The McMethod Email Marketing Podcast

Technically, Dan Lok mentored under Gary Halbert. Enough said. Well he actually mentored under someone who mentored under Gary Halbert. This was before he became a best selling author, online marketer, real estate investor and owner of 21 companies. It was before he elevated his life’s goal from a “lifestyle business” to shooting for the moon. Dan believes that one day along your entrepreneurial timeline you will be faced with a defining choice between plateauing and settling with a lifestyle business or shifting into an all-out Elon Musk gear. Dan Lok came to North America from Hong Kong unwillingly when he was 16. He didn’t know a lick of English. Today, he will impress you with his knowledge, and with his quotes. Meaning, he drops so many note-worthy quotes you’ll be forced to open up Evernote: “Wealth is gratitude, that’s all that is. Wealth is a feeling, no matter how much money you have.” “Whatever you do, it cannot be about yourself, I can just tell you that flat out.” “Most people have not tried enough things to know what their purpose is.” “Life is not about finding yourself, its about creating yourself.” “The mother of passion is contribution, the father of passion is growth” “Your inner world effects your outer world, and this is not foo foo tree hugging shit I’m talking about.” Dan knows that success is not long lasting if you’re out there chasing money. It needs to be about others. And it needs to make an impact on the world. “If you’re gonna look, look there.” Listen in as he teaches from his experiences, And watch out for his best quote of all towards the end.   In this episode, you’ll discover: how the gauntlet stage of foundational skill development must be gone through (and how to achieve the next step) that using information product models to grow other types of businesses works why repeatable and scalable high profit margins are essential Dan’s signature Attitude of Gratitude Excercise, a guided meditation that fills your days with joy what Dan thinks about the 4 Hour Workweek & how it leads (or misdirects) people on their paths to success Mentioned: Dan’s Youtube channel Dan’s Shoulders of Titans Podcast Danlok.com 7 Habits of Highly Successful People Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy, I’m here with The McMethod Email Podcast. I’m with Dan Lok today. Now Dan is quite an impressive — he has quite an impressive story actually. True immigrant success story which we’re gonna get into today. He used to be a copywriter I’ve just found out. He’s a very, very successful serial entrepreneur. He’s a bestselling author. And when he was doing the copywriting in his 20s he mentored under someone else — he mentored under Gary Halbert. So he’s — I guess you do that’s technically mentored by Harry Halbert which is pretty cool. So anyways we’re gonna get into his story today, what he’s up to, his mission in life right now which I think it’s all very, very exciting. I’m excited to get into it. So we’ll jump into that in a second. First so Dan, how are you today man? Dan Lok: Fantastic John and thank you for having me and I’m looking forward to share my journey and story with your listener. John McIntyre: Me too, me too. So before we get into the — well I was gonna say before we get into the meat and potatoes — the tactics, we can talk about the story, but the story’s really the — this episode. So let’s start off. Just — can you give the listener a little bit more — just sort of the surface level information. A bit about who you are and what you’re doing right now and then we’ll dig into the story and see what we come up with. Dan Lok: Sure well right now nowadays I do — if you’ve seen the show “Shark Tank” or “Dragons’ Den” that’s pretty much what I do in real life. I’m an investor. I invest in companies, I partner with companies and I help them grow. When people ask me what I do for a living it’s kinda difficult to answer because I do so many things. And in — and it’s — I — it takes a long time to answer that question. So now I just say — I just tell people I’m an entrepreneur and I grow companies for — to — for a living. John McIntyre: Okay, okay. Now I know where we’re you know this is sort of a copywriting oriented podcast so a lot of people think that I you know when we talk about copywriting or companies we’re talking about information and eBooks and you know that sort of thing. So I’m curious — growing up or sort of getting started as a copywriter and then to where you are now, are you talking about growing you know small information businesses on the internet or are you talking about bigger you know what some people might call a real businesses? You know give me an idea of what sort of businesses you’re getting into. Dan Lok: Very, very good questions. So I’m involved with a lot of different business in different industries. Digital marketing, ecommerce, real estate and even supplements so, not necessary — I nowadays I prefer a real products. You could say John that not just necessary information, but we can definitely use the information marketing model to market certain types of businesses that’s very effective. And we can definitely talk a little bit about that — dive into it in this podcast. So yeah all types of industries. I prefer industries that is — has high profit margin and that’s repeatable, that is scalable as well. And that’s nice. So some of the things that I’m working on and some of the new things I’m working on they’re even — even on a bigger scale that will require additional skill sets such as raising capital and actually building a team and then building something a little bit bigger, coz a lot of people who are in the information marketing business they’re what I call lifestyle entrepreneur that you know they want to make enough money, maybe I don’t know 10,15,20 gran even up to a million bucks a month — a year working from home and they kind of be their own boss and that type of thing. I was — that’s what I was interested in and when I got there then my goal has changed and evolved. And we all do that you know how you — how it is John you set a goal you get there and then set a bigger goal. And so now I’ve evolved and so being a lifestyle entrepreneur no longer interests me. I’m just interested being an entrepreneur — all I can be and maximize my potential of what I can do in this lifetime. John McIntyre: Hmm so that — I mean there’s a few directions we can take there. So it’s funny because you know I find for me when I first — you know 5 years ago when I left Australia to go and do my you know — so my journey took me to the Philippines. That you know at the time it’s like I wanna go have the 4 hour work week and a lifestyle business so I can travel around and do nothing. And you’re right it absolutely changes over time when you kinda realise like, “Well this is fun,” and it’s — the freedoms good, but there’s more to what like — that’s not the path to a fulfilling life. It’s actually like living in a really — I don’t know what you call it like a deep, deep fulfilling — deeply satisfying life — living that sort of life. It’s not as simple as just getting to the point where you have a lot of freedom and autonomy. That’s a part of a puzzle, but it’s not the whole piece. Dan Lok: No and … John McIntyre: It’s not the whole angle. Dan Lok: … if you think about it John the people who are — I mean you know I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like Timothy Ferriss. I mean you know I read the book and it’s fine, but I think the book itself — content is good, but the title is — it poison a lot of people. I think it’s the … John McIntyre: How so? Dan Lok: … because with — you look at the 4 hour work week, personally I don’t know any super successful high performance entrepreneur who works 4 hour week. I just don’t. I — they don’t even work 4 hour a day so, when you think about life it’s about more. It is about living up your potential if you — okay if — think about it John if such a great idea that you know because I’ve been through that — we’ve all been — I want to make enough money, I want to retire by the age of 30. I made enough money I can retire by the age 27 and when I retired for 3 months I was bored out of my freakin mind. And so then I know that’s not, like you said, that’s not what life is about. When you want to live a purposeful life it’s not about — coz when you think about it it’s about the whole concept of the book. Yes it’s about efficiency, systems, and everything, but it’s about doing the least, for most people, that I think they misunderstood. It’s how can I get a — what can I get away with? How can I have the least amount of input to get what I want? That’s not a path to fulfilling life. If you think, in terms to — the wealthiest people in the planet, the Michael Dell, the Bill Gates, anyone on the Forbes 500 all of them could retire, but they don’t. They actually have retired, but they retire to the company. They love what they do. You ask Warren Buffett, he loves what he does. Does he only work 4 hours a week? Hell no. So if it’s such a great idea why don’t the 500 richest people in the world do it? They don’t even talk about financial freedom or retirement it’s — none of them even use those kind of verbiage because they love what they do. John McIntyre: I think — the — I mean this is the issue, right? Is that like — coz I think when people have jobs and they have a more of a middle class so they’re more into that sort of middle class thing. The first thing is to try and escape that and you’re going for freedom or you know that sort of thing, but at a certain point you know whether you call it self actualization or something… Dan Lok: Yes. John McIntyre: … you get into this thing where you go, “Well what’s the —” and you know I think for some people it is gonna be entrepreneurship. It is they love running a company, but for a lot of people it’s not. They’d be miserable doing that they’d — you know even operations people who you know they’re not big thinkers, they’re not visionaries, it’s just not how their brain works. It’s not bad or anything and it’s not they… Dan Lok: No it’s not bad, it’s not bad at all. It’s just — it’s different that — to me then I mean nothing wrong. I mean — to me if they say they are a dad or they want to work from home and they want to spend more time with their family that’s great coz that’s — in the beginning how I got into business it’s because my mum and dad got divorced and I just wanted to provide for my mum. That’s what kinda got me — push me into entrepreneurship so, I can make more money and that’s all — that’s perfectly fine, but I think once if you get there then you have a choice. It’s a transition, it’s a stage, it’s a phase that you can think, “Well do I want to stay here or is there more to life?” and, “How could I utilize my talents and skills and actually do something greater?” To me that’s a different issue of entrepreneur, not just — coz when you think about it the 4 hour work week or lifestyle entrepreneur it’s all about me. It’s me focused, you know? How many hours I work, how much I get paid? It’s not so much about the world and it’s a lot into the marketers I know it’s all focused on, “Oh yeah I want some parts of income coming in,” or, “I want to set something up. I don’t give a shit about the product just sell some shit online and do some email thing and you know —” I bet John you met some of those people too, “Oh set up some autorespondents for me John and they’ll make money and then I’m on my beach.” That’s okay… John McIntyre: So… Dan Lok: … you know it’s a phase. John McIntyre: Coz I think that we’re — I mean I think the challenge here though is that everyone’s crying out for meeting, everyone. I mean this is — I’m very passionate about that like you know this whole topic because I think that a lot of people who you know we get so distracted by TV and just mindless bullshit basically in life. Dan Lok: Yes. John McIntyre: But these stuff doesn’t matter because all of us are you know I think we’re craving — we’ve got enough — we’ve got a roof — most of us you know we might not be rich, but necessarily, but you know you’re not flying a private jets, but everyone’s got a roof over their head, for the most part, everyone’s got enough food to it. So we’re well off enough that now we’re starting to ask questions about meaning, but we’re not — everyone’s missing this piece — this like, “Oh what’s life about? What the purpose of life? What do I do with my destiny?” and I think that’s the struggle? Coz people that — no one really knows what the — how to answer this question coz it’s different for everyone. Dan Lok: It was — I always say sometimes I get those questions too. You know, “Dan how do I find my purpose?” and I say, “Well you know, dude, life is not about you know finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself so, for most people, they haven’t tried enough things to know what their purpose is. And it’s different for everybody, but I could tell you chances are if you wanna be fulfilled, you want to be truly happy, have that deep sense of purpose or fulfilment whatever you do it could not be about yourself. I could just tell you that flat out. If it’s about yourself it’s very, very limited. John McIntyre: Right. Dan Lok: But if it’s about others and make an impact on the world that’s a different story. John McIntyre: Right. Dan Lok: That’s where — like look — like if you’re gonna look, look there. John McIntyre: Well the — I mean the interesting thing — I — I’m actually testing a new routine at the moment which is waking up at 4:30 which is the earliest I’ve ever woken up. I notice some people do this you know 3:30 and 3. I’m gonna stick with 4:30 for a little while and see how that goes, but what I’ve noticed in doing it is you know I certainly — I know we all have, but we spend time when we, “You know what’s the purpose of life? Oh I’m so you know bored,” or whatever and I was doing that a little bit over Christmas just with the you know — I was family I wasn’t working too much, I was just getting stuck up in my head and everything and then getting back onto this new routine and waking up and being extremely productive, getting so much stuff done by lunch time I’ve got more done in one day than I usually get done in a week. And the fascinating thing about it is that by taking all of this action, by executing it — just a crack ton of stuff I feel like life feels — it’s very hard to describe. Life feels extremely meaning — like much more meaningful than it did… Dan Lok: Yes. John McIntyre: … a month ago when I … Dan Lok: Yes. John McIntyre: … wasn’t doing much. So it’s almost like… Dan Lok: Exactly. John McIntyre: … it actually comes before the meaning not the other way around. Dan Lok: You got it John. It’s your — I think — think of anyone like — think of anyone that’s listening to this. Think of the time when you are the most alive and most fulfilled and the most excited. You’re not sitting on the couch doing nothing and just staring at the beach. You’re doing something. You are either growing or you’re learning, you’re meeting new people or you’re doing something that makes a difference for everybody. That’s how human beings — we are wired. So if you understand psychology contribution your passion, I mean, I always say the mother of contribution — the mother of passion is contribution. The father of passion is growth. So when you’re growing and you’re contributing you’re passionate about what you do. So then you’re not so concerned about, “Oh yeah I only wanna work 4 hour a week. I wanna work 2 hour week,” it’s not even about that. If you’re so passion about what you do you don’t care how many hours you work. It’s — it — would you rather do this than anything else. It’s like people like I — you know I hear people sometimes they say entrepreneurs, “Oh you know what? You should be broke entrepreneur if you love — you, you know you’re not helping people. You know if you love this you shouldn’t make money doing this.” That’s idiot — that’s stupid. I say you should love what you do so much is the only way you do — the only thing that you do to make a living and make money. John McIntyre: I think that there’s this — coz you know I guess part of it is like for me, for example, like I really enjoy, lately, a thing that’s you know becoming a very personal thing for me at the moment is music. I grew up playing guitar and so, I guess I got musical blood. Family’s very musical. And — but lately I travel a lot so, I’ve been making music on my computer — electronic sort of progressive house and techno and just electronic music. And like it makes me come alive. I can’t describe — I love to dance as well so, like music and creating music and just that sort of… Dan Lok: Nice. John McIntyre: … good to be something that makes me — I don’t know. It gives me Goosebumps when I like — there’s those moments and if I — well but I’m not good enough yet where I can make money from it so, it’s not a career — it could be a career in the future. It’s not a career right now and it’s gonna be probably a year — well a year — years before really — realistically so, there’s this I think this is where the catch comes in, is everyone’s got these things that they — some people are really passionate about business, but sometimes it’s like, “I wanna work 4 hours a week,” you know? Sort of like 4 hours a week’s a check point. What you’re really trying to do is — the real goal is how do I create a life that for me the way everything goes, “How do I create a life that I’m completely in love with?” coz that’s what matters. And if that means building a business that makes tons you know X amount of dollars in 4 hours a week or 2 hours a week or whatever then it better be because I’ve got something else I’m gonna do — like for example if I could you know put the business on autopilot tomorrow and work 4 hours a week then I’d probably wanna be waking up at 4:30 making music every day. Dan Lok: Hmm yes, yes. So I absolutely agree. So if for — it’s about finding what makes you tick not what you think makes you tick or what other people sold you on the idea of what you want — what you should make you tick. It’s truly knowing what gives you that satisfaction of fulfilment. And it’s different for everybody. John McIntyre: Well what makes you tick? Dan Lok: I’ll tell you the first 10 years of my life from my 20 to 30 that I was type A overachiever. It was all about money. And I was good at it. It was about money, I was just working long hours, I still work long hours but it was about how much I can make, how many chips I could grab from the table. Then when I hit 30 somehow I don’t know, as a man, that I looked at my life and say, “You know what? Do I still, for the next 10 years of my life, — I could keep living this way it’s okay. I mean you have all the materialistic things or what’s my legacy?” So I thought about it and one thing that actually hit me a couple of years ago when my dad passed away and that was a turning point. You know we’re talking about life — we have turning point. When my life — you know my dad which is in hospital just doing a regular check up and he never came out. It was just within a week’s time he was gone. And that had a profound, profound impact on me because I looked at my life and I’m like, “Wow you know what? What’s my legacy?” When I — in my funeral — and when we do come to my funeral and I’m laying down — I somehow have this picture John. I’m laying down in the casket. Do I want people to say, “You know what? That guy’s a great marketer,” or, “That guy’s made some money, made a few dollars,” or do I want people to say, “You know what? That guy — he has made a difference in my life. He’s made a positive difference in my life.” Well you know what? I want a ladder and I know that’s when I’m the happiest when I am the most alive is when I teach. It’s when I help entrepreneurs, it’s when I get a letter, when get an email from someone watching my video or you know somehow reading one of my books that’s impacted them in some way. That makes me happy. And I say — I said to myself, “You know what? I want more of that.” So somehow I just — in my mind I set a goal to impact a million entrepreneurs worldwide. And that’s just that’s what turns me on. And in order to do that I keep you know building my companies, doing my thing and that’s awesome, but my passion is teaching. John McIntyre: Hmm what’s your morning routine look like? Dan Lok: My morning — it’s pretty simple. It’s not — I don’t — a lot of people talk about morning ritual and all of that. Mine is actually pretty simple. I get up in the morning, the first thing that I do is I — rewrite my goals in the morning, rewrite my goals in the evening before I go to bed. So it puts into — you know feed into my subconscious mind, I would plan out what I want to do usually the night before, but I haven’t read — look at what I want to accomplish like for this particular day. And then also I go through an exercise what I call attitude gratitude. And I actually have an audio on YouTube you go to Dan Lok Gratitude you can find it and I — it’s about 15 minute thing that I’ll listen to it with music. It’s a guided meditation. And I go through that and it fills my day with joy and everything and then that feeling of gratitude. Coz wealth is gratitude that’s all that is. Wealth is a feeling not how much money you have. And then I go through about I would say 15, 20 minutes of yoga that I do and then I pretty much start working. So about an hour of morning ritual and then, yeah, and then I start working. John McIntyre: Okay. And then well what does that look like? Dan Lok: When I — nowadays? Nowadays it’s mostly a lot of thinking — a lot of strategizing, a lot of phone call because of you know I own now 20, 21 companies so, includes basically meeting with business partners, meetings with mostly virtual phone call with people and then after I check my email, usually after lunch, so I spend a few hours on that. And I get a few hundred emails a day so, go through that. Nowadays my routine it’s just mostly my day consist of telling people what to do and making decisions, really. John McIntyre: That’s cool. That’s very, very cool. Okay and so, I mean we — the funny thing is it — here we are you know intending to go down into the back story and really sort of explore things and do the whole classic story podcast, but we’ve gone off on a big tangent here. So let’s go back. You mentioned — one thing I’m interested in is on your About Page on your website it does mention that you — let me get back to it. It mentions that you came to Canada as a teenager. Tell me about that. Dan Lok: Well I came to Canada, Vancouver Canada, when I was 14 years old with my mom and because I was getting into a lot of trouble in Hong Kong. I was born in Hong Kong. And so by the age of 16 then my mom and dad got divorced and that’s how you know I got into business accidentally. And so, yeah, when I first came to Canada I couldn’t speak a word of English, didn’t know anybody, no contacts, nothing with no money. And so the first couple of years was very difficult because the high school that I was going to in Vancouver, Canada I was one of the only of 3 Chinese in my school so, I got beat up, I got bullied. People talk about you know, “It’s bowling real love,” you bet your ass its real coz I experienced it so… John McIntyre: So… Okay Dan Lok: … it’s very much real and I was very… John McIntyre: You mean like bullying in terms of coz you know when I ask that question — I see stuff in exempt from Australia and I see movies from America where kids get locked in lockers and just stuff like that which I never… Dan Lok: Yeah. John McIntyre: … flap in any way. Dan Lok: Yeah I got beat up. They take my stuff and they put — throw in the garbage can, that kind of stuff, yeah. John McIntyre: How did that feel? Dan Lok: Hmm at first I was actually very mad. Not at them, at my mom. And that was wrong. John McIntyre: Why is that? Dan Lok: Because I felt like why did you guys move? Like why — I was fine in Hong Kong, I had friends, I had — I thought I had friends and, but because I would get in — always get in too much trouble and so, then I — a lot of resentment towards my parents because you know they got divorced and then I was in a country that I hated — the first few years I hated it in Canada. I hated Canada. I didn’t like it, I couldn’t speak — don’t have — had no friends, getting beat up. I mean think about it John, right? No friends, getting beat up, you know and you just don’t like it, but it was the best decision that they’ve ever made because they changed my life completely changed my life. I — sometimes I joke about it if I was still in Hong Kong I probably work at McDonalds something like that. Being in a different environment because the back story, at the time, why they decided to immigrate to here because I was acting — my dad was actually coming to the police station to bail me out coz I was fighting, I was getting into trouble, was hanging around with you know with the wrong people and the officers said to my dad, they said, “You know what? I’ve seen a lot of teenagers. If you’re son kinda keep — stays in this environment he’ll go to jail. It’s only a question of time.” So then my dad made a decision, no you know I cannot — I’m the only child in my family so, he sent me to this place where I didn’t know anybody. Have to kinda start from scratch. And so the first few years was very, very difficult and — but those are the times that you learn and I learn how to mature and respect my mom and knowing how difficult it is for a mom. So my mom sacrificed a lot for me. That — to taking care of me when I first got here and all these things and being very supportive of everything I do and so, yeah I’m very grateful, very grateful for them. John McIntyre: Hmm it’s amazing how that works, isn’t it? How you know I mean me getting to the Philippines in I think it was 2011 when I first got there and I’d had a you know I basically — I didn’t be getting into any serious trouble, but I’d be partying very hard in Sydney, wasn’t really doing anything with my life. And my relationship with my family — parents certainly wasn’t good. They’re divorced as well. And I remembered walking along — got to the Philippines and I think just disconnected you know from everyone in Australia just — I wanted to sort of my own way in the world. I remember walking along the beach there. Because I was working at a resort there doing some marketing for the resort and it was right on the beach. I remember walking along the beach one morning and I don’t know if it was a specific morning or if it — it’s sort of — basically there was a realization and then I yeah I don’t know if it was a specific morning if it sort of grew over. It probably grew over multiple mornings, but I just — the time and the space and all of that, being away a year made