Learning From Others

As a business owner, bringing on an intern often sounds enticing. But interns are only as good as the framework that you have built in place for them. What's that? You don't have a strategy plan for your interns? Today's guest can help. He founded Internship Institute, helping businesses maximize the value of interns. Additionally, this athlete, single parent, caretaker, consultant and nonprofit founder has a goal of positively impacting 100,000,000 people in the next five years. Will you be one of them? Please welcome Matt Zinman. Contact Info https://z-isms.com https://mattzinman.com  

What if you could increase your revenue but without increasing your customer count? Today's guest is here to show you how you can grow more loyal customers that not only buy more from you and more consistently, but also become brand advocates to share your company with others. Please welcome Blake Binns. 0:55 - Are of Expertise of Blake Binns 4:18 - Blake's Journey 9:08 - Concept Differences 13:27 - Think About the Customer Experience 17-13 - Importance of Intent and Where Do you Begin Contact Info https://goodadvicecoaching.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakebinns/   Mr. Blake Binns. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you doing? Hey man. How are you doing? I'm good. I'll um, before we hit record, we we're talking about very masculine things and beard. So, um, naturally. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. You, like you said, it seems like every time we have a guest that, um, one of us has a beard than, than. You talk about beards, you got to man. Well, you know, it's, it's, I feel like all of us, or maybe I'm projecting. I feel like when I was a kid, like all of my friends, none of us could grow beards. And so now that we are all at the age that we can find, I mean, I think it came in at like 25 and now that we're at the age that everyone can have a beard. Now we just like explicitly make sure to like, when we see someone's Beaver, like it's a nice beard to a stranger. I'm sure. I'm sure strangers are like, what's wrong with you? Like, why are, you know, Thanks. All right. So Blake, um, I asked our guests two questions. Question number one is what's your area of expertise and what are we gonna learn from you today? Yeah, so I run a business coaching company called good advice and really the sweet spot for our company is we help companies build their 1000 raving fans, which is a very basic concept that comes from the thousand true fans concept. And it's basically, how do you really grow a business where your customers love to buy from you again and again, and again? And it's not just your external company customers, it's also your internal customers. Meaning how do you have employees who really love your company? Uh, which is especially true right now during COVID, because frankly there's a lot of employees who are like, do my company sucks. Like they did not keep take care of me at all. Um, so, so essentially we're we're growing businesses is what we do for a living. Okay, cool. Yeah, I actually have, um, uh, I want to dig pretty deep on that, because like you said, it's applicable to the current economic environment, but not until I ask you question number two, which is, what do you suck at? Like, well, we probably should get my wife in here cause she would, she would probably tell you, you know, it's funny because. I, I was doing, uh, a personality test with some people. And there were like all these flaws that showed up and I was like, I was like, this test sucks. And so I got home, I got home. Sure. Her name is my, my wife's name is joy. And I was like, can you believe how jive this test is? And she's like, Oh yeah, that's all you sure. I would say I probably I'm super sarcastic. And so I'm, I'm pretty sucky at like going deep with people. Like it's hard for me to like, not make a joke. And especially like when my wife is like really feeling raw about something and I make some comment and she's like, all right, I'm calling my sister. Listen. Yeah. So I would say, aye. Aye. I mean, I can have deep conversation and not that all the therapists listening are like, what's wrong with this guy? I just, I just like humor, you know, I just like to make jokes and I dunno, it's just my personality, I guess. So I was, um, we were talking to Todd Hartley, I guess the other day. And, and, uh, he runs this big company. He was kind of saying the same thing. He's like, man, when I'm in meetings, like I'm just waiting for the punchline. Like I can't stare at spreadsheets and numbers and the whole time I'm looking for jokes, let's see. Isn't that kind like, you know, you think about it and like so many meetings get so in the weeds, you kind of need that person to like. Bring people out of it and be like, okay, let's, let's actually lighten up and really think about what we do. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So a thousand raving fans, um, I'm familiar with concept and I assume that some of the people might, even if they're not familiar with concept, they they're probably familiar because of like the what's what's the other thing, a hundred. Your dream 100. So I assume it's like, kind of, yeah. There's tons of variants of it. Yes. I say that with me having a variant of it. I mean, it's, it is very intuitive. I mean, it doesn't take it. Doesn't take rocket science to understand the concept. Uh, but in case maybe your listeners aren't fully familiar of it. The bottom line is. To, to grow a sustainable business. You don't need to chase thousands and thousands or millions of customers. What's actually more profitable and sustainable for your business is to build a tribe of people who love your brand and who actually will buy from you over and over and over again. And it there's a lot of, um, uh, you can get really into the weeds on the details of looking at like the. The value of a return customer versus what you spend to acquire a new customer. Um, all of these things together, kind of what build this, um, very common strategy in business. So how did you get into specializing in this? So I was working for a consulting. I was an executive coach at a consulting company here in Northwest Arkansas, um, which I got to plug Northwest Arkansas for a second. Cause anytime I mentioned that people are like, actually I mentioned that the other day and someone was like, Oh man, I was in Phoenix the other day. And I was like, okay, well that's Arizona, you know, you got the a right. You know, but, um, so people really mix it up. Oh yeah, man. Well, you know, the South is, you never know what state you're in, I guess. I don't know. But, uh, comments, I get comments like that all the time or, you know, they're like, Oh, what's even in Arkansas. And I'm like, well, that's a fair question, but. In Northwest Arkansas, we actually have the headquarters of Walmart, Tyson, JB hunt, three really awesome fortune 500 companies. And so probably about four years ago, I was working as an executive coach for this really awesome consulting company in our area. And we were serving companies like Walmart, Tyson, JB hunt, these other companies. But part of what was happening in this process was I was realizing that. We were leaving a lot of money on the table by really not nurturing the relationships we had. We were kind of all over the place. And so whenever I left that company, I kind of had that in the back of my mind. And when I went on to start good advice, I started working with business owners who. And this is so true in business. I'm sure you see this all the time as well. There's, there's nothing, there's no new concept in business. Like a lot of this stuff is really, um, basic. It's easy to understand. However, it's hard to actually implement. And so I started working with business owners and I was just, I was just talking about growing businesses. I wasn't even talking about raving fans. But it starts talking to business owners who were doing things that were, so they were, they were in such opposition of the concepts. So here's a great example. I was working with a guy who sells, basically sells protein powder and he had a customer who, you know, the average customer buys like a, a, um, A two quart container of protein and it's maybe like 20 bucks, 30 bucks or whatever. Well, he had this one customer who bought something like $300 worth of protein powder. And then the customer asks and you know, those little like obnoxious plastic, uh, cup things that, you know, they get lost in the protein powder. You can never find it. I, yeah. Yeah. Well, so I say it, like, I work out, like, I just know what I know about it. So. You had these really obnoxious little cups, they get lost in the protein powder. Well, this customer says, Hey, could I possibly get a couple of extra just since I bought so much? Um, sometimes I typically lose it. Would it be okay? Well, this business owner got so offended and talking to me was like, I feel like my customers taking advantage of me that he's trying to get an extra buck out of me. Like, how do I tell this person? No. And I'm like, You know, you're crazy. What are you doing? And I'm like, how much does this little plastic thing costs you? And he's like, well, it cost me. Yeah. It cost me, pennies cost me nothing. And I'm like, what, what is wrong with you? You need to tell them. Yeah, of course you can have these cups, like, absolutely thank you for your business. And that's an extreme example, but, but over and over and over again, I was seeing business owners who were really tanking their company by not. Not understanding what good customer service looks like and really, how do I really retain a really incredible customer rather than, um, actually I had one business owner who was like, well, if they don't like what I'm selling, they can go somewhere else. And I was like, well, they, they, they will go somewhere else. That's, that's how business works. And so I would say over the last couple of years of my business, it's really sort of, it's just been a passion project for me. I've kind of just. The business has evolved to really hone in on and you need to be building those raving fans. If you're going to have something meaningful. All right side. Now on the protein guy, because I'm in that pain. I see the, I ha I am that problem customer, but I don't know if you still talk to the guy, but you know, what you need to do is, is I can't remember who does it, but I've seen brands that they have a little slit underneath the lid and it slides in. And so it just stays there. So then when you take off, it's just there. Yeah, so that would be great. But see, here's, what's funny about that though, is that maybe I bet that top the plastic top for that container, I would say that top maybe cost them an additional maybe like two or 3 cents, like nothing, but this type of business owner would cause again, these types of people are so cost cutting focused that we'll let the customer experience suffer. That kind of person wouldn't ever, it would never indulge in that kind of idea, you know? Um, All right. So, um, what type? So I imagine that some of the listeners are thinking like, okay, this sounds cool. Um, you know, Sure Blake, a thousand thousand or eight pounds is all I need, but I am the guy or the woman that sells two millions. And my sales is based on volume. So is there like a difference in this concept of businesses that do low dollar high volume versus high dollar low volume? Because it sounds like it makes more sense for K you don't need as many people, but you have a higher ticket. Item. Well, I would say don't get lost in like the details of like literally how many customers, like, for example, if you have, if you are closing 10,000 customers a month, you know, on some, on basically a product that's nine 95 or whatever, you know, it's, it's not like, Oh, this doesn't apply to me. The concept at its heart is how do I take someone? And on like the funnel of how they perceive my business, how do I build enough trust with them and give them such a great experience that they will buy from me again and again and again. So like Amazon's a really great example of this, Amazon it, in terms of like the two day shipping, that's really, it, it's a great. It's a great offer, but now you have other companies like Walmart who are offering the same thing. What Amazon does that makes them so valuable in the customer's mind is anytime you need to return something, I mean, you could do it. You could snap your fingers. It doesn't matter. You know, if it's open, it doesn't matter how you've used it. Nine times out of 10, if you try to return something on Amazon, it's a no questions asked. Sure. Send it off. We'll get it returned. What have you, that creates a lot of trust in the customer's mind and it makes them more likely to buy from you. So it's, it's less about how many customers you're dealing with. And it's more about how am I crafting an experience that someone says, okay, wow, this wasn't just a transaction for me. I'm actually, I'm interested in this brand. Now. I I'm excited about this brand. And another great example of this would be something like Chick-fil-A. Um, here in the South Chick-fil-A is like, it's like, God, I mean, people are, you mentioned Chick-fil-A people lose their mind. You have people who are so, um, just jazzed about Chick-fil-A, even though they're doing, you know, they're serving millions of people. And you don't have to work hard to see how many times Chick-fil-A

Coronavirus forced a new evolution in business, where everyone now knows the importance of video in online communication. So what if you could learn from the original expert that's been preaching the value of video since before the world changed in 2020? Today's guest has done campaigns with legends like Justin Timberlake and Tony Robbins. He's here to teach you how to explode your business with video, and how to do it with simplicity. Please welcome Todd Hartley. Contact Info https://www.linkedin.com/in/videotodd/    

  What if you could sell more... but without selling? What if, instead, you focused on building relationships and those free relationships became your most profitable source of sales? Today's guest talks about doing exactly that, and the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Please welcome Joy Abdullah. Contact Info https://3minutemarketing.biz/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyabdullah/    

  As a business owner, what's your exit strategy? You likely got into business either for the money, the freedom, or because you're passionate about what you do. What if that changes? What if it's time you decide you want to do something new? There's a big difference between a 1x multiple, a 3x multiple, and a 5 or 10x multiple. And how do you get the bigger one? Todays guest has been featured in INC, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and USA Magazine, she is an international keynote speaker and makes regular radio and TV appearances on Fox Business News and CNBC. She is a Certified Mergers and Acquisitions Professional with 20 years in the industry and is here to teach you how to exit rich.   Please welcome Michelle Tucker. Contact Info https://www.facebook.com/michele.seilertucker exitrichbook.com  

20 years as a Navy SEAL Commander, today's guest is obsessed with what it takes to be the best and the cost of success. That means discussing not only the benefits of striving hard for success, but the pitfalls. Listen to him share his stories of triumph and failures so that you can learn and grow professionally, physically, and mentally. Please welcome Jack Riggins. 1:45 Jack's background 7:02 - Stands Out the Most 9:27 - Moment of Realization 14:11 - Type of Consulting 17:17 - Trust Theory Contact Info https://thedarksideofelite.com/ https://www.twitter.com/riggins_jack   Jack Riggins, welcome to learning from others. How you doing? Good. Thanks for having me. Yeah. What do you got in the background on the pitcher that you got? Are you a golfer? Yeah, golf is my one, a competitive endeavor left in life. Um, so I've been doing it for about 20 years and I probably take it too serious, but I enjoy the, uh, I enjoy the process of trying to get better at golf on an individual level. Having spent my entire life in teams, in groups, it's kind of fun to take on something where it's just you. And so, yeah. Yeah. Golf is my one habit. Maybe addiction. If you ask my wife. You know, it's funny as our, as our guest that I was with just yesterday as a total opposite, he's been in, he's been golfing for not quite as long but long enough, I think 10 or 15 years. And he says he just sucks. Uh, the same as day one. So, well, we usually, it's a, it's a difficult skill. Yeah. Yeah. I was telling him and the listeners don't have to excuse us. So it looks like there's a little delay between our replies, but what I was telling him, Sam is our guests yesterday, as I said, I have his name's Tom Mattson. I said, I haven't picked up golf because I'm afraid that I'll embrace it. And I just don't want another thing on my plate. Understood understood it. Uh, if it gets you, it becomes, I mean, you gotta kind of pattern your life around it, depending on how hard you want to chase it. Yeah. All right. So, Jack, I told you we start with two questions. Question number one is what's your background? What's your area of expertise? What are we gonna learn from you today? Yeah. Great question. Um, So I'm a retired Navy seal commander with 20 years experience. Um, what I would tell you is, um, I've been in teams in groups, uh, my entire life. I was an athlete before seal team. Um, my expertise is in leadership and collaboration and, or getting groups of people to accomplish something, whatever that may be. Um, and so I both have a formal education in that with my undergrad, my master's degree. And. I also have a lot of years, two decades, uh, doing that internationally, not just with us forces, but coalition forces and also partner forces around the world. So, um, that's my area of expertise. And, and to sum that up real quickly, my whole thing is it's all about the people. So no matter what you do, people is your most valuable commodity. Yeah, I agree with that. Uh, I have a lot of questions that come to mind being in the Navy as a seal for that long. Yeah. But not until I asked you a question. Number two is what do you suck at? Yeah, I think that's a great question. Um, because it's not asked a lot, so to speak, I ask a lot myself when I'm consulting and helping folks, um, What's interesting is so we spend a lot of time, especially in seal teams, even in my consulting, work with businesses and teams talking about arousal control or managing your fight or flight space so that you can perform at your optimum at the given time. And even though I teach it, and even though I would say I've had lots of experience in it, I would also say that it's one of the things I suck at. And I, I suck at it the most. It's in my own home. Um, meaning that I've found that when there's an emotional connection, um, to people you care about, um, that adds another stressor. And so it's a balance, um, between, you know, groups and teammates and things like that, and getting to know them and care about them, but also. You know, not only for performance standpoint and whatever you do, managing that space, but managing those relationships. And, and so in one way, I think I'm really good at it, but I would tell you that I'm also really bad at it and constantly trying to grow and learn in that space. Um, and I think that's because I'm human, like everyone else. Yeah. It seems like there's a reoccurring theme with, uh, you know, our different guests at different levels of performance. It's almost like more often than not. Whatever they are exceptional at, there is a, there's a parallel to that. That's completely opposite in the same, in the same space. So you as a Navy command or a Navy seal commander, and you talk about you, your area of expertise as being a leader, did that role as being a leader? Come from a, I mean, obviously the Navy seals played part of that, but were you a leader before that or did that develop primarily through that. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, five was to go back and talk to peers or mentors or coaches, teachers. I mean, in my area, I grew up in, in Nebraska, small town. Um, I would say that, that I was introduced to leadership, um, primarily through sports early. And as I grew through those and in my formative years and high school, if you will, I would say I was kind of designated that. And so I paid attention to it a little bit. Um, and I even read things on that. And so I, I had some experience and there's certainly some, um, you know, nature versus nurture. If you will. And there's a little of both. I mean, some people I'm an outgoing person and so we tend to think, Oh, outgoing people. Well, you know, they're a leader, you know, that's not always the case, but, you know, I had some inherent skills that maybe showed that. And then certainly as the years would go on, I would say that, you know, I formally was educated, trained and, and, and learned a lot of things. And certainly believe that leadership can be taught without a doubt. Um, and, and got hopefully really good at it. Um, throughout the Navy, at least enough to have a Navy career. But what I would say is that to me, you know, leadership is a journey. So if you're really trying to be a leader or you are a leader, it's best that you think about being on a growth curve that never ends. So it, you know, you're constantly not only trying to improve, but learn and, you know, in leadership, if you think you've arrived, you haven't. And so, uh, you know, I almost feel like, well, I, I am a leader and I am an expert in it and it. Each it at the same time, I feel that there's so much more out there. And sometimes that I don't know anything. Yeah. Is kind of on what you just touched on. Is there looking at yourself before and after your Navy career? Is, is there something that stands out the most about how you yourself has changed? