but nowadays if I want to take 90 days, I probably could just got to ask for it. Chris: Very good, very good. Well, steve, thanks again for taking the time to come on and love hearing your story and all the innovation you brought to the travel industry. Steve: All right. Well, thanks for having me, chris, I really enjoyed it. Good conversation. Chris: Thanks, well, we'll talk soon. Steve: Okay, you bet. Special Guest: Steve Reynolds.

Steve Tuck, Co-Founder & CEO of Oxide Computer Company, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his work to make modern computers cloud-friendly. Steve describes what it was like going through early investment rounds, and the difficult but important decision he and his co-founder made to build their own switch. Corey and Steve discuss the demand for on-prem computers that are built for cloud capability, and Steve reveals how Oxide approaches their product builds to ensure the masses can adopt their technology wherever they are. About SteveSteve is the Co-founder & CEO of Oxide Computer Company.  He previously was President & COO of Joyent, a cloud computing company acquired by Samsung.  Before that, he spent 10 years at Dell in a number of different roles. Links Referenced: Oxide Computer Company: https://oxide.computer/ On The Metal Podcast: https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is brought to us in part by our friends at RedHat. As your organization grows, so does the complexity of your IT resources. You need a flexible solution that lets you deploy, manage, and scale workloads throughout your entire ecosystem. The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform simplifies the management of applications and services across your hybrid infrastructure with one platform. Look for it on the AWS Marketplace.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. You know, I often say it—but not usually on the show—that Screaming in the Cloud is a podcast about the business of cloud, which is intentionally overbroad so that I can talk about basically whatever the hell I want to with whoever the hell I'd like. Today's guest is, in some ways of thinking, about as far in the opposite direction from Cloud as it's possible to go and still be involved in the digital world. Steve Tuck is the CEO at Oxide Computer Company. You know, computers, the things we all pretend aren't underpinning those clouds out there that we all use and pay by the hour, gigabyte, second-month-pound or whatever it works out to. Steve, thank you for agreeing to come back on the show after a couple years, and once again suffer my slings and arrows.Steve: Much appreciated. Great to be here. It has been a while. I was looking back, I think three years. This was like, pre-pandemic, pre-interest rates, pre… Twitter going totally sideways.Corey: And I have to ask to start with that, it feels, on some level, like toward the start of the pandemic, when everything was flying high and we'd had low interest rates for a decade, that there was a lot of… well, lunacy lurking around in the industry, my own business saw it, too. It turns out that not giving a shit about the AWS bill is in fact a zero interest rate phenomenon. And with all that money or concentrated capital sloshing around, people decided to do ridiculous things with it. I would have thought, on some level, that, “We're going to start a computer company in the Bay Area making computers,” would have been one of those, but given that we are a year into the correction, and things seem to be heading up into the right for you folks, that take was wrong. How'd I get it wrong?Steve: Well, I mean, first of all, you got part of it right, which is there were just a litany of ridiculous companies and projects and money being thrown in all directions at that time.Corey: An NFT of a computer. We're going to have one of those. That's what you're selling, right? Then you had to actually hard pivot to making the real thing.Steve: That's it. So, we might as well cut right to it, you know. This is—we went through the crypto phase. But you know, our—when we started the company, it was yes, a computer company. It's on the tin. It's definitely kind of the foundation of what we're building. But you know, we think about what a modern computer looks like through the lens of cloud.I was at a cloud computing company for ten years prior to us founding Oxide, so was Bryan Cantrill, CTO, co-founder. And, you know, we are huge, huge fans of cloud computing, which was an interesting kind of dichotomy. Instead of conversations when we were raising for Oxide—because of course, Sand Hill is terrified of hardware. And when we think about what modern computers need to look like, they need to be in support of the characteristics of cloud, and cloud computing being not that you're renting someone else's computers, but that you have fully programmable infrastructure that allows you to slice and dice, you know, compute and storage and networking however software needs. And so, what we set out to go build was a way for the companies that are running on-premises infrastructure—which, by the way, is almost everyone and will continue to be so for a very long time—access to the benefits of cloud computing. And to do that, you need to build a different kind of computing infrastructure and architecture, and you need to plumb the whole thing with software.Corey: There are a number of different ways to view cloud computing. And I think that a lot of the, shall we say, incumbent vendors over in the computer manufacturing world tend to sound kind of like dinosaurs, on some level, where they're always talking in terms of, you're a giant company and you already have a whole bunch of data centers out there. But one of the magical pieces of cloud is you can have a ridiculous idea at nine o'clock tonight and by morning, you'll have a prototype, if you're of that bent. And if it turns out it doesn't work, you're out, you know, 27 cents. And if it does work, you can keep going and not have to stop and rebuild on something enterprise-grade.So, for the small-scale stuff and rapid iteration, cloud providers are terrific. Conversely, when you wind up in the giant fleets of millions of computers, in some cases, there begin to be economic factors that weigh in, and for some on workloads—yes, I know it's true—going to a data center is the economical choice. But my question is, is starting a new company in the direction of building these things, is it purely about economics or is there a capability story tied in there somewhere, too?Steve: Yeah, it's actually economics ends up being a distant third, fourth, in the list of needs and priorities from the companies that we're working with. When we talk about—and just to be clear we're—our demographic, that kind of the part of the market that we are focused on are large enterprises, like, folks that are spending, you know, half a billion, billion dollars a year in IT infrastructure, they, over the last five years, have moved a lot of the use cases that are great for public cloud out to the public cloud, and who still have this very, very large need, be it for latency reasons or cost reasons, security reasons, regulatory reasons, where they need on-premises infrastructure in their own data centers and colo facilities, et cetera. And it is for those workloads in that part of their infrastructure that they are forced to live with enterprise technologies that are 10, 20, 30 years old, you know, that haven't evolved much since I left Dell in 2009. And, you know, when you think about, like, what are the capabilities that are so compelling about cloud computing, one of them is yes, what you mentioned, which is you have an idea at nine o'clock at night and swipe a credit card, and you're off and running. And that is not the case for an idea that someone has who is going to use the on-premises infrastructure of their company. And this is where you get shadow IT and 16 digits to freedom and all the like.Corey: Yeah, everyone with a corporate credit card winds up being a shadow IT source in many cases. If your processes as a company don't make it easier to proceed rather than doing it the wrong way, people are going to be fighting against you every step of the way. Sometimes the only stick you've got is that of regulation, which in some industries, great, but in other cases, no, you get to play Whack-a-Mole. I've talked to too many companies that have specific scanners built into their mail system every month looking for things that look like AWS invoices.Steve: [laugh]. Right, exactly. And so, you know, but if you flip it around, and you say, well, what if the experience for all of my infrastructure that I am running, or that I want to provide to my software development teams, be it rented through AWS, GCP, Azure, or owned for economic reasons or latency reasons, I had a similar set of characteristics where my development team could hit an API endpoint and provision instances in a matter of seconds when they had an idea and only pay for what they use, back to kind of corporate IT. And what if they were able to use the same kind of developer tools they've become accustomed to using, be it Terraform scripts and the kinds of access that they are accustomed to using? How do you make those developers just as productive across the business, instead of just through public cloud infrastructure?At that point, then you are in a much stronger position where you can say, you know, for a portion of things that are, as you pointed out, you know, more unpredictable, and where I want to leverage a bunch of additional services that a particular cloud provider has, I can rent that. And where I've got more persistent workloads or where I want a different economic profile or I need to have something in a very low latency manner to another set of services, I can own it. And that's where I think the real chasm is because today, you just don't—we take for granted the basic plumbing of cloud computing, you know? Elastic Compute, Elastic Storage, you know, networking and security services. And us in the cloud industry end up wanting to talk a lot more about exotic services and, sort of, higher-up stack capabilities. None of that basic plumbing is accessible on-prem.Corey: I also am curious as to where exactly Oxide lives in the stack because I used to build computers for myself in 2000, and it seems like having gone down that path a bit recently, yeah, that process hasn't really improved all that much. The same off-the-shelf components still exist and that's great. We always used to disparagingly call spinning hard drives as spinning rust in racks. You named the company Oxide; you're talking an awful lot about the Rust programming language in public a fair bit of the time, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe words don't mean what I thought they meant anymore. Where do you folks start and stop, exactly?Steve: Yeah, that's a good question. And when we started, we sort of thought the scope of what we were going to do and then what we were going to leverage was smaller than it has turned out to be. And by that I mean, man, over the last three years, we have hit a bunch of forks in the road where we had questions about do we take something off the shelf or do we build it ourselves. And we did not try to build everything ourselves. So, to give you a sense of kind of where the dotted line is, around the Oxide product, what we're delivering to customers is a rack-level computer. So, the minimum size comes in rack form. And I think your listeners are probably pretty familiar with this. But, you know, a rack is—Corey: You would be surprised. It's basically, what are they about seven feet tall?Steve: Yeah, about eight feet tall.Corey: Yeah, yeah. Seven, eight feet, weighs a couple 1000 pounds, you know, make an insulting joke about—Steve: Two feet wide.Corey: —NBA players here. Yeah, all kinds of these things.Steve: Yeah. And big hunk of metal. And in the cases of on-premises infrastructure, it's kind of a big hunk of metal hole, and then a bunch of 1U and 2U boxes crammed into it. What the hyperscalers have done is something very different. They started looking at, you know, at the rack level, how can you get much more dense, power-efficient designs, doing things like using a DC bus bar down the back, instead of having 64 power supplies with cables hanging all over the place in a rack, which I'm sure is what you're more familiar with.Corey: Tremendous amount of weight as well because you have the metal chassis for all of those 1U things, which in some cases, you wind up with, what, 46U in a rack, assuming you can even handle the cooling needs of all that.Steve: That's right.Corey: You have so much duplication, and so much of the weight is just metal separating one thing from the next thing down below it. And there are opportunities for massive improvement, but you need to be at a certain point of scale to get there.Steve: You do. You do. And you also have to be taking on the entire problem. You can't pick at parts of these things. And that's really what we found. So, we started at this sort of—the rack level as sort of the design principle for the product itself and found that that gave us the ability to get to the right geometry, to get as much CPU horsepower and storage and throughput and networking into that kind of chassis for the least amount of wattage required, kind of the most power-efficient design possible.So, it ships at the rack level and it ships complete with both our server sled systems in Oxide, a pair of Oxide switches. This is—when I talk about, like, design decisions, you know, do we build our own switch, it was a big, big, big question early on. We were fortunate even though we were leaning towards thinking we needed to go do that, we had this prospective early investor who was early at AWS and he had asked a very tough question that none of our other investors had asked to this point, which is, “What are you going to do about the switch?”And we knew that the right answer to an investor is like, “No. We're already taking on too much.” We're redesigning a server from scratch in, kind of, the mold of what some of the hyperscalers have learned, doing our own Root of Trust, we're doing our own operating system, hypervisor control plane, et cetera. Taking on the switch could be seen as too much, but we told them, you know, we think that to be able to pull through all of the value of the security benefits and the performance and observability benefits, we can't have then this [laugh], like, obscure third-party switch rammed into this rack.Corey: It's one of those things that people don't think about, but it's the magic of cloud with AWS's network, for example, it's magic. You can get line rate—or damn near it—between any two points, sustained.Steve: That's right.Corey: Try that in the data center, you wind into massive congestion with top-of-rack switches, where, okay, we're going to parallelize this stuff out over, you know, two dozen racks and we're all going to have them seamlessly transfer information between each other at line rate. It's like, “[laugh] no, you're not because those top-of-rack switches will melt and become side-of-rack switches, and then bottom-puddle-of-rack switches. It doesn't work that way.”Steve: That's right.Corey: And you have to put a lot of thought and planning into it. That is something that I've not heard a traditional networking vendor addressing because everyone loves to hand-wave over it.Steve: Well so, and this particular prospective investor, we told him, “We think we have to go build our own switch.” And he said, “Great.” And we said, “You know, we think we're going to lose you as an investor as a result, but this is what we're doing.” And he said, “If you're building your own switch, I want to invest.” And his comment really stuck with us, which is AWS did not stand on their own two feet until they threw out their proprietary switch vendor and built their own.And that really unlocked, like you've just mentioned, like, their ability, both in hardware and software to tune and optimize to deliver that kind of line rate capability. And that is one of the big findings for us as we got into it. Yes, it was really, really hard, but based on a couple of design decisions, P4 being the programming language that we are using as the surround for our silicon, tons of opportunities opened up for us to be able to do similar kinds of optimization and observability. And that has been a big, big win.But to your question of, like, where does it stop? So, we are delivering this complete with a baked-in operating system, hypervisor, control plane. And so, the endpoint of the system, where the customer meets is either hitting an API or a CLI or a console that delivers and kind of gives you the ability to spin up projects. And, you know, if one is familiar with EC2 and EBS and VPC, that VM level of abstraction is where we stop.Corey: That, I think, is a fair way of thinking about it. And a lot of cloud folks are going to pooh-pooh it as far as saying, “Oh well, just virtual machines. That's old cloud. That just treats the cloud like a data center.” And in many cases, yes, it does because there are ways to build modern architectures that are event-driven on top of things like Lambda, and API Gateway, and the rest, but you take a look at what my customers are doing and what drives the spend, it is invariably virtual machines that are largely persistent.Sometimes they scale up, sometimes they scale down, but there's always a baseline level of load that people like to hand-wave away the fact that what they're fundamentally doing in a lot of these cases, is paying the cloud provider to handle the care and feeding of those systems, which can be expensive, yes, but also delivers significant innovation beyond what almost any company is going to be able to deliver in-house. There is no way around it. AWS is better than you are—whoever you happen to—be at replacing failed hard drives. That is a simple fact. They have teams of people who are the best in the world of replacing failed hard drives. You generally do not. They are going to be better at that than you. But that's not the only axis. There's not one calculus that leads to, is cloud a scam or is cloud a great value proposition for us? The answer is always a deeply nuanced, “It depends.”Steve: Yeah, I mean, I think cloud is a great value proposition for most and a growing amount of software that's being developed and deployed and operated. And I think, you know, one of the myths that is out there is, hey, turn over your IT to AWS because we have or you know, a cloud provider—because we have such higher caliber personnel that are really good at swapping hard drives and dealing with networks and operationally keeping this thing running in a highly available manner that delivers good performance. That is certainly true, but a lot of the operational value in an AWS is been delivered via software, the automation, the observability, and not actual people putting hands on things. And it's an important point because that's been a big part of what we're building into the product. You know, just because you're running infrastructure in your own data center, it does not mean that you should have to spend, you know, 1000 hours a month across a big team to maintain and operate it. And so, part of that, kind of, cloud, hyperscaler innovation that we're baking into this product is so that it is easier to operate with much, much, much lower overhead in a highly available, resilient manner.Corey: So, I've worked in a number of data center facilities, but the companies I was working with, were always at a scale where these were co-locations, where they would, in some cases, rent out a rack or two, in other cases, they'd rent out a cage and fill it with their own racks. They didn't own the facilities themselves. Those were always handled by other companies. So, my question for you is, if I want to get a pile of Oxide racks into my environment in a data center, what has to change? What are the expectations?I mean, yes, there's obviously going to be power and requirements at the data center colocation is very conversant with, but Open Compute, for example, had very specific requirements—to my understanding—around things like the airflow construction of the environment that they're placed within. How prescriptive is what you've built, in terms of doing a building retrofit to start using you folks?Steve: Yeah, definitely not. And this was one of the tensions that we had to balance as we were designing the product. For all of the benefits of hyperscaler computing, some of the design center for you know, the kinds of racks that run in Google and Amazon and elsewhere are hyperscaler-focused, which is unlimited power, in some cases, data centers designed around the equipment itself. And where we were headed, which was basically making hyperscaler infrastructure available to, kind of, the masses, the rest of the market, these folks don't have unlimited power and they aren't going to go be able to go redesign data centers. And so no, the experience should be—with exceptions for folks maybe that have very, very limited access to power—that you roll this rack into your existing data center. It's on standard floor tile, that you give it power, and give it networking and go.And we've spent a lot of time thinking about how we can operate in the wide-ranging environmental characteristics that are commonplace in data centers that focus on themselves, colo facilities, and the like. So, that's really on us so that the customer is not having to go to much work at all to kind of prepare and be ready for it.Corey: One of the challenges I have is how to think about what you've done because you are rack-sized. But what that means is that my own experimentation at home recently with on-prem stuff for smart home stuff involves a bunch of Raspberries Pi and a [unintelligible 00:19:42], but I tend to more or less categorize you the same way that I do AWS Outposts, as well as mythical creatures, like unicorns or giraffes, where I don't believe that all these things actually exist because I haven't seen them. And in fact, to get them in my house, all four of those things would theoretically require a loading dock if they existed, and that's a hard thing to fake on a demo signup form, as it turns out. How vaporware is what you've built? Is this all on paper and you're telling amazing stories or do they exist in the wild?Steve: So, last time we were on, it was all vaporware. It was a couple of napkin drawings and a seed round of funding.Corey: I do recall you not using that description at the time, for what it's worth. Good job.Steve: [laugh]. Yeah, well, at least we were transparent where we were going through the race. We had some napkin drawings and we had some good ideas—we thought—and—Corey: You formalize those and that's called Microsoft PowerPoint.Steve: That's it. A hundred percent.Corey: The next generative AI play is take the scrunched-up, stained napkin drawing, take a picture of it, and convert it to a slide.Steve: Google Docs, you know, one of those. But no, it's got a lot of scars from the build and it is real. In fact, next week, we are going to be shipping our first commercial systems. So, we have got a line of racks out in our manufacturing facility in lovely Rochester, Minnesota. Fun fact: Rochester, Minnesota, is where the IBM AS/400s were built.Corey: I used to work in that market, of all things.Steve: Really?Corey: Selling tape drives in the AS/400. I mean, I still maintain there's no real mainframe migration to the cloud play because there's no AWS/400. A joke that tends to sail over an awful lot of people's heads because, you know, most people aren't as miserable in their career choices as I am.Steve: Okay, that reminds me. So, when we were originally pitching Oxide and we were fundraising, we [laugh]—in a particular investor meeting, they asked, you know, “What would be a good comp? Like how should we think about what you are doing?” And fortunately, we had about 20 investor meetings to go through, so burning one on this was probably okay, but we may have used the AS/400 as a comp, talking about how [laugh] mainframe systems did such a good job of building hardware and software together. And as you can imagine, there were some blank stares in that room.But you know, there are some good analogs to historically in the computing industry, when you know, the industry, the major players in the industry, were thinking about how to deliver holistic systems to support end customers. And, you know, we see this in the what Apple has done with the iPhone, and you're seeing this as a lot of stuff in the automotive industry is being pulled in-house. I was listening to a good podcast. Jim Farley from Ford was talking about how the automotive industry historically outsourced all of the software that controls cars, right? So, like, Bosch would write the software for the controls for your seats.And they had all these suppliers that were writing the software, and what it meant was that innovation was not possible because you'd have to go out to suppliers to get software changes for any little change you wanted to make. And in the computing industry, in the 80s, you saw this blow apart where, like, firmware got outsourced. In the IBM and the clones, kind of, race, everyone started outsourcing firmware and outsourcing software. Microsoft started taking over operating systems. And then VMware emerged and was doing a virtualization layer.And this, kind of, fragmented ecosystem is the landscape today that every single on-premises infrastructure operator has to struggle with. It's a kit car. And so, pulling it back together, designing things in a vertically integrated manner is what the hyperscalers have done. And so, you mentioned Outposts. And, like, it's a good example of—I mean, the most public cloud of public cloud companies created a way for folks to get their system on-prem.I mean, if you need anything to underscore the draw and the demand for cloud computing-like, infrastructure on-prem, just the fact that that emerged at all tells you that there is this big need. Because you've got, you know, I don't know, a trillion dollars worth of IT infrastructure out there and you have maybe 10% of it in the public cloud. And that's up from 5% when Jassy was on stage in '21, talking about 95% of stuff living outside of AWS, but there's going to be a giant market of customers that need to own and operate infrastructure. And again, things have not improved much in the last 10 or 20 years for them.Corey: They have taken a tone onstage about how, “Oh, those workloads that aren't in the cloud, yet, yeah, those people are legacy idiots.” And I don't buy that for a second because believe it or not—I know that this cuts against what people commonly believe in public—but company execs are generally not morons, and they make decisions with context and constraints that we don't see. Things are the way they are for a reason. And I promise that 90% of corporate IT workloads that still live on-prem are not being managed or run by people who've never heard of the cloud. There was a decision made when some other things were migrating of, do we move this thing to the cloud or don't we? And the answer at the time was no, we're going to keep this thing on-prem where it is now for a variety of reasons of varying validity. But I don't view that as a bug. I also, frankly, don't want to live in a world where all the computers are basically run by three different companies.Steve: You're spot on, which is, like, it does a total disservice to these smart and forward-thinking teams in every one of the Fortune 1000-plus companies who are taking the constraints that they have—and some of those constraints are not monetary or entirely workload-based. If you want to flip it around, we were talking to a large cloud SaaS company and their reason for wanting to extend it beyond the public cloud is because they want to improve latency for their e-commerce platform. And navigating their way through the complex layers of the networking stack at GCP to get to where the customer assets are that are in colo facilities, adds lag time on the platform that can cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. And so, we need to think behind this notion of, like, “Oh, well, the dark ages are for software that can't run in the cloud, and that's on-prem. And it's just a matter of time until everything moves to the cloud.”In the forward-thinking models of public cloud, it should be both. I mean, you should have a consistent experience, from a certain level of the stack down, everywhere. And then it's like, do I want to rent or do I want to own for this particular use case? In my vast set of infrastructure needs, do I want this to run in a data center that Amazon runs or do I want this to run in a facility that is close to this other provider of mine? And I think that's best for all. And then it's not this kind of false dichotomy of quality infrastructure or ownership.Corey: I find that there are also workloads where people will come to me and say, “Well, we don't think this is going to be economical in the cloud”—because again, I focus on AWS bills. That is the lens I view things through, and—“The AWS sales rep says it will be. What do you think?” And I look at what they're doing and especially if involves high volumes of data transfer, I laugh a good hearty laugh and say, “Yeah, keep that thing in the data center where it is right now. You will thank me for it later.”It's, “Well, can we run this in an economical way in AWS?” As long as you're okay with economical meaning six times what you're paying a year right now for the same thing, yeah, you can. I wouldn't recommend it. And the numbers sort of speak for themselves. But it's not just an economic play.There's also the story of, does this increase their capability? Does it let them move faster toward their business goals? And in a lot of cases, the answer is no, it doesn't. It's one of those business process things that has to exist for a variety of reasons. You don't get to reimagine it for funsies and even if you did, it doesn't advance the company in what they're trying to do any, so focus on something that differentiates as opposed to this thing that you're stuck on.Steve: That's right. And what we see today is, it is easy to be in that mindset of running things on-premises is kind of backwards-facing because the experience of it is today still very, very difficult. I mean, talking to folks and they're sharing with us that it takes a hundred days from the time all the different boxes land in their warehouse to actually having usable infrastructure that developers can use. And our goal and what we intend to go hit with Oxide as you can roll in this complete rack-level system, plug it in, within an hour, you have developers that are accessing cloud-like services out of the infrastructure. And that—God, countless stories of firmware bugs that would send all the fans in the data center nonlinear and soak up 100 kW of power.Corey: Oh, God. And the problems that you had with the out-of-band management systems. For a long time, I thought Drax stood for, “Dell, RMA Another Computer.” It was awful having to deal with those things. There was so much room for innovation in that space, which no one really grabbed onto.Steve: There was a really, really interesting talk at DEFCON that we just stumbled upon yesterday. The NVIDIA folks are giving a talk on BMC exploits… and like, a very, very serious BMC exploit. And again, it's what most people don't know is, like, first of all, the BMC, the Baseboard Management Controller, is like the brainstem of the computer. It has access to—it's a backdoor into all of your infrastructure. It's a computer inside a computer and it's got software and hardware that your server OEM didn't build and doesn't understand very well.And firmware is even worse because you know, firmware written by you know, an American Megatrends or other is a big blob of software that gets loaded into these systems that is very hard to audit and very hard to ascertain what's happening. And it's no surprise when, you know, back when we were running all the data centers at a cloud computing company, that you'd run into these issues, and you'd go to the server OEM and they'd kind of throw their hands up. Well, first they'd gaslight you and say, “We've never seen this problem before,” but when you thought you've root-caused something down to firmware, it was anyone's guess. And this is kind of the current condition today. And back to, like, the journey to get here, we kind of realized that you had to blow away that old extant firmware layer, and we rewrote our own firmware in Rust. Yes [laugh], I've done a lot in Rust.Corey: No, it was in Rust, but, on some level, that's what Nitro is, as best I can tell, on the AWS side. But it turns out that you don't tend to have the same resources as a one-and-a-quarter—at the moment—trillion-dollar company. That keeps [valuing 00:30:53]. At one point, they lost a comma and that was sad and broke all my logic for that and I haven't fixed it since. Unfortunate stuff.Steve: Totally. I think that was another, kind of, question early on from certainly a lot of investors was like, “Hey, how are you going to pull this off with a smaller team and there's a lot of surface area here?” Certainly a reasonable question. Definitely was hard. The one advantage—among others—is, when you are designing something kind of in a vertical holistic manner, those design integration points are narrowed down to just your equipment.And when someone's writing firmware, when AMI is writing firmware, they're trying to do it to cover hundreds and hundreds of components across dozens and dozens of vendors. And we have the advantage of having this, like, purpose-built system, kind of, end-to-end from the lowest level from first boot instruction, all the way up through the control plane and from rack to switch to server. That definitely helped narrow the scope.Corey: This episode has been fake sponsored by our friends at AWS with the following message: Graviton Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton. Thank you for your l-, lack of support for this show. Now, AWS has been talking about Graviton an awful lot, which is their custom in-house ARM processor. Apple moved over to ARM and instead of talking about benchmarks they won't publish and marketing campaigns with words that don't mean anything, they've let the results speak for themselves. In time, I found that almost all of my workloads have moved over to ARM architecture for a variety of reason, and my laptop now gets 15 hours of battery life when all is said and done. You're building these things on top of x86. What is the deal there? I do not accept that if that you hadn't heard of ARM until just now because, as mentioned, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton.Steve: That's right. Well, so why x86, to start? And I say to start because we have just launched our first generation products. And our first-generation or second-generation products that we are now underway working on are going to be x86 as well. We've built this system on AMD Milan silicon; we are going to be launching a Genoa sled.But when you're thinking about what silicon to use, obviously, there's a bunch of parts that go into the decision. You're looking at the kind of applicability to workload, performance, power management, for sure, and if you carve up what you are trying to achieve, x86 is still a terrific fit for the broadest set of workloads that our customers are trying to solve for. And choosing which x86 architecture was certainly an easier choice, come 2019. At this point, AMD had made a bunch of improvements in performance and energy efficiency in the chip itself. We've looked at other architectures and I think as we are incorporating those in the future roadmap, it's just going to be a question of what are you trying to solve for.You mentioned power management, and that is kind of commonly been a, you know, low power systems is where folks have gone beyond x86. Is we're looking forward to hardware acceleration products and future products, we'll certainly look beyond x86, but x86 has a long, long road to go. It still is kind of the foundation for what, again, is a general-purpose cloud infrastructure for being able to slice and dice for a variety of workloads.Corey: True. I have to look around my environment and realize that Intel is not going anywhere. And that's not just an insult to their lack of progress on committed roadmaps that they consistently miss. But—Steve: [sigh].Corey: Enough on that particular topic because we want to keep this, you know, polite.Steve: Intel has definitely had some struggles for sure. They're very public ones, I think. We were really excited and continue to be very excited about their Tofino silicon line. And this came by way of the Barefoot networks acquisition. I don't know how much you had paid attention to Tofino, but what was really, really compelling about Tofino is the focus on both hardware and software and programmability.So, great chip. And P4 is the programming language that surrounds that. And we have gotten very, very deep on P4, and that is some of the best tech to come out of Intel lately. But from a core silicon perspective for the rack, we went with AMD. And again, that was a pretty straightforward decision at the time. And we're planning on having this anchored around AMD silicon for a while now.Corey: One last question I have before we wind up calling it an episode, it seems—at least as of this recording, it's still embargoed, but we're not releasing this until that winds up changing—you folks have just raised another round, which means that your napkin doodles have apparently drawn more folks in, and now that you're shipping, you're also not just bringing in customers, but also additional investor money. Tell me about that.Steve: Yes, we just completed our Series A. So, when we last spoke three years ago, we had just raised our seed and had raised $20 million at the time, and we had expected that it was going to take about that to be able to build the team and build the product and be able to get to market, and [unintelligible 00:36:14] tons of technical risk along the way. I mean, there was technical risk up and down the stack around this [De Novo 00:36:21] server design, this the switch design. And software is still the kind of disproportionate majority of what this product is, from hypervisor up through kind of control plane, the cloud services, et cetera. So—Corey: We just view it as software with a really, really confusing hardware dongle.Steve: [laugh]. Yeah. Yes.Corey: Super heavy. We're talking enterprise and government-grade here.Steve: That's right. There's a lot of software to write. And so, we had a bunch of milestones that as we got through them, one of the big ones was getting Milan silicon booting on our firmware. It was funny it was—this was the thing that clearly, like, the industry was most suspicious of, us doing our own firmware, and you could see it when we demonstrated booting this, like, a year-and-a-half ago, and AMD all of a sudden just lit up, from kind of arm's length to, like, “How can we help? This is amazing.” You know? And they could start to see the benefits of when you can tie low-level silicon intelligence up through a hypervisor there's just—Corey: No I love the existing firmware I have. Looks like it was written in 1984 and winds up having terrible user ergonomics that hasn't been updated at all, and every time something comes through, it's a 50/50 shot as whether it fries the box or not. Yeah. No, I want that.Steve: That's right. And you look at these hyperscale data centers, and it's like, no. I mean, you've got intelligence from that first boot instruction through a Root of Trust, up through the software of the hyperscaler, and up to the user level. And so, as we were going through and kind of knocking down each one of these layers of the stack, doing our own firmware, doing our own hardware Root of Trust, getting that all the way plumbed up into the hypervisor and the control plane, number one on the customer side, folks moved from, “This is really interesting. We need to figure out how we can bring cloud capabilities to our data centers. Talk to us when you have something,” to, “Okay. We actually”—back to the earlier question on vaporware, you know, it was great having customers out here to Emeryville where they can put their hands on the rack and they can, you know, put your hands on software, but being able to, like, look at real running software and that end cloud experience.And that led to getting our first couple of commercial contracts. So, we've got some great first customers, including a large department of the government, of the federal government, and a leading firm on Wall Street that we're going to be shipping systems to in a matter of weeks. And as you can imagine, along with that, that drew a bunch of renewed interest from the investor community. Certainly, a different climate today than it was back in 2019, but what was great to see is, you still have great investors that understand the importance of making bets in the hard tech space and in companies that are looking to reinvent certain industries. And so, we added—our existing investors all participated. We added a bunch of terrific new investors, both strategic and institutional.And you know, this capital is going to be super important now that we are headed into market and we are beginning to scale up the business and make sure that we have a long road to go. And of course, maybe as importantly, this was a real confidence boost for our customers. They're excited to see that Oxide is going to be around for a long time and that they can invest in this technology as an important part of their infrastructure strategy.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me about, well, how far you've come in a few years. If people want to learn more and have the requisite loading dock, where should they go to find you?Steve: So, we try to put everything up on the site. So, oxidecomputer.com or oxide.computer. We also, if you remember, we did [On the Metal 00:40:07]. So, we had a Tales from the Hardware-Software Interface podcast that we did when we started. We have shifted that to Oxide and Friends, which the shift there is we're spending a little bit more time talking about the guts of what we built and why. So, if folks are interested in, like, why the heck did you build a switch and what does it look like to build a switch, we actually go to depth on that. And you know, what does bring-up on a new server motherboard look like? And it's got some episodes out there that might be worth checking out.Corey: We will definitely include a link to that in the [show notes 00:40:36]. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.Steve: Yeah, Corey. Thanks for having me on.Corey: Steve Tuck, CEO at Oxide Computer Company. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this episode, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry ranting comment because you are in fact a zoology major, and you're telling me that some animals do in fact exist. But I'm pretty sure of the two of them, it's the unicorn.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Tuesday 7/26/22 Hour 1 - Steve is okay with the College Football Playoff potentially expanding to 16 teams, and USA Today's Neal Coolong says the Steelers 'have the raw talent.'