me really realize how you know how much my parents had done the exact same thing when you kinda go, “Wow!” It’s just like my parents are just people too like they’ve got the stakes, but they’ve tried so hard to do all these different things and this gratitude just fills you. It’s a really incredible experience. Dan Lok: Yes and isn’t it amazing sometimes it takes us to go through a different place and have some distance, some space then to realise like wow like how awesome our parents are? That I would I mean I say to people I — one of the biggest — I don’t have a lot of regrets in life, but one of the regrets I have is I wish I had spent more time with my dad. I spent a lot of time with my mom, but I just wish I had spend more time with my dad. And I would write any check to do that. And so I tell people now, you know? Spend time with your loved ones. Spend time with your parents and just — like this year I plan it — I plan to have a — go to a trip with my mom. Just go on vacation with her and, yeah, I mean those things. That’s what life is about to me. John McIntyre: Yeah and it sounds one of those sort of things. It’s funny how you know just as you get older you start having these realizations that you know when you’re young it’s very much like, “Let’s go so much money as possible,” or you know it’s those sorts of things, but eventually you have enough good conversations with good friends like you know I like having, for example, like a night out with some really good friends and a couple of bottles of red wine or whatever. Dan Lok: Yeah. John McIntyre: You just sit there and you just talk. Dan Lok: Yeah. John McIntyre: And at the end of the night  you feel so connected. Dan Lok: That’s correct, that’s correct and that’s one of the basic human needs, right? So for sure connection with family and friends and, yeah, I mean you have achievements side type A, go get ’em, make it happen whatever it takes. That’s nice. Keep that, we need that, but also the other side is to — on the — at the same time just slow down and kind of cherish the moments and just smell the roses. John McIntyre: Yeah and it’s — I think that — the last few weeks I’ve been doing an exercise — put an exercise in — I’ll do like a personal mission exercise. I’ve read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which… Dan Lok: Nice. John McIntyre: … I don’t know why it took me so long to get to. And I know it’s a classic, but picked it up, read it, and while I read one of the chapters, one of these habits was to figure out what you’re mission is. I Sit down and so I you know opened up a Google dock and started typing and came up with this — just broke life into various different areas and came up with a couple of bullet points on what I — not so much the goal in a certain area, but almost the person that I wanted to be. So going back to that funeral example, at the end of life you know when I die, when I’m at my funeral, first of all my family’s gonna sort of walk down the aisle, go up the front and then they’re gonna you know give a little speech on who I was as a you know as a brother, as a son, as a husband like that sort of thing. Then there’s gonna be people from work, for example, who are gonna go up. Then there’s gonna be people from you know the different groups that I’m a part of. And that was part of the exercise of you know doing this personal mission stuff. And as I did that it was — it’s been a really amazing exercise in the sense that for a long time I think I’ve been working and I’ve had goals and I guess I’ve had some kind of mission, but I’ve never done an exercise this deep coz I found myself — this is actually what’s been happening over the last week is to the point where I go to bed and I have trouble sleeping coz I’m too excited about getting up in the morning to keep working towards these various visions in various areas of my life. And the — this is why I thought it was interesting to go and talk about the family in these types of things because I think that people think success is you know you hack it. You can if you’re motivated enough or if you’re self disciplined enough, but it’s almost like all that will fall into place if you can get the really, really deep stuff right. If you can figure out why you’re doing this and what you personally care about. It’s — the rest is pretty easy. As far as like sitting down and doing the work each day at hustle, that’s  — it’s not that hard. You gotta try a lot of stuff and it takes time, but it’s not terribly difficult, but it’s gonna be impossible if you don’t have the inner strength that really comes from that mission and purpose. Dan Lok: Yes and people think in terms of making money, it’s a game that they play with — the market players. When they actually get it they truly get it how making money works. It’s actually a game you play within. And it’s all about you know your inner game — your inner world creates your outer world. And this is not woof woof  you know spiritual tree hugging shit. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about knowing how — coz I know — before never, never believe in this type of stuff. It’s only when I gonna get you know 30 just speaking from experience I went through the journey and I study a lot of this type of work, spiritual laws of success and what makes us you know fulfilled and all these things. Exactly right, John, with money how — now we all need to develop the foundational skills, I mean you have your copywriting skill, marketing skill, I mean any young people listening to this get there first. That’s the first step. Pick your responsibility you know setting goals, personal development, go through order — the order. We all need to go through that, but once you have those skills and the right self-image, the right mindset that set, let’s say, coz I always — I’m a very big believer in mindset. When you have those pieces down, the next step is actually to surrender, to let go all of that. Let me give you an example. I’m a very huge — I’m a huge fan of Bruce Lee and I’ve actually study under one of Bruce Lee’s original students Ted Wong in martial art and Bruce Lee used to have a quote that I love and I think it’s same — very applicable to business and to life. He said, “Before I learned how to punch and kick — before I learned the art, a punch is just a punch. A kick is just a kick. After I learned the art, the art of martial art, a kick — a punch is no longer a punch and a kick is no longer a kick. Now I truly understand the art. You know what? A punch is still a punch, a kick is still just a kick.” So think about that. John McIntyre: I think that’s a good place to wrap it up to be honest. I think that’s a nice tie. Very, very wise and it so — I’ve really enjoyed this. It’s very meandering. I like these conversations that we get into. A bit of tactical stuff, but it’s fascinating to look into you know almost people’s paradigms and the way they see the world especially with this. You know I think this purpose stuff, for anyone that is listening, I think this is the — that’s some of the highest leverage stuff. You need the skills, but take the time to reflect on the purpose and the mission coz it just goes a long way. So before we go though I know you have a — you know you have your mission of trying to help a million businesses. So if someone’s listening to this and they want to learn more about you and they want to go and watch one of your videos or something — you know just dive into what you — what we’ve talked about here and get more, where would they do that? Dan Lok: I would say to go to www., my website,danlok D_A_N_L_O_K .com. And if they want to watch my videos I would subscribe — I would suggest subscribing to my YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and type in Dan Lok D_A_N L_O_K they find my channel, they can subscribe to that. I have over 300 videos on there and I’ll keep adding videos. That’s probably the main platform where I want to just to build my content and work. They can also check on my podcast called shouldersoftitans.com where every week I interview a super successful entrepreneur and hear their stories, and kinda what you’re doing John, hear their insights and how — and their journey. How they get to where they are today. John McIntyre: Fantastic. Well I’ll have links to all of that on the show notes at themcmethod.com, Dan it’s been good mate. Thanks for coming on the show. Dan Lok: It’s been good and I enjoyed it. Thank you John great job! The post Episode #135 – Dan Lok on Achieving True Wealth and Leaving A Legacy appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

You know those guys who are naturally funny and entertaining? Clay Clark is one of them. He’s also one of those guys who has mastered business as well as life, Today Clay touches on the 5 steps every business owner must use to do the same. But this episode is far more than a simple 5 step formula. These five steps will enable you to figure out your why, to figure out your product or service, as well as how you’ll gain the skills and a vital power network.. If there is one thing that is certain in this episode (besides Clay’s method to make you successful)… …it’s that Clay wants you to be happy. See how well qualified he is to guide you there. Because if you’re hitting your life goals (not just your business ones) Youre winning at life.. And you are happy. Learn how to get here and far more. Clay Clark’s been featured in Fast Company & Bloomberg and he’s also the entrepreneur of the year for the United States Small Business Administration. AKA he knows what he’s doing. Learn why he woke up at 2:15am this morning (all mornings) to hone in on something that lets him do what he does. You’re in for a great episode.   In this episode, you’ll discover: why Clay says sex so much (and Thrive 15 too) that over 80% of successful people take at least 30 minutes every day to study success (and the rest of the day applying..) why you shouldn’t make your business your life’s rental car (learn how to see past your business) the extreme importance of having a good “why” when starting your own business how the world is always trying to push their version of happiness onto you (and how to overcome this mindset killer) why you should not try to save the world if it means being a bum and living at home with mom (learn what to do what to do instead) Clay’s 3 hours meta-time daily ritual that let’s him set up then smash out daily to-do lists (see how he taps into spirit, mind, body, relationships, finances, and more to start his days) the entrepreneurial-required knowledge of exactly where YOUR passion comes from (find how to be 100% invested in being exactly where you are at all times) the simple fact that whatever’s the most important thing in your life needs to be #1 on your schedule (& that your life in 2nd or 4th means you let people control you) Mentioned: eitrlounge.com oxifresh.com thrive15.com info@thrive15.com Get Rich Click by Ostravsky Search Engine For Dummies by Bruce Clay Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy, I’m here Clay Clark. Now Clay is the founder of the online business called Thrive15, he’s been featured in Fast Company. He and his business partner, NBA Hall of Famer, have been both featured in Bloomberg and he’s also the Entrepreneur of the Year from the United States Small Business Administration. I’m really excited to have him on the show and he’s jumped on here to talk about — we’re gonna get into some business processes and you know building the business or duplicable business that a lot of people want. So we’ll get into that in just a second. Clay how you doin man? Clay Clark: Man I am excited to be on your podcast here. I just appreciate putting up with my harassment thus far. John McIntyre: Oh the kangaroos and the shrimps it’s a — I mean it’s bad, it’s bad. Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: We’ll see how offensive we can get here. I don’t know how we’re… Clay Clark: Absolutely let’s do it. John McIntyre: … how far we can go. Anyway before get into the actual meat and potatoes, as a friend of mine likes to say, let’s talk about the — can you give the listener a bit of a background on who you are and what you do and you know what makes you special? Clay Clark: I was — if there’s anybody listening right now who’s had a bunch of ideas and had no idea how to gain traction, I was the poor kid with all the ideas and I had this goal to become a millionaire before I’m 30 and to hire my dad someday. And when I was 27 I looked up and I was like, “Man I’ve done all that.” And I decided that I wanted to teach people the systemic process that I found — I kinda learned through mistakes and over time I found out that mentors and best practices and systems help you avoid a lot of pain along the way. And so I wanted to build a scalable system to teach people how to do that and so, we built thrive15.com and now millions of dollars later there’s thousands of — become thrivers with thousands of users all over the planet who are learning how to start and grow businesses in a very duplicable and systemic way and it’s absolutely my life’s passion. John McIntyre: Great, great. I’m curious coz I think there’s gonna be some other people who might want to know this as well. Is in the online world there’s a lot of online schools and you know sort of marketing products that you can buy that teach you how to build a business. And a lot of these are put together by people who never really done that much. Sort of there’s a whole sort of stigma around here to teach people how to you know — making money by teaching people how to make money. It sounds like… Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: … based on the story there you’ve done a lot of the actual real deal of doing this stuff and now… Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: … you’ve set up this product. So what the — I’m curious what’s the difference between say Thrive15 and say you know one of the random you know business building courses that you can buy out there? Clay Clark: Well they got 4 main differences. 1 with my face on the site it is the ugliest of the sites. Second is we have a button on the website called “Ask the Mentor” and you can literally ask the mentor any question that you want and we respond with answers. So it’s like a business — online business school, but instead of goin, “Ah I didn’t really get it. I guess I’ll have to wait for another video,” you can hit the button and our team responds with the best practice answers for you. 2 it’s just $19.00 a month so, it’s not thousands, there’s no mystical webinar, training trip to Hawaii, get rich get motivated, buy the book thing we’re trying to trick you in to. And the third is that it includes an offline, in person face to face seminar that you can come to the workshop at any time. So you can like if you’re on the site and we had some guy there today who lives in Miami his name is Antonio. He almost reluctantly calls us and I was like, “Yeah I wanna come out to workshop, what’s the catch kinda thing?” and we go, “There’s no catch. It’s part of the deal.” So you could literally be in a workshop with an optometrist and a photographer and a plumber just like that guy. And people all over the world come to these things it’s awesome. John McIntyre: Hmm okay and it’s just you know what sort of entrepreneurs are we talking about? You mentioned a plumber and things like that. It sounds like this is a wide range. This isn’t just people who wanna start a blog. This is all sorts of types… Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: … of businesses. Clay Clark: Anybody who wants to start a non-ponzi or non-pyramid we welcome them. John McIntyre: Great. Okay so… Clay Clark: If you’re into the ponzi game you can’t come, but you know if you’re like, “Why here’s the deal we got get in the ground level. We move up and boom you know I’m — my name is Maydolf [?],” and we’re kinda going, “Well Mister Maydolf [?] maybe you can’t come to this — the seminar.” John McIntyre: Yeah okay that’s fair enough. I like that. Well let’s talk about the you know what you actually teach coz I think that’s the — you wanted to mention that most business owners want to be able to build some sort of — you mentioned duplicable business. So let’s start then what do you mean by duplicable? Clay Clark: Okay well you have 5 steps that every business owner needs to get. And really some of the people listening to this while they’re driving so I’ll — we’ll — I’ll make sure that we cover them succinctly, but the first step is you want to figure out why am I doing this? Step one is why. I mean why would I want to start a business? Coz I’ll tell you why you wouldn’t want to coz you work all the freaking time, coz you’re probably are gonna have ideas in the middle of the morning, you’re trying to take a shower and you’re thinking about your business. You’re on vacation thinking about your business, you’re obsessed with your business. That’s probably why you wouldn’t want to. Coz to be a successful entrepreneur you really have to focus on it and so, you want to figure out why am I doing this? And if it’s not worth it then don’t do it. I’d rather go get a job as a manager working at a fast food restaurant or something. I mean if you’re gonna start a business I mean make it worth your time, you know? So want to first off think about, right now, in terms of your spiritual goals, your mental goals, your skills you know, your fitness, your relationships, your finances why would you want to do this crazy thing called starting a business? You know you live in Australia so you know what I’m talking about. Now whether you’re — it’s universal whether you’re in Australia or America or South America or Canada entrepreneurs are sick freaks. And if you’re gonna join this group — this coalition of sick freaks you’d better know why you’re doing it, you know? So the why is the first thing. Write it down. Now the second thing is you want to figure out how much does it cost? So how much do you need to earn? So people say to me, “Well how much money do you make?” That’s a great question. How much money does Clay Clark make? That’s a question. You know that’s a good — that’s a valid question. So people ask me all the time. I say, “Well you know this month I’ll — about $74,000.00.” They’ll go, “$74,000.00? Well why the — why would you not make more? Why are you telling people what you make?” Well as anybody listening to this knows if you own a business you can write things off, right? So I write my car off, I write off you know my studio where I’m filming a recording today, I write off the trips — I’ve just done Orlando this weekend — it’s all legitimate write offs. So I — for $74,000.00  of fruits from my tree that I kinda live off of, but why not make more? Coz I don’t want to work anymore, you know? That’s not my goal. My goal’s not to make as money as possible. My goal is to achieve my goals. So my business is just a vehicle to get there. My business is not the destination. So, so many people get that twisted they’re like, “Once I build a big business then I’ll build a bigger business.” And so I see these entrepreneurs who are trapped inside the rental car. They flew all the way up to Sydney, Australia — they rented a car and then they don’t get out of it. They’re just stuck in the rental car and that’s what their business is it’s a rental car they’re stuck in. It’s a vehicle they can’t get out of. So you got to figure out what are your goals, you know? So all the time. John McIntyre: That’s a big question though. It’s like — what I found is that some people grow up and by 14 years old they already know what they want to do, they already know what their goal is, their mission, their quest. A lot of other people though get you know 20, 25, 30 — some people you know 35, 40, 50 well they don’t know what they want… Clay Clark: Yeah well you see… John McIntyre: And so I don’t know if that’s a problem because they haven’t thought about it or it’s a different personality, what do you think? Clay Clark: Well John Lennon — you know if you’re gonna talk entrepreneurship let’s talk about the Beatles, right? The Beatles — the top selling you know record label you know to — recording artist of all time. You know John and Paul and John Lennon says, “People —” I’m paraphrasing, but a teacher said — asked him so he said, “Class tell us what you want to do when you grow up.” And John said, “When I grow up I wanna be happy.” And I think that’s what it’s all about, it the pursuit of happiness. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and so, I would question why you’d want to do anything if it’s not gonna end in you being able to have a great marriage or a great time with your kids or great trips or whatever. Like I’d personally hate travelling — I hate it, I hate it, I hate travelling. I hate seeing new places, I hate networking, I hate leaving my house. I love being in my house. If you were to come to Tulsa you and I — you’d go, “Do you ever leave your house? You’re kinda weird.” I don’t like leaving. I like to do the same thing every day, I like to wear the same thing every day, I hate variety, but someone else listening to this their goals are to travel, to — travelling to me is the worst. I can’t stand it so, you got to figure out what you want to do and then don’t let anybody else put those goals on you. If you’re listening today and you’re like, “Well you’re wrong. I like to travel.” Well that’s probably right then. If you love to travel then that’s your goal, but write it down coz the world’s always trying to push their definition of happiness on you — very, very important that your goals should be to be happy. Write down the list of the things that make you happy. Go and write it down right now, like I love seared tuna. That makes me happy — seared tuna bro. That’s a — do you like seared tuna? John McIntyre: I don’t know. I just know tuna. What’s seared tuna? Clay Clark: It’s like a tuna where it’s kinda pink in the inside, but you sear it like you pan sear it. You cut — it’s almost like you’re putting on a super hot you know a skillet… John McIntyre: Oh so we’re talking tuna you’ve actually cooked in a pan? Clay Clark: … yeah and it’s kinda little semi raw. I love it though. I love that — to me I’m happy. I love watching football games, I love my man room, I know — I’ll know that no one else, except for me, will ever touch my stapler. That’s what makes me happy, but somebody else has their own different goal, but the third thing is you got — so once you figured out your why and how much it cost the third you got to figure out, “What service am I gonna render or what product I’m gonna render in exchange for it?” It’s about tradeoffs. So I can’t like — so many people are like, “I wanna get rich quick! I want to offer no value and I wanna trick people.” Well I mean if you’re a Judeo-Christian faith you know you might believe that you’ll burn in hell for that and if you’re not you might believe that you screw people off and people write bad reviews about you and if you’re — I mean but you have to offer some value in exchange for what you want. And so many people are trying to just get what they want without offering value, you know? So if you’re listeners today, I mean, if they’re going, “That guy was weird he’s the weirdest interview you’ve ever had. I hated that interview,” then you know you’re not gonna get anything out of this. So I have you know to at least try to offer some new knowledge here, but you have to figure out what service am I gonna render? Now the fourth step if you have to figure — you have to build a practical skill. You have to gain a practical skill. And this is the issue that I have with college. It’s very possible to go to college — my brother just got married to a girl, she’s 23, she has like a double masters or something. She knows about — she’s a computer engineer. Well she has people all over the world lining up to pay her to code and to do the you know to do the computer engineering. He is studying like philosophy and history and no one even knows what he’s talking about. You know and he’s a good guy, I love him, but no one knows what he’s talking about. No one has any idea so he’s trying to figure out now, “How am I gonna solve a problem for the world? You know what service am I gonna value with my vast knowledge of theology and history and that kinda thing.” So figure out what’s the practical skill that you’re gonna gain and the final one is you have this thing called the proximity or you call your network is your net worth. Other people call it your mastermind so, I’m just gonna call it your mastermind and your network. So what you do is after you go through and you define your why and you figure out how much it cost up to and you figure out what service or product you’re gonna render, 3, and now you’ve developed that skill now you gotta build a network. And the reality is because I’m doing this podcast with you right now I am not engaged in sanctimonious marital sex right now. I’m not. I’m doing something else, right? If I’m with you I can’t be doing both at the same time coz that’s weird even talking about it it’s weird, but I bring that up as an example because so many people are like, “What I want to do is I wanna hang out with all my friends I’ve always had and I want to do — I want to be around exact same people, but I want big connections.” Well if you could clone yourself maybe that’s possible, but if you’re gonna change your net worth you have to focus on changing your network. So you gotta surround yourself with people who have the skills and abilities to get you there. So that — that’s kind of the big 5 step process, boom! John McIntyre: Boom! That’s good man. So you know one question I’ve got is it seems like it seems simple. Clay Clark: Simple. Boom. John McIntyre: Almost too simple. Clay Clark: Yeah. Well here’s the thing is — William Shakespeare — but to simplify it we’ll call him Bill S. John McIntyre: Okay. So what did Bill say? Clay Clark: He says that brevity is the soul of wit, you know? And then like Steve Jobs says it’s sim — yeah Bill S, and then Steve Jobs we’ll just call him SJ, for simplicity, he says that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication or if we want to quote Steve Jobs off the record … John McIntyre: SJ. Clay Clark: … allegedly he said — yeah SJ. He allegedly told the developers of the iPhone and he’s like, “If it needs an F-ing manual it’s too complicated.” You know? So the point is we have to simplify and the world wants to make it esoteric and endlessly complicated. So they can — then student go to college for 8 years and pay them, right? I mean if I make the system complicated can I keep charging you for the solution? I mean so I’m just saying well I’ve been doing consulting for a decade with clients and what it comes down to is once you know these 5 you do have to get some