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think like a lot of young people, I mean, I was driven to service, um, by the excitement and definitely wanting to serve. I certainly was wanting to find kind of another locker room. Cause I was a big sports guy and you know, I was a little bit naive, um, to maybe the, the big picture of things and dynamics of human beings on teams.   Um, and so there was a lot of learning. You know, about different types of people, different ways they communicate, things like that. Yeah. And ultimately through that experience, um, you know, I would say I was a hard charger, I would say, you know, out front, you know, I probably thought louder is better at first. Um, and then throughout the years, you know, I learned to, um, you know, move more towards a, a servant leadership role. You know, which was to listen, you know, find compassion and empathy and all the people I lead and, and try to make those three things, the cornerstone of my leadership. Um, and at the same time, um, develop a real good self-awareness to where, you know, I had some shortcomings in my case addiction and, you know, not handling injuries right. Or mental health. Right. And so I had prioritized a lot of other things well, before myself, Um, and kind of drove myself into the ground. And so in the end, you know, getting those challenges and taking care of them on a self thing, you know, that realization that I'm a better leader, I'm a better person. If I take care of myself, um, and you know, I'm in the best state that I can be to lead. And then going back to those cornerstones of, you know, servant compassion, empathetic leadership, and listening. And so, you know, I think what that taught me was, um, again, growth and that, you know, sometimes people get sideways and they need some help. And, um, and so I would say ultimately I learned balance. What made you realize the benefit of taking care of yourself first? Was it just a slow evolution of understanding that? Or was there a very specific moment that made you realize that. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think in the end there was, it's a very specific moment or two. Yeah. Um, and you know, to back up, um, given how I was raised, I had an abusive father and so I kinda threw all my coping skills into athletics and just. Getting exhausted as a young person, certainly drove me to, um, the excitement of joining a special operations unit. Um, and so my coping mechanism was just to physically get exhausted every day. Um, And that's not a great coping mechanism because as we get older, you know, it's tough to do that. You get injured. And so anyway, um, and, and some of those things played out well in that type of career, meaning, you know, the go, go, go, go mentality. But. Ultimately, you know, I broke myself. And so there were a lot of people around me in the teams, mentors of mine or teammates that, you know, and you see that I think in a lot of those jobs, but anyway, you know, some of those people had to essentially intervene in the case of injuries. They were like, you need to go get fixed, you know, because physically you're not performing and you're just trying to power through something. Um, and that was one, wake up call more on the physical side. And then, you know, I used a lot of, uh, opioids, things like that to block pain and that kind of caused addiction to go into overdrive and then alcohol. And then it was my family. Um, my wife and my children who, you know, kind of gave me the, hit on the head and said, you know, you've messed yourself up. And, uh, I'm so thankful. Both those groups of people, um, one had the courage to do that. Um, cause at that time in my life, I don't think I had the courage myself to do that. I was just going to grind into the ground. Um, but then, you know, then I went and got professional help and uh, you know, have really stuck with it and uh, in an, an. I am in a better place with better mechanisms and it's all just part of the growth curve. So yeah, I needed some people, um, to help me out a lot of that. Well, well, I imagine benefits your ability to relay and, and do consulting. And I want to get into your consulting, but I kinda have one more question before we transition to that. Um, so. That's amazing that they were willing, like you said, to have the courage to come up and, you know, have a little intervention. Um, when, when did you yourself realize that the exhaustion component was a coping mechanism? I would say about 50, 15 years into my career. So, you know, right before I turned 40, so my late thirties, um, I realized that, you know, I was very frustrated at work and, you know, wasn't always excited to come in and, and was just trying to survive if you will. Even though I was very seasoned and I, you know, was an expert in, in special operations. Um, you know, and I wasn't sleeping well and the injuries, you know, wrongfully, I was trying to hide the injuries, you know, because of a fear of what might that might do to my career. Um, and so, you know, ultimately, you know, it was exhausting and, um, and I guess I just didn't, I just thought that I could. Power through if you will. And you know, eventually, you know, for me, you know, physical health, you know, led to mental health, mental health. Uh, degragation, you know, lead to wrong coping mechanisms to the point where I couldn't overcome it individually or really as a group. And, uh, and that's when, you know, I learned that it's okay to ask for help, you know, whether it's inside or outside and, you know, and in my case, it saved my life, but it took me a very long time. If you will, you know, late 30. You don't realize that professionally and personally. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about what you're doing now. So now you have like all this experience as a leader, you have the ability to personally relate to situations because you've overcome them yourself. So give me an example of what type of consulting you do now. And then I want to specifically get into the phrase that you mentioned the dark side, and I assume that that's a transition we can make based on that first question. Yeah, no, no, that's great. Um, you know, first I was lucky enough to, while I was in seal team to be asked and begin kind of consultant. Well Dean with, uh, sports teams around the Midwest national level sports teams. And for me at the time, you know, that was a nice one. What I called leadership exchange. Because if you think about the age groups, 18 to 22, 23, there's a lot of that military. And obviously in college sports teams, that's the demographic that you're trying to lead. Um, and so I learned a lot and I thought, wow, this is great. You know, I learned a lot. I took back to seal team. I'd like to think coaches, mentors and athletes learned a lot from me as well. And that just kind of led to more, um, more, uh, eggs are more clients, if you will. And, and through that, I met a psychiatrist too, was working more on kind of the mental health side of things with people. And so we formed our own company  mountain in 2016, um, just to bring it to a broader audience, um, businesses. Cause we felt that what we really teach is personal skills. Um, and you know, from my angle, I relate to them, you know, military stories and addiction and recovery. And those type things. And, you know, my doctor partner relates to it both in psychiatry, but also he's been doing high performance mental skills. So just this kind of dual approach, um, we've added some other people have had some success over the years. And so, you know, really what we do. Is again, teaching leadership from a, uh, basic foundational level, um, and guiding and mentoring leaders of people through that, as well as teaching a lot about followership and, and what it means to be a good follower and role acceptance. Um, and we do one on one coaching, of course. So some of those may be more personal to where someone like me, as you said, can relate to issues that are going on. Um, in some leaders lie, if. Um, but ultimately, you know, when you break it down, what we're doing is we're trying to invest in the individual human and make them the best that they can be with their potential. And then of course, making the group function. And oftentimes what we find is it's just really all about communication. And then if we can get everybody communicating in an open and honest fashion, you know, we can get the group to what we call ultimate trust and people function really good in that environment. I mean, we spend a lot of time talking about vulnerability and being your true self. Um, so sometimes leaders. Are leading, but they're not doing it from a place that's their true self. And they may not even have explored what their true self is. And so then that creates friction in their leadership, um, and vice versa, you know, there's other dynamics. So, you know, in a way we're a life skills consulting group. Is there an ideal quantity of participants in a unit that kind of better support the group trust theory? From my experience, um, both in seal team and in sports and business, um, certainly the more people, right? So you take a seal team roughly, you know, 50 to a hundred, um, that's manageable. Um, the smaller is obviously better. You just have. A numbers favor on your side with personalities, you know, different experiences in human beings. So there's less, um, potential points of friction or things you have to work on. Obviously easier to teach a small group. Um, But I would say, you know, our success has been, you know, 50 and below. If you start to look at college football teams that can get to 150, um, you know, and then there's another 20 coaches. So very difficult. If that group is trying to all be on the same page. And certainly as you get to bigger corporations, you know, There's a lot of people. And so trying to generate the same culture dynamics across say 20,000, you know, that's a difficult task, you know, the United States military does do it. Well, you know, each service. Um, but in the end of the day, I mean, when you're talking about, you know, individual units, individual kind of cultures, then a culture, you know, I would say my experience has been, you know, 15 Dean below you, you can make. Some great gains then hopefully, you know, you go to the next 50 and you make great gains. Yeah. Um, but that's just been my experience. And I think it's mainly because of the personal nature in which we do it. And so, you know, difficult to mass produce on us a 10,000 person level. Yeah, uh, kind of on that same note because of the potential of how diverse the groups are that you're working with and the participants within the groups. I imagine. And though with all that diversity, there's, there's probably a reoccurring trend in like, is there a reoccurring thing such as self-doubt ignorance, naiveness, whatever, no matter how diverse the group is, there's always like this top one or two reoccurring theme that you run into. Yeah, the top reoccurring theme that I noticed in seal team. And then I kind of, for my own leadership, if you will ballad. Dated it in different groups, men's sports, women's sports. And then, you know, the businesses I've worked with, um, is communication. Um, and when I say communication, I mean, person to person, face to face communication and, and most of the, the issues that arise in those groups just comes down to that. Simple facts. So whether it's a lack of it, um, on one person ability simply to communicate face to face, um, or another person to misread body language and social cues. That tends to then spiral and not be taken care of and, or create, you know, mass quantities of miscommunications, which then lead people, you know, to not work effectively or to, you know, have grievances. And so we spend a lot of time, um, on that, right. And almost like an arbitrator watch a situation from your experience of say leader follower. And see the dynamic and then, you know, go back and discuss, you know, what was the leader trying to say? What was the follower interpreting? You know, how can we bridge that gap? And so for me, for that question, um, in human dynamics and trying to perform at an elite level and whatever that is for people, and almost always comes down to communication skills on both sides. Yeah. Is, is you have a term that you use before we jumped on the call, uh, the dark side, and then that's part of, you know, your entity, the dark side of elite. Can you define dark side for us? Yeah. So. Part of it, as you said, it's, it's a little bit of a hook into my journey, um, into seal team, which, you know, for the most part, most people would say that's an elite organization and, and I'm a leap. I don't necessarily believe that. I mean, in the end of the day, I realized from a numbers perspective, um, and it is an elite unit. Um, but it's what I wanted to accomplish. That's what I wanted to do in the first half of my life. And so what, what I've seen, not only there, but then consulting with elite sports teams and personalities from Olympians to pro sports athletes to very successful business people is that there's a cost to being elite. Not everybody has it, so to speak. Um, but it may be family time, right? It may be like me, you get off kilter, get your priorities out of whack back. And you, you know, you have physical and mental health injuries, um, in your job. And so I look at it more like there's challenges and I use the term, the dark side of it, say that when you're striving. You know, to accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish. And you know, the more you push there is blow back. There are things that you have to be careful of, um, and balance and or work through. And I just feel, um, especially in the male culture and maybe my background and seal team that it's not talked about a lot and that it really shouldn't be something we're scared of. It should be something that we do discuss, and we realize a lot of other people have these thoughts and things get out of whack. And it's something that if we discuss it and get it front and center, you know, we can deal with it. And so that's why I use the term, the dark side of elite, um, in my podcast. And that's why, um, most of our guests, if they, if they're willing to share, um, we'll talk about that to bring it. Front and center to not only people that have accomplished things, but everyday people with stressors and, and, and, and help them understand that they're not alone in that no matter where we're at, you know, we can deal with this together because I think it's inherent in human nature that, you know, at some level we all have, uh, bad decisions we make and our stressors, we don't handle well. Yeah. Why do you think it is that in the culture of men, that mental health is, is still not discussed as, um, equally or openly as other demographics? Yeah. I think just one, it it's kind of society in general. Um, you know, without ostracizing different side, uh, sides of whether it's science or, um, evolution is that, you know, most societies have males generally. You know, when you're young, it is about toughness. I mean, we see more of that, um, and that, you know, crying or talking about mental health is quote unquote a weakness. Um, and so that still is a stigma that's out there, whether we like it or not. Um, the other thing is, I mean, here in America, right? We have a lot of fatherless children, um, that creates anger and resentment. Even if a kid doesn't understand that at the time. Um, right. And so now we have kind of a two negatives, you know, that are prevailing in society. And, and then ultimately, you know, we tend to run with that because. Of peer pressure, then all around us as we grow up up until we learn something different. And let's be honest, there's a lot of jobs and a lot of places where then if we are making money and providing a, we fear on the male side, you know, well, what if someone thinks I'm weak or, or what if. I disclosed this is it going to hurt my job? And so, you know, and obviously there are places that, um, if you do do that, it can cost you your job. Is it right? I don't think so, but it is a reality. And so, so I think that, you know, right now, as we sit in the year 20, 20, the default still is for a man to beat his chest, you know, when stressed to a degree and to hold things internally, And not to try to process it in an inappropriate way. And it takes time, it takes a maturation and it also takes more people to be open about it, to say there's another way. Yeah. Is, is there anyone throughout your journey, whether it was in the Navy or with performance teams and the athletics that really kind of stands out that made the most progress underneath your wings? Underneath like my leadership or, uh, uh, of some young person that I was grooming. If you will just like a standout story of progress. Yeah. I mean, I've, um, you know, without, without giving names, um, there's several CLR officers and seals that are still on active duty, that I'm very proud of helping them in their careers. And it always warms my heart when they call, um, for some advice, whether that's professionally or personally. Say in marriage or, or whatever they're struggling with. Um, I would say one of the ones that isn't in seal team is a student athlete that had a phenomenal career in the sport, um, and still does, um, but was very suicidal and had a lot of mental health issues, you know, young, beginning of college and being one piece of, of the group that helped, um, You know, help work through those things. Um, that's very gratifying to me because it definitely could have turned out very bad and, um, been very nice, only shocking to her family or friends, um, but you know, on a national stage. And so that's very gratifying to help someone, uh, work through maybe some of the issues that I struggled with in my professional career. Yeah, well, Jack, has we get kind of closer to wrapping up? What I want to ask you next is, you know, what's what's next? Are you going to stay in performance consulting? Are you going to branch off into something else? What's what's the longterm play. Yeah, that's great. I mean, you know, performance, mountain, if you will, our company is kind of the umbrella. Um, Got me from a military London, again, a high performance psychiatrist. Um, we've added some other professional sports athletes. We're close to adding some people that have been very successful in business, um, so that we can work those lines and kind of share our experiences to help people grow individually and to grow as a group. Um, in whatever they're doing, um, from that each one of us has our own, um, if you will individual brand where we are sharing our experience through prod podcasts and books. Um, and I think we're going to continue just to grow that and share those experiences to the audiences and groups that, you know, find it beneficial. And all of us, I guess, are fortunate enough to. Have succeed in one thing. And so we don't, I don't necessarily need the money, which is a stressor for a lot of people. And so we can focus on giving it away and just helping, you know, one person or one group at a time. And so it's very gratifying. Um, Through, you know, podcasts, social media books, interactions with other people, um, share that on an individual level that falls underneath the umbrella of the corporation. And then of course, if, if there's good client synergy to absolutely go out and work with groups, which is what we love the most. Yeah, that's awesome. Uh, I want to give you the last moment, uh, I want to say thanks for jumping on learning from others, but it give, be the last few moments to put out contact information, or how can people find out more about you? Yeah, that's great. Um, our performance company is performance mountain, and it's a performancemountain.com. Um, you can email us at info@performancemountain.com. Again, we educate, train and provide the tools to motivate and develop elite mindsets and winning culture across business for life on my own personal podcast, the dark side of elite it's at the dark side of elite.com. It is on all platforms. And we regularly put out about two or three podcasts from interviews to just, um, little series with thoughts on leadership and culture and addiction and any stressors that people are going through. I'm very proud of that. Cause we've had international people on everyday people up to Olympians up to people that have been so successful, but they've been very good about sharing their struggles. And I think that that's a great learning platform for all people. Yeah, I agree. I know a couple of people personally that have gone from addiction to, um, you know, some sort of performance thing. Um, one that comes to mind is, uh, an organization called, uh, now I'm going to forget it addicted to. Addicted to now, now I'm going to slaughter it, but it's like a it's they do triathlons and marathons and it's all just a group of people that have recovered from addiction. Very cool. Jack. I support several things. I mean, yeah, go ahead. No, I support for several things. Obviously, as I support seal family foundation, I'm big on supporting our active duty and their families. You know, I support veterans here in Nebraska and Nebraska soldiers fund. And so you'll find me big on, uh, on that. Cause of course, and I also, you know, and I'm an influencer for the same here, global health mental Alliance. So, so I'm big on trying to change that stigma. And use my background, uh, to help people realize that all of us have a little something that we have to work through. So yeah, I appreciate you having me was a great, great interview. Yeah. Thanks. Um, well, as we wrap up, when we jump off here, I'm going to introduce you to a couple of people. I've got a couple of a couple of people to come to mind, but Jack Reagan's performance, mountain. Thanks so much for jumping on learning from others. Thank you.