I have had my head down working on some big things, and it has been a while since you heard from me. Well, I'm getting back to it with a follow-up chat with Toby Bowers, the Leader of the Microsoft Bizapps ISV Program. I managed to catch him in his car, and got a great update on some new things happening in the ISV arena. Enjoy! Transcript Below: Toby: Hi, this is Toby. Steve: Hey Toby, Steve Mordue, how's it going? Toby: Hey, Steve. I'm doing well. Thanks. How are you? Steve: Not too bad. I catch you at a decent time? Toby: You've caught me at a fine time. I'm actually in the car at the moment. I'm just taking my team out for a little celebratory launch after our big Inspire event and also our Ready event earlier this week. So it's actually a good time. Let me just pull over so we can have a chat. Steve: It's Been a pretty frantic couple of weeks for you guys. Toby: Frantic, but good. Yeah. Yeah. We had a great showing at Inspire. We made some exciting announcements across the business applications business, but especially around our ISV program, ISV Connect, as you and I have chatted about before. So, it's been good. Steve: Well that's [crosstalk 00:00:50]- Toby: How about you [crosstalk 00:00:51]. Steve: [crosstalk 00:00:51] the reason for my call is to try and catch up on ISV Connect. We talked some time ago about some things that you kind of had just inherited this role from Googs who moved on and were kind of getting your feet wet. Now you've had a close to a year in this position, right? Toby: Yeah, that's right. That's right. I remember our initial chat and I think in fact I'm guilty, Steve, because we agreed to speak a little bit more often, but it's been an interesting year this past year, as we all know, but yeah, it's been almost a full year of execution since we last spoke and I even remember Steve, the nice article you wrote with some suggestions for me as I sort of took over. Toby: Yeah, I'd love to actually go back to that. We can talk about a little bit about some of the enhancements and announcements that we made last week. Steve: Yeah. I mean last week, I think for a lot of the ISV's that they weren't thrilled with some things as the program got launched, they were starting to kind of get their arms around it. But some of these announcements that I was hearing and hopefully we can talk about today, anything of course isn't NDA, I think should make the ISV community pretty happy. It's making me pretty happy. And really kind of throw some gas on that fire. Toby: Yeah. Well, absolutely. I'd love to reinforce it. I know, I know you get a lot of people listening to your impromptu calls here. So why don't I do this? Let me maybe just set a little bit of context, just kind of where we left off Steve, and then I can hit on the high notes of what we announced and then we can dive into any particular areas. That sound all right? Steve: Yeah. You are pulled over, right? Toby: I am pulled over now, yes. Steve: Okay. Toby: You got my full attention. Steve: All right sure, kind of hit some of the highlights. Toby: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, for those who don't know, we originally set out with the ISV Connect program a couple of years ago to attract ISV's to our platform, building and extending upon it. That platform being both Dynamics 365 and the power platform with a specific focus on partners who had great industry or vertical IP to enhance the portfolio and delivering better value to our joint customers. So through the program itself, it's a revenue share program and we reinvest back in the ecosystem in the form of platform benefits, go to market benefits, co-selling with our field. Toby: So when I sort of took over Steve, I wanted to sort of get a full year of execution in place. And in that first year we were pretty happy with the numbers. We have over 700 ISV's enrolled in the program. Now we use AppSource as sort of the cornerstone of the program. We have, we have 1400 apps or more certified in AppSource. But after that first year, I really with the team wanted to understand how things were landing, and I think your feedback was good Steve. We did a bunch of research. We do partner satisfaction surveys. I of course talked to a lot of partners in my travels. Steve: [crosstalk 00:03:59] in a year's time, you can kind of get a pretty good gauge on what was working well? What could work better? What wasn't working well? What do we need to just abandon? What do we need to step on? And I kind of got the feeling that was this readjustment that we just saw was kind of bringing some of those things to light. Toby: That's exactly right Steve. I mean, it's such a diverse ecosystem of emerging partners to large mature partners across a pretty vast portfolio. So, it was a diverse set of feedback, but you're spot on. We wanted to give it a little bit of time, but then check in and listen and make some adjustments. So that's what we did, based on a lot of the feedback we got. Toby: I'd sort of summarize what we changed in three big areas Steve, the first is that the business model itself, the fee structure, and we talked about this last time, but not only having an investible model where you can reinvest, but actually investing in the ecosystem, especially as it's growing like this business is growing. Toby: The second thing was a lot of feedback around the go to market, whether it was the marketing benefits, the co-selling with our field, really just getting that value proposition right Steve, and really delivering on the promise we made. We needed to balance that equation a little bit and equalize the effort. Toby: And then the third piece is really around the platform itself. And again, we've talked about this in the past, but just the platform, the tooling, dev test environments, app sources, and marketplace itself. Toby: So those were the three key areas that we sort of listened and got a lot of good feedback around. So with that in mind, what we actually announced at the event is that first of all, back on the business model we're significantly reducing the rev share fees down from 10 and 20%, which you might recall, we had a standard tier and a premium tier. So we were bringing those fees down from 10 and 20% to 3%, just a flat 3% going forward. Steve: That's across the board? Toby: That's across the board. And in fact, it was part of a broader announcement we made as Microsoft, Steve, where we're also bringing our commercial marketplace fees, so that's both Azure Marketplace and app sources. We get transact capabilities down to that same flat 3%. Steve: So what's the motivation behind that? I mean, what is it that they're hoping that will accomplish for Microsoft? Toby: Yeah, it's interesting. If you catch any of the sessions, even starting with Satya, he really talks about Microsoft wanting to be the platform for platform creators. And then if you parlay that into what Nick Parker said and Charlotte Marconi around being the best platform for partners to do business on, it really just came down to helping the partners keep more of their margin to invest in their growth. Toby: So it's not a P&L, a profit center for Microsoft. It's a way to deliver benefits. We think it's pretty differentiated in the market compared to some of our peers. And it was sort of interesting to see, because we were planning on bringing the fees down for ISV Connect specifically, and then we started to align across the organization and just thought, gosh, we should just do this in a very consistent way across the entire Microsoft Cloud with that one flat 3%. Steve: So the math equation had to work out something like, if we dropped this to 3%, that's going to grow that side of the business significantly, which is going to increase platform sales, right? There has to be an up for the down. And I guess maybe... I mean, not that the platform wasn't already growing by leaps and bounds, but somebody must've been thinking this thing can grow a lot faster if we get rid of some of these hurdles. Toby: You're exactly right. I mean, it's kind of what we've talked about in the past. Just the value that an ISV ecosystem brings to Microsoft with that, whether it's the industry relevance, industry specific IP, or just a growing ecosystem in general. I don't know if you'd caught what we just did, our earnings earlier this week, but Dynamics 365 is growing 43% year over year, we doubled our power apps customer base. And so to your point, the business is growing, the platform is growing, and we want the ecosystem to grow and we want to attract as many partners to do that as possible. Steve: So, I mean, you can't reduce fees and increase the benefit, you have to have taken some things away or maybe gotten rid of some things that weren't being utilized, or how did that kind of offset? Toby: Yeah. Great question. Yeah, so we are investing deliberately to build this out and kind of putting our money where our mouth is, but we did, you're spot on. We learned a lot around the benefits, the go to market benefits in particular, the second key thing we announced is that we are reducing just down to one tier at that flat 3%. So no more 10% and 20% or a standard and a premium tier. And we're reducing the thresholds within that one tier for partners to unlock those go to market benefits and those marketing benefits. And then what I heard, especially from partners, again, to my point around, you've got some mature partners and some emerging partners, it's not a one size fits all. And so we've got an option sort of an, a lA carte, option for partners to choose marketing benefits that make the most sense for their business. So we just tried to simplify things and streamline things a little bit. Steve: You know, I talked to a lot of partners. We're, kind of unique in that our application is free. So, the revenue shared didn't really come into play for what we were doing because there wasn't a fee for our app or any recurring services with it. But you know, a lot of these ISV's their business is significantly different. They've got revenue generating applications that run on top of your platform. Many of them that kind of told me in confidence that they just weren't paying the fees. They were getting the notice from Microsoft saying, "Hey, please do us a favor and tell us how much money you've made and what you owe us." And many of them were just kind of ignoring that. Steve: I guess if we're getting down into a 3% range, it'd probably make it a little easier for some people to be more honest about things too you think? Toby: Yeah. Well, yeah we hope so. Again, that was kind of my point around balancing the equation and making sure that we're delivering on the promise that we set out with the program itself. And I talked to a lot of partners as well, and there's definitely benefit being realized, whether it's from a marketing perspective or co-selling with our field, again, based on what's important to their business, but you're right, we do think by reducing it to this level and also just getting better at delivering the benefits in a consistent way, we'll have more partners participating in the program. Toby: The one thing I would say, Steve, that I was just going to close off on with this sort of consistency across Microsoft is we also realized that's our value proposition. If we can not only have a similar model with the 3% marketplace fee and ISV Connect fees across Microsoft, but a similar model to the way we deliver those benefits, to the way we engage with technical resources or engage from a co-selling perspective across Azure Teams and 365 Dynamics Power Platform, that's kind of how we differentiate ourselves versus, the rest of the players out in the market. Toby: So we made a bunch of enhancements and announcements across the business Azure teams, ISV Connect obviously, and you'll see us continue to sort of work towards a much more consistent approach from a Microsoft Cloud perspective, because obviously we'd love it if partners were integrating with Teams. We have over 250 million monthly active users with Teams now driving dynamics integrations all the way through to CDM and Dataverse and integration into Azure Synapse. Those are the partners we want to work with and the type of partners we want to support and go to market with. Steve: Well, I'll tell you, I think the 3% has probably eliminated a hurdle for a partner, certainly I remember at the time a lot of partners complaining about the 10 and 20 saying things like, "If it was like three." Okay, well it's three now, so shut up and move forward. Toby: Yeah. We've had a lot of- Steve: And it's interesting, because it's kind of the way we sell is I guess for an industry ISV who built something specifically for Dynamics 365, maybe they approach things a little different. Our approach is more, we really try and sell the potential of the platform because we've got a simple CRM. So we're up against a lot of competing simple CRMs. And when you open one of their CRMs and open, rapid start, for example, they look very similar and do very similar things. So for us, we really have to sell the value proposition of, hey, behind that little CRM that you're using from Acme Cloud CRM company is really nothing. You've got the extent of what you can do with that right there in front of you and there's nothing more that can be done, and we really lean in hard on the potential for things like integration with Teams, with things like integration with Azure. Steve: Obviously the integration with Microsoft 365, all of the pieces that are available in the power platform that we haven't enabled in our app that are there to be enabled, you like the forums and some of the AI stuff, it definitely seems to be a huge differentiator in that sales conversation. Toby: Yeah. Well, that's great to hear that's really what we're trying to get right and stitch together the teams if they exist across Microsoft and iron those out. I think your company is a great example of that Steve, and I know you talked to a bunch of our partners and sort of as an independent third party, we had a few partners join us at inspire. Icertis has been a longstanding partner of ours. They're a similar story from, from Azure Dynamics Teams really across the board, and getting more and more focused on industry solutions with their particular IP. Toby: And then we had more emerging partners like Karma, Frank at Karma talked to us about some of the benefits we're building into the platform, specifically license management, and now he's taken advantage of that. And we have big partners like Sycor, that's been working with us for a long time on the Azure side of the business and is doing some really interesting things now on the dynamic side and sees value in that co-sell motion. Toby: So I think that value prop is what we're trying to land, and then we're seeing lots of different types of partners take advantage of it in different ways, which is great to see. Steve: Yeah, it's not often that you see both a cost of participation come down and the value of the benefits go up. And when we talk about benefits, and before, you and I have talked about some of these go to market benefits, there's a segment of ISV's that could make use of those probably mostly new ISV's that don't really understand that system. Steve: But for a lot of the ISV's, they really didn't see value there, but in the meantime they're maintaining their own licensing systems and their own transaction systems and things like that, which as an ISV, that's just like a tax. You're building your solution to solve a particular problem, but you can't just stop after you built this wonderful solution, you got to protect it, you got to monetize it. So those things ended up being just kind of attacks. Steve: And, every ISV out there has had to kind of build their own system for licensing and transacting. And you guys coming through now recently here would be with the licensing capability we were in that pilot, and that thing's got some great potential, a couple of things left for them to do on that to get that really where it's going to solve a lot of problems that ISV's have had, even with their own licensing. Steve: Because with your own external licensing system, you can only do so much, but working with one that's on the platform, that's essentially the same one you guys are utilizing, is going to be huge for ISV's, and then we'll get to transactability, that's just going to close another piece that ISV's have had to deal with, especially when you talk about those startup ISV's, they know an industry and they can build an app, but when it comes to licensing and transacting, and if they can just tick a button and plug right into a couple of those things, that's going to lower the bar to entry and make it a lot easier for some of those folks to get in I think. Toby: Yeah, I hope that you're right Steve, in fact, I didn't know you were working with Julian Payor and the team on piloting the license management stuff. It's great to hear your feedback. That was kind of the whole intent with the journey. If I rewind a bit with AppSource itself, you'll recall we had to do quite a bit of work on the overall user experience for AppSource. We worked hard with the engineering team to improve that, improve discoverability and search capabilities and just sort of the plumbing underneath. And then the next step was, was licensed management, which we've just GA'd working again with the engineering team, and then from there, to your point, the value proposition, a lot of ISV's put all this together and then you add transactability and the ability to actually sell your stuff on our marketplace to what's now more than 4 million monthly shoppers, going to that destination is it is definitely a point of value that I've heard positive feedback from ISV's on. Toby: So that's why we really invested there. I know it's taking us a little bit of time to get there, but that was another key announcement. We announced license management later in the fiscal year. We'll have translatability and AppSource for our customer engagement apps, for power apps, and then we'll continue to roll out a roadmap from there. Toby: And then the other piece I forgot to mention Steve, we made some noise about as well, was these new sandbox environments. And I know you've given me this feedback before, but you know, sort of in the broader internal use rights world, the value in having sandbox environments for our partners to do dev tests and do customer demos around, I heard loud and clear from you and from other partners. And so that's the other thing we announced. We have these new discounted skews, which are basically just at cost skews across the business for those dev test environments. And then for partners who are participating in ISV Connect and hitting those new lower reduced rev share thresholds, we'll provide those licenses for free. Toby: So we think that's going to be a great new benefit for partners as well, more on that technical and platform side of things. Steve: Yeah. Particularly for the ISV's, because ISV's don't necessarily see a lot of value or need to get Microsoft competencies. Competencies are definitely, as a program that was designed for resellers to demonstrate their competence. But a lot of ISV's don't want to have a need for that. And that's where [inaudible 00:19:22] had historically kind of been tied was to those competencies. Steve: So is there any talk about any sort of... I mean, they did do that kind of short-lived ISV competency, which was primarily around, hey, if you've got an app in AppSource you qualify. Here's some IUR. Steve: So this new program will replace that, but are they going to be revisiting any sort ISV competencies or need? Toby: Yeah, well I won't say too much as far as future plans are concerned, but what I can say Steve is that we did this for biz apps, we did it for ISV Connect because that's our program and we got feedback and we think there's value in that. Toby: I did mention that going forward we'll have a more consistent approach across Microsoft Cloud. There's lots of different benefits out there. Azure Credits, we announced some new things around Teams. And so we just need to, as one Microsoft, provide that to our partners in a consistent delivery through these benefits so that we can support that kind of value proposition we talked about earlier. So look for more from us in that area. You're spot on, on the competency side. And I wouldn't even say resellers, I'd say more SI, system integrators services partners. Steve: Yeah. Toby: The key difference there is, we want those guys to be able to differentiate their organization. As a company, you can say, "I've got 15 certified individuals in this role-based certification. And I've got this many credits to my business that make me a gold partner at an organization level"- Steve: Which is something a customer looking at SI would be looking for. Toby: Right. Steve: But when you're looking at an ISV solution, they're really just looking at the functionality. Toby: It's the app, right? You would want to badge in app versus badge and organization. And so that's the key difference there. And I think we've kind of figured that out and again, you'll see us do more in that space going forward. Steve: Yeah. I just want to mention, just go back for a second to make sure everybody is aware that the transactability and the licensing are optional. These are things that you can take advantage of if you spend a ton of money on your own systems, nobody's going to expect you to rip and replace. These are really designed for... I mean when I think of a partner like myself, if I can get out of the license management and have transactability just be automatic, where all I really have to do is focus on building my IP, getting it in AppSource, hopefully promoting it properly, but then the licensing becomes automatic and the transactability becomes automatic, and I'm just getting money coming into my account. Of course, you guys are scraping your 3%, which I don't begrudge because your given me those tools. That just makes things a lot easier. Toby: That's right. And you're right, it's not mandatory. It's again what makes sense for the partner. And so, you can do business with us and ISV Connect outside of the marketplace and work with us on the new 3%, get those benefits, or you can transact in the marketplace, it's that same 3%. And it's a different benefit. You get that whole commerce system, you get that whole billing engine. You don't have to worry about that. And there's a lot of ISV's out there that see value in that. So yeah, you're spot on. Steve: Yeah. I remember Goose had kind of recharacterized the revenue share after the kind of flap up from some of the ISV's about the benefits and stuff and he recharacterized it as a cost for the use of the platform that you're building on top of a platform that Microsoft has built, Microsoft maintains, Microsoft advances. So look at that as a cost for that. And I think you still kind of need to look at that as a cost for that. It's not 3% for licensing and transactability, it's a cost for maintaining the platform, there's these pieces you can take advantage of or not. But if you're not taking advantage of license management, transactability, it doesn't mean you don't have to pay the fee. You're paying the fee for something else. Toby: Yeah. Steve: I'm trying to head off some things I know I may hear from some folks [inaudible 00:23:24] licensing. No, no, no. Toby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. You're right, Steve, and again, to zoom back out again, I mean, it's not about the 3%, it's about attracting partners to build on the broader Microsoft Cloud and supporting their business in a way that works for them. And you're right, there is a cost of doing that, but we want to invest, and I think we just sent a message hopefully to the market that we want to be aggressive in this space, we think we're well positioned, we've got a great value proposition with this broader Microsoft Cloud thing that we're just seeing incredible growth across the business. Toby: And I guess most importantly, we're listening back to that, after a full year, really sort of staying in tune to feedback from partners like yourself, that [inaudible 00:24:07] at large to make sure that we're doing the right thing and delivering, that's kind of what was most important to me. Steve: So those discounted skews for ISV's, in order to qualify for that, what do they need to do? They need to join ISV Connect? Toby: Yeah. So the discounted licenses, which are again, just basically at cost for us, are available to anyone who's enrolled in ISV Connect. All you need to do is enroll in the program, but then if you hit the new reduced rev share threshold that sort of unlocks additional benefits, then we'll give those licenses to you for free. And I can't here in the car, remember all the details of the numbers and stuff like that, I think, and you probably have it. I think aka.ms.bizapp.ISV connect, I think that's a link to our website that has all the benefit details and stuff, but that's basically the way it works. Steve: Are those available today? Toby: They are. There's a whole bunch of them available today and there's more coming. I know that the sales service, field service, marketing, I think the customer insights products, maybe commerce, I might be forgetting a few others and then there's more coming down the pike shortly. Steve: All right. So a good reason for people to go back to revisit ISV Connect site if they haven't in a while. Toby: I would love that. Yeah, I think so. If we can get people to go back and like you said, revisit, just get educated, hopefully get re-engaged and then keep the feedback coming. That's a great outcome. Steve: So I've had a few ISV's asking me about what's the future of ISV Embed, and maybe you can speak to that because that one's kind of a little vague, I think, for a lot of folks right now. Toby: Yeah. It's a great question Steve, that's kind of next, next on our list. And again, today I can't share a lot of specifics, but this is a good topic for us to come back to probably in our regular chats. Toby: As you know, Cloud Embed is a model that supports kind of like an OEM like model where a partner's just packaging their IP directly on the underlying license and selling it together through our ISV Cloud Embed program, which leverages our CSP vehicle as a way to transact. And so we've had it out there for a couple of years. And I may have mentioned before that we're sort of modernizing a whole bunch of our commerce capabilities and new business models and so we're working on a few different options still to support that embed scenario where things like co-selling with our field or certain other marketing benefits aren't the most important thing for a particular ISV in a particular scenario, they don't want to have to mess with reselling the underlying dynamics license. They're not resellers. They just want to sell their IP. Steve: Yeah. Toby: So we're working on some stuff there, especially, on both the core dynamics business and the power platform business. So we can stay in touch and I can come back to you for some feedback once we have more to share. Steve: Yeah. That, I mean, that program worked for a particular kind of an ISV. Toby: Yeah. Steve: A lot of the ISV's that have add on solutions that are not SI's, there's a partner already involved with a customer and they just want to sell their add on solution. Steve: Yeah. Licenses have probably already been sold by that partner. They don't want or need to get involved in that management of that sort of stuff. They just want to sell their IP. And then there's some ISV's that the customer is actually buying, which I think we're starting to see now. And I think I told you this before, one of the things that Salesforce had going for them with their ISV's was there were a lot of very robust ISV's that did a lot of direct marketing to customers about their solution and less so about the fact that it ran on Salesforce. Steve: Salesforce is this platform in the background, but this is what we're selling is this ISV solution, and in that scenario they own the customer because the customer wasn't buying Salesforce, they really were buying the solution to their problem for this ISV, and we hadn't seen as much of that on the dynamic side for a long time. It was definitely, you start with dynamics and then you add on ISV features and capabilities. But I think we're starting to see more of that, that holistic ISV solution that a customer is buying the solution that happens to run on the power platform or on dynamics. Toby: Totally. That's the scenario we see mutual opportunity in. That example, you said where the ISV owns the partner or the customer, the relationship with the customer, frankly that helps us reach more customers as Microsoft. And then if we provide that ISV still the underlying technology and the right business model to support their business, then that's goodness on both sides. So, that's exactly [crosstalk 00:29:10]. Steve: So that's the one where ISV Embed probably makes the most sense, , that type of partner. So we're starting to see more of them. Toby: That's great. That's great. Well, I always appreciate the feedback if you have any. So I'd love you to go through these new things in a bit more detail, and then send me your feedback and we can continue to keep the lines of communication open as always. Steve: I'm not letting you off just yet. I'm keeping you for a couple more. Toby: Oh man, I've got my team waiting, I'm hungry Steve. Steve: I just want to ask, "What is the most exciting thing you're seeing in the space coming soon that people should really be paying attention to?" I know we've got some things happening that aren't so much related to ISV, like the power platform pricing coming down, but what are some of the things that you're seeing in your group, or maybe some things that are already out there that you're feeling like ISV's are not understanding what this is obviously or they'd be all over it? Toby: Hmm. That's a great question. I'd say probably two things. One is, again, one of the big announcements we made at Inspire that wasn't necessarily related to ISV's or ISV Connect specifically, but what we announced with Teams where Teams users will now be able to sort of view and collaborate on Dynamics 365 records from directly within Teams. Toby: So this concept of collaborative apps you'll see, and that's at no additional cost. Obviously that concept you'll see us continue to do more around to bring that again, pretty large install base of Teams users that are out there, 250-million now, together with Dynamics, we think is sort of unique to our value proposition. So there was [crosstalk 00:30:58]- Steve: So this is somebody you think ISV's out there should definitely go do a little bit of investigating into the Team story? Toby: Yes, yes. Teams on the front end, it's such a large install base that we can take advantage of as partners. And then on the backend, I mentioned that again, power platform, Dataverse, leveraging our data services like Azure Synapse Analytics, again, stitching that all the way from the front end of the backend. We as Microsoft, we're really focused on that combined Microsoft Cloud story. And I think the partners that are recognizing that and investing in that with their own IP are the ones we're going to engage with and hopefully generate some good opportunity around. Toby: The second one, in that vein Steve, the second one I was going to say is just what we continue to do with our industry clouds. So we have cloud for healthcare out there at the moment, we've got financial services, manufacturing, retail, we announced the cloud for sustainability, we've got not-for-profit. So, these things continue to roll off the conveyor belt, but it's such a great opportunity. I was sort of surprised with how much interest we had from the ISV ecosystem around these industry clouds. Obviously as we build more industry IP, we need to sort of adjust our relationship with our partners who serve those industries, but there's still so much space to add, specific IP to that industry and work with some of those very credible industry partners that we were sort of talking about just a moment ago is a big place that we're going to invest going forward. So, that's an area I'd encourage people to keep a close eye on. Steve: Are you satisfied with the level of ISV engagement with the accelerators? Are they still kind of too many of them on the sidelines kicking or poking it with a stick or have we got enough of them actually coming in now that you're happy with that velocity? Or are you feeling like there's a bunch more that need to get in there? Toby: I think, first of all, we've evolved a bit from that original industry accelerator approach to now just real industry IP that we're building first party in these verticals that I mentioned. Obviously there's great partners out there that can work with us with those solutions to, like I said, have their IP built on that broader Microsoft Cloud. Industry clouds are just a great example of a Microsoft Cloud solution, frankly. And so to your question of, do we have enough partners there? You want to obviously get it right when you launch an offering like that with the right, frankly, small number of partners to complete the solution and have it be good and relevant and useful for customers, but the more the merrier around that investment. Toby: And so it's early days, Steve, we only have one industry cloud in market GA'd at the moment, but as I said, there's a lot more coming. So we want to make sure we're building the ecosystem around it pretty aggressively. Steve: Yeah. I mean, we've got partners of all sizes, so we got some big healthcare ISV's I'm sure engaged in some of the heavy lifting, but healthcare is an awfully big market, awfully big field, and there is spot, point solutions kind of across the healthcare organization that need to be filled by probably a smaller ISV's. So it seems like there's stuff across that whole thing. Toby: Yeah. Totally. There's plenty of opportunity and plenty of space around that. And even from a geographic perspective, I mean, different parts of the world have different regulatory requirements and are different, and so there's yeah, to your point, and that's what I was trying to articulate earlier. I think there's still just a massive opportunity for partners to work with us around those new offerings. Steve: Well, I know you've got to get to your thing. You've told me twice in the call, I appreciate you pulling the car over to chat with me to catch up. I just wanted to get some of this stuff out to the listeners about some of these changes that just occurred. Steve: And I'm definitely going to go through, like you said, and study it a little more closely and I'll reach out to you directly with some feedback and some thoughts and see if we keep this thing moving. Toby: Awesome. Well, Hey, I'm so glad you caught me, Steve. It's always a pleasure to catch up and have a chat, and yeah, please do go through it in some detail. Again, your feedback is important. Whole ecosystems feedback is super important to me, so I appreciate it. And yeah, it was great to catch up. Steve: All right man, talk to you soon. Toby: All right. Take care, Steve.

1. on the lam 潜逃 Ross终于发现了Chandler和Monica的地下恋情，于是发疯似的冲到对面，Chandler吓坏了，准备逃跑说I am going on the lam. lam 潜逃，逃亡be on the lam 或 go on the lam 潜逃中Chandler: (To Monica) Wow! Listen, we had a good run. What was it? Four? Five months? I mean, that's more than most people have in a lifetime! So, good-bye, take care, bye-bye then! Monica: What are you doing?!Chandler: Oh, I'm going on the lam..2. mess around 瞎混，胡闹 看到Ross发火，Chandler赶紧说自己和Monica不是mess around 而是真爱。 mess around 胡闹，瞎混，浪费时间例句：That Romeo tried to mess around with every lady in the office.那个自以为是罗密欧的家伙勾搭办公室里每一位女士。Ross: (To Chandler) I thought you were my best friend, this is my sister! My best friend and my sister! I-I cannot believe this!Chandler: Look, we're not just messing around! I love her. Okay, I'm in love with her.Monica: I'm so sorry that you had to find out this way. I'm sorry, but it's true, I love him too.(There's a brief pause.)Ross: (happily) My best friend and my sister! I cannot believe this. (He hugs them both.) (To Joey and Rachel) You guys probably wanna get some hugs in too, huh? Big news!Rachel: Awww, no, it's okay, we've actually known for a while.3. kick in 凑一份钱 修理工要退休，住户每人kick in 100块开party. 在口语里kick in 意思是为某项活动出钱，等于以前提到过的chip inSteve: I came to talk to you about Howard.Ross: Howard?Steve: Yeah, he's the handy man. He's gonna be retiring next week and everyone who lives here is kicking in a 100 bucks as a thank you for all the hard work type of thing.Ross: Oh that's nice.Steve: Yeah. So, do you want to give a check? Or…Ross: Oh. Uhh…Steve: Oh look, you don't have to give it too me right now! You can slip it under my door. (Points to his apartment across the hall.)Ross: No-no, it's not that, it's just… I-I just moved in.Steve: Well, the guy's worked here for 25 years.Ross: Yes, but I've lived here for 25 minutes.Steve: Oh, okay, I get it. (Starts to leave.)Ross: No wait, look. Look! I'm sorry, it's just I've never even met Howard. I-I mean I don't know Howard.Steve: Howard's the handy man!Ross: Yes but too me he's just, man.Steve: Okay, fine, whatever. Welcome to the building.4. cheapstake 小气鬼 Ross不肯出钱被人称作cheapskate cheapstake 小气鬼 类似的说法还有miser, penny pincher.Ross: …so then President Steve told everyone that I was a cheapskate, and now the whole building hates me! A little kid spit on my knee! Y'know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna throw a party. That's right. For everyone in the building, and I'm gonna sit them down and explain to them, I am not a bad guy. I am not a cheap guy! I'm just a guy who-who stands up for what he believes in. A man with principles.Chandler: (To Rachel) Sounds like a fun party.5. hit 热门的（人，影片，歌曲，书籍...) Phoebe为party出了钱所以大家很欢迎她。Phoebe说I am a hit. 我很红，我很受欢迎。类似的说法The movie is a hit. The song is a big hit.Guest #1: See ya Phoebe! Oh and hey, thanks for chipping in!Ross: You chipped in?!Phoebe: Yeah, uh-huh, a 100 dollars.Ross: Phoebe! I can't believe you gave them money! I thought you agreed it was totally unreasonable that they asked me for that money!Phoebe: Yeah, but they didn't ask me! Y'know? This way I'm just y'know, the exotic, generous stranger. That's always fun to be.Ross: Yeah, but you're making me look bad!Phoebe: No I'm not. No! If anything I'm making you look better! They'll see you talking to me and that's--I'm a hit!6. talk up 大声说，赞扬 Phoebe为Ross 说好话。I am talking you up to people. talk up 大声说，赞扬Talk sb up 为某人说好话He'll be talking up his plans for the economy. 他将夸大他的经济计划。Ross: (tapping her on the shoulder) Phoebe? Phoebe?Phoebe: Ooh. (Turns to him.)Ross: Look, this is a disaster! Can't I please just go?Phoebe: No! No! I'm talking you up to people. Just give it a little time, all right? Relax, get something to eat! Okay?

He’s invited by some of the world's top salesmen to help them sell more.    He’s incredible...and amazing at it - I’ve learned SO much from him.    Every time he speaks, I take out a pen and paper...    (Hint, hint...cue, cue...to everybody here!)   Please take out a piece of paper and take notes!    This is a man who’s likely to make MORE money arrive in your pocket just by listening to him... ;-)   Mr. Myron Golden. Myron: Hey, Steve. How are you doing, man?    Steve: Fantastic. Thanks for being on here, man.   Myron: Absolutely my pleasure to be on Sales Funnel Radio, talking to one of my favorite trainers...teachers… ‘OfferMinds…’   Ooh, did you see what I did there?! ;-)   Steve: That's good!     Honestly, thanks so much for taking the time. The feeling is mutual.    I have notebooks upon notebooks from your things.    Every time you come speak...or anytime I’m at Inner Circle or one of Russell's events, I’d fill a WHOLE legal pad.    And thinking…     "Oh, man, that was amazing."       "No, that was better than the last."        "Oh, my gosh, they're getting better…”      Myron: You're kind, thank you.   Steve: You are just an incredible salesperson.    You have so much skill and so much knowledge...    I've watched you unplanned…    (...and I know you've done this multiple times!)    ….get up and pitch someone's product better than they pitch it to an audience that doesn't know you…   AND you'll make MORE sales than the actual owner of the product!   How do you do that?! I know that's a huge question, but that's amazing…   HAVING NO INHIBITIONS   Myron: First of all, how I do that in particular, is how I sell.    First and foremost, I have to believe in the thing that I'm selling. If I believe in the thing that I'm selling, then it's easy for me to sell it.    What I mean by that is...   Most salespeople don't even realize that they haven't gotten out of their own way yet.    Most people who sell things, whether they sell cars, or sell shoes, or sell online courses… or whatever...     … they believe that selling is doing something ‘TO’ people not doing something *FOR* them.    So first and foremost, I look at selling as a service.    I look at it as something that I do *FOR* people’ that makes their lives better. It makes the world a better place because people like me are selling.   So I don't have ANY inhibitions.    For example...a pitcher will have pain in his shoulder, and he can't throw the ball as fast, or a golfer will have pain in his back and he can't swing.    Because subconsciously, his body knows that, “This movement is gonna hurt me or hurt someone.”    Right?    When we are incongruent or when we have incongruence about selling in general, that makes it hard for us to sell things.    I think the thing that I have going for me when it comes to selling is that I have *NO* incongruence in me whatsoever.    If I feel like a product isn’t good, then I wouldn't sell it to somebody in the first place!    Does that make sense?    Steve: Yeah, that makes sense.   Myron: I get out of my own way.   Steve: And I mean, you've done that multiple times.    I saw you do that at Dream 100 Con.    I mean, you're the guy that Russell Brunson asks to come re-pitch ClickFunnels' amazing offer after he's pitched!   Myron: Yeah.   Steve: It's impressive.   Myron: I'm honored. I'm honored by Russell. I appreciate him more than I can say...  I've got so much belief in what he offers, that selling a Russell Brunson coaching program is easy for me to sell.   (...even though he doesn't consider himself a guru, okay? I'm gonna call him my bounce-back guru.)    Because I went out, made a fortune and had a lot of great things happen in my life.    And then…    I went through seven years of life devastation.   Like every year, major tragedy after major tragedy, of some kind, happened in my life.    ...from 2007 through 2013.    I signed up for another coaching program in 2014 and I just didn't like that kind of work.    I don't believe that the key to success is to find something you're passionate about and the money will follow.’’   I DON’T believe that's true.   Steve: I don't either.   Myron: But I do believe that…    If the work that you’re doing doesn’t match the person that you are, you will never create wealth or massive world change in that arena - because your ‘doing’ has to match your ‘being’.  Right?    The coaching program was great; they had a lot of people making A LOT of money...it just wasn't the kind of work that suited me.    After that in 2015, I joined Russell's Inner Circle and my life has been on an upward trajectory financially, ever since then.    Selling a Russell Brunson coaching program? That's like the easiest thing in the world for me to sell!    Because he is the one person who I can point at and say, incontrovertibly, has helped more people to become millionaires in a shorter period of time than ANY other human being I've ever known of.   Steve: Yeah, not even just “known of”. I've never heard of anyone doing that!   Myron: Exactly.    And he's not an MLM guy. He's just a guy who teaches you frameworks that work.    So standing up and selling his product is easy because…    I wasn't selling the product I was selling the payoff   ...and I know what the payoff is because I get paid from that payoff all the time!   So that's why, if I can look at something and it makes sense, then it's easy for me to see how it makes sense...    ...then it's easy for me to say HOW it makes sense in a way that's easy for people to receive.   Steve: It's powerful stuff! And you know what's funny?   I feel like there's a lot of people who are jumping in entrepreneurship…   (which is great!)   ….but they do it under this notion that it's NOT sales, it's “entrepreneurship”.    But  like,  “ Eh, entrepreneurship IS sales. It's a sales role."   Myron: Yeah, exactly.   Steve: And if you're lying to yourself about that, you're already a bad entrepreneur!   To be an entrepreneur is to be a salesperson.   Myron: Exactly.   Steve: How can people be better?    How can they get rid of the inhibitions around selling?   Myron: Let's start with this.    So as you just said…   The reason that people say, “I'm an entrepreneur, I'm not a salesman,"    (What does that even mean?)    ...that is because they think there's something inherently wrong with sales!    But I'm gonna fix that right now.    BLOOD & SALES   …. the people reading right now - they can agree or disagree.    If you disagree ...here's what I'm gonna say to you…   ”You've been wrong before… congratulations, it's happening again!”   So I happen to have some money in my pocket….   ….if you take some money out of your pocket, any amount of money… and you look at that money - just check it out - and you’ll realize that:    All of the money that you have...    All of the money you will ever have...   To do the things…    You desire to do for yourself...   For the people that you love...   The causes that you care about...   The only reason it's possible for me, you, or anyone else to ever have money is because somebody somewhere sold something to someone for a profit.    PERIOD.   (I wasn’t gonna go here, but I will…)   Money is like blood, right?    Money is like blood, in that, money is stored in a bank.    Where's blood stored?    Steve: In your body.   Myron: Well, no, it's stored in a blood bank.    Money is stored in a money bank, right?    Steve: Oh, I get what you're saying.   Myron: Blood is stored in a blood bank.    Blood has to be in circulation in order to give life to your body and money has to be in circulation in order to give life to the economy.   Steve: I love that.    Myron: Right? So money is very much like blood.  Blood carries oxygen to every part of your body.    Money doesn't really carry oxygen, but it does help you breathe.    … because when you don't have any money, you feel like you can't breathe.   Steve: That's true.   Myron: Right?    But also…    Money is a mass noun, just like blood is a mass noun.    Yesterday, I went and got some blood drawn - I didn't go get ‘A blood’ drawn, I got SOME blood drawn.    … even though it's singular, it's a mass noun.    So you have to put “some” (which is plural) in front of a singular word.    You'd never say "I gave A blood," because that doesn't make any sense.    I gave SOME blood. Well, guess what?    When it comes to money, you wouldn't say, "I gave A money..."   It's SOME money.    Money and blood are both mass nouns.    Money and blood are both fungible.    Q: Now, what does fungible mean?    Well, you drove my car when you were in Tampa.   Steve: Yeah, great car, beautiful car.   Myron: With my name on the floor mat.   Steve: On the floor mats right there, that was...wooooo!   Myron: I drive a Bentley Continental GT.    If I let Steve borrow my car, when he brings my car back, my car is NOT fungible.    It's a car, but he can't bring me back a Volkswagen Jetta and say, "Here Myron, here's a car."    You have to bring back the same car!    ...or at least the same kind of car in, at least the same kind of condition.   (Preferably my car, right?)   So if somebody borrows a car, a car is NOT fungible.    If somebody borrows my golf clubs...    (… I wouldn't let somebody borrow my golf clubs 'cause those are my babies!)      But if I did, it's like, "No, you can't bring me back some other golf clubs."    "Well, they're golf clubs! What difference does it make?"    No! Golf clubs are NOT fungible.    If you give blood at a blood bank and then get in a car accident, you need to go get some blood… they don't have to search through millions of pints of blood to find the exact blood you gave!   Steve: "Oh, here are your cells!"    Myron: Exactly.    They just have to find the same blood type.    It's like with money.    Money is fungible.    If you loan me $5, you don't care if I pay you back the same bill.    Or if you owe me $50 then you don't care if I pay you back a $50 bill. Or two $20s and a $10 or five $10s or 10 $5s.    You don't care.    Q: Why?    A: Because money is fungible.    As long as it's the same currency type (#American dollars), you don't care.    You don't wanna loan me $50 in American dollars and I give you back Costa Rican dollars.    That wouldn't work.    So…    Money and blood are very much alike.   So here's what you gotta realize.    The only reason any of us EVER have any money in our pocket to do…   The things we wanna do    The things we desire for ourselves    The things we desire for people we love or the causes that we care about    … is because somebody somewhere sold something to someone for a profit.    Here's what that means:    Just like money is the blood, it keeps the economy alive, money is the lifeblood of the economy.    Salespeople are the heart of the economy that keeps the blood flowing.    If you are in sales, free yourself from the idea…from this ridiculous Hollywood notion that selling is somehow doing evil in the world.    Hollywood does way more evil in the world than salespeople!   The government tries to demonize business and salesmen and entrepreneurs while they do WAY more evil in the world.     Here's what you gotta realize...    Being a person who is in sales (a salesman or saleswoman) is one of the most noble, honorable positions and vocations in the world.     You make the world go ‘round.   Once you realize how essential salespeople are in the world and how much joy they bring into the world?   Salespeople bring joy into the world!    Remember how good you felt last time somebody sold you a new car? Or somebody sold you a new house? You felt great!   Why?    Because they sold you something that made your life better.    Salespeople bring more joy into the world than almost any other profession.    So once you wrap your mind around what selling really is…   … that FREES you up from all those internal conflicts and incongruencies that create the cognitive dissonance that restrict you from going out and making your offers boldly.   Steve: I 100% believe that.   Myron: That was a long answer.   Steve: But it's an amazing answer.    It drives me crazy…. "Money's evil."    Money is NOT evil, money is an amplifier.    I feel like (most of the time) when someone is NOT good at sales, usually they need to redefine their relationship with money.    They have so many *false beliefs* around money.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Do you find that to be true?    Myron: Absolutely.    I'm gonna say, money IS an amplifier, but I'm gonna add a caveat.   Because money IS an amplifier…    If you're bad, money will make you a worse person, or give you the opportunity to do more evil in the world.    If you're a good person, money will give you the opportunity to do more good in the world   HOWEVER…   Money itself is NOT bad, nor is it neutral. Money itself is good. Money is a good thing.   Steve: Right.   Myron: How can you say money is a good thing?    Q: What is the substance that represents wealth around the world since the beginning of time?    What's that substance?    Steve: Gold.   Myron: Gold, that's right.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Gold is the substance that represents wealth.    The first time gold is mentioned in Scripture is in the Garden of Eden.    Here's what God said, "And there was gold in that land, and the gold of that land is good."    Now, wait a minute, wait a minute!    Help me understand something here.    The Garden of Eden is a place where all the food is free.    The Garden of Eden is a place where there were only two people who ever lived there, Adam and Eve, (last I checked, they were married to each other).    There were no stores, there was nothing for sale, and yet God put gold in the Garden of Eden and then, He made sure He told us it was good.   Money is good. It's not neutral. It's not bad. It is inherently good.    You can do bad things with money, but it’s inherently good.    A car is inherently good - it's not bad to not have to walk everywhere you go!    It's good to be able to get places faster and it gives you the ability to save time and put more experiences in your life.    But people have run over people intentionally with cars!   You can do something bad with something that's good but it doesn't make the good thing bad - it just means that a person did a bad thing with it.   Steve: And the person did it, NOT the car, or the gold, or the object!   Myron: You know how you talk about the Capitalist Pig it really irritates people?    THIS MAY OFFEND YOUI'm gonna say something that really irritates people.   Steve: Yeah.    Myron: I'm not attempting intentionally to offend anybody (that's not my intention) but if they get offended…. they should probably grow up a little bit!    So the government talks about gun violence, right?    Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Oh, there's no such thing as gun violence.    I know, I just lost a bunch of people....but I lost the ones I wanted to lose.   Steve: Sure.   Myron: Okay?    There's no such thing as gun violence. I have a whole bunch of guns, not one of them is violent.   (I know I just lost a bunch of people… but I lost the ones I wanted to lose)   Steve: Me too. It's so funny, they're just sitting there and they never harmed anyone.      Myron: They don't do anything to anybody.   They just mind their own business!   In fact, they don't even mind their own business ...because they don't do anything.    They just sit there until I go to the range and I practice.    There's no such thing as gun violence, it's people violence and some of those people use guns.    Nobody talks about...   Steve: Car violence.   Myron: Car violence.    Nobody talks about fist violence.    It's stupid, it's like saying, "My stupid pencil failed that test."    *Your pencil didn't take the test*    Steve: I'm gonna use that one!    I wish I would have known that when I was in elementary school, hah.    “My pencil's broken!”   Myron: "My pencil...I can't believe this... What kind of pencil is this?!”   Steve: So we've gone through and said, “Okay, in order to get better at sales, you really need to embody…” Myron: You have to fall in love with it.   Steve: Sales are incredible.   Myron: You have to fall in love with it.   I love sales and salespeople.    Pray for salespeople every night when you go to bed. Thank God for them every morning when you wake up.    Stop being, "I can't believe that person tried to sell me something."    When somebody tries to sell something to you, get excited about it and watch their process and see what you can learn.   Instead of , "I can't stand these stupid infomercials. I can't stand these stupid commercials….”    I like infomercials… I really love them!    Steve: Me too! I watch them for fun.    Myron: Goodness, they're so entertaining!   I'm like, "Ooh, that is such a great idea!"    Steve: Oh man! So we’re saying …   THE STRUGGLE IS NOT REAL!   Number one: You can't even learn any of the skills or real tactics that you teach if you can't even accept the fact that…    Sales ARE good.   That money IS good.   Myron: Absolutely, absolutely!    And that you are doing good in the world when you sell things to people.    Do you understand that people only buy something because they value the thing they're buying more than they value the money?    It's kind of amazing when you think about it.   Steve: Yeah, money is GOOD. Sales are GOOD.    I'm writing down some of the notes here...    What else would somebody need to do?    I mean these are all major foundational pieces before you even get into tactics…   (or even things that you'll be speaking at OfferMind about)   So what else can somebody do to just increase their sales?    They're like, "Hey, I've got those things, I know sales are GOOD. I know money is GOOD."    What would be the next step?    Myron:    Realize that the struggle is not real, it's imagined.    “But sales are SO hard!”    No, no, no, no, that's just a story you tell yourself.    Sales are NOT hard, you're just NOT good at it.    I love what Jim Rohn said his mentor told him.    He said, "Mr. Rohn, Mr. Rohn. Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better."   Steve: Ohhhhh...there's some zing on that!   Myron: That's juicy, ain't it?    Steve: It's a little sting, there. A little spicy.   Myron: Yeah, he was like, "Sales is hard."    No, no, no, no. It ain't the problem.    Sales are not hard. Sales are really, really easy! You just don't know how to do it.    Jim Rohn said his mentor, Mr. Earl Shoaff asked him, “So how much money do you make?"    He said, “Well, I don't make that much. I'm broke.”    His mentor said, “How is it that you, being 26 years old and a healthy American male...and you're broke?”    He said, “Well, I can't help it. This is the job I have. This is all they pay.”   His mentor said, “Well, now Mr. Rohn that's not true. Let me ask you a question. Are there people who work for your company that get paid more than you get paid?"    He said, "Yes."    His mentor said, "Well then, that's not all they pay. That's just all they pay YOU."   And I said, "That is so good!"   Steve: I totally I can hear his voice as you say that. You do it well!   Myron: That's all they pay *YOU*    So what we have to realize is…    Mr. Rohn said, "It's too expensive."    "No, Mr. Rohn. The problem is not that it's too expensive. The problem is that you can't afford it."    We always wanna blame it on something outside of ourselves.    We always wanna relieve ourselves from the responsibility to do the thing, but the reality is... the reality is that sales ISN’T hard…   “…I just haven't learned how to do it yet!”   I'm gonna tell you something, Steve.    I have NOT always been good at sales.    When I got started in sales in 1985 selling insurance and investments through a company called AL Williams, I was not even good enough to be bad yet.    I was so bad, I was worse than bad!    I got started in October of 1985 and I did not make my first sale until April of 1987.    I was working and doing presentations... and I was woefully awful.    See, here's what happens.    Most people are not willing to be bad long enough to get good.   I was making offers and doing presentations from October of 1985 to April of 1987.    (By the way, if you're counting that's 18 months before I made a single, solitary sale.)   Shortly after I made that first sale, I became the top salesperson in our office month after month after month after month.    Some of you will say, "Well, Myron. How did you do that? What was it that changed for you, that took you from not being able to make the sale, to being the top salesperson in your office?"    *EASY*    I ran out of all the ways that wouldn't work.   Steve: Mat time!   Myron: The only thing I had left? The ways that it WOULD work.    It's so amazing, Steve.    People resist the only activity that can help them get better at the thing they are desiring to do.   They'll create all kinds of creative avoidance around not doing the one thing, i.e.,    Making offers   Doing presentations.   DON’T HIDE   I'm gonna tell you something, I've got a young lady who's in one of my high-end coaching programs.    Her name's Eileen, I think you met her.    This particular coaching program is $40,000 and they have to put at least half down and then they get on weekly bank drafts, right?    So she's like, "Myron, I really wanna get in this and I don't have the money. I don't know what to do."    First of all, she came to me and she didn't hide from me.    She came to me and said, "I don't have the money. I don't know what to do. What should I do?"    I'm like, "This person's gonna be awesome."    … because when they didn't have the answer, they knew there was an answer…   ... and so they ASKED for the answer instead of avoiding the place where they could get the answer.   Steve: Yes. I'm a student of exceptions.    If you don't have the means, or you don't have whatever...    JUST FIND ANOTHER WAY.    It doesn't mean that you're blocked!   You keep moving!   Myron: Yeah, exactly.   Here's what I told her:    "Eileen, you already have a $4000 offer. Raise the price to six and make more offers.    In fact, take the people who are in your current database right now and give them a date at which you're gonna raise your price to $6000 and give them an opportunity to get it now for only $4000.    Raise your prices."    I said, "Then the second thing you wanna do, raise your prices and make more offers."    Now, here's what make more offers means to me: *Collapsed timeframe*.    Take the number of offers you would do in the next year and do that in the next month!   Take the number of offers you'd do in the next month and do that in the next week!   Take the number of offers you'd do in the next seven days and do that many offers today!    You will have the money in less than 30 days.    She called me a week later, "Myron, I have the money."   Steve: That's SO cool.   Myron: It’s something as simple as “make more offers”.    I can tell you story after story. That's not unusual, but it is unusual to find people who are willing...   To make an offer!    Adjust the offer and then make that offer to another person when somebody says no to their offer   Make that offer just the way it is to 10 more people just to see if the problem is the offer... OR if it’s just the way they're offering it.   Steve: Right, right.   Myron:    Most people won't allow themselves to stay in the game long enough to figure out how to win the game.   Steve: You know, it's funny. I went back and I recounted how many tries it took me... and it was 33 failures over six years!    It was painful...   Myron: Well, why didn't you quit?    Steve: Right? Yeah, I know.    Someone was like, "Why did you think you could keep going like that?"    I was like…   I realized that failure is largely made up. You just learn. Everything is progression. It's not win-lose, it's just progression.   Man, I had a lot of garbage in my own head around the beliefs in money that I had to overcome.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Before I could even sell what I was making in the first place.   ALL WORK *WORKS*   Myron: Absolutely.    What's really interesting that a lot of people don't realize?    They'll say, "But Steve, it's not working! But Myron, it's not working!"    I say, "Okay, first of all, let me help you understand something. All work WORKS."   Steve: I'm gonna put that on my ceiling!   Myron: All work works. There's no such thing as, "I did that thing, and it didn't work."    Oh, it worked.    "No, no, but I made the offer and nobody bought."    It still worked.    "Well, if I made the offer and nobody bought, how can you say it worked?"    See, work is a two-sided coin.    Q: What are the two sides of the coin?    There's the work I do on it    There's work it does on me.    When the work I do on it doesn't do what I thought it would do...then the work it does on me ALWAYS does what it's supposed to do!   I know all work works.    So when I'm working on something that seems like it's NOT working, it's still working on me.    It's so interesting, we were talking about how you had six years... six years you tried all these different things and none of them "worked."    You had six years of failure, about 30-some odd failures but here's what we as human beings fail to realize.    Repetitive use of a limited ability will always produce an increased capacity.    What do I mean?    If I wanna get in shape and started doing push-ups, and I wanna do 30 push-ups, but I can only do five, here's what happens initially after I do five.    The next day I can only do three, right?    Because push-ups, in the beginning, don't make you stronger at first, they make you weaker because of fatigue.    So people think when they become fatigued from the activity that they wanna get good at, they think that means it's NOT working.    But you have to do it over and over again.    Repetitive use of a limited ability will ALWAYS produce an increased capacity.    Unless you do the activity repetitively, it cannot increase your capacity to do that thing.    Eventually, if you do five push-ups today, and three tomorrow, and then five the next day, and then three the next day, and five the next day... all of a sudden, you get down one time and then it’s 21.    Where did that come from?    Repetitive use of a limited ability will ALWAYS produce an increased capacity.    Over that year and a half when I was making presentations and nobody bought, what I didn't realize I was learning two very valuable lessons.    I was learning how to NOT work for money.    I was learning how to hone my message and how to adjust my approach and then go back and do it again.   And that's what I mean when I say I literally became the top seller.    Went from a year and a half no sales...to making a sale...to top salesperson.    “How did you do that?”    I ran out of all the ways that wouldn't work. The only thing I had left were ways that would work.   Steve: I totally get it.    It's kind of the same thing for me... after a while, I was like, "I don't know how else to be bad, or make it not produce cash.”   Myron: Exactly.   Steve: So just so everyone else can see, I've taken so many notes that I even turned the page…   ….now I'm going down this side of the page with notes!   I have so many notes and what's funny is that I've listened to you speak so many times...    Every time I hear you speak, more and more comes out!    I have a greater understanding of why I behave the way I do.    Not just, "How do I sell more?"    It's, "How do I actually behave better?"    It's really fascinating and I want to thank you for that.   Myron: Absolutely, my pleasure bro.   Steve: So you're gonna be teaching a lot of stuff at OfferMind and you're gonna come speak...   Myron: Yes.   Steve: And at the point where you're gonna come speak, people should have a great idea of what their offer actually is.    The core offer, what they should be doing.    Horse blinders on about everything else and just hyper-focused on that one core offer…which is what I'll be doing on the first day.    But you're gonna come in and teach them how to offer the offer.   Myron: How to offer the offer in a way that people expect it.    So many people make the mistake of thinking that the offer is their person.    What do I mean by that?    What they'll do is say, "Well you'll get so many hours of my time."    I say, "How many hours of your time?”    What I want less than hours of your time is for you to have hours of my time!   Steve: Right.   Myron: Okay? So they'll sell their person.    They'll sell their pieces, "Well, this has got five books, 17 videos and 47 audios."    Well, nobody cares about the pieces.   Steve: No, I don't want that.   Myron: Nobody cares about the pieces.    They'll sell their process.    It's fine to teach people the process after they've taken advantage of your offer, but don't sell them the process!    If you sell them the process then they're not gonna buy it.    I'm gonna teach you how to offer the offer...    Q: ...and so how do you offer the offer?    When you're selling to somebody you don’t sell them the process, you only sell them the payoff.    You don't sell them your person, you don't sell them the pieces, you don't sell them the process.    Q: What do you sell them?    You sell them the payoff and you use a concept that I call Emotional Cooperation.    After you use Emotional Cooperation… (and I'll teach you what that means when I get there - at OfferMind…)    ...then you use what I call Logical Justification.    When you combine Emotional Cooperation with Logical Justification, you become what I call a Psychological Artist.    You can hang pictures in people's minds for them to refer to that help them see your offer in a more favorable light. OFFERMIND???Steve: That is powerful stuff and I’m taking notes like CRAZY.    If anyone's watching or listening to this now, and they're like, "Will OfferMind be worth it?"    ...first of all, if you're NOT convinced by now… I don't know what to tell you!    What would you say to somebody who's like, "You know what, I don't know if I should show up to OfferMind?"   Myron: What does that mean?    Steve: Right.   Myron: No, no, I know what you mean.    I'm like, "I don't know if I should show up for OfferMind?"    Some of the greatest marketing and sales minds in the world alive today are gonna be there teaching you how to get BETTER at creating offers, and offering those offers…   ...if you don't know if you should be there…? Perhaps we should come get your family and take them to safety!?!   It's that kind of deal.  THE TWO THINGS...One of my old mentors, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones... I love that man and he was so amazing.    He changed my life in so many ways.   Steve: Oh, I didn't know he was! Oh, that's cool. Wow.   Myron: Oh yeah, I knew Charlie.   Steve: Oh, that's amazing.   Myron: Yeah, I knew Charlie.   Steve: Cool.   Myron: He lived in the same town as me. I used to go visit him.   Steve: That's amazing.   Myron: Like, I would go hang out with him.    Charlie used to say:    Your life would be the same 10 years from now as it is today, except for two things, the books you read and the people you meet.   When he said, "The people you meet", he is talking about the people you associate with.    I have found that NOTHING in this world ... in this life...changes your life for the better like going to live events.    Live events are my vibe.    I get to meet people and interact with people.    If I had never gone to Funnel Hacking Live, I wouldn't even know you and we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now.   Steve: No, definitely not.   Myron: When you were at Funnel Hacking Live in San Diego, 2016 and I was at Funnel Hacking Live 2016... I don't even know if I remember meeting you.    Do you remember meeting me?    Steve: No.   Myron: Probably not. No.   Steve: No, no.   Myron: Probably not, right?    We were both there, just as attendees.     And now you're having your event, and I'm coming to speak at your event!   You learn from me, I learn from you.    We make each other's lives better and we help each other's students, it's like...    ...does it get any better than that?!    Steve: I don't know?!   Myron: You will meet joint venture partners and they can open doors for you that you can't open for yourself just by going to live events in general...    But OfferMind! Like really?!!    I mean where will an assembly (other than at Funnel Hacking Live) of this level of marketing and sales genius be converged in ONE place at the same time other than OfferMind?    If you're not there ...where else would you be?!    Steve: I don't know? I've asked the same question.    I'm like, “I don't know why you wouldn't show up to this, it's pretty ridiculous…”   Myron: Your life will change.    I love what JR Ridinger used to say, he is a guy who is the president of a network marketing company I used to be a part of.    He said, "You can change your life in two days."    How long is OfferMind? Two days or three days? Two days?    Steve: Two days.   Myron:    You can change your life in two days. You can get more accomplished in two days than you get accomplished in a whole year by being smart enough to get yourself to that next event. Steve: There’s something about it...   Myron:    It collapses timeframes   It gives you a synergy    It gives you a level of focus that you can't get...that's diffused when you're out here doing your own thing in the workaday world.    When you come into a space where there are that many people focused on sales, focused on marketing, focused on offer creation, dude, it changes everything.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Yeah, I'm speaking at OfferMind.    But I'm not just going to OfferMind 'cause I'm speaking, I'd be going to OfferMind if I wasn't speaking.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Let's not get it twisted, ladies and gentleman.    Steve needs to go to events, I need to go to events, Russell needs to go to events.    The teacher who has stopped learning has lost his right to teach.   Steve: Okay, amen.    I think about like wings on a plane.    I tell everyone, if you're being coached by someone who's not also being coached, stop listening to them!   They're not practicing the very thing they're teaching you.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Get away from them.     Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Oh man.   Myron: Don't get stuck like Chuck in a pick-up truck.   Steve: Well hey thanks so much for being on here, thanks for being in Sales Funnel Radio.   I'm just incredibly excited to have you on.   Myron: Me too.   Steve: Guys, go to OfferMind.com and grab your ticket.      By the time while I'm saying this right now, we're pretty much out of VIP seating -  stuff is filling up very quickly.    Go get your ticket and we'll see you September 2nd and 3rd!   You’ll get to listen to Mr. Myron Golden teach you how to offer the offer that I'm gonna teach you how to build on day one.   Myron: May I borrow one of your words?    Steve: Yes.   Myron: BOOM!   Steve: BOOM!   BOOM!    If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?    That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.    So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.    Wanna come?    There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.    You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.    Again, that's OfferMind.com.