education. You have to get your PhD a.k.a pigheaded discipline. John McIntyre: Okay. How do you get that? I’m very curious. Where does that come from for you? Clay Clark: Pigheaded discipline? John McIntyre: Yeah. Clay Clark: Poverty, insecurity, knowing that my dad — like right now you know my dad has stage 4 cancer he’s been battling. He just had a stroke recently, guess who’s taking care of him? You know? So I’m motivated. I have 5 kids so, who’s taking care of them? Guess who’s motivated? My bother-in-law was going through a patch in his life, didn’t know what he wanted to do with himself. Well guess who was kinda like the father figure? Growing up when you’re 12 years old and you realise that every other kid gets to play travelling sports or competitive sports or you know some sort of sporting league — I’m sure in Australia you guys are playing soccer or you’re doing rugby or whatever the sport and then these… John McIntyre: Race generally around the track. Clay Clark: … yeah you’re chasing kangaroos, whatever the stereotype is. In America it’s a bunch of cowboys playing football, you know? But the thing is that I realise I couldn’t afford it — my parents could not afford to pay the fee, you know? So I was gonna be on the sidelines not being able to play unless I found a way so, I started to paper route, you know? And I realised I wanted school clothes coz kids make fun of kids that don’t have the newest clothes or didn’t have the clothes so, I started a t-shirt making business and because I realized I didn’t have a t-shirt press and I didn’t have the ability to make t-shirts. I needed to find a guy and because I realized the cavalry wasn’t coming I should probably find the guy myself. And then I wanted to started a DJ company, but I didn’t know how to DJ and I didn’t have any equipments so, I had to figure out how to pay a guy to teach me to DJ and then had to borrow equipment from some guy who smoked a lot of marijuana, I’m sure for medical purposes only, named Oswald. You know these are just things you have to do, you know? And so — or you can fit your life dreams into a small box called a job, just over broke and you can basically decide that you’re going to have a trade off and go, “You know what? I don’t want pigheaded discipline I just want to have — you know I’m okay with mediocrity.” And you just settle for that, you know? And you start to make small dreams and you start to small goals and then you talk to your buddies and they say, “How is your week?” and you go, “It was okay.” And you say, “How’s work?” and, “I gotta want [?] to talk about it.” You know? But you just kinda — if you’re gonna be working right the majority of our living hours — the hours we’re alive well why don’t we do something we love? Or if you’re goal’s to work as few hours as possible I literally have once client I’ve worked with who’s entire goal — she just wants to work 5 hours a week and she’s literally built a system where that’s all she does. So I mean if that’s your goal too then you can downsize your lifestyle and do what she did. John McIntyre: Yeah one thing I’ve learned over the last years about some of this stuff is that yeah there are people out there, for example, who love their jobs and there are people out there who — like their job is their passion. Clay Clark: Yep. John McIntyre: And it’s an interesting how like you know I noticed that, for me, you know I went to a stage of you know we tend to kind of hate on people who have jobs, but it’s interesting… Clay Clark: Oh yeah, terrible. John McIntyre: … some of — some people love their jobs. Clay Clark: Oh yeah and the thing is I don’t want to put my goals on anybody, right? Because that’s what I was — to start off very beginning, right? John McIntyre: Right. Clay Clark: Why? So I’ll tell you this like I know a very good friend of mine he goes, “I don’t want to do payroll, I don’t want to think about how to make a profit, I’d like to do triathlons, I like to work out all the time, and I like to be able to take my vacation when I want. And I want to know that like at the end of the day the bucket does not stop with me. I want to peace out when I need to peace out.” And so he has found himself a very secured job and he does a great job when he’s there. He just doesn’t want to be in-charge. John McIntyre: Yeah. Clay Clark: And I get that, but I’m saying in exchange for that though he can’t expect to be paid at a CEO level, you know what I mean? Now if he ever changes his mindset, I know his boss right now wants him to get promoted coz he’s very good at his job, but he’s just like, “You know what? I don’t want to get the call on the weekend, I don’t want to get the call, I don’t want to — you know I don’t want to — I want someone else in-charge.” John McIntyre: Hmm okay that’s fair. And so… Clay Clark: You’re — yeah? John McIntyre: What — so you mentioned sort of what motivates you, but where is this? You’re very energetic, you’re very… Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: … like yeah passionate about this and obviously some of this comes from you know that why, but it also seems part of your personality. What do you think? Clay Clark: Yeah well the passion is when you know that you’re doing — this is where passion comes from. Right now I know, and I don’t want to get too spiritual, coz there’s going to be one guy listening he’s like, “Man you’re a little bit crazy man.” John McIntyre: Like go… Clay Clark: But here’s the deal. John McIntyre: … crazy as you want. Clay Clark: Fine let’s do it. I believe that God has called me to be on this Skype call with you at this appointed time because somebody is listening to this right now who needs to hear something that either you’re gonna say or I’m gonna say. And therefore I am 100% invested in being here. So I that I am passionate about this. I want to be here so, I’m totally here. I want to be here I’m not somewhere else, I’m not texting, I’m not thinking about something else. Now I don’t like going to my kids’ sporting events. I hate it. I don’t care about kid sports, I don’t care about my kids’ sports, I care about my kids so, there’s nobody more disinterested than a kids’ sporting event than me. So I had to go to hockey games last year and I literally had no energy, no passion — you probably thought I got hit by a bus, but — coz all the parents complained about the refs and they complained about why their kids’ not playing, right? So I would sit by myself with my hoodie sweatshirt on, like I’m in a gang or like I’m a Tom Brady you know impersonator and I’ve got my hood on, I’m not getting — I’d sit away from everyone. I’d cheer for my son like you wouldn’t believe and he knew I cared and I would cheer for him, but I would not engage with the other parents coz I didn’t just didn’t give a crap about why their kid wasn’t playing or why the ref wasn’t giving us the calls. And so I had no energy there, you know what I mean? So people would see me there, — they’ve never seen this right now or saw me at a speaking event or saw me at my office — in my element they would go, “What’s wrong with you? This guy he’s like antisocial, he doesn’t talk to people.” That’s why if you take me golfing too — if you take me golfing — if you want to see a guy who is not happy to be somewhere it’s me golfing. I can’t stand golfing. I can’t understand why people would golf, I don’t want to walk — run around chasing the white ball, I don’t want to chase around the girl with the drink cart, I don’t care about your score, if you’re cheating that’s fine I don’t care. I just don’t care. I probably use one club the whole time just to make it faster and I’d sprint after the ball, you know what I’m saying? So I just have to get the finery of passion. I’m saying if somebody listening right now might go, “Man this guy’s passionate about business,” yeah coz I know what I’m — I know that I’m supposed to do this right now. It’s where I’m — it’s… John McIntyre: Where does that — all this come from? Clay Clark: … I’m totally washed in. John McIntyre: How do you know that? Where does that come from? Clay Clark: Well I’ve been to 3… John McIntyre: Where — yeah what it’s like — feel that, but it’s sort of like… Clay Clark: I’ve been… John McIntyre: … where does it come… Clay Clark: I spend 3 hours every day doing metatime. John McIntyre: Doin what? Clay Clark: Metatime. Meta from the Greek word meaning above or beyond, you call meditation time I don’t because I’m not like a gonna do the down word and the vinyasa and the you know I’m not gonna be the — wearing yoga pants — well if I go to jail I’d wear yoga pants, but I don’t do that whole deal. What I do is I wake up, I literally I’m not even kidding this — why did they? I pull up YouTube every morning about 3 or 4 in the morning and I Google John Legend live from United Center and I hit play and then I think about my life, right now where I am versus where I want to be and I go through my to-do list and I think about okay I need to do this to get here. I need to do this to get here, I need to do this and, again, I just begin making my daily to-do list and then I begin to prioritize. Okay this needs to happen so, right now, today, is a very specific example. I have to call a guy by the name of, Danny Dunright [?], to get my freakin permit so I can build on my addition to my house so, that I can make a place for my dad and mom to be so, that’s like on my list, you know? And then I gotta call a guy called, Eazy E, about making calls for the company the — it’s a minor league hockey team I work with, the Oilers. John McIntyre: You say Eazy E? He sounds like a rapper. Clay Clark: Yeah, yeah I give everyone in my office nicknames. They did tell me what their name is… John McIntyre: So it’s not actually… Clay Clark: … and I just kinda give them their own. John McIntyre: … the Eazy E from … Clay Clark: He’s Erick. We have too many Erick’s so there’s Eazy E and then we have — now we have the Outman, but he didn’t work out you know, and then we’ve got Herman — you know Big Herms. I just make up names, you know? Well gangster rap references so, I listen to too much when I was a kid, but you know — but I focus every morning — I contrast where I am versus where I want to be. So I know right now that I’m supposed to be here with you, but I literally spend most of my day saying no. I probably say no to 95 things for every 5 I say yes to. John McIntyre: Hmm okay. So how long does this last? Coz I’m very curious about this morning routine. So you wake up at what? 3 am — 4 am? Clay Clark: Yeah, yeah. I mean today I don’t wanna exaggerate. I wanna give you specific things because your listeners deserve more. You don’t have idiots listening to your program. You have the geniuses. This morning it was at, let’s see here yeah, so this morning I woke up here at 2:15 am. John McIntyre: 2:15 am. What time did you go to bed? Clay Clark: I went to bed like 8:30. And I only had to do that because I got back from Orlando and I hate travelling, it freaks me out, and I got back and I had to get all — everything… I had to get discombobulated, you know? People give you a card like, “Hey you should call me sometime. We should network.” And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah we should,” but I’m not going to unless I write it down and put it in my schedule, you know? And I’ve got text messages from all the people from the event who were like, “You were so good. It was great.” One guy who was, “You’re the worst speaker in the world. You hate people.” Whatever and I’m gonna respond to that and I’ve got to make sure that I don’t get overcharged for my freakin hotel which I did. You know just that kinda crap, but — and so — but I have a meta, every day I do, it and by the time my day starts I’m just sprinting because I know exactly where I’m going and what I’m doing every single day. John McIntyre: Interesting. How long does this Meta go for? And what happens exactly? Coz you said that you breathe or you listen to this song my John Legend or how does it work? Clay Clark: Yeah I listen to John Legend and I pull up — I have 3 monitors. I recommend 2 though because the good friends at Carnegie Mellon did a study on this and you go — you’re twice as productive with 2 monitors. Just throwing it out there — Carnegie Mellon and you can research on yourself — on own here, but 2 monitors. So what you do is on 1 monitor it’s all my to-do lists items that I’m supposed to get done and I look at them and I’m going — I look through and it’s like, “Call Deidra about Fox 23 feature with Dan.” I look at it and I’m going, “Do I need to do that?” someone told me I need to, do I even need to do that? Yes or no? And then where does that fit into my priority? And then I’m thinking about all my spiritual goals and I’m like, “You know should I take my kids to the church or should I just eat pretzels?” you know or okay and then you know my — my skills, “Should I read the new Google update book that I have or should I just —” you know I start to think about my skills. I go through methodical these 5 areas. Spirit, you know? Mind so, spirit 1, 2 mind — like skills, 3 is body you know and then physical fitness and then 3 is relationships you know like, “Who do I need to talk to today that I need to be a friend to?” you know the — like a lot of times as friends we only tell people what they want to hear? And then they tell us what they want to hear and then the moment one of us disagrees we’re not really friends anymore coz we’re really just acquaintances. I’d like to be a friend, you know, to people? If I’m a friend I wanna be your friend so, I wrote down on my list today I need to call a guy and I called him today on my way to work and had a really neat connection. I was like, “Hey buddy I realized you’re going through the divorce, how you doin?” and he’s like, “Are you freakin serious?” Coz he didn’t meet any people like don’t — they don’t understand why someone would call them without wanting anything, right? John McIntyre: Yeah. Clay Clark: But it’s a relationship. You sow seeds into that, you know? Relationships I use schedule time for that. And then finances you know I got to look at like there’s a couple of big web deals, clients are paying me to do — redo their brand and fix their websites and do search engine and I gotta — you know that kinda thing so, I just — spirit, mind, body , relationships, finances. And I go through that until I’ve everything on my list that I need to do on my list that relates to those pthaaah. And after a time I list, I prioritize it and I sort in based on what needs to get done. John McIntyre: Very cool. How long does this take? Clay Clark: 4 hours. John McIntyre: 4 hours? Clay Clark: Yeah. I mean but it’s like a Monday so, you know most days probably 2 or 3, but I have a weird world, man because I own multiple companies. John McIntyre: Yeah. Clay Clark: So if somebody who’s in Australia they’re like, “He’s trying to sell us, he’s trying to up sell us here it goes,” no, but if you go to eitrlounge.com, that’s one of the company’s I’m involved with, Elephant In The Room. eitrlounge.com or if you go to oxifresh.com O_X_I_F_R_E_S_H or you go to thrive15.com. Those are all 3 things I’m involved in. So if in a haircut business I’m trying to focus on how do I offer more value to the guys who come there? How do we cut more mops? How do we cut more wigs? How do we cut more lettuce? How do we make more cheddar by making their lettuce better? How do we cut more hair? How do we do it? How do we cut more hair? How do we make more profit? And then I shift quooof to oxifresh. I’m not an equity partner, but I help them on some marketing from time to time… John McIntyre: Oxifresh is that O_X_Y? Clay Clark: O_X_I. John McIntyre: O_X_I? Coz I spoke to Oxyfresh… Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: … O_X_Y a couple of weeks ago. Clay Clark: Oh yeah O_X_I. And then — so then I have to figure out, “Well how are we gonna help John sell more franchises?” He’s a partner of mine so, how do I help him sell more franchises? And then thrive, you know? How do we offer more value where these people are paying $19.00 a month how do we make it better? How do we get better, better, better, better? And what’s cool is usually your customers submit those ideas. If you could do it right you create a forum where your customers can submit ideas. And then you wanna take their ideas and you know implement the ones that aren’t crazy. John McIntyre: Wow. This is intense man. Clay Clark: Yeah it’s a little weird. I’m — I think you need to come to Tulsa. I know this — I know you’re probably already booked a trip for your vacation, I know a lot of people come to Tulsa for trips, a lot of — I mean like 2 people a year come to Tulsa for a vacation. Like 2 a year. You could be the third, but you should come here and you could observe this because I promise it’s like a — we have a lot of people that they pay for this, that’s why we built thrive so, people don’t have to pay for it anymore, but you could come in and kinda see it. And I’ve learned these systems from like the guy who used to run Disney World? I mean Lee Cockerell’s one of our trainers on our site and he used to manage 40,000 people. I mean how do you do that while staying married and managing relationships and finances and fitness? They all have a process. And the process this is metatime. Plan out your day, think about your day, prioritize your day then go do it, hard charging. John McIntyre: Well I’ve done that before the whole idea of sitting down, plan out the day, but if it — I’ll do it for 20 minutes. So the idea of doing it for 4 hours… Clay Clark: Yeah it’s weird… John McIntyre: … seems… Clay Clark: … see that’s why I’m saying that — no — that’s not necessary… John McIntyre: But this is good. Clay Clark: … it’s not good. John McIntyre: No, I think it is good. Clay Clark: What’s that… you know… John McIntyre: Coz it’s good seeing the differences. Clay Clark: Yeah it’s coz I own so many different things. If I wasn’t involved in so many things, you know? And simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, right? So at a certain point I mean if I could sell all the businesses and focus on one it would be Thrive15. But Thrive15 is like this passion project that it’s like millions of dollars to build it and it’s infinitely like there’s so much to be done on it. So my other businesses you know kinda supported the funding of that and the founding of it and all that and now I had to make those other businesses stronger to fund it more and now those other businesses are rockin and now I’m like, “Freak they’re too big! We need to scale back,” you know so I gotta find other people to kinda take leadership roles in those other businesses. John McIntyre: Ah okay, okay. What else? Is there any other sort of strange things that you do that you think other people probably don’t do that would help them if they did ’em? Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: Like the metatime? Clay Clark: Yeah oh yeah. Yeah well another thing is you wanna prioritize — whatever it needs to happen — whoever’s the most important thing in your life you need to schedule it first. So you know I have 5 kids and I’ll tell you physically how you have kids is you need to have a consistent marital sex. That’s the key, right? That’s you have a lot of kids, you know? So you gotta schedule time, just being real. John McIntyre: Really? Clay Clark: Just schedule time. John McIntyre: Just schedule time to have sex? Clay Clark: I’m not — yeah you block it off. You gotta schedule time — and you know what? So gotta do that and you gotta schedule time for fitness, you know? You gotta schedule time for talking with your mom and your dad. Anything you wanna get done you gotta schedule. If you know — but a lot of people what they do is they put their life second, third, fourth, fifth. They do let people tell them what to do, right? John McIntyre: Hmmm. Clay Clark: And then after they’ve done what everyone else wants them to do now they’re like, “Oh I don’t have time to call my wife or time to watch my favourite movie or time to work out,” or whatever. But if you put it first then you’ll always have time. And what’s great is that everybody will — everyone will definitely not be happy with you if you schedule your own priorities first, right? So most people are like, “What a jerk he puts his own priorities first,” but if you try to please everybody they won’t be happy either. But at least this way you’ll be happy. John McIntyre: Hmm okay. That’ true. Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: That’s true. What about this? Here’s a question. What — is there anything that you believe or that you do that other people would totally disagree with and think is stupid? Clay Clark: Yeah I do believe in the overflowing cup mindset where if I have a cup and that cup is overflowing, I’d be happy to share water with you. Now I’m pragmatic so I say the things that people think, but they don’t say. Now if I don’t have any water left it’s kinda A hard to share with you because I don’t have any myself and I’m also, you know, struggling for water. I’m struggling to survive, but if I have enough water for you know you and for me then it’s easy to share if I have an abundance. So I always teach entrepreneurs as quick trying to save the world and the rainforests and like kids in Africa and drilling wells and first focus on having your own prosperity. So you wanna be fruitful and then you wanna multiply. But I see as entrepreneurs out there trying to save the world while living with their mother’s and being quasi homeless and that’s not really the move. You don’t wanna be quasi homeless. Now — does that make sense? Like you see so many people who are like really struggling financially, but yet they’re spending all their time helping everybody else. John McIntyre: Hmm. Clay Clark: But if you can help yourself first now you can give back, does that make sense? Like I couldn’t help my dad right now if I was in the toilet. John McIntyre: That’s very true. That’s very true. I think of people do this as they get caught up with this, “Oh we give it to charity, we’ll give all this money or we’ll volunteer or —”… Clay Clark: Oh gosh. John McIntyre: Yeah I remember speaking to a girl and she went to Africa and obviously helping some kids over Africa doing some volunteering. And she comes back she goes, “Ah all I needed was $2,000.00 a month and then I could go back there and live there and just help them forever.” And then she goes and comes back and gets into real estate, does a little bit of it and she goes, “Oh wow.” Instead of having 1 house and making 2 grand a month and then going back to Africa I could have 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 houses… Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: … and then I can build entire cities in Africa. Clay Clark: Exactly and that’s where I screwed up when — in my career early on because I volunteered at a program called Junior Achievement. It helps kids in schools who are — learn business and that kind of thing. And I was asked to volunteer after I received the Entrepreneur of the Year award. So I’m out there volunteering and we didn’t have thrive15.com at the time it was just — there was no technology, you know? So I’m going to the schools volunteering, volunteering, helping kids. Kids are writing me thank you notes, kids are — one girl went to the Sony Film School. Like she said that we encouraged her to do it so, she took the risk, she went, she won this thing, she started her business. I mean it’s just — all these great stories. One guy started his own window cleaning company. I mean I could go on and on. The stories of the high school kids who implemented what they learned and it was awesome. Then my wife’s like, “Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey do you think you could volunteer and maybe spend a couple of hours a week with our own kids?” And that like hurts, you know what I mean? As a dad coz you’re like frick! I’m trying to save the world! I’m screwing up my own family, I’m an idiot! So all I am saying make sure that you think about your own spirit, mind, body, relationships and financial goals and don’t start volunteering, donating, joining all these endless clubs coz people ask, “Well this guy this guy today. There’s a guy today. This is a guy today. He is so pissed right now, but I feel so good. Like I feel good.” He calls me and he says, “Hey can we network? I’d like to get together network. I hear you’re really well connected. I’d like to network.” I — very nicely on the phone I say, “Hey I don’t ever leave my office and I don’t network, but if there’s a benefit for me and you like a win-win, if I can help you, you help me? Tell me I’d love to help you. If not I just — I’m not your guy.” And he’s like, “Well but I don’t understand. I want to network,” and I’m like, “If I’m networking with you,” I literally said this example, “I’m not having sex with my wife, I’m not hanging out with my kids, and I’m not doing stuff that I love. So no.” You know? And I feel good about it because now I’m here with you otherwise I’d be stuck in a networking meeting talking about some pure dribble. John McIntyre: That’s good, that’s good. Well all right we’re getting to a — we can wrap it up soon. I got one last thing I’d like to ask coz… Clay Clark: Okay. John McIntyre: … what is it now… Clay Clark: I’m trying to say the word sex six times during this training during… John McIntyre: I think that’s correct. Clay Clark: … this podcast. I think I’m only done 4 times so, I’m sorry but sex, sex, sex, now I’m done. John McIntyre: That’s 7 now. We’re getting… Clay Clark: 7? John McIntyre: … this is getting… Clay Clark: That’s it. John McIntyre: … racy right here. It’s probably gonna happen again too, you know? Clay Clark: I’m sorry I just — I guess it’s a personal goal… John McIntyre: I wouldn’t be surprised. Clay Clark: … I’ve had. I’ve never done it on a podcast before. I just wanted to do it, that way I can say I’ve done it. John McIntyre: Well it’s done, done. Any way what’s something that — you’ve done a lot of these podcasts, right? Clay Clark: Yeah, yeah. John McIntyre: What’s something that you wished people asked you, but they never do? Clay Clark: I wish people would ask what specifically do I need to do if I want to achieve the same level of success that you have? You know what is it that you do that if I follow that path would guarantee that I would have success? I wish people would — you know? But usually they’re like looking for the unicorn and the magic secret sauce that I wanted. I wanna find a system where it’s like some sort of essential oils that allow me to have success quickly, freely, easily, you know? They’re just — that’s what you want. They want the microwave thing. You know I’m not sure how big the microwave is in Australia, but in America people are like boom. Oh look it’s a