As a teenager, today's guest came from an upper-middle class lifestyle in Africa and his family moved to the US. Miscalculating finances lead to his family living in a small apartment and hustling side jobs to survive. As an adult, he then lost it all in 9/11. Hear his story of how he overcame it all and built a 7-figure net worth with 6-figures in passive income. Please welcome Ike Ikokwu. 0:28 - Ike lkokwu's Background 2:29 - Patience is a Virtue 4:01 - Ike's Things that He Overcomes 5:46 - A Teenager Story 6:58 - Ike's Journey   Contact Info https://morebizgrowth-nofee.com https://morebizgrowth.com https://meetme.so/ikeikokwu   Mr. Ike, how you doing man? Welcome to learning from others. Hey brother. I am doing fabulous. Thanks for having me excited to be joining you today. We connect on LinkedIn. So this is our first a virtual face to face. It is. I am still mad. Yeah. Well, so I know a little about a bit about you, but why don't you bring our audience up to speed? So as they know, I like to start with two questions. Question number one is what's your area of expertise? What are we going to learn from you today? Awesome. So I am a bit of a triple threat. Uh, I follow a lot of people on LinkedIn that are branding gurus and you know, the, the word out on the street is you got to stay in your lane and take it one specific thing. That's just not the way I'm wired. So my three areas of expertise are as a business growth strategist, personal finance expert, and as a success and mindset coach and all the work that I do typically kind of reverberates around those three different domains. Got it. Okay. Now, before we dig into those more specifically, a question number two is what do you suck at? Well, what do I suck at? Um, and I want a question. I suck at being patient dude. Like when I want to get done, it's gotta be like a week ago. Like I'm always behind the eight ball. I just. I guess it's part of the way that I'm wired as a visionary and just the go getter. It's like, once I get wind of like what it is I'm supposed to be doing or where I'm supposed to be, I forget about the process of planting the seed. The water, the seed running the seed grows my mouth. Yeah. You know, that, that, that, that's, that's actually an interesting opportunity for us to kind of transition into what you do because I heard somebody on another podcast a while ago, say, say something that actually kind of resonated with me. And so he said something along the lines that, um, you know, the more. Um, the more empathetic Nick, you are to people like understanding their circumstances, the less patient you are. And it's because you just want to say, here's the answer. So go, like, what are you waiting for? And so when he said that, I was like, yeah, that's why I'm so impatient with people. Cause I'm like the answers right there. Like, why aren't you just doing the thing? So do you find yourself, um, with you joking about you being a patient, but then also being in a position where you help people, do you find yourself sometimes like having to. Say that like pause yourself. They're like, no, don't go too hard on them because yes, the answers right there. But you know, they got to figure this out. You know, it's a, I believe it's a gift from God because I, I totally get what you're referring to. It's like, it's, it's so obvious. It's like, it's screaming at you. Like, well, why don't you see it at the same time? I can be extremely, extremely patient with my clients. Because, I mean, you've seen parts of my story. I mean, I have, I have been through so much adversity over my life that quite frankly, so many people would probably want to check out, just looking at the magnitude of stuff that I've been through. And I know the depths of what takes to crawl yourself out of a hole and not be able to see the opportunities that are in front of you, because you're just so high profile. Focused and how jacked up and how broken your life is. It's like, that's all you have your attention focus on. So you've had it said, you know, it's hard to see yourself with you in the picture frame. And so. I've been gifted through the pain, through, through the gift of adversity to be, be able to be patient with people, to kind of help them see the diamond, see the gym that they truly are and just kind of shine that thing until it's like, just evident for them. Cause I know what it was like, you know, during my stages of trying to. Dig myself out of a hole. So it's a bit weird because there are instances where I'm okay with myself. I'm extremely impatient. But with those that I serve, I tend to be very, very patient with. Yeah. Why don't we, um, can you share whatever stories you want to share with the audience so they can kind of better understand some of those things that you've overcome? Yeah. So, um, man, there is no shortage of them. So I'm originally from Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa, and came to this country in the late eighties. My a bit of our family values. Education is really, really big. And so my dad and my mom got there from all education from England, always had it in the cards to ship us off to Europe or the United States to get a formal education. So that happened late eighties. He had a business business apartments based out of Columbus, Georgia. We ended up here going to school. And working extremely hard to do that. And I worked multiple jobs. I had a paper route with my mom. I used to get up at 3:00 AM in the morning to go through a paper route. Uh, just cause my dad didn't do the financial calculations quite as well as it needed to do to transition from a third world country to here. I get up. Yeah. I mean, we went from living an upper middle class lifestyle where. Um, I had a driver, he used to take me to school every day. I have a cook who used to cook for us. I had maids who would like take care of the house. Yeah. And Africa. Right. And again, you know, here it's like lifestyles of the rich and famous, but that's kind of like standard for like upper middle class. And then we ended up here in the United States and due to his faulty calculations. My mom and youngest of three siblings, uh, we ended up in like a 450 square foot apartment. I'm getting up at 3:00 AM with my mom to go through a paper route because they have me in a private Catholic school. And education is extremely important and five dog gone. It, we're going to make sure you get that education. So I'm throwing a paper route with my mom at 3:00 AM in the morning for three hours before I get around this time. 14 teenagers. So, I mean, so imagine like I'm coming into the teenage years and it's like the last thing a teenager wants to be doing is waking up at three in the morning. It's good. Throw a paper out. My mom bless her soul. She's such a kindhearted, servant, a leader. She knew all of it. Details about everybody on the, in the route. Mr. Johnson likes his newspaper in his mailbox. Stephanie wants it right at her front door. So she had all these particulars and I'm like, mom, just like go around there. All of a sudden now sling these things out there. She's like, no, get out of the car. I'm like 14 years old. I'm like with that. So I had that measure of diversity in terms of just having the odds again and still ending up. Selling not only was I working at 3:00 AM in the morning, I'd be at school from seven till three. My brother would drop me off at like, uh, Google car wash and Roca carwash. I'd do that for a minute. Three hours, come home, chug down some dinner, do my homework and make straight A's. So those were the formative years. Getting through some adversity, which served me well later on, then I got into the workforce. Um, 1996 degree in the County go work for the top six accounting firms. Spend some time there do well. Cause I start learning that not only do I like accounting in tags, I liked tax specifically, but the Christmas financial planning aspects of that by working those divisions and we do some phenomenal work for like really, really wealthy people. And I'm a big believer in. Uh, duplicating imitating success, right? So it's like, you know, duplication is the greatest from a flattery. So all the stuff that they were doing at a much higher level, I was trying to figure out ways to do it at my level. So young 20 something year old kid, and I had control of like an international business corporation that was based out of Panama. I had control. Of an offshore trust that was based out of Latvia. Um, I had banking accounts that were, I mean, I was exposed to a lot of stuff as a 20 something year old that I probably shouldn't have  50 or something, but I took advantage of that things that you're seeing, financial tax planning strategies that quite frankly, you know, Extremely ultra wealthy utilize for asset protection for opportunities that rank and file don't get access to a, but just through my extreme level of curiosity around money and always wanting to apply what I'm learning. I opened up those avenues for me. And I might have been making 30, 40, 50 grand, you know, on the job, but I was making as much as that. And then some through some of the different opportunities I was getting exposed to. So I did well and, uh, you know, save a couple of nickels and dimes for lack of a better word and then Lebanon. And when nine 11 hit. Obviously we know the impacts for our country, but a lot of people lost a lot of wealth. I'm no exception to that, but it was the first time in my life, Damon that I suffered being unemployed. And unlike most people who go through like a few weeks or a month or two of unemployment, mine lasted 18 months. That's a pretty long time. So I got no income coming in. I got to ask it's wiped out as a result of the tech bubble and losses in investments. And then my real estate portfolio, almost a dozen properties that ends up going South. Cause I ended up with tenants who can't pay their rent. Well, I don't have assets. I don't have income. So properties go into foreclosure. I felt bankruptcy. Start all over again. I start all over again. Not as an employee working for somebody else, but as an entrepreneur working for myself, I then realized that the reason why I couldn't find the job. And if you looked at my resume, CPA, CFP, two of the top six accounting firms, top of the class graduation, if you're going to bet anybody, you could find a job. I was probably the guy you'd be betting on. One of the big revelations that came through that season was the fact that my destiny and my purpose was not tied to being an employee for somebody else I believe. And I know that God specifically like shut the doors for me to get reemployed, just to make sure I stepped into purpose and destiny. And the reason I know that to be true is because five years later, after filing bankruptcy, I had to find myself back for the seven figure net worth six figures in passive income. I'm actually realizing something. I've heard coaches and mentors. Tell me all the time I do, you know that you can actually turn your annual income into a monthly income. And that sounds like a really, really good coaching sales start to get you signed into one of their coaching programs. I was like, dude, I'm not falling for that. But God is truth. That only occurred to me. One when my mind, my mindset was ready for it. But two, when I stepped into the world of being an entrepreneur, that's the only time that ever happened in my life. Um, so that's another huge, huge, um, you know, season of adversity for me. So you'd think like it's all systems go now, right? I'm 34 years old, you know, financially independent by life. Can't be better. So I write a book about all of that in 2012 called what are you? The money game? Released the book on Amazon, it becomes a best seller. Um, I remember actually getting a screenshot of my book ranking ahead of Robert Kiyosaki's book, cashflow quadrant at the time. And he's like an icon and an idol just growing up in the financial services world. So that was just like a huge, surreal moment for me. So that's 2012. I get asked to blog the Huffington post and their personal finance division. Uh, that was awesome. And then 2014, it comes around and I suffered too devastating business be trails that cost me seven figures plus, so my income dropped about a third of what it was very, very excruciating time and to make matters worse. One of those business, B track sort of a classic Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. So both me and like, you know, several handfuls of clients that I used to serve as an investment advisor, we all fell victims of that and lost tons and tons of money. 2014 that happens. Unlike Bernie, the was case where he was brought to justice, the Burnie reiterated the fraud in our instance actually fled the country. We think he's in Switzerland somewhere. So the sec couldn't even bring them to justice. So the years after that in 2016, I find out. And this is just my impression that one, because we don't have the, the magnitude of celebrities that are involved in the case. And because it's not a $50 billion case, it's just 200 million in quotes. You're not about to expend any resources to try to go track this guy down instead. Because I am regulated investment advisor. By the sec, they decided to turn the cards and actually try to hold. So they file complaints against me and my companies and an attempt to try to hold me responsible for not only my losses, but for the losses of my crimes, which if you know anything about my personality and just my core values. Even being remotely accused of anything fraudulent as the antithesis of who I am. So I bathed that season in prayer. I'm like, Lord, what am I supposed to do about this? And he's like, dude, go for it. You're going to experience victory. Cause I had to decide whether I was going to litigate, you know, just, you know, bow down and disappears. So he's like, go for it. You're going to get victory. I'm like, but. Um, I can, like, nobody knows me. I mean, it's like going up against the Italian mob for lack of a better word. Like the SCC is a freaking Billman. He's like, go for it. You go and get victory. So I go for, I hire what I feel like is the best representation I can get with the attorneys to represent me. I spend over six figures and in the span of almost two years and. Basically run out of money and here's how the victory shows up my life. Damon's. And by the end of 2018, I've agreed to settle my case with them on a neither admit nor deny basis, which is good. No admission of guilt, no denial of what took place. Fine, no big deal. But this was after spending six speakers with my attorneys. And as part of the settlement, I ended up having to pay out over 320,000, just to settle a case. I also CRE. To have my investment advisory license suspended with the rights to reapply. Now, once that happens, if you hold any other professional licenses, you gotta disclose to all of them. So I did, I did for my CPA, I did for my CFP license, my insurance license. My CFP license went down the exact same track as my investment advisory license, but that was gone. I got to keep my CPA. I got to keep my insurance license, but now in my new normal, in the world that I was in, nobody wanted to provide it in Arizona. So it's like, I couldn't even use the licenses and all of the insurance carriers that I was like, one of their top producers are like, yeah, you were good to us in the past, but we don't know if we really want you representing us now. Right. So here I am at the end of 2018, started 2019. Basically assets are depleted. Income is basically depleted. Reputation is shot, as you can imagine. And I'm like, God, you said I was going to experience victory. Like, how do you guys spell victory of heaven? Cause it's nothing like what I'm experiencing down here. Right? I kid you not the revelations I got during those quiet times where this one, that I was actually experiencing the victory that he had promised me the difference. Was the perspective I had around that. Like, I was expecting a very external, yeah, victory, maybe explosive injustice at the sec, ready, persecution or damage, not lose on my assets and income and all that stuff. And he's like, look as devastating as those losses were, the most devastating loss was the loss of your identity. Because my whole world, the only reason why I was comfortable looking at the guy in the mirror was because of all of that external stuff. And he's like, dude, if I got to strip you of all of that, just to remind you of this carnal truth, and that's the fact that your value to me and to the world at large has nothing to do with what you do. It's built on the fact that you're my son. I don't know if you have kids, Damon, but if you ever had the joy of bringing a child into this earth, there is a love and a value that is ascribed to that child that has nothing to do with what they will ever do in life. Right. And so for me, it was this huge distinction between my, my, my human being, like my intrinsic value versus my human doing what I do externally. And so that was a huge area of victory in my marriage, you know, 23 years of marriage to my wonderful wife, Emma, it was finally coming to a place where I was like really loving her the way she was yearning to be loved for much of our marriage. There's huge victory there, huge victory with our kids. I got three kids, a 13 and a 10 and a five. And just being present in their lives, like being comfortable, being on vacation and not having your laptop to work on because that's the only way you define being fulfilled. Huge huge victory. And then he goes, you're just like a bunch of my other kids out there. And so now it's like, he gave me this mandate to go out there and essentially help people that are just like me. But we're out there trying to bring to pass what they feel like is their purpose or their destiny in business in life, but not pay the ultimate price of losing in their identity. Cause they get clouded with whatever measure of success. So yeah, I focus now on what I call the inner and the outer game of success. Helping people create indestructible and limitless mindsets around what they can do. Inner game, but also working on the outer games, identified the very specific tactics and strategies that they need to explore, deliver incredible value into the marketplace and get to a point where money is you're actually chasing them versus them chasing after money. Yeah. And I imagine that that makes you more relatable too, for them. They go, okay, he's been here, he's been through the ups, he's been through the downs. And then that also gives you the ability to relate to them more personally, you know, it's interesting. Did you, um, are you familiar with when Mark Cuban, uh, had a suit against him from, I had a huge, huge deal with the SCC now he spent. Um, infinitely more money than I did you off the case. I actually reached out to his attorney, um, because I was, I was, I was certain that there was corruption that I was supposed to try and help expose. I was like, God, you got to point me to the best, the best of the best. And I reached out to them. It didn't quite work out the way that I'd hoped to, in terms of actually giving them to represent me. But it's funny that you even bring that up now, just kind of reminded me about that. I remember when he was going through that, he was on, I watched a little clip. He was on a late night talk show and he was talking about how he said, look, it varies. He had similar comments to what you said, where, you know, I know, um, this is the right thing and I didn't do this. And, and for him, he said, look, I could either. Falsely admit Gail, just to put it behind me, but he says, you know, there was way more on the line than, than just the finances. Like this is my reputation. This is all my future deals. So it's interesting to, and I've had, I know several other people that would agree with you on the topic of, um, There's potential corruption that needs to be expelled. It's not just them. I mean, I think all of our government entities, I mean, I look at the city of Atlanta. I mean, just the mayor and the governor, like at odds at each other with whether or not they're going to mandate, we should wear masks in public. Unlike in the myths of the pandemic, we actually have people in office who can't see eye to eye and are more vested in their personal or political interests. And that of the constituents that they serve. I mean, that is just a travesty, right? So what's that. You know, I want to go back a little bit. So you talk about how, uh, I believe it was when you were saying about nine 11 and, and the impact that had on you and you were out for about 18 months. So during the 18 months, like, how are you surviving? Did you have savings? Like, how are you eating? Like, what's the basics like that look like? Yeah. So we had, um, some amount of savings that were being depleted rapidly. It was just the weird set of circumstances. So, um, We had it very unique mortgage. We were fortunate to be in a very, very expensive home at the time. And when we acquired the mortgage on that property, it had a very unique deal where like, if you were severed from employment, it was like a disability rider where the bank would automatically continue making your payments for you as luck would have it, that bank went under. And when it went under, it was taken over by the FDC and the new bank that was appointed to kind of, you know, clean house black, sorry, we're not honoring any of those covenants or things that you guys had with the bank that's been under. So what I flooded, I had as a saving grace to kind of help, you know, get us through that time period. Didn't actually work out. So we went through like several months where like, you know, the mortgage was in arrears and we just kept on waiting and waiting and waiting. And, you know, being a guy in that space, it was just a huge blow to my ego. But just, you know, I went to, I went to the Lord and I prayed and I said, listen, you know, I'm trying to do, we actually even went back to the bank and said, Hey, I'm in a position now where I've started my own business. I'm actually generating some income. Can we renegotiate this mortgage and do something and they would, my God, I'm doing everything that I know to be honorable. You know, if the writing is on the wall, then. Make it such that it's obvious. And when I have a conversation with my wife, Emma, she knows that this is what we're supposed to do. And when push came to shove, I'm like, listen, this, this looks like what we have to do. We have to just file and start over. So we did. Yeah. God was gracious to resurrect our finances after that and kind of clean things out for us. Do you find anything comparable to what you went through or the circumstances at nine 11 to what's going on right now with the, with the virus? There's certainly elements of fear, um, that are, uh, that are present with that. I think there are not to get into conspiracy theories, um, but I pay attention to both sides and there's something peculiar about the virus. I mean, you can look at the reporting and then we just, yesterday we were, it was, my wife was showing me something about how Florida, which we're on vacation in Florida just a few weeks ago. But you know, Florida has been in the news for having just extraordinarily high accounts. If this is true, apparently if you go in and you got total, it. And they're giving you a treatment. They have to give you multiple injections and multiple procedures. Then it ends up being like 15 times, you have to go through whatever it is that they're doing, rather than counting that as one case case, counting that as 15 different. So there's, there's some parallel there between some of the stuff that happened around nine 11, what's going on right now. Uh, but what I say is, you know, when it's, when it's a bleeding out in the streets is. Is when unprecedented transformation takes place. That's when wealth is created, that's when opportunities are bound. And so I always like to try look at things from the other perspective and see, like, what are people missing and all of this in terms of opportunities or things that they can do different. Um, so it's, it's an exciting time. I, you know, A lot of people are going through really dark times. That's not been my story. We, as a business, as a family, we have been thriving through all of this. And it's kind of like when you drive down the street and you see like it's raining on one side and the sweat pouring rain in the other, that's sort of what it's felt like. I think it's a matter of perspective, planning, preparation, where your heart is at, where your mind says as to which side of the road you might end up in this time. Yeah. Speaking of opportunities, why don't you tell us you got a challenge coming up? What's that all about? Yes. I offer a 10 K challenge and it's it's so, um, so timely too, with everything that's going on with COBIT. So, uh, I wear three different hats, as I said earlier on business growth, strategist, personal finance experts, and, um, Success and mindset coach when it comes to the business growth side. One of the things that we love to do is give a challenge, which is simply this, you know, Geico 15 minutes with them and we'll save you 50% or more on insurance. Well, the challenge that I give to business owners is spend an hour with me and I guarantee that I'll help you uncover it. At least a $10,000 in hidden revenues and profits within your business. And if they want to take me up on that challenge, they can simply head over to meet me that SL slash IQ, Coco book, the 10 K Andrew with me, and we'll spend an hour with them and try to uncover at least 10 and times. It's several multiple of that hidden opportunities within their business that they're not seeing. I don't necessarily want you to give away what the secrets are, but like what, what can you say about how this works? Like what type of things do you look at? What do you expose to them? Like, bring us up to speed so we can get excited about it. Yeah. So, um, we have a, what we call a five step profit formula and the fibers we look at are one, what are the things that you're not currently doing that are right underneath your nose to help you generate more leads? Once you're generating more leads because that's the lifeblood of every business, right. Businesses go down. Cause they don't have enough people to see. But when you have enough people to see the next major thing is how all, what percentage of those are you converting? So how do you generate more conversions in your business when you generating more conversions, which is people going from leads or prospects to actual kinds. So somebody made a purchase with you. Well, what are some of the opportunities that you're missing? Because once you've had somebody become a client, they are one of your best assets that they've bought from you once they'll buy from you time and time and time again. So how can you generate more transactions from each individual client that you've acquired? So more leads, more conversions, more transactions. And then we look at what can we do to generate more profits for your business? And there's a whole host of different things that we look at, you know, within that I mentioned as well. And, um, so those are some of the areas that we kind of look at and again, without giving out the seat, good sauce. What we often find is there are hidden opportunities in just about every business and sometimes it just takes an external third party. Analyze and point out what seems so obvious to them. Maybe not so obvious. Oh, it is. It's just those little things that end up coming through and having big contributions to your growth. I can, it's been a pleasure. I want to thank, I want to tell you, thanks for jumping on and learning from others and sharing your story. You know, I think, I think most people, a lot of people often learn more from the trials than the one, two, three blueprint on, you know, follow these steps. So it's always good to get some real life stories like that. I'll give you the last few moments to throw out that link again, maybe spell your name for the people that are listening on audio only so they can find out more about you. Absolutely. So the name is Ike, kind of like Mike without the M so I K E last name it is  I K. Okay. W you, if you're interested in 10 K challenge, you can have an opportunity to book back directly off of my calendar. It's meet me and E T M E dot S O four slash first name, last name Ike I K E. Last name I K O K W U and then just select the 10 K challenge option there to book the appointment. And we'd love to spend some time with DNC what we're going to uncover. Awesome. Everybody. Thanks so much for depth. I'm learning from others. Thanks for having me brother. Appreciate it.