A marketing campaign is nothing more than orchestrated noise around your product.    Here's an example of how to keep a campaign going when everything is going well…   A campaign is about creating orchestrated noise   … that's my definition, but really that's all a campaign is.    Running Facebook ads,  that's NOT really a campaign. It can be part of a campaign, but it’s NOT a campaign on its own…   Marketing campaigns are a dying art… which means MOST people are leaving money on the table.   Think about this...   We're no longer just in the information age, we're in the attention age where the loudest, not the best, is more likely to get paid.   HOW TO TURBOCHARGE YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGN   Recently, one of my good friends, Josh Forti, did a cool launch, and he had me come on to promo this product.    After our interview was done for the launch, he asked if he could get on my Facebook page to chit chat about the interview and do a little MORE promo around it.    I swear one of the major reasons that people don’t do very well in this game is simply because they don't know how to do the second step that Josh took…   ...which is why I thought it'd be cool to share the interview with you…   I chopped it in different places and such, but you’ll see Josh ask some very general questions…   Then kind of after each of my answers, he'd go back to, "Hey, we covered that in the playbook, click here."    That skill is a very learnable thing, and it’s one of the easiest ways to get better results in your marketing campaigns…   Because, here’s the thing…   I see people with a...   Great Product   Excellent Funnel   Good Launch   ... but then they don't follow through all the way, and it cuts their launches down.    Campaigns are broken up into a lot of parts. I plan and put all the pieces together, and then, I ask...    How am I gonna get tension?    How am I gonna leverage the followings of other people to get attention?    Once it's in the middle of a launch, how do I keep the momentum going?    Once it's done, how do I keep that pressure moving as well?    And, so I thought this interview with Josh was a great example of how to keep the pressure moving...    So, when you launch your product, or whenever you're putting your stuff out; *REMEMBER*  it's NOT just about the product or the funnel…   It's about the noise.    So you need to ask, “How am I creating that noise?”    The success of your product is just as dependent on the noise you orchestrate as the product and the offer and the sales message itself.   If no one knows about your offer, you're NOT making any money anyway.    If you can't get anyone to even go look at your sales message, your product is already dead... so why did you make it?     So I'm just giving this to you as an idea, so you can see like, "Oh, man, I should go do that."    A follow-up interview whenever you interview somebody for a product you're putting out is NOT abnormal at all.  Let’s cut over right now…   JOSH FORTI’S MASTER MOVE   Steve: On the other side of this wall here, there’s a whiteboard and I call it my "questions whiteboard."    I believe that questions invite revelation, and that's good and bad...    So…    I have to focus on answering rich people questions instead of poor people questions.    Because whatever I ask, I will likely answer.    The purpose of the board is NOT for me to answer the questions.    The purpose of the board is me to figure out which question to focus on answering.    ...because I shouldn't try and answer EVERYTHING.    It's funny you asked that;  I don't know why, but it happens in the morning….    I'm getting ready in the morning and my brain turns on, and  I'm like, "Whoa, what about this idea?”   Man, I'm not going to lie, I've run out in a towel before to write stuff down... like, “That's such a sick idea!  Oh my gosh! I should try to answer that…”   And I put it on my questions board... and I write, and write, and write…   I have a BIG list of unanswered questions that I want to pursue.    It's NOT that I'll sit down always and be like, "I have to answer this now," and just dive into my books…    But, on interviews, because it's on my mind, I'll continue to clarify the answer to that question…    I'll be like, "I think it's this."    One of my favorite things is to go back and listen to those interviews and hear myself, and be like, "...that was probably the coolest I've ever explained an answer to the question on my whiteboard.”    And so I go back a lot, and it's one of the coolest ways I figure out like, “Okay, that made sense, that didn't make sense. This was helpful, that was confusing.”    And it's only honed me in what I do more and more.   FINDING WHAT RESONATED?   Josh: It's interesting how much you can learn about certain things that you say when there are clips of the crowd, (and they get the back angle)...   ... and you watch everybody's heads go down and start writing all at once.    And you're like, "Oh my gosh, they all really liked that point."    And so it's ALWAYS interesting for me to kinda go back and listen to old interviews, speeches, or things that I've done... that got A LOT of really good engagement...   ‘Cuz I feel like you can learn so much about what people really like, what resonated and what didn't resonate.    Steve: Well, it's funny 'cuz the market literally votes, (they don't know they're doing that a lot of times), and it's NOT just with products, but even with content, (you know that)…   It's cool to see that reaction when you say something and you know it's right, you know it's helpful…   ... but you said it differently that time, and suddenly it’s the click… and you're like, "Oh, that's what you mean!"    And then you see all the heads go down, and you're like, “Okay, note to self, say it that way next time because it's more impactful than last time.”   ARE YOU ASKING POOR PERSON’S QUESTIONS?   Josh: I believe that the key to thinking different…    The key to getting, basically, anything that you want out of life is asking the right questions.   If you know how to ask good questions, you can ultimately go out and find answers, have a good perspective, and get what you want out of life.    But how did *you* learn, like...    How does one go and actually learn good questions?   How do you determine what questions you're actually gonna ask, and what's worthwhile to go study or not?   Steve:    One of the biggest filters I run things through is, does that sound like a rich person question or a broke person question?   Josh: Hmm.   Steve:    A lot of times, people try to answer broke people questions just out of habit.    For example:   I don't clip coupons. I'm not against coupon-clipping. Well, actually I am… ;-)   One of the issues is…    If I spend my time and my attention and my focus on how to save money, I will find out how to do it…    ...but I also didn't learn how to make MORE money!   I'd rather learn how to make more money and who cares how much something costs at that point?     The one thing everybody has when they start this game is a buttload of questions.  … and it makes sense why they would. Just EVERYONE has tons and tons of questions.   Josh: Right.   Steve: That's natural… but, like start writing them down. I challenge everybody to do that…    And…   Before you seek to answer the question, seek if it's worth answering at all.   Josh: Yeah. That's huge.   Steve: It will pay you in time or money.   Josh: I love that.    One of the things you said is interesting because we mention it in The Mindshift Playbook, is the habit thing…   You said, ‘Often times we just do it out of habit,’ right?   Steve: You know what's funny, I'll go teach these models, “Hey, this is a cash flow model. This is a cash flow model. This is a cash flow model…”   And what's funny is, the very first reaction people have is, “Is that gonna work for me? Am I in the right spot to do this?”    And I'm like, “Oh, my gosh, are you kidding?”     ... it ticks me off so bad. Josh: It’s like, “Does ClickFunnels work for -----?”   Steve: You know what? Of the hundred thousand monthly subscribers, you're right, you're the one it's NOT gonna work for.  It's like, “Come on! Just do it."    People set a goal, "I'm going to go do this, and I'm going to use ClickFunnels to do whatever,” and they don't allow *themselves* to break on the goal.    That's the key…   You have to break *you* on the goal instead of change the goal.    Robert Kiyosaki says that as well…    As you start moving towards any goal, you’ll have these character flaws that explode in your face.    I was probably, you could say…    Addicted to video games in high school.    I was very overweight.    I got kicked out of college.    I barely graduated high school.    I couldn't speak.    I had major anxiety issues.    I am literally the opposite of everything that I was back then because I started realizing that,    I needed to allow myself to feel some pain on the way to the goal. Pain does not mean bad, and pain does NOT mean the wrong choice. Most of the time, pain means growth.   Josh: Yeah.   FAIL FAST   Steve: When you realize, “Oh my gosh, failure is really kind of a made-up principle. It's not even a principle, it's made up...    As I start to feel that pain, I start to feel the progression of moving towards things.   I went back and counted how many times it actually took me to make one of these funnel things work, and it was actually 17 funnel tries and 17 before that…   It was actually my 34th thing that actually blew up (from age 20 until now).   Josh: That's crazy.   Steve: That's A LOT of freaking failures.    ...and most of the time, people aren't going to be able to go through that.     About 1/3 into those tries, I became cognizant that…    I was changing at a speed faster than any personal development course could ever hope to give me. Josh: Ever! And you mentioned that in the interview too. You say like,    Entrepreneurship is the best personal development course you NEVER signed up for.   I mean, like it just is, and I 100% agree with that.    ...and it's interesting what you say about pain and struggle.    I think the one thing that we both agree upon is that the struggle is there for a reason. The struggle is a good thing.    The struggle is absolutely needed to develop you into who it is that you say. So it's interesting that like, they're saying it, you're saying it. Like, it's there…   I think in today's society, we're just trained to want to avoid struggle.    Everything is convenient.    Everything is now.    Everything is easy.    Like, “Avoid this!” (Thank you, marketers, right?), but like, you know what I mean?    I feel like we're trained as a society to avoid struggle, which I think is why it's so hard for so many people.    Steve: Yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of it, (and I'm never gonna be the one that just like slams and bad mouths school and all that stuff)...   ... but you think about it, you get punished for doing something wrong in school.    But like, man…    I do stuff wrong, all the time, in business, and that's actually the thing that accelerates me.   Josh: Right   Steve: “You can't do that here, or you can't do that here.”    Or…    “What if I fail?”  *Plan on it* And then you just move forward.   Josh: Write it in.   Steve:    I find that failing ends up being an accelerant to everything else that you do   I've gone through that many failures, and because it sucked for so long, it's NOT that hard to make cash now.    I'm like, “Okay, well, I solved that problem.”   And what I've learned is that while I teach these models, and then people feel this first sense of personal development requirement that comes like…    “Oh, man, I don't actually qualify to be running my dream in the first place.”    ...as they start moving, they start to gain this self-confidence. And then, they move faster and faster and faster…   I almost want them to hit some major speed bump quickly and then see if they can pick themselves back up.    That kind of person, I love working with them.   Josh: Yeah, because people don't know how to fail. Sorry. Go ahead. DO YOU QUALIFY?   Steve: I was chatting with Russell about this a little while ago…   I was like, "Dude, when I met you and started working for you in the same room, you were totally a different person a year and a half later by the time I left."    The Russell Brunson of 3 or 4 years ago, could NOT handle what he's doing right now.    But too many times we're like, “I want my dream with the million-dollar business now.”    Man, *You don't qualify* You've gotta get some personal development going down!   Josh: What would your advice to me be, if I were to go down that route and be like,    "Yeah, I'm gonna open up a talk show where we bring on interesting guests. Maybe we talk politics. Maybe we talk about business. Maybe we talk, whatever.”    What's your advice to me when it comes to doing those interviews or creating concepts around that?   Steve: Okay, so I'll tell you one of the reasons why Sales Funnel Radio has been so successful and “The Capitalist Pig” is such a big deal to people…  It's because it actively throws rocks around mainstream ideas that others believe.    So, I was in the Army, (and y'all know that if you’re on here, right?)    I was in the Army, I enlisted and I went to become an ammunition specialist, (which I didn't know at the time meant "fancy warehouse guy." )   I was like, “Crap, I wish I would have chosen something a little different."    Anyway, a little bit through that, I was like, "I'm going to go be an officer."    So, in the middle of my officer trainer, one of the things that they do is they make you study wars, battles, lots of strategy and movements... things like that.    So you study these HUGE battles, and it's a ton of fun. I really enjoyed it.    The guy who was teaching us was ridiculously smart. He's a historian that they brought in just for officer training.   It was a whole semester of just studying wars.    What's interesting is that he taught us that wars are started over usually pretty much always out of rights...   States' right   Human rights   ... that's what wars start over.  The Civil War was NOT started because of slavery. We did NOT leave Europe because of religious oppression, but that's how we romanticize the past…   What's funny is that in the middle of a war, a lot of times, a social issue will piggyback on the war.    So slavery becomes part of the Civil War, (like right towards the last hour)...    And that's when Lincoln said, "Hey, The Emancipation Proclamation, let's go dump it in there."    The same thing with like leaving Europe, as Americans, we're gonna go in and you know what… ‘it's about religious freedom now.”    It was NOT at first. We were Britains!    And the reason I bring this up is that from a marketing standpoint, when it comes to the way I treat a message, (this is not something I normally would talk about either), but …    I look to piggyback a message on the back of a social issue.    (Not a human rights issue... because then you're seen as political)    But when it comes to really disruptive messages in the marketplace, Socialism right now is getting a lot of attention…    So one of the easiest ways for me to get a lot of attention on a show is to become the anti-something major in a social issue that's currently got momentum.    It takes a lifetime to create momentum, but I don't have to do that if I piggyback on a social issue that I'm passionate about in the opposite way.   Josh: That's super good advice.   Steve: Yeah, I would figure out what big things to talk about. I find that themed shows always do better than a general, let's just...   Josh: Let's just talk.   Steve: Yeah.    So I would find something that you find and throw rocks at it like that, and then it's very natural to find those people who are for or against to hear both sides.   You'll get as many people who listen to you and love you, as hate your guts.   Josh: Yeah, well, I think this entrepreneurship like micro-influencer game has prepared me for the hate. Holy cow, dude!   Steve: Yeah, it only gets louder.   Josh: Aww, man, I tell you what! But I've learned to tune it out.   Steve: Well, thanks for listening and thanks for jumping on here.   Josh: Absolutely, man. Thanks so much.   WHOA!    If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?    That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.    So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.    Wanna come?    There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.  You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.    Again, that's OfferMind.com.  

Benefits of Using Profitability Analytics Tool in Your Amazon Business Part 2 Today’s episode is part two of a three-part series with Vladi Gordon, co-founder of sellerboard.com, a profit analytics service for Amazon sellers. Vladi has worked in the software business for many years. Here are more amazing lessons on today’s episode: Why bookkeeping is crucial to your Amazon business. Why quality assurance or some sort of inspection process is vital before shipping out. The profit killers that a lot of times entrepreneurs tend to overlook. So listen, enjoy and become inspired by Vladi’s amazing Amazon success story. 03:18 (Always do your bookkeeping if you’re an Amazon seller.) 05:04 (Always make sure your business model is healthy.) 07:27 (Steve gives an example of when items gets tagged as oversized causing excess charges.) 09:32 (Steve talks about how important it is to do quality assurance or some sort of inspection process before shipping out.) 12:27 (Vladi talks about the biggest profit killer for an Amazon seller.) 17:41 (Vladi talks about the second biggest profit killer for an Amazon seller.) Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, “You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want.” It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope you will join me on this Awesomer journey. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT If you’re launching a new product manufactured in China, you will need professional high- resolution Amazon ready photographs. Because Symo Global has a team of professionals in China, you will oftentimes receive your listings photographs before your product even leaves the country. This streamlined process will save you the time, money and energy needed to concentrate on marketing and other creative content strategies before your item is in stock and ready for sale. Visit SymoGlobal.com to learn more because the picture should be worth one thousand keywords. You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. Steve: You are listening to Episode Number 87 of the Awesomers podcast series. And for those keeping score home just run on over to Awesomers.com/87 and you'll find today's show notes, details and even some links that we talked about. With today's featured guest, coming back to us for part two of three is Vladi Gordon. And we talked to Vladi about some of the important things that I think a lot of times entrepreneurs overlook and that’s these profit killers as Vladi calls them. I sometimes call them black holes or other fun titles because any time you don't know where the money is going it can be a very destructive situation in your business. So it's really important to get that financial house in order. And I know, if you're anything like me that doing the financials and doing the bookkeeping that's kind of like, “ I'll get to it when I get to it” or maybe you've even hired somebody and you’re like yes, they’ve got the monkey, I don't really want to interface with it that much. I started out like that. I can assure you it certainly is not something that I would recommend. Don't find yourself scared about finance and your lack of understanding can be overcome. It's something that you can absolutely solve and we talk about that a lot in today's episode, looking for some of those profit killers. Go ahead and jump into this episode and learn some more about how to get your business running right. Steve: Okay here we are back again everybody on Awesomers.com podcast with Vladi Gordon.

Money Talks - Financial Learning Tips from a Chief Investment Officer Part 3 Today is the last part of a three-part series with Greg Silberman, CIO of ACG Wealth. Greg is responsible for managing the firm's Global Investment Portfolio, as well as supervising the implementation of the company's Asset Management Strategies. Here are more key points on today’s episode: Diversification as the best way to help clients achieve their goals. The advantage of having business experts on your team. Why patience is definitely a virtue. Investing is not one size fits all. So join us on today’s episode and learn all about managing and growing your finances. 01:11 (Steve introduces today’s guest, Greg Silberman, CIO of ACG Wealth.) 02:13 (Greg talks about the importance of getting an expert looking after your business.) 07:37 (Greg shares his predictions about the future of the market.) 13:55 (Greg shares his knowledge about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.) 18:32 (Greg gives his final words of wisdom to the Awesomers.) Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT Empowery, the name says it all. Connecting E-commerce entrepreneurs with great people, ideas, systems and the services needed to sustain business dynamic into growth. Empowery is a network; a cooperative venture of tools and resources to make you better at what you do. Because we love what you do. We are you. Visit Empowery.com to learn more. You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. 01:11 (Steve introduces today’s guest, Greg Silberman, CIO of ACG Wealth.) Steve: Okay, everybody we're back again Steve Simonson joined today by Greg Silberman on the Awesomers.com podcast series, and we've been talking about investments in various strategies and ideas about how to get a look at least from the 30,000 foot view of investments. I definitely agree as you talked about before the break, Greg, that you know the idea of being diversified is a fine idea whether it's a range of stocks or you know range of even private equity types of deals. You know there may be some allocation towards that higher risk but high reward stuff. But do you have a basic or easy to understand idea that would help us say, “Hey, why should we use somebody like ACG, somebody who's a wealth specialist versus just going and you know putting all the money in one of these mutual funds.” And you know they got ten thousand stocks so that's super diversified. That's got to be better. At least that's what they would tell us. How would you guys respond to that kind of issue? 02:13 (Greg talks about the importance of getting an expert looking after your business.) Greg: Steve, that is, you touched on kind of the million dollar dollar question there. So let me tell you my answer and obviously there's no right or wrong answer to this. My view is that in investing, there is a season and a time for everything. And so that means there is a season for mutual funds, there's a season for ETFs, there's a season for Robo-advisors, and there's a season for private equity, okay. I don't know when those seasons are. They don't, certainly don't ring a bell and say, “You know it's now time to go into bonds,” or whatever the case may be. So again, diversification is probably the best way that I can help my clients achieve their goals. That means,

The magic of accounting is all about taking data and turning it into valuable information. On today’s Awesomers Authority episode, Steve Simonson introduces us to Jeremiah Kovacs, Founder of MuseMinded. He and his team have worked with hundreds of Amazon Marketplace sellers to automate and outsource their financial systems. Here are some key points on today’s episode: What MuseMinded is and how it helps Amazon marketplace sellers. The three phases of bookkeeping - data capture, data categorization and data presentation. The importance of having a solid financial system. And the three ways to approach sales tax and more. So subscribe to the Awesomers podcast and learn more about having an efficient and scalable accounting system. Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT If you're launching a new product manufactured in China, you will need professional high-resolution Amazon ready photographs. Because Symo Global has a team of professionals in China, you will oftentimes receive your listing photographs before your product even leaves the country. This streamlined process will save you the time money and energy needed to concentrate on marketing and other creative content strategies before your item is in stock and ready for sale. Visit SymoGlobal.com to learn more. Because a picture should be worth one thousand keywords. You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. 1:16 (Steve introduces today’s guest, Jeremiah Kovacs, Founder of MuseMinded.) Steve: You're listening to the Awesomers.com podcast and this is episode number 28. So all you have to do is go to Awesomers.com/28 to see all the show notes and details that's Awesomers.com/28. Now today my special guest is Jeremiah Kovacs who's the Founder of MuseMinded. Jeremiah is a really good example of somebody who is kind of born out of this Amazon related ecosystem because his firm specializes a hundred percent in accounting for Amazon centric firms since 2014. He and his team have worked with hundreds of Amazon Marketplace sellers to automate and outsource their financial systems helping them leverage their own time and energy to 10x their business and build towards successful seven-figure exits by leveraging the things that they're instead of the things that maybe we don't like to do. And we've talked in today's episode about just exactly how people treat finance often as an afterthought. We talked about the idea that it's a core function that needs to be done in your business to to do scorekeeping. Yet so many of us procrastinate it or try to do it in the worst way possible either ourselves god forbid or we hire resources that aren't really specialized, don't really understand. And today I think we're gonna have a great conversation about how we can solve that particular problem. Okay Awesomers. Welcome back here we are again today Steve Simonson, I'm your host and today we're talking with Jeremiah Kovacs. How are you Jeremiah? Jeremiah: I'm doing great. I'm doing really great, Steve. Steve: Good. Did I pronounce your last name right? Jeremiah: Yes, it's phonetic Kovacs. Steve: Okay good because I've got a history of mispronouncing names and I like to just come clean when I mess it up. So luckily you've got

Join us as we present a live question and answer session with entrepreneurs and Awesomers from around the world. In this episode, Steve tackles the important questions about Amazon, dropshipping, Shopify and consumer-driven products. More interesting tidbits on today’s episode: What is Amazon review purge and how it can affect your business. What service elements to include in a feedback sequence for your customers to get better reviews. How to know if Amazon FBA is a viable economic model for you. And many more! Stay awesome and listen below to know more! Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT If you're launching a new product manufactured in China, you will need professional high-resolution Amazon ready photographs. Because Symo Global has a team of professionals in China, you will oftentimes receive your listing photographs before your product even leaves the country. This streamlined process will save you the time money and energy needed to concentrate on marketing and other creative content strategies before your item is in stock and ready for sale. Visit Symo Global to learn more. Because a picture should be worth one thousand keywords. You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. Steve: This is Episode 5 of the Awesomers.com podcast. That's episode number 5 and you can find all the show notes and relevant details by going to awesomers.com/5. That's awesomers.com/5 to see all of the relevant show details. This Episode is a little bit different because we do a live question and answer session with entrepreneurs and Awesomers from around the world. From time to time, we'll post these live Q&A sessions. They'll be posted on Awesomers.com and various places on Facebook and for those who join us live, they'll get the chance to answer questions sometimes on video, sometimes on audio and sometimes just through the live chat function. But between myself, Steve Simonson and sometimes special guests we'll try to answer your questions to help you the best we can so what a great opportunity for the community to be involved and become part of the show and this is one of those episodes, it's our first one so nothing's ever perfect but we're always trying to improve so thanks for listening and again this Awesomers podcast number five. Steve: Okay everybody welcome back awesomers.com today we are doing a live session, a little Q&A. You might think of it as talkback or perhaps even back talk depending on who asks a question but either way we want to just talk a little bit about what's happening out there. One of the things that has has caused a significant amount of consternation in the Amazon world is this so-called review purge and the the change in terms of service at the end of 2016 created a whole series of events from Amazon trying to respond basically to some bad PR they got. I think it's the New York Times there's some big publication that said, hey everybody's gaming the system of reviews on Amazon and it's overt, it's naked, it's ridiculout. Why are you letting people get away with it Amazon if reviews are supposed to be credible and if that's supposed to be kind of your sense of trust with a customer.

Find out how you can successfully validate your business in as little as a three-day period, before even launching and raising capital. In this episode, Danny McMillan explains how he went from a struggling student with learning difficulties to an Amazon FBA expert and a serial entrepreneur. Here are more awesome gold nuggets about today’s episode: How Danny overcame lightning bolts and adversity and used them as an opportunity to reset his life. Why a steely determination is one of the most effective tools in the learning process. The right questions you need to ask to validate your business before doing anything else. And why Danny focuses on three different business models to avoid risks. Stay awesome and listen below to hear how you too can take charge in transforming your life and validating you business model. SHOW TRANSCRIPT Steve: Everybody today on the Awesomer’s podcast we're gonna talk with Danny McMillan. Here's a little bit about Danny's background: Danny's an international speaker on Amazon marketing and optimization and he's an active ecommerce seller in the USA and in Europe. Danny has an open collaboration and sharing at its core with a drive to dismantle, optimize and share his deep learning, analysis, research and even his trainwrecks with peers and the community at large so that you don't have to experience the same pain. He's a survivor of the former music industry and a start-up serial entrepreneur without a doubt. For the last couple of years he's been focused on Amazon FBA. He's appeared on numerous podcasts including his own Seller Sessions which is the number one podcast for advanced Amazon sellers and he contributes to the industry Bible webretailer.com. Danny's been a guest speaker at all kinds venues across the world including the Smart China Sourcing Summit, the European Private Label Summit, the Private Label World Summit, The Great Escape and ZCon and so many more. I am thrilled to have Danny McMillan with me today. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT Steve: Okay everybody, welcome back to Awesomers. It's great to be back and today we have a special guest, Danny McMillan. How are you Danny? Danny: I'm good. Thank you for having me. Steve: It's certainly a pleasure to have you and I couldn't help from the accent to notice that that doesn't sound American. Where are you from Danny? Danny: I'm based just outside of London but I’m originally born in London. Steve: Okay, fair enough. and so I know you and and I already know that you're Awesomer but help our audience understand kind of what you do in your day to day world. What do you spend your time doing mostly? Danny: Okay. My life is split into various different areas though my day starts with Asia into the UK into the US. I run three businesses. One’s an Amazon product business where we’re in Home Kitchen and in Topicals. I’ve also got an agency with my partner Ellis who is the guy behind Jungle Scout. We’ve got a PPC service agency that does automation. It’s managed accounts as well. We can do international page like multilingual PPC and we mainly manage large accounts. I also got a service business as well which is in the construction industry. I also host Seller Sessions which we publish three times a week and I also do public speaking on all things Amazon. Steve: So basically what you're saying is you only work in about half time. That’s a pretty light scheduled there, very impressive. Knowing how many pots you’re hands are stirring at one time, plates you’re spinning - whatever metaphor you prefer, do you find it rewarding to you or stressful to you? Danny: No, I love every minute of it. I enjoy what i do. If I didn’t like it, I’d have to get it removed from my life. I got to that age, I’m 42 now. I want to enjoy my life. This is going to be stressful from time to time but if you are passionate about what you do, that’s what gets you up in the mornings.