microwave, boom, boom! Look at that okay just boom! And then we go, “I can’t believe it’s not healthy.” Well how is it — how’re you gonna heat up — how are you gonna heat up — how are you gonna make food 90 seconds and have it be healthy? Come on I mean it’s like whatever. I mean just — let’s not even get into that, but the point is if you wanna eat something healthy it takes some time. So if you’re gonna build a successful business then you need to look at how successful people do it and begin to do what they do. That’s the whole deal, man. You just — if you’re good at saying — if you’re gonna climb to the top of the mountain and you find the guy he’s grisly, he’s got the big old beard, he’s got the cane you know and you’re like, “Hey how do you get to the top of the mountain?” and he said, “Well I was just there, you know? I’ve been up there 20 times —” and he looks kind of grisly and gross, but he’s been there. It’s probably better to follow him than somebody who’s never been there before, you know what I’m saying? So I think it’s important that you think about how are successful people doing it and reverse engineer it and think about how you can apply it to your own life in business. John McIntyre: What’s your answer to that question then? That like in the way — I know you shared a bunch of stuff already… Clay Clark: Yeah. John McIntyre: … but I mean the stuff that you — that — you know maybe the stuff that you don’t usually get to share or stuff that most people aren’t doing that you wish they did. What are they missing? Based on your experience… Clay Clark: Okay. John McIntyre: … of getting to the top of that mountain? Clay Clark: Well one is quit trying to sell people crap that they don’t want, you know? Like quit trying to sell problems the world doesn’t want to solve, you know? So make a product or a service that actually solves a problem. If people have a problem and they’re willing to pay to solve it that’s a great thing, but if you have like a problem you’re solving that no one wants then stop that. Don’t die on that hill. Second is figure out, I mean, sit down today before the end of the day. I don’t know — sure what time it is on Australia, but I’m sure that you know you guys are — still have time to ride around with some kangaroos and fire up some shrimp on the barbie and that kind of thing, but before the day’s done figure out your why, figure out how much it cost, figure out the service you’re gonna render. I dare you to do it. What service or product I’m gonna render? Figure out the practical skills you need. I remember sitting down going, “Holy crap! People are using the internet and I have no concept of how to use it to market. I should probably become an expert on it.” And I am not exaggerating it. As God as my witness I have read dozens of books about internet marketing, there’s 2 though, Get Rich Click by Ostrofsky super awesome book. Get Rich Click by Ostrofsky and Search Engine for Dummies by Bruce Clay. Those are 2 books that are awesome and they’re easily accessible, but I had to read those kinds of books to learn a skill, right? I mean I want to be a speaker. People always ask me to speak coz I won awards and I would get up there and just screw up. I mean it was literally like killing audiences. People would pay me to speak coz they’re like, “You’re good at business I bet you’ll be a good business speaker.” And I would get up there and just screw up. Well how do you get good at that skill? You gotta study people who are good at it and focus and practice and practice you know develop that skill and the final thing is set up that network. Ask yourself right now who do you need to know that’s gonna help you get where you want to go? Who are those people? Boom! Do it and then have that PhD, pigheaded discipline. And I dare you to check out thrive15.com because I’ve said that as only as many times, but I’ve said it less times than I’ve said the word sex, which would be 8 times I’ve said sex and only 5 times thrive15.com. John McIntyre: Sex, sex, sex, sex. Clay Clark: That’s right. John McIntyre: There you go, mate. Clay Clark: Yeah. Marital — marital sex — marital sex. I wanna be — make sure we’re keeping it biblical here. John McIntyre: Okay, okay cool. Well I mean thanks for comin on. Before we go to — I mean we’ve already talked about Thrive 15. I’m sure that’s where you’re gonna tell me where to give it. Is that — if they want to learn more about you or become more successful or whatever this is what should they do? Where should they go? Clay Clark: Well take the 30 day challenge. Go on to thrive15.com it’s 19 bucks I’m sure and — right now I think your currency’s beating our currency is it not? John McIntyre: I can’t — no, no. We’re… Clay Clark: I mean is the Australian currency’s got… John McIntyre: … not. Australia’s terrible right now. Clay Clark: You’re in the toilet right now? Okay. John McIntyre: We’re in the toilet right now. It’s good for exports, but yeah not so good. Clay Clark: Well go spend $3,000.00 of Australian money, but log on to thrive15.com. check it out for 30 days, get in there and commit to doing what you’re learning and be one of those success stories. I mean that’s funny we have people all over the planet who are going, “I literally committed just for 30 days to take 15 minutes a day and go on to your site and learn this stuff and my life is changed.” People are saying, “My sales are up 7% this month just by learning those skills.” Salespeople you know? Photographers, plumbers. People are going, “Man my website is up you know on page 2 now of Google instead of page 75, you know just learning that stuff,” but commit, take the 30 day challenge, check it out. And worst case scenario you know you’re out 19 bucks and you know you can call me and complain and get crazy and hostile, we’ll refund you. Okay just get on there check it out. John McIntyre: How does this 30 day challenge work? Is it just sort of a you know sign up you choose a bunch of different videos or is there a process to follow? Clay Clark: Well we have a — there’s 3 different paths. 1 its start a business, 1 is grow a business, and 1 advancing your career. So you choose the path that makes sense for you and you get on there and there’s all sorts of research you can read up on. I don’t wanna — hate it when people make up statistics. So I’m just gonna direct you to a couple of things, but Dr. Carol Dwek, Stanford — she wrote a book called Growth Mindset. There’s another study that Dave Ramsey, he’s a financial help guy, he studied — he published, but basically over 80% of successful people meaning that they are living their goals, they’re achieving their goals. They take 15 to 30 minutes a day to study success. So you don’t be one of those people — only 2% of the general population does this by the way. So don’t be in that 2% category going, “I don’t know why some people are more successful.” Well 80% of these people don’t have super skills they’re just studying. So you need to take 15 minutes a day to study success a.k.a thrive15.com and then spend the rest of your day applying. John McIntyre: Cool. And where do they do that? What’s the address? Clay Clark: It’s thrive15.com so thrive 1_5.com or if you wanna email us go to info@thrive15.com and if you want to send me some hate mail send it to info@thrive15.com and if you want to email dating tips to one of our fabulous team members, Marshal, you can also email that to info@thrive15.com. John McIntyre: Well I’m sure you’re gonna get inundated with dating tips now. You shouldn’t of said that. Clay Clark: No he’s got so many dating tips and the thing about he’s a virtuous man, he’s highly skilled, he’s basically spending most of his time saying no. All the eligible women are reaching out and he’s like, “No not available.” You know he’s networking he’s done the whole deal. John McIntyre: That’s good. I mean it’s all about saying no, right? Clay Clark: Yeah his got — I’m telling you this guys is — he’s a — probably the perfect kangaroo for the you know for this market. He just — he can jump around from date to date and then — then he’s trying to figure out the right one to put in to his papoose. John McIntyre: Well, well it’s been good to have you on the show, mate. I’ll have links to these in the show notes at themcmethod.com. Thank you. Clay Clark: Awesome, hey you’re a beautiful man. Thank you — thanks a lot. The post Episode #134 – Clay Clark on Creating Happiness Through Business Success (5 steps every business owner needs) appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Leon Jay is back on the podcast, ..95 episodes later. And he’s back with another doozy. The takeaways in our chat alone can grow your business long before even digging into his new book, Create Automate, Accelerate. Leon used to be director of marketing for Mark Joyner. He’s worked on multiple 7 figure launches, And is founder and CEO of FusionHQ – an online platform for internet marketers. Create Automate Accelerate is Leon’s way to teach others what he’s learned along the way. He wants others to know that entrepreneurship is not about money. And that when you make it about money, It’s no longer an enriching experience that it should be. By around midway through this episode,  Leon will completely convert you from a money hungry solopreneur… …into a passion driven, team oriented entrepreneur. Listen in as Leon Jay shares all about his 5 P’s necessary to grow your business successfully. The thing about his 5 P’s though,  Is that you have to get them in the right order in order to maximise all your oppos. But once you do, You’ll know how to tap into this mentality, And how to build and grow your business the right way.   In this episode, you’ll discover: why moguls like Richard Branson and Elon Musk are sacrificing everything, even though they could have retired comfortably years ago the scary fact that most entrepreneurs misunderstand the meaning of the word “passion” (its reality is not so cuddly) the innate quality in us that creates passion out of thin air as long as we find a purpose why Leon doesn’t buy into the whole solopreneur way (learn how freelancers and solopreneurs fall victim to themselves) why having a team is essential to growing a long term business (and the power behind group-passion-mentality) how Google used Leon’s 5 P’s to overcome their early adversities (did you know they tried selling their business to Yahoo and were denied?) the biggest mistake people are making in the personal development world an essential fact that states that you do not need to have all the answers before you embark on your journey (especially ones revolving around funding) Mentioned: Create Automate Accelerate Amazon page for Leon’s book Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy, I’m here with Leon Jay. Now Leon was on the podcast in Episode 38 when we talked about how to generate 7 figures in 7 days. He does a ton of email marketing, a ton of just marketing and business in general. I first met him in Thailand where he had a coffee shop there as a side business just to — somewhere cool to hang out. I just found out that he since sold that and moved to New Zealand. So he’s travelling around and he’s just written a new book which is what I wanted to get him on the show for. It’s called “Create, Automate, Accelerate” and it dives into a you know concept that I find very — that I find very interesting in my own life right now which is this idea that business isn’t just here to make some money and have a nice lifestyle, but to actually put some purpose behind it. And so it’s — you know I like what this book’s about, I like what Leon’s about and today I thought we’d have a chat about some of these concepts and how you get some more — just like the tough thing which I think we’ll get into today is that this whole world is you know with meaning and purpose. It can get a bit cloudy and a bit whirl wind sometimes so we’re trying to avoid that today. Focus on the nitty-gritty, what you consider — so anyway Leon, how you doing man? Leon Jay: I’m good. Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head there. It’s — there’s a lot of whirl wind stuff particularly when people start talking about passion in relation to business. You know it’s one of those topics that I think often has a lot of fluff and no real kind of getting down to it and some practical how to. John McIntyre: Yeah it’s — yeah I mean just this whole thing this — is it like a whole business niche or business industry focused on teaching people how to live their purpose and I think it rubs all over — I mean I think a lot of who get value out of it, but it — I know it rubs a lot of people the wrong way at the same time. Leon Jay: It does, it does and for good reason. You know it’s one of those things that frustrate the hell out of me, to be honest and coming from a personal development world and a business world both are full of — heaps of BS and let’s just put it bluntly and call if for what it is. And then there’s a lot of other stuff which is well meaning and well intentioned, but really just leads people down the wrong path or gets them frustrated and sort of almost does more harm than good. So hopefully we’ll try and avoid that. Hopefully we’ll try and actually find a concept here that people can find useful and practical in a meaningful way. John McIntyre: Cool, cool okay. Well these people want to probably get the full background on what to do. We — I can refer them to the last podcast and that’ll maybe today just focus on this book, but can you get — give me like why — you know just a couple things — couple hard hitting social proof things, if anyone listening here — who hasn’t heard of you knows that you really know what you’re talking about, and then we can get into the book. Leon Jay: Okay so, I guess the general run down is that I used to be director of marketing for Mark Joyner which was one of, you know, big 7 figure international online business. I was Affiliate Manager for another 7 figure online business. We raised $1.4 million in revenue through one of their projects that I was a co-founder of. I’ve founded FusionHQ and I’m now CEO of FusionHQ, online platform for internet marketers. We’ve run our own event — internet marketing event. We’ve run a series of 5 of those out in Thailand. Like you say we started up a co-work space for internet entrepreneurs and I’ve spoken on stages around the world and this will be my third book on the topic of business. John McIntyre: Awesome, cool, okay. I like it. So let’s get into that end. Tell me about this book. What’s the — what inspired you to write this book? Leon Jay: So basically my concept is that many people are coming to the world of online marketing, business ownership et cetera, et cetera with the belief that it’s gonna make them a heap — a whole heap of money. And while that’s entirely possible I think that it’s perhaps the wrong way of approaching it and ultimately the successful business owners that I find — those that are really getting more out of life other than just simply turning a profit are those that approach business as an artist. And I often see — well the way that I see an entrepreneur is an artist with business as his or her canvas. You know they’re the ones that will put their soul into it — that they’ll spend their last dollar on it, that they’ll not worry about the 9 to 5 or they’re not worrying about trying to free up more time or make more money, but they want to see a project come to fruition. And they want to create something. And I think that is a much healthier approach to starting because let’s be honest in almost any business there’s going to be a lot of struggles. There’s going to be a lot of ups and downs. And a lot of people fail in business simply because they don’t have the stamina to survive the challenges that creating a business provides and, I mean, you see this time and time again with any biography of any successful business owner especially, you know, go check out the stories of people like Elon Musk and Richard Branson who are often held as huge inspirations within almost any entrepreneurial community. And you’ll hear them tell you again and again it wasn’t easy in the early days. It was real struggle and even now they face many big challenges. So — and again in these cases, these guys they’re not — you know they could have retired years ago and yet they still carry on doing what they do so, it’s obviously not to free up more time, it’s obviously not to make more money because you know they could just stop what they’re doing and have far more time and they’ve got you know every dollar they make now doesn’t really make a difference on their lifestyle. So I think it’s really important to look at those who really succeeded and find out well what does that mean to their life and what was it that they did to actually get there. John McIntyre: Hmm it’s interesting you mentioned Elon Musk. I just read his — well it’s about a month or two — I’ve read his biography. There was a… Leon Jay: Yes. John McIntyre: … you know… Leon Jay: Me too. John McIntyre: … see you… Leon Jay: Excellent. John McIntyre: Yeah that was amazing and it was interesting seeing because you know everyone glorifies the guy because of his work ethic and you know he’s got 3 you know $3 billion companies that he’s running right now and he’s built, I think it’s all, 4 or $5 billion companies total. So he’s a very successful guy… Leon Jay: Yes. John McIntyre: …but in the book you start to see a bit of the weakness side of him as well which is we probably don’t have time to get into here, but it’s interesting like probably in the same — I was probably very interested and have the same reasons you are. I was thinking how do — like these guys who do these incredible things and work these incredible hours, they’re obviously driven by like they don’t just doing it to do it. That doesn’t really make sense. So they’re… Leon Jay: No. John McIntyre: … obviously driven by something. So it’s like how does — I mean it’s a really interesting question. How do you actually find the same kind of purpose that they have? Leon Jay: Well I mean it’s interesting with Elon, right? Because Elon has — let’s say take his 2, 3 primary companies. SolarCity obviously looking at eco friendly power, Tesla looking at eco friendly transport, and SpaceX which is a backup plan if — and in — basically in his mind it’s a backup plan that if all else fails — if his other companies and other entrepreneurs don’t do enough to save the planet then there’s an escape route to Mars. And I mean for many of us we might find that completely outrageous, but this is not a stupid guy you know by any means, but he’s so passionate about that belief that he’s gone to all this extent to build these companies. Now I don’t believe that the majority of this likely to ever tap in to such insane levels of determination and focus as Elon. I mean he is definitely out there as one of the 0.001%, but that said I think he does represent something that we should all consider and that is to try and tap into something more meaningful and so, this is why I came up — you know I — as you know I spent a lot of time talking to entrepreneurs who would come to me and ask me the question how do I make money? And that would frustrate me because I say, “Well that’s the wrong question.” It’s not that you don’t want to make money. I’m not suggesting that that’s not an important thing to do. It absolutely is, but it’s the wrong question. And a lot of people would get frustrated with me because I couldn’t tell them well what was the right question and I — you know frustrate me too. So I was out for a motorbike ride one time up in northern Thailand and I just suddenly had this flash of inspiration about this — these 5 Ps of priority and I realised that they’re actually 5 things we need to consider when building a business. And if we get them in the correct order they naturally flow. If we start in the wrong sequence, then we could end up giving ourselves poor quality answers. And ultimately poor quality results… John McIntyre: Okay. Leon Jay: So the first P — the first priority is to determine what is our purpose? And you know I think a lot of us are annoyed by many things in this world. A lot of us are very concerned about many things in this world. There are so many issues facing society today whether it be abusing in the various communities, whether it be pollution, whether it be global warming, whether it be war, financial crisis, issues, I mean anything you know disease and sickness, poverty, the list goes on. And for almost all of us there has to be one of those things that or more than one, but something that we feel quite passionate about. Something that’s probably touched our lives in some way whether it be something we’ve seen while we’re travelling or something that we’ve experienced at home, but it’s — once we realise what it is that we want to change in the world then it’s becoming passionate about that. And I find that that’s the second P is passion. Passion comes out of purpose. A lot of people talk about building a business of passion and I think that the problem with that concept is that it’s a misunderstanding of the term passion. Passion comes from the word suffering not… John McIntyre: Hmm Leon Jay: … joy… John McIntyre: Give me… Leon Jay: … right? John McIntyre: … give me a background on that. Where is — you mean from the Greek [?] just going back to the Greek [?] or something like that? Leon Jay: Right so basically the idea is and the you know if you look at the Passion of Christ as a movie, right? It was about his suffering. That was coming from the true root word of passion. And it’s not to say that it’s all suffering and if we talk about passionate lovers, often we consider the passionate lovers not just to be you know a hot embrace, but also to be hot and fiery in their arguments. And you know we see that whenever passion is involved its intense emotion. It’s not just joy, it’s not just pleasure. It’s much more than that and if we look at sports analogy here, but let’s say you’re going for Olympic gold. Now you’ve got to be — you’ve got a serious purpose, right? You’ve now defined your purpose, “I want Olympic gold.” And it may be not the most ultraristic purpose, but it is a strong defined purpose and very, very clearly marked. Now once you become committed to that purpose you can become so passionate that you will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. Well that’s not all pleasure, right? It’s the — if you’re not passionate about your sport you will never attain Olympic gold, but likewise if you don’t bleed, suffer and put your entire heart and soul into it you will never attain it either. And so I think that that’s the important point to remember here, is that when you have a big enough purpose you’ll become so passionate that you will do whatever it takes. That means, yes you can enjoy many of the days. It’s not that everyday is painful and suffering, but at the same time you recognize that there will be ups and downs and it will give you the strength and the emotion and the resolve and the determination to continue through the down periods. Now I think that that’s extremely important particularly when you’re building any form of sizeable business. Now the next part is that this leads nicely on because once you become really passionate about something it gives us the influence over others and what I mean by that is we know — it’s very easy to become inspired by somebody who is passionate and that leads us on to the third P of priority and that’s people because ultimately, I’m not a big believer in the solopreneur world, I think that if you become a freelancer or a solopreneur there a huge danger in that and — in that you are your weakest link in your business. If anything should ever happen to you then ultimately the likelihood is that you’re gonna see your profits disappear very, very fast. And ultimately that business isn’t gonna out survive you. Not just that I think it’s a lot more fun if you work with other people that are also passionate and committed about obtaining a certain and specific purpose together. So we might have multiple different skills sets so that I mean you know within my business I have guys that work for me doing the jobs that I don’t like, but that doesn’t mean that the jobs that they don’t like they’re jobs that they do and I do the things that they don’t like and together we’re able to enjoy our workday much, much more because we’re doing the type of activities that we enjoy, but also we’re committed to the same common goal. We’re driven and directed by the same purpose. So you know you can have a group of people that won’t necessarily attain much, but if you have a group of people that are driven by the same goal, the same vision they can all become passionate together and they are likely to achieve far, far more and enjoy doing so on an average level on day to day basis as a result of that. Now I think you know once we’ve identified our purpose, we’ve identified the you know connected to that passion, we’ve built a team of people or we’ve started at least to build that team of people that you know I think all of these things are an ongoing process it’s not like you have to have everything black and white from day one. They’re all organic and evolving over time, but then we’re able to move to the fourth P which is I mentioned is place. So you know place is going to be — the ideal place is going to be specific to each individual business and you know that may be determined by the purpose. I mean if you’ve got a specific purpose in your business is delivering on a specific intention you may have to be in a specific location to achieve that. It may be determined by the people. You know if we look at, for example, when Google started out they were in a place where they were surrounded by investors that could believe and fund projects. They were surrounded by people of extremely high talent. And they required both of those to make their business a success. So in their situation, their location suited them absolutely perfectly. And then finally we can move on to the fifth P which is profit, that’s how to monetize that business. How do we fund those people, how do we fund the creation and delivery of that product or service that ultimately meets the needs to deliver on that initial purpose? And again I mean if we look back at Google as a prime example of this. When Google started out they had the intention to make the world’s information available to everybody, to make the world’s information accessible and useful. They were very passionate about that. They became very committed. They were also very passionate technologists you know they were very passionate programmers and involved heavily in technology and in the development of technology. And it was their passion towards their initial purpose to make that information