What if you helped others without expecting anything in return? That's it. No sexy spin on this. But today's guest is here to tell you how doing something so simple could change your life and your business. Please welcome Brian Sexton. 2:17 - Brian's Background 8:00 - Intentional Encouragement 13:29 - Encouragement 17:35 - Behind every Engagement. 21:16 - Established the Trust Contact Info https://twitter.com/BrianSexton13 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansextonmba/ Right. Let's go, Brian Sexton. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great. Damon. What's going on today? How come I have not see? And so the people that are listening to this and not catching the video, um, Brian's got rocking this green screen, but he went like the whole other level and he painted the whole wall. Like that's what you, yeah. I'm surprised that it was my wife's idea. So she was like, so she was like, listen, um, cause where I am. So for full disclosure where I am, I'm literally about 20 feet from a Creek in West Virginia. And so she's like, you're going to draw rats and you know, my wife just thinks all this stuff, you're gonna draw rats and swamp creatures and all this stuff. And she's like, well, let's go to home Depot and Lowe's, let's get some green paint. So I knew the kind of green paint I wanted. So behind me is painted green. And then when I need to do a virtual background for the intentional encourage podcast, I just dropped a piece of fabric. Then I went to hobby lobby and paid six bucks for it. And that, so that's that just kind of surrounds the green, but yeah, most people think, cause I went to Marshall university, Damon in Huntington, West Virginia, and. Our school colors are green and white. So people think, well, you made you're all in on the Marshall stuff. So they think that it's just an homage to my tamale Alma mater, but no, it's the cheapest way I could find to do a green screen dude. So wait, so wait, you dropped the cloth. So, so do you have, uh, two different purposes? So you have the clot and the greens, the green paint. Well, I didn't figure out about the cloth until after I'd already painted. And so I, after I it into the paint, I was like, okay, this is all right, but what am I going to do about this? What I need a professional background. And so, you know, I was like, well, I'll just drop, listen to me. And I do things and then I have to go back and fix them. And then it's like, Oh, why didn't I do that in the first place? You know, we were actually talking about that just briefly for a hit record about, you know, the things you learn when you're doing podcasts that you know, now that you wish you knew before. And all right, before we get too deep in that let's, uh, let's bring our listeners up to speed. So, Brian, what are we gonna learn from you today? Well, Damon, hopefully that the audience gets from me the power of intentional encouragement. Um, I went all in at the beginning of this year. Um, basically starting on linked in and said, I see so much expertise out there that I'm going to focus on intentional encouragement. And so, you know, guys like you and you rocket man on LinkedIn, you, you are just constantly giving people great information. Thanks. And, and I didn't want to play in that sandbox. I wanted to leave that to the, to the experts like you, but I knew what I could bring to the party. Was intentional encouragement and little, you know, nobody knew we were gonna have a global pandemic. Right. Nobody knew we were going to all be working from home and zooming. Zooming would be a, a verb in 2020. Yeah. It's like Google it. Yeah. Like Google it. Yeah. So nobody, you know, nobody figured zooming would be a big thing. In fact, I hadn't heard of zoom. I had a couple people mentioned zoom about recording podcasts, but. Again, I just decided Damon. I was going to go all in on intentional encouragement. And so hopefully today, what folks will get from me is the power of intentional encouragement, how it spreads like wildfire and, and what, what intentional encouragement can do to a whole tribe of people that buy into it. All right. Before we go deeper into that, uh, Brian, what are you not so good at? Well, apparently painting your greens. You know what? I'm not good at. Damon is figuring out. You know, in, I'll give you a good example. So when I started my podcast, I was buying compressor mikes and I bought a mixer and I bought it all the way to the one. And yeah, and what I didn't realize was that the compressor might had to have Phantom power. And so then I had to go buy a mixer. What I suck at is figuring out upfront what I really need to get the job done. What I really needed was a nice Yeti mic. Like you've got in a $30 webcam that I finally had that V8 moment with God, this is what, this is what I needed. So I suck it kind of figuring it out. But once I figured it out, Then I try to, to be prepared the other way. So yeah, that's kind of what I eat now. If my wife were on the podcast with his name and she would have thing that I saw it yet. Okay. But since it's just me and you, man, that that's, that's the first thing that comes to the top of my mind. Okay. Well, we'll get her on next week. This will be part two. All right. Going to happen. Tell her about it, man. You know, you know, what's funny about you talking about how you didn't know what to do was is, um, my, my older boy, he has, one of his friends has a little birthday get together to just slips across the street this weekend. And it was his mom when the pandemic started. Um, so I, I was, you know, already on zoom and most, all of my team is remote. And so it's just been a way of life for me. And so when everything happened, I was hooking my kids up with their friends and saying, Hey, do you guys want to zoom each other? Like, you know, the first couple of weeks when no one, no, no one still knows what we're doing. But like the first couple of weeks, we really didn't know what we're doing. And so it was like total isolation. And so I knew the importance of, uh, my kids having that interaction. So I said, Hey, let's, I'm gonna message your friends, parents and see if you can get on zoom. And so it was funny in our, in our neighborhood, we have Facebook group. And so I, I. I got on there and tagged like three or four of the neighborhood's parents. And I said, Hey, my kid wants to know if you and you and you, if your kids want to get on zoom. And so then, you know, they did that zoom thing and then three or four weeks later, the one parent comes back to that post and she's like, Okay, full disclosure. I had no idea what zoom was and I'm just barely figuring it out. And I just came, I'm coming back to this post to say, yeah, my kid now wants to get on zoom and well, here in West Virginia people thought zoom was just another word for going fast, you know? I'm to zoomed down the interstate. Yeah. So we were just kind of caught off guard to me, you know? Yeah. So that's how West Virginia is deal with a pandemic. You, you never tell you never, you never introduced new words to a hillbilly. It'll just. It will just go over their head. They get lost in the weeds. Joking. When we were communicating, before we jumped on an email and I said, I have a friend that's in West Virginia, and you were mentioning something about your internet. I said, yeah, my friend's internet. She says, it runs on hamsters. And you're like, well, she's not wrong. No. And, and Damon, we got to say in here, we've got a saying here in the Southern part of the state, they say that that they're hanging on like a hair in a biscuit. And I am stunned that my internet is hanging on like a heritage. Never heard that. Yeah. So that's horrible. I had neither. I had neither, well, a few years ago I was working down in Southern West Virginia. And one of the guys I worked with, he said, uh, he said it and no joke. This is the way he talked. He said, Hey, Brian, how are you doing this morning? That's me. I'm doing good. And he goes, I said, how are you doing? He's a man hanging on like a hair to be skew. Did you just sit there? Oh, I was still, I was dumbstruck, man. I was dumb struggle. Like how do you respond to that? Yeah. All right. So let's talk about intentional encouragement. I want to give you the opportunity to kind of differentiate because, um, in, in your intro, I don't think you, uh, segmented where you, I don't think you defined the difference between when you were saying. You know, I didn't want to play in that sandbox, but I wanted to bring this to the table. So if you kind of differentiate between, um, you know, maybe what got you inspired to bring the intentional encouragement versus what actually is what intentional courage actually is. So what actual, so what intention virtual encouragement actually is Damon is, is being, um, specific. About giving someone else something that will help them. Okay. And I'll use this as an example. I text people a lot and I'll say, Hey, I just, I was just thinking about you today and I'll give them something specifically like, Hey, don't be afraid to take the next step or, Hey, listen, I'm praying for you. And I feel like this is what. You know what I want to say to you? Intentional encouragement is specifically designed for that other person to help that other person, because what happens with encouragement, Damon is it triggers something in our minds because humans run on hope. Zig Ziglar says encouragement is the fuel. That powers hope. Hmm. And so what encouragement does is when somebody is walking through something and I may not know that somebody is dealing with something, right. And so, but if I can just share something specific and say, Hey man, you've got this, you're built to do this. Knowing that person like I do, then that person may be going, man, you know, you're right. And all of a sudden it starts to unlock some things in the mind that can help them go. Okay. You know, maybe today, maybe they hadn't thought about taking that next step today, but maybe that piece of intentional encouragement specifically gives them the impetus to go ahead and say, okay man, today's the day. And so that's why I wanted to be intentional about it, because again, I saw a lot of people still facing challenges and I thought I can help. I can help there because here's the thing today. And I'll say this real quick. Is that when you are walking through the midst of something unknown, when you're trying to figure things out, the last thing that you need to add to something like that is expertise, because then expertise gets lost in the process of the mind expertise kind of gets lost in all the other things you're trying to process in making that decision and stepping in that direction. Encouragement does the other. Encouragement motivates the feelings. So encouragement speaks directly to the, to the, to the soul and the spirit and it bypasses the mind. And a lot of times, if you can get to someone's spirit and you can get into their soul, then it unlocks things that go to the mind. And then all of a sudden you've got, you've got that person's attention. You know why I love this. So, um, I'm over here grabbing my phone because. I just met up with a friend yesterday and, um, I sent him this message. So he just started, he left. I'm not going to say his name, but he listens. Um, and so I went and met him yesterday for coffee. Cause we had, I had started this post, like, you know, two months before the pandemic happened and I said, Hey, I want to start making, um, Rounds of connecting with people like in person, because just you and I engaging before we hit record, like, I like conversation. I genuinely like me to networking with people with, with no, ultimately, you know, no other conditions behind it. Like, you know, other people get together if there's the potential for business. And I get that, there's no hate against that. Right, but I'm totally cool with the wild card. Like some of the best things I've ever come in have come to me in life. Or I went in there with no intentions, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So I do this post and I say, Hey guys, I want to start meeting up like every other Friday with just like one person. So, you know, drop a comment if you want to, if you want to get on this list and I'll go meet up with somebody every other week coronavirus happens, you know? So that falls through, but. This one friend keeps following up. When am I going to have meet up? When am I going to meet up? And so I've known him for a, and so I said, you know, I'm call me now if you want to meet up. So anyways, he tells me about all these cool things he's doing. And how he went through, um, you know, he's launching this new product and the ups and downs of business and this and that. And at the end of it, what he talked about was, um, how he finally realized that I can't, he he's been following, you know, some influencer and through that info influencer finally realized he's in control of his life. And so he goes, you know, I finally realized that there's. All these excuses. And I went through every one, my dog died, the coronavirus hit this, this and this. And then I finally realized, like, it doesn't matter. Like I can still have forward momentum and do my own thing. So anyways, I send them, I send them this message after we leave. And I said, super proud of you. The last topic about you realizing you're in control of your life made my day. And so that, and I'm curious if you're the same way, but one of the things that frustrates me the most about. Trying to help other people is, is that little gap of them realizing that they can take ownership. And so in the conversation I had with my friend, Sometimes it's frustrating for me because I'm like your problems right there. Like you see it, it's like right here. Can you just do that? Yeah. Can you do that? But the thing's right there. Can you just do the thing? Yeah. And so I like it. Yeah. Those, those little nudges and I'm actually glad you put a word to it, a phrase to it. Um, because now I feel like that will help me go. Okay. Yeah. It's in touch with encouragement and then, and then that'll help me. Proceed better with intentional encouragement. So I rambled about a bunch of things. Take it where you want w what you said there was brilliant. And, and here's the thing. Don't discount what you've done in the process too, because a lot of people, it can be sexy to say, Oh, man, this influencer, um, showed me something and I saw the light. I had a V8 moment. Right. But. Don't discount what you've done in the process as well to Daymond because you might've been here's it. Here's what a lot of people miss about encouragement, intentional encouragement. You're going to plant way more seeds than you take in and harvest and using the, the farming kind of thing. And the reason I say that is. Just literally 20 feet away from where I'm sitting by walk out the door about, about 20 feet away from where the door is here. There used to be a garden there. My wife's 98 year old grandfather. He's still alive, but he planted gardens till he was about 92 or 93 years old. And he used it a section of our property to do it. I saw him work and work and work and work every day he was doing something. When he planted his garden every day, it was doing something. He put way more work into the garden than what he got out of it. But when he got something out of it, he was satisfied. Yeah. Because you reached something. And what I want to say is this is don't give intentional encouragement with the expectation of immediate gratification coming back. It doesn't always happen that way for sure. But when it does happen, It's incredible because you you've planted those seeds. You watered, you've done those things. And when it finally comes back to you, man, it's powerful. And then it's tangible. You can learn, right. You can see it, right. Just like you were talking about. You can see it right in front of you. And so that's the thing that you have to keep in mind is if you decide to go all in on intentional encouragement, understand you're going to do a lot more giving than receiving and, and Damon. That's why a lot of people don't like to do intentional encouragement because there's, our society is instant gratification, right? I mean, if we want something, we go get it. You know, Amazon has spoiled everybody because you can place an Amazon order today. And if you're a prime member, most of the time, depending on where you live, you're going to get it that day. And so intentional encouragement takes time sometimes to get it back. But when you see it, man, it's powerful and it, and it's like, it's like fuel. Like I just talked about with Zig Ziglar quote it's it fuels you and you go, I got to do this more and do this more. And so that's what I see from you, man. You, you really saw that. It's like, man, I got to do this more. Yeah, I don't, I don't take it as discouragement. Um, when I say that it's frustrating, um, it doesn't, it doesn't delay the process, but it is something that I, excuse me, that I observed. And that's kind of like along the lines of what I wanted to ask you next is, is I'm okay with the, for myself, I'm okay. With delayed gratification. And then that's why I like encouraging others because as we kind of, the metaphor is. I see my friends and family and, you know, whatever associates the problem right here. And I'm like, here's the thing, do the thing. And I'm okay with them not doing the thing, because I know it has to click for them too, but it doesn't mean for me, at least it's any less frustrating. So. I S I power through that, but I'm curious, you being somebody else that's on the same page about encouraging other people, whether you, you beat that frustration or not. Then the next thing I wanted to ask the same lines to see if you observed the same thing for me is do some people find it weird that you do this? Because I noticed that I'll go out to people and I'll just send them a message or all this. No, I don't want to, I don't have a, I don't have an agenda. I just. Can we just talk, you know, and, and do you run into that awkwardness sometimes because people are, are so, uh, like you talked about society and we're so rewired nowadays that everyone thinks that there's an agenda behind every engagement. So not to name drop, but, but, um, the reason I mentioned exemplary is I, I was, I I've been in sales and customer engagement for 25 years. And so Zig was a sales hero of mine about. A year ago, a little over a year ago. Um, I got the chance to talk to his son, um, and. What was cool for me. And I think I've got a video issue here. Give me just a quick second. We use audio. Okay. Um, but, but with Tom, um, the last conversation I had was when he was on the intentional encourage your podcast. I said to him, I said, Tom, can I, do you mind giving me your cell phone number? I said, because I just figured like you're in the business of encouragement, but who's encouraging you. Hmm. And he goes, man, no, not at all. Here you go. And that, that I try to be very sensitive Daymond because it does weird. Some people out, he can weird somebody out. If you say to them, Hey, do you mind us changing cell phone numbers? And I can reach out to you and provide you some intentional encouragement. And, you know, you just, what I say to to people is this is just be up front and say, this is why I want to, with your permission, do this. And then it kind of removes the weird, then they understand your intention behind being intentional. So, you know, I've tried to just say, this is what I want to do with your permission. And if somebody says, no, I'm not really comfortable with that. Okay. I'm totally cool with it because again, You don't want to try to encourage somebody that, that is weirded out by it because you're just going to, it's going to be spitting into the wind. Right. And so that's how I kind of handle that situation. I even get that on LinkedIn, where you and I connected is a lot of times when I engage with somebody like in my communications with networking with somebody I want. I want them in my network and exposed to my content and the things that I do. I don't, I want to showcase what I do instead of just messaging by my thing, or, you know, Hey, take this action, sign up for my funnel. And so in my messages, when I connect with somebody, I flat out