Interview with Steve Durie Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou. Another episode of The Nonprofit Exchange live, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis. Russell, how are you doing today out there in beautiful Colorado? Russell Dennis: After a snowfall last night, the sun has come back out. Everything is beautiful out here in Colorado. Hugh: Love it. People on the podcast can't see it, but you've got a shiny head. Is that part of the sign, or is that just the light over your head? Russell: All of this glare helps keep the focus off of the shadow here with all of the gray hair in it, so there is a method to my madness shining the light here. Hugh: I see that. Russell, the real person. We have a guest who is also a resident of Colorado, but he is a new resident of Florida. We are going to hear from him in just a minute. Today's topic is protecting your culture by doing effective vetting of the people you're bringing in, be it volunteers or paid staff. Steve Durie, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Steve Durie: Thank you, Hugh. It's good to be here. Hugh: So good to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, some background, and how did you arrive at what you're doing now? Why is it important to you? Steve: I have been doing this for 15 years. Where it started was when I was actually volunteering in youth organizations with my kids. My question was: Aren't you going to run a background check on me? They're like, No, we don't do that. We trust everyone. Previous to that, I had a lot of database experience in a consulting company in consulting on justice projects, that is, how to share criminal data. I took that knowledge about sharing criminal data and my passion for keeping my own kids safe and know that I was going to be working as a volunteer and turned it into a business 15 years ago. My kids are a little older now, and my wife Laura and I have a special needs son. He is an adult; he is 31. But he is also extremely vulnerable and needs protection. He doesn't live at home anymore. And that is a constant worry about Tommy, whether the people who are working alongside him are safe. It does transcend not just our children in their youth, but into any vulnerable population. That is a broad brushstroke is anybody who is vulnerable, and we can look at each group individually as to how to best screen someone and check them out if we are working with children, youth, or vulnerable adults, or elderly, or single people. There are a lot of different. Vulnerable populations who may need our work. Hugh: Absolutely. It's really good to know about people. In the work that Russell and I do through SynerVision, we help people build their strategy out. Part of that is competencies. We have created a new paradigm that replaces the position description, and the first of four colors is the competency. When you look at somebody's competency, you also want to do a background check so that you can validate what is on their resume, that they actually do that. Are there some hidden things in there? Finding out about the people. What is their performance going to be? Role and responsibility? If it's financial, there is another level of compliance. I used to live in a town of 30,000, and one year, there were two nonprofits that had treasurers make away with $750,000, trusted friends and community members. They didn't do an adequate background check or have safeguards in place. The third color is the culture fit. If somebody has a history of conflict or abuse, you don't really want them spoiling your culture. The fourth color is expectations, but the vetting the person, competency, not only are they clean, but they also fit the culture. There are lots of reasons in any kind of enterprise to do the background check. I think it's especially important when we are dealing with people who are compromised, like your son, like children, like older adults. There are lots of opportunities for people to abuse the system. You have worked with nonprofits so far, have you? Steve: Our focus of the company SecureSearch is with the nonprofit community. It's been over 15 years; we have served over 10,000 nonprofits as their partner for screening their staff, their volunteers, and their board of directors. We are a full-service company. We can do anything, from resume verification to child awareness for those who work with children. Hugh: Resume verification. I heard a guy one time, and his resume said he went to Yale and studied finance. I found out later he didn't graduate. People make up things on their resume. That's a new piece of data. Are nonprofits any more vulnerable than for-profits? Is there an attitude of difference there? You told a story about you being a volunteer, and you ask about the background check. They said we trust people. Do you find that to be more common than not? Steve: I find that to be pretty common in the nonprofit culture where they are really hungry for people to serve and to help. With that, sometimes they actually push aside the fact that these people may have a nefarious past. They are looking to quickly onboard them, get them into a position. They are happy to have a warm body. They are happy to have the skillset the individual brings to the table. Referred by a close friend or family member, so they are not even thinking about screening them, especially if they are not working directly with a child. When they are working with a child, it's more in our consciousness that we should put the best people with these kids to keep in faith. But what about people who are just working alongside one another? The workplace violence conflict. We need to focus on making all of our communities and all of the workplaces as safe as possible. It's the responsibility of the organization to do so. But nonprofits, because of their compromised budgets in some cases, they are spending their money elsewhere to maybe grow their projects and they are not really thinking about the people, if they are safe in the environment they are working in. In corporate America, it is common, and in the nonprofit arena, it is not as common. We are here as a voice to raise the awareness that everybody should be doing this, whether you have one employee or thousands. Hugh: You and I met at a conference last week, CEO Space. Had I met you—I came in late in the week because I had conflicts—and said, “Hey Steve, what is it that you do?” and you say, “I do background searches,” and I say, “I have a nonprofit. Why is it important for me to do that?” How would you respond to me? Steve: As a nonprofit? Hugh: If I say, “I have a nonprofit. Why is it important for me to do that?” Steve: You touched on this. It's about reducing risk and reducing liability. Liability is big. It all ties into the overall image in the community they're serving. It's protecting their image. It doesn't have to be their first priority. The first priority is protecting those who are part of their organization. You have to look at the entire hierarchy of your staff from your board of directors down to your volunteers. Oftentimes, there are people in between the upper board and the volunteers who are just coming on who get missed. They didn't think it was important to screen them. Really it's about lowering your liability and lowering your risk, or at least managing your risk. You can't be a risk-free organization; that doesn't exist. It's about, how do you take steps and utilize your budget dollars to minimize your risk as much as you possibly can? Hugh: Russell, you and I interface with a lot of nonprofit leaders and boards. I find there is a lot of boards that aren't up to speed on how to be the board. They think about being in charge of governance sometimes. They sometimes realize they are responsible for financial oversight. I don't think boards realize they have a liability whatever happens. Do you find, Russell, in your work that boards are blind to this element as well? Russell: I have talked to people who really don't have a core grasp of the notion of having liability insurance for the board of directors officers as they are putting these things together. They don't understand how critical that is and what risks are involved. A large part of the problem is people don't know what they don't know. Nonprofit leaders, these are people centered in the idea of making the world a better place and service to others. They are more prone to take people at their word as opposed to doing any sort of digging. They may not think there is a big risk associated with bringing a person on. It's nice to be able to take people at their word, but it depends on what kind of work you're doing, who you're serving, the assets of your organization you're protecting. It never occurs to people there may be a scurvy elephant roaming around the zoo. You have to have a look at who you're dealing with. People aren't always who they say they are. That is just the reality of it. It's important to look at these things up front because if you don't have a person who is not in integrity in there in the first place, you don't have to figure out how to get rid of them later on when you could have problems. The reputation of your organization could be at stake. You just have these horror stories. There was a veterans' organization a few years ago that saw their reputation fall apart because the CEO was playing games with the books. Always you have to think in terms of protecting yourself with your regulations, with internal controls, with the way money and other assets are handled. More important, how you deal with the people you serve. You can really get in a lot of trouble easily and quickly without in the least bit intending to. Hugh: Steve, did that shake loose any thoughts for you? Steve: Yeah, it actually did. I do believe that nonprofits feel that the people they bring in have the heart for what they do. If they have a heart for what they do, then they are probably good people. I really think that is a mistake a lot of them make. Taking that assumption because they say they believe in what you believe in, they have the passion for what you have a passion for, that doesn't mean they have the same background you have. A lot of people are trying to use their influence they currently have in the community, it could be a leader in the community, to find their way into a vulnerable group. That is the MO of a pedophile is to build up trust in everybody around them, including building themselves up to be leaders in the community so that everybody seems to trust them, and that is when they can get to the vulnerable children and build relationships without anybody thinking twice about it. Screening is not going to catch everybody, only if they have been arrested or convicted of something in the past. It's only one part of the puzzle for keeping not only your organization safe, but those that you serve. It goes much more beyond the background check. I don't think anyone can feel that they have that warm fuzzy feeling now that I have implemented background checks. I'm good, I got a green check mark for that person, I can just let them go. That is a wrong approach. You really need to have a conscious community around that everybody is the eyes and ears of the organization. We all have to keep our eyes on who we're working alongside. If they are doing something we believe is incorrect or harmful to the organization or to those who serve, to make sure we all feel empowered to report those things, especially for physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, whatever you might see. It's up to us to report it. Hugh: There is another realm that Russell talked about with having your policies and procedures up to date. You just pointed out, we have to pay attention. That is part of our responsibility as a leader to see what is in front of us. I never realized people who are—and it makes sense if you talk about it—a pedophile positions themselves in a place of trust and then continues to validate that, so they throw people off guard. No, it couldn't possibly be true. I have known people in that position before, and they were busted. Eventually you got caught. How long does it take and how many people do you hurt in the process? At least do your background check, which also helps relieve your liability. I'm sure some of the companies that Russell talked about that issue board insurance require a background check so they have less liability. I didn't warn you: When Russell comes in, he asks you the hard questions. I'll ask you easier ones first while he formulates the hard ones. Give us an example where people were trusting, and it really created damage. Then you came in and maybe you helped them get a process in place to prevent it in the future. Without naming names, what are the kinds of things that people should be alert to?   Steve: There are so many stories. Some have been recently in the news that everybody is aware of. One is USA Gymnastics with Dr. Nassau. Building trust, not only from the organization, but with the parents of these young children in the gymnastics program, and then going on to abuse them for years without ever getting caught. Sandusky at Penn State, same thing. He was able to testify with his peers that showering with young boys was just about cleanliness. They are always going to try to lie about who they are and have somebody believe it. They are masters at it. They never take any responsibility for their actions. It's that narcissistic behavior on the pedophile side. Another story has nothing to do with a criminal record. This was a nonprofit organization that had drivers and they were doing deliveries. One of the individuals when we met with them, and we were on site for this one, he was in the state of Colorado, but he had a Tennessee drivers' license. He said he had been here for four years. I asked him why didn't he have a Colorado license. He said that he lost his license in Colorado from too many speeding tickets, so he had to go to my parent's house in Tennessee to get a license. He is volunteering for an organization that drives one of their vehicles. People can get around from their past and get away from their past, whether it's criminal behavior or not. It could be resume fudging. That happens more than you know, especially for certain positions, for executive director positions, finance positions, COO type positions, where they can say they have a Master's degree in finance. They really just have a Bachelor's, or they never finished college. They put it on their resume for years, and nobody questioned it. There are stories where the CEO of RadioShack, and RadioShack is falling from grace, but the CEO never had his Master's degree in business, never had his MBA. It was a reporter who figured it out and started reporting on it. Then he resigned or got let go. Same thing with the president of the business school of Harvard. She had miscommunicated on her resume that she had a Ph. D, and she never did. Organizations that we all know about and have heard about, down to around the corner with businesses in your neighborhood or possibly even your organization. It's important to vet the higher-end positions in your organization. It's not just about the volunteers. I can go on forever about why it's important for the volunteers, but anybody working in your office, making sure you are looking at embezzlement or money laundering or anything that deals with your budget, your finances, your books, make sure those are always intact and that you are bringing on the best people. Background checks don't always catch everybody. They may never have been arrested before. I am going to go back to what Hugh was talking about with the pedophile. Eventually they get caught. That's not true. They never get caught, and they die with their secrets. The average pedophile molests 137 children in their lifetime without ever getting arrested for it. That is where the training is more important than the background check and being aware and keeping their eyes open. Hugh: Wow. I guess there is some people who will be polite and they think it's not polite to do a background check. Have you come across that? How do you respond to that? Steve: For the last 15 years, we have dealt with that. I don't know exactly where that really stems from other than they feel like it's unkind to ask someone to sign a consent form to do a background check. They are giving of their time, and I feel like I am invading their privacy if I ask them for this information. But you have to think about your organization and its reputation and why you have that organization set up in the first place. Then you have to make sure you bring on the best people. You just need to frame it differently: we are a culture of safety instead of just being haphazard about who we bring on. I think that everybody who comes on board would feel more confident with the person sitting next to them, with the person they are running an errand with to Office Depot if they are going in the same vehicle together. You will have a higher level of confidence that the organization did the right thing before you came. Hugh: Where is the person who said, “Oh, I don't want to be impolite to them,” so they back down from not realizing they are being impolite to everyone else in the culture. I don't want to make trouble, but if they don't do that, they will make trouble for everybody else. What about the person who says, “I don't have time for that?” That sounds like too much trouble. Steve: The one issue with nonprofits is wearing so many hats and being so busy. I think that sometimes the background check seems like a daunting task, especially if they have never done them. First, I have to vet a company. I don't know where to go to trust somebody. I don't want to do all the paperwork. I have enough things going on. I don't even understand background checks. How am I going to do this? I don't have a Human Resources background, nor do I have a HR director on staff. That is where SecureSearch makes it a little unique. We can come in understanding that that is one of your pain points on not having enough people to do all of the tasks you have to do. We made everything paperless. Not only are the consent forms, but also the entire process of signing up is paperless. Everything is the click of a button. The applicants, whether they be your board of directors, staff, or volunteers, they do all of the data entry. All you're doing is sending an email invitation. Simple as that. Hugh: Wow. If I came to you and said I have ten volunteers and I need to take them through a background check, then you'd give me a consent form for them to sign, with permission to do that. Steve: The way you phrased that is interesting, that you give them a consent form. It's actually against the law for us to provide a template consent form. We provide samples. All consent forms are the organization's form. It's not my form. We provide a sample, but it is really up to each organization to go through legal counsel and make sure everything is in there that needs to be in there and that it meets their federal and state laws. We try to do our best with our samples to make sure they are good, but you should only use that as a framework. Hugh: Before you can do the background check, I have to have them sign a form though. Steve: Yes. That form can be in paper, or it can be through our paperless volunteer and applicant portal that is called Search My Background that we have. If everything is in the portal electronically, and they sign a signature box either with their finger on a mobile device or the mouse of their computer. That signature will map to all the documents in the system so that everything is signed and everything is provided to the applicant. Hugh: Where I was headed with that, and I thank you for the clarification on the language, where I was headed with that is I would say I have my ten volunteers and I need to run them through the process. Would you suggest to me that I do it on myself as well? Steve: Well, somebody should run one on you. But if you want to at least have something in the “file,” whether it be a digital file or a file folder in a lockable filing cabinet, having your own in there is a good idea, especially to report to the board that if you are the executive director, it started with you. Sometimes you can be surprised on what you might see on your own. We had an executive director in Minnesota who had a small nonprofit. I think it was five or ten volunteers based on what he told me over the phone. This was quite a few years ago. When I was small enough and able to see the background checks coming in on a regular basis, I pulled it open and said, “Oh, I talked to that gentleman on the phone.” He signed up and ran his background check; he had three pages of felonies on his own. He never ran another background check with us. I think he was curious as to if his own background check would come up and expose him as a customer. There was nothing I could do to share it with the greater group of that organization. There is a lot of risk out there. It can start with that executive director. I don't think the executive director should be the one running the background check; it should be pushed by the board that the executive director have a background check. Hugh: Absolutely. Nobody should be exempt from it. Everybody should go through it. The founder, the executive director. Steve: Everybody. Hugh: Great. We are almost halfway through this interview. Russell, I'm sure that you have formulated a great question for our guest. Russell: As I was saying earlier, a lot of people don't know what they don't know. I think it starts with going from a place of what do I know, what have I been told, what don't I know, and where did the information I get come from? How do I know what I know? I think my first question would be all quality information. How can you get quality information to make sure that what you're hearing can be verified? Steve: That is a really good question. There are a lot of background screening companies in the U.S, thousands really. Everybody approaches business differently. Some are very small, that concept of working out of your garage, and they might not have a website. They might be in it just for the profit. There are lots of different data points to put together a good background check. The problem I see with the nonprofit side is they are learning on these database products to be the be-all end-all product because it's fast and it's inexpensive. They think because somebody might be calling it a national search that it truly is. But it isn't. I like to think of the database searches as a net. If you can picture the map of the United States and now you're casting this net across the United States, what is the net made up of? Holes strung together is the way I'd like to put it. I want you to remember that while it might be national—we call it multi-state—there are going to be holes. In some areas of this net there will be tears and huge holes versus tightly knit holes in other areas. You have this product that a lot of the nonprofits like to order because they think it's national, they think it's an easy, inexpensive way to launch into the background checks, and they don't realize the risks that are still going to be there. They are not conducting what we call a best-in-class background check. Nonprofits have to be careful. To answer your question about data, we take three different aggregation data points from the database and merge them together, eliminating the duplicate points. Other companies will buy data from these aggregate groups of data, and they will hang it on their own internal servers and ping against that data for months before they refresh it. That's how you get the $2 background checks for some of these large nonprofits. I'm not saying everybody does it, but in order to reduce the cost to meet what an expectation might be for a nonprofit, which is cheap, these organizations are going to give you bad and old data. We refresh our data every week, in some cases like the sex offender registries, for some every two weeks. But the oldest refresh we have is 30 days for our entire database. Again, it's a merge of three different data points coming together. We didn't get into this business primarily to make a profit; we got into this business to protect those who need to be protected. Russell: That's it. It's setting that intention right up front. When you talk to people, you have to set an intention up front about what it is you're doing. When you talk to people who might be new that we need to help, but understand we are going to be looking into some things, asking you questions for the sake of transparency, and direct about it. Who, what, when, where, why, and how? We keep our questions as open in that way as we can so that we get some meaningful information. I think that people who have things to hide may balk a little bit at this directness. Somebody is fidgeting, and they are talking about how much time this is taking, why you need to know that. In my head, that will be a red flag. What say you? Steve: A hidden benefit of the background check implementation is the bad ones kind of leave in the guise of night. They don't come back tomorrow. You actually said, “Hey, we take it seriously, we are going to have a consent form for you to sign. We will call your references. We will check in on who you say you are.” That's another thing, references. If you are not calling references, whether you outsource it to an organization, I recommend doing it internally so you can hear the nuance of the phone, the pregnant pauses of someone being asked, “Is this somebody you would bring back into your organization if you could?” and they go, “Hmm, well, I don't know about that.” If you outsource that, it's hard for somebody to put that into words on a report. I recommend if you have the time to do it yourself. If you have the money, you can outsource it. References are just as important as the background check. The background checks of course can be criminal. They can also verify your resume, education, employment. It's not always just looking at their criminal records, but making sure they are who they say they are. Hugh: While you are on that track, what kinds of background checks are there? Go over that again. Steve: There are lots of different types of background checks. We want to get nonprofit organizations to stop thinking about using the database just for looking for a criminal or a sex offender. Because of the analogy I used with the net with all the larger holes and tears, you need to look at each applicant holistically. Instead of where your organization is serving or based and the geography and how that might look in a database search, you need to look at the applicant. John could be a resident of one place for his whole life, and Mary has lived in seven different places in seven years. Mary, you are going to have to do more on because there are possibilities that the database has missed where Mary lives, they weren't up to date, and you are going to add a county courthouse search or a statewide repository search if it exists, like it does in Colorado. Other states have that, too. You are going to need to start with a foundation and then lay additional due diligence on top of that to get a good profile for each applicant instead of one size fits all. The criminal side, you break out into two different things. We have state and local crimes that you find in a database. You have the sex offender crimes that are in the sex offender registry. Then you will have crimes against the federal government or federal-related crimes. A lot of people think of these as the white-collar crimes, the Bernie Madoffs or the Martha Stewart crime where she got involved in the stocks. Yes, but inter-state kidnapping is also a federal crime. Money laundering and profiteering is a federal crime. Any building on federal lands. A lot of organizations and companies lately neglect ordering a federal criminal search. That can come back to bite them if they don't search it. There are a lot of other things, too. Motor vehicle searches, I mentioned. Credit reports we can do. You can do the education verification. International criminal and credit. Motor vehicles. We have 165 different services available to any organization, and most organizations look at about five. Russell:What are some of the training opportunities? Part of the challenge is training nonprofit leaders or other people about what the benefits are and the dangers of neglecting to do due diligence. In other words, what are the things that you're doing to assist people to understand the value of it so that they actually have this awareness? It's one thing to bring somebody in. Somebody could slide under the radar after you have done your search. Maybe something changes. People need to have an idea of what sort of things they need to look out for to make sure that everything is good. What training do you folks give nonprofits an opportunity to take advantage of so that they have a better sense of when they may need some help digging into something? Steve: We actually have a very specific training program that I actually founded. It's called Safeguard from Abuse. With a focus on the vulnerable populations that a lot of nonprofits focus their energy into those communities, it is a 75-minute online and also on a DVD training program with a certificate of understanding for those that pass the test on all of the different types of abuse, not just the sexual abuse, but neglect, physical, and emotional abuse, diving deep into what they are, diving deep into how to recognize when a child is being abused. So many organizations have that fear of having a sexual predator in their midst, so we do focus more time and attention in their personality traits, their grooming behaviors, understanding the personality of that pedophile. The most important thing is raising the awareness overall through the training, but empowering each person who goes through the video to be a mandated reporter and to understand that they can't help if they put their head in the sand. They have to be empowered to report, and they have to understand how to do so is very important. The awareness training is important. My example that I like to use is Russell, you want to buy a new car. You have a brand of car in mind, and you're getting in that car and heading down the road. All of a sudden, you start to see that car everywhere. It's now in your awareness. It's always been there, just like the characteristics of people who harm kids. They're still doing it in front of us; we're just not aware of it. We didn't raise our awareness level high enough to see what's always been there but invisible to the eye. It's really what we focus on is what we see. What we focus on we become as well. We want to make sure that we can train enough people to end child abuse, or at least if we can save one child, it's all worth it. Russell: Every time you buy a new car, everybody buys the same make, model, and color that very same day. I was thinking about all of these things. There are people who are listening to this, and they may be leaning back in their chairs thinking, No, I never did any of this stuff up front. Now I have 60 people. How do I know that I don't have somebody like this in my midst right now? Is there some type of organizational audit or assessment that you can do? Steve: We can definitely help. What you're saying is I gotta go retro. I have to go back to day one, and anybody who is still with me, screen them. That seems like an invasion maybe, or a daunting task, or maybe you're just thinking, I'll start with the next person. Now you will set yourself up for some difficulties being fair and equitable. If it's just Susan who just walked in the door but you did not go back five years ago and do this, once you implement the strategy, you have to implement it at any level and go back and do everybody. Starting top down is a good approach. Start at the top, and push down through the hierarchy of individuals in your organization. It's about resetting the reason for why you're doing it. You are resetting the fact that you have this new program that you're implementing. Our insurance company wants us to do it. Most insurance companies want you to do it anyway. If you have to put it on something else, you can just say it's a new requirement. It could be just your organization's requirement. Once it's a new requirement, it's a requirement. Everybody has to do it. Russell: Having everybody do it ensures that you don't have somebody out there who wants to take you to court saying they're being singled out because I'm a woman or I'm black or I'm over 50, or just anything they can pull out to say why it doesn't apply. We talked about that comfort level that people have. I don't want to offend or put anybody out. How do you help people who decide to do something like that do it in the face of the apprehension that they may have and the fear of offending somebody, implementing it seamlessly? What are some of the things you do to help people through that? Steve: That's a good question. We help organizations put together a background screening policy. It's all about policies. Sometimes you might have a policy- With those who work with kids, you might have a child protection policy, for example. But even in that child protection policy, they don't talk about background checks. So we need to weave in another layer of policy, and that is who do we screen, why do we screen them, how often do we screen them, and what do we order? Really it comes down to being comfortable enough with your organization and communicating that you do have policies. It's part of your mission and vision, wherever it is that it fits in, to make it that important. You can make it unimportant and be at risk and have everyone at risk, or you can make it important and be an advocate for safety and make your organization. It's all about preserving that organization. Amp up your image; it will help you and the community. Hugh: Both of you are talking about people not knowing what they don't know. There is a side that people are so close to it, you're so involved in it, that you're so blind to it because you are focusing on the day-to-day and the relationships. You're blind to all of the liabilities. Having someone like you that is skilled to discuss policy procedure with I think is really a high benefit. Is that part of your service that you offer? Steve: We offer that at no charge. Phone call conversations, any time someone wants to talk to me. It's very individual. Each organization is very individual, and I can't just say, Here is a template. We like to discuss what your organization looks like, the different roles and responsibilities you might have, the silos you may have, the offshoots of your organization you may have, and drill down. Like I mentioned, it's not a one-size-fits-all. Based on roles and responsibilities, you will be ordering different types of services. You may order motor vehicle for one, you may need to look at a credit report for one, but it won't be for all. We want to make sure that you understand that as an organization, what's available first of all, why you should order it, and then implement it. Now it's part of your policy manual, and now it can be handed off if you were to leave the organization. If you are in charge of this role, and now you are leaving or retiring to go do something else, you can now hand it off to someone else and they won't have to reinvent the wheel. It's important to do it on the front end, but we'll help. Hugh: Your link for people to find you is SecureSearch.com? Steve: It's actually not. I wish I had that. It's SecureSearchPro.com. Hugh: That's better. Steve: We have SafeguardfromAbuse.com. Hugh: You have been talking about databases, and people can do a database search. Say more about that for people who don't know what you mean by “database.” I think of a database as where I keep my CRM, where I keep my contacts. Say more about that and why it doesn't really cut the mustard. Steve: Okay. A lot of people think that there is one central place to go to do a background check in the United States. Just go to the FBI. They think there is something in some place to go. That is a fallacy. We are a disparate country. Our systems do not communicate with each other. What you have in Colorado doesn't communicate with what's in Virginia with what's in Florida, even though we think that's the case. Another fallacy is that a social security number is all you need to find a criminal record. We don't find any criminal records using a social security number. That's a myth. We use the social security number to find out what the person might be: what names they have used, what addresses they may have used, information sources. The databases, because we have this disparate system where counties don't communicate with states sometimes and counties don't even communicate with each other, all of these groups work in silos. Their information or their data is also stuck in that silo. You have to search that silo to find that information. In some cases, these silos of information raise their hands and say they will share. There are companies called data aggregators to say, I will pull from this county, I will pull from that county, and this department of corrections wants to give me that information. They compile it all together. They go out to my industry and say, “Do you want to buy my information?” I was talking about having three of these aggregators that I purchase information from and weave it all together because they will miss some in one and miss some in another and I am hoping I can fill in some of the gaps. This is not 100%. Again, it's that net with holes. It's as good as it gets. We search over a billion records, but there are so many holes and gaps in this data. That is where the database comes in; it's a base of data. There will be holes that you can't rely on as your only search. We can consult on the best approach. The best approach is you have to look at three different things. First, your due diligence, why you do what you do, why you want to screen in the first place. Do you want to protect the vulnerable? Is it because your insurance company made you do it? I don't care what it is. We have to understand what the impetus of your diligence is. Then we need to look at your organizational budget and say what budget dollars do you have to work with. Do you need to go find more budget dollars from another bucket in order to cover something like this? You want to implement it as soon as possible. The third is your comfort for risk, or your risk tolerance. That is already comfortable with your organization name being in a newspaper because you didn't do a background check, and now you brought in a pedophile into your organization. Or does that make you cringe and keep you awake at night? What does your legal counsel say? What does your insurance company say? We need to bring those three things together and create a unique, sustainable program for your organization. That may be very different from the organization I talk to tomorrow. That's okay. It's unique to you and sustainable and something you're comfortable with and can move forward with in your organization. A long answer for a simple question. Hugh: It's a complex question, a complex situation. I have met people who think they can just Google somebody's name and find out all kinds of things. What's the fallacy in that strategy? Steve: Did you have consent to do it, first of all? Every applicant has their legal rights. They have to provide you consent to really do a background check on them, especially if you want to use it. If you just want to be the armchair neighbor and check in on a neighbor, you have the legal right to do so. If you are going to bring this individual on board and have them fill out paperwork to be a volunteer or member of the staff, you have to get their consent. You can't just go to Google. The data out there is only as good as the data out there. If you're not buying it and it's free, there is a reason it's free. If you're spending $59.99 to get the rest of the report, they gave you a little bit, and the rest of it is behind the scenes, that is just database information, and that is way more than you ever need to pay. You need to do a database search for only $15. It's something you need, and something you need to build on, so you want to make sure you make it affordable on the database side so you can grow it and add the county courthouse searches as necessary. Russell: There are some things out there that are robust. I have probably used some of the things as a revenue agent for IRS. It's not off the shelf, and it's not cheap by any means, but it's good stuff. It's important to do that. You get what you pay for. A lot of these databases that you describe pop up if you do an online directory search for the Yellow Pages, or something like that. These things get offered to you all the time. Steve: It's the free data available to everyone that they compile. Not everything is going to be in there as I mentioned. It will be fraught with holes. They make it look good. They put a shiny website together, and you see moving parts. It's like they are searching as deep as they can go, and I will get every tidbit of information I need in seconds on one of these companies. You have to be careful with what you do. Everything needs to be validated at the local level. Anything from the database, any red flag, has to be validated at the court or the point of origin of the information to be accurate; otherwise, you are not supposed to see it anyway. That is why you want to work with a consumer reporting agency. SecureSearch is a consumer reporting agency. We are a member of concern consuming reporter agency, making sure we do it the right way and making sure we do validate everything at the local level before you as the customer gets to see that information. Hugh: We are coming to the last part of our interview, Steve. SecureSearchPro.com is where people can find out more. What is the differentiator? What makes this business different? You mentioned there are lots of others out there. Why are you different from them? Steve: That's a good question. The first thing is the information we have to share with you is through years of experience. We have veterans in the industry on staff who run our customer service department, who run our operations, and who run the executive office. That's number one, lots of experience. Two is we have a heart for the nonprofit sector because we understand you are wearing many hats. You don't have time, and you may not have the skillsets. You can feel comfortable with us. We are going to answer the phone. We will talk to you. You won't be alone in this process. We will be there to answer any questions you may have throughout the process, and you will have someone you can work with, whether it be me, you can always work with me directly, or anyone on my staff. We also don't have a single salesperson on staff, so you will never be “sold” anything. We only have consultants, so we will be asking you questions and making you recommendations for best practices. You won't hear from us five million times; we won't pound you until you buy. We wait to hear from you again if you'd like to do this with us. That is what makes us different. We have a heart for the nonprofit, the integrity of our data we are purchasing, and the integrity of the system we have and the compliance of our system and processes is what set us apart. Hugh: That's strong. It sounds like this service is incredibly expensive, thousands of dollars, to do a background check. Is that true? Steve: No, that's actually very far from true. Depends on the organization you're working with. Our pricing model is geared toward the nonprofit sector, so we are extremely affordable. We actually have scalable pricing for those who have high volume discount programs. A background check, I would say that a good budget, if you want to do it right, for the criminal and sex offender and fill in all the gaps, is budget for $50 a person. It doesn't mean it will always cost $50 a person; it may cost $15 for some, $22 for another, or $85 for another. It could be all over the board. But I would budget that to make sure you have enough allocated funds for a good solid program. A lot of people are going to ask if they need to do background checks through the fingerprint process, too. No, you don't. You can get good information that is disposition-based. Disposition is what happened in court, information from a secure search without ever having to do fingerprints. If you are getting government funding or state funding, they may make it mandatory, so you have to do it. But we can still make sure that the fingerprint arrest record—and that's all it is, an arrest information source with biometrics, and not everybody gets fingerprinted when they get arrested—that the courts dismissed it or said it was a guilty verdict and enhance the arrest record database you search. Hugh: Good. Thank you for that complete answer. This has been a very informative interview, and I'm sitting here thinking about all the organizations that I know about that have fallen short. We are going to make sure we will put a recommendation in our work that they do this early on. I think it's that important. As we are tying up this really good interview—Steve, thank you for the time today. It's been exceptional—what impression, what challenge, what thought do you want to leave in people's minds? Steve: I guess my question is: What image do you have of your own organization? How do you look at your own organization? Do your process and your people align with it? If you are worried about that and you want to lower your risk and your liabilities as an organization and maintain the image you want to have of your own organization, it doesn't cost a lot of money, it doesn't take a lot of time, you don't have to learn how to do it. We do everything for you. Just reach out to us. There is no charge to sign up or for a free consultation. Talk to one of our advocates. We're here to help; we're not here to sell. We hope to hear from you. It's something you should definitely take a look at. If you're doing the background checks now, we can talk about if you are doing them the right way. If you're not doing them, we can help you along the path. Hugh: Russell, thanks again for being here and being by my side. Steve, thank you for a wonderful interview. Thanks everyone for listening. Steve: Thank you very much. Learn more about your ad choices. 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EP21: Marc Miles Discusses 7 Things Every Painting Contractor Must Know To Protect Their Business SUMMARY: In this episode of DYB Podcast, Steve interviews Marc Miles, his business attorney based out of Venice, Florida specializing in defendign against IRS and state collections. Marc shares a plethora of useful knowledge about finding real solutions to the unknowns that could potentially hurt your business. From employee timesheets to written agreements, Marc talks in-depth about how to navigate the different undesirable situations you and your business may face. _______________ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: -How to protect yourself and your business from unknown factors -The legal standing of your business and your money -Understanding the goals of your business in advance _______________   QUOTES: "If you do have something in writing, you’re bound by it, so you need to make sure you’re comfortable with it." "If you’re going to form a business entity, 95% of the time, LLC is the way to go." "A written agreement isn’t ‘I don’t trust you,’ it’s clarifying expectations and giving yourself a chance to void if something unfortunate happens." "If you want just your books done right, and you have no worries, your EA is irrelevant." "When you form the business, think about what your succession plan is going forward." _______________ HIGHLIGHTS: [03:25] The big unknowns that can hurt your business and how to prepare for those unknowns [09:33] Proper ways to protect yourself from false claims from employees [15:14] What to stay on top of regarding the IRS and what to do when dealing with tax issues [26:16] The difference between sole-proprietors and corporations [34:15] Partnerships, establishing trust, and understanding what your expectations are from the beginning _______________ LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: [APPS] TSheets DYB App [GROUPS] BNI The Florida Bar DYB Coach Special Offer Contact Miles Join DYB ADDITIONAL FREE RESOURCES: DYB System PDF EP01 9 Steps to Doubling Your Business Part 1 52 Blog Post Ideas PDF YouCanBookMe VIDEO Pre-qualifying Questions PDF Video Testimonial Checklist PDF 3 Steps To Get Leads From FB PDF 11 Interview Questions PDF 9 Ways To Get HOA Work PDF  -------------- Connect with Marc Miles on Facebook here Connect with Steve on Facebook here  -------------- Press and hold to visit the page Show Page Notes -------------- Thank you very much for joining us today! If you received value, would you take a quick few seconds and leave us a review on iTunes, please? _________ STEVE: What happened? MARC: So, I had this client, he was behind on his IRS payments, he had an ex-wife and had some issues, things didn’t work out well, she left him high and dry, he was in another relationship, he was trying to make that relationship work, but the IRS kept following him, he had a car, he had a business he was trying to start and his soon-to-be wife was like, "I am not marrying you till you get this fixed, if you don’t get this fixed, I am leaving you," so he is like, you’ve got to help me, I said I can do that, so he comes to me, he said, where are you at, we took a look at this whole situation, we said no problem, we can do this, this and this, we set everything up, I talked to the revenue officer, she was fine, we submitted the paper work and he ended up paying about, maybe $8,000 on what had been a $110,000 liability… And his girlfriend at the time married him afterward, saying we got together and if it hadn’t been for you, while I was doing this, she would not have stopped there… STEVE: Woah, okay… Hello and welcome Marc Miles of the law offices of Marc J. Miles P.A, welcome to the show. MARC: Thank you, Steve. STEVE: Marc, what does P.A mean? MARC: P.A stands for Professional Association, and it’s a designation that is able to be used by individuals who are licensed by the county moral of the States, when they formed a business entity that says, they can only practice with the entity that which they are licensed for. So, if you see a lawyer with P.A or PLC, you know that is their business, all they do is the practice of law, they don’t serve Mc Donald’s fries on the side… STEVE: Ah… okay, glad to have you on the show. For everybody listening, Marc Miles is our business attorney, and he has been, for years, he helped us when we were at Burnett Painting, he wrote the agreement when we sold Burnett Painting and he has worked with us ever since, for everything we’ve done, without going in details… and Marc is outstanding keep him close cause he’s a great guy to know and I was kidding around with him before we get into this. Marc, you are too big to be an attorney… it’s not hard and I kind of wonder how you got into this industry… But, fortunately, he is really good at what he does and so I thought, Marc, we’ve got to get you on the show and let’s share somethings that some business owners, painting contractors out there need to know, to protect themselves, protect their businesses and the unknowns right, so we know, what we know and we don’t know what we don’t know, that’s really the dangerous part huh… MARC: And that’s what I try to help people to say, here’s what you are not aware of, let me ask these questions, you decide, but I hope you can get there so you can think about these things that you might not otherwise think of. STEVE: Hmm… Absolutely, so for example, what are some of the big unknowns? MARC: Okay, so the big unknown… the biggest thing especially with trade contractors and painters is, whether your clients are going to pay you or not, a lot of times whether or not you are having an agreement or non-agreement to sign, that states the payment terms and other terms of agreement, you have no idea what the client is going to go, are they going to try to want to stiff you, do they want to change? Do they say no? I am not paying until you repaint the whole thing? So, one of the biggest unknowns is try to eliminate the ways the client has not to pay you. STEVE: Uh… Okay, now this is really good, this is especially used for high contract or long contract work like commercial, industrial or even residential for your construction, absolutely… So, what are some ways? How can you…? MARC: The first is, you put the total price in the writing in the contract, not just a quote, the quote says, here’s my estimate, here’s your price, but when you have them in a contract say, this is the price and what’s paid, you are also saying what you do it for, and you haven’t signed, people don’t think an estimate is binding, people sees a paper says, estimate, sign, yeah, I agree to that amount, but they don’t see it as, this is a contract I am… subject to, there are legal remedies to it and that’s one of the easiest ways to sort of… that’s how you do it, so you have a little, it doesn’t have to be a 10-page contract, it can be a 1-page contract, but it looks like a contract, so it impresses upon them, the seriousness as opposed to, here is my quick book invoice, sign here, that says I agree… STEVE: Uh, woah. Okay, so this is a really good point is and I know opinions to this is very common practice, quick books, invoice, estimates, whether it’s an estimating program, they all say estimate stuff. If I heard you correctly, you were saying it should say, to set the it should say contract, what about agreement? Can it say agreement? MARC: Absolutely, you could say agreement, no problem. And then it should contain a couple other things that… you people have seen in contracts before, you’ve seen references to if the contract is breached or if not paid in x days or you know, choice of law, if we disagree, we go to court here, you know… throw some of those things in there, you know… Now, don’t be smart about it, don’t put something that is going to hurt you because you don’t really know what it is, but throw some other things in there, so it looks like an agreement or contract, more than just an estimate. STEVE: So, silly question here, I put this together when I was in L.A, is if we should have a lawyer take a look at it? MARC: Have someone take a look at it, over, just see it and ask some questions, yeah. Because every state is going to be different and some things you maybe find difficult to put in one state versus another, so… STEVE: Okay. Thank you. What are some ways that business owners… because you know, I mean you run your own practice, it’s a ton of work and you take all the risk? Now if something happens to you, you can sue them for free, and if something happens to us, the owner… how can business owners protect themselves against faulty claims. Like here is an example, I was talking to a friend of mine and he had paid on of his guys an extra day, it was a holiday or something and it ended up being 48 hours and he isn’t paying five and a half and there was a day he didn’t even work, he was just being generous and paying the next 8 hours, well he came back and sued him, ended up causing him $30,000, because he didn’t pay him five and a half for that extra 8 hours that he paid him… MARC: And he brought the state in as well, I am sure, because the state came in and probably said, let’s take a look at your records as well… Absolutely, so yes, so one of the things you want to do is, some people use independent contractors, while some people use employees, and there’s two different ways you have to handle it, you have an independent contractor, you need to clearly meet… First of all, if you are using an independent contractor, you need to have an agreement, end of story, why? Because if you have good insurance, your insurance might have clause for not having an agreement. I’ve got a situation right now, a client of mine that is relatively large painting company has got major insurance, that’s $100,000 job, $300,000 jobs, had a job where the sub he used, ended up screwing up, causing maybe $1,500 or $1,900 worth of damage, but if he wants to go through his insurance, they are like you didn’t use sub-contractor agreement, even though I drafted one for him. And now they are saying, if you are going to use the insurance, it’s going to cost you $15,000… So, now he is going to pay it out of the pocket or pay the $15,000. So, if you are going to use a contractor, make sure the insurance always have an agreement, even for that reason, but the agreement contains a schedule, the schedule says, here is how I pay you, and you will be specific in that schedule, this is how I get paid and then you only pay by that schedule… that’s for contractors STEVE: For sub-contractors, so if you are working with subs, you have subs, make sure you have a written agreement? MARC: Yes, absolutely… STEVE: Okay, what should be in that agreement? The schedule? The payment schedule? MARC: The schedule, their insurance and their compliance with the law basically says, you agree you have x amount insurance and your license etcetera, whatever you have with the state, failure to do so is a breach. As well as the fact that if you don’t get paid, they don’t get paid, so you want to make sure that if you are doing the job and your sub and you get stiffed by the owner, you are not going to have to pay your sub out of pocket or not. Now, some people, they say that’s a little hard to get, maybe fair, but if you take a look at almost every big GC contracts that’s out there, from the big players, I would guarantee you that is in there. STEVE: Hmm… I wouldn’t be surprised actually… So, what about employees, what are some proper things, what are some, things we need to be doing to protect ourselves, faulty claims against employees, just making sure all our basis are covered? MARC: The biggest thing to do is, the time-tracking of hours, you have to have a system where their hours are tracked and you can see that, relatively easily… STEVE: Okay… MARC: Then the best thing to do is, if you are doing payroll, maybe you have someone else doing payroll, maybe you are doing it yourself. If you have someone else doing payroll, they will automatically know the hours when you calculate to get to know, are we yet over-time? Is it a holiday? Do we pay 5 and a half? Now, if you use QuickBooks payroll, it will usually do the calculation for you, but if not, they will know, it will let you keep track, because once you get that 40 hours, the rules change, once you hit the holidays, the rules change, and they are different in every state, but wherever the state, you need to know that. So, you need to be able to keep track of hours because what happens if they put, we’ve worked this time and you are like, hey you’ve worked 42 hours already, based on this job in here, you only really worked 32 hours, you know, something… I don’t know, I mean God forbid… few hours here and there a day. Track hours to be able to track the hours consistently, that’s number one… STEVE: There is an app we like to… that we used with Burnette Painting and that many DYB use, we call it T-sheets, I don’t know if you are familiar with it, but… MARC: Not a lot but okay… as long as it is hours that are recorded and you can see those hours on a regular basis so that you can catch anything, you have to still review and catch everything at a time, because what a lot of people do is, they think overtime is time and a half, that’s the only thing they think of, they don’t think about, sick or vacation, whether it’s state mandate, certain things, and that should be talking to… even talking to a payroll person they know, you know good idea of that, if a not local attorney is what makes that. And that’s just actually a brief conversation just to get some conversations to help make sure that you don’t blow that. The other thing is don’t do a written agreement, depends on what state you are in, lots of state are at will, which means as long as you don’t have it written, you can sort of do what you like with their employment and how they are employed and how long they are employed. So, very few rules such as over-time, wages, etcetera, but if you do put something into writing, you are bound by it, so you need to make sure you are really comfortable with what you have, if you have something in writing. STEVE: Interesting, so you have more liability with the employee… MARC: Potentially it is because you can be held to everything that you held them to, you can be held if you don’t do it, so you have 6 employees, and the rule states that employees do not get vacation until they have worked at least 3 months and ask for two weeks in advance and you let one guy have his one week in advance, now everybody gets to have one week in advance because you let them do it, despite the fact that the agreement, Emmanuel or whatever says two weeks STEVE: Hmmm, now you mentioned at will, can you impact that for us please? MARC: Sure, absolutely I will… STEVE: Okay MARC: So, a lot of states… actually I am not sure, I think it’s less states… at will, which means, whenever you go to work for somebody, there are no set terms, there are no set agreements, you can work whatever you agree to, if it’s in written then it’s a great upon, if not, it’s really tough and you can let them go at any time for any reason, subject to of the course federal discrimination, you can’t let the person go because they are black, you can’t let them go because they are female, you know, those kind of stuff you can’t do, no matter what, that’s a federal law that overrides. But if you don’t like the way the person drives his car, you don’t like the way he looks on the job, done… goodbye… STEVE: About tattoos… MARC: Absolutely… Sorry, I don’t like tattoo, done… You don’t have to give him a chance to rectify, you are done, goodbye… STEVE: Okay… MARC: So, everybody needs to find if they are in at will state or not, so if you are, great, if not, then you need to check with the local attorney there, because I can’t tell you what some of the restrictions on firing somebody can be, sometimes you have to give them notice, you have to give them opportunity and it just depends on that state. STEVE: Okay, makes sense, interesting. So, how about IRS? What are some?