available to the world and their passion around the technology that they were involved with that ultimately inspire — was — enable them to inspire the investors around them that coughed up $23 million before they’d even figured out their profit model. You know when Google started their initial idea was, “Well perhaps we’ll sell this technology to Yahoo!” John McIntyre: Hmm. Leon Jay: Well I mean if they were — if they were built — if they would of focused purely on the way that they were gonna monetise their business model they would have failed miserably, right? Because that didn’t happen, they tried to sell it to Yahoo!, Yahoo! didn’t want it. So, luckily they weren’t invested in the specific business model in terms of the way they were gonna monetise the business. They were invested heavily into the purpose and they were very passionate about that purpose and they built a very solid team up around them and they were located in a very good place. And then ultimately out of that they then were able to identify multiple different methods for monetising their business and of course you know they became the world’s largest advertising network, they’ve gone on to deliver multiple products and services, they’ve even deliver — sell physical hardware in terms of the Nexus range so, you know you can sell data, you can license agreements, I mean there’s so many different ways to generate revenue and I find that everybody is running around asking this question, “What’s the best way to make money?” they’re not asking, “Well how can I monetize a way that I can make my life more meaningful or create a more meaningful business?” John McIntyre: Hmm got one question I had. We had to jump back a little bit; just go back to the purpose. A lot of people think that — yeah I know that a lot of young people struggle with this. Yeah I’ve certainly struggle with this. I think a lot of people that I speak to struggle with this idea of you know go out there and figure out what your passion is and figure out your purpose is. And it’s almost like there’s this believe that maybe comes from you know pop culture and movies and music and all of that that purpose is something outside of us that someone’s gonna bestow upon us as opposed to something that we just decide as really important like it’s a you know it’s a conscious choice. So how do you… Leon Jay: Right. John McIntyre: … I mean how — you know what’s your advice to people who you know would try to do that? Like I just don’t know what my purpose is. I you know I’d be loved to be passionate about something, but… Leon Jay: Yes. John McIntyre: … I just haven’t figured out what my purpose is. Leon Jay: Yeah I get that and you know I’m not suggesting it’s necessarily a magic wand, but I think there are some steps that people can do or take to figure that out. The first thing to point out is just to clarify the difference between passion and purpose. I mean passion is the emotion that comes out of purpose so, you don’t need to find your passion. I think passion finds you. And I think that’s perhaps the biggest mistake that a lot of people are making in the personal development world is that they’re trying to figure out what they’re passionate about. So they’re going out there and trying to figure out, “What do I enjoy doing?” And that’s going to lead you to the wrong answers. That’s gonna lead you to try and start a bakery when — because you love cooking and you know a bakery is — yes there’s cooking involved, but it’s a business and so, a lot of bakers, who enjoy baking, suddenly hate their business now because they try and follow their passion. And I think there’s a danger in that. Whereas if we find a purpose, if we say let’s say for example — stick with the baking analogy, but we become really passionate about the importance of eating organics and in particular, say for example, organic bread and if we go, “Okay well how do we deliver? How do we supply organic bread to our community?” and you become passionate about that — I mean that — that’s a different story. That takes you on a different path. And I think for many people finding a purpose — I mean there are many different purposes in this world. Some small — maybe seemingly small, some much larger, I mean perhaps if you’re a golfer and you’re mission is to try and improve a swing and it’s all about you know the purpose is to become — to divine — design a better golf club and you just become super crazy passionate about designing a better golf club, ultimately you’re gonna enrich the lives of you know many golfers because they become so obsessed about these little details. Other people like Elon Musk take an absolute much you know huge view on the world and try to address and tackle head on the really big issues that are facing society. Now I don’t think there’s necessarily a right or a wrong. I think we should all take a step back and look and just say, “Well how is my business really improving the world? How is it making society or the environment a better place?” and or, “How — what would I like to change in this world to make it a better place?” And I think for almost everybody I speak to if you asked them long enough and you dig deep enough they do have things the care about. There are things that annoy them in this world or that they would like to see improved in this world. The problem is that they’re just too afraid to follow that. They don’t have enough confidence in themselves that they could possibly create a business around that and I think that’s a shame and I’m not sure whether there’s necessarily a simple answer to that, but I would suggest that if you are struggling with this then perhaps take a step back and just ask yourself, “Is it simply because I’m too afraid that I may fail? That I’m not good enough? That I can’t contribute enough to this particular cause or this particular issue in society?” And I think that’s probably the you know what stops more people from following that path, the fear that, “Well you know I’m not gonna have enough money if I focus on this because they’re — they keep going back and keep getting stuck on this issue around, “Well how am I gonna finance it? How am I gonna fund it?” And they keep going down to that last question before they’ve identified the other 4 questions. Now I can say — tell you now once you got those first 4 questions aligned then you can start answering the fifth question far, far easier, but everybody gets stuck on the fifth and go, “Well how am I gonna fund it? How am I gonna fund myself? How am I gonna fund the — I’m not gonna be good enough. I can’t do all of those things.” They haven’t got the you know they haven’t identified the team yet. And so I think it’s important to remember we don’t need to have all the answers before we start, but really identify, just in your own life, what is important to you? What do you really want to change? What would — and then just focus on it and start asking the questions like, “Well if I could change it how would that look like? What could possibly make a difference in this world? What would be the solution for this problem?” Okay and then you can start becoming — tapping into that passion and start talking to other people, start attracting other people. It’s not something that happens in 5 minutes, but I think it’s an important stepping stone and my fear is that a lot of people have this belief that it’s a case of you know well when this happens then I’ll do this. And they go around kidding themselves saying, “Well you know once my business is successful then I will tackle these kind of issues.” John McIntyre: Yeah. Leon Jay: And you know the problem is that often they end up creating this income — they create this financial stability, but then they become trapped by it because they become dependent upon that cash flow and they become scared to let that cash flow go and now because they haven’t systematized or automated their business in the correct way then they’re now limited in time and you know time slips them — slips by and they don’t really achieve what they intended to or set out to achieve. John McIntyre: Yeah. I like it, very cool, very cool. We’re coming right up on time here so, if people want to go and get the book and they want to read more about this process what’s the — how do they do that? Leon Jay: Well I mean you could either go to createautomateaccelerate.com and check it out or just go direct to Amazon and you know pick it up on Amazon, available in print or Kindle. John McIntyre: Cool, cool. I’ll have links to both that createautomateaccelerate.com and the Amazon book in the show notes at themcmethod.com. Leon thanks for coming on the show man. Leon Jay: Always a pleasure John. Good to speak to you again and I just you know wish everybody the best out there and encourage them to take some proactive action and not to be afraid of creating some real change in their lives and to the lives of others. The post Episode #133 – Leon Jay on Tapping Into Your Inner Drive and Not Caring About Money appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Attention High Performance Seekers: Serial entrepreneur Josh Felber is on the show today. Josh has owned over 15 businesses since he struck onto his path at age 14. And not only does he run these successfully, He’s also is the host of Making Bank on Cardone TV, He’s a 2 time best selling author, And now he’s helping you by way of high performance coaching… …in order to share the beneficial strategies and techniques that have always worked for him. As a business person, Who better to help you get clarity in your journey, And achieve what you’re set out for? Listen in as Josh shares with us how he uses & coaches high performance strategies.   In this episode, you’ll discover: 2 bulletproof strategies that help direct all inner thoughts towards a supreme goal (find clarity utilising Josh’s framework) the 5 key performance indicators to hone in on maximum productivity the extreme importance behind setting aside significant time for yourself, family & loved ones (yet still be able to CRUSH it) A brilliant way to process pain and gain the right type of courage (whether personal or business) in order to move your business forward A few of Josh’s tricks to help you gain the courage to let go (quit letting shiny objects blow up your entrepreneurial-ego) why you must know what your sacrifices are, and if they are worth it, before embarking on your ultimate entrepreneurial goals what you focus on is what you are (learn how to continuously remind yourself what you need in order to keep your precision-focus) Mentioned: www.joshfelber.com Making Bank Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy; I’m here with Josh Felber. Now Josh came to me, as a lot of my guests do, from via email and his assistant hit me up and told me a bit about his story which is pretty interesting. Josh has been an entrepreneur since the age of 14. He’s a serial entrepreneur, he’s built over 15 different companies, he’s the host of Making Bank TV show on a grand scale [?] on tv.com and he’s a two times bestselling author. So I decided to get him on and we can chat – we’re doing a chat about basically high performance and especially for people in business to understand sort of what they need to do, how they can do it better, how to get clarity in what they’re trying to do, and sort of all things in that area. And the way I thought which would make this interesting is to talk about someone with what I’m doing right now on my own business and use that as a jump off point for some of these ideas. So we had a bit of a case study approach as we went through it so, we’ll get into that in just a moment. Josh how you doing man? Josh Felber: Awesome John! Really appreciate you having me on the show today. John McIntyre: Good to have you here man. So before we get into, I guess the nitty-gritty stuff of what you actually – how you actually help people and what you’re actually doing, can you give the listener a bit more of a background on who you are and what you’re doing? Josh Felber: For sure, definitely. So my background is everything from owning multiple companies since I was 14. I’ve owned over 15 different businesses ranging anywhere from fitness and health, nutrition to financial. I owned one of the second largest merchant processing companies and sold that as well as internet satellite businesses, technology. We’ve started a green wireless technology business and, you know, we’re able to start implementing systems and solutions in everything from dorm rooms to hotels to, you know, businesses being able to rewire their whole offices without running any kinda new wiring and everything. So a lot of cool technological things there and finally, you know, over the years – I have always worked with a business coach and, you know, finally he was like, “Josh, man,” he goes, “You’re being so selfish with all the knowledge – all the information that you have and you’re not sharing that. You’re not communicating, not helping other people.” And so, when he said that that’s when, you know, kinda when that whole light switch – light bulb moment happened. I was like, “Wow! You know you’re totally right.” And, you know, and so from that moment on I was okay how can I get out there? How can I help a hundred to a million people? How can I help a billion people, you know, change their lives? Enhance their lives, be able to find that time freedom and have the energy to be able to connect with their families and friends and live their life, you know, how they want and so that’s kinda where I’m at now today. John McIntyre: Cool, cool okay. So coaching or the business that you have right now, helping entrepreneurs, that’s the only thing or the main thing that you’re doing? Josh Felber: That’s one of the main focuses. Is high performance coaching, that I’ve really focused on. It’s been able to really help me connect with a lot of different entrepreneurs or just even normal people that wanna push, you know, kind of that next level in their life and so, you know you don’t have to just be an entrepreneur to wanna have, you know, higher achievement, but I also have some fitness businesses, CrossFit businesses out there right now that I own as well as a nutrition company where we make a whole range of nutritional products for workout recovery, that sort of thing, a brain boost – our brain boost it’s our mental melatropic [?] product that we’ve launched that’s just exploded and – as well as a Mastermind retreat that we, you know, are in the process of rolling out to help businesses. Kinda really focus on the details and the nuts and bolts and marketing and everything to push their business and you know to the next level as well. John McIntyre: Very cool, very cool. So you’re in the CrossFit too now? Josh Felber: Yeah I’ve been doing CrossFits since 2003 so; I used to be a big runner running in 60, 80 miles a week. And you know always pushing to the next level of performance and you know came across CrossFit and its start [?] loved it and have integrated it to everything I’ve done since. John McIntyre: Nice, nice. I was doing CrossFit back in Thailand. Yeah I did about 12 months. Right now I’m sort of doing some other stuff, but it was good man. Josh Felber: Awesome, that’s cool. Yeah it’s a whole another – you know if you raise on the really challenges and pushes you from a mental as well as a physical standpoint you know and in that you know CrossFit’s where I found that it worked really well for myself… John McIntyre: Yeah. Josh Felber: …so… John McIntyre: Good stuff, good stuff cool man. All right then let’s get into some of this – some of the performance stuff coz I’m really interested in this right now. So all the – not so much from a – I actually just started an interesting conversation with a guy who’s or my friends who’s staying with me here in – I’m in Columbia right now. Josh Felber: Cool. John McIntyre: And so right now I’m putting together a sort of writing project. It’s just a personal thing at this stage. It might turn into a business leader, but we were chatting about the different posts, you know, different topics that I could write about and he made a really good point that, you know, sometimes when– you know anyone can write a generic post about for example what gets measured gets managed was that you know when we were talking at it. You know fairly well understood concept that – and most people get. And that’s all very, you know, he mentioned – he made a really good point. “Like if you right a post about that I wouldn’t read it,” but if you wrote about your application of it, the way – coz right now I have a bunch of spreadsheets that I use on a daily and a weekly basis to track all sorts of different things, he said if I wrote about that he’d probably you know he probably would read it coz that’d be really interesting. Hearing how I’d taken that concept and probably you know sort of expanded it and applied it… Josh Felber: Sure. John McIntyre: … to my life so, I think what would be interesting here is instead of say, probably going to just – there’s a lot of generic sort of performance stuff, everyone’s very aware of self help and you know motivation in business so, – and if you’ve seem the dive into some of the specific stuff around it – so can you give me sort of a – let’s start with a broad overview of sort of how you approach performance and then we’ll see if we can find some you know nitty-gritty things to dive down into. Josh Felber: Sure, no I definitely – awesome. So where we take a look out for high performance is there’s 5 key areas that we really try to focus in on and you know help our clients. They’re being really dial in on and the first one is clarity you know our you know are you clear with your you know where you are right now in your life? Are you clear with where you’re going – what your focuses are? You know then we look at energy. So you know power from an energy level standpoint. You know are we you know saving ourselves up in the morning to have energy throughout the day. What are we doing throughout the day to break up our day? Does this have sustained energy as well as be able to finish the day still have the you know a high level of energy to be able to come home, connect with our families or connect with our friends and you know maintain that you know throughout the whole day. And then we look at courage. You know so, there’s a lot of people that you know have a lower courage score coz we rate everything 1 to 10. And you know a lot of it has to do with you know courage to be more vulnerable to connect with somebody or the courage to take that risk to step out of you know where you are in your life in your situation and take that next step forward to better your life – to better your family’s life. And then productivity, we have so many technological distractions around us today. The phones, the computers, the iPads, that sort of thing and we become so distracted with that that our productivity has decreased and so, we’re really focused in on getting dialed in with productivity. And then influence, you know, if we can become better influencers in our lives. You know we can help people enhance and become you know better in their life as well whether it’s our employees, our kids, our spouse, our business partner that sort of thing. So John those are the 5 areas that we really look at and really look to focus in on. John McIntyre: Cool okay, okay. So like this that’s the broader review. Wouldn’t be interesting is like – how about this so, what – when is your iPad for the last – probably for a long time, actually, is the issue of clarity. I’ve gotten a better handle on it for myself. I’ve understood why it’s a lot more about why it’s important, but where I’ve struggled with it is you know recent one was this past week. You know about basically about a week, yeah, well I listened to a podcast with a friend of mine and I met him in Thailand and he was back in – I think it was like 3 or 4 years ago. I was living in San Fran, had all the sort of trappings of a successful life. Great car, great apartment, great job, lots of money, all you know everything from the outside looked great. On the inside though he wasn’t happy which is only happens quite sure with people. And so he decided he was gonna go and start a business online, move to – you know go and live in South East Asia, for him it was, and figure out this business thing. And I remember the story, this is on another podcast which I can link to after the show. He went to a Mastermind and in this Mastermind he said, “Well I’m gonna go build a business, but I’m not gonna have clients and I’m not gonna do any phone calls,” something like that. He had some really strict rules like that. Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: And understandably the other guy’s in the Mastermind is you, know you, go in and you’re an idiot, you’re you know this is business you need a host, you need a client, I mean this is – you need to get on the phone that’s where the money happens. In that I’ve heard that from so many different people so, normal typical you know common sense advice. He stuck to his guns though and said, “No, no, no I don’t want any of that that’s exactly what I’m trying to get away from.” You know to get away from Silicon Valley so… Josh Felber: Expertly. John McIntyre: … he stuck to his guns and 3 years later he’s got a business is doing about $20,000 a month profit. So I can mention that coz he mentions this in the actual interviews. So it’s public knowledge and I thought that was just such a cool story that he’d left this you know quote unquote successful life of his to go and start what appeared to be you know starting at the bottom and also making some – what a lot of you would think are big mistake in business, just being ignorant like no phone calls and no clients. And you know it all worked out you know it all really worked – it’s worked out really well for him. Then I actually spoke to him on Facebook a couple of days later and he said you know he’s really got to struggle – he really struggles to not work. And he has to really like adhering to his rules is really hard for him coz he’s you know I think for anyone who’s ambitious and hardworking… Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: … it – those sort of rules are gonna be hard. Josh Felber: For sure. John McIntyre: So where – so what I’m interested in is like so when I listen to that – the reason why that stuck with me is coz I – I think I mentioned this before we started recording, I went to Necker Island to hang out with Richard Branson and you know for a sort of an entrepreneurial event, everyone on there was about 30 other people, everyone’s in his amazing businesses building satellites and solar powered aircraft and just crazy stuff. I’ve turned up there – at first I was really intimidated, felt like a you know loser here I am with his little marketing industry and here are these people who are legitimately you know changing the world. Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: And yeah I’m feeling like, “What the hell am I doing?” By the end of the week though I’d sort of resolved to myself, “I’m gonna go out there and do the same thing.” I had this – you know I was very excited, I wrote a big blog post about it got a lot of comments and so, I’ve put this – been speaking about this out there in the world and then now, last week, thinking about it I was like, “Well if I was actually to go and – I love the idea of going and doing this stuff, but the reality of it is, for example, going and working 16 hours a day like you know if you’re gonna be you’re gonna be Elon Musk, for example, it’s gonna be basically putting everything on the line including the $20 million you, you know generated or you got at the last company you sold, … Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: … putting all that on the line, working 16 hours a day, basically not taking care of your health or anything, it talks about this in the biography I just read of his. And so as I thought about that I was like, “I don’t think I really do want to work 16 hours a day.” Like I love the idea of doing something big and I still want to continue to explore that, but I’m not actually interested in working that much and when I do I actually get depressed and find I don’t like it. So – but then I still feel I go back and forth and I can’t commit to 1 way or the other. So how do you help someone in this position? Josh Felber: No for sure it’s you know it’s an interesting position to be in. It’s like you know you see all these other people and they’re doing you know these perceived great things or you know it’s like you know how can I – you just solve a problem for a billion people or you know how can I you know create energy you know there’s – and I’ve been around in, like you said, is – you’re around all these other people and now you spend a lot of time with Peter Diamandis and you know help produce one of his movies and everything. If you see all these people at this level and it’s like how can I be at that level or how can I do the same things that they’re doing? But when you take a step back from all that and you sit down and you really get clear on who you are, what you want to do, where you want to go, that may not fit you know exactly what your vision, what your thoughts and you know everything about yourself and how you want to live your life. And an interesting quote came from a friend of mine I worked a lot with, like Russell Brunson, from ClickFunnels and I know in his Mastermind he works a lot with people and you know all these he was telling me, “These guys come in and you know they all want to make millions of dollars every single month,” but don’t we really sit down and map it all out it’s like why do you even want that? And you know okay great you wanna house, I want a car, I want this, I want to build a house in Taiwan and spend it with my family. And they start listing all their stuff and really breaking down what they want. And it’s okay well now let’s add it all up. You know okay you want to have this, and you want to have this, you want to be able to do this, you want to be able to take time off and this and this. And you add it all up it may come up to $25,000 a month that you need. John McIntyre: Yeah. Josh Felber: So do you need millions of dollars a month to be able to build the life that you want to have for $25,000 dollars a month? And you know I think we get so caught up in this glamification – this glorification of what we see and what we have around us and when we really sit down and understand who we are, what we do, where you want to go, and how we want to be able to help and create value for others then that allows us to really define – have a set course of action like your friend did. You know he’s like I don’t want to be – have phone calls, I don’t want to have to deal with clients, I don’t want to have those headaches and he set a course of action for himself and stuck to it and is now become you know what his success is you know for himself. So what we really like try to jump into  when we start focusing on in clarity is you know we take a look at you know what you know – for you John you know where do you see or what – you know – what does clarity mean to you? John McIntyre: It’s interesting because you mentioned Peter Diamandis there and I think, for me, what was happening I was living – so I lived in Thailand for almost 3 years and while I was there I you know basically moved to the Philippines before that in 2011 to – for an internship. I ended up doing the – basically becoming the marketing director for a chain of beach resorts there. I did that for a year and started, obviously wanted to get off on my own – make my own money with my own business and be able to travel around and have this lifestyle. So I moved to Thailand, I started making a few thousand dollars a month doing copywriting this was 2 or 3 years ago and at the time I was thinking, “Great! I’ve made it. I’m – here I am making money, I’m sort of got a lot more freedom than I had before.” And, yes, it was good, but then all throughout that time – I had a lot of great times, a lot of great experiences, but all through that time I was start to think, “Well what’s the – what’s the – maybe not so much what’s the purpose of life, but sort of like what’s the next step? What’s the next thing. And just building up a company to make more and more money, never really – it doesn’t really get juiced, but eventually after – it was around about the start of probably towards the end of last year and the start of this year I started to feel like – had a decent handle of what I was doing. I certainly wasn’t down to working you know 1 hour a week or you know retired or anything like that, but I was making good money and having great experiences and I’m thinking well do I really want to do this or do I want to go and do something bigger? And I’ve read Abundance and read BOLD and read some of these things. I thought what better way to go and create more meaning than to go and do these things? So I you know I applied to Singularity University, which didn’t end up happening, ended up on you know Necker Island for this even with Branson and the other guys and that was sort of the next step, but then now where I am, here, I you know the goal right now is to – well the goal I had was to go and build this business up, take my time down to about an hour a week, put a whole lot of cash in the bank, then go to Silicon Valley and get involved in some sort of sale, but then in the back of my mind part of me thinks that that’s just a should like it sounds like a great idea and I love the you know obviously I think everyone wants to make an impact and feel like they had a positive you know influence in the world, but at the same time I can’t tell me how to shake this like I only be able to commit to 1 direction so, I think I’ve struggled with – definitely struggled with clarity in this area and I know all of other people to – coz when I wrote that post a lot of people are in this position where – especially with this you know they’ve read the 4 hour work week, for example, they’ve … Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: … created a business where they have a you know quite a large degree of freedom compared to you know most people have a job and so, but you know a lot of these who aren’t making huge amounts of money, but they’re making enough that they can you know travel around and not work too much and basically have a really, really great lifestyle, but then always the second sort of thing seems to come in where people think, “Wow I’m –” you know they’ve got like a – spoke to someone with a Facebook account business and he’s like, “You know I’m making good money, I’m having fun, but yeah it’s just not that meaningful.” You know and so for me I was like… Josh Felber: Sure. John McIntyre: … I was like I’m doing this agency and it’s just not meaningful, you know? Something’s missing. And so there’s this drive to – it’s almost like a – you end up at that point at Maslow’s Hierarchy where it’s self actualization of what’s really gonna get you going. Like it’s fun enough to go and just make money online and travel around. What’s that next step? Josh Felber: Definitely and that’s you know once we really start become clear you know with that next step and who we are you know we you know we take people through you know a variety of different questions to really start to understand that. And then we have a what we all a clarity chart and so, with this clarity chart – and this is something that you could do as well is there’s 3 different categories. So we have self interactions and success markers and what we look for is we want to put 3 words under each of those areas and so, what we focus on and practice is what we become. And so with this worksheet and when fill this out its gonna allow us to continuously remind ourselves of these three things throughout the day, throughout our life. And you – we can set it up whether it’s like an alarm on our iPhone, whatever it might be so those become a habit and one of the things we do is we look at  – okay the 3 words about ourself. This is defining the best of who I am or who you are and we’ll use this to guide this through my – through your personal life or my personal life including my thoughts and actions. And so, for me, I always look you know as myself when I want to be – I want to have integrity with myself as well as honor and also be energized so, you know that’s how I look at myself every day. You know integrity, honor and full of energy. And how I want to interact with others – so when I’m interacting with others I look to be vulnerable to be able to communicate and be open. You know share what I’m thinking as well as joy – bring joy into every situation because if you can bring joy into somebody else’s life you’re gonna help them you know expand and grow. And then also being present because there’s so many people that are disconnected through technology that they’re never actually present there when you’re communicating. And then the last category is your success markers. You know this is 3 words that remind me you know what its – remind me that what has made me the most successful and what will make me even more successful so, the 3 words that have helped me as well continue to push myself is I’ve always been relentless. So that was 1 of the big key points for me was being relentless, focused and disciplined. And so once you kinda define these different areas its gonna allow you to really understand and know who you are as well as find the you know and start creating habits of those success markers, those inner action markers, those self actualization markers. And so what that then – be – creates that clarity in us to really start to learn and become and head us down the right path that we want to go on. John McIntyre: I like that. I like that. One idea that I found helpful in the last week which is probably building up some of the things that you just mentioned is, is really knowing – obviously you don’t know what you want to do which is you know I go and build this company or I want to have a great relationship – whatever all the different things that we all want to do, but the nature… Josh Felber: Sure. John McIntyre: … of the important question is well if like this there’s various ways to unpack that sort of just what I’m moving to what? But what a lot of us don’t focus on is what am I gonna have to give up if I do that? Coz that’s part of the package. Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: And if you want to go and build – and this how I was thinking out in relationship – Elon Musk did this last week coz like if you want to build space rockets and totally – like just totally –  a lot of his competitors would be out of business probably in the next few years. If you want to go into an industry in do these sort of stuff that he’s doing it’s gonna require working some pretty intense hours you know hours that most people just wouldn’t be able to do you know without burning out after a few weeks or a few months. He just keeps going. Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: And so – and that’s a M [?]. He’s been divorced 3 times, 2 times from the same girl – the same woman and obviously there’s certain cost associated with doing certain things in life. We often don’t pay attention to those so, for me I’m finding that an interesting or useful way to look at this is you see what’s going to be the cost of this? What am I giving – what am I gonna have to give up to have this and then the third question is really what is that sacrifice worth making to me? But you know based on our you know my personal value system or your personal value system. Is that sacrifice – is it worth it? Coz to some people it’s real, I must go and see that sacrifice totally is worth it, but to another person they’re gonna look Elon and think he’s a total idiot because he’s not focusing on the important things in life like having a good family or something like that, you know? Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: So there’s no right wrong way here so, it’s an interesting –I think the reason why I find this issue – this high idea of clarity so interesting coz once you get this down – once you figure this out, and I suppose it’s never really totally figured out it’s more of an evolving process, figuring out what to do is fairly straightforward. It’s always this issue of clarity. Coz when you’re not – don’t have clarity you can’t commit to it. Josh Felber: Definitely and you know one of the things that you can really – that really help kinda jumpstart you is kinda take a look at your you know life and say okay where have I really been successful at? And you know have I you know when I was where was my clarity? You know did I have things defined? You know and take a look at those situations as well then okay cool now take a look at the situations where we may have – or situations currently where we may feel uncertain, unclear direction is. And you know then we can kinda take a look and say okay why is that? And you know then we can really start to figure out you know how – what makes us tick. Coz I mean it’s you know it’s interesting when I’m coaching clients all the time and they’re like, “Hey well okay tell me what works for you,” and it’s like you know we’re totally different people so, what works for me is not gonna always work for you. And so we – what we do is we try to teach a framework to empower and to allow you to go out and utilize that framework to create your clarity in your life. To create your you know focuses and how to move forward and you know in your life and so, you know with that is – I think that’s the first place to start and where we all have to start to really move forward in our lives whether it’s in our relationships, businesses, what we want to do, how we want to serve, and you know how we want to interact and connect with other people. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah I mean yeah. I mean the other thing there when you mention that – what you just mentioned is this idea of like it’s really good to say you want something like you want to be fit or you know you want to have that business that makes you know millions of dollars a month and part of it is figuring out like do you actually want that, are you willing to give up you know whatever it is that you know – whatever it takes to get there? But then there’s this idea of just look at your life. Like what are you doing right now? Like for me I – if I you know if I’m only sleeping like 6 hours a night and working all day well into the night, having dinner and going to bed, maybe all I do is go to the gym, after a few days like I’m miserable and that’s not something that you know I think the thing that we don’t really give – maybe we don’t really allow ourselves to well not really accept is this idea that a lot of us can’t – we can’t choose what we want. That’s the interesting – I mean we can choose, we can sit down with a piece of paper and list out whatever it is that we want, but a lot of time – the time, I think , it’s more a process of discovery than a choice. But we’ve got to… Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: … dig inside and figure out what is you know what is it that we’re sort of automatically moving towards? What’s the stuff that’s gonna get us excited? We don’t really choose what gets us excited it’s just certain things happen to get us excited and other things don’t. And so, for some people they’re – they love working all the time and other people you know they love not working all the time. Like they’d rather be meditating and doing all sorts of you know maybe like exploring self healing whatever that you know you want one corner area of life. Josh Felber: Sure. John McIntyre: And they would hate to it like in – so these things is – the fascinating thing is like it’s hard – you can’t just choose. Like just because I want to go and build rockets doesn’t mean therefore I should go and build rockets or that it’s the right thing for me to do. There’s this issue of like do I actually – it’s like goes back to that thing that core issue of like do I really want to put in 16 hours a day and if I’m not putting that in right now then what makes me think I’m gonna be willing to do it later? Josh Felber: And that’s true. And you know I think it all boils down to you know how much you love and how much you know what your interest too is in things. I mean you know I may see Gary Vanyerchuk and I think he just posted an article several – I think a week or so back about you know how much he goes out and work and how hard he’s hustling and every day you know all the time you know and people think you know, “He does – he has a family and everything, is he able to connect with them?” and you know that’s a lot of times is you know what people see is like you know they see a hustler and they see you working hard, they see you driving, you know and they don’t see the other side – you know the other side of it. And you know for me my days are really broken up and you know blocked out so I can have the most efficient day as possible. So whether it’s making sure I connect and have time with my kids in the morning and the evening, you know being able to spend time you know with my wife and things as well as then making sure you know that I’m crushing stuff throughout – every morning, every afternoon, you know, and then late into the evenings and so, I mean I love what I do and I love you know being able to connect and help other people and I think when you find you know what you’re supposed to be doing you know just like Elon Musk you know working you know he was working basically back to back jobs for the longest time and you know and now you know with the SpaceX and Tesla and everything else and you know you just – you love it so much and you want to make such an impact not just for yourself, but for the world you know coz of that passion and, for him, he’s been able to become crystal clear on what he wanted you know and his priorities you know for him are just not you know are – it’s not family it’s you know what he wants to do, how he wants to change things. And you know for me I try to take a more of approaches you know I – you know I love business, I love you know what I do, I love hustling, I love helping other people creating value, connecting, I’m obsessed with that, but I’m also you know I have – I have 3 awesome kids and you know my wife – and I want to make sure that they’re in a situation to help empower them and help them grow up to be set up for success and to become successful themselves and you know I want to make sure I’m teaching them those correct things and so, I have to set my days up to be able to do that. And you know I think with everyone out there, like you said John, is you each have your own place, your own thing, and just because you’re not an Elon Musk or Gary Vanyerchuk or Richard Branson does not mean you’re successful in your own way. And you just have to become clear who you are. You know you can utilize the clarity chart like we talked about. You can then also become – you know once you’re clear on who you are – like you said John is what are you willing to give up to now make what I love – what my passion is, what my dreams are come true and you know and then you know is that gonna fit the lifestyle and the mold that I want to you know to allow me to provide for my family or provide for myself and then as well as creating deliverance, serve others you know at that level as well so… John McIntyre: Another thing I was thinking of then is that a big part of this is how I like our ego all right like how it becomes a part of our identity. Now for me example, I mean, you know I had this – I get this idea in my head that I’ve got to go and do this you know this huge things – we’re gonna build rockets or you know I use rockets as just an easy example, but you know I came off that island with this I’m gonna do something crazy big as well. And… Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: … I think very much is or became a part of my identity to the point you know I had to find myself as this person who is gonna go and do those things which it feels really good and it’s an addictive, I think that’s you know why we do it, you know it’s very addictive to feed the ego like that. To tell myself that I’m gonna go and do some amazing stuff, but I think it’s also damaging at the same time because if it’s not like – basically what ends up happening is that I end up investing so much in that identity that I’m not able to admit to myself that maybe that’s not what I want and that you know and that you know that I’d actually genuinely enjoy doing something else. Whatever happens to me and so, I think that’s part of the issue here is a lot of times we’re not willing to face the – just face the reality that we don’t care about something as much as we say we do. You know everyone likes to talk about like go into the gym – like going to CrossFit for example. I know when I was doing CrossFit I wanted to be – you know I went through a sort of a few week so I was like yeah I was want – I love these like CrossFit athletes. I think a lot of it will get like this. I want to go be like Rich Froning or anything you know top athletes there. And I was like all right that’s cool, but you got to look at like Rich Froning he trains like 3,4,5,6 times a day. All he does is train. Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: He’s probably on some sort of performance enhancing supplements and you know there’s a whole range – his whole life is structured around this thing. I think he owns a gym or something like that. So he can just basically make his whole life about training. So if you want to go and compete with Rich Froning or any of those guys you’re gonna have to build the same kind of life. Josh Felber: Right. John McIntyre: And if you’ve got a job or a family or all these other things it’s probably gonna be quite difficult to build that life. Anyway so long story short is you get back to this thing where you probably don’t care about it you know in your mind coz I certainly didn’t care at that as much as I wanted to think at the time and so, it’s – I think it’s very helpful to sort of realize you know I actually don’t care about that so much and then you can let go of the guilt and let go of the shame and let go of the oh I’m not productive enough or I’m not working hard enough or I’m not whatever and just go no I just don’t care about that as much as I thought I do. And that’s okay. Josh Felber: Right definitely. And that’s where you know that kinda that whole courage part comes into play as hey you know you got to have the courage to you know know who you are, but also have the courage to you know – where are you stepping up in your life or where are you backing down you know where you – times that you mean to just step up so, you know like you said John as hey that ego’s getting – taking control and stuff like that we got to have the courage then to admit to ourselves like hey you know this isn’t the right spot or the right place for me you know or hey my ego’s getting too big here you know this isn’t – got me off course you know on where my focus is and where my passion is even though it sounds all fun and exciting the whole entrepreneur new shiny object thing. And so and with you know with that is you know where we take a look at is awareness of what we fear and we have you know we have those you know fears whether it’s loss of pain or process pain or outcome pain you know we… John McIntyre: What do you think about that? Josh Felber: … don’t take… John McIntyre: What’s this process pain, outcome pain thing? Josh Felber: Sure so what happens is the process pain is you know the mere act of the process or changing will be too hard for us so, you know if you know we’re in the situation like you said and, “Oh man I’m gonna build rockets, I’m gonna do this, and do great stuff,” or maybe I’m you know maybe I have my marketing show or my marketing company, but it just you know that process pain of changing of will be too hard so, “Oh man it’s gonna be too hard for me to go out and start building rockets and competing and you know with like Elon Musk and those guys or you know the third would be outcome pain so the effort that we put into to changing may not lead to a better outcome. We may be you know the grass may not be always greener. So we may be in the same situation or worse situation and so, what happens is we have a tendency to come across one of those fears and we don’t have the courage to push through and take that action or move ourselves past that. And so you now really been able to find the courage and summon the courage you know and that can be as basic as communicating with somebody and telling them how you feel about a situation or you know whether it’s a spouse, your kids, business partner, employees you know if you’re employees don’t know what you expect of them coz you don’t have the courage to go talk to them. How are they gonna really perform and be able to perform and deliver to the level of higher performance or higher achievement that you, you know you would want them to or you need them to, to move the business forward. And so you know that’s why it’s one those top 5 things we really like to dive into. John McIntyre: Nice okay, okay cool. Well I mean I think we can keep talking about this for a long time so, but we’re… Josh Felber: Yes. John McIntyre: … going a little bit overtime here so, before we go though can you give me – basically tell me a bit of sort of where – if the listener wants to get more information about you and what you do, maybe to work with you or learn from you where is the best place for them to do that? Josh Felber: Sure our – my website is joshfelber – F_E_L_B as in boy E_R.com and I got a lots – a lot of ton free awesome content on there. There’s a free productivity cheat sheet that I use. A lot of 7 figure clients’ use to plan out their mornings, set up their projects for the day, who they need to contact for the day as well as you know who they need to – what they need to do to move those projects forward. And then at the end of the day they can go back check it off as well put 3 wins. You know what they’ve accomplished throughout that day that made them successful as well so, and then a ton of just free video content, free blog articles, I also write for Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Business Insider so, I’m always posting different blog articles and things as well. And then feel free to subscribe to any of my different information links to free video series as well as my online TV show. We’re actually switching – in the process of switching networks and we’ll be re-launching here in about 2 weeks as a headline in show and so, Making Bank online here shortly so we’ll be sending out a notice you know when we’re back live so… John McIntyre: Cool I’ll have links to all of that in the show and it’s at themcmethod.com. Josh thanks for coming on the show man. Josh Felber: Awesome really appreciate it and thanks for having me on and being able to spend some time with you today. The post Episode #132 – Josh Felber On How He Uses High Performance Methods To Smash All Goals appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