say that it's totally the opposite of what most people do or are taught to do. And I say, Hey, this is, this is my, you know, I'm a father, I'm a husband. Um, here's my background. This is the company that I run. And I, I quite literally say, that's a wrap. Like I'm not going to message you anymore. And I get so much positive reinforcement from that on a daily basis, I get at least one or two of the replies, uh, people replying back from the engagement that I send out that says that was the best intro ever, or, you know, thanks for not pitching me something. And I, and I live by it. I don't pitch them unless they respond to me. That is the last message that I'm going to send them. But even then, so some people listening, saying, well, what's the point. Because you build trust and relationship with them because you didn't sell them. You had the opportunity, as you said to plant seeds, they get exposed to your personality. You know, what you offer, what your expertise is. And then they come around when the time is right. And best of all. They now, you know, quote unquote know you because they've been exposed to that content. They've built a relationship with you and whether it becomes a, the next step is some sort of personal engagement or a business engagement, like all the cells walls come down because they, they already have established that trust with you. And then I don't know. I, I just, uh, I think that there's a lot of people understand this, but given the current situation in the world, I think that there's, um, it's getting more attention as it should. Well, I want to give you some mad props too, because you were, I noticed when, when this thing started, you did a post on LinkedIn. The you didn't have to do, but you said, Hey, if you're a podcast, connect with me, let me, let me, let me help you. Let me give you something. And I applaud you for doing that because a lot of people don't want to give something unless they can give something back. And I'm not talking about you specifically. I'm just saying for me, that impressed the daylights out of me about you. And it showed me the kind of person that you were, because I think you're intentional about helping as many people as you can try to get better. At their business and things like that. And it just speaks to, to your personality and your character, Damon, that you're a giver. I've never seen people that are givers by nature, that they didn't receive way more back than what they gave. And so that that's really what, and thank you for doing that, man. We probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Had you not been bold enough to, to say, let me help some of you that, that want help. I commend you for that. And, and I think if, if we're more intentional about doing that with encouragement and other things that we have, it's going to come back to us in spades, it's really just going to come flooding back to us. And now is the greatest time to do that. Damon, because everybody needs something through this pandemic. And it's the brotherhood of man, right? We can, we can help each other, you know, you're 2,500 miles away from me. But we can help each other and we can make each other better and lift each other up through this. Unusual time in our country's history. Yeah. Uh, I have, um, my wife's nephew, I've been mentoring him a little bit and, and I've been really kind of busting them up lately about telling them about the opportunities that he's missing right now, because you know, you, and I understand it from an, from a business and a non-business perspective. He's, he's young, he's 19. And so. For him, it's all all about like his starting his entrepreneurial journey. So with him, I've been focusing on like, Hey, you know, there's all this opportunity. Here's my position. You, as the young money hungry, you know, 19 year old, I'm going to satisfy that desire to the same seven turns 20 in two weeks. I totally get it. Yeah. And I've been telling them, I'm like, dude, I, you know, I'm out here, you see these relationships I'm establishing. I'm going to play. I'm going to cater to your desire for money and, and explain it in those terms like you are missing out right now. So yes, there is understandably businesses and people that are being negatively impacted, but there is so much opportunity out there because all those people that need to stretch their dollar further. They want to give it to somebody that they know has genuinely their best interests at heart, or at least it's going to give it their all to protect that dollar. And you there's so many options and I've talked on other podcasts about how get in now and don't discount your price, or, you know, your whatever, don't, don't theoretically discount it. You like come to the table and say, Hey. I want to establish a relationship with you. And even, even the super, super I told the super young kids. I said, if you're mowing lawns for, if the, if the competitive rate in your neighborhood is 30 bucks, go mow lawns for 20 bucks, don't set your expectations. That it's always going to be 20 bucks. Let them know like, Hey, I want an opportunity to, just to prove that I can mow lawns better. So for five times I'm going to do it for 20 bucks. And then after that, you can go to 30 bucks, but. You go in there and you prove your worth, that, that person's never going to go to another lawnmower again, and you can take that same concept and apply it to, you know, the listeners that are web designers, the listeners that are insurance agents, listeners that are plumbers, whatever your expertise is. If you can come in there and say, Hey, you know, I'll I'll take it. I'll take a chance on you. You take a chance on me. You're going to establish a relationship that you couldn't create. Otherwise, man, I'm glad you said that because you're, you're tapping into my sales brain for just a minute here. So, so here's the reason why customers view compelled to look at other options. And I love that that lesson you gave your, your 19 year old nephew, it's powerful and it's right on the money. Because when customers don't feel like that, the person they're doing business with Damon is providing the value. Then they're going to search the marketplace for somebody that will. And so sometimes you have to go, listen, I know I'm an unknown commodity to you, but I'm telling you, if you give me an opportunity and then you just do a bang up job, you do the job that, that you, you know, you under promise and you over-deliver, you're going to go so far. Above your competition is not going to be funny and you're right. Mow. And those launch for 20 bucks, that person might say, well, crap, I was paying 35 or 40 in this kid's doing twice. The job that I was paying for now, all of a sudden, the intrinsic value. In the mind of that customer just went through the roof and now they're happy to pay 25 or 30 cause guess what? You're, they're getting a better quality and they're saving money and they're willing to come up a little bit and they'll go, man, you're really discounting your price. I'm, I'm happy to pay more for what you do. Just be sure that when you do it, you do it well, and you do it consistently continue continuing to over deliver that value. Yeah, consistency is huge to it. What, so what got you into this whole world? What were you doing before this? Well, it's what I'm, it's what I'm still doing. So I, you know, uh, the work from home thing. Um, so being in the pharmaceutical industry, um, obviously we can't go out in, um, call our offices and things like that. And so it's given me time to be able to podcast. I always wanted a podcast. Amen. Um, I've done for the last 18 years. Um, part-time, I've done live radio. And so, uh, I had people in my circle that said, Hey, you should do, you should podcast. You should podcast. And I'm a guy that for me, I want to wait for the right time to do something. And so when this hit, I was, I was already in preparation. Anyway, I kind of put a plan together, had some really good friends of mine that are doing podcasts that. That were kind of in my year that I pick their brain and then the pandemic kits is like, okay, well, I guess I'm, I'm going all in on this thing. And so I've been able to use the time, you know, I get my work done and then I podcast and, and I, you know, that's how I balance it. Now, when I go back out, um, it's going to be a little challenging, but, but you know, so far we've recorded. Well, man, we've probably recorded 50 episodes and I've released, um, with bonus episodes. Um, probably close to 40 episodes. And so, um, it's good. It's it, it really gets into where, what I've been doing for the last 18 years part time. Um, but it's different because instead of doing the interviews, you know, when you do live radio, my, and I do fill in work for a friend of mine has morning talk show. When I filled in for him about three weeks ago, I did interviews. So I would do, you know, send me your talking points and I would do it. And I'm fine with that. But the intentional encourage your podcast is designed to be an organic conversation that I don't want to interview. I would rather have a conversation and I'll tell you what it's done for me, Damon. I really been able to dive deep and really pull incredible stories out of people that they've told me afterwards. They're like, man, I didn't anticipate telling this, but it felt like the right time to tell it. Yeah. And so that's been the, that's been the aha moment for me in this. And I'll tell you this, man, I'm not really, a lot of people say, well, you can build your audience this way or that way for me, man, I'm focused on one. If one person listens to the intentional encourage your podcast and they get something from it, I'm golden because I know that the growth will calm. As people tap into this. And that's what I say, but that's what I was telling you earlier. Damon, in the, when we started recording is, um, that's, that's my goal is to intentionally encourage as many, as many people as I can trying to bring something unique to the table. And not trying to, to have a podcast about sports and I love sports. You can see behind me. Yeah. You and I are talking over a video autograph picture of coach K behind me, Mike Shashefski, uh, I'm a, I'm a huge reds and Bengals fan. I I'm a, I'm a big time sports fan. I can talk sports and I have. But I wanted to do something that was universe, so that could help people, um, 'cause stories, people connect to stories in fucking connect, one person to somebody else through a powerful story. Job done. Mission accomplished. Yeah, I got, I got two comments on that and then we'll, we'll get closer to wrapping up. Um, but you're totally right there. I had, um, the last guest, uh, recently I recorded with, um, he get, he got off and he's like, dude, I saw half of those topics I never even talked about before. And I would've never known because he was all about it and he was, you know, into it and yeah, we had a great conversation, but in that kind of leads me to my second point is I have, um, another guest that's pending and we got on the phone and they said, Well, what do you get out of this? And I said, I don't have an angle. You know, they, they were, they were wondering like what the pitch was or what, the, whatever it was. And I'm like, is it just not having a conversation? Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. I don't mean to rub that. I'm glad you brought that up because I have a similar process. And so, you know, I'll have people to reach out to me. And I had somebody reach out to me the other day and said, you know, I was searching podcast, came across yours and I said, I want to have a conversation with the person you're trying to get on my podcast because. Every podcast. I want it to feel like people are in the, in the room with my guest and I, and you're, and you're coming on real soon too. And I want to have that same feeling when somebody listens to that. I want them to think that they're in the room with the two of us as we're talking and they're observing that conversation. And so I do I get on the phone with somebody or I'll zoom. With somebody to get that feel of how they are so that I know this is how I need to bring the conversation to the audience. And so, I mean, I commend you for doing that. That is so neat because so many people are trying to get on as many podcasts as they can. And it's like, okay, w what, what are they bringing to my audience? And, and, you know, I was intentional about praying this morning because I wanted to bring something to your audience, man, that. That helps your, you know, your, your audience comes you Damon, because they're looking for that, that content that you uniquely provide. And so as a guest, I feel that pressure to just continue to deliver that for you and your audience. So when they listen to that episode, they go, yeah, that totally aligns with what Damon's all about. Yeah, these are always the best conversations. The one you get, the ones you get the feedback with the ones that you and I and the guests enjoy the mouse. So I appreciate you coming on and just having a conversation. Yeah, you got to sweep the med. It keeps the voice lubricated it's hot tea. Listen, man. It's hot tea. It's coffee. There's some honey there and there's some Stevia that, so, I mean, that's, that's my, uh, that's my go-to drink when I'm doing podcasts or what I'm, I'm talking on the radio. I got to have some hot tea next to me. Cause it, it, it keeps the, it keeps the vocal chords lubricated. I don't mean to one up you, but. I love it, dude. You're my hero, man. So this is my hero. You can't see, my wife talked me into buying this gallon jug that's twice as big as my head. Yeah. You have to have that thing home delivered. Isn't that what she does? I mean, It's it's like one of those gallon jugs you see in an office, like the water pool? No, it's not that big. It's got a portable water cooler right there. I just slipped a lot. I just got a little hamster tube right here to the portable water cooler. That's like a 20 gallon. I think your wife's side, you guys up for a contract. And she was just. Telling you to casual way, like this is, this is what's about to go down is not that big. No, it's Hey, listen, when you, when you talk like you, do, you do a ton of podcast a week, so do I, you have to do something that protects your voice because you know, I will talk between podcasts and phone calls and things like that. I'll probably talk 25 hours a week easy. And so, you know, you, you have to. Really get those things to help your voice. Um, I had voices use, I'll share this with you. So I was launching the podcast back in March and I was starting to have some voices use and I'd never had voice issues. Um, maybe one other time and I had some acid reflux issues and that was like 12 years ago. I had never really had voices use and I was seriously concerned that I wasn't going to be able to deliver what I had started out to deliver. And, and it was, it was pretty bad. Um, thank, thank God that, that, that it recovered. But I'm very intentional about making sure that I drink that tea. Cause it, it does, it helps my boys. It stimulates it. And so, you know, you just kind of wonder, it's like, man, I'm launching this podcast now all of a sudden I've got voices used, this is not good for a podcast or, and so yeah. You, you do those things, but again, man, we powered through it and got a better microphone. So that helped. And so, you know, and, and, and Damon's rock and such a cool mic. I've got Mike in man. He was the coolest Mick. And so I've got. So forgive me, man. I've got a little bit of Mike envy here, so, Oh my gosh. All right. Well, I appreciate them. I can be, I feel like I missed an opportunity to make a joke about Brian, Brian being a professional lube expert, but so I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna leave. I'm gonna leave it up. Well, you need to make that on. When you come on the intentional encourager podcast, you just need to file the thing away and just save it and drop it there. So, you know, okay. Be prepared. So. I, I have had to, to, uh, to bleep out F bombs and things like that. So again, I'm ready for anything. So, you know, it's all good. I kinda, I try to keep the intentional encourager podcast, family friendly. Now I only, now I have room only to disappoint. I think so, man, I think you're going to bring it strong, but, uh, yeah. But yeah, th th this is, this has been great conversation. And, uh, again, thank you for what you're doing for your community. Um, I have learned from you in watching your, your post on LinkedIn, please, man, follow this guy. If you're not following Damon burden, what are you doing? You need to be following this guy cause he's dropped and you just you're drop knowledge, man. I learned something from every post that you do. So thank you, man. People like me are benefiting from what people like you are doing. I appreciate it. Like you said, it kind kinda comes around at random times when you get that reinforcement that makes it all worth it. So we're going to leave it at that. Brian Sexton. I want to give you the last few moments to tell people how they can find out more about you. Yeah. So, uh, the intentional encourage your podcast is on all the podcasts platforms. iHeartMedia, Google play Spotify. I don't think we're on Pandora, but no. Oh, well we've got everything else covered. Um, but uh, you can find me on LinkedIn at Brian Sexton MBA, and then when you. Typed in, in search bar, the, you know, comes up in my. Profile headline is the intentional encourager. Uh, I'm on Twitter at Sexton, Brian 13, the podcast at intentional ENC one is on Twitter. Uh, Facebook just type in Brian Sexton and a pop-up the intentional encouragers. So I don't do Snapchat and I don't do Instagram because I'm not 20 I'm 48. And so I leave that to my 20 year old son to maybe me he'll help dad out and get us an Instagram or something. I say this, I say the same thing about Tik TOK. Yeah. I don't do tick. I like take tax, but I don't like, I don't do tick tock. That was the like orange. That was the worst joke ever. That was so worst that man, it is what it is, dude. I lose it. I know my own limitations. And then I've got my son, my son came to me. I get, I get to tell you this really quick. My son came to me one day. He said, dad, I'm going to start a podcast. And his name is Bryce. I said, Yar Bryce. And see, he said, yeah, he said, it's the unintentional discourage your podcast to have a counterbalance to what you're doing. Uh, Mike, my kid, man. I tell you what your, your boys, man, you are, you are in for it. My man is my kid, my kid. Yeah. My kid I'm like as much as I thought, like, okay, he's got his no. He just comes up with stuff, man. And I told my wife, one day, I said, listen, looked her right in the eye, Damon. I said, listen, as long as he's alive, I'll never die. Because he looks like me and, and, and, and things like that. So, yeah, man, your day's coming and, uh, I'm going to get the grade and the beard, I already got the gray. I already got the all zoom. Yeah. They do an outstanding job of hide my man. I got to know what your product, my mic is right here. No doubt. But listen, I want to connect with as many people as I can send me a message, you know, um, again, I just want to. Do what I can to help so many people out there professionally and personally that are kind of walking this road, like we're doing man, you know, we're all just kind of feeling our way through it, but. Damon brother, this has been so good, man. I am so honored to be a part of your podcast and thank you for the time. And, uh, looking forward to, by the way, Daymond Burton is going to be on an intentional encourage your podcast. So you got to check that one out too. So we got Tom Ziglar, we've got Dale Dupree, we've got our Robertson from duck dynasty. We've got a whole host of people that, you know, Christian Sherry, a lot of LinkedIn influencers, my friends that have come on the podcast and. I'd be honored if you check it out, um, intentional, encourage your podcast.podbean.com. So that's another way to get to it. But man, thank you for the time. I, my honor, and my privilege to be here today. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate your time, Brian, and you and I will chat soon. Thanks so much.