… I don’t know if I can ask you this… MARC: You can ask whatever and I have to answer it… STEVE: How do you feel, like where does the IRS ranks and your Christmas card list? MARC: Actually, believe it or not, the IRS ranks decently, the problem is congress, they are the ones, that are so low, I am like don’t ever pay them in front of me when I have a baseball bat… Because all of these since about say 1999, most of the issues we really have with IRS, is really congress issues, it says, you know what, we have come up with this plan, we are not going to spend a lot of time specifics here, you, IRS, figure it out, if we don’t like it, we will tell you, you are wrong and then go implement it without any real guidance from us and then when people complain, deal with it until they complain too much then we will try to address it, and that brings the IRS into doing things that they really shouldn’t be involved in, and having to make decisions that really shouldn’t be made by them, but congress doesn’t do it, so… STEVE: So, IRS has been taking the wrap the whole time MARC: They take the wrap a lot of time. Now, back in the early 1990s and late 80s, IRS deserved the wrap, they were doing stuff, it was like, we don’t care about you, you aren’t human, done, done, done… Now, it’s a little better, I mean most of the people I work with at the IRS are very reasonable, they are not push-overs unfortunately, but they are reasonable, at least, so… STEVE: So, what are some things that we need to stay on top of, to protect ourselves with IRS? MARC: The biggest, most important is if you have employees, you need to make sure you are paying those payroll taxes on time. So quickly, when you have an employee, you pay them their wage, you withhold a certain amount based on their W4, plus you pay 7.65% of the social security at one point, something percent, whatever… 7.65% total between the two and social security, Medicare, that federal withholding plus the Medicare and social security withhold from the employee’s pay, is not your money, that’s their money that goes to the government, failure to pay that, and the government can come after you, personally for that amount, regardless of what you think you set up, business protection-wise. STEVE: So, are these the 941s that we file? MARC: Yes, everything you file, the 941, the payments you are making, the 941, you need to make sure you pay those employee taxes first and foremost, end of story, pay those, it’s not your money, people try to say, I won’t pay this week and I will try to do next week and catch up, they can still be very, very dangerous game, it’s sort of like gambling, like oops, I didn’t hit black this time, I will get black again, alright Mr. black, I will bet it one more time, maybe eventually I’ll get to black and try to win. You know… do you really want to take that risk? You probably don’t. Number two is, for those in some states… if you have sales tax, file and pay that sales tax as quickly as possible. In Florida, I tell people, if you are a Florida resident and you don’t pay your federal taxes, IRS can come after you and take 90-120 days, and they will start coming after you, Florida department revenue… 90 minutes if they get serious… the state can move like that, and most states can move like that, most states have far more strong to grab and attach to people, for non-payment of state taxes than the IRS does. So, whatever your state tax is, if you have sales tax and… or similar collection taxes, pay those, because they are the people that can go after you ASAP. IRS, you can buy time, you can do stuff, a lot more than you can with the state. STEVE: Okay, that is really good to know. Now, what’s the first thing somebody should do if they received one of those dreaded letters from the IRS? MARC: The one that says, we think you owe something? STEVE: Yes, that one… MARC: Okay, there is a lot of letters from the IRS that people dread… So, there’s two types of letters, there is the one that says that, excuse me, we want to look at your return, because we don’t like this $200,000 in supplies that you put and then we know you owe us money, now if you don’t do something within 30 days, we are going to take action. So, there’s two different letters, one is on one side and one is on the other, if you get that first letter that says, we don’t like this on your return, go back and make sure you check you have your receipt and your documents, in that statement. Once you have those, then decide, do I want to talk to my CPA if my CPA can help or if it is something simple. Sometimes it’s as simple as, we just need to see what your travel is, and your travel was, for example, that year was just twice as large, because you went to two more conferences and you’ve got plane tickets and the thing, you probably have to go and say, here, sure, no problem, plane ticket… here and as long as all your receipts match up to what’s on the return, you know, you are probably fine. Now if they go and say, we want to see your bank statement, everything on the return, now you probably need to talk to that CPA, because they need to know what limits there are, when they are doing this, not you. STEVE: So, that’s a great point, CPAs…  about Florida, that’s fantastic. What does somebody look for in a CPA? How would somebody know a great CPA from a forum floor? MARC: The first thing usually is to check whether they have the CPA designation, those that have CPA, which means they’ve got the license, have undergone a higher level, 99 times out of a 100, a higher level of training education to know what has to be done. Now, does that means they are going to form that they have education? No, obviously not, so the best thing to do is have an interview with them, phone or face, it doesn’t matter, and then ask them questions about your stuff. Say, what can I do about this? What can I do about that? And see how they answer, and if they are one of the people that goes, oh you can do A or B, and that’s it… and they are probably one of these people that is following up on the forum or it depends, like what are we looking for, or they can give you a little more and say, well, what are you trying to achieve? They will ask you, what are you trying to obtain? What are you trying to achieve? What’s the ultimate goal to fit it in, that’s one part, instead of saying, just oh, well, keep your receipts or make sure the mileage checks, those one line answers to three or four questions indicate the person is probably not, either is engaged and they are going to give you the time, or they are probably more about, here it is. STEVE: Okay, so this is really good, we are going to pause here for a moment, because… this is really good, if I heard you correctly, what you are saying is if they have a simple A or B answer, that’s no good? MARC: Usually, yes… STEVE: Okay, usually… these situations are dynamic… MARC: Yes, and they depend on the overall… So, obviously once have a CPA in your account say, hey, Marc, can I deduct this? And he goes, no, that’s okay, that happens, this time you are not asking stuff, the answer is simple, no you can’t, okay do this, yes you can. But when you are interviewing a CPA and in this interview, don’t just say, oh, I know somebody, okay, here you go, stuff… talk to them, interview them, so, I say interview attorneys too, don’t just… whenever you have a professional, especially a professional, interview them and talk to them, make sure you think that they can do it, they are engaged and you can work with them. STEVE: Fantastic. What about these small shops who… maybe just a couple of employees, but the and for one thing I know about myself and I know about most entrepreneurs is, we hate the books… MARC: Yes, so that is why you have a good CPA or a book keeper and ask them to do a monthly or quarterly book keeping and here is the thing, they are going to give you a quote, they are going to ask to see some stuff that can give you a valid quote of how much it is going to cost per month to do everything. And what you do when you get that quote and you shop around, you go to a couple of different accounts of CPAs and get quotes, then you ask yourself and you do an exam that I am sure you tell everybody to do, how much time does it take you, as the business owner to do this, this and this and you add up all these hours to do all these stuff that they are doing in this proposal. Now, ask yourself, how much money you could have earned with those hours in your business, which is what you are good at, as opposed to doing this and work it out. STEVE: Absolutely, we have a video, we have a link to it in the show notes called “Ownership Responsibility Value” and work through that exact formula. So, that’s great, how would… how does somebody know, so okay, find a couple of 2, 3 book keepers, how do you interview them and what do you do to open up your books... do you say what do you think? MARC: No, when you go to them, you talk to them, you ask them a little bit… hey Marc, how have you been down here, how long have you been doing this? You know if they are a CPA, you know how long they have been a CPA… and then they say, so, here is my situation, give a brief overview of my situation, I have this, I do that, and see what they say, some people may go straight to, hey, can I see the tax return? Some people may ask questions, there is really not a right or wrong there, because especially if you start getting a little long-winded, they are going to say, just give me the tax return, at this point you are explaining all that stuff and it’s like you are probably going to a little more extraneous details than they actually need… STEVE: Okay… MARC: But, bring the tax returns, bring the bank statements and you ask them questions about… do you feel comfortable with them? Ask them some basics, hey dude, do you… how many other painting companies do you deal with? How many of your clients are under 3 employees? How many of your practice is business versus personal? Because all CPAs do 10, 40 individual tax returns. So, how much individual do you do? If the person does 95% individual and has 3 businesses, maybe you say, okay, may we look at someone else, maybe you are like, hey I am going to be the forth, I don’t need a lot of handholding, okay, or you can go to someone who’s got 85% of the businesses and most of the individuals in the business. And then, the thing is more of a judgement at that point, how much does that matter to you? What’s the feeling you got from that? Because there is no right or wrong answer at that point, now you sort of feel, what are they doing in there, in their field and then how many employees they have, because if they’ve got several employees, the chances of you actually getting to them or them actually really looking at your stuff are probably slim than none and they may be awesome, the junior who they’ve hired, may not be at the same level that they are, and if you are going to get junior doing your tax return, do you have the same confidence that… you know… STEVE: And would you say it’s just as important to check and refer us as we would prior an employee? MARC: Absolutely… who we know, if you go find a CPA, have 2 or 3 people, that’s why I like BNIs, it’s a great resource, because most probably if someone isn’t BNI, they’ve got testimonials, hope… if nobody is giving testimonials then there should be a problem, they should begin there, that’s the start, so if you can get testimonials from people, ask people, if you know somebody says here, go and ask on… or do the whole Facebook recommendation thing, go and ask Facebook, what is recommended for CPA and see who comes up with it, if you got somebody come up with 6 names, then name 17 times out of 40, that’s probably a good one to start with… STEVE: Yeah, absolutely. Now, what is an EA? And how important is that a CPA is an EA? And I believe you are an EA MARC: No, I am not… An EA is an Enrolled Agent, and that is an individual who has taken the exam that the IRS puts out, to be able to practice before the Internal Revenue Service. Me, being an attorney and CPAs being the CPA are automatically granted that by right, nature of our license to do so as long as we are in good standing in A state. STEVE: Interesting, that’s why I though you are an EA MARC: Yeah, because I can do it. So, if you want just your books done right and you have no worries, your EA is irrelevant, because the EA is when you have tax issues and need them resolved. Hopefully you are not getting to that point… STEVE: Okay, absolutely… let’s circle back a little bit… we talked about corporations, what is the difference between sole proprietor, LLC, S-corp, C-corp and impact this slowly for us, for those who want to know if they are in the right one or they should make a shift MARC: Well, and that’s going to be after some consultation, that’s really hard to make, a sole proprietor is somebody who has nothing, but use their name… Steve Burnette painting, not Burnett 1800 painting, Steve Burnette painting, Donald Robert CPA, those are sole proprietors, they don’t have any requirements to deal with bank accounts or whatever, they do have to get an EIN, if they have employees, and everything they earned on their profit is subject to self-employment tax, which is an extra tax above income tax… On the net profit, corporations and LLCs are business entities, why do people say C-corps, S-corps… at the state level, it is a corporation, you form a corporation or you form a limited liability company, and people form these for two reasons, tax or protection, 99 times out of a 100, there are some exceptions to the rule and each day it is a little different, but a corporation is the vehicle designed for large companies, they are going to have public shareholders, make large amount of money, have a lot of certain deductions and have to pay out to the members and there was a way to keep the protection inside the company, so that members that were buying in weren’t at risk. The cost of that was paying an extra inside tax on the money, before the money got out to people, who received it and had to pay their tax, so S-corporation decided to say, we are going to make a difference, we are going to give you the corporation and give you the protection but the income will just flow out so you only pay tax once. But there are some restrictions on that, for example, you can’t have two different classes of stock when people invest, like you had a preferred shares, but you can’t have preferred shares in this corporation, you can’t have more than a hundred people, you can’t have a non-US resident, alien or citizen be a shareholder and the most important in an S corporation, if one partner takes money out, the other partner has to take their share out as well… STEVE: Interesting… MARC: Whether you like it or not… STEVE: What’s the difference in protection between S and an LLC? MARC: Okay, whether it is S or C, protection on the inside level doesn’t matter… so, corporation and LLCs, doesn’t… corporation… when you hear S or C, that’s a federal, sometimes state tax issue only, it has no effect on the protection of a corporation or not, whether it is C or S, the protection from the corporation, from a legal stand point is the same, no matter what… So, there’s two types of protection; inside and outside. Inside protection is simply that you are doing something on the job, within the job… something goes wrong and you get sued and that keeps your personal assets from being attached, you close down the business if you have to, but walk away, that’s within the business, no matter what, you are covered, you are protected, that’s what we call inside protection, there is no difference if you do it right between a corporation or an LLC, you get the same either or…. It’s the outside protection that there’s a huge difference, so outside protection is, something happens to you outside of the business, such as you many have back alimony you haven’t paid or child support that you haven’t paid, your behind done or you have a judgement from when you were trying to get your life together, say you have your house closed, they are not going to forgive the loan and they are still going to come after you for the money, it is outside your business, but they are going to come after you. A corporation does to protect you from that, your corporate shares are assets and they can attach those. STEVE: Okay, but how relevant are corporate shares to a painting company? MARC: Really, because most states require shares to be issued if you have a corporation and your share is your evidence of ownership, so if you are the 100% owner, you are supposed to have shares and if you have shares and they get attached, guess who owns the company, the corporation now, not you, your creditor… (After the Break) STEVE: How much protection does a sole proprietor have? MARC: None… Zilch in any which way he performs, no inside, no outside, end of story. STEVE: Okay, so if somebody started a painting company and maybe they are a sole proprietor, they are just getting going, should they go? What should they do? Should they… I heard you say it was dynamic… MARC: Yeah STEVE: So, any guidance what they should do? MARC: Yes, so basically, look about… first and foremost, if you are just starting, are you going to have employees and contractors or not? If you are going to have employees and contractors, most especially employees, form an entity, end of story. No matter what, form the entity, it’s not a question of anything else, because if that employee or that contractor does something wrong and you get sued, no entity, no protection… STEVE: Okay MARC: End of story, if you are not going to hire or use anybody else, it’s just you and your truck and your paint brush, your ladder, it’s probably cheaper to just get some insurance for what you are doing and make sure you have some decent insurance, and go forward… STEVE: So, just some liability or… MARC: Yeah, liability insurance, or if they don’t have an umbrella policy, if they are on the house, once they get an umbrella policy, because if you are just one person doing everything yourself, you don’t really get much protection from the company and what are you really going to do to cause the damage as obviously as the painter, I mean at what point are you going to cause more than two million dollars for the damage, it’s pretty hard, as a sole proprietor, just going around. Now, once you have contractors, a lot of the people, they are driving around or they are doing different things, and their effect is going to affect a whole lot more people rather than you, now you are going to get more risk. STEVE: Okay, you’ve mentioned partnerships a couple of times, so partnerships can be sticky for example… there is a common statistic that marriages will have 50% chance of ending up in divorce, what is it for partnership, do you know? MARC: No, I don’t have a number, sorry… STEVE: That’s okay, I was just curious, I didn’t think there might be one, but what are some things… I think it was just the last episode, we had four brothers on and they are partners, unfortunately they are brothers and they are just awesome Christian, so they’ve got a strong understanding and character and values, but that’s not the case for most partnerships, right? They all started off great, hey 50-50, it’s going to be awesome, we are going to make a ton of money, it’s will be great… MARC: Correct, so there’s two part to it, one, there is a part that is themselves and there is a part after… So, let’s take a part that is themselves, you are going to go into business with somebody, could be your wife, significant other, it could be your brother or somebody you have just known for 5 years that says, hey, let’s walk together, the biggest thing in the world is expectations. Before you can get started, what are your expectations for the company? And what are your expectations within this company, what are mine? What’s the work load split? How much work are we putting in? how much are we expecting? Can I afford to live on what we have as a budget while we are putting this together, before it grows to be the next billion-dollar company? Set those expectations down and talk about them, you don’t even need to get the attorney involved yet, because if you don’t agree that, hey, I thought you were going to put in 50% of the money and I am going to put in 50% of the money and you are now like, no you are going to put in 90% and I am going to put in 10% and I was going to work this amount. Well, that’s a direct split you can’t reconcile, end of story, you don’t even need the attorney, so expectations starting off, what are the expectations to find them? And then what’s the work load going to be? As an example, I had somebody call me, he was like, hey, my friend wants me to go and work for him, he wants me to be a partner in his business, and I would handle the finance and the contract etcetera and he would do the marketing and customer and actual web production, he was like, but I don’t trust him, he was like, because I don’t know if he is going to be straight with the money and I tell him to stop, my first response was, don’t go into business with him, he was like, no I want to do this and I said okay, fine, I will draft a disagreement, he is like, okay, no, change it, I want to do a new LLC and I am like, really? I am like, I can do this, but I am telling you, from your friend and as a client, it’s not a good idea, so I went and did it, he’s like, okay, let’s work on this, he comes back to me and says, no, I changed my mind, I am not going to, after realizing. You have to be able to trust this partner, I tell people all the time, you are going to business with this person, okay, do you trust them with the key to your house and with your wife and child? If the answer is no, you need to rethink this, or at least think it over seriously before you move forward… if you don’t trust this person, it’s ultimately a matter of trust in the beginning, do you really trust this person? Now, people change and you don’t know, but you ask that question, you could think you trust this person, but again, we don’t know what happens until the going gets rough sometimes, when people show what they are made of, that kind of stuff… STEVE: Absolutely, that’s really good… So, expectations, and do you trust them enough to keep them with your wife and children… MARC: Yes, once you’ve got to that point and you are sure, that’s when you go to the attorney and you say, we want this and we want this, in writing as to what we are going to do, well, is this a corporation which has a shareholder agreement or an LLC which has an operating agreement? You can put this stuff in there, now what people don’t realize is corporations, generally, people hear corporations, they hear bye-laws, bye-laws don’t address all these issues that I talked about and in an LLC, you have to do an operating agreement, that has addressed everything, you address those if you do it right. Of course if you don’t, if you put a trained monkey don’t do one, you basically got nothing, but if you put a you can do a shareholder agreement to address all these, an LLC will not need to address everything and if you don’t address it, I tell people, if you don’t address it with your business partner now, you are going to end up paying ten times what it would have cost you to have done this right in the first place, to have the courts tell you what you are going to be doing. And most people don’t usually like that, that’s not a win-win situation… STEVE: Speaking of win-wins, most partnerships start as 50-50, why might that be a really bad idea? MARC: One of the reasons is because a lot of partnerships are like 50-50, but at the end, we are going to go vote, and are going to try to make decisions, at 50-50, you are deadlocked, so how do you break that deadlock? And if you can’t break that deadlock you can’t move forward. So your company can stall without proper mechanism; 50-50. Second, a lot of people want to do something where they can get minority preferential treatment in bids and contracts, if it’s female or other minority owned, so all you can do is make a 51-49 or 60-40 split, but if you create an LLC, you can put all these protections in, just because you are the 40% person, you are not getting screwed by the person that has the majority votes, that’s one of the things that I love… I am doing that for a company right now, he’s got this product that he’s selling out, you know he wants to get the minority preference, he wants to put his wife as the majority owner, he wants to preferred himself in case of anything happens with him and his wife, that she runs the company and makes all the decisions, and she doesn’t really get the company. So, I as a good attorney can fix that, you can play with that, in an LLC, it’s a lot harder in a corporation. STEVE: So, somebody should have insured a majority, but just because you get the majority doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself. MARC: Correct. And sometimes you can say, you know what? There’s a majority for voting, there’s a majority for money, so in a corporation, you are sort of stuck, but in someone, especially if passed to an S-corporation, but in LLC, you could say, listen, you are going to put in more money in, fair enough, we will give you more money back out, ahead of me, but I want 50% control, so we have to agree, or 51-49 and I want the control, you can do that split. Now, a lot of times, what I do, I tell people, if you have the deadlock, I put in the agreement, you find the third party that knows that area and ask him, because people go, oh, let’s come to the attorney and I am like, well that’s all fine and good, but if you guys are discussing a painting issue or growing your painting company, why are you coming to me to ask for expert opinion? I don’t know, I don’t know about painting, like I am not going to help you out on that, go to somebody else that knows that and ask them. Now, legal stuff, yeah, come to me and ask, and say hey, we need financial advice? Come ask me, but… so, I say, find an expert and talk to them… but if you don’t put anything in, then you are going to be screwed, because then you can’t make a decision, and essentially if you don’t agree, you have no recourse but to go to court… STEVE: That’s awesome, that very helpful. Now, selling a company, what does somebody need to know, how do they prepare, what… so Marc I come to you, say Marc, we’ve got this… April and I had this weird idea, we are going to sell our company… MARC: Okay, so first thing I ask is, how much are you going to sell it for? Then I say, where did you come up with that number? Because, what’s going to happen is you need someone objective who knows what they are doing, to look at your books and say, this would merit a price increase of x or a price of y, to sell the business, all things been equal. Now there’s always certain things that are out of the box, that you have this unique packing system, that there is a big craze for? That hey, that has the value that you are buying the business for, for that, as opposed to the business, as a business-operating-bringing-cash. So, actually the first thing I do is, I tell people, when you formed the business, think about what your succession plan is, going forward, what’s your ultimate goal with this business, do you want to be a 100? Do you want to sell it out to somebody else? Do you want to give it to your kid? Because based on that you need to prep, I usually prefer, when people want to go sell their business, start prepping, a year to two years in advance, because as we know with a lot of the trades and restaurants, cash flows through, cash doesn’t always get recorded on the tax, right or wrong, we all know it happens, cash is king. Well if a lot of your cash is king, then you can be very hard to ask for a price on your business, because people look at your numbers and say, why do you want this? Well, I take $40,000 of cash in a year, well, okay, do you want me to believe that, I tell you one horrible story, one restaurant here in Venice, the individual who sold the restaurant was putting money in for fake sales, paying the sales tax on it, so the number looked higher for the buyers. And the buyers bought it and paid more because they thought the sales were higher than they actually were… STEVE: Oh no. That’s bad MARC: Yeah… So, that’s why you do your prep, you do your work, so you can be prepared to show, this is why I deserve what I am asking for… STEVE: Okay, NDA; how important is NDA, what is an NDA? MARC: So, an NDA is a Non-Disclosure Agreement, it’s different from a Non-Compete, which is different from a Non-Solicit, people use these terms interchangeably and they are not. One, Non-Compete, the person who works for you cannot work in the same field at a certain period of time, doing what you do, Non-Compete. Non-Solicit, whoever leaves you cannot come back and go after your clients. STEVE: Interesting, so that one is not very popular or common? MARC: No, not common and then Non-Disclosure means you cannot disclose any information you obtain for any reason, except for the purpose you’ve received it, this is used often when people are looking into buying or selling a business, you sign a Non-Disclosure, hey, let’s see the financial so we don’t use it, etcetera. But you can also use it, if you don’t have the proprietorial system, such as a DYB coaching for example and someone is interested in the coaching program, you want them to sign this Non-Disclosure because if they decide not to buy in, and they have gotten some information, you don’t want them going and taking it elsewhere. So that’s a Non-Disclosure, and so you can do an agreement that has all three, but sometimes you don’t need all three, I have had somebody say listen, if somebody comes work for me, I don’t care if he works in a set of shops next door, I just don’t want him to go after my clients, Non-Solicit, fine, Non-Compete, I don’t care if he works for another company, I don’t care if he dissolves the company up, I don’t care, I just don’t want him to go after my clients, that’s a Non-Solicit, so it depends on what you want, what are you concerned about? then you know, get that. STEVE: Awesome. Very good, so as we wrap this up, Marc, this has been awesome, is there a question I should have asked or another point or comment that you would like to share with me? MARC: Yes, two of them actually. One is that, if you are going to form a business entity, 95% of the time, an LLC is the way to go, so picture your state change and talk to somebody, but it’s going to give you more flexibility if you need it for what you want to do, because you can always choose to be treated like a corporation with an LLC, but you can use its flexibility for elsewhere. Two, if you do want to use an attorney, every attorney who is licensed to practice in the state you are in, has to have passed the bar and your local bar has a list of every attorney, so if someone says they are an attorney, or you are looking at an attorney, you can go to your local bar, in this case it is floridabar.gov, you can look up the person, it will tell you how long they have been practicing, if they are licensed to practice in that jurisdiction and it will show disciplinary history, if any. So, anytime somebody says, I am an attorney… look them up on Florida bar or the bar or maybe they were dis-barred and maybe they are retired, I can’t tell you when we looked through sometimes, and I hate to say this but… look through the disciplinary hearings for fun sometime, seeing what people are doing… and a lot of times, what it is, is people are practicing without license because they have been dis-barred and they still continue to take people’s money to quote and do work, they are not licensed anymore, so always go to your local bar, check out say, is this guy licensed? Is there a disciplinary history? What is his story? How long have they been working? And CPA is by the way the same thing, if they have a CPA designation, go check with the state, state has information for CPAs. STEVE: Okay, fantastic, very good. Anything else we should have asked or you like to share? MARC: Yes, last thing, sorry… STEVE: No, it’s good… MARC: License is an insurance, a lot of times, when you use a sub, they are going to ask… you are going to want to make sure they have an insurance, a certain type. Always understand that the first step is asking for a certificate of insurance and don’t let them give it to you, make sure it comes from the insurance agency who has their policy. People take it and modify it and play around with it, and you can’t trust it if it doesn’t come from the insurance agency. STEVE: So, the certificate must come from the insurance agency? MARC: Should come from the insurance agency and you have them send you the certs… STEVE: Become listed… MARC: Yeah, so list the person… so the agency says, here it is, here is the person, it’s valid. Now, again, could they have cancelled that insurance? Yes, they could have, afterwards, but at least it’s not fraudulent, it’s legitimate and a lot of time people don’t realize what it is, so they don’t even know how to give it, but that’s why this part two is have that written agreement, because if you get that insurance and you have agreement say they will keep your insurance and they violate it, now, A, potentially your insurance may say, screw you, but B, you now have them on hook of being in the wrong. STEVE: Okay, fantastic, if there could be one more things that you would have shared, what would it have been? MARC: The last thing I am going to say is, in general rule we all want to believe the good in people, so, we give people chances, we do things sometimes without as much structure, because we don’t think of the negatives and I want people to understand that the reason you go to an attorney or somebody is if something goes wrong, yes it may go bad, go well, nothing ever needs to be done, and that’s great, I hope so, but if it does and things happen, this is what you are trying to protect. So, as much as I like kelvin, the person I am sharing my office with and it might be compartments, our agreements in writing, as much as I like people or certain things, the agreement is in writing, it clarifies the expectations and just in case something happens… what happens if someone gets Alzheimer’s… this person will never betray me, no, now they got sick, now they have Alzheimer or something, now they are doing something that they wouldn’t have done, but they are, so now what? Didn’t expect that? Too bad. STEVE: So, written agreement is not, I don’t trust you, written agreement is clarifying expectations… MARC: And giving yourself a chance to avoid, when something unfortunate happens. STEVE: Okay, very good, that is awesome. So, Marc, I am going to share your contact information here in just a moment for those who would like to reach out to you… MARC: Okay STEVE: But first, how about some fun questions, because… MARC: Sure… STEVE: Alright, you are a dangerous, not just legally but physically and have a black belt in… MARC: …Taekwondo STEVE: How many countries have you lived in? MARC: Lived in? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… STEVE: Five, how many languages do you speak? MARC: How well do I speak them… I have studied six different languages… STEVE: Six different languages, which is the most difficult? MARC: German was the most difficult for me… STEVE: German, interesting… okay, and food. You are a food kind of… I have been trying to encourage you to start like a food blog… MARC: I know and I have been starting and I have… STEVE: You will be the ultimate ABA for Venice, Florida as far as food blogs, I mean like, anytime we have a question about food, I just call Marc, food this, food that… what are some of your favorite dishes or types or styles of food? MARC: Sushi… STEVE: Okay MARC: Duck… STEVE: What’s the strangest thing you have ever tried with all the different countries you have lived in? MARC: The strangest thing was probably eating a fish that’s still living and breathing as you pull the flesh off the bone. STEVE: Okay, that good… that’s awesome. So, what countries? Germany, Japan? MARC: No, Demark, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, United States. STEVE: Awesome, fantastic… Marc, it has been great to have you on... MARC: Thank you Steve… STEVE: For those who have been listening, more to value, we have tons of take away here and looking forward to hearing feedback from this episode, it has been very, very helpful, for those who like to follow up with you, how can they best reach you? MARC: Email is the best way to go, my email should be… I think marcmileslaw.com, that’s the best way, because I am running around, I am not always in the office and stuff… STEVE: So, I have that here, and that’s mmiles@marcmileslaw.com MARC: Yes, awesome STEVE: Fantastic. Marc, thank you so much my friend. MARC: No problem, my pleasure Steve, anytime, take care…

Welcome to all of our Becoming Your Best podcast listeners wherever you might be in the world today. This is your host Steve Shallenberger. And we have a tremendously interesting guest today. Our guest is a successful business leader and has influenced many many people for good. Welcome to our show today, Tim Sanders. Tim: Hey great to be with you Steve. Steve: I've been looking forward to this. Tim: Me too. Steve: Well, good. All right. Now, before we get started, I'd like to tell you a little about Tim's background. He spent his early career on the cutting edge of innovation and change. He was an early stage member of Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com, which had the largest opening day IPO in history. After Yahoo acquired the company, Tim was tapped to lead their Value Lab, and by 2001 he rose to a Chief Solutions Officer. And today he's one of the top-rated speakers on the lecture circuit. Tim is also the author of four books including The New York Times best seller "Love is the Killer App," which is an awesome book, "How to Win Business and Influence Friends," I really enjoyed reading that. Tim's book has been featured in Fast Company, USA Today, The New York Times, Boston Globe, and so on. He is a master storyteller who offers his listeners actionable takeaways that produce results right away. So I have been looking forward to having Tim here in our interview today. And to get going, Tim, can you tell our listeners maybe a little about your background, your story? What was it like growing up? And maybe some experiences that helped you see that you could be successful? Tim: Thank you. I grew up in Clovis, New Mexico. It's a farming community just east of the West Texas border. I'm sorry, just west of the...West Texas border. And I was raised by my grandmother. I was a special education student from second to fifth grade, which really, you know, taught me a lot of things. It taught me how to bounce back. That's for sure. Taught me how to fit in when people didn't understand who I was. But most importantly, my childhood taught me that anything is possible if I'm willing to put the preparation work in and seize the opportunity. In my adult life I had a period of time, say 15 years or so, where I was gainfully employed and successful to some degree but just not laser-focused on what mattered. You might say I was in a mediocrity trap. In 1997, I went to work for Mark Cuban about a year after I had gotten out of that trap and had a real paradigm shift about what it was gonna take for me to be successful for my family. When I worked for Mark Cuban you can imagine 1997, the dawn of the internet explosion. It was such a breathtaking opportunity Steve. But I remember those times mostly as being a student of the game. Something I learned from him. And I was a voracious book reader. I was a mentor to anybody I did business with. And by 2001 after he'd sold the company to Yahoo, I became Yahoo's Chief Solutions Officer right after the dot-com crash of 2000. So my team and I went out to rebuild hundreds of millions of dollars of lost business because all of those companies, like eToys, our big advertisers, had gone caput. And through those experiences, I built up a perspective that if we commit ourselves to lifelong learning, and we lead with love in our hearts for other people and expect nothing in return other than that they improve and pay it forward, you can accomplish anything in this world we live in. Steve: Wow, what a rich background and then to be able to take that background and, like, Clovis, New Mexico? You mean you can be successful if you were born in Clovis, New Mexico? Tim: I'll tell you something. Let me tell you something about Clovis, New Mexico. Little town, 30,000 people. I was on the debate team in high school, Steve. And we wanted to be nationally ranked. Now, it was a real kind of a pork chop circuit, right. There was the Las Cruces tournament, the El Paso tournament, the Odessa tournament. We had to get in our cars and drive over two hours to Lubbock, Texas, to go to a decent library to research for our debate. And we had to compete with, you know, Houston's Bellaire and Dallas' St. Marks and all these great folks in New Mexico, and all the big schools from Albuquerque and Santa Fe. But I'll tell you something, my senior year, we won state championship, and we went to the national tournament, and we didn't have nearly the resources of anybody we competed with. But man, I gotta tell you, and I thank my coach for this, we had heart. Steve: Wow! Well, I'll tell you I can attest that people from the salt of the earth communities like this can have a big difference in the world. Tim: Yeah. And I think too Steve, is that there's something in our values raised in that environment that makes us really good connectors. And I also think it makes us hungrier to find some way to get back that edge. And to look for those invisible resources that are out there, like knowledge that can really give us a leg up. And it makes us wanna give back too when we become successful, you know, there's a natural, very deep set generosity. And I gotta tell you, I come from it very honestly. I mean, the patriarch of our family is my great-grandfather the late great Tommy King. And he was one of the founders of Clovis when it organized into a city back around it, you know, after the Great Depression. And he was a successful farmer. And one of the things he did before the Dust Bowl era, right before it, was he engaged with some agricultural technologist and became the first farmer in that part of the country to use a circular farming techniques, which when the Dust Bowl hit, helped his farms survive if not thrive while others withered away. And in our family, one of the most poignant stories about Tommy was how much he gave back to other farmers who were in crisis. The ones that bullheaded, they wouldn't try circular farming knowing that the science said there was something coming in a drought. He was happy to give them microloans. He never collected on them. He would just tell people, "When this happens in the future, you pay it forward." And I believe that his philosophy really represented, you know, small town America. Steve: Oh, that's a great story. And then to actually go from being a special ed student to being successful, that's got to give hope to special ed students anywhere because, you know, they're behind a gun. And so, is there hope? I mean, like, can we make it? Tim: It's tough. I mean, you know, more background here. So my grandmother raised me because my mother abandoned me when I was in four. And it manifest into tremendous depression when I was a little kid. And it exhibited itself in discipline issues. And during those days, Steve, they really didn't have much to do with a kid, you know, when you're seven. So, all they really can do is put you in special education. And that experience was really challenging because it's not just that you're taken out of school, that you're ostracized. And when you go to church you're treated differently because, you know, you go to the other school. And I picked up the nickname Shortbus, and I really didn't shake that nickname till junior high. But I think the thing that I got out of the whole situation is when they put me back into the general population in the sixth grade. I had to deal with bullies for the first time. You know, when you're different you're gonna deal with bullies. For parents, this is a great challenge when a child is singled out into a program like special ed or frankly like gifted for that matter. And I'll tell you, I think my point of view about how I dealt with that traumatic sixth and seventh-grade year had to do with how I felt about love. I'll give you a classic story. So, in the seventh grade, the day that you wear your nice clothes and your nice white shirt for the picture, you know, for the yearbook? Steve: Yup. Tim: I went in and this bully who went to church with us demanded my lunch money and I hesitated. So he punched me right in the nose and I bled all over my shirt. Not gory but I bled on my shirt. It ruined me for the picture that day. When Billy, my grandmother, came to pick me up, I thought she was gonna just, you know, have it out with that boy's mom, or at least give him a good talking to. So when Billy and I are sitting in the vice principal's office and we're alone for a second, she turns to me and she looks at me and she says, "You know the problem here is that you don't love those boys enough." I remember looking at her and I point at my shirt and I said, "What do you mean? He's mean. He's a mean boy." And she said, "In our family, you don't love people because of who they are. You love people because of who we are." And she goes, "That's gonna go a long way with you fitting in at the school." And so she said I should invite him over after church. Because she believed that people were inherently good and when they were mean, or when they were bad, there was something about the story that you don't know. And so he came over after church and stole some of my stuff and still kind of picked on me but he didn't punch me in the nose. And then I guess he felt the duty to invite me over to his house a few weeks later on the other side of the tracks where he lived. And when I visited his home that Sunday afternoon, I realized why he was a bully. His father, a drunk, swore at him coming in through the front door. His older brother whipped him with what, like a horse bridle, in front of me. Later, and I realized that this guy had been going through a lot more than I was. And that he was manifesting it. He was a big guy. He was manifesting it by picking on the only thing that he could get away with picking on, that's a little guy called Shortbus. And once I had that breakthrough, Steve, it really changed the way I thought about people. I truly began to understand that if we give someone our love and we care about them, whether it's on a personal level like this or on a professional level like say someone that I manage, you'd be surprised how many of their problems go away. And how you can convert a bully into a blocker. And I gotta say, that guy and I became good friends. And a little bit more than four years later, he put up posters for me when I successfully ran for senior class president and won. And I realized that for the rest of my life, I'm gonna go out into the market and love people because of who I am, and it's very easy to find things about them that are incredibly easy to love. And that I'm assuming when people don't give back, when they don't do the right thing, when they're mean spirited. I'm assuming that there's something about their story or struggle that I have no knowledge of. And it's made me a much deeper listener and a much more curious person in a good way. Steve: Well, that's a fantastic experience and thank you for sharing it. How grateful are we for the people in our backgrounds that help us grow and develop and overcome maybe some of the deficiencies that we might have that we may or even may not be aware of, that help us start becoming what we're capable of becoming. So that's really an inspirational story. And then love is so powerful and we may talk about it more after our interview but after...well, I was going through my college career I sold books back East. And one of the great books that I read was "The Greatest Salesman in the World", "About the Scrolls," and "I Will Greet This Day With Love In My Heart," and "How Will I Greet Those That Treat Me Poorly Love." And, oh, my goodness, you just fill this tremendous power that comes from it. So I'm so glad you shared that. Tim: Well, thank you. And I will tell you, there's real science or at least there is real psychological research behind this. And if you think about it, this is a manifestation of Maslow's hierarchy, right? Abraham Maslow studied something he called B-love, that is being love. That is a detached form of caring about another person, like I care about another person whether or not you care about me. I care about that person solely because I wanna help that person grow. I don't care about that person because I need a new friend. D-love, Maslow brought about this, a deficiency based love, says, "I need to be loved." So everything I do from being friendly to making, you know, advances, whatever you do to try to go out and help people, you're doing it to solve one of your problems. So, next we'll talk about the idea that when we feel fulfilled in terms of how much we think we're cared about, and that the way we think about love and other people, again, whether it's personal or professional, when we do that, we are making the leap to becoming like self-actualized, if you will. And that it's the most powerful way to think about loving other people because there's no anxiety in those relationships because you're not expecting anything in return. And that's what makes them so beautiful. And I found in my business life, that as a leader, as a manager, as a colleague, this works even more. Because, you know, we need people to encourage us at work. We need people to care about us as customers. And I believe too many people are just traders, transactionalists, and don't bring that Maslovian, you know, B-love to work every day. Steve: Okay. All right. Well, that's a powerful point of view and force in our work lives. Now talking about how to be successful in what we do in business, in our work, and in life generally, it does take work and effort and doing certain things that make a difference. So you shared earlier, that as we visited, that you had made a discovery in your mid-30s that led to ten promotions and helped you achieve a strong financial position and financial security. Can you talk a little about that? What was that? Tim: So this is like 1996, 1997. I had been coming back into my studentship, and I had gone from just need to know in terms of learning to being a voracious reader of books. And not just on stuff that mattered to my current job but anything that was adjacent to it. Anything that I thought was interesting to know in the future. I was at a point Steve, where I would read a book a week. I would burn through these books. I'm not talking novels either I'm talking about complex books in some situations. And what happened was I began to talk about different things with clients. So when I go to work for Cuban, I had this mentality kind of fed by Leo Buscaglia as love on one hand and Steven Covey on the other. I had this mentality that I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna promote other people's success during a time of great change. Because you know the internet was disrupting everything. So I worked a lot with the retailers. So I would go out and work with Neiman Marcus or Victoria's Secret or whomever. And I took it upon myself to learn everything I could about their business future and their business challenges, and then share that with them. And that's where I had the big aha. That if my business practice was to aggregate my intangibles, my knowledge, my network of relationships, my ability to care about people. If I build those up so I can give them away, and systematically help other people make the leap without expecting anything in return, that faith would repay me with endless referrals, a powerful brand, and a magnetic value proposition inside my company. Because I make decisions with Mark, I start to adopt the style. I was a sales person of service out in the community. We accomplished a lot of great things. He sells the company two years later to Yahoo if you remember back in those days. When I transfer out to the West Coast at Yahoo, I've really refined the system of building relationships by sharing my knowledge, and my network, and my compassion in every interaction. And it was like the doors swung wide open. Because now it's 2000, now it's right after the dot-com crash. This idea about helping people finds success during times of great change and expecting nothing in return. Boy, it worked crazy good in Silicon Valley and that's when I begin to train the young Yahoos on this philosophy and this set of values. And that's where I begin to write down the steps I was taking to really document you know how I read books and how I chose books, and why I read books instead of articles, and what I talked about when I was networking. And that's where "Love is The Killer App" came from a few years later. And since then, you know 15 years, I've been traveling around the world meeting people, comparing notes and really building upon that philosophy. Steve: Oh, that's great. And as we've talked about with our listeners the twelve principles of highly successful leaders, these are the things that are present across the board for high achievers. Also they were able to sustain, really, success over a long period of time, both personally and professionally. And one of those was applying the power of knowledge. In other words, gaining knowledge in the first place, and one of the primary ways is being a reader. And so this is a great reminder to every one of us listening here today of the power of reading good books on a regular basis because they're just totally stimulating, aren't they? They just fire... Tim: They are. Steve: ...your mind. Tim: And what I like about books is that books require you to take a deep dive into usually a narrow subject. And you don't just learn a couple of data points and one story, you learn a construct. It's got a thesis, and it's got supporting anecdotes, and it usually has research and it's really meaty. And you can deeply understand the topic so you can give it away, right? So the twist here Steve, is read good books but have a mix. And what I say about this is every third book you read, read for someone else's benefit. I call it prescriptive reading. Think about what... Steve: What's an example of that? Tim: Yeah. Think about information challenges that the people have and go study on their behalf because talk about expanding your resume. Steve: Right. It gives you a whole different perspective to maybe a different discipline. Tim: Absolutely. That's made a big difference for me. And that was another part of my turnaround in the late 1990s that really shifted me away from the idea that, you know, I read books to help myself. No, I read books to help the world, and sometimes it helped me too. And that philosophy will keep you from being too laser-focused on what's in front of you and not focused enough on what's coming in the future. Steve: Okay, great. That's a powerful influence on our success. And you told this wonderful experience that you had personally, this story about the bully and your grandmother saying, "Listen, we need to love him." Tim: That's right. Steve: See things from a different perspective. So you must have learned, Tim, somewhere along the line that love can be applied across the board, in business and as an entrepreneur. What have you found? Have you been able to make the jump of using that in your personal life to a professional life, and what's the experience? Tim: Yeah. I've made it my professional strategy, you know, for the last 20 years or so. I mean, when I say love in a professional sense, Steve, I mean, that I have a set of emotions about you. I care and I am now committed to promote your success by sharing my intangibles with you, my knowledge, my network, my compassion. I want you to think about, for those of you listening, I want you to think about the mentor in your life who's made the most difference to you. There's maybe one. There's maybe two. Maybe some of you might have three, but there's maybe one, right? And I want you to really think about how that person felt about you. And I want you to think about how open that person was to loving someone like you, not as a family but just as a person maybe at work or just a person maybe they did business with. I'm talking about unleashing the capacity to do this every day. I developed strong emotional aspect for almost every single person I do business with, and I don't make them earn it, Steve. It happens quick. Maybe I start out by liking him and I look for things that other people don't look for. I wanna hear their story so I can admire their values and understand their point of view. I find things that are familiar about them. I experience their passion so I can really understand what makes them a unique person. I think our capacity to care about people that work quickly and then maintain that over time. I think that is oxygen for leadership. Steve: Absolutely. That's