When you hear the name Adobe… What do you think? Video/image editing softwares and PDF stuff? Did you know that Adobe has a powerful marketing cloud too? Creative Cloud is awesome, But wait til you hear about the Adobe Marketing Cloud, And its powerful cross-channel marketing benefits. Patrick Tripp is an email connoisseur over at Adobe, He’s on the show today to tell us all about Adobe’s marketing cloud, PLUS some in depth data… Adobe has some mind blowing data gathered from their own research on cross channel marketing and email. After this episode, You’ll know about Adobe’s email marketing capabilities, ..how to better address millennials (because they check their email A LOT) …the consumer AND the business side of email within the average American’s life. ..and MUCH, much more. Email in the workplace is on the rise. It’s pervasive, And it’s not going anywhere,  Adobe has joined the party in a big way. Learn how you can use Adobe to create highly effective emails. Whether a large company or a one-man show, Listen in as Patrick Tripp provides some huge takeaways that will surely improve your email marketing.   In this episode, you’ll discover: what businesses need to do differently to make the most of email in 2016 the awkward places that the U.S. masses check their email (52% read in bed upon waking!) why less is more when it comes to your brand’s emails (learn how to avoid “batching & blasting”) how to personalize customer emails and leverage the data your company has gathered up until now why email creates a “fear of missing out” and how to make people fear they’re missing out on yours how quality far surpasses quantity when it comes to email the scary diminishing returns emails possess (learn how to avoid these within your email markeing) that to be successful at email, you must understand the individual.. not just the “list” Mentioned: Adobe.com/campaign (learn about Adobe Marketing Cloud) blogs.adobe.com (check the email blog section) Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy; I’m here with Patrick Tripp. Now Patrick’s from Adobe he works on the email team over there and I was surprised to get an email a few weeks ago that apparently he terribly wants to get into obviously start spreading the message about their email marketing projects which, you know, at the time all I thought they have was, you know, was PDFs, it was Adobe Photoshop, it was all the usual stuff that we’ve, you know, pretty much anyone online has probably heard of, but they actually have a suite of – yeah products that are helping people with communication especially email. And email is one of those main channels that they’re helping. And what they’ve also done is a whole bunch of research which we’ll get into in a minute which, they’ve done the research themselves, so I bet there’s gonna be some interesting data here and, you know, even more important there’s some interesting takeaways that, you know, if you’re listening to this you’ll be able to, you know, walk away and implement in your business starting today so, we’ll get into that. Patrick how you doin mate? Patrick Tripp: Good John. Thanks for having me. John McIntyre: Mate it’s good to have you on. Before you get into some of the research that you mentioned you have, can you the listener a little bit more of a background on, you know, who you are, what you do at Adobe, and sort of just like a rough background on – like I had no idea – like I was saying I had no idea that Adobe even had an email marketing thing going on so yeah, give me the run down. Patrick Tripp: Yeah absolutely! Thanks John, yeah I’m a part of the Product Marketing Organization at Adobe and as you kinda alluded to the Adobe solution is really evolved over the years. We started with the creative suite and things like Photoshop and Illustrator and we kinda moved out into the Cloud and there was the Adobe Creative Cloud and I’m a part of the business now that’s the Adobe Marketing Cloud and that’s really focused on businesses and helping marketing and enterprise organizations really address their consumers. And so I, you know, I’m one of the product folks from the Adobe Marketing Cloud that works on a solution Adobe campaign and we focus on cross channel marketing, really delivering experiences from online to offline. And email is a massive part of that equation. As we’ve been delivering emails since 2001 as a part of this business. And we’re just – you just know – excited about it and we’ve done some recent research about this so, we’re excited about sharing that. John McIntyre: Fantastic! So can you tell me a little bit about the sort of person or the sort of company that would be, you know, that Adobe – that the suite, you know, the suite of email products and – that you have. Who is it really a fit for? What sort of company… Patrick Tripp: Yeah this is really focused on enterprise marketing organizations – that large scale companies that are really trying to handle really complex issues. Whether it’s understanding, you know, website visitors to creating the right content on their websites, to creating those email campaigns that need to be, you know, delivered scale and that personalization, but we do look at that some of the more complex, large scale organizations across industries whether its retail financial services, travel, hospitality, things like that. John McIntyre: Okay so based on that the competitors are people who are sort of, you know, serving a similar market.  Cause they’re gonna be people, you know, like Salesforce Pardot, ExactTarget… Patrick Tripp: Yes! Absolutely, Salesforce, we see quite often. Oracle is out there doing their marketing cloud thing. We hear about IBM here and there… They’re dated. There’s a number, but as you go into the email world of course it’s sort of a unique set of prospects out there, but yeah we’re in that mix completely. John McIntyre: Cool, cool okay. Well let’s get into it. Tell me about this research. How did, you know, what did you, you know, how did it all start happening and what was the – yeah what was the result? Patrick Tripp: Yeah so in July this year we actually put together a study we work with a third party to kinda conduct the study of 400 workers in North America around there. The use of personal and work email. And so found some interesting data so, we want to share that. And then we combined that data with research house that we have internally. Here at Adobe Digital Index and they analyze, you know, billions of transactions and interactions on digital properties on behalf of our consumers and customers and we were looking at 17 billion visits coming from email over to around 3,000 websites leveraging our tools. So bringing sort of the – the study we did in North America together with this Adobe Digital Index data we found some really interesting results. Yeah and I’m happy to get into some of those and talk to those at a high level. Yeah the one thing I’ll say, John, at the top is really a – you know Americans are addicted to email. This is around the clock; this is an obsession, a potentially unhealthy obsession. John McIntyre: Yep. Patrick Tripp: And we’ll talk about the numbers and average time spent and things like that in the most awkward location you can imagine. People are, you know, at a high pace looking at their emails in the bathroom, while they’re driving, while they’re watching movies, in the most awkward situations which, you know, we can all relate to at some level. And a big part of this story as well as we get into the data is millennials. And those folks that are kinda between the ages of 18 and 34. They’re activity run email is actually pretty interesting. We know there’s a lot of channels out there things like, you know, mobile apps and social and mobile devices, but email still does kinda float to the top for the millenials. And so I think there’s some learning’s, as email marketers, we can think about how to better address these millenials out there. John McIntyre: Right so, I mean the interesting thing here is that people have been saying for years that email marketing or just email – email is dead. Email marketing is dead. No one checks their email anymore or at the very least they may be checking their email, but they don’t respond to any sort of promotions via email, but you know study after study is always, you know, floating around that’s saying email’s they lose like a 4,000% ROI so I’d say two and a half thousand percent. And it’s pretty much always above social and above any other channel which I find fascinating. So where do you think – and the interesting would probably be… Where do you think the trend’s going? I mean we’ll get into the recent – the sort of the specific data in a second, but just based on your sort of exposure to this stuff, a lot of people think email, even if it’s still effective, it’s just getting worse and worse and worse and worse. What do you think? Patrick Tripp: Yeah, I mean, I think that the volumes of email are still there and brands, I think , have a lot to learn in terms of how they deliver emails effectively at scale and with personalization. Consumers are agitated. They’re annoyed by this, I mean, they’re checking it, but there’s definitely this love hate relationship going on. And we’ll talk about that in the data. There’s specific areas for improvement that consumers, as we all, kind of experience that really can be improved around email, but I think, you know, one of the mantras I think about for brands is less is more. And I know some folks might not agree with that, but that’s my take on it, less emails more even from the brand stand point. Let’s think of a way to better, more calculated, more efficiently, more personalize the – to personalize the effect and use that word. Deliver these experiences to individuals, right? And so it’s not about batching and blasting. It’s not about getting your email everyday from the same brand. It’s really about how can we, you know; follow this concept of less is more. John McIntyre: Okay, okay. So tell me about the data. Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: Let’s get into it. Patrick Trip: Yeah let’s get into the data. So you know we – I first got kinda teed it up where it’s an obsession, at least for Americans, and I would say, to back that up, I would say on average for a weekday Americans spends 6.3 hours per day on email. That’s insane, right? And that breaks down by 3.2 hours in the work place and about 3.1 personal spaces and, you know, it’s just out of control. It’s a part of our lives; it’s a part of our device too, right? So I think this is – this all trails from that mobile device concept as well while we’re all certainly – it’s pervasive content. 9 and 10 of the respondents in the study admitted to checking personal email while at work, and 87% of their findings said they checked work email outside of normal hours which is, again, that think that’s transforming – the sort of mobile devices are transforming in a way we think about the workplace and the workday and email is sort of around the clock. So at the top level, I think, this obsession is pretty intense. John McIntyre: Crazy isn’t it? I mean I – like I, you know, we all tend to judge everything, you know, by our own personal experience and I know, for me, coz I work online and I’m pretty much on the computer from – oh today it was probably 6:30 or 7 I’ll be working till probably 9 tonight… Patrick Tripp: Right. John McIntyre: …obviously with breaks during the day. Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: But one thing I’ve had to learn over the last few years is to be really strict about my email and even went so far as to outsource my email just about a month or two ago. So I’m generally not even – I’m not really responding to business emails, but even there I still log in every day. My friend – one of my friend’s laughs at me because you know here I’ve got this someone else taking care of my email. I’m still logging in just to get the buzz of that dopamine kick of emails. So it’s fascinating how hard it is to not check it. Patrick Tripp: Yeah! Yeah absolutely and in some of the data we’ve found plays right off of that where this counts of the fear of missing out. Really is why we’re sort of obsessed and constantly checking. Nearly a third of the respondents in the study admit to checking email while still in bed. And we all know that – I’m guilty of this personally. And then it gets even higher with the millenials. So we’ll kinda start to carve this out by millenials, but about half of the – all the millenials about 45% of the 18 to 34 year old bracket check their email instantly upon waking up. So this need to just make sure that you’re checking and ensuring you’re not missing, you know, some major world event or something happening through email then that’s a part of it. Another interesting aspect that we didn’t ask in the study, “Have you ever imposed a detox program for email?” and actually 40% have. 4 out of 10 indicated that and with a pretty high success rate actually 87% noted that they had some success with that. And the average sort of detox program listed across the 400 respondents was 5 days so… John McIntyre: You mean they don’t check… Patrick Tripp: I email… John McIntyre: … email for 5 days at once? Patrick Tripp: Right, right, right. And then that seems a little high to me, but I haven’t tried it, but it might be good for me. We’ll see. John McIntyre: Yeah I find – you know me I’d probably have, right now, I’ve started – I mean a lot of it applies to social as well, but I’ll – I used to charge my phone beside my bed and I find that whenever I do that the first thing I do in the morning is pick up the phone. Patrick Tripp: Yeah, right. John McIntyre: And I don’t usually check email. It’s a real bad habit relative under control, but now what I’ve done I, you know, I check Facebook and things like that. So now what I’m doing is I’ll leave it outside of the living room where my desk is and now it means when I wake up it’s, you know, there’s nothing to pick up. So I go and have a shower and just relax for half an hour – an hour… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: … before I even check anything and usually the phone’s on flight mode too. So for me that’s what I do and then at – in the evening I probably – then I can have – there’s no way I’m gonna check email after say 6 or 7 pm. 95% of the time I’d say coz occasionally I slip up. Quick help too. Right one – well it works for me. Patrick Tripp: Yeah, yeah and it’s interesting you started to mention the different like locations and things you do throughout the day and that – that’s a good angle on the story as well in terms of where folks checking email. And as I kind of allude to in the beginning it’s in some of the most awkward locations you could imagine where, you know, 70% of them are checking email while they’re watching a movie. 52% while in bed, overall, 50% while on vacation. Now I don’t know the breakdown, by the work or personal, but I can tell you I turn mine off, for work, while I’m vacation for sure. But while on the phone 43%, 42% while in the bathroom and 18% while driving which is this the whole another issue that – yeah that yeah is causing some problems. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. Patrick Tripp: Yeah so, so these channels are just a really interesting and it’s really a big part of our lives. And so that’s the consumer side of things and I can go a little bit on the business side as well. John McIntyre: Sure. Patrick Tripp: Yeah. So email in the work place – let’s say 47% of folks in the study note that in the next 2 years their use of email for work will actually increase so, it’s not going away it’s gonna continue and they’re kinda embracing that. . And 20% say this will actually increase substantially so, you know, and that really number of other channels now available whether it’s social collaboration class forms and text messaging or instant messaging, but really email is pervasive in the work place as well. Let’s see millenials have even more of an email preference in the work place. 45% prefer emails as their top channel in the workplace. And the email popular in the workplace its efficient, right? Its efficient, it’s sort of the workplace norm still and in many cases you have to operate on this channel. John McIntyre: It’s interesting. You know what’s interesting here is I’ve been noticing Facebook here. You watch their – how their message system evolves which I’ve been – you know looking at it its much – becoming much more like email which is really interesting. You go in there – like I’m using Facebook at least for my personal stuff. Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: Like I’d be getting anything here. Some days it’s only 1 or 2 messages, other days it might be 10 or 20 throughout the course of the day where I’m spending… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: I mean the same – it’s basically the same thing as email. The same concepts where I’m sending – I’m messaging back and forth. It’s probably a little bit more instant on Facebook the way it’s all setup. Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: And it’s kind of – yeah I mean part of this – either part of a lot of the fascinating things about this is sort of the trend of culture and – you know and the way life is evolving and changing with technology. To the point where, you know, we’re always online. Patrick Tripp: Right. John McIntyre: No matter where – look when we’re in the bathroom, when we’re in bed, when we’re driving so… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: It’s a fascinating sort of cultural shift as well as you know just you know interesting from a business standpoint as well. Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: So what else… Patrick Tripp: Absolutely. John McIntyre: … what other – what other steps do you have or is that all of it? Patrick Tripp: Yeah so that was interesting on the workplace. Not necessarily surprising, but when you look at millennials it gets interesting as well. We’ve looked at that group of folks in between the ages of 18 and 34, younger folks kinda next generation of influences out there. 88% of them report regularly using a Smartphone for email, 76% of them are leveraging email at a desktop or a laptop, 29% on a tablet, and 7% using a smart watch. John McIntyre: Wow. Patrick Tripp: Now you know despite some of the mixed results of the apple watch, it feel you know every millennial that I worked in and around at least at Adobe I’ve seen a lot of these devices on people’s wrists. They’re checking their email, they’re getting notifications so, and the smart watch is something to keep an eye on as well. John McIntyre: 7% I mean that’s still… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: … that’s impressive. That’s 1 in – more in 1 in 20 people who’s checking their… Patrick Tripp: Right. John McIntyre: … email from their watch. Patrick Tripp: Right, right and that can be quite a distraction as it kinda pops up and you’re constantly looking down as you’re trying to multitask and things. John McIntyre: Imagine you can’t reply to it either like… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: …. you know you got a watch, you can probably check it and read it and then your mind just – like this is why I hate it. You know a couple of nights ago I was out with a girl… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: … went to the movies and you know it’s nice relaxing evening. Got some food, got a you know… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: … got some drinks for the movies, sat down… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: … and then I was like, “Hang on let me just check my email for a second.” I check my email, I had an email from a client that needed a response and then all of a sudden the brain just fires up. The engine just goes ring. Broom. I couldn’t stop. Patrick Tripp: Right. John McIntyre: Thinking about it for the next, you know, the whole time we’re at the movies. And so for me… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: … if I had a watch like that I’d be like, “No way would I be checking email on it.” Patrick Tripp: Yeah, yeah there’s definitely an early adapter culture there, but I wish we had a sort of been able to measure blood pressure and other things because I kind of completely could feel for you there in terms when you’re inundated with work stuff and emails and you start to get engaged in that and that can raise your tension levels and imagine having at your wrist kinda popping in your face constantly. Like … John McIntyre: Yeah. Patrick Tripp: Yeah pretty great – intense. John McIntyre: Yeah. Patrick Tripp: Yeah so, and you know, some of the overall takeaways in the study and you know we can make that available to folks if they’re interested, but you know the email is the ways preferred method of communication with brands and I think that aligns pretty well to what we all expect in the business side of course as you’re pointing around the return in investment in the thousands of percentages. We see that as well. We see a number that’s $39.00 for every dollar spent is the return that we see. It’s the staff and the direct marketing association. John McIntyre: Yeah. Patrick Tripp: And so still a preferred channel, still the kinda tried and assured in the workforce so to speak particularly the commercial side of things of how we communicate sort of the norm, but I kind of alluded to earlier about consumers and their preferences around email. Well actually 28% are annoyed by having to scroll too much to read an entire email. That’s something we can probably all relate to. Next biggest annoyance was that 24% noted that the layout is not optimized for mobile devices so, this concept of responsive design and being able to adapt to the different form factors can be sort of a distraction and an annoyance to consumers. And another one that pops is 21% of folks noted that their annoyed with having to wait for images to load or download while you’re looking at an email. We’ve all been in that experience where you have these brackets and they’re sort of meant to be images and offers and things that are just haven’t loaded yet. And that can be a – have an impact on individuals. So you know little annoyances here and there about the consumer experience. 39% of the consumers in the study noted that they wanted to see fewer emails and few repetitive emails and info brands and like less intrusive 32% noted they want it to be less intrusive so, that’s interesting. That gets to kind of what I mentioned earlier on around this wanting to kind of move towards a less is more philosophy. And I know there are email marketer is out there you know stomping their feet saying, “Listen this is a numbers game. This is a volume based business where you’re just playing the numbers, ” but what I think folks tend to forget is that there’s a long tail, right? There’s a diminishing return that happens quite quickly actually where upfront, yeah, you might be able to build to get some extra conversions by – as a marketer, as an email marketer, you know, delivering more volume, but you start to fatigue. You start to wear down your consumer. You start to annoy them in a lot of different ways so, we see that sentiment kind of you know bearing its ugly head in some of this data and so, I think you know that’s a big opportunity, right? And some other data we actually collected, not too long ago, of email marketers which kinda takes a different angle of this, it says you know, “What are your struggles?” We did a study about 220 email marketers not long ago. And we’re putting together some benchmark information on that right now trying to categorize them in different levels of maturity, but in terms of personalization they struggle. I would say 37% of them sort of strongly believe that they don’t have the ability to deeply personalize their email content and leverage customer data. So it’s very superficial, right? It’s very sort of hello name, hello I know some real basic things about you. I’m not able to pull in purchase history, you’re not employing contextual information that might be more helpful than sort of blatant, you know, selling to too broad audiences. So when you look at it from the email marketer standpoint you think it’s also an interesting rub. John McIntyre: Okay. Patrick Tripp: Yeah, yeah. John McIntyre: So let’s flip the table then. So I looked at the research, what do you I mean what do you guys doing differently? How do you – what suggestions do you have for businesses, you know, small and large so we – you know from you know from small time entrepreneurs all the way up to the enterprise level? What do people – what do businesses need to do differently to, you know, to make the most of email in 2015 and, you know, moving forwards? Patrick Tripp: Yeah really and I think there’s a lot there and I think it does revolve quite a bit around data and how you kinda manage the data and the profile of your customer and not just sort of cutting lists. By cutting lists and sort of cranking those out and so, we all know that – well most of us only have one email for work, but in the personal side of things, I know I have multiple different emails personally and so how do we maintain that sort of individual view? Yeah I might have 3 emails, but I don’t want to receive 3 strands of communications from the same brand or from various similar efforts. So how can we, as marketers, think about ways to kinda bring those different email identities together? The different sort of touch points and kinda look at that as a single person, as a single profile and so that’s a good opportunity for us, as marketers, and it’s not as hard as it seems. There’s a lot of automation that you can do there with bits of technology and you know that allows you to kinda say, “Hey here’s what we’re doing for email, but let’s make sure that that’s coordinated with what we’re doing with direct mail or what we’re doing with – what we’re sending out on mobile pushes or for looking at social.” There’s a way to kinda insure that you know you’re not doing – you know everything that everybody all the time and they – you’re only sending messages in channels that matters so, you know that kind of brings you, you know, the data concept to understanding the individual and not the list and not just the email address, but the person and again less is more. It’s really about a more effective, more targeted communication and not about matching and blasting in our opinion. John McIntyre: Yeah I mean it – I definitely agree with that there. There’s so much – you know like a classic – the classic you know marketing is just blast out emails all the time whether you’re you know – no matter what you’re selling. It’s just you know get people onto a list and then just send these you know big broadcasts which just go to everyone. But the – I think why  businesses – a lot of businesses don’t understand now is that there’s all sorts of software solutions, you know, up and you know all the way up and down the you know price spectrum which can help you do all sorts of behavioral targeting. And you know just to get extremely targeted about you know what you’re sending out since other people just getting these big blasts they’re getting you know promotions and contents that’s specifically tailored to you know what they’re interested in, how they’ve interacted with the website, with the app, however you want to do it. And then you know you could just do that with the website and the email, but I think we get so – by the way you talked about I’ve seen people doing this too is get this you know all in one platforms where, like you mentioned, you can start doing this segmenting with you know all across the boards so based on direct mail and based on their apps their using and based – just everything. And it can get quite complex, but it’s also, I think, extremely valuable too for the people who get on board with it. Patrick Tripp: Yeah we completely agree in you know a lot of the email providers out there. We’re talking about cross channel and from the Adobe standpoint we know we’ve been crossed channel since our inception. We were kneeling back in 2001 as a French company that was very focused in on digital like email, text messaging, social and so, you know cross channel has always been a thing for us and for us it’s just saying let’s think of email as the centerpiece for the glue to this cross channel construct and you know what email can also be a good mechanism to collect more preferences and information about individuals. So it’s not about the selling, but it’s about, “Hey we like to learn more about you John and we like to kind of understand you better as a like a person and your preferences. And then if you can provide those things to us we can take those into the system and ensure that like all the content that we deliver to you is extremely relevant.” John McIntyre: Yeah absolutely cool. All right well we’re just coming off on time now so, before we go though can you give – you know give me the – give me and the listener a bit of more of a background on – or give me an idea of what you guys – exactly what you guys do? What the solution’s like and… Patrick Tripp: Yeah. John McIntyre: … where people can go to learn more information about the solution you know you guys offer and also probably just to get more information about it if you guys have a blog or resources that you have on offer? Patrick Tripp: Yeah sure. You know you can go to adobe.com/campaign and that is really the story of our cross channel marketing solution including email. And we call it Contextual Email coz we really care about being more than just a – again a static badge and blast type tool and more about, “Hey what’s the weather? Where are you located? How can we use these types of data points to better engage,” but yeah adobe.com/campaign. You’ll learn there more about the solution as well as the Adobe Marketing Cloud which a lot of aspects there including web and social and analytics and stuff like that and so, yeah we’re really excited about that. You can also go to blogs.adobe.com and you’ll see there an opportunity to look at an email blog section that we write a lot about this stuff so… John McIntyre: Perfect cool. I’ll leave links to that in the show note at themcmethod.com. Patrick thanks for comin on the show man. Patrick Trip: Thanks John, take care. The post Episode #131 – Patrick Tripp on Powerful Email Marketing With Adobe Software (plus outrageous email statistics) appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