Today's guest is a super-connector. What's that mean? He, self-admittedly, sucks at nearly everything... except remembering others' talents and connecting them with those that needed those skills. Having been new to entrepreneurism just 3.5 years ago, he now runs a successful global PR company. Listen to find out how he did it. Please welcome Justin Breen. 0:40 - Justin Breen's Background 2:16 - Connecting on a Global Level 10:06 - Secrets of Success 13:22 - Me and my wife 16:05 - Scaling with other People Contact Info https://www.brepicllc.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbreen1   Justin Breen, welcome to learning from others. How are you, sir? Dude, you're the man I'm pumped for this man. Big time. And funny, we've been on a world. We've been on a whirlwind romance. Justin, we've only known each other for a couple of back and forth. So it's been fun. I mean, it's a high-level bromance, highest level, 30 minutes you can imagine. And it's just going to continue to bromance. It's the bromance will exponentially Broman. Well, you, and I know why we love each other, but why do the listeners love you? What is your background?   What are we gonna learn from you today? Sure. Um, so in terms of, uh, connecting people on a global level and getting people in mainstream media and on podcasts at the highest level, there are very few people in the world that are better at it than I am. And I just stay in my zone of genius. And, uh, I'll tell you what, I'm not good at later, but I just, a hundred percent of my day is in my zone of genius.   None of this has worked for me at all. A lot of fun. Yeah, I want to ask you about that, but you, you already touched on what was coming. Next is question number two is what are you not so good at? So one of the best people in the world that connected people on a global level and getting people in news at the highest level, really, really good dad, average above average husband, useless to society, besides that things that a child could do, like make a puzzle or, you know, build something very easily.   Can't do it. Can't do it. Well, you being a good dad. I wouldn't say you're worthless to society because I'm sure that's a trickle down effect in some capacity. Yeah. So as long as my kids don't ask me to like, do a puzzle with them or, Hey, can you build this? Would they knew. I asked mommy, what was your kids?   What would your kids say dad does? Yeah, so, um, my eight year old's already started his first business and my six year old wants to be a Navy seal. So this isn't like typical family. Um, they would say that, uh, their dad, uh, Works with some of the most brilliant people on the planet. Well, let's dig into dig in deeper to that because people that aren't familiar with you, that's going to be a pretty broad statement.   So can you say more on what you mean connecting on a global level? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so I'm flying the plane. Uh, most people are landing the plane, I'm flying the plane. Um, but, uh, No, I'm in three of the top entrepreneurial groups in the world. One is strategic coach, the others entrepreneurs organization.   Then just trying to abundance three 60 with, uh, you know, Dr. Peter Diamandis started that, uh, you know, people like Elon Musk are in it. And so it's the most brilliant people on the planet. And so, yeah. I have access to the top minds access to the most innovative technology access. So the top networks in the world.   And so I just hang out with people like that all the time. And then when you do that, you just become, you just become one of those people, you rise with the tide. And so I can talk to someone in Australia, someone in Melbourne or Sydney, or. Adelaide or whatever, whatever. And then they'll say something random and I'll be like, Oh, I know someone in Utah that thinks like that.   And then I'll just connect them. We closed it. It'd be like, how'd, you know how to do that? We're doing business together. We're best friends or we're partners or referral buddies, whatever. And they're like, how do you know how to do that? Yeah. I don't know snide to do it. So it's just what I know how to do.   And so a by-product of that. By-product is constantly getting intros to companies around the world that want to hire my firm. No sales, no, no funnels, no, no, no scrape value for people they create value for you, create value, create value. Well, how does that translate to Justin paying his bills? Yeah. So thank you.   They, uh, you know, companies invest in my company to, um, get a news at the highest level. So they pay, they invest in, uh, my company's ability to. Tell very high level newsworthy stories and then get connected to the right mainstream media or podcast host. So you're like a mega Rolodex. Yeah. That's one of the best questions anyone asked me ever has ever asked me because my brain is essentially a supercomputer of geniuses.   So I have a PR firm, but, um, what, well, my company really is, it's just this giant incubator geniuses around the world and we're constantly introducing each other. So my 10 X thing in life. One, what I've learned is my brain has endless capacity to store that type of knowledge. I don't know how I don't question it.   I know just don't question. It just don't ask me to build anything, but, uh, I, it's just an endless, endless, endless CRS. I'm like, I don't have a CRM. I don't write anything down. It's just my brain's a CRM of geniuses and it just keeps growing every single day. All right, Justin, I'm the random listener that isn't Damon and doesn't know you.   You're arrogant. Justin, what do you say to that? Yep. Yep. So people with the wrong mindset, that's what they say. People with the right mindset, understand that that's not arrogance at all. It's actually extreme confidence. So arrogant people think they're great at everything. I'm actually terrible at almost everything terrible at almost everything.   What's one thing that you're terrible at that you enjoy and wish you weren't so terrible at   usually I'm not stumped, but I don't have to think of it now. I don't do anything that I'm terrible at. I don't do anything that I'm not good at it. And I don't like to do, um, I used to be a much faster runner. I still run six days a week outside, no matter the weather conditions. So it gets to be negative 20 years sometimes.   And blizzards, I guess I'm pretty terrible runner now, but I still like doing it. Um, why do you like running? Yeah, so I run a, I've been running six days a week. No matter the weather conditions outside for 15 years, at least. So. Usually before the sun comes up. So that can be pretty dangerous here, black ice or skunks or whatever.   Um, you know, both, both, they're both dangerous, but, um, is it her physical benefit or do you do it for like mental clarity? Um, most of the really good ideas I've had with my company since I started in the last three and a half years has been during those runs are solidifying things. And then, uh, I listened to 'em.   He used to listen to a lot of music, concerts and stuff, um, live concerts. And then I, now I listened to a lot of, uh, like podcasts like this, or, um, things in strategic coach, one of the entrepreneurial groups I'm in Dan, Sullivan's the co-founder, he's my hero. And, uh, so I listened to a lot of his podcast and it's a great way to great way to start the day, get motivated in the right way.   And then, and then just breathe. You remind me of, uh, uh, your own version of a savant. Are you a savant, Justin? Yeah. Some people think I'm an idiot savant. Um, but, uh, I'm a, I'm a polymath that's on my, uh, LinkedIn and Facebook and, uh, so I'm just kind of know. Things about things, but explain, define that. What is that?   It's just like someone who's wise in a lot of different things. Um, and I guess, you know, the thing that I, again, I, I don't, I stopped questioning my brain, uh, in terms of how it works. I just focused on what works and what I like to do. And then I just keep doubling down on that and those things. And again, I worked zero hours every week.   None of this has worked for me at all. It's just a lot of fun. Um, byproduct is companies insanely profitable and will continue to be that way because you know what I've learned three and a half years is you plant seeds was these types of people. These things happen. Talk to these type of people. These things happen partner with these types of people.   This is the result. And so the seeds that have been planted in 2020, and even since COVID, it'll be amazing, but fruit is what bear fruit bears from that because, uh, you know, the seeds I planted. Three years ago, those are starting to bear fruit now. And the people three years ago, it was just a different, different type of person than it is now, just because a lot of the groups I'm in.   So those seeds planted will lead to what's 2020 been like for you. Cause, uh, understandably, a lot of listeners they've had downsides, um, you know, you and I have chatted. Uh, I'm one of the fortunate ones that have been on the upside, but what about you? Yeah. Thank you for asking that. So, um, When COVID started, I'm like, Oh, maybe this will destroy my company, entrepreneur life, whatever you can handle.   Bankruptcy, depression, anxiety, dice level, or traumatic experiences as a child or younger. You're an adult. Don't become an entrepreneur because I have not met one. I haven't met one yet. Who hasn't overcome at least one of those four things most are well over one, but at least one. So on. When, uh, COVID started, I'm like, Oh, maybe it'll destroy my business.   And, uh, his background, my wife's a pediatrician. I have a lot of clients in healthcare. I've had a client that almost died from COVID. So I'm very empathetic, very empathetic. My wife's in there front lines. Um, so because I only partnered with visionary investment, abundance mindset, people, again, visionary, abundance, investment mindset.   People it's been the opposite of destroying my company since COVID, it's actually exploded since then, because those people. There's no cost scarcity. There's no panic. They're just figuring it out. Invest pivot and invest, pivot and invest. So are you talking about how you don't question your brain and it just works the way it does.   So is it awkward at when somebody comes to you and says, Hey, guess when you've had success? What's the secret is the answer basically. I dunno, a kid. No. So it's the opposite answer to that. So here's the, here's the, that's a really good question because the question I get is, are like, so. So, how did you do this?   How did, uh, like, so I started my business three and a half years ago. Didn't know what an entrepreneur was. Didn't know, an LLC was didn't know you had to pay taxes four times a year. Didn't know what a w nine was. I still don't know what S-corp stands for. All that stuff. Just landing the plane garbage.   Who cares mean that's just meaningless. It's just flight. That's landing the plane. So, so people like, how did you, that's what I wrote my book about. It's like, how did I do this? So, but, so it's mindset, one mindset, one network, one a. And then everything else is a byproduct of that. So mindset one. That's why I'm so intentional with how I talk, because it's a magnet for attracting people with visionary, abundance, investment mindsets, and those people are either running high six figure to 10 figure businesses, see their families whenever they want to and do what they like to do and what they're good at, or they will be one of those people they're not there yet, but they will because they have that mindset.   So it eliminates all the noise and nonsense and just, it just eliminates that. And then those people, because they have that mindset, they're attracted to other people with that mindset. And then they just introduced me to more people like that. So there's no sales or fun. None of that. There's no funnel.   It's just tray value people with the right people. And then they create value for me. It's very simple. I the story I'm about to tell, I, I told when you and I met with Steven and I'll probably tell every audience that you and I are on together as it's funny. So when Justin and I first met, he says, um, kind of like what you touched on entrepreneurs.   Perform highly have this characteristic and this characteristic and this characteristic. And then, and then one of the other things that he said was, and interestingly enough, most of their, their spouses, if it's a male entrepreneur, their wife is, did you say teacher and nurse teacher, nurse pediatrician, social worker, something normal kind of rules, order meetings.   All of that. So he goes still, he goes, what about your wife, Damon? And I said, ah, you know, she stays home and he sits there for a second. And then he goes, what would she do? I'm like, damn it. A nurse. So there's two again, because, so my brain is a pattern of simplify a brain. So you talk to these number of people, you see what, you just see what the patterns are, and I can just.   I can just squirrel it away. So there's two patterns in that regard. Most of the time, visionary, wackadoos like us, they marry someone who's a nurse or a social worker, someone who's a human someone. Who's like a very sound very sound fundamentally. Um, my wife is literally the exact opposite personality as me.   Thank God. So that's most of the people, I guess, married people like that. Good balance. Some of the people like us marry other people like us and they become business partners and that does work. That's great. Sometimes it doesn't work sometimes it does. Um, but again, if I had someone like me, I can't even imagine it would just be, it would be terrible.   What, what, so your wife's the opposite of you? Does, what does she think of your brain? Does she not question it or does she, is she just like, whatever boy, that's a really good question. So at first she'd never understood. She didn't understand, uh, now here's what happened. So my wife, here's how I answered that my wife has made me somewhat of a human somewhat, and then I have made her more adventurous, more risk taker.   Now I'm like, Oh, do you think I should invest 15 K in this thing? She's like, yeah, do it. She would have never said that three years ago. No, no, no, no, no. That would have been, that would have been like an alien landing on the planet if I had said that, but now she's like, no, no, no, you just do it. Just do it.   It is the scope of, of the increase in being a risk taker within the business world. Or you can jump out of an airplane for me, both my wife would never jump out of an airplane. Um, but the reason why I jumped out of an airplane last year to 2019 is that, uh, time and time again, people had told me.   Starting a business from nothing which I did with zero clients. Zero revenue is the same as jumping out of an airplane, seeing if the parachute will open. So my business, the parachute open parachute open. And when I jumped out of a plane with an instructor, I certainly didn't do that by myself, but with an instructor of the parachute open.   Very similar feeling of what were you doing before three and a half years ago? Yeah, so I was a journalist for 20 years, created my entire business model based on how PR firms annoyed me for 20 years. So when people laugh at that, but it's, so here's the, again, you see the pattern simplifier. So it's a very simple formula to creating a successful global company.   So here it is, this is it. You see a problem. You create solution to problem, problem solved, successful global company. See a problem creates solution to problem, problem solved successful global company. So that's all I did in PR. So I problem created solution problem solved, successful global company. Well, what are some examples of what were annoying and the traditional PR world?   Yep. Yep. Sure. So the problem is, again, I'm a simplifier. So the problem is hundreds of times a day, you receive useless press releases from people you don't know as a journalist see hundreds of times of the day being annoyed. I don't like to be annoyed. So badging being annoyed, hundreds of times a day for your professional career, by people you don't know.   So that's annoying. That's a problem. So my firm, this is all my firm's website. No hidden tricks. No, no, just here's what my firm does. No hidden trips. So it's go ahead. What's the w how do you approach these? So how do you scale, you're obviously very personal and intentional with your relationships. How do you do that at scale with other people?   Or is it, is it really you behind the scenes? Yeah, so I've, I have, um, some freelance writers that do some of the stories, how this will scale is, uh, I'm on a mission to find my Babs. So 99.9% of people have no idea what I'm, what I'm talking about, but I will, I will land the plane with that. So Dan Sullivan is my hero.   He's the co-founder of strategic coach. He just, he just does his damn thing. He does his podcast. He does his speeches. He does his workshops, his co-founder partner. Her name is Babs. Babs does all the logistical behind the scene. Things. Yeah, it's the, the, the employees. So when I find my Babs, that person can do all that stuff.   Um, I'm just flying the plane. I'll I would never be able to hire a bunch of people. That'd be a terrible thing for me to, so I just hired the one person. Then that person does everything from there. That's how it's scaled. Tell me about writing. About how many books have you written. So I've written one book officially.   I've. I don't have the exact number, but since I've been a journalist over 10,000 stories, so yeah. What, uh, what format were the stories that you mostly wrote was just like newspaper or magazine? What was this? Every thing you could imagine? Uh, I've been in every basically, so when I was a journalist, they didn't know what to do with me, cause I was never really meant to be.   An employee. Um, so they'd give me these weird jobs. So it'd be like assistant managing editor for content or some BS like that, or photo editor slash sports editor or pages designer slash sports reporter. Like it's just not, how did you get work in there then if you weren't meant to be there to begin with?   That's a good question. So I've always wanted to be a journalist, but what I've learned is I'm an entrepreneur who happens to be a journalist. Big difference between an entrepreneur who happens to be a journalist, as opposed to a journalist who happens to be a journalist big it's like a lawyer, who's a lawyer, as opposed to an entrepreneur who happens to be a lawyer.   Very big difference. So it was good that I did that for my whole career. Cause it, cause I liked him. I liked to be here journalist. I'm just an entrepreneur that happens to be a journalist. So I learned that since starting my company. Did your kids, you talked about what they're aspiring to be. So is that because of, did they inherit your Savantas or are you guiding them above?   Yeah.   So that kids can do whatever they want. What I will say as my eye now he's eight. He started his first business when he was seven. He's a mini version of me, tremendous pain in the ass. But he has just enough of my wife's just enough of my wife's genetics to, um, you know, normalize him. And, um, so, and then the six year old wants to be a Navy seal, but, um, he's, he's nothing like me other than his temper and he eats a lot.   Um, but he's, he's like, uh, he's like the snugly sweetest. He's just like my wife. Well, it will probably be a PDF and he has, they both have photographic memories like my wife does. So they'll the six year old, probably be a doctor. Like my wife is seven or he's eight now the eight year old, whatever. I don't even care if they go to college, that's English to me.   It's half my clients can barely read, but if they do go to college, which I'm sure they will, because my wife is different than me in that regard. But yeah, if they do go, my only deal breakers, they have to must. Must take entrepreneurial and business classes led by people that are not yeah, they actually know what the hell they're doing.   That's my only that's it. I don't care what else they do, but that's the only deal breaker. How long ago did you realize that Justin is different? Yup. Boy, that's a good question. So again, seeing patterns. So I have found that people like me were floating around up here. They are aliens within their own families.   They're aliens within their own communities. They're aliens with their own verticals. And so that's why I'm constantly on a quest to find people like me on a global level, because I need to find people that I know. I understand that they understand that you understand me. And so entrepreneurs at the highest level in terms of mindset and network, which I definitely am.   Um, they did their families, usually not always, but usually their families don't understand them. Their community does not understand them. So that's check one, check two, and then usually the vertical journalism, whatever it is. And they have no idea what I was doing. No idea, but I was doing or what I was.   Okay. So, so I've known that I was different basically my whole life. Now I just submitted, did that by understanding that people like made their that's, how they are aliens. So I'll, I'll ask him the same question, but then with, on the last note you said, so you may have always recognized it, but at what point did you accept it and realize the value in owning that?  Probably when I joined strategic coach, which has been about two years, Because that's changed my life. And people say life-changing flippantly being in that program has changed my life in every, every possible way. 90% of the way I communicate live my life from my businesses, what I've learned in that program in the last two years.   So   let me answer it like this. So most people are miserable in their lives for two reasons. One, they never. Find out what they're good at and what they like to do. So they're doing something eight to 10 hours a day that they don't like to do, or they're not good at it, or both. You would be miserable too. If you were doing that too, too, they do find out what they're good at and what they like to do, but they don't do anything about it.   So strategic coach has taught me a million things, but the main thing is just focusing on what I'm good at and what I like to do. So whether that means I'm an alien or different or whatever, which I know I am. But I just focus on it's. Okay. Then I'm different. It's in fact, it's awesome. People don't want normal.   They want weird, they want different normal two-ish years ago when you kind of grew from what you're learning is strategic coast coach, uh, was being different uncomfortable before that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, because, uh, so I'd go to these lower level networking things. And I'm like, what the hell is wrong with me?   I don't, I, I don't need a painter. I like trying to run a global company here. I don't understand why don't these people think like me. So I'm like, is there something wrong with me? And when I found out, no, there's nothing wrong with me. It's just, I, I don't think like 99% of people, or even 95% of entrepreneurs, I just don't think like that   But what I did find is once you find people that you do think like, then. No people like you at a high level, then it becomes infinite. Then the possibilities. It's interesting. A lot of things that you say because, um, you know, it bothered my head over here. You know, I went to a lot of, like, I could just never do the BNIs and things like that.   Like I get why they're beneficial for some people, but great. That's your tribe. If that's your tribe, then fine. Be happy in your tribe. That is not my tribe. God. Yeah. So , I'm always, it's comforting to hear and I'm sure for some listeners too, when, you know, I've I recognize the things that make me happy in my alienness, but you're like a step ahead of me in, you know, recognizing the patterns and things like that.   