so powerful. I mentioned the research that we've done for 40 years and these principles that are present, you're doing them? Tim: Well, you know, we're thinking alike buddy. Steve: We are thinking alike. I mean, one of those was living the golden rule, really exceptional leaders. I mean, you can have leaders that are good in different contexts but when you put these together, and exceptional leaders also one that really cares about people. And this is manifest in how they treat others, how they learn about others so that they can bring the best out within others. And this is what starts creating excellence, so great going on this. Tim: Thank you. Thank you so much, man. Steve: And by the way, Tim's book "Love is The Killer App." He talks about these three things, knowledge, networking, and compassion. Would you mind touching on the compassion part a little bit? And I'd like to go back to the networking because you said one thing that is important, and that is how a mentor maybe ought to perceive others with this love, learning what their story is? How do you bring out the best? And you'll find mentors that have done this the same way for you. So, how can you be a good mentor? That's one question. And then we'll hit this other one before we're done. Tim: Absolutely. So, the best way to be a mentor is to remember that the mentor is usually a benefactor, a teacher of sorts. And their job is to give the hero a gift that will enable the hero to make it to the next stage of her journey. When you think about Homer's Odyssey, with the character mentor, when you think about the archetype of mentorship stories in very modern culture, like, say, Star Wars, with, you know, Yoda, or with Karate Kid in Miyagi, that's what it's all about. It's about finding that person that has heroic qualities. That's going somewhere a little too fast. You've got a gift for them, maybe it's your personal experience. You've been where they've been. You have knowledge that they need and you give it to them. You expect nothing in return but that they apply that knowledge and learn and improve. All the mentors, they gain enthusiasm from the student learning. And when they need to, they go beyond just sharing information and perhaps make vital connections to create alliances, to help that hero deal with upcoming adversity. As a mentor I just want you to think a little bit like Yoda. And I want you to not really think so much like a person who's like a fire hose of information, a person who's gonna "Take somebody under their wing." I think you need to think about your role very transitionally. But most importantly, you need to expect nothing in return other than that they hero seizes the opportunity, right? I think that is what changes the game. And by the way, you know, I know you talk a lot about how to be successful over a long period of time. My philosophy that we give without expectation, this is not lip service, Steve. I literally expect them to pay it forward but I don't expect them to pay it back. And I'm telling you that is liberating, because when I meet leaders who were generous for years and years and years and then they "Burned out." This is why they got burned out. Because just enough people didn't pay them back or give them credit or whatever their reciprocity was supposed to be and they were disappointed. And I call it ego economics. And it sets in on a lot of people in their career. Super generous in their 30s, a little bit jaded in their 40s, super protected in their 50s. I'm 55 years old, I've never been more generous because I'm not disappointed in people. And I think that's what comes with being detached about what you get back. Steve: Oh, great. You know that's great. I think even the savior of mankind, Jesus Christ, if you...regardless of what you believe, as it was described when he healed the lepers, and he had one return and thanked him. Nine did not. And if your expectation is that people are gonna thank you, you're probably gonna be somewhat disappointed. Tim: Absolutely. You will. Steve: If that's your expectation. Tim: And it's interesting. So, you know, I love that story and I appreciate that example. I think that, for us, the secret to a long-term career is a very flexible perspective. And I think that if we're willing to go against the grain that there's a quid pro quo. I think we really open up our opportunities in life. You just continue to be great until the day we die. Steve: Wonderful. What a refreshing wonderful perspective. I had a friend, Tim, that I had lunch with last week. He is a facilitator for a very successful training company. He has been, really most of his career 30 years, he's gone all over the world. And one of the things he talked about was precisely this, is that his observation is one of the keys for companies to get ahead today to be able to be a best in class, be the best in their industry, is to have active healthy coaching program within the company where people are able to coach each other. And I think it's really these type of qualities you're talking that would help that be successful. Tim: Absolutely. And for leaders, whether it's a small business or an enterprise, you can create a culture of coaching. So even if there's not a funded program per se, it can be the habit inside that organization. So Tom Ward was brought into Barton protective in Atlanta to turn that company around several years ago and he created that culture. He had something called Vision Quest. These values cards everybody carried with them. It was a huge part of the cadence that he had in that company. And the third value was love. "Do you care about me as a person?" He hired based on it. He rewarded based on it. He promoted or did not promote based on it. It made a big deal to how people behaved, because culture at work, culture at work is a conversation that's led by leaders about how we do things here. And that's like software that runs a company, right? So, when you as a leader go to work and say, "We coach other people because of who we are as a company," then the habit sets in. And it's very attractive, Steve, to today's millennial, to have a reputation for a company where we bring each other up as opposed to where we internally compete. So I just want everybody listening to know this is within your power. And you don't need a big checkbook, but you do need to have consistent cadence because you need to manage that conversation about how we do things here successfully. Steve: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am, like, speechless that we are out of time. I can't believe it. Tim: It goes that quick, man. It goes that quick. Steve: It has been fast today. Now, any...what's one last bit of advice, or any tips you would like to give our listeners before we wrap it up today. It's been fun Tim. Tim: Hey, it's been fun buddy. So I'll tell you a place where you can get some stuff about me, but before that, I'll just give you one of my...it's kind of my new little piece of advice I like to give people. And I can't say that I came up with it but I can tell you I'm championing this idea. If you want to be a happier person in, life in traffic and in work, the next time somebody irritates you, does something that is seemingly rude to you, I want you to assume that that person is operating under the best intentions. I want you to assume that you don't know the whole story. Because more often than not, Steve, people are operating under the best intentions. It's just that their needs clash with our needs. And we spend a lot of our time judging those people instead of inquiring about the rest of the story. So like I said, next time somebody cuts you off in traffic, you might wanna consider that she's trying to get somebody to the hospital before you honk your horn and shake your fist. And this goes double for you as business owners and leaders. Steve: Oh, that's great advice. I hope I can get this right. This comes from an article I read yesterday and it really left a deep impression on me. It was given by the leader of a worldwide organization, a humanitarian service organization. And the fellow talked about 50 years ago, he had a mentor. And the mentor said, "Every time you meet somebody, if you'll say to yourself this person is dealing with a serious challenge," he said, "You're gonna be right 50% of the time." Tim: And guess what? Before, when you just reacted and judged that person, you were wrong 50% of the time. Steve: Exactly. Well, he said, "Man I thought my teacher, my professor was a pessimist," he said, "But I have come to learn what wise advice that was." Because indeed as we look around what's going on in the world, it is often true. And I love your comment that half the time we're wrong. So let's give everybody a lot of slack here, right? Tim: On that, you know, again, yeah, let's put our self in another person's shoes. And let's find out more. You can learn and grow so much more. You can expand your thrive so much more. And, again, you can just avoid those regrettable mistakes we all make. Steve: Yup. Well, these are some great things that we can do to make a difference, to lift others, to build others. Tim has done a great job in sharing these. What a tremendous background. And, Tim, if you'll share how our listeners can learn more about what you're doing, and which is tremendous? We'd love to hear about it. Tim: Absolutely. We've set up a special page for your listeners, Steve. It is timsanders.com/byb. That's timsanders.com/byb. I'll have a huge download excerpt of Love is The Killer App for you to read. I'll also have a way you can connect with me on LinkedIn, and find other resources like videos and other such content on my site. Steve: Well, that's terrific. Thank you Tim Sanders for being part of this show today. This has been enlightening. It's been wonderful. Tim: Oh, absolutely. It's been a pleasure Steve. I really enjoyed it. Steve: Well, you bet. We wish you all the best as you're making a difference in the world as well Tim. Tim: Thank you. Steve: And to all of our listeners, never forget, you are creating a ripple that can never be counted for good as we do the right things, good things. And they do make a difference. They lift our own lives and they lift others. And they help us be more successful, happier and have fuller lives. I'm Steve Shellenberger with Becoming Your Best Global Leadership wishing you a great day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Maximize Your Health To Live In Peace and Balance with Ron Williams Welcome to our podcast listeners wherever you may be in the world today. This is Steve Shallenberger, your host. And we are excited to have a wonderful friend and guest with us today, Ron Williams. Welcome, Ron! Ron: Steve, thank you so much, man. I'm glad to be with you. Steve: Now, Ron is a repeat visitor on this podcast series. I met Ron, for the first time, about a year ago and we had Ron talk about fitness. He told us about his background which is an amazing background and to what he's doing today which is helping people all over the world to improve their fitness, their health, and of course, that leads into their happiness. So as we think about The 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders, each one of those has a big impact on our life. But they come together to help us be highly successful leaders as we touch not only our own lives have an influence in our relationships but also help contribute to best of class, world class organizations. So one of those principles is to Live In Peace and Balance. Part of that is how do we maximize our own health: our fitness, our mental health, emotional health? Well, it just so happens that that is exactly what Ron does. And when we had the chance to visit a year ago, I mentioned to Ron on the air that I have been trying to lose 10 or 15 pounds for maybe 10 years. I mean, I'm not like really overweight but it's always there. Do you know what I'm talking about? Can anybody that's listening relate to this? And it just kind of rubbed me wrong. I felt like I could do better but it was just really hard to knock it off. And so I asked Ron what his thoughts were, and we talked about a few ideas. At the end of our session, we turned off the equipment and I told him, I said, "Ron, really, I'm serious about this. I'd like to lose 10 or 15 pounds." And Ron said, "Well, I'll tell you what, I'll think about this and I'll call you tomorrow." And so on the phone the next day, he said, "Well, I've been thinking about this and you don't need to lose 10 or 15 pounds." And I threw my hands up and I said, "Yes." And he said, "You need to lose 20 to 25 pounds." And I gulped and I said, "Okay, but I'm going to need your help." Over the next few months, I did indeed lose 25 pounds. It was an amazing process, and the fact is it wasn't a torture for me. It was a positive upbeat process. And one of the things that I found as I went to my periodic checkup with the doctor, he was amazed, first of all, but second, we noticed that my blood pressure had decreased. It wasn't really particularly high before, it was in good shape, but it had gone down. My cholesterol levels had gone down, and this is tracking a 16-year baseline that I had with this particular doctor. And so we had all of this data, and you can push a button right there and it automatically graphs everything. And so you see this graph, and it kind of goes up over the years and all of a sudden, a big drop. Found that my weight had a big drop, and that this was a correlation throughout across the board and that I was much healthier. And so, first of all, I credit Ron. There's a number of things we did, and we're going to have the chance to talk about some of those today. First of all, Ron, I'm just going to invite you to share anything that you would like to about what's been happening in your life over the last year. I have also recommended Ron to a couple of friends and they've had similar experiences. So why don't you bring us up to speed on anything that you would like to talk about, experiences that you're having, what you're seeing? But what would you like to just introduce yourself with? Ron: Awesome. First of all, I want to say thank you, Steve, for all that you have done for my business. One of the things that I found with working with Steve was this is that here I am coaching this guy, thinking,"You know what, I'm doing him a great service," and you know, we lost the 25 pounds, but the little nuggets that I got from him let me know that I needed a coach. And he became my coach. So Steve is my coach today, and I want to appreciate him in what he does. But some of the things that have happened over the year is that I'd been able to put together programs for corporations that have drastically changed the face of you know, the companies, and we've really been enjoying that. And we realized that the principles of what we teach cross boundaries, meaning that we work in several areas: faith, family, fitness, and finances. And with that being said, regardless of what direction you're moving in, there are universal principles that actually cross those boundaries and we call them "Champion Principles," and if you apply it as far as your fitness is concerned, those same principles apply in your business, in your relationships, and across the board, Steve. Steve: Well good. Well, all right. So since we're having this discussion, Ron...and Ron has been a great coach for me, and I'm glad that we've been able to be of help to him. It's been fun to see some of the things that have happened. Ron, together with his wife Tanya, have created a 9-week fitness program that they have shared with a few special clients. Would you mind telling us about that and how it's designed, and what some of the end results that you're having? And the purpose of doing this is that I'd like to have our listeners today have some hope, have some encouragement that if they do certain things, they can get to a better place that makes them feel better, frankly. Ron: Absolutely. This 9-week program is really just a basis and a starting place because our complete desire is to develop lifestyle. And that's what I can see in Steve, is he's developed a lifestyle. You know, he lost the weight, but if you look at him today, he looks better now than he did at the completion of the program. You know why? Because he's continuing in that same lifestyle. And that's what we want to do is to develop these principles so that it becomes a lifestyle to you. But one of the main principles is never to allow yourself to be hungry. It's very important because you send your body a signal of starvation. When many times, what people think is that it's willpower, "If I can starve myself and just have the will to keep going." But that sends a signal to the body of starvation. So eating and making sure you're never hungry is very important. Another principle would be to eat in combinations. Combinations are so important. If your desire is to decrease body fat, you never ever want to eat a carbohydrate by itself. The reason why, I'm going to explain this as short as I can, when you eat a carbohydrate by itself, it spikes the blood glucose level which causes the pancreas to secrete the insulin where the insulin is the culprit of the excess body fat. Your blood sugar level comes down when the insulin is secreted, but it converts those calories into triglycerides which is blood fat, and it pumps it directly into the fat cell. So we want to move away from that. If you don't eat enough calories, then your metabolism slows down, and when you do eat, those calories convert to body fat as well. There are 75 reasons why people are overweight and obese, so we have to find out individually what are yours and which ones belong to you. Reverse that, we can get rid of the body fat. Steve: Okay, all right. Well, that's good advice. Now, the first time we got going on this, Ron explained this to me, the example that he used for me was that if you eat an apple...And you correct any of this if you don't mind, Ron. But if you eat an apple by itself, it's the carbohydrate. It will be digested by the body within 20 minutes. Is that about right? Ron: Absolutely. Steve: But if you'll take that same apple and it goes right to fat, as Ron just explained...On the other hand, if you eat that apple together with the protein together with an essential fatty acid, it takes four hours for the body to digest this and it goes directly to energy. Ron: Wow, that's awesome that you remember that principle. Yes, and this is for those that are trying to decrease body fat. If you're an athlete and you have a high metabolism, this would not apply for you because sometimes you would take in pure sugar to propel you forward in whatever activity you're competing in. But if your desire is to decrease body fat, Steve is 100% spot on. Steve: Okay, and so that was really helpful. So that's a good tip for today is whenever you eat any type of foods, be sure you have at least three things on your plate: a carbohydrate, a protein, and the essential fatty acids. Right? Ron: Absolutely. Beautiful. Steve: Okay, that's if you're trying to, you know, lose body fat. And that's what I was doing, and I still do that by the way. I'm trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle of an ongoing diet that I know I can sustain. People often ask "Well, what are essential fatty acids?" That's raw almonds, avocados. What are some other sources of that, Ron? Ron: Wheat germ oil would be another one. You know, you said avocado. There's a new oil called avocado oil. I love the avocado oil because I can put it in any of my drinks and it's hard to even taste. Steve: Oh, okay. All right, good. So, Ron, what are some problems that you see are common in our society concerning excess body fat? Have we already talked about it? Have we covered that or...? Ron: Well, one problem I see is that we in America are getting fatter. You know, years ago, it was hard to find a person that was more than 300 pounds. Now we're 600, 700, 800, 900, even a thousand pounds. I mean, that was unheard of. The body is so resilient and I don't know how the body can handle that. But we're becoming more overweight and obese because of being sedentary and the other thing is poor eating and some of the things that we're putting in our bodies, and we have to reverse that. That's a real passion of mine. Steve: Okay good, all right. Well, so in terms of the eating do you... I'd like to just get back to that. Are there some things that our listeners can do to have a healthy set of eating habits? Like I know that you sent to me, originally, the Champions' Nutritional Guideline as I recall. Ron: Yes, sir. Steve: I don't know if that addresses it but maybe you could take a minute to just talk about, well, what are types of healthy eating. Ron: Okay, types of healthy eating depending on where you are, if you need to lose 15 pounds, if you need to lose 30 pounds, if you need to lose 70 pounds, or if you're in a class that we considered a hard-loser. A lot of people go on diet, after diet, after diet and what you end up doing is retarding your metabolism. When you retard your metabolism, it doesn't function properly the way it should. And then we have those people out there that are insulin resistant. And all of these create a huge problem. So what you have to do is find out, first of all, which category you're in, and then, you want to start off by detoxifying the body. Because we have what you call "fat-loss resistant chemicals" along with estrogen mimickers, and what estrogen mimickers do is they create excess body fat. And we want to get those toxins out of the body so that the body will function the way it should properly. There's certain things that 200 years ago, we weren't privileged to put in our body, you know, and we want to go back to nature as much as we possibly can. The way God originally created food is the way we should ingest it. God didn't create the Oreo cookie. I know some of you think he did but he really didn't create the Oreo cookie. And what I do is I study out different ingredients, where they came from, how we came about it. And when you look at an Oreo cookie, the center of that Oreo cookie that you take...you open the Oreo cookie and you scrape that white stuff on your teeth. Do you know what that is? It would be equivalent to Crisco oil or that Crisco-thick saturated fat that you're scraping on your teeth that has some sugar and has a little vanilla flavoring. But you're putting that directly into your body and it clogs the arteries and creates excess body fat. Well, if we go back to nature, we'll find out those things that we originally ate were to bring health, life, and longevity. So I would say, first of all, let's learn a little bit about good nutritional value. Eat those things that are very nutritious. Eat organic as you possibly can. Fresh is better than frozen. Frozen is better than canned. And try to get back to nature as much as you possibly can. Steve: Okay. Well, those are some good guidelines. And as I started adopting this, I didn't know what to expect but what I found is that eating, for example, the steamed vegetables were amazing. I don't know how I had missed these before. So yellow squash and steamed broccoli and the cauliflower, and there are so many amazing things that are so good. And I've loved the celery, the carrots. All of these things are so good, and I think they're part of what you're talking about. Ron: Yes. sir. Absolutely. Steve: kay, good. All right, well, let's just wrap up with a couple of thoughts here. What are a few things that we could implement today that would aid in decreasing body fat? Maybe we've already talked about it, but...And then, I'd like to talk about...the final thing is the role of exercise versus diet. Ron: Awesome, awesome. Well, one thing, it's very, very simple but it's huge, and that's change the type of water you drink because water, you know, it's the number one nutritional thing that we can put in our bodies. At one time, you could get water for free, but good quality water you have to pay for. It is very, very important because we're made up of 70% water. In water, just because it's clear does not mean that it's clean. We have different things in our body: fat-loss resistant chemicals along with estrogen mimickers, medication. Some people are taking hormone therapy. All of that gets into the water, and you think it gets cleaned out but it really doesn't. The other things...we have chlorine. Now, an estrogen mimicker, you've probably wondered where do they come from: pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, chlorine, perchlorate, which is jet fuel. All of those have estrogen mimickers. Heart medication, they'll tell you with some heart medication that it creates tenderness of your breast or your chest which become breast, and that's because there's an estrogen mimicker in there. When little girls go through puberty they get that tenderness, and that starting to happen in men along with other excess body fat throughout their bodies. So a good source of water is distilled water that's fortified with the minerals, that's pure water. So that's really important. You can implement that starting today. Steve: Now, let's just hold on a second. Where did they get that? Ron: Distilled water, you can either distill it yourself by having a distiller or you can just go on the Internet and google distilled water in your area or you can find it on the grocery store shelf, distilled water. But fortify it with the minerals. Even on our website, if you're looking for the minerals, they should cost you somewhere between $17 to $19. If it cost you more than that for a 90 day supply, way too expensive. We have some on our website for just $14.95. Steve: Okay, all right. Well, let's take this last question. It's been a good interview and good ideas today and hopefully, some encouragement for people and keeping it simple on a way forward. How big of a role does exercise play? How big of a role does the diet play? Ron: Well, as a competitor, exercise is a very, very small percentage, something like 20%. And the nutritional part of it is somewhere around 75% to 80%. I mean, the nutritional part of it is huge, but the combination together, utterly, utterly important. You can go on a diet by itself and you'll receive some results or you can do exercise by itself and depending on the type of metabolism you have, you may get no results. But the combination together, scientifically, is the best thing you could possibly do. Steve: Okay, and then one last question, Ron. What have you found is the best way to get this distilled water? Do you just buy it from a store around or can you get it in a larger container? What's the easiest way? What have you found the best way to get it? Ron: The best way to get it is have it brought to your house. It's really inexpensive. If you have a store that's fairly close, and as I said just google it, they will actually bring five-gallon containers to your house for less than 60 cents a gallon. If you go to the store, it may cost you $1.25 or maybe even higher. And another thing is distilled water... you can only drink that for two weeks. It'll help detoxify the body but after two weeks, start putting the minerals in. Steve: Okay, yeah. That's a critical part, right? Because it can actually hurt your health if you continue with the distilled water without the minerals. Ron: That's right because water, by itself, it has open bonds, and as we receive rain, it goes through the atmosphere but it collects the asset that's in the atmosphere then it hits the ground. But when that water is completely distilled, it has open bonds. And when it goes to your body, it does the same thing. it collects the dirt and the filth but it also absorbs those minerals and will pull the minerals out of your system. So get the water distilled, two weeks, it'll help you detoxify. But after the two weeks, apply the minerals. Steve: Okay, good stuff. Well, this is been a great interview. Hopefully, you have received a few good ideas. And if this is an area of interest, then certainly, the diet that we've talked about, the way you eat, the number of meals, and then try to have a consistent exercise program to supplement what you're doing. The distilled water... Ron: Absolutely. Steve: With the minerals. Okay, good start. Now, Ron, how can they find out about what you're doing or learn more? Ron: Well, one is we have a YouTube channel which is just, Ron Williams YouTube Channel. The next thing, you could go to our website which is ironchestmaster.com or rwfitness.com. You can find me on the Internet just google Ron Williams. Steve: Okay, good to know. Well, thank you. It's been a great interview. And Ron, I can't wait to see what happens in the next year. Ron: Absolutely. Steve: All right. Well, we're signing off and remember that every one of you is making a difference in your own life. And I'd like to give you hope and encouragement that if you've had 10 or 15 pounds or whatever that you've been trying to lose, you can do it, and it's just a steady effort and you can have fun doing it. It's an adventure. Well, we wish you all the best. This is Steve Shallenberger signing off with Becoming Your Best. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What’s Your Innovation Quotient? - Interview with Tamara Kleinberg Steve: Welcome to all of our "Becoming Your Best" podcast listeners, wherever you might be in the world today. This is your host, Steve Shallenberger. And we have a very interesting guest with us today. Our guest has helped and inspired many people on how to improve their lives and be more effective. Welcome, Tamara Kleinberg. Tamara: Thank you so much for having me. Steve: Oh, we're excited to have you. And before we get started today, I'd like to tell you a little about Tamara's background. First of all, this is fun. She's part of an elite group of TED speakers for completing three Tough Muddlers. Tell us what a Tough Muddler is, Tamara. Tamara: Oh, they are these...I don't know if you've done one yet...but they are these extreme sport events. It's usually 12 to 16 miles, 20 obstacle courses, and things like getting dumped in water so cold you can't breathe and electric shock wires. It just...it tests your limits, both physical and mental, every time you do it. Steve: Lovely. Well, we know what the Spartan event is. We've had a number of our family members that have participated in that. I think quite similar. Tamara: I love Spartan events. Steve: Yeah, they're great. And Tamara's life is about breaking through the status quo for game-changing results. And I'll just tell you a little bit more about her. She is the founder of LaunchStreet, an online innovation program, and the creator of a proprietary Innovation Quotient Edge, which we'll talk a little bit about later in the program. It's the only assessment able to help you discover your unique innovator archetype, and we'll talk about that, so that you can innovate on demand. She is a sought-after keynote speaker, CrossFit addict, and a knee-high sock lover. She lives in the Colorado area, has two young children, a husband, and they are rocking and rolling. Tamara: Don't forget my dog. My dog would be very upset if you didn't mention her. Her name is Zoe, and she's a 90-pound mastiff. So she's part of the family. Steve: Well, that's perfect. Okay, well, Tamara, what was life like growing up for you? And what experiences helped you to see that you could be successful? Tamara: Yeah, that's such a great question to open with, you know? So I was telling you a little bit offline that we moved every four years of my life. And the reason for that was my dad was an entrepreneur. So we basically bounced from business to business, and that required moving as well. And while that sounds horrible to a lot of people, what I will tell you is it taught me how to talk to everybody, because I had to start over every four years. I became the queen of reinvention I think before I was 18 years old because I always had to. And, you know, I kinda looked back on my life, and, you know, I realized that that entrepreneurial spirit was inside of me very early on. My very first business was when I was 14 years old. I turned my teenage girl's dream closet into a business of renting clothing, and keep in mind, just to date myself, it was the 80s. So the clothing was bad, and it was before the Internet and [inaudible 00:03:19] could rent everything. But, you know, I was always looking for opportunities to just do things a little bit differently. I think a lot of us have that inside of us, that little spark, and it ignites every now and again. And sometimes we shut it down. And sometimes we let it grow. But in that case, I let it grow. And that summer, I had a ton of money. It was great. But, you know, you would...one of the things that you would ask in a previous thing was, you know, kinda what are some of those defining moments in your childhood. And I would tell you a quick story, because I think this really kinda set up how I viewed life and how I ultimately was able to achieve success. When I was in third grade, I got the most awesome homework, which was, you know, come back on Monday morning and tell the class what you wanna be when you grow up. And I was so excited. And that's the best homework you can give a third grader ever because the possibilities at that point in your life are endless. So, you know, I spent all weekend. I really...I took it very seriously. And I got back to school, and I stood up there, and I was the first to raise my hand. So I got up, you know, in front of that dirty chalkboard. And to see if my...you know, kids in front of me in those low tables, and I said, you know, "I'm Tamara. And when I grow up, I wanna be president of the United States." Steve: Woo-hoo! Tamara: And, you know, then I waited... Yeah. Well, that's what I was hoping for. Thank you. You know, I put my head down waiting for the like obvious standing ovation that was coming. But instead, I got laughter. And it wasn't actually the other kids. It was the teacher. Yeah. She looked to me, and she said, "Tamara, don't be silly. You can't be president of the United States. You weren't born here. You need to come up with a new dream." So I wasn't born here. I was born in Israel. But I...I was born on dual citizenship. And it doesn't matter. In third grade, that's not the point, right? Steve: Right, right. Tamara: You know, I went home in tears, and I went into my dad's office because he's working from home at the time. And I said, you know, "I was told that those are the rules. So I can't be president." I was so upset and ready to be very dramatic. And my dad is very brass tacks about everything. And he looked up at me, and he just said, "Well, Tamara, then go change the rules." I was like "Oh my God." Like that opened my eyes to everything in life. So I can't change the rules to be president. Frankly, at this point, I'm really glad I never pursued that path because it looks like a really hard job. But what it did teach me in life and what I've always applied is how can you go around those brick walls and those rules? How do you go under them, over them, through them? There's always a different way to accomplish what you wanna accomplish. And when I was in third grade, what I was really saying was I wanna make an impact on the world. That's really what I wanted. So when I thought about that in a different way, I was able to do different things and get to that goal. Steve: Oh, I love it. Oh, thanks for that background. And this is a great reminder too. We who have the opportunity to work with others, to give them encouragement, to give them hope, to... I love the assignment. You know, to stoke that curiosity and creativity and... Well, great going! That's terrific. Now, how about...you've been moving along. That was a great setback right there, a little challenge. But what's been some of the biggest challenges in your life or a challenge, just pick one, whether personal life or professional, and how did you handle it, and what was the impact? Tamara: Yeah. So, you know, I think we all have a lot of challenges. And sometimes there are tiny little ones that seem to add up over time. And other times there are, you know, big ones that are slapping us around and leaving a little bit of a sting on our face. And I know...I think when I look back, the biggest challenges have been these tiny little things that constantly added up. And, you know, it really led to...it was me always trying to push the limits and always trying to do something different and getting pushed back. And, you know, when I was...and so when I left university...I graduated from UC Berkeley and went out to New York City because I wanted to be in advertising and on Madison Avenue, which in the '90s was a big deal, you know, different now, but it was then. And I remember getting my first job there. And I was an administrative assistant. And that's not what I wanted to be. I wanted to be in account management. But because I didn't have an in, a connection, a referral...I was new to New York. I moved there not knowing anybody. I mean it was me and my apartment for the first six months of my time in New York City. And I had to take the job that I was provided because that's all I could get. I couldn't get the one in accounts because, you know, I didn't know anyone. However, once I got in, I was able to make my imprint and get to where I wanted to be. So, you know, it seemed like a really big challenge, and I had to look at it and go, "Well, how do I do it differently so that I get to my goal, but do it in a different way, because that path I thought I would get is just not open to me?" The beauty of it, though, the thing I learned, not just that, is I learned how hard it is to be an administrative assistant and how that is they are the gatekeepers to everything. So not only did I learn, you know, what I needed to do to get to where I was trying to be, but I also learned what it really meant to take on that role, which was not easy. But that's really all the challenges...every moment that I remember another time I was working at this, you know, prestigious brand strategy and innovation firm. And I used to get in trouble for going home at four because I would be done with my work, and I would do it well, but I was done because I figured out a different way to prioritize my workflow and not do it like everybody else and get even more accomplished in a shorter period of time. But I got in trouble for it. So, you know, I kind of kept having to push boundaries and I kept... What I learned along the way is I had to keep pushing back. I had to keep pushing back. It was my job to keep that flame going, nobody else's, because they were not gonna do it for me. Steve: Okay. Well, now, I just love it. I love the fact that Tamara is out there pushing the horizons, thinking about possibilities. This is one of the things that we need to do to reach our fullest potential. We just gotta reach down inside and say, "Wow, what is it out there that...where can I make my contribution? Where is my area of interest?" and go for it. Don't let things hold us back. And that might be in the different roles that we have in life. And so great going, Tamara. Tamara: Well, thank you so much. You know, I think this is kinda how life works, isn't it? Like it's...I saw this great quote on Facebook from Sylvester Stallone in what...a movie he's I think recently in. I didn't get to see the whole thing, because, you know, you're on Facebook, you scroll through. But, basically, it's like "Look, life is gonna slap you around harder than anybody else. And it's our job to get back up." And I think that's really how I've tried to lead through life. And when you tap your innovative mind, which we all have the power of doing... I know we don't always feel that way. But it's true. We can talk a little bit about the research that led to that and kinda, you know, the assessment that goes along with it. But when we approach things in a more innovative way, we're able to make a greater impact and go around some of those big barriers that we face. Steve: Okay, good. Well, let's talk about innovation. This is one of your specialties. And it plays such a huge role in our success in life. And I was just reading through my personal vision this morning, which I've had for 25 years. It's been inspiring for me. And on the personal level, one of the aspects was when I have setbacks and challenges, I think of options, options, and options. And then I move again. Tamara: I love that. Steve: Well, this is kind of it, innovation. So what's the greatest barrier to innovation? Let's really help our listeners out today of how we can get to a better place. Tamara: Yeah. So there's a couple of barriers that I wanna talk about here. And let me just back up by sharing my definition of innovation so we're all on the same page because I think oftentimes we think of it as a new product, new technology, or, you know, relegated to a certain point in time, exercise, the brainstorm with scented markers, you know, and [inaudible 00:11:08]. But that's really not it. What innovation is and the definition that I'd like, you know, us to move forward with is people each thinking differently about what's right in front of them to create differentiated value. And that really ultimately comes back to us in how we view things and shifting our own perspective and trying out new things. I think that one of the greatest barriers to innovation is thinking that we're not capable of it and that, you know, Greg down the hall with his blue streak in his hair and his funky glasses and, you know, going the cafes to work. He is the innovative guy. But it's really not me, whether that's because of my, you know, how I've been trained over life or my job description or just how I view myself. And that couldn't be more wrong. I think what we've discovered in our 20-plus years of work and research over here at LaunchStreet is that being innovative is actually universal. We all do it. But how we innovate is unique to each of us. But we gotta own that we're innovative people. You now, we all go to the movies, and we suspend belief, and we watch these crazy sci-fi movies, and we think nothing of it. Yet, we come home, and when we ask ourselves to work and we ask ourselves how to think differently about something, and we shut down. We got to bring that back up. Steve: Okay. Well, that's great, yeah. And I love your definition, thinking differently to get better results to how do we be... As you know, one of the things we talk about a lot is helping people become their best. And this is the thinking is we can do it. We can come up with ideas, and we are capable of it. So as we get into this process, Tamara, why do most ideas die before they even have a chance to get going, before someone leaves the conference room? Tamara: Yeah. There's a couple of reasons for it, and it's so sad, isn't it? I mean even asking the question sounds sad, like "Oh, ideas die." It's so sad, but they do, and they do for a couple of reasons. One is we confuse collaboration and consensus. So if we're working in a team, you know, we would have an idea that we wanna either bring forward or we have a problem we're trying to solve and we get together to form a solution for that, what we do by accident, in an effort to create collaboration, is we pull everybody together at the table. Now we've got everybody's opinion. And frankly, it's too many. And we need to replace consensus with collaboration, real collaboration, which I would define as the right people sitting at the table at the right time discussing the right things. That's not everybody. That's the appropriate people together. So that's number one is, you know, we end up doing this consensus decision-making, and that just waters everything down to nothing. Nobody is excited about it, and we leave with this blah, wet clay-looking idea. That's number one. The second thing is...and this was a really painful lesson that I learned along the way from someone who I called Mr. Mustache, because I don't remember his name, but he had a really big mustache. It moved before he spoke. And he shut down every one of my ideas in this meeting where I was presenting ideas. It was actually to Johnson & Johnson baby care. He worked for them at the time. And what I learned that day was that most ideas die because we don't have the language to champion them and get other people along for the journey with us. We assume that the idea is gonna stand on its own, like "Oh my god, this water bottle is so amazing. How could they say no to this?" But they do say no because they weren't along for the journey of the creation of it. And now we're throwing this one-way tennis ball, you know, across the court expecting them to pick it up. And they don't. What I have discovered, and we have a lot of these tools on our LaunchStreet on demand...I think it's part of the reasons why our clients come back year after year for more and more tools. We have this whole language of innovation method because what we discovered is that when you change your language, you change your outcome. But it is just really unfortunate to think the number of ideas that never see the light of day because we just don't know how to champion them. Steve: Okay. Oh, those are good thoughts. I'd be interested in your thoughts about this. What role...I'm just thinking that sometimes people don't have confidence in their ability to innovate, to be a creative force, and so they're a little shy about it. Would that also be a reason that an idea dies that they don't have enough confidence? Tamara: Yeah, you know, it's so interesting, and it's great that you really kinda brought that up to the surface. We don't give ourselves permission to innovate. So oftentimes...we hear this all the time, don't we? Like "Oh, they don't get it. They don't understand. They're not innovative enough." But what we forget is that we don't even give ourselves permission to innovate. So we...before we ever even say an idea out loud, we put layers of judgment on it. We say, "Well, that's not good enough. I mean who am I to share this? I don't have the experience. They'll never go for it. It'll never work. I'll sound stupid. I'll sound like I don't know what I'm talking about. Obviously, if it was a good idea, somebody else would have said it." So we talk ourselves out of bringing those ideas forward. And in doing that, we're shutting down all of that innovative thinking and keeping it inside. Yet, the question we have to ask ourselves is how do we expect to get to those breakthrough ideas or results in our work and life if we're not even giving ourselves permission to innovate? And, you know, when I keynote, I talk a lot about...we do this exercise when we're together in keynote that really brings this to life about how... It's really incredible. We self-sabotage before we even get it to the world. Steve: Right. Now, that's a great insight. If you don't mind let's talk a little about your innovator profile. I've noticed that in your information you have a unique IQE. Tell us what that is. And how can a person use it to get good results, to get innovative results that are helpful? Tamara: So the Innovation Quotient Edge or the IQE, as we call it for short, is the only proprietary tool that helps you understand how you innovate so that you can innovate on demand, so basically so you can tap your greatest asset, which is your innovative mind, as we talked about, that we all have. And part of the reason we decided to create this tool over at LaunchStreet was because we were tired of seeing people say, "I'm not innovative." It's so and so down the hall. Or "I just don't have it in me," or "I want to. It's in me, but I don't know how." And what we realized is if we can help people understand how they innovate, they're more likely to do more of it. I mean we do more of what works for us and less of what doesn't. We wanna tap our strength. And that's what this allows us to do. So we discovered there's nine triggers of innovation, and it's the combination of the top two that make your unique innovator archetype. And here is kind of the cool thing, and I'll use myself as an example. I am a risk-taker and an experiential. Those are my two things to come together for an archetype. And what that means is that the experiential side of me is I have to learn in motion. I have to innovate by doing. So if you ask me to think in theory and hypothesize and leave things on PowerPoint presentation, I shut down. And the funny part is that's how I used to work because that's how you're expected to work. That's how we're trained in our nine to five jobs to get stuff done. But I was actually working against myself, and it was showing up in my work. It wasn't innovative. I wasn't getting recognized for the value I was bringing to the table. I didn't have a strong enough voice because I wasn't playing to my strength. And then I flipped it around. Now when I build an idea out, I build it out with duct tape and scented markers because I need to see it in real life to be able to innovate. And I can now take things to the finish line. So when you understand how you innovate...it's plain and simple...you work smarter, not harder. And the cool part is if you stay in that...you know that zone we always talk about, that flow, you get to stay there longer because you're bringing that innovation to life. Steve: Well, very good. Now I'm gonna put you on the spot here, Tamara. Tamara: Uh-oh. Steve: Yeah. So what's an example? Share an example of someone that used this and the result that they got. Tamara: Yeah. Ooh, oh, this is like the Oprah question. I'm sitting on a couch, okay. So I'll give you actually an example of a company and some of the people inside their company, because there's two great examples out of this. So the company is called Footers Catering. It's one of the largest catering companies in Colorado. So they do very well. The founder, the president, Anthony, had his team take it. And two really interesting things came out of it. First, I'm gonna talk about Kara. So Kara is...one of her archetype is inquisitive. So that means she innovates by asking questions. For her innovations and the questions is not the answer. And you know her archetype because they're the one... You know them. It's 11:30. You got a quick meeting, and you're dying to get to lunch, and they're over there with their hand up like "I just have 10 more questions, just 10, I swear." But that's because they go deep. They pull back the layers of the onion and challenge assumptions. That's how they innovate. So when Kara recognized this, her team understood this about her, because they talked about their result. And now she's able to leverage that. Where before people saw it as kind of an annoyance, like "She's got 10 more questions," now she understands that's how she innovates. So she's empowered to ask the hard question, and her team understands it and actually...and expecting her to ask questions and is okay with it. So it really opened up her ability to add value to the team in a way that she wasn't able to do before. The second one is named Stephanie. And she's a futuristic. That's one of her two power triggers, which means that she's always 10 steps ahead. She's envisioning what it could be, what the possibilities are. She's solving today's challenges by creating tomorrow's opportunities. So she was in a role that was purely administrative. And she was dying on the vine. It was so hard for her. When she realized this, she and the president, Anthony, got together, and they created a new role for her where she's creating themes for their clients when they bring food to their events, whatever it is. So now she's been put in a role that's all about creating the future versus managing the past. And she is doing incredibly well. And the last I'll share with you is an entrepreneur who is outside of that realm who is a collaborative, which is all about pulling disparate people and ideas and experiences together to create innovation. And so they're all about the conversation, the team dynamic. They're very magnetic in that way, but it's because that's how they pull the data pieces together to create innovation. She had this business. She had a product. It was online. It's doing incredibly well. And she was so frustrated because she felt like this wasn't her vision, her dream. She was stuck in a silo in her house with no one to talk to. So when she realized that she was missing the thing that was feeding her soul, this collaborative innovator, she actually created an entire feedback loop with her customers. When they buy the product, they now have this opportunity to engage with her on a regular basis. Because of that, she's able to bring more and more innovation to the table because she created a business that matched how she innovates. She created a collaborative business instead of a solo business, which is what she was doing in the past. Steve: Okay. So that's excellent. So it helps both the individual and it helps the team of how to work better together. Tamara: That's exactly right. That interplay is really interesting. And what we see is when you understand how you innovate, you bring more of that to the table. And we you understand how other people innovate, you respect and seek out their opinion because now you've got a 360-degree view, different ways to tackle a challenge. The results are 10 times better. Steve: Okay. So, Tamara, what's one thing that our listeners can do right now to up their innovation quotient? Tamara: Well, the first thing I do is say go take the assessment and find out what you are. Like I said, there's nine triggers. That means there's 35 different unique combinations that could be you. If you go to gotolaunchstreet.com, that's the way to do it. But let me give your listeners, if it's okay with you, just a little something they can do right away in their everyday life that's one of my favorite innovative exercises. Can I have a minute to do that? Steve: Yes, yes. Tamara: Okay, excellent. So it's what I call geek out. So you mentioned in the very beginning that I'm a CrossFit addict, which is totally true and a knee-high sock lover. I'm wearing knee-high socks right now. I'm very proud to say. So one of the things, the challenges we have with being innovative is we look in our center, you know, in that same box with the same information with the same people over and over again, and then we don't get any result, and we get frustrated. A great way to bring innovation to your world is to go wide, go far out, and then bring that information back. The easiest way to do that is to think about how the innovative brands and products you love...how they do things and how they might solve your challenges. So for example, for me, I always think about...because I love CrossFit...how would they solve the challenge I'm having with the usability of my website. How would Southwest engage with customers in this challenge? How would Trader Joe's bring this idea [inaudible 00:24:26]. Suddenly, it becomes so easy to think differently when you put yourself in the shoes of the brands and the businesses that you love for being innovative. I mean do you have a few that you absolutely love that you could talk my ear off about? Steve: Yeah, sure. Tamara: Yeah, we all have them, right? So when you do that, it becomes super easy to be innovative because you just put yourself in their shoes. Steve: Okay. Well, that's great. I'm always amazed at how fast time goes. Our time is up. And so how can our listeners learn more about what you're doing, and how can they find out about your information? Tamara: Yeah. So the best way is to go to our website, gotolaunchstreet.com. So it's gotolaunchstreet.com. Or you can find us on social media. We're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and it's all @LaunchStreet. Steve: Okay, that's terrific. Well, this is a great resource for people. Thank you, Tamara, for being part of our show today. Really excellent ideas. And you're just touching a lot of people. So we congratulate you on that and on making a difference in the world today. Tamara: Well, thank you for providing a platform to share with your listeners. It's a wonderful show. So I appreciate being on. Steve: Yeah, you bet. And to all of our listeners, never forget, you too make a difference every single day, your leadership, the light that you have as you work on these grows brighter and brighter, and it influences everyone around. So we congratulate you as you're in this journey as well. And I'm Steve Shallenberger with Becoming Your Best Global Leadership wishing you a great day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Radical Abundance - It's a Way of Thinking Steve: Welcome to all of our Becoming Your Best Podcast listeners wherever you might be in the world today. This is your host, Steve Shallenberger, and we have a fascinating guest today. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. She has helped and inspired many people on how to improve their lives. So welcome Dr. Sharon Spano. Dr Spano: Thank you so much, Steve. I'm very excited to have this time with you today and to share what I have to offer to your listeners, and to learn more about you as well. So, looking forward to this opportunity. Steve: Well, thank you. Well, now, before we get started, I'd like to tell you a little about Sharon's background. Sharon has a P.h.D. in Human and Organizational Systems. She's an author, a corporate business strategist, a workforce expert, professional speaker, former radio host of Work Smart Live. She and her husband actually run three businesses. And so she understands what it's like to have business challenges, and success, and setbacks, and overcoming those. She empowers business leaders and entrepreneurs to maximize performance. Also works on employee engagement and how to increase bottom-line results. She is a certified professional coach, she loves helping other people, and especially, stepping into radical abundance. And we're gonna talk about that shortly. Her research focuses on wisdom, adult development and leadership, and her work and her new book, The Pursuit of Time and Money: Step into Radical Abundance and Discover the Secret to a Meaningful Prosperous Life. So there you go. This is somebody we wanna have some fun and listen to. Dr Spano: Well, I appreciate it, Steve. I appreciate it. What a great introduction, thanks so much. Steve: Well, you bet. All right, well, let's jump right into things. So, tell us about where you grew up, what it was like growing up, and what experiences, Sharon, helped you to see that you could be successful? Dr Spano: Well, I think that's a great question, Steve, because we all have our story, right? And so, my early childhood story. My parents were divorced and I was literally dropped off at my paternal grandmother's home at probably around the age of five, my sister and I, in the inner city of Los Angeles. And so, we were kind of thrust into this different lifestyle as children, and it was a pretty intense environment back in the day. I can remember growing up and there were gangs and a lot of things like that. But my grandmother in her wisdom, put us in catholic school, which was not an easy thing, even at $15 a month. I mean, we were very poor, so it was difficult for her to make that happen. But that was the saving grace, I think, because she was worried about us being in the public school system with all the gangs and the things that were going on at that time. And I got a very, very good education with the nuns. And so a lot of my success, I attribute to those early years, because the emphasis was on literary work, and reading and writing, and I learned early. I'm a lifelong learner and I'm an avid reader. And so I would say, most of my success, if I could attribute it to any one thing, which of course there never is just one thing, is there? But it has to do with my willingness to learn, but also the ability to communicate, both in the written and spoken word. That has been really, just a big plus for me throughout my entire career. Steve: Well, that is quite a background, not only cultural, from Los Angeles, and that kind of experience in the inner city, but also that type of a tremendous education. Your grandmother must have been some woman. Dr Spano: Yeah, she was. She had nine children, she buried two husbands, lost her younger son in the war, which I've just recently learned his story because I grew up kind of under this cloud, if you will, of an uncle that she always expected to come home. She believed that he was captured by the Japanese. And I only just literally a month ago found out that he actually went down with the USS Houston. So, it was interesting in many ways, in that, I now have come to see how she prepared me spiritually, but she also prepared me for loss of a son, because I lost my own son in 2008. And so, her strength, her spirituality, her wisdom, you know, sometimes when you're growing up, you don't realize how all that's impacting you, but it's really had a tremendous impact on how I've carried myself through the adversity in my own life. You know, and particularly learning Roy's [SP] story now, in my later years and realizing how she handled, you know, that grief and that uncertainty, you know, never knowing for sure what had happened to him, was quite an amazing thing to grow up, you know, under and have within the household. And I didn't realize how much it prepared me, you know, for the loss of a child. Watching her, you know, witnessing her strength all those years. Steve: Having great role models like that have a far greater impact sometimes than we realize, and how fortunate. And I'm grateful for the wonderful women who have had such a big impact on my life, as well as the great role model men. So, good going on that. So, Sharon, what's been the biggest challenge or maybe one of the biggest challenges in your life, whether personal or in your business life, and how did you handle that? Dr Spano: Well, I think it's really to what I alluded to a moment ago. My husband and I, you know, met, I was pretty young when we met. We've had a very strong and long lasting marriage for over 43 years. We've been very blessed in that. Steve: Way to go. Dr Spano: But our son Michael was born in 1981 with a very rare metabolic disorder. So that was sort of the first adversity that hit us. As a very young couple, that certainly wasn't what we had expected to have happen. And he was at that time diagnosed, he was supposed to live till the age two. So those first years were very, very challenging for us. But we transitioned from Los Angeles, moved to Florida for my husband's business in the early 80s. And Michael wound up living till the age of 27. So we had a very full and rich life with this young man, who was wheelchair bound throughout his life. But there were a lot of adversities and ups and downs, as you can imagine, through that process. And we're both entrepreneurs, running our businesses, you know, trying to stay ahead of the game with him. And his death was certainly, probably without a doubt the biggest challenge of my life. Because he was critical for four years, in and out of hospitals. And of course, my business was booming at that time, and, you know, you're at the height of all of that, and of course, if you knew that you're near the end of, you know, this journey with him, I probably would have quit everything, but you don't know that. You're just kinda living day to day thinking tomorrow is gonna be a better day. And as it turned out, it was a very great opportunity for me to exercise resilience, because managing the business and managing his illness, you know, my husband and I just, again, that was the value of being entrepreneurs. We would just pitch ship for each other, and, you know, be what we needed to be for him first, but still kept the businesses going somehow. And then when he passed, in '08, that in and of itself was such a dramatic event, but one that really made us appreciate the sacredness, I guess, of that kind of life transition. We both buried parents, grandparents, but obviously, it's a very different thing when you burry a child because it's unnatural, right? That our child would pass before us. So, you know, really helped me grow spiritually, helped me appreciate the work that I have and how God has blessed me to serve people in the corporate environment. And I love the work that I'm about. I feel very purposeful in it, and I just have a very, very passionate perspective on the value of life and the legacy that I wanna create moving forward. And I feel like God's timing was perfect, in that, if we had to lose Michael, we lost him at a time where we'd had a wonderful experience with him. Really, as a family, you know, we did so much together. And then, yet at the time of his passing, we're both young enough to still, you know, carry forth our businesses and contribute. I mean, that's really what I want, you know, the fourth quarter, as they say, to be about. How do I contribute to making people's lives better and offer what I can in terms of my wisdom and knowledge to those in business and in corporate America. Steve: Yeah. Well, that...I appreciate you being willing to share about that experience. I'm certain that our listeners, every one of them have challenges. Some are more severe than others at different times in life, and just like the type that you've described anyhow, it's probably different for everybody in a sense. But nonetheless, in many ways, it feels the same way, which is, we wanna do what's important and balance things, and... So, if you were to give some advice to our listeners in the midst of their adversity, the challenge, these heavy weights, and yet still try to balance life. Any thoughts on that? What would you suggest? Dr Spano: Well, I think for me it goes back to purpose, you know. I mean, whatever role or whatever business you're in, you know, how do I be the best in that every given day? Steve: I like the sound of that. Dr Spano: Well, and just fulfill that purpose, you know. And I know that sounds very cliché for some people, and if you're in a job or a position where you hate what you're doing, you know, that's certainly a bigger challenge. But part of the work that I'm about Steve, and I know that you're about is, how do we help people really dive deep enough to figure out how to be their best version of who they are. You know, for me, that's a very spiritual matter because I've been blessed in growing that spiritual line of development and knowing who God is and what he's called me to do. You know, for someone who may not have a traditional belief system to lean on, you know, there is so much out there right now to help people, and that's what I love about the integral coaching work that I do, is we really...we're less about goals in our interaction. When I finish with you today I'm going to meet a CEO who is very clear on his purpose, but he's struggling with some of the changes in the economy and the systems and whatnot. So it's, how do we take all of his strengths and match them to another level of purpose such that we maybe shift his consciousness so he can step up into this new role, in a bigger and better way. So, for me, it goes back to purpose and then staying focused. And then how do I continue to develop my own consciousness so that I'm growing, and moving forward, and adapting. Because as you know, today's leaders have to adapt constantly. I mean, every day, things are moving and shifting so quickly. And we're a global diverse society now. And so, that requires a different type of leadership than we've seen certainly, in generations before. And I think it's exciting, you know, it's an exciting opportunity for each of us to dig deeper and ask ourselves that question. You know, what can I do each and every day to make the world a better place? And for me, when I get up with that perspective, there is usually something miraculous that happens in the course of my workday. And that's kind of what I try to get my clients to see is, what is...even in the most adverse moments, what am I being called to learn? What am I being called to lean into, in terms of my own growing edge? And how can I step up and into that growing edge, such that I become a bigger better person, and realize my potential on the other end of it. You know, certainly through the years of my son's adversity and suffering, I had to dig really deep to be what I needed to be for him, for my husband, and for my clients. And I know I'm bigger and better and stronger on the other side of it for having risen, you know, to that adversity. That's part of my research around wisdom, by the way is, we know that leaders who exhibit wisdom handle adversity a bit differently, and they do a lot of what I've just talked about. When they're in the midst of it, they're looking for what is the lesson here and how can I be my best self in the midst of this. Steve: Okay. Well, let's talk about leadership a little bit more. Every one of us, each one of us is a leader of course, and the mental construct that we have on how to be successful is such an important influence in our personal lives as we deal with others, as you've mentioned, relationships, and professionally. So, let's discuss for a second some different aspects of achieving success, and especially from the point of view that, from your background, your experience. So let's start with radical abundance. It's part of your book, what is it, and why is it important? Dr Spano: Well, I think it's vital and it's a lot of things, in that, it's more about a mind shift, less about what you actually have. And of course the focus of the book is on the experience of time and money, and I'm looking at it through a developmental lens. And by that, I mean, what we know through the research is there are 12 of what we call stages of human development. Obviously, beginning from, you know, birth on up. The average American, we know that 60% of those Americans fall within what we call the expert and achiever levels. And so, part of what I'm exploring in this work is, based on your level of development, what are your paradigms or belief systems around time and money? And I came into that quite by accident, if you will, because I saw so much human suffering in corporate America around these two very important resources that impact us daily, and in every decision and choice that we make, but often at subconscious levels that we're not even aware of. So when we talk about radical abundance, I'm talking about developing, again, those growing edges, the awareness of consciousness, such that you can have a meaningful life of joy and prosperity, no matter what your life circumstances are. No matter how much time or money you actually have. It's a place to come from more than it is a place to get to. And so, I'm really trying to open the conversation, getting people to examine their worldview, their paradigms, and often in the contest of those early childhood stories, because that's where it all begins. What were the things you were taught or heard about time and money, you know, and how is it impacting you in terms of your daily choices today. And what we're finding is, when we can open the discussion, and of course, we have instruments where we can actually measure where people are developmentally. That helps a lot, for them to see where they are and to see that you don't have to be stuck there, you can grow in these developmental, what we call developmental lines. There actually 26 lines of development that we enjoy as human beings, that we're aware of today. And I focus in my integral coaching work and in my strategic work with leaders on six of them. And so we can literally see where people are and where there might be some short falls or some faulty premises, as I like to say. Ideas or ways of being, ways of action that are inhibiting you from realizing and maximizing your potential. And then when we can do that, we can coach or help people shift those paradigms, such that they step into more radical abundance. Steve: Okay. So you're saying radical abundance is something that's within us? It's a way of thinking? Dr Spano: Yes. I'm saying that it's a way of thinking, it's a consciousness, if you will. And if you think of the stages, kind of the easiest way that I explain it, even though they're not a hierarchy per se. If you imagine a mountain top, Steve, and you're climbing that mountain. Stage one might be at base camp, okay? And then as you mature, and grow up and into higher states of consciousness and stages of consciousness, imagine yourself at the top of the summit. So, one is not necessarily better than another, but it is a broader perspective. So, for someone who grew up in the inner city like I did, your story, the story that's given to you as a child is, you can never get out of here. You're not smart enough for an education, and you'll never get a really good job. And so, you know, that's why people get stuck in ghettos, right? For some reason, that never resonated with me, and I don't know why, because I always knew I will become educated, and I will get out, and I will have a different life. But for many, they don't even know there is another life outside of that environment. And that's part of the opening that I'm trying to create. Because as you mentioned moment ago, we're all leaders. And I've taught that for years and years, because I don't believe that leadership is a title. I believe that it's...also, it's a mindset, it's a place to come from. You know, you can step into leadership and whatever role you play within an organization. And so, that's part of the exciting work that I've been blessed and able to do, is to help people see, when we change your paradigms and the actions flow from that. And more importantly, when we can shift your consciousness and your whole way of seeing the world, anything is possible. I mean, it really is. And so, you know, that's the work that I wanna be about, and that's the conversation I wanna open up within people whenever I can. Steve: Okay. Well, that's very exciting. So you're really working on transformation with people. And so, it sounds like what you're saying is the experiences we have in our childhood has a big impact on how we see time and money? Dr Spano: That is what we've been researching and we're seeing more and more evidence of that as a reality. And so, one of the examples that I like to give for instance is, as a child, I grew up, again, living with my grandmother and my dad who was supposedly to be the provider, really never was around very much, right? My dad, you know, did his best as most of our parents did, but he wasn't a guy that was really invested in his children. And so, I grew up hearing stories of, "Your dad isn't around. Your dad isn't paying for you. You're a charity case. You know, you're lucky to be here." That was from my aunts, not from my grandmother, of course. And so, the message that I received was, my parents don't value me and I'm not really worth their time and money. Now, as a child, you don't know that. You know, I didn't internalize it to that degree. But later in life, it played out, in that, I didn't think I was worth, you know, the salary, or the raise, or the promotion. You know, and it took me many years to unravel that. Well, then fast forward years later, I'm seeing this in CEOs, I'm seeing it in clients, you know, left and right. And when you get down to, you know, what is the scarcity mentality that's running you? Whether it be corporate wide or just in terms of your own personal life. Almost always they'll go back to a story that says, "Well, that's what I was taught." And the interesting thing, Steve, that I'm finding, that I'm so excited about is, it's fairly simple when we look on the spectrum because we have an assessment that we've developed called, "the time lining instrument." And it's an inventory that will help the individual see where they fall on the spectrum between scarcity and abundance. Scarcity is fairly clean and obvious as is abundance. Where it gets really challenging is when you're in the moderate range. Because for instance, someone who's in moderate scarcity might look like and believe themselves to be highly responsible. And so, they're doing all these theoretically right things that might look like they're coming from abundance, but often, those very same things are fear driven. And so, for instance, it's the father who, and this is a real example that I often share. Who saves, and saves, and saves, you know, from the time he's a young man for retirement, but he saves to the point where, you know, they can't even go to dinner or his kids have never been to a theme park because we don't have money for that because we're saving...we're doing the responsible thing and saving. So the lifestyle is affected. And what the children learn is how to be fearful and worry about both time and money, because that's what dad does. Steve: Okay. Dr Spano: Does that make sense? Steve: Yeah. And there is a big difference between the scarcity mentality and an abundance mentality, and how we treat everybody, and our experiences. So that's a very interesting level of research that's going on. How do we help somebody that may not have had the type of childhood that positions them for the type of success they could have. How do you give them hope? How do you help them with that transformation? Where do you focus? Dr Spano: Well, I think, you know, for me, I always say that with the first moment of awareness comes opportunity for change. And so, what I find is, a lot of the things that I'm talking about here, particularly get into the scarcity, they're very much at a subconscious level. So I might know for instance, that I'm worried all the time, that I'm fearful all the time, or that I feel like I'm being chased by the clock, but I don't know what to do about it. And so, part of the work that I do with groups or even with individuals is, we bring those thought processes to a level of awareness. And then we start to talk about what would a new way of being look like. You know, I'm this way now, but what if I were this way. What would that look like? Because the other thing that we know about development is that people, particularly in the earlier stages, don't always have the capacity to see things moving forward. Like, they can't see things a year out or two years out. Or they don't often understand consequences of certain actions. And so, when you start to connect the two, when you think this way and behave this way, this is the outcome, you start to... I mean, it's literally like you put a mirror in front of them and they're seeing themselves for the very first time. And it takes a while, but once they have that awareness and then you start to, together, paint a picture of how things might be differently. And then of course, obviously, when I'm working in companies, we're looking at infrastructures and systems and processes and all of those kinds of things. Because a leader, whether it be corporate or entrepreneurial who's coming from scarcity, it's gonna impact obviously not only how he leads, but how he builds or fails to build the infrastructure for the organization. And so, you know, we get into a lot of that. And it can be sometimes a very quick process. It can lean on just how open the individual is to change. And sometimes it takes months and months and months, maybe even years. And a lot of times I work with a leader who goes off, and then I hear from them two years later because now they're at another...what we call another growing edge. They're moving into another stage of consciousness, and so now we have to kinda revisit things again. But that's what's cool is, you know, the progress is being made and it's a process. Steve: So, these things that cause success and you talk a lot about, Sharon, time and money and how it correlates to what we value most in life, right? Dr Spano: Right. Steve: So, there is hope for people then, that they can develop these skills? Dr Spano: Well, the skills are the outcome of the shift in consciousness. So, one of the things that I talked about is the cycle of freedom, which I believe begins with understanding the essence of stewardship. And that's a big word that means a lot of things. You know, some talk about it in terms of sustainability, but I'm talking about it in the context of, where your treasure is, there is also your heart. So, I'm gonna put my time and money, I'm gonna utilize these two most important constructs or resources based on what I value and treasure the most, right? So, stewardship is a part of how I make those choices and decisions. And then from that, I believe grows greater compassion, generosity, a greater sense of gratitude, and then eventually, even a greater love for myself and others, because self is a part of it. You know, if I don't value myself, I'm not gonna take the time for instance to nurture my mind, body, my spirit, you know, those things. And then that translates to how I love and care for others, and even my love and care for greater humanity. So, it's letting go of the fear and then stepping into this radical abundance of, there's enough for me and for others, and for me to be generous and to give, and to focus my attention. So like, one of the examples that I like to talk about is, there's this young child that comes from an environment where nobody wanted to invest in me. And then I meet this amazing man who lives in abundance, who believes in the flow of money, and that there is always enough. And when there isn't, he just creates. But he's always invested time and money in me. So, he's kind of the opposite of what I knew as a child. You know, he's the nurturing, loving, caring, generous husband, who, you know, is the president of my fan club, who is always willing to invest in whatever it is that I'm about. And that's a pretty big deal for someone like me because I could have just as easily married an abusive guy, coming from the environment that I came in. Steve: Got it. That's a good example. Dr Spano: I mean, it's truly a blessing, right? That I kind of stumbled into the right guy. I don't know what that says about me, but... Steve: No, I had a friend one time who is the CEO of a major utility company in the United States. And I was the young man and he said, "Now, let me just share with you the three biggest things that will have the greatest impact on your happiness." I said, "Okay, great. I've got my pen ready." He said, "Number one is the person that you choose to spend your life with, to marry." He says, "That's one of the three biggest decisions that will impact your happiness." And it's fortunate that you've found that somebody that helps you see what can be possible. In our language, that helps you see that, you know, you can work on becoming your best. And it's different for really everybody, but to have people like us that can help like that is helpful. Number two, he said is the career that you choose. So you wanna choose a career that you can love, that you can make a difference in. And then number three was interesting, is the first major company that you work with. He said, it will have a huge impact on, you know, on your future, your career. So this kinda deals with what you've just been talking about of creating an abundance mindset, and how it affects everything else. Your time, your money. Well, tell us as we wrap up. I'm always amazed how fast time goes, what was the impetus behind you writing your most recent book? Dr Spano: Well, a lot of what I've discussed and I think anyone can...who's been in business can relate to the idea or the experience, I guess I should say, of hiring someone who wasn't the right fit. And years ago, I had a guy that I hired that I thought had great potential, and he was quite brilliant, and I just was never able to get this guy to make money. I mean, he couldn't get any clients, he couldn't make any money, and I just couldn't figure it out because I had invested quite a bit of time, money, and energy into him. And one day I just asked the question, "You know, what do you believe about people who have money?" And he said, "I think they're oppressive, greedy, and egocentric." And in that moment, Steve, I went, "Well, wow. No wonder I can't get you to make any money. Why would you wanna be like those guys?" And he was one of those guys who came also from the inner city of New York, and he'd had a rough life. And even though he was brilliant, he just could not step into the type of radical abundance, you know, that I'm talking about. So he sabotaged his entire career and even his home life. And it kind of opened my eyes and it began, kind of it was like the first stages of curiosity for me to begin to study this further. And then of course, once I got into the developmental work, I started to see the correlations between where people were developmentally. And I just got very excited about, you know, wanting to be an interruption to some of that in a more concrete way. So that was really the impetus behind the book and some of that earlier research. I mean, my whole body of work is not only on time and money, but time and money to me are just the symptom of the other things that are going on within this. Because again, there are two very important resources that can define, you know, our life if we let them. And what I'm really saying is, have awareness of how you utilize them. Have awareness of how they're impacting your relationship so that you can make better choices, and live a life of radical abundance. Steve: Okay. Well, that's great. Yeah, I had a friend one time say, "You know, money is not the most important thing in life." But it is right up there on the list with oxygen. Dr Spano: Yes, it is. Unfortunately, it is, and we have to learn to be good stewards of it. Steve: Exactly. Okay, well, Sharon, tell us how our listeners can learn more about what you're doing, tell us about your book. I think it's coming out, right? Or is it here already? Dr Spano: Yes. Well, the pub date is August 1st, and they can go to the www.timemoneybook.com/becomebest/, and we have some resources there. One is a manifesto that I've written on radical abundance. The other is, they can have access to our research based time, money, inventory. It's all confidential, but it'll help them see where they fall on the spectrum between scarcity and abundance. So that's the timemoneybook.com. And certainly, they can visit my website, which would also get them there, at sharonspano.com, to learn more about my overall work and the work that I do, you know, as a consultant and integral coach. Steve: Well, congratulations Dr. Sharon Spano. What a great job you're doing. Dr Spano: Well, thank you, Steve. And I would say the same to you. And I appreciate so much the opportunity to be on your show, and to hopefully, have an impact on some of your listeners on some of the thing that they're thinking about, as they too, begin to embrace what it means to maximize performance and step into radical abundance. Steve: Well, great. Well, I'm sure that that will be the case and we appreciate you being part of the show today, you've done a great job. We certainly wish you all the best because you're certainly making a difference in the world. Dr Spano: Thank you, Steve. Steve: And to all of our listeners, never forget, you too can make a difference every single day of your life. I'm Steve Shallenberger, with Becoming Your Best Global Leadership, wishing you, a great day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Click above to listen in iTunes... I LOVE video…. And traffic. I have over 200 videos on Youtube now and here's what I wish I'd known… Steve: Hey, everyone. This is Steve Larsen. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve: All right, you guys. Hey, I'm super excited. I'm super pumped for today because we get to talk about something that has always intrigued me. It's actually kind of the way it got started in internet when I first started working for Paul Mitchel and driving internet traffic with one of my buddies. Since then I really haven't done much so I'm excited to welcome on to the podcast an expert in this area, thank you so much, Nick Arapkiles. How are you doing? Nick: I'm great, man. Thanks for having me on. Steve: Hey, thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on. I was just looking through Facebook messages before you and I got on here and I didn't realize I think you had asked if we could push the time back and I'm such a morning person, thanks for getting up this early to do this. Nick: Hey, no problem at all, man. I'm happy to do it. Like you said I'm not much of a morning person, but when someone like you gives me an opportunity like this I'm happy to get on. Steve: It's nice that you did, I appreciate it. For everyone listening, this really is probably the first time, I mean, this is the first time that we'd really spoken like this. The guy that connected us is Ben Wilson obviously. Ben is the guy. He and I we're doing that things, Paul Mitchel and several other companies just think the world of him. He sent me a message and he goes, "Dude, I got this awesome guy. He's the man." I think I still have the message just to put it on the podcast or something. It's pretty funny. He's like, "This sweet guy, man, he's this genius and he said he wants to come." "Hey, sweet." I'm always looking for talent, for people because I get boring for everyone I'm sure. I'm excited to have some mix out. Nick: It's kind of a funny story. I met him at an event here in Colorado and then I actually ran into him at the Rockies, in the baseball game. Then he messaged me about you and here we are. Steve: Dude, that's great. What event was it? Nick: It was actually for a book publishing event ironically ... Steve: He told me he's going to that. Okay, cool. That's fantastic. It's funny this whole internet marketing world, it's actually a lot smaller than people think it is because people get in it, they'll get out of it, they'll get in it but the people that stick around I don't think there's ... Anyways, get around quick. What is exactly that you're doing then? You told me that you're awesome with YouTube which is awesome. Most people forget you can even advertise there I feel like but what is it that you're doing? Nick: Basically, I've been doing this stuff for a lot. Do you want me to just go on to my story a little bit? Steve: Okay, man. Let's hear it. Nick: Okay, cool. I've actually been online for about six years now and two and a half of those first six years were complete and utter struggle. It's usually the case with a lot of people's stories. I don't think I'm too much different... Steve: Anyone who says otherwise I feel like they are just lying or throwing a sales video. Nick: Yeah, I mean, it sucked at the time. Obviously it sucked at the time not having, you always expect when you get started you're thinking you're going to make money in your first day, first week, first month at least but it was tough man, it really was. I forfeited a lot of things going on. I was actually in college at the time... It was the summer before my last year of college so all my friends were going out partying and going to pool parties, different stuff like that. I was just dedicated to this thing. I essentially locked myself in my room that whole summer and I was dedicated to making it work and I didn't even make it work that entire summer and even years after that. It just led me on this path I think once you get into this like you're essentially infected with the entrepreneurial bug as I like to call it. You can't really go back from that. I mean, I kept on trying different things. I even went into the trading Forex and stuff like that but eventually came back into the marketing realm and that's where I am now like you're asking I've done a lot of YouTube stuff. That's the big thing is I really always focus on driving traffic because if you can drive traffic then you have a business. You really can do anything, it depends on what traffic you're using. Most the time I promote different funnels like business opportunities or just affiliate programs... I haven't really dove into much of my own stuff. I just leverage other systems that people put out and that's pretty much what I'm doing but it all stems from driving traffic and then calling people from YouTube into my world. I like to really call it my world more so than my list. I think a lot of people say my list or build a list. That's great, obviously you need to build a list but I think it helps me come from a better mentality than it's I'm building a list of people or a list. It's more so I'm building an audience of people, they are in my world now. Because I think a lot of people secure a list and they just think of numbers and what it really comes down to is that these are people that are interested and they want to connect with you and they want to learn more. You have to treat them as such and I think when you do that you get a lot better results. Steve: Interesting. That's interesting. A lot of people I know will talk about, they'll have you fill out something. Who are you trying to attract? What's their likes? What's their dislikes? What do they hate? Sometimes I feel like that gets pretty artificial after a while. You're just targeting people like yourself. I feel like it's the easiest way to go... Nick: Yeah, to be honest I didn't express this fully but basically what I do right now is I don't actually do too much advertising where I'm paying for the clicks and stuff like that. It's mostly just all organic. I've done a little bit of advertising here and there but the big thing is just putting content up. I know you're asking if I could drop some nuggets for YouTube and stuff like that but the biggest thing is just to continually put out content just like any other type of platform whether that's Facebook, Instagram, even Snapchat now. It's just continually putting out content because the more content you have out there, the more likely people are going to find you... I mean, there are some videos that I have that have seven views but there's also other videos that have 100,000 views. You never really know exactly which videos are going to hit. You might have an idea depending on the keywords and how optimized your videos are but the biggest thing that I stress and every day I learn more and more, I'm always learning is the fact that you never really know exactly until you start putting up content which videos are really going to stick and gain some traction until you upload them. Steve: That's interesting you say that. Back in college also I started really, really diving into this also, same thing. I sucked at it. There's a guy I listen to and he was saying, "You should always be publishing. Try and get a way to be in front of your people. Produce content." Just exactly what you're saying. I started doing that and making all these Periscope videos and I would put the recordings on YouTube. I can't tell you how cool that was. Stuff started happening when I did that. The exact reason you're saying. I had some videos that were terrible but then others were completely surprising to me. People started watching them and pushing them around. What the heck is this? My products started getting sold organically. I was like, "This is kind of cool," I totally agree with that but I have to ask though, you're putting YouTube videos out. Try to put as many up as you can. How do you rank a YouTube video? It's hard to... these words for spiders to go crawl and stuff like that like a blog post. What are some strategies you use to actually try and get them out there? Nick: It almost feels like it's changed throughout the years, I think the algorithms and everything. I'm not that geeky like that but I just noticed some trends here and there. As of late, I've noticed that a bigger channel with more subscribers and just a little bit more authority, maybe it's been on for a little bit of while or a little while, those are the videos that's pushing up towards the top of the search engines. You can pull back links. I know that probably gets a little bit more complex. I don't know if you're familiar with back linking. Steve: 100%, yeah definitely. Nick: Okay, I just didn't know if your audience would or not but that's basically you can go out there and get some other people to put your video in a bunch of different places. The idea behind that is that the search engines see your video all over the place and they are like, "This must be a video that is good. Let's start pushing it up towards the top of the search engine." Especially a couple of years ago that was huge and it definitely got me a lot of results but the thing again that I've noticed lately is that just having a big channel and having some decent subscribers and having people actually watch majority of your video is what's really pushing your videos up. I've had some videos where I just started making videos and they don't get much traction at all but then I have one of my bigger channels and I just put it up and I don't really optimize it at all, I don't really do anything to it and right away it's like one of the first videos on the search engine. Steve: I hear of Traffic Geyser. Nick: Yeah the name sounds familiar. Steve: These sites where you just submit your video and they'll just blast it across the internet so that you could get more views. I mean, totally spam-my stuff, you know what I mean? It's the dream for every entrepreneur or internet guys to just put your stuff everywhere. What strategies do you use for finding people to put your videos up? You know what I mean? Did you have to find related channels to yourself? Nick: Not necessarily. I use a website called Fiverr a lot of the times or at least I used to. I haven't been using it as much lately but it's a really cool website. You're obviously familiar with it but I'll explain it for your audience. Basically, it's just a website. It's called fiverr.com, F-I-V-E-R-R dot ‎com and basically it's a site that has a bunch of people doing a bunch of different gigs. They'll literally do anything for you for $5. I think there's a processing fee now for like 50 cents. Essentially people will do anything for you on the internet. I should be more specific with that. Steve: It's funny though because I've had people like, "Rap my name." I've had people, "Beat box stuff," they'll do anything for five bucks. Nick: Exactly, there's a lot of different stuff that you can do. Basically I just go on there and look for back links or maybe social signals and it's not to complicated. I mean, you just have to find someone with good rating, good track record and just test them out and that's the whole thing that I always tell people too is that you just have to test things out. You'll never really know what's working, what's not working until you go out there and actually apply it yourself... I think a lot of people are always asking me for the secret, asking me for different things that are just going to make it click and they're going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's really never the case. You know this just as well as anybody is that you actually have to go out there and do the work, see what's working, see what's not working and then throw out the stuff that's not working and then just ramp up the stuff that is working... Steve: This is one of the reasons why I laugh so much when you brought up Fiverr because it started out as a great class. I'm sorry if anyone's listening that was in that class. It was like an SEO class in college and it started out great. We're learning all these cool strategies for SEO and things like that. Then it just got like the strategies were really old. I've been doing it long enough by that point that I just knew that what I was earning wasn't significant or anything. He's like, "Hey, what you're all going to go do is you got to go create a YouTube video and think about a topic a lot and the competition in the class to see whose video can get the most views." I was like, "I could totally game that." We went and we made this, you know that, "Do you even lift, bro?" Those videos that are out there right now, have you seen it though? Nick: I'm not sure. Steve: "Bro, do you even lift?" Nick: Okay, yeah. Steve: The next Star Wars is coming out and we said, "Do you even Jedi, bro?" We made all these funny videos of people. It was pretty cool but I totally went to Fiverr and I paid this dude $5 to send like 10,000 bot clicks. For no views at all to just this massive spike and we went and we gave the ending presentation stuff like that like we have over 10,000 clicks on this thing and everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing." It's in the last few weeks and what's funny is that we ended up getting contacted right before the class ended by this ad agency. They were like, "Hey, we want to use your video to promote Star Wars stuff on." I was like, "Okay." None of them knew that this were like ... I'm sure that 50 of them were real clicks out of the ... Maybe. What's funny though is that obviously YouTube after a while can start to see if that's crap. The views on the bottom went from 0 to 10,000 to 12 and it stayed there. We're looking at the analytics for a while and then just totally drop. They took away all of them all the way back down to 3 views or something like that after the class was ended. Anyways, the only reason I bring that up is because A, it was a total failure and I knew what happened. I knew enough about that world that time but it was I mean, how do you go through Fiverr and figure out who's going to be sending you real clicks and not. You know what I mean or who's going to be pushing your video around the right way or not? Because most of it ... I like Fiverr for testing a lot of the lower level stuff but it sounds like you've got a cool way to do it that isn't that way. Nick: Yeah, that's actually a good point... I'm glad you brought that up because that's very important that you find good gigs because if you are sending a bunch of fake traffic to your YouTube videos it can get your video shut down and even your account shut down because YouTube will recognize that and they see that you're just throwing all these views on there and they are all fake. They don't like that. I've had the experience of getting a lot of my stuff shut down because of that in the early stages. Anyone listening, make sure that you're not sending crap gigs over to your videos because YouTube will shut that down real quick. In terms of finding good stuff, basically I just make sure that the vendor has a good track record. There's one specific guy that he's probably one of the bigger gigs. He's got so many different gigs on there. I'll just let you know his name is Crorkservice. Steve: Crorkservice, you know, I might actually seen him before. Nick: I'm sure you have. Honestly he's probably one of the best out there and he's got the best ratings. He's like the top of the top sellers... I mean, it's no hidden secret. You just have to go through his gigs and figure out what exactly it is that you want. If you are going to purchase views I really haven't done that in a long time. I know there are some people that do it and they do actually have success because again like I was saying before, if you can get high retention views where people are watching the majority of your video, that actually can really, really help you with ranking your video on YouTube in specifics. Just make sure that is a high retention view and again it has a good track record because that can definitely help with rankings on YouTube. Steve: Interesting, okay. What are you doing? I heard some people talk about we’ll give some formula or outline for what to make, what to put in the video to make sure that they’ll push pass minute seven or whatever it is. Do you have anything that you would recommend there? Nick: Yeah, for sure. There’s a couple of things. The first thing that you definitely need to know, basically how I get all my traffic for the most part is it’s all based on keywords. People come into the search engines and this is just like general in terms of search traffic. Basically people will come in, they’ll be searching for something, I mean you and I have done this just as much as anybody else is that they have a concern, they have an issue, they need help with something. They come into the search engines and they start typing it out whether that is how to lose weight, how to grow tomatoes. It doesn’t really matter, it just pertains to whatever your business is but they’ll start searching things in and then they’ll find your videos if you start uploading videos, you do it on a good channel, you start optimizing it. Your videos are going to start rising towards the top of the search engines. What you need to do when you’re making your videos is that you need to let your viewers know that they are at the right place. Let’s say for example that you did make a video about how to grow heirloom tomatoes for example. What you need to say in the beginning of the video, you need to let your viewer know that they’re in the right place at the right time. You say, “Hey, you probably landed on this video because you are looking, you started searching out how to grow heirloom tomatoes,” right then and there they know that they are at the right place. That's what starts it out and then if you can get technical and say, you need to say this, you need to say this, but I think it ultimately comes down to is that you need to let them know that they’re in the right place and then give them value. I know it sounds stupidly simple but I think there’s many people out there that just like they’re trying to heighten all this traffic, all this stuff through your website. People are smart, you can’t bullshit people... When you’re genuine, when you give value and you’re just a real down to earth person then that’s when people recognize that. People will connect with you just on that fact based alone, they might be coming searching for information they want to learn how to grow tomatoes or lose weight or whatever it is. A lot of times people just want to connect with somebody and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that happen where people just, they’ll hit me up on Facebook and they’re like, “Yeah, I mean, your video is great and all that but you just seem like you’re a down to earth person, you seem like a good dude and that’s why I came out and connected with you.” Steve: Interesting... I have had it happen before also and I never realized that that was probably it. I’m trying to be authentic on camera, you know what I mean? I’m just being myself and I have people come back and say, “Hey, you’re the man. I have this feeling when I was talking to you I should reach out to you,” and I was like, “What kind of feeling? All right, thanks.” Interesting. Yeah, that’s cool you bring that up... There really is as simple as that just answer the question, let them know that they’re there and then connect with them. There’s a guy I was listening to and he was saying something like, “The first 20 seconds you have to do something crazy to keep their attention. The next 60 seconds then you got to teach a little nugget then the final two minutes do something that’s also a little crazy to make sure they come back next time.” I was like, “Man, that’s a lot. All right,” but that’s so much more simpler route to do that. What kind of timeline do you usually look at when you’re trying to rank a video? You know what I mean, like how long it usually take? Nick: Again, it’s kind of goes along the same thing I was talking about just before and there’ll be a lot of people that say, “You got to make two to four minutes.” I certainly agree to that to an extent because like I was saying before it’ll help you start ranking your videos a little bit more if people are watching more of your video. If you have a shorter video it’s more likely that people are just going to watch more of it. If you have an 11 minute video then obviously less people are just going to watch it just because everyone has shorter attention spans. It does depend on the video that you’re doing because specific keywords especially like I do a lot of reviews. I’ll be honest that’s where a lot of my traffic comes from, a lot of my buyer traffic. That's just kind of a nugget right there. If you can start doing some reviews like that’s going to be some of your best traffic out there. I’ve got review videos that are like 10, 11, 12 minutes long and people watch the majority of it because buyers, think about this, buyers will watch, they will watch everything and they’ll read everything because they're thinking about it from your perspective. If you’re going out there and let's just say for example you want to buy a new MacBook or yeah, let’s just go with that example. Are you going to go to the website and just like look at a couple of pictures and then buy? No, you’re probably going to be going, you’re going to watch the hour long keynote presentation, you’re going to watch the ten minute video that shows all the details and all the benefits and features on the MacBook. You’re going to be talking to people, you might even reach out to a support. Buyers they will do their research. To just tell you, “You have to have it four minutes long,” or, “You have to have it ten minutes long,” I can’t really tell you that exactly because if you just target keywords that are buyer keywords, people are going to be searching that stuff until they make that buyer decision. Does that all makes sense? Steve: Yeah, it does. That’s a great insight. It’s not like a two to four minutes, there's not a hard fast rule, it's just hey whatever is … Make sure first that you’re actually delivering value and answering the question and coming back to them. Nick: Yeah, and if you’re asking for a short answer, I would say keep it shorter if you can but if you need more time to explain everything that you need I think there’s nothing wrong with that. Steve: What kind of buyer keywords? I mean is there’s a trend in good buying keywords, you know what I mean that you’re saying? Like across mostly internet or things that will pull your videos apart because those keywords are more valuable or you know what I mean? Nick: I’ll just be honest, review videos are probably the best videos that you can possibly make. Steve: Really? Nick: Yeah, because the reason people are coming and looking for reviews is because they saw a video or they saw a product and they’re a buyer. They’re looking for more information on that, they want to get everything they can possibly know about that. Once they figured out, once they see your video, once something clicks and they make sure it’s the right product for them then they’re ready to buy right there. Does that makes sense? Steve: Interesting. Yeah, 100%. I was just thinking too I’ve got like, I don’t know, 150 videos on YouTube but 90 of them are unlisted or whatever so that I can put them inside of websites and things like that. Do you have a preference at all? Have you found that there’s any kind of, I don’t know. I don’t even know, favoritism given to people who stay on the YouTube website versus watching YouTube video embedded on a page? Nick: I haven’t really done too much embedding on different pages so I can’t really speak for that. One other thing I was going to touch is the fact that you can actually look at your analytics too and you can see which videos people are watching longer. You can see the average duration on how long your viewers are staying on your video... Steve: Yeah, I love the stat section in the back of YouTube, it’s nuts. Most people don't look at that by a part but it’s pretty fascinating. Nick: Yeah, it’s great stuff and I actually just like within the last few months I’ve really started looking at that stuff a lot more and it’s really helped me. We just go back to the whole thing about testing seeing what works and then start doing more of what works. That what I was doing is I was really taking a look at the analytics, see what the videos that people are staying on for a long time and then just making more of those videos. Because there’s some videos where people are staying on for less than a minute through an average of 10,000 views. I’m like, “Okay, that obviously didn’t work so let’s throw that away. It was a good test, that was some good feedback, I won’t do that anymore so let’s move on and let’s find something better.” Steve: I just wanted to touch on something because this really matters a lot in kind of my world. I build funnels all day long, just tons of sales funnels and that’s kind of what I was looking through on your site mentorwithnick.com which is super cool, everyone should go there, mentorwithnick.com. You’ve got a quiz there and we’re a huge a fan of quizzes, it kind of pre-frame people. You got a welcome video from you and automated email that I got and then a link over to $1 offer. Kind of a cool biz opportunity there or business product I should say. Usually what we do when I build these types of funnels. You just kind of took me through in that mentorwithnick.com is we’ll always take those videos and enlist them and put them inside a funnel. I mean, I never let people just sit inside of YouTube format. I think it’s interesting that you just said … I mean it sounds like almost all of your review videos they’re all on YouTube anyway which makes sense. That’s what people are searching. That’s fascinating though. I guess I’m just recapping that. That’s cool though. Do you ever embed it all I guess, I mean you obviously did on that welcome video with Mentor With Nick. Nick: Yeah, that is one place that I do embed, I kind of almost forgot about that but those are like the only places. Mostly just like welcome videos or I like to call as bridge pages, like you said I do promote different things, different opportunities and stuff like that. What a lot of people will do is they’ll just send traffic directly to an offer and while that can work for sure like I’m not saying it can. Steve: It’s rough though. Nick: Yeah, pre-frame that a little bit and kind of just introduce them, kind of welcome them into your world. That’s a big thing it’s just like saying, “Hey, I’m here for you,” like, “I got your back,” like, “Don’t worry,” like, “We got this taken care of and you know I’m going to introduce you to this thing and you can certainly take us up on that but if not, you know, just connect with us.” So many people just want to connect with somebody, that’s what my whole video is about and after they opt in it’s just kind of saying, “Hey, I’m here,” like, “If you need anything from me you’ll be receiving some emails from me and you know I’m here to help you out.” I think that’s just a lot better way to do things instead of just like hard driving traffic to offers... My honest opinion that’s going to drop convergence but it’s also going to drop your audience where they just think that you’re just trying to sell them all the time. Steve: Yeah, 100% I agree with that and I was impressed with that video that you put out there, I thought that was really good. I always draw out funnels like crazy and in my world we call it funnel hacking. I was going through your funnel and drawing all that out, the emails that came, things like that and it’s not like you need that welcome video, the one from you. Technically you don’t but I thought it was interesting and cool that you put it in there because I watched the whole thing and it made sense to me is like, “Hey, there’s a lot of trust and there was a lot of ...” What’s the word? I can’t think the word. After watching the video I was like, “Hey, this guy is real. That was cool. What a good video,” and it set me up because I have to tell you when the next video started I was like, “Eh.” I don’t know but because I watched you, I was like there was a lot more trust, like a lot more stock in that video. Anyways, great example right there, I thought that was fantastic... Nick: Thank you. I appreciate that. Steve: Yeah, everyone go checkout mentorwithnick.com, that’s an interesting process for a bridge page right there. That’s really good. Nick: Thank you. Steve: Do you send people to quizzes a lot also? Nick: I use that capture page right now because it seems to be converting the best. I’ve noticed that in the past like I even got opt in pages like that up to like 50% opt in rate for all my traffic which is really good. Right now I’m sitting at around like 39%. I mean that’s for the best that I’ve done. I’ve tested with a lot of different stuff and everything else have been kind of sitting around like 32 to 33 maybe like a little bit higher than that. I just use that because it just kind of like gets them invested... They have the two step opt in and you are obviously very familiar with all this stuff and that works really well where you have to click on something that makes it a little bit more congruent. They’ve already invested a little something to make sure they put their email address in but the survey just kind of adds a little bit more like they’re taking a quiz and then they’re like, “Okay.” Now, they need to put their email address in and they’re already a little bit more invested so they’re more likely to continue with that action, that whole congruency. Steve: 100% plus then you can follow up with them, you got their email address and you can re-market to them and ask them if they got the trial. Yeah, great for you, great for them. Yeah, I completely agree with that too. I had this quiz who’s probably about 50% also, same thing. It’s just quizzes are great things for people. It was only like four questions but it set them into my … It was the same thing that you did which is what I was laughing at, “Where did you hear about us from?” and it was like, “Facebook, Oprah, Obama mentioned me,” and then other. I’ve never been on those things before but because they heard those names first and then your name last or even other, it’s a lot more stock also. Just increases your authority like crazy, not that you want to be deceptive but it does give you more authority. The next question was like, “What age range are you in?” and these are questions that sometimes don’t even matter or you can ask questions that just kind of poke them in the eye a little bit. “How much do you make on your side business every week?” “Zero. A hundred bucks,” and then just, “I got to choose the lowest one.” For a weight loss product, “How many products have you tried?” but at the time your solution comes up they’re like, “Man, he’s right. I fail every time at this. I do need to buy this product.” That’s interesting though. Cool. Hey man, I don’t want to just keep taking your time. I appreciate you getting up early to do this with me. Where can people learn more about you and join your world like you were saying? Nick: You can add me on Facebook, that’s a good place. I am kind of maxing that out now. Lately I’ve been going pretty hard with getting people add me and everything like that. My friend list is kind of maxing out right now so I did also start up a new Instagram account, a new Snapchat account which my usernames are Mentor With Nick, just kind of goes along with my website. You can also go to my website like you mentioned before which is mentorwithnick.com. Steve: Mentor With Nick Instagram and Snapchat, mentorwithnick.com also and then also on Facebook. Hey Nick, I appreciate it man. Thank you so much for taking the time again and for dropping all the nuggets you did. Nick: Yeah, for sure man. It was fun. I always love getting on with like-minded people and just chat marketing something I’m very passionate about. Steve: Yeah, I appreciate it. Everyone else usually who talks about it, sometimes they feel alone in this world. Anyways, it’s cool to meet you man and I do appreciate it. Nick: No problem, man. Happy to be on. Steve: All right, talk to you later. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free t-shirt when your question gets answered on the live Hey Steve Show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question.