So it's probably comforting for a lot of listeners to go. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I just haven't found my tribe yet, or I need to be open to accepting my differences. I think a lot of people it'll it'll click for them. So the dings that just went off in my head, the, the non audible things is that you just summed up exactly why my company is a successful global business.   So what happens if I do, I do interviews like this or whatever 90. It, depending on the audience, but most little, just say most of the audience will be like, what the hell is going on here? This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He's arrogant, whatever, all day, whatever. But the people who get it, they will reach out.   And the people who get it again are either running high six figure to 10 figure businesses. Either families, whenever they want to doing what they're like to do, or they will be those people because they have those attributes. That's why I'm so intentional. All right. So let me, let me plan out a timeline here.   So prior to three and a half, there's Justin prior to three and half years ago, there's Justin now who are, seem like significantly different people, but what about the beginning of big Justin? What about the beginning of the new Justin? Maybe the two and a half, three year Mark would. So you've accepted your alienness, you're starting to find your superpowers already done that.   Yeah. Did, did you accept where you offended when you would get the arrogant statements at that point in your life? Because right now it's clear that like you get the, it's just a difference and understanding, but what about three years ago? No, that never offended me ever. Um, that's so interesting that that was your question because that, um, never offended me because I've always known, I've always known that there's just.   I'm just not like most, I'm just not, I'm just not like most people, um, uh, you know, like if you get me at a normal party talking about normal things, I'll sit in the corner and not say anything. So people like me were like ambiverts so you get me talking on a format like this I'm the biggest extrovert, because I'm so passionate about this.   I care so much. That like, Oh, this is the way people can live their lives, make as much money as they want to and see their families whenever they want to and work with only the people that will like, why wouldn't I be passionate about that? You asked me about the, you know, white socks or what's going on in the local diner.   I don't know, carrot, like that's meaningless to me. I don't just don't care. Um, but what's interesting about you is your Colby's nine five three two. So, and as the fact-finder side, I just, I think that's, what's amazing because, uh, I'm an aid fact finder and I'm so endlessly curious. It's unbelievable. And then you're even a step above that.   So that's what really. A lot of things. Interesting. Interesting me about you, but that's that's number one, because you're just on a constant quest to find information. I think that's the neatest they needed and I've never met a 10 fact finder. Never. I don't even know if, I mean, I guess it exists, but I've never met one.   So you're the highest I've met. Explain to the listeners what scoring metric you're referring to. Okay. Sorry. Ellen. Okay. So I've taken a lot of entrepreneurial tests or personality tests, whatever. So coldy K O L B E the a index test. It's by far based on my experience, the top entrepreneurial test in the world, it's the Bible of strategic coach.   Anyone who's, anyone has taken that test or knows what that is. So when you know, someone's Colby test or they've taken it, it's a higher level of conversation. Okay. So that's the background. Any top entrepreneur in the world knows what this test is or has taken it. So there you go with that. I can't recommend it enough.   It's $55, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. It's B. So it's not a personality test. It's your brain strengths. And so, so you are a nine five, three, two. So I'll translate that for audience. So it's one to 10 that there are no bad scores, no bad scores. So nine fact finder that's really high. Really really most entrepreneurs are like a five or six.   It's still pretty high, but not a nine. I'm an eight. You're a five follow-through which for an entrepreneur that's really high. Most entrepre nurses have little to no follow through. They're all over the place. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they have no follow-through, that's why they hire a million people you don't follow through is higher than most.   Entrepreneurs is a five. Mine's a six. So it's even higher than that. Your quick start is really low for an entrepreneur. You're a three. Most entrepreneurs are eight, nine, even 10, and Sullivan's at 10. So they're like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then they have no follow-ups there.   They hire a bunch of people. So I'm a seven quick start, six follow through. So I have high quick start. Boom, boom, boom, and high follow-through. So I just say it, do it, say it, do it, hit the gas, pump the brakes. Do what I say. That's very rare by the way, for people in general and for entrepreneurs, but. And then you're a two implementer, meaning like working with your hands and things like that.   You're up futurist see things in the future. So I'm a one implementer I'm a million times worse at implementing things than you are the difference. The woman, the two, my wife's a two implementer. If we have to build anything, she won't like doing it, but she'll do it. I will run across in traffic as opposed to trying to build something.   Um, So that's what, that's what it is. And so when you're hiring some, if you're hiring someone or you just want to know how people's brains, it means work, the Colby test is the ultimate. It's the ultimate guide for that ultimate. Well, I was having a discussion with my wife yesterday, about something he touched on about, you know, small talk and same thing for me.   Like, it's just not my thing. And, but, but I am sympathetic to it being other people's things. So I'll listen, I don't say that I care. Oh yeah. Humanize it. You'll humanize it. Yeah, it is. Can you do that or you can't even do that. I can do it. And, um, It's not easy for me, but what, what I here's, here's the interesting thing of what you just asked is that sometimes I actually crave it because when you're up here flying the plane with these tens of thousands of these people, and I have, we'll just call this a meeting I have between five and 10 of these types of meetings every single day with people at your level.   So when you're up here all the time, I mean, all the time. Um, it's it actually is it's. Yeah. So I was talking to one of my fraternity brothers is by the way, also a very high level entrepreneur. And I was just talking about fantasy football, which I'm like, Oh man, can we just not talk about like scaling our businesses or like, you know, working on this six figure project.   And like, it would just. Like talk about Antonio Brown if he's gonna play. And so that, but just every now and then I liked those conversations most of the time. No, do not get me involved with that. Cause I will be very bored very quickly. All right. Well, let's uh, as we wrap up, I want to ask you what's next what's what's the big game plan.   Where are you at five years? 10 years, whatever. Again, nothing random about that question. So I'm working on my 10 year vision now. And, uh, so the mission statement, I have to write a 300 word synopsis of it, but the mission statement is to connect every visionary, abundance, investment mindset person, and share their stories with the world.   So I'm doing that now, but it's a hundred X thing that it's whatever. And so again, finding that Babs, finding that person to, yeah. Integrated, what did he do at all? What do you imagine Babs will do? Like how's everything that I don't want to do everything. Well from a technical answer. Yeah. She's gonna do all that stuff, but from a visionary position, what, what do you think she's going to bring to the table?   So Moneyball, good movie. So there's a scene in Moneyball and Moneyball is the movie about the Oakland A's general manager, Billy Bean. So the owner, this is. This is what I'm trying to say. It's not like this, but this is what I'm trying to say. So the owner of the AEs has a five minute meeting with Billy Bean saying, here's your budget and I'll get to work on the owner floating up here.   Here's my five minute thing do this. And Billy Bean takes care of everything else. That's it. So that, that Babs person just needs to follow my vision and to make sure every person that they hired. So you don't even have any specifics in mind that you would hope Babs would bring to the table. You're gonna lean entirely on Babs lean entirely on.   Yeah, because, because I have zero implementation skills, meaning I just want to fly the plane. Yeah. Yep. And, and if, if I w I will find that person, um, Because it's just going to organically happen. Do you think that's what I was going to ask? Do you think it'll come through, like, it'll, it'll probably come through a connection and like this, where I'm putting out these radio frequencies now, and then someone will see it and they'll reach out to me.   That's what, that's what will happen. You know, I think he'll be blindsided. You think it'll come from some point of connection when it's meant to happen? It's meant to happen. I don't believe in randomness because. Like, there's nothing random about your ten-year question when I'm working on my 10 year vision right now.   No, there's nothing random about that. So, um, I listen to my self on podcasts from three years ago and things I was saying, then they weren't happening then, but they're happening now. Of underwear. Are you wearing, can I throw you a random one? Uh, blue and green boxers. All right. Random enough. All right, Justin, it's been a pleasure.   I enjoy our relationship. I'm looking forward to seeing where we continue to grow together. And I'm going to give you the last few moments to tell our listeners and your future Babs, how they can find out more about you.   No, you're just a good, you're just a good human being. And, uh, that's what people like about you, all this SEO stuff, whatever. I mean, that's fine, but they like you, they they're attracted to you and you do do a good job. I appreciate that. Stephen gentlemen, that we did a duo with, he, he said something similar.   Right? So Stevens, if you think I'm flying the plane, he's flying the spaceship. Yeah. Yeah. He's on a different he's on, he might not be human. He's like, that's not it. I mean, he might not be human. Yeah. I mean, I haven't invited him now. I need to invite him on the show. Oh my God. That's it. That's it. All right.   Kevin, the editor listeners, I hope by the time this errors, Steven follows up Justin's episode. I mean, that will be a really interesting you. Two are very, you're very different. I mean, he's different than everyone. That's what makes him so interesting. But yeah. I'm trying. I will listen to that because he he's just.   He won't be able to draw anything in that interview will yeah. For the listeners. Uh, Steven's very visual with how he communicates and he has a whiteboard on his thing. So. All right. I'm going to steer the, I'm going to steer this back to, okay. So you were landing the plane. Uh, LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn as a commercial for other people.   I'd like 23,000 flowers there. Uh, so if you want. There's my book. It was what I always have is never talk about the, so Chris Wallace wrote the forward. No, it's always funny because it doesn't, that's just, that doesn't matter. Like it's, it's the brain, but, uh, the, so that's how the book is the, like I talked that the book is exactly that there's no deviation and then Chris FOSS wrote the forward.   So. Anyone who's anyone has read Chris's book. I never split the difference. So he's the, he's the real deal. So let me ask you on that because, um, the last couple of guests we've had have talked about having really cool foreword writers, how did you get that forward written? Yeah, so Chris's son, Brandon's in my strategic coach group.   And, um, so Brandon is the first person that ever called me connector. He's like, Oh, you're just the connector. I'm like, what? So Brandon is the genius. And so Brandon. They're the it's a black Swan group is Chris bosses and Brandon's company. So they were looking for an entrepreneurial financial planner.   I'm like, Oh, one of my clients is a perfect fit. So then I introduced them. They want to pertaining and for all their employees, then when it came down to, uh, writing the forward a book, I'm like, Brandon, your dad would be, I mean, there's a perk. That's perfect. He Brandon's in strategic coach with me. Chris Voss is in strategic coach.   Uh, total. So there you go. That's so that's one out of a good Jillian stories of how built company that's one tiny, good example, but one of many, many, many, all right. Justin's on LinkedIn and www.brepicllc.com Well, tell, tell me about the company name. Where'd that come from? I always laugh when people are like, Oh, we spent millions of dollars and months and it's playing in.   No, no, no. So I was driving up to Wisconsin. My wife has surprised me for my 40th birthday. I go into this five-star lodge and on the way, halfway up through Wisconsin, I'm like, Oh, I'll just name my company.  cause I like saying the word Epic.  That's it? No, no thought just action   town is falling apart. I was going to say they didn't like the name now we live by a hospital, so, Oh, I was going to say, I've heard a few sirens run by. All right. Justin Breen find him on LinkedIn and uh, that's it. That's a wrap. Thanks Justin. Thanks for joining, learning from others in the man. You're the man. Damon. 

Today's guest has started 87 businesses, most earning seven figures and beyond. And he teaches others to do the same, with his clients having generated more than $100,000,000 in sales in dozens of industries. For as much success he's earned, he's equally failed, making and losing millions several times over. Hear his real-life stories of glorious triumphs and colossal failures. And listen through to the end to learn of scholarships he's giving away to entrepreneurs and business owners just like you. Please welcome Tom Matzen. 1:29 - Tom Matzen's Background 10:08 - Skin in the game 12:13 - All about ads 17:34 - Learning from Other Entrepreneur 19:39 - The Big Breakthrough Business https://embarkmilliondollarauthority.com Non-Profits https://entrepreneurempowerment.org   That's my favorite part. Are you kidding? Noxious? That's totally makes sense. Matzen. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you doing? I'm doing awesome. Damon. So excited to be here. Thanks for making some time. Yeah. Hey, I just noticed for Mike Twitters, you got a shiny silver Yeti. That's a Yeti, right? Yes. It is like with a little boom up and down. Yeah. Hey, how'd you get that fence? So the people that people that are listening and can't, they can't see the video what's going on. What's going on. Say we got the same little flexy arm here going on. I didn't get, how did you get that little stretchy thing at the bottom? I couldn't, I couldn't get one that works with my Yeti. The little BH photo video, uh, has a kit. They sell that goes with the Yeti and it's a whole, it's a whole kit for mounting it and getting the, they call it a shock Mount that part. That's what it is. Yeah, and I love it. Cause I'm hanging around. I'm like, it's fine. So that'd be good. It's up in the air. Makes it a lot easier for those of you listening in audio world. Yeah, for sure. Well, cool. So you got a, um, a lot of stories that I want to get into. You've done 82 businesses. That's old now it's 87, 87. Clearly a guy who can't focus. We know that for sure. Yeah, well, there might be some truth to that because you got too many things going on. All right. So let's talk about, um, you know, in the intro, I brought the listeners up to speed about kind of your, you know, all your magic sauce, but let's hear it from your own words. I start with with two questions, question number one is what are you good at and what are we gonna learn from you today? Fantastic. Well, I, if I was to narrow it down to one thing, the ability to guarantee results for your clients, The ability to guarantee results for your clients, because so much links to that in business. If you can guarantee results, you can charge a premium price. They're happier to pay a premium price. You get more referrals, you get more loyalty there. They become what we call raving fans. And we can dig into that. But that is something that I stumbled across in my twenties. And then I mastered when I worked with Jay Abraham for a number of years. So he was my personal coach and we've been teaching it now for well over 12 years. It's an essential part of all the work that we do. We apply it specifically with high ticket programs right now, but the strategy can be applied to any entrepreneur at any stage of their business. And frankly, It's the number one secret weapon in business. Uh, with 87 businesses, I am an expert at starting them. I'm not an expert at exiting for nine figures. Talk to someone else for that. Um, but I want to exit for a seven or eight figures. We can definitely talk. And the secret weapon to scaling past seven figures. Which we, math challenged folks is a million or more of sales is being able to guarantee results. Being able to be so unique in what you're doing, that you can guarantee results. So we can definitely dig into that today if you want. Yeah. All right. So I'm making notes here cause I got a lot of things I want to hit on, but not Intel. Question number two. What do you suck at Tom? Oh, a whole bunch of things after spinning nine holes on the golf course yesterday. Uh, I proved once again, I suck at golf. I don't know how many years into it are you the year? 2000. So it's that 20 years. You got no excuses. Clearly I haven't had a coach and clearly I haven't applied any systems, uh, through that period of time. But in fact, I also learned yesterday, if you take 12 months off from golf and come back, you're no better than when you left. Yeah, I believe it. You know, you know, my take on golf is I I've never golfed a day in my life, except for maybe when I was like a kid and went with my dad. And here's why is because most people I know that start it. They just love it. And I just, I am just terrified to put another thing on my plate. Well, I tell people that aren't into it. Stay away. I really do. I used to be in the golf business. That was a different story then, but now I say, no, stay away. If you're not addicted, stay away because it gets under your skin. It is from a biomechanics point of view. It is the most complicated sport to master. And so if you don't have athletic timing and tempo, Which I don't, it's a very, very challenging sport. And frankly, even if you do have athletic timing and tempo, it's a challenging sport. So it's a, it's a fascinating, fascinating sport in business. What I suck at is. I would say my number one weakness is executing systems repeatedly. I'm really good at creating systems to execute repeatedly. I'm really good t training people to do that. But for me doing it myself, I get bored. Yeah. That's what I was going to ask. Just the attendance wander. And I tend not to follow the systems that work. I tend to reinvent them. If you want the guy reinventing it and you know, beta testing it. I'm your guy. Yeah, well, if you want it, the guy executing it every single time. No, I'm, it's much better having other people on our team to do that. And I'm fortunate that we can do that. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about guaranteeing results for clients. So you said you kind of stumbled across this in your twenties. What was that moment or that, Oh, it was fascinating actually. Damon, I was a, I was a young lad working with Dale Carnegie. I was selling and, and instructing with Dale Carnegie had been for a number of years and in that world, Um, if you ever hung out to any of those classes, you know, that the assistant instructors are like, God, like features to everyone in the room. They're all like, wow, you're an instructor. Oh my gosh. So they would come to us for advice all the time. And I was 23, 24 years old. And of course I always had an opinion as my first wife said often wrong, but never in doubt. And, uh, you know, I would give him my opinion. And after a few months of this, I realized I've got no basis. In reality for these opinions, I'm just given opinions. I should actually take some courses. And so I started signing up for courses on marketing and strategy and different business elements. And I had just completed a course on yellow page marketing for you kids out there. That's a book you use to hold open doors. Yes. Well, no, that's the least for today. Back then it was the internet in a book, right? The local businesses were in one book and, and a yellow page marketing. This guru from Australia had come. I was living in Calgary at the time and he'd come in and taught this three day workshop or two day workshop. I think it was on how to do yellow page ads, how to do them well, and I had a presentation with a client later that week who wanted a yellow page ad, which is part of the reason I signed up for it. And I, and, and he happened to be in the locksmith business. You know, replacing locks and new doors and things like that. And then metaphor, the guy used the entire workshop was locksmith his entire sample all the way through was that. So I knew I could crush it for this guy. Right. But I still didn't know how to price things. It was early enough in my business career, but I didn't know how to price my consulting services. And now I know there's nine different strategies and you can go through the different pros and cons of them. Then I didn't have any clue. I just knew I wanted to make this amount of money. I also knew this was a veteran entrepreneur had been around the block a bunch really, you know, like in my mind's eye, he was in his fifties, which back then was old. Uh, I laugh now because that's what I am, uh, and you know, he's this old guy. Right. And, uh, I also figured he would negotiate me. So I, I, uh, I, I doubled my price on the proposal. I put together all the details, put together the numbers and I doubled my price, giving him room to negotiate and still get what I want. So we go in and I go through the presentation and go through all the elements. And in my mind's eye, he's a, he's a southerner. And that could be true because in Calgary, there are more Americans living in Calgary than any city outside of the U S at least at that time because of the oil and gas business. And a lot of them were from, from Texas, from Houston, particularly. So in my mind's eye hit a Houston accent and he was like, son, I think it's going to work like, well, yes sir. Yes, sir. I'm positive. It's going to work is tell you what I'll pay you. Not never don't and double if it does. Now, this was double my double Damon. Yeah. This was four times what I wanted and knew it was it's going to work. I said, you're on, sir. I could take that. Absolutely shook his hand. And the yellow pages was coming out in a few months. So we plan the ad. We put it in a month after the added come out. I figured we'd take three to six months, but a month later he calls me up and says, son, I need to speak to you. Come on down. I'm like, Oh, like I literally thought the worst. Cause he had that rough, rough tone and I come down and I put on my best suit. I'm in his office and he's like, I got a check for your son. I go, what he goes. Yep. It's been crying for it. Hasn't stopped ringing. Since the book came out, you totally delivered. And he was ecstatic. And so it was, it did two things for me. Number one, it allowed me to make four times what I wanted to make for the same amount of work. That was a game changer. When you're in your twenties. Yeah. It's a game changer. Any time that's like, Holy cow, number one, number two, he was happier. The pain was happier at paying that higher amount because it was linked to resolve. And I took away a very powerful lesson and my mentor, Jay Abraham retaught it to me. He calls it risk reversal, where you're taking the risk off of the prospect shoulders, and you're putting it on your shoulders. And now we have a whole six step method we use when we teach that and we can get into all those if you want.But it literally is become a cornerstone to all the businesses we do and all the businesses, our clients too. You know, what's interesting about that is so when I started my SEO agency 13 years ago, that is how, how I, how I pitched it. So I had designed clients, but my first two SEL clients, they said, tell me about Google. And I said, well, I know enough that I'm willing to take this on for you, but I don't know enough that I feel competent to charge you for it. And so how about I take a risk on you? You take a risk on me. Well, I take the risk, you know, you don't pay me anything, but. If I hit this goal, you owe me retroactively and then reoccurring moving forward. And so we're one client. And then I said, let's try on a client number two. And then I said, okay, this is my thing. And then here's a perfect example, right? In the SEO world, once you know what you're good at and you can deliver on it. Then you can target businesses that can totally appreciate that value proposition and will pay you even more for the same amount of effort. Right? I've since learned that you need to have some skin in the game, your clients need to have some skin in the game to listen. You probably found that too. Although I guess if you were doing the SEO SEO work, it wasn't so important when you're a coach or consultant. It's really important. They listen because you can have the best guarantee in the world, but if they don't execute on, the idea is not the, probably the same thing. Totally the same thing. Yeah. All right. So I'm curious though, your price in your mind being in your twenties, like, what was your thing? What were you going for with that price point? Was it a new thing? The new something, you know what, that's fascinating. No, one's asked me that question and I, I gotta see if I can, I even remember so many dead brain cells since then what I was, what I was attempting to do. I knew it had something to do with a monthly target for sure. Because back then, that's the only thing I looked at. I want it to make X, I believe it was, I wanted to make a thousand dollars cause it was going to be a couple hours work and this was going to be my breakthrough in this space. So I believe it was a thousand. That'd be my guest, which means he would have paid me for it. Yeah, yeah. At that period of time, but you know what? I actually am not even sure. And back then, were your kids listening in? We had these things called electric typewriters, so there's no copies. You had to literally type it out. Put it all in. I remember, I remember Tom we're like we're, we're somewhat, uh, of entrepreneurial soulmates. Um, so I, I went and spent a summer when I was a kid. Let's see. How old would you be in fifth grade? I want to say like 10 or 11. I was in fifth grade. I went and spent a summer at my grandma's and she had an electrical, a electric typewriter, and I was just jamming out on that just because it was cool. And it was so cool. It had a, a white, uh, a whiteout built into it. Oh, that was way beyond my budget. Way beyond my budget. I had to put those tapes in the little white out tapes. You'd just stick it in the tape, the same letter back out, and then type the letter. Yeah. I want to ask you about yellow page ads as, is there anything that sticks out that has, that carries over to today in marketing principles, as far as like how you would design add call to action and things like that? Totally. In fact, literally the principles that I learned there. Are responsible for hundreds of millions of sales from it, me and my clients, the exact same principles. You think about it? What's the headline, you know, as, as Dan Kennedy used to say, it's the ad for the ad. So the headline in any marketing, right? Wherever it is, whether it's a flyer or something online, or a masterclass opt in page or whatever you're using, the headline is the ad for the ad. And it's about 80% of the effort for those of you that are not experts at marketing spend all your time on that. And the next thing I'm going to tell you, because it literally all the rest is it doesn't matter if you do those, right? So the headline and in a yellow page ad, the vast majority of headlines were the name of the business, which no one cares about. Yeah, they care about what's in it for them. They care about how you can solve a problem or make them feel better or whatever it happens to be, but they don't care about the name of your business. They really don't care what the name of business they care about what you can do for them. And so that it was one, one item. The other is the call to action, and I cannot believe the number of people that design websites or opt in pages or flyers or brochures or business cards. Business cards where you will listening and that might hit home. If you don't have a call, what's the action on a marketing piece. It's not a marketing piece. Yeah, it's not a marketing piece. A call to action is do this and get this right. But it can be little, it can be major, you know, on, on, on many of our businesses, it's watch this masterclass and learn how to solve this problem. Um, and it's a three hour deep dive training and it's free and it's on the business card. And literally people look at it and go, Oh wow. They log in and away they go. And so you can, you, you want to have an, every good marketing. You want to have a call to action. Right. You want to have a reason for people doing something now isn't it isn't always, you know, opt in. It might be, share this or tell someone about it or, or, or log in here, or, you know, sometimes the call to actions are more subtle. Yeah. But frankly, most people. Don't have a problem being too subtle. They have a problem not being aggressive enough in their marketing and having a clear and compelling call to action. And then there's a bunch of fundamentals of great copy, direct response, copywriting that come after those two. Right. You know, you're writing benefits that are what's in it for the reader, not your features. Right. And if you want to get advanced there's features, benefits, and then there are the applied benefits of the benefits or what I like to call now outcomes. Because that's really what we're buying like with no, for example, we're not buying we're on first page of Google. Right. What are we buying when we're on first page of Google? What does that give us to him? Yeah, lots and lots of them. Lots and lots of motivated clients seeking us out saying, Hey, what, can you help me with this problem? Cause you're like on the first page of Google, you must spell. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta solve this problem. Google says you're the best let's talk. Right. So it, or at least among the best. Right? So they'll be the outcomes, uh, in marketing world. A lot of people forget. That. And they're just trying to sell their features. A great example is if you're selling courses or seminars or programs or masterclasses, and people describe each of the modules and what the topics are in each of the modules and the handouts and the calls and the, this and the, this, yeah. They don't want that. That's how you get them there. They need that. They don't want that. What they want is if they go to all those modules and all those sessions, all those times, what are they going to learn? And what difference will it make in their life? What difference will it make in their life? And so outcomes, you know, that's classic direct response marketing. That's been around since, since, uh, well, probably since the Bible, you really want to look at it, right? That's a direct response marketing tool. That's working incredibly well, right. For, for centuries. And so, you know, you can look at any classic, amazing movement, right. And a movement is what a business is. Now a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize they're building a movie. So they're not very good at building a movement, but great entrepreneurs build a movement, you know, right. As we record this, I just got back from a week's holiday with my son. And I happened to notice that stock is 1300. And when we left, it was a thousand. And so literally Elon Musk made three or 4 billion while I was on holidays for a week. Do you know what part of it was? I, I saw a headline either yesterday. Yeah. Yesterday, or I think it was yesterday morning when I was like, like this in bed, like, do I wake up? And I was flipping through the news and it's because he put Tesla, he came out with some booty shorts. That's a movement, right? Not sum it up. Right. When you were at that point of creating a movement where you put some merchant out and suddenly, boom, really like he has become, I mean, he's obviously the face of Tesla, but he's become like a personality behind it where like between the booty shorts and the flame throwers, like what do those have to do with Tesla products? Like absolutely nothing, but then they go, ha did you see what Elan did? At Tesla. And so then it's just like the whole movement thing that you're talking about that power, but you can learn from that we as entrepreneurs. Right. We can learn from that. We can say, okay, what can we do? Like, I know it's part of your background was working with the shark tank guys, right? There is a group of people that have taken a concept and an idea which was actually a different name in a different country. Yeah. . Pardon me, Dragon's den Dragon's Dan in the UK and then in Canada. And then the two of the guys came to the States and licensed debt and they couldn't, they couldn't get the name for dragons down. They wouldn't let them in America. So they called the shark tank and didn't have to pay any royalties and created this whole brand, right. This whole approach to business, which I happen to disagree most of their approaches to business, but they have sell their approach. And they're quite happy to take 90% of your work from you. If you're happy with it, I'll give you 90% of my business, please, please, please. And they're bagging when they literally line up to beg to give away most of their business to these guys, which is a whole nother discussion, but they've created a movement. Clearly they've created a movement around it. And so as entrepreneurs, we can do the same thing we can look at and say, okay, who do we want to be?   Raving fans, who is our ideal target market? And how do we turn them into raving fans? Right. How do we create an environment where they're absolutely loyal to us? Just like the shirts. There you go, Tom. Let's get into that. How do I get a loyal audience? So the, the keys to getting a loyal audience, are you number one? Well, and this is going to be a little controversial, so hope you don't mind that. Um, I actually believe under promise and over deliver is fool's gold. In business, um, it's, fool's gold. Anyone can under promise and then over deliver. And if they're a hundred promising, right. Can you imagine a pizza? You know, Domino's pizza in the early days. Yeah. We'll get your pizza to your house within three, four hours. I promise maybe five. Right. And then they get it to you in an hour. And they're like, wow. See we over promised. No, what they did was they over promised and then over delivered on that promise. So their first big breakthrough that created a billion dollar brand was fresh, hot pizza, 29 minutes, guaranteed. And frankly, if you ever had Domino's pizza in the early years, It wasn't very good, but they didn't say great pizza. They didn't say the best pizza y'all ever have. They said fresh and hot. Yeah. So they, they weren't promising the best pizza, but they were promising to get it to you in 29 minutes or less. And back in the beginning, it was literally free if they didn't. I remember that, right. It was free. It was a breakthrough in the pizza delivery world, because you never knew when these guys would show up before and then Domino's came along and said, what's the biggest thing people want when they order pizza to know when they're going to get it. So they optimize their entire process around that. So if you think of the concept of over promise and then over deliver on that, and you look at the businesses that you admire, the businesses that have amazing breakthroughs, that's what Apple did with the iPhone, right. They over promise the moon on there, on this new technology called an iPhone. And then they over-delivered on that now, you know, obviously other people have come along and copied them and improved upon them, but they still have this dominant position in the marketplace. Right. Tesla. We were talking about them right. With their cars. Right. They, you know, they come up with their truck, right. The cyber truck. Right. They promised all this craziness and they'd come out as completely different style and design. And then they did their big showy launch and the window broke and you blew it Eli. And he got like 200,000 orders in 24 hours. Including one from me. Did you really? Yeah, I put down the deposit back. I was like, I was just blown away by the creativity of the design. Huh? Um, and I'm still not sure I'm going to actually drive it. I'm going to, I pre-ordered Powerwalls when they came out and I was, I was one of the few that actually got him. So the reason why this has nothing to do with business, everybody. So I think a movement does, I'm giving Tom a heads up on the Tesla process. So when I pre-ordered, they said you're you're, you're gonna get, you're gonna get it within. Um, you know, three months, well, that three months turned into a year. And then what happened after that is I finally, I ordered two of them and so the two got installed, but like two weeks before that the, uh, big hurricane that went through Puerto Rico came in and so they moved all their inventory to Puerto Rico. So I was like one of the few that just got lucky that got them in. I have no idea what their inventory is now, but you're, you're gonna, they're gonna lead you on a little bit. Yeah, well, in fact, they already have, since I put my deposit down, well, I also want to go back on one thing. When you said that you are, um, you know, uh, an apprentice or under an instructor and, and you said, I realized I had no opinion. People come asking me for it. My opinion, I kept giving it. At what point did you realize you had no opinion just because you had given it so many times or was there a specific, no, it, it, I, it was one of these realizations where I had no training for the opinion I was giving. I realized like, this is ridiculous. I need to master. If I'm going to be giving someone advice on their business, which is what they're coming to me for. I needed to start learning from people that were good at it, and that it was a breakthrough. And since then I've invested well over a million dollars in personal development courses, businesses, seminars, masterminds, retreats, you name it. Um, well over a million, probably closer to five. Actually, if I tell him everything up and I absolutely changed everything, it changed everything in my life. It changed everything in my skillset. Um, the amount I could charge, the amount of fun I could have them on impact. I could make the amount of money we could give away to good causes all that change by learning how to do that. Did it, was it a straight line? No, it was up and down, up and down, up and down. But that's life as an entrepreneur after you realized that, was there any point where you, where you kind of look back when, when you said, okay. I realized I shouldn't be giving my opinion until I, I improve my skillset. And then once you notice that, did you ever think back and go, ah, I really regret giving that person that one advice, because now I know I was so far off the Mark. No. And I'll tell you why, because I was always transparent with them where I was at. And so for me, I do not live a life of backward regrets much. Uh, there are a few things in my life. Absolutely. But for the most part, you know, people will say, well, especially in this type of setting, if you had to do it over again, because I've made and lost millions multiple times, and they'll ask about the losses and especially the big ones, and they'll be like, would you, what would you do differently? And my honest answer is not thing because those decisions were made with the best available knowledge we had at the time. Making the best decision we could at the time. So if you had to do it over again, yeah. You'd have the same knowledge in the same decision making process. Now, obviously, if you had all the information you now out and could time travel back, that would be different, but that's not doing it over again. That's doing it smarter the next time that's learning from your mistakes and yeah, if you don't learn mistakes, you are definitely doomed to repeat them. So for me, no, I w I actually would say that it wouldn't, it wouldn't be something because it was given in the context of where I was at. And I was fortunate that even in the early days I had good street smarts. Like I knew the focus was the customer. The focus was the client, the focus wasn't, you. I knew that from the very beginning. And so most of the advice I had was while you're focusing on you focus on that, focus on them. And that that's just great sound advice. Now we can do it more nuance and more pinash and more scale. For sure. Um, but the same philosophy still applies. And when I talk to young entrepreneurs or college entrepreneurs, same thing I say, you know, you want to start with the basics, right? You're there to serve someone you're there to help them solve a problem, or, you know, basically two things. Right. Problem solving. Yeah. Good feelings. Those are the two things. Everything else is, can be narrowed down to one of those two things, sometimes a combination. But, but I tell people the primary motivation will be one or the other. Yeah. Right. There's always some secondary motivation, but the primary motivation is one or the other. And if you want to have impact, it's all about the primary one. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It's like SEO work, right. You could try and SEO optimize for 46,000 words, but that's not going to get you very far. Right. When you, when you got your best success, how many words were they focusing on? Oh, yeah. I mean, I tend, I tend to, to, I, I break it into two. I do our core keywords and then, you know, there's variations of those. So the example I always give is you focus on if you're a produce, if you sell produce you, you monetize apples. And then, and then there's red apples, green, apples, and yellow apples. Love it. And then you focus on that. Kill it with apples and then, and then expand your reach after that. But first, like you said, you start small really narrow. Yeah. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially if you're trying to make your first a hundred thousand or your first quarter million in income. The more you focus the better off you're going to be. And that's not just SEO. That's also marketing clients. That's also product development, right? You want to do what you do super well. And back to your original idea about how do you make a difference. If you over promise and over deliver as a strategy, then you have to backward shape that and say, okay, now how that can I do that? Like, what does it take to do that? And one of the best bits of advice I ever learned was recently, it was probably five years ago from a guy that helps companies doing 10 million a year. Grow to a billion a year. Wow. And he has a hundred percent success rate. To be fair, if you don't listen, he fires your back. Like, so not a hundred percent of the clients that start with him, get that result. Cause some don't listen and then he kicks him out. But everyone who listens and in fact, his first big success was a, a, a ladies yoga clothing store. You might've heard of called Lulu lemon. Hmm, multibillion dollar brand. He worked with chip Wilson from store one to a billion plus market cap. And, and his strategy was, if you're going to have a goal, let's say you want to make a hundred thousand dollars this year. We actually call this idea and you're ragging. Cause we don't want to give them credit. And you're at goop. It was the guy's name. So you want to make a hundred thousand dollars. The first thing you do is double that goal to 200,000. Don't play for the a hundred that you want. Double it to 200 and then here's the break. It's true. Then you create three separate. Redundant strategies, all capable of achieving that double goal. So now you're actually playing for 600,000. And if you think about it, think about to the last time you set a major goal for yourself in business. Did you get 18% of the way there? Well, if you're honest and you really applied yourself, you probably got 20, 30, 40, 50%, maybe 75%. Occasionally you get a hundred percent, but most people don't. The reality is the vast I've worked with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. Most people don't hit their goals with this approach. You hit all your, all your goals from that point forward because you're playing for six times. So your original goal of a hundred thousand, you blow past that. Yeah, no matter what. And so we teach that as part of our strategy. If you're going to over promise and over deliver you, then better Anurag, whatever you're doing, because if you're promising them acts, you gotta have a much higher threshold you're playing for to ensure that you blow through that ensure that you blow through that. I mean, some of our high end clients today, we guarantee them a million in sales. For the, with their high ticket program. And in order to do that, we're not shooting for a million in sales. We're shooting for 6 million. Yeah. So that we know we can blow through and get them to that target. Does that make sense? Yup. Yup. Totally. Yeah. Why don't we, um, why don't we leave it there? I, you know, I want to respect your time, Tom, and why don't I give you the floor to tell our listeners how they can find out about exactly what you were just talking about. And I find out more. Happy to do that. Appreciate it. The thing that I would suggest, if any, wants to track me down, just go to LinkedIn and look up mats and MATL at Ian or Z. And depending on what part of the world you're tuning in from Tom, um, I come up pretty much top of the page there. And on that, you'll see a link to a scholarship offer. We're giving away our most profit producing program. Free this year. Like our goal is to give away a hundred million dollars. Yeah. For the scholarships. We'll get you the link for your show notes as well. Damon, if you want it easy for people, it shows you how to create a high ticket program that guarantees results for your clients. We give you the coaching, the accountability calls, the support, the templates, the training. It's something we sell. For $10,000. We give these away of scholarships right now about 81% of the people applying get them. So not everyone will get it, but the vast majority will, if you've got wisdom and knowledge and you want to package it up and sell it, or if you want to become what we call a reporter authority, where you research other people's wisdom and knowledge and put it all together and package and sell it, um, it's our gift to you just for tuning in today. Anyway. Very cool. Yeah. I got those links and I appreciate your time, Tom Matzen. Thanks for jumping on and learning from others. You got it. Take care of him. See ya.