Steve: Hey, everyone. This is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.   Speaker 4: (music starts) Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. (music ends)   Steve: All right you guys. Hey, I am super excited. Today I've got two very special, kind of unique guests on the podcast. As you guys know, a lot of times, I record my own thoughts on things that Russell and I are doing to make marketing awesome, but I like to go and interview other people as well. Today I've got on the show with me, it's Dallin Greenberg and Kristian Cotta. These guys have a pretty awesome unique way for building funnels. Anyways, I want to welcome you. Thanks for joining me.   Dallin: Appreciate it.   Kristian: What up.   Steve: Hey. I actually was thinking about it and Dallin, I don't even remember how we actually met. It wasn't that long ago, was it?   Dallin: Ah, no, not very. Just a couple weeks.   Steve: Just a couple weeks ago.   Kristian: I think Dallin met you the way that him and I kind of joke about he's the black box back alley hacker. He does all the ...   Dallin: If there's someone I want to meet, I find a way.   Kristian: He's the unconventional guy. You won't find his practices in a book or a manual.   Steve: Crap, that makes me a little nervous.   Dallin: Yeah, don't mess ... I told Kristian the other day ...   Kristian: Not black hat, black box.   Steve: Yeah. We can call it whatever we want, right? No, just kidding.   Kristian: Yeah.   Steve: Well, hey thanks for-   Dallin: I told Kristian, the other ... Oh, I'm sorry.   Steve: No, no, you get a say. Thanks for letting me wake you up at the butt crack of dawn and still being willing to share some cool stuff.   Dallin: Yeah.   Steve: How did you guys start meeting or working with each other?   Kristian: I'll let Dallin take that one.   Dallin: Yeah. I was working on a kind of unique project. We had a guy up in Scottsdale that owns a software. He's the developer. It's a software that does algorithmic stock trading and he was stuck with his marketing. He's a big guy. He's got a lot of stuff going, but anyway, we were trying to help him get some plans going.     I had actually watched Kristian on Periscope. I'd met a lot of guys on Periscope and one day I noticed Kristian was actually in Chandler, which is only a few miles away from me. Like I said, if I see someone, I'm going to find a way to meet him, so I'll comment in his Periscope a few times and little by little, end up getting his contact info. Day later we're in a Starbucks together talking about a plan that we can do, well I was more impressed with Kristian, what he was doing. My partner that I was working on with this marketing plan for this software developer, we were on kind of different pages. I have a background in sales and Kristian's dynamic was a little more my still, so my partner ended up leaving and I ended up asking Kristian, "Hey, is there anything on the side that you're working on or that I think we can do together?"   Steve: Mmm.   Dallin: Badda bing badda boom. We've ... I feel like it's the perfect love story. We've been hanging out pretty much ever since.   Steve: As long as he says the same thing, I guess that is true, right?   Dallin: Yeah. Yeah.   Kristian: Yeah, no. The funny thing, Steve, about Dallin is I'd been with ClickFunnels, I was one of the first 50 people that signed up for the beta version of ClickFunnels.   Steve: Wow. You're from the dark ages, Man, that's awesome.   Kristian: Dude. Yeah. We were just talking yesterday because we literally I mean the crazy part ... I'd been so resistant to start using Actionetics.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Until I had to transfer from Infusionsoft to AWeber, AWeber to ActiveCampaign and we're trying to do something and it's like, "Dude, why don't we just use Actionetics?" It's all in here." I'm like, "Fine." We're switching everything over and I needed ... I'd been doing funnels and learning about ... like when I first signed up for ClickFunnels, I didn't know what a funnel was. I wasn't even sure what Russell had explained to me. It just sounded so cool and I was like, "Dude, I'm going to figure this thing out because what he's talking about and the numbers, I'm like, "That's what I need to be doing. That's it." I been doing this for two and a half years, which is kind of a long time in funnel years.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah, it is.   Kristian: It's not really that long of a time in regular terms, but I got on Periscope and started kind of talking about my business. At the time, I was trying to grow this fitness, be an online fitness guy.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: I'd used funnels to grow an email list of 3,500 people and I got on to Periscope and nobody cared about the fitness. They wanted to know how I was growing my email list and how I was doing my, how was I doing this business.   Steve: Interesting.   Kristian: Then I kind of became one of the funnel guys on Periscope and was a speaker at the Periscope Summit. I got this notoriety on Periscope for, they call me the King of Funnels. I'm like, "No, guys. I know some really big funnel guys on Periscope." They're like, "No, King of Funnels."   Steve: Wow.   Kristian: It's been like two and a half years of this little journey of learning funnels where it's been ... I'll tell you the three guys I credit everything to are Russell, Todd Brown and [Lo Silva 00:06:09].   Steve: Mmm.   Kristian: I actually had just finished the PCP coaching program with Todd Brown and those guys. Dallin, when he came to me was like, "Dude, this stuff you're talking about is awesome." I said, "Well, let's, I need a guy that gets it. That is driven and ... " that was Dallin. Now we've got this little, little agency we're trying to scale.   Steve: That's awesome, because good partners are hard to find. I remember I started doing this back in college. My buddy and I were driving traffic for Paul Mitchell and we were doing all this stuff. I ended up firing, going through nine different partners. It's cool that you guys found each other, you know what I mean? That's pretty rare just right there.   Kristian: Yeah. If you go back and talk about Dallin's ... there's a couple of key things that I was looking for, because I have an entire course. You love Periscope. I saw some of your Periscopes on YouTube and ...   Steve: Dang it. Man, those were the new days for me.   Kristian: Yeah. I was a speaker at the Periscope Summit in January.   Steve: Cool. Wow.   Kristian: Dallin's helped me develop this program and it's something that we've rolled out in beta and we're going to roll out as a digital product. It's called the Live Video Funnel. I've been working with Todd Brown and the guys at MFA on the entire sequence and the packaging and all that kind of stuff. They're calling Kurt [Malley 00:08:00] speaking at Marketing Funnel Automation Live in October and one of the things they're saying is that the biggest opportunity of 2017 is, they call it the Facebook Live Funnel, but I'm going to let you guys in on a little note. Facebook Live and Periscope don't work the same way. Even though they're both live video, they're different, so Dallin ... I needed somebody to help me with that aspect. I couldn't ... to be honest, you know this Steven,   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: I couldn't do all that, every single thing, every single aspect of a funnel.   Steve: No.   Kristian: The script writing, the copy writing, the editing, the videos for the VSL's, the strategy, the email marketing sequences, all the social media.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: What I'm really good, compliments what Dallin's really good at, like I said, his ability to get in on Facebook and recruit people. He has this really strong sense about building a team, which is one of those things that ... we both get along with people, but Dallin's good at that recruitment process. When you want to build and scale something and you need the right people, you need somebody like that.   Steve: That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, it's hard to find that stuff. Dallin, you and I, we were talking a little bit about some of the trials you guys went through. Obviously individually you do, but you guys met each other, what have you guys been working on and I guess what was the ... What are some of the issues you guys have run on, I guess, getting to where you are. You know what I mean?     Unspoken stories, you know that where none of us put in our marketing hardly ever unless it's part of our sales letter. "I was in the dumps, but now I'm flying high." These are like, really what kind of issues did you guys run into what you're doing now? What are you doing now, first of all?   Dallin: Well, the majority of our issues actually are from more individual sides. We're actually doing really good with our projects together.   Steve: Mmm.   Dallin: Your typical issues you run in together are testing. That's what funnels are, right, it's testing, testing, testing, testing. There's always that down side until you ... it's just a numbers game, right, until you find something that works. As far as the personal side, because I believe that this kind of runs, this is the fire that's on the inside, the Y factor from what I call it, right. My background's in sales, so I did door-to-door for years. I think, Steven, you've mentioned that you flirted with that a little bit but, I was really good at it.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah. That's like, I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's one of the best educations I've ever had.   Dallin: Yeah. Yeah.   Steve: I've got a marketing degree and I don't know what I learned from it. You know?   Dallin: Well, that's actually just what I was going to say. I was going to school for business and marketing and be honest, my classes were super redundant. I hated them. I was like, "Man, this is for years I've been planning on doing this and ... " Anyway I got into sales and I did pretty good at it. I just kept going. I ended up doing more recruiting and for six, seven years going out on the summers and taking a team out and helping manage and recruit and sell.   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: You learn so much from just talking to people, the sale cycle, funnels, a different type of funnel, right?   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: Learning how to build value to the point where it doesn't matter what you ask for money, because they love it so much that they're going to buy. It taught me a lot. Well, long story short, I made my transition. I was doing alarms and home automation. I made my transition with this solar boom.   Steve: Mmm.   Dallin: Solar's on fire and fortunately for us, we live in Arizona, one of the sunniest places in the world. Solar was hot, but a lot of stuff was happening politically. A lot of the utilities are trying to shut down solar here just because of different costs. It's a mess. They succeeded and actually the utility ... There's two main utilities in Arizona. They succeeded shutting down solar where I live.     In order for me to get work, I'd have to go an hour a day just to prospect clients, let alone keep my pipelines, my relationships, my contracts, everything going, because they're longer projects. It was really funny because I was really bummed because I was really excited about this transition. It was a huge jump for me because we were so comfortable with what we were doing, making awesome money and it was kind of just this really big leap of faith. Well, last April, fast forward a little bit, last April, our little girl, our daughter, she was four years old. She got diagnosed with leukemia.   Steve: Oh man.   Dallin: When that happened, we literally were going to leave for another summer, two days after she was diagnosed. It was crazy. Everything was just happening and days and days and days sitting in the hospital. I had always wanted to do something online my whole life, but I didn't want to ... I didn't know exactly what was happening. I didn't know where I wanted to put my foot in. I didn't want to mess with inventory and selling one off things. I wanted to do something on a big level. I just didn't know how to do it.     In the hospital you got a lot of time to yourself and so I'd study these things. I'd start looking at different processes. I'd find patterns. I would sign up for everyone's email list, not because I cared about their product. I wanted to see their system. I wanted to study the funnel. I wanted to study the email sequences and I started seeing the patterns.     That's when I kind of got into a lot of this other stuff with Periscope and live stream. I was like, "Man, this is the future. I get it." I think every guy that's doing any sort of digital marketing has a day where they, it kind of clicks and they say, "Holy smokes. I can really ... This is powerful. This is how you can reach a lot of people." What everyone wants to do is have a voice and do something.     I ended up switching my major, going to school for persuasion and negotiations were my sayings. I was a business communication major and I had that emphasis in persuasion and negotiation. Looking back on everything now, it was just perfect. Everything kind of worked out really, really good. I was kind of like, my little side, so we really hit this kind of rock bottom where it was like ... financially we took a massive hit because I wasn't able to go out, drive an hour and do all this kind of stuff. This last year-   Steve: Yeah. You needed to be home. Yeah.   Dallin: This last year has really been an investment of my time and I just kind of feel like I went back to school. I feel like I'm getting way more out of this school than four years of collegiate, right?   Steve: Easily. Man, how's your daughter now? If you don't mind me asking.   Dallin: She's awesome. She's in a maintenance phase right now, got another year left of treatments, but she's ... hair's back and muscles coming back and went back to school. She's in a really, really good spot right now. Appreciate it.   Kristian: She's strong too. You should see her.   Steve: Really?   Dallin: Yeah.   Steve: That's amazing.   Dallin: It's from everything that she went through. She got down to, had to relearn to walk, lost all her muscles. She was a little skin and bones and now she's this little muscle ball.   Kristian: Now she's a beast.   Dallin: She's awesome.   Steve: I appreciate you guys sharing that kind of stuff. I mean it's ... because most of the ... I've never interviewed anyone on this who hasn't gone through something crazy, you know. It's not like the path is always clear, either. Usually it isn't.   Dallin: Yeah.   Steve: There's a lot of times I wake up and come here, I'm like, "I don't even know. I know I got to work on something, but I don't know what." It's like going through this hazy fog, so I appreciate that. Then there's all the personal side and all the things going on. Yeah, I first started getting into this stuff, little bit similar with door-to-door sales. I started looking around going, "What the heck?" We're driving out and there's all these billboards everywhere. I was like, "People call these things ready to buy." I'm knocking on people's doors all day long and they're not wanting to buy it when they wake up. I've got to go convince people who weren't planning on spend money. Like, "How do I do this?" I start putting ads everywhere and that's how I started getting phone sales and stuff. I was like, "There's something to this." Anyways, I-   Dallin: See, that's funny because I was kind of the same person. All the other managers are, "Dallin, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. It works."   Steve: DS, yeah.   Dallin: DS, this. I'm like, "No, guys. There is a better way." My motto in everything in life is there is always a better way. I don't care what you say and what's working. Something can be tweaked and something can be done to scale.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.   Kristian: Which is funny, because Russell always says, "You can tell the pioneers because they're lying face down with arrows in their back."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: I guess in this case, it wasn't really pioneering. You were trying to find the people laying face down.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah.   Dallin: Yeah.   Steve: Side stepping all the other people who were already face down because they knocked 400 doors that day, right?   Dallin: Yeah, seriously.   Steve: What are you guys working on right now though? You guys mentioned that there's some awesome things going on. What's your current funnel, if you don't mind talking about that? [inaudible 00:18:19] sounds like, maybe ...   Kristian: Dallin said like perfect timing. I feel like it has been. We joke about being a startup because ultimately we are, to the point that we're even in the process of creating our business plans and our SOP's and all that kind of stuff, so that we can talk to some investors. We have some investors that we're talking to in order to really have the capital that we think we need to be able to scale this thing quickly, instead of Facebook ads tested at $10 a day for 50 weeks.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah.   Kristian: Yeah. The whole reason I got into learning funnels was, you guys talked about door-to-door sales and I have 15 years of commercial real estate experience. I worked with clients like L.A. Fitness and McDonald's. I represented McDonald's for the state of Arizona and Burger King and Taco Bell, so pretty big name companies.     There's a lot of guys that would be happy with that, but the problem I had was that I kept looking at the deal size of what I was doing. It was constantly kind of like this feast or famine situation where you either had a huge check or you had nothing. Literally, nothing. It kind of got to the point where I was like, "Man, there's a better way to do this." Very similar. You guys hear the consistent theme here? There's a better way.     That was kind of the first step of me saying, "I'm going to figure out how to streamline this" so that it wasn't even so much ... I just kept seeing all the guys that were buying the properties doing all these big deals. They weren't even in real estate. They had these other businesses that were generating cash flow and here I am putting these deals together that are making, Dallin and I had this exact conversation, making these guys over a million dollars and they're like, "Oh hey, thanks. Here's 40 grand."   Steve: Yeah. Yeah.   Kristian: What's wrong with this equation? I'm the one that did the whole thing, the financials and all that. I just didn't have the money. That was the start of it.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Then you add on top of it that we got into a network marketing company and did really well, but we got stuck right under about 10 grand a month for like 18 months. It turned into another full time job where I was 40, 50 hours a week at every Starbucks from east to west meeting people. I'm like, "This is not working."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Those two combined, I was like, "If I get online, I can figure out how to do both of these. I don't have to pick because I can leverage myself."   Steve: That is kind of the funny thing I learned about ... because I got into an MOM. I went and did exactly what my upline was saying. Got 13 people my first move.   Kristian: Oh, wait, your [inaudible 00:21:42] not duplicatable.   Steve: No. Not at all.   Kristian: I don't care. If I find enough of the right people, it won't have to be.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah. My first month, I recruited 13 leeches. Man, they wouldn't do a dang thing unless I was like pushing them in the back with a cattle prod. I was like, "Ah. There's got to be a better way to do this." That's why I took it online and did a lot better. I definitely relate with that.   Kristian: Yeah. The crazy part about this is, like Dallin was saying, he's, shoot, some of the advanced strategies ... Dallin's has this like ... he understands and can see what the outcome is that we're trying to do. He gets it. He gets the whole flow and process of this, of how funnels work. He's been studying them. I just think for a big part, he just needed to connect certain pieces and be able to see what's going on behind the scenes that you can't see online.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: We talk about ... the hardest part about knowing how to do funnels is focusing because when you understand it and it clicks and you realize what you can do, it's like .... Someone starts talking you're like, "Oh my God. I know how to make money with that. Oh my God."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: It's like entrepreneurial ADD exacerbated.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Forget entrepreneurial ADD. This is like an entrepreneurial ADD addiction.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: That's the issue, so we've had to get very focused on okay what's the quickest and most pressing thing at the moment that we can make money with, so that we can reach our long term goals. Like I said, Lo Silva is one of the guys that I credit a lot of what I learned from. There's three little things that I take from them and that's think big, start small, scale fast.   Steve: Interesting. Think big, start small, scale fast.   Kristian: Yeah, that's kind of our little mantra.   Dallin: Yeah. That leads into basically what we're doing now. Our whole plan without getting too much into detail is we have a very, very big picture. Just like a funnel, we have our personal value ladder. Our big picture is more in investments, real estate, things like that. Those are our high tickets. Right.   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: For the time being, we need to make sure that we couple that with clients, so we have our lead gen system, our agency that's doing multiple things, SCO work and funnels, and social media strategies and management and that way it can help us scale. Our agency essentially fronts the bills and I guess the best way to put it is we want everything that we do to be self-sufficient. If we build something, the entire goal-   Steve: Keep it in hands.   Dallin: Well, yes and no. The entire thing is for that project to sustain itself, so you understand once you get going with your Facebook marketing and such, it gets to the point where you reinvest X amount back into it. Then it lives, it breaths on it's own kind of. It just needs to be monitored, right.   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: If we have this solid balance between us of we have clients coming to us for done-for-you services, that's awesome. That's cash. That keeps us busy. That keeps workers of ours busy. Then in the meantime, if we can couple that with 40, 50% of our other time for in-house projects, because Kristian and I already have entrepreneurial ADD, we're always thinking of ideas. We always have something going on or a lot of times a client that comes in has something that sparks an idea.   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: We'll, like you said, we'll keep them in-house and then we funnel them. We get them to the point where they self-sustain and all of a sudden, we have our house projects, our client projects and it's just a very healthy business model. You don't see a lot of very sustainable and scalable models. You know what I mean?   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: Especially, because I've been with very, very, very big companies with these companies I've sold for and you find ... one of the things I like to do is study patterns and development. I'm really into the business development side of things. You look at the ones that have made it, that have succeeded and that are scaled to the massive, massive billion dollar companies and that's kind of what they do. They make sure they have kind of that happy medium, that solid balance in all these different areas and factors and that's kind of what we're trying to do.     One of the projects we're working on right now is a political campaign funnel. This is just one that's easy to scale and we're just pretty much hacking it and taking advantage events which one of the things coupling social media with funnels is current events, man. That's, they kill. If you can find something trending and good and that has ... that you can milk for a long time, you better believe we're going to find a way to make, pinch money out of it, right.   Steve: Yeah. Isn't it the-   Dallin: I'll let Kristian talk about that.   Steve: The political campaign funnel, is that the one you downloaded I think from Sales Funnel Broker?   Kristian: Ah, no.   Steve: Maybe that was you, maybe it wasn't. I don't know. There's some guy, he downloaded it and came back and he's like, "This is the coolest thing ever." I was like, "Just the share [funnel 00:27:53] free one I got from someone else. Glad you like it."   Kristian: Yeah, no. I got the idea from actually from Funnel ... I got part of the idea from Funnel U. To be honest, as much as we know about funnels, something clicked when I watched Russell's video inside the membership site for the political bridge funnel, where it was like, "I see it." It was that coupled with the, the funnel stacking I got that whole idea of moving them from a front end funnel to a webinar funnel to a high ticket and how you stack those.   Steve: Sure.   Kristian: Bridging and when all the sudden the bridging made sense to me, I said, "Oh my God." Just like what Dallin was talking about here. Ultimately our goal is to, take the same amount of time to do all this work to go and work with somebody and do a commercial real estate transaction, where we're an investor or we're buying the property and people are investing with us, as it does to sell a t-shirt. Just time is time, it's just the size of the value and how you frame your mind around it. We are in the process of growing our agency. The whole point of it is to, if you think of construction companies, really good construction companies constantly have work that's in place to keep their employees working, so that they have the best team, right.   Steve: Mmm. Yeah.   Kristian: That's what they're always talking about is we just have to keep work so we can keep these guys busy. It's not about keeping them busy, but we also want to have the team in place because ultimately when we have our ideas, we can get them shipped quicker.   Steve: Yeah. I've been approached by a few people lately and they're like, "I got these awesome guys. I absolutely love them." He's like, "What work do you have? I just don't want them to go anywhere else." He's like, "I don't care what it is. I just got to bill."   Dallin: That's exactly what it is.   Steve: Yeah, interesting.   Kristian: Yeah. That's the idea, but to get back to what we're doing right now is I got the idea of how Russell explained the political bridge and my dad had ordered 100 t-shirts from my best friend. My best friend did all the screen printing for the Super Bowl in Santa Clara.   Steve: Jeez.   Kristian: He's got one of the largest screen printing companies on the west coast, based here in Phoenix. He has a company very similar to what Trey Lewellen started with Teespring.   Steve: Interesting.   Kristian: He's set in and he came to us and said, "Hey, why don't you partner with me and just handle the marketing on this." He's talked to me about doing some marketing for them for different aspects of their company. Now we're working together and the whole idea came up I said, "Well, you know what? I think I can do it." Before I was hesitant because I was like, "Well, I'm in the digital media space. I'm selling digital products." That was big hangup was I've got to sell to these entrepreneurs.     Then when this political bridge funnel that Russell talked about when he talked about how you move people from this list to this list, I went, "Oh my God. I can build a list in anything. I can just bridge them." It was a combination of that video inside of Funnel U and my participation in Todd Brown's PCP, Partnership Coaching Program, where they were really working on educational based marketing, and script and copy writing. The confidence level in my own ability to write copy had shifted to where now MFA is outsourcing some of their done-for-you client work to Dallin and I and having me write copy and script for their video sales letters.   Steve: What?   Kristian: Yeah.   Dallin: That's real, man.   Kristian: That tells you the ...   Dallin: We scale fast. Remember that third principle. We scale fast.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I wrote all those down. That's amazing. What's funny is that people don't realize that it literally is the exact same amount of work to do a small company as a big one.     My buddy, I mean as far as building a funnel and things like that, my buddy and I were building an [inaudible 00:32:11]. It was the first funnel I ever built with ClickFunnels and it was a smartphone insurance company and we were ... we got out of that for a lot of reasons, but it was interesting though because I was building it. We put it all out. That's actually when I got into ClickFunnels and it was right after ClickFunnels left beta. I was like, "Hey, I'm going to build this whole thing out before my ClickFunnels trial runs out." I'd never built one and I just killed myself for the next little while. We got it out.     Then this guy approaches me in Florida. He's like, "I need a funnel for some of my ..." He was selling water ionizers or something. I was like, "Oh man. This is a big company. They're already making a couple million a year." I was blown away. I was like, wait, this is the same exact amount of work as it was for the small little startup. Anyways, I thought that was interesting you said that.   Kristian: Yeah. That's what we talk about is that it's easier to work with those bigger companies. They get it.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: You work with the smaller companies and they're worried about how much money it's going to cost them. The reality is that the more we put ourselves in a position to work with guys like you and Russell and guys like Todd and Lou Coselino and David Perriera and all them at MFA, they're saying, "Man, why are you, how come you're not charging double and triple?"   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Dallin and I are sitting here like seriously if they're willing to pay us to write scripts for, to outsource their ad copy to us for some of their client work, what's that say? I mean, we're literally working with, doing work for the guys that are considered the best in the industry.   Steve: That's ... Yeah. Yeah.   Kristian: It's just a mindset shift is what it is. That has made it a little easier to have a conversation with someone and say, "You know what? We can take on this project. Here's how much it is."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: They're like, sticker shock. Well, sticker shock. You can go and just have someone build the pages for you, but it's not going to convert. I know that for a fact because copy os what converts, right.   Steve: You know Tyler Jorgensen?   Kristian: You know what, it sounds familiar. I think I-   Steve: He said the same thing to me. He's like, "You charge 10 grand to build a custom funnel?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "Why not 15?" I was like, "I don't know. I'd never thought about that before." I thought 10 was kind of the mark. He's like, "No, no, no, no. I'd do 15, 20, 25." I was like, "You've got to be kidding." That is is just a mindset shift. You'll get better people to build for anyways, whatever it is.   Kristian: The big thing for us-   Dallin: True and at the same time ...   Kristian: Yeah, I don't know.   Dallin: You there?   Kristian: Yeah, you cut-   Steve: Kind of lost you there.   Kristian: The big thing for us is really to build a team, Steve, and to have that team in place and be able to have people that focus on all the different areas of the funnels, so that they get really, really good at that. They don't have to know the whole process because that's what I've spent the last two and a half years doing, right.   Steve: Wow.   Kristian: They can be part of this and be part of building something and helping these clients and really enjoy what they're doing. Then, like I said, when we have these ideas we can ship them. I know you want to know and your audience probably wants to know what it is that we're doing, which is what got you in. I mentioned my friend, Bryant. He's got this company like Teespring. He's got everything in place to roll this out. We had this idea for how to start doing that. We took advantage of knowing that the campaigns going on right now. I mentioned to you I think my dad bought like 100 Trump t-shirts from him. I was like, "Those are really cool shirts." My dad's like, "Yeah, man You should do this funnel stuff and figure out how to sell these to everyone. Look how crazy everyone is about Trump. Trump's going to kill it." At the time, it was still in the Republican Primaries. I'm like, "Well, I don't want to go build a funnel."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: "Then trump doesn't win the primaries." But as he started pulling away I'm like, "Oh, let's start testing some stuff." We tested one funnel and surprisingly the Facebook campaign got a lot of clicks, but there wasn't a lot of opt-ins and conversions on the funnel. What it did and I think this is one of the biggest skill sets that people who are elite develop versus people that are frustrated and saying this isn't working for me is understanding the information that they're getting and what to do with it. You might not have a winning campaign or a funnel that's making money, but to understand what kind of info you're getting and how to use that to do the next thing is that whole testing process is what separates those that are killing it from those that are getting killed. That first funnel that we did, didn't make money. Not at all.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: I mean it lost $1,200. I went to Dallin and I said, "Dude, this is awesome." He's like, "Huh?" I said, "Look at the retargeting list that we got." Then we went and we tweaked this and I said, "What if we change the front end," and at that time Mike Pence had just been named Trump's VP. I'm like, "Who the hell is Mike Pence? I never heard of this guy before." I started asking people, they're like, "No." Unless you're from Indiana, you don't know who Mike Pence is. I go, "Should Trump have picked Mike Pence? Isn't there someone else." I'm like, "Boom. Is there a vice presidential debate in the Republican Party?"   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: We created a little mini survey around is Mike Pence the right one. First of all, you've got all these people that love Trump and they're hardcore republicans and now you're creating an internal debate. Everyone wants to voice their opinion, but they don't want to be judged.   Steve: Yeah. People get pretty intense about that for sure.   Kristian: Yeah. We created a mini survey.   Dallin: Oh yeah.   Kristian: We created a mini survey and we had this retargeting list from the first time and we started running ads. I didn't expect and I don't think Dallin either, that it was going to do as well as it did, but I mean, we had in less than 12 hours, we had 500 email opt-ins.   Steve: What? Oh my gosh.   Kristian: I was like, "Oh my God." I'm like, "Holy crap." I'm like, "What the hell's going on?" Of course the first goal is to try and get the funnel to break even. What we had to do was we were getting so much information so quickly that we really had to be on our toes and make adjustments and modifications. What we figured out through the first week of testing this is there's so much activity on this funnel. Just to give you the stats, after what was Dallin, really 6 days of running the ads, we got 2,600 email subscribers?   Dallin: Five and a half, yeah.   Kristian: Yeah. Five and a half days, we got 2,600 email subscribers.   Steve: Wow.   Kristian: K, the funnels not at break even, but here's what I want whoever's listening and whoever wants to take this information understand is the testing process. We figured out between two front end offers-   Steve: Which one was the winner.   Kristian: Which one's working better.   Steve: Yeah. Which one's the awesome one. Yeah.   Kristian: It's still not winning. Our free plus shipping is not, it's not helping us break even. The reason for that is because we're getting so many opt-ins. On a normal free plus shipping, you're not getting as many people clicking on the ads, right.   Steve: Right.   Kristian: Well, we're getting 5, 6 times the amount of people subscribing to the email-   Steve: Would you, in that scenario, would you ever try and get even less people. It'd be counter-intuitive maybe, but I would just start tweaking the free plus shipping, I guess.   Kristian: No. No. Well, no. We can't-   Dallin: The strategy-   Kristian: Yeah. We can't really tweak it because it's not like we're going to offer anything cheaper than free plus shipping. When you start looking at all the different things we can offer, there's not a lot of options, but here's what Dallin and I have figured out is that we think we've created a new funnel. It's not really new in the sense of what you and I and Russell and all these other guys think of.   Steve: True.   Kristian: In terms of Russel and [Daygin Smith 00:41:29] coming up with the black box funnel, right.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: It's just soft offer funnel, a front end soft offer. We think that we've come up with what we call a backdoor funnel.   Steve: Interesting.   Kristian: You get so many people on your email list. You get as many people to take the first offer and you get as many people to take your upsell as possible to figure out how close to break even you can get. If you look at 2,600 people, we go back and look at the numbers, only about 115 of those 2,600 ever saw the offer.   Steve: Huh.   Kristian: Now we have an opportunity to present those people with the offer again. Well, how do you do that in a way that's going to get a lot of people to open the e-     All right. Want me to ...We cut off here at the point of high dramas. As I was mentioning, we got so many email subscribers and such a lower number based on the email subscribers because we didn't expect to have that many, that we still weren't at break even, but we have a ton of people that we can show an offer to. It's a little different obviously because our price points ... We're doing apparel and things like that.   Steve: It's like delaying the offer almost on purpose, right. I mean this is ... awesome.   Kristian: Yeah. Remember, we started this whole thing with a survey, right, something that people were very passionate about, so a lot of polarity in there. They want their opinion-     They also want to know what everyone else thinks, where they fall in line here. We thought, "Oh my God. Somebody that votes, that voices their opinion, takes the time to put a vote in wants to know what the results are." We created a results page that shows them the results and has a special offer that all those people haven't seen. When we send it in the email and we tell them here's the results of the survey, the open rates are and the click through rates are sky high.   Steve: How long are you waiting to actually send them this results page?   Kristian: A couple of days, so-   Steve: Oh really. Wow.   Kristian: Yeah. I mentioned Actionetics. The whole reason that we started doing this is because we wanted to ... since we're having people take a survey and we're offering them this gift, we want to make sure we get as many people that take us up on that gift for taking the time to vote. We have a few of those triggers built in there, "Hey, don't forget to grab your free gift. We noticed you took the time, maybe something happened. Go back here and grab your gift." Then we make sure that everybody sees the results page a couple of days later.   Steve: A couple of days. That definitely is a different style for sure. You don't think that hurts conversions at all?   Kristian: No, I mean. It's a survey, right?   Steve: Sure.   Kristian: The point of high drama and the suspense and all that. We're still testing it, again, like I mentioned earlier that the biggest thing I think that separates those that are successful and those that aren't is to understand the type of information that you get.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: We may found out that we need to send the results sooner, but we don't know. We've got to test.   Steve: It's interesting positioning too of you saying, "Hey. It look's like. Thanks for taking it. Here's your results. I don't know if missed this, but just jump back and get that." That's interesting. Like they missed it. They missed the gift.   Kristian: Yeah. Yeah. "You forgot to grab your gift." That's our first step and then in the email that comes after they've taken the survey, "Hey, we're in the process of tallying up the results. We'll send them to you as they're updated."   Steve: Interesting. It keeps the loop open, basically.   Kristian: Hmm-hmm(affirmative). Exactly. Exactly.   Steve: Man, that's awesome. Well, hey is there a URL that we can go check that out on? I don't want to pollute or dilute any of your stats, so if not that's fine, but ...   Kristian: Yeah. We're just running ads to this right now.   Steve: Good.   Kristian: We're in the process of, like I said, this was just an idea that my dad came up with. I've got to give him credit for the initial idea, but now it's turned into kind of a new business entity, right.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: We're growing this email list and the concepts that Russell talks about the how to bridge funnels and lists and things like that. We're starting to build a list now in that republican, conservative, survivalist category. We're going to take it a step further and build out a home page and start doing some different stuff with it.   Steve: That's interesting. You're going to go through and who's going to keep opening all the emails over and over again, looking at all the stats of all the people around. These are the hyper active political caring people. You know what I mean? That's awesome. That's a really clever way to segment out those people. That's fantastic.   Kristian: Yeah. Yeah. You never know where your next business entity is going to come from.   Steve: Interesting. Gosh, well, hey, I know we've been on quite a while. Thanks for dropping all the bombs of gold you guys did. I don't know what happened to Dallin, but ...   Kristian: Yeah. He just texted, said thank you. He's trying to get back on, but I know we've got to take the kids to school and stuff, so-   Steve: Awesome. Well, hey man, I appreciate it. Thank you so much and this was awesome.   Kristian: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it, Steve. Love meeting new people that are doing the same thing as us and glad that we can reach more people that are trying to learn how this works and kind of help them understand the process and that if they just stick at it and keep testing. That's really the big thing I think is testing and learning is how you get better at it.   Steve: You're kind of a scientist going through this, for sure. Going in an industry you know will make money obviously, but whatever you're doing specifically, you might almost always be the first. The think big, start small and scale fast. That's huge.   Kristian: Yeah. If anyone wants to connect with us, Dallin and I are both on Facebook. We mentioned Periscope. I do a lot of broadcasting on there with what I call the Live Stream Marketing Funnel Show. We're rolling, if people are interested in learning how to use live video, we've got that coming out. Yeah. Connect with us on social media. Kristian Cotta and Dallin Greenberg.   Steve: Okay, yeah. Then you've got the Health Success Podcast. Guys, go check him out at Health Success Podcast as well as he said Live Stream Marketing?   Kristian: Well. Yeah. Just go to KristianCotta.com. It'll take you right there.   Steve: Cool. Awesome.   Kristian: Kristian with a K.   Steve: Kristian with a K. Cotta, right?   Dallin: I'm in.   Kristian: Kristian with a K. Cotta. Dallin's in here. He just got back in.   Dallin: Dude, I don't know what happened. I was getting all excited what Kristian was saying and then just cut off.   Kristian: It's the point of high drama, that's what we were talking about.   Dallin: I know. It was. That's what I told Amy. Is it over?   Steve: It is now.   Kristian: Yeah. We're just wrapping it up.   Steve: Awesome.   Dallin: Sorry.   Steve: It's good. Hey, thanks guys so much.   Kristian: All right. Take care, Steve.   Dallin: See you man.   Steve: All right. Bye-bye.   Speaker 4: (music starts) Thank for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free t-shirt when your question gets answered on the live Hey Steve Show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question. (music ends)