lf you’re spinning in circles, wallowing in your entrepreneurial stress, you need to listen to this episode. If you’re discouraged and wondering if your back is actually becoming part of the wall… Then you’re gonna love Dan. From corporate. To freelance. To personal trainer. To business owner. To investor. Dan Meredith has risen from obscurity, To massive entrepreneurial success in a matter of MONTHS. Yes, months. Around 18 to be exact. Listen in as he shares the most important parts of his journey, And his introspective thoughts about how he made this happen in such a short amount of time. Entertaining and informative throughout, ..this episode will get you pumped up and confident that you too can do what he did. Because you can.   In this episode, you’ll discover: how Dan got retained by four large clients & outsourced 100% of it (learn how he landed these deals and built his team) the inevitability of the grind.. how relationships are ruined, good habits murdered & physical and mental health goes to shambles (learn how it’s all so worth it when done right!) Dan’s networking secret tips that have made each and every conference he’s gone to profitable (hint: he doesn’t like calling it networking) how buying someone’s product instantly makes you a person of interest to them (invest in others and they’ll invest in you… but don’t be a weird “fanboy”) a technique to make sure you’re not a weird fanboy when reaching out to professional connections (never look at others as better than you.. just more advanced) why social skills are an absolutely necessary & learned skill (whether you’re “cool” or “weird”) the beautiful breaking point that follows your period of grind (learn to appreciate this transition to scale your business best) how Dan levels up to his next entrepreneurial venture through allotted periods of slave-labor like working time blocks the absolute number 1 thing Dan attributes to his rapid success.. coaches & mentors: learn why and how he uses these to short-cut his way to the top (he’s invested over 6 figures this year alone.. and its all come back plus FAR more) Mentioned: Dan’s Ramblings: DeathGloryOrDisappointment.com Dan’s FB Group: Coffee With Dan Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy; I’m here with Dan Meredith. Now Danny’s an old friend, a semi old friend. I think we started talking some time last year. And he’s done a lot of cool things in the last 12 months – 12 – 18 months. So I asked him, “Can I get you on the podcast so I can pick your brain?” Dan Meredith: Oh you. John McIntyre: So I… It’s like… Dan Meredith: You absolute grub. John McIntyre: So anyway Dan is a marketer who like – we’ve been talking about his story. I’ll let him tell – you know it’s a very detailed, really – lots of cool stuff happening. He’s working with a bunch of marketers who have probably been on this podcast and they’re all in you known all over the industry. Anyway he’s done lots of cool stuff. So we’ll get into that and you may remember Dan from the videos that we did in September when we were both at the Titans of Direct Response we spoke about, I don’t know, Dan – what was it – Dan Kennedy and some of those guys. And also Lady… Dan Meredith: And lady boys [?]. John McIntyre: Lady boys [?]. Dan Meredith: Lot and lots of lady boy [?] based discussions… John McIntyre: Yes. Dan Meredith: … which was crucial to marketing. Key to part that. John McIntyre: So Dan what’s up man? How you going? Dan Meredith: I’m doing absolutely brilliant mate. I’m just wrapping up things here on a Friday. I just – for anyone I’m apologizing in advance. I do tend to let the old swear word out and the event I just finished was called “Free Shit Friday” in my group I set up called “Coffee With Dan” which was just a little accountability group that I set up because I couldn’t – none of my – I didn’t live near anyone sort of entrepreneurial so, I kinda decided to set up this little group. Hopefully about 15, 21 friends and I think we’re about 700 now. It’s crazy, but once in a blue moon we do something called “Free Shit Friday” and we just – I encourage everyone to give stuff away. And I think – I literally just left the conversation because I said I’ve got to go, but we’re close to 300 comments and about $45,000 worth of stuff just being given away. John McIntyre: It’s pretty – so… Dan Meredith: So crazy group. John McIntyre: Coffee With  Dan. Dan Meredith: Coffee With Dan. John McIntyre: A bit crazy coffee. Dan Meredith: Amount of Vodka I put in mine, my friend, yeah it’s pretty crazy. John McIntyre: All right well let’s get into the story. I already told this before, but let’s go back – I think what people find value in is the whole understanding where build come from coz remember I says the end result which is you know so and so’s you know working for this guy – working with you know a bit of you know I overlay, “Oh John’s got all these guys in his podcast,” for example. “Like how the hell he do that?” And the honest answer is I just email people which is you know the answer to a lot of this stuff, but people really appreciate hearing the story of when it was like when you weren’t successful when life kinda sucked. So tell me about that. Dan Meredith: Yeah well career wise I flipped between kinda recruitment and sort of personal training and a bit of consultancy. At the age of 33 – I’m 30 – just turned 35. I decided that I really wasn’t happy with my life and I decided to take what little savings, and they were little, even though I’d had some all right jobs before I just kinda knew that there’s never enough money in the pot. I took what little I had. I maxed out – I think it was 4 credit cards? To quite a pretty penny and opened myself a personal training gym for the facility and before long I was down to, so I’ll do it in dollars coz the international language of market, about $40 a week to life off. And we were making decisions you know is it food or is it fuel today? And we would – some days we would eat and some days we would put money in the car so we could get to work and get to clients. So yeah it started off pretty lean, to be honest, and I heard about copywriting – I can remember this it was December 18th in 2013 so, I’ve only been in the game for say 18, 19 months? Maybe 20 I don’t even know. So yeah that’s how long it’s been for me. And it started off with a guy called Paul Mort who does fitness marketing in the UK and I learned about what copy was from him. Then I thought this was fascinating applied it to my own business, more money started coming in. I thought this was awesome then I came across Ben Settle, Andre Chaperon, yourself John, and then it was the CopyHour, as well and I just became obsessed about it. And I just bought everything to do with copy. And you know I was a bit of a nut job with it to be honest coz like for example you’re supposed to do the CopyHour every year. I decided to do it in 3 months. It was 5 hours a day of hand written copy. Yeah it was intense, but that was my starting point. Piss poor and with absolutely no idea what I was doing. John McIntyre: That’s a cool – that’s a cool start. I’m curious when you mentioned that you said you had $40 a week to live on, I never actually asked you this, what did you eat? When it came to eating, what did you eat? Dan Meredith: Do you know what mate? It was oats, tins of tuna, and beans. That was it. John McIntyre: Mixed together that? Dan Meredith: Just… Not all the time, but yeah the oats was separate generally then there was tuna and beans. It was just the most simple you know kinda the cheapest most calorie dense protein filled food I could get. Coz least money as possible. One of the things we got into the habit of doing was going down to a supermarket we have here called Tesco’s. And if you get – if you get there about, 9:30 they shut at 10, they’d be all the food that was gonna be thrown away that day. So we got pretty good at sussin out when the cheap food was gonna be put up and we would eat – you know we would just grab whatever we could. It was you know usually a discount so, yeah they kinda recognized us and we’d always be the first ones there to grab the bargains. John McIntyre: Nice okay. I’m really curious what oats? This is totally unrelated. Me – I’m just in a funny mood today that oats, beans and tuna blended up together and… Dan Meredith: They… John McIntyre: … this little bit of water. Dan Meredith: I imagine it would taste bloody awful Jonathan, but that – I actually do have the ability to separate my foodstuffs and since we’ve last met I’ve now mastered the spoon. So cutlery is actually something that I can use Jonathan, thank you. John McIntyre: Good. I mean I was speaking more for me. I mean I used to – when I was in Thailand it was like smoothies – it was a huge smoothie every morning just coz I couldn’t be bothered to sit down and eat. It was just quicker to mix smoothie and just drink it while I’m you know doing my stuff whatever I happen to be doing that morning. Dan Meredith: Moisturizing knowing you. John McIntyre: Well sometimes I’d use the smoothie to moisturize. I mean that was – anyway… Dan Meredith: Would you be drinking the smoothie when you drive one of your cute pairs of underwear Jonathan? John McIntyre: Getting distracted. So what happened next? I mean what was the – you’ve gone from like this you know from $40 a week you know, spending on food, to you know sort of working for – almost getting mental and working for  a few very interesting people and now – I mean we haven’t spoken actually in a few months. I’m not even sure where you are now or what’s going on. Dan Meredith: It is pretty cool right now to be honest mate. John McIntyre: Okay. Okay tell me about that– let’s do that first. What’s going on right now and then we can settle back and look – what happened in the journey. Dan Meredith: Well okay so, currently I – okay so still got the gym. That’s like turning over you know a very comfortable amount and I don’t do anything for that. I’ve now got this Coffee With Dan group which obviously started off as a bit of a fun, but you know to put it in perspective it – I did well I did a high 5 figures in one afternoon a few weeks ago from that group. It’s turned out to be crazy responsive so, I’ve got a whole group of coaching clients, provocation clients, I’ve got a copywriting team. So I got 4 copywriters that work for me. I got supplement comin out and I now own a majority stake in a half millimetre digital product company. So… John McIntyre: Nice. Dan Meredith: … it’s been a bit nuts to be honest John. John McIntyre: Okay, okay. Dan Meredith: Yeah still is. John McIntyre: If you’re still doing – coz last time we spoke you were doing a whole bunch of say – you were basically on Facebook all day doing deals. Dan Meredith: Yeah I mean I still – we’ve still got – that was for the copywriting agency and that’s kinda fully booked at the moment. You know we generally – we were retained by 4 large clients and that covers – I mean that in itself is a big business on its own and that’s only in the health, wellness, fitness nutrition sector. And yeah went to an event in that and then we picked up 2 you know beasts in the market place and that’s actually been something very useful is the events that I’ve gone to every single event I’ve gone to has made me money. John McIntyre: Okay. Dan Meredith: So yeah I mean I’ve got a you know about 10 staff now. All around the world, a couple full time and yeah I just literally do what I want. I mean but honestly I preach this to the group I teach. I do about – and I learnt this from I think you were talking about something you learnt from James Franco with the kinda 90 minute blockings? John McIntyre: Yeah. Dan Meredith: So I do 3 90 minutes or 2 2 hours a day and that’s it. That’s all I do. John McIntyre: Nice. Dan Meredith: Everything else is automated. I mean honestly I can fold my business up. I mean realistically as long as I check my emails once a day. Spend about an hour or so on Facebook, I’m good. John McIntyre: Yeah. It’s funny when you have that. Everyone has that transition point where you’re gonna go from you know doing the work to be going, “Oh I don’t actually have to do the work. I can just hire other people and charge a little bit more for what I’m offering.” Dan Meredith: Yeah. John McIntyre: Then done. All you’re really doing – is you’re sort of the chess player at that point. Dan Meredith: That’s the thing. You know at the moment you know we had a one of our you know retaining copy clients drop off the other week because now I’m just renowned for just that. It’s no stress mate. I mean this is the beautiful thing. When you – you know I’m a big fan we’ve spoke about this before, the power of niche-ing down.  Let people know exactly what I  do so, it’s so simple for me to pitch now because I just you know I have  team of copywriters all expert in fitness and nutrition professionals, all fully trained copy chiefs. So when I pitch in it’s kinda of a no brainer for people. I take a lot of stress away from – by just handling all of their work. John McIntyre: Right, right it’s cool, but the funny thing is like you handle the work, but you don’t do the work. I mean that’s the best bit, right? Dan Meredith: Yeah well that was the kind of the reality is obviously I started you know so we know we both – I mean I still love writing copy, I still do enjoy it, but it’s more kinda for fun now and just doing on bits and pieces that I enjoy. The thing that I did, as I soon realise once I got my apprentice in, trained him up, and kinda kept doing that. Then I realise I was the one checking all the work still so, it’s kinda on my head and then I basically approached – I won’t name because it’s he kind of keeps under the hat, but you know a known copy mentor. And I said, “Look for an hour a week will you just you know maybe an hour or 2 a week, will you just go through all the work my team create and give it your critique?” And he was like yeah. We pay him you know a decent retainer for that. So you know the whole system I’m hands off of now. It just works without me. John McIntyre: Nice, nice. Dan Meredith: Yeah. John McIntyre: All right so, let’s hear me out for a second. So like 18 months to 20 – 18 months to 24 months so, almost 2 years ago was when you guys started. You had 40 bucks a week to spend on oats, beans and tuna. And then now you got this same way – you got a few different businesses going, a bit more of a – definitely moving more into that. What if it’s good – I’m like it’s more a – I feel like that’s the entrepreneurial role. Like you’ve got that transition from you have a job… Dan Meredith: Yeah. John McIntyre: … then you start a business then you’re self employed, but that’s really just a job and you’re employing yourself. Dan Meredith: Correct. John McIntyre: Then I don’t know what the next step is. So the next step seems to be something like the – it gets – when you get other people in – I mean it’s the 4 cash flow quadrants, 1 of those rich dad books, that’s what he calls it anyway. So you go for that… Dan Meredith: Okay. John McIntyre: … employed to self employed, to a business owner, which is where let’s say you’re at right now, the next step is investor which is where you use that money, you give it to everyone else to run the business, but it’s this cool thing… Dan Meredith: Yeah that’s where I’m – I’m just morphing into that right now. Coz obviously I did my first sort of investment about 6 weeks ago? John McIntyre: Okay. Dan Meredith: And already you know paying off. And it’s good, and it’s great as well because you suddenly – there’s people out there who can – you can help and you can work with and yeah it’s fantastic mate. I mean honestly you know the thing I like and suddenly I’ve realised the more give away some of the money I invest or just give to people to do things with, the more it comes back and it’s really weird. It’s something that I never you know I’ve heard about that you know concept before and it works simple as that. John McIntyre: Right, right absolutely. So what’s really interesting, and I think what the listeners might be interested in, is what do you think – and this is always like you never really can be 100% sure about exactly why we’re successful coz there’s a lot of sort of luck and variables that happen into it, but what do you think – what do you think is some of the factors that have made you have what a lot of you would call a rapid ascent in the business world? Dan Meredith: I think – okay yeah the concept of you know just create this site, click on this button, make all the monies automated, yeah it works to a degree, but I’m not that – I’ve seen it firsthand you know and I’ve met a lot of people and a lot of successful people. And there’s what I think a lot of people don’t realise is there is a fact a period of grind that you have to go through. And there is a crafty period where you are putting in the long hours and things aren’t working and you’re just putting content and pitches out over and over again. I’d say the thing that has made me successful is the fact that I have had some very tough you know corporate, non corporate jobs before where you had to work hard and I decided to approach that I – it got to the point where yeah I mean I’ve got – we’re lying and my health suffered, my relationship suffered, you know mental health, physical health, you know injuries occurred, digestion got screwed, sleep got destroyed. You know how to – a little bit too much of a fondness with the drink because you get stressed. And it’s the only ways to kinda – I found unfortunately to relax. And one of the things I look back on that period of time now in – I said to myself before you know I’ve worked hard you know foot in like a 12 or a 15 hour day or whatever, but that period of time just about six months, I would say, I would never worked that hard in my life. I literally there is – there wasn’t an ounce of energy spare. There was nothing else I could have done to do any better. So when people say they’re working hard, I often question them. I’m like, “Are you really?” you know? Is there any – I get to the end of the day, and I always think to myself – thought to myself should I say, “Is there anything I could have done to make today successful?” And if there was, back in those days, I would get out of bed and I would do it. And I knew it wasn’t gonna last forever, but I thought if I can just absolutely crush it for sort of 6 months or so, yeah, I’ve transformed my life. And if you say to most people, “Look you’re gonna do the equivalent of you know you’re gonna break your back for 6 months. It’s gonna be hell, you’re gonna hate life, you’re not gonna have fun, but after those 6 months your life will change forever?” I think most people would take that, but a lot of the people who are online and offline who sort of promise these overnight successes and get rich quick schemes and you know all these kinda stuff it’s bullshit. There is a period of hard work in there, but you know if you’re prepared to do it and you, you know, you got a decent idea in your – you know good person you actually want to do something good in the world and that’s the thing like what I’ve wanted to do, I’ve wanted to help people. And I’ve always had people in mind first and that’s the thing. So basically hard work, not giving up like being a relentless bastard, I mean just like you are with your podcast bookings, I’m the same with my pitching. I’m relentless and that’s it. And it’s accepting the fact that people – you know it is a busy world now and people never gonna get back to you straight away. But just be – never really given up and just go in – going the extra mile mate like it’s – it is hard work and anyone who said it isn’t is lying, but once you get past that stage, kinda the stage that we are now it’s wonderful. John McIntyre: Yeah. Dan Meredith: There you go. John McIntyre: An interesting thing I’ve been sort of wrestling with my head for the last few weeks, maybe for the last few months about this about this, it’s like a on the one hand there’s a pure grind. And I mean with everything, like even if we go and start a new business. Like Elon Musk was here and he grinds his ass off so, the grind never really ends depending on what you’re doing. Either it sort of ebbs and flows a bit depending where you are with it, what stage you are in business or start a new business management whatever. But there’s this aspect of – I found for me, and I think some people that we get so attached to the grind that we get it like – our way of – like our identity is based on doing the work. And that identity of doing the work – actually I find finding – it holds us back. Coz then it – you know if you want to be an entrepreneur you want to be a business owner, not self employed. You’ve got to get to a point where you don’t derive your value – your identity off the amount of work that you do because at a certain point you’re gonna hire a whole bunch of people to do all the work for you and you’re not gonna have that much left – not that much tangible stuff to do. You’ll be doing strategy and thinking and deals and networking, but a lot of that stuffs so intangible that you – it’s not gonna make you feel productive the same way that sitting down and busting your balls to write a sales letter for 3 days is gonna you know is gonna do. So there’s this interesting – and I’ve spent – I think it’s like it just takes a bit of you know think through and it’s gonna depend on the circumstance, but it’s an interesting idea if like – how do you work hard and you know cultivate that – cultivate it really strong work ethic while at the same time remembering that if you want to be an entrepreneur you’re job isn’t to do the work so much as find the really smart people to do the work for you so, then you could focus on the more important high level stuff like strategy and you know partnerships and all that sort of stuff. Dan Meredith: So, yeah, I think for me it’s – I always – I’ve – I’ll never forget because obviously mate that hard work phase was so brutal it’s like a scar on my body now, yeah? I’ll – I never – I knew what I took me to get me here and I’ve now gone from the working hard to the working smart, which sounds cheesy but it’s true philosophy. And I know what idea to keep myself at, but I’m just about to enter a period of growth so, I’m gonna have to go through probably another 2 to 3 months of not as crazy work as I’ve just done, but every time I wanna kind of level up I put in these kind of you know 1 to 3 months stints of intense growth. And then I put in – I you know put in the longer hours, I put in the effort. And that’s the thing mate. I’ve realised as an entrepreneur it’s like if you’re staying still you’re kinda not really doing it. It’s like it’s hard because I’m always wanting to do better and I’ve you know I used to have a real issue with money and kinda you know coz my sister’s not well and I’m always kinda you know provide for home and save for the future. I was a very – what the opposite of an abundant – scarcity monitor [?]. And since I’ve gone with that more abundant mindset, and we’ve spoke about this before, it’s just fantastic because I’m not scared of investing or spending or putting money into something now because I know that if I do you know do the work, it’ll come back. And that’s the thing mate. I’ve just realised that you know as long as I – I’m consistent so, for example I don’t really have a day off. I work every day, but it’s on my terms. So I’ll do you know even on a weekend I’ll do 1 or 2 hours of work, but it just means that everything’s ticking along. So for me the key to not going back to where I was is not staying still. So I’m never complacent. And you know every dollar, cent, penny, pound, rupee, whatever it is I’m given by anyone, I’m incredibly grateful for. And you know I’m always very thankful for the fact that people have invested in me and that’s another key thing. I treat my customers and my clients like gold. And if you know 1 if we think about this before it’s far easier to keep them than it is to get a new customer. So I just look after the people that pay me money. I’m very, very conscious to treat them very, very well. John McIntyre: Yeah. Talking about network, is this just something that you’ve been – like me and Rob, a mutual friend of ours, has – and we’ve chatted about you before in the sense that you are an absolute machine when it comes to like networking and this just ability to connect with people that – like I use my podcast to do it and that works for me. I get on the phone and sometimes I stick around to have a chat, we become friends, sometimes I don’t, but you don’t even have a podcast. You just somehow end up – and I’ve noticed – I’ve been surprised I had this like how are you even friends with them? I just don’t – I don’t know. It’s just bond with me. So I’m like how – what’s your you know – what’s your secret? Dan Meredith: Well I’ve got – well so secret number 1 is I’m very much a big believer in the kinda pay to play model. As in I – every single penny that I – say for example when I bought your product for example? Bought your product, consumed it, made an effort to connect with you, you know, about you know about my experience with your product, asked a few questions. So that was the first thing to this. So everyone who’s product that I’ve purchased only then do I connect with them. So I don’t expect you know – let’s just say Ben Settle, yeah? I didn’t expect Ben to connect with me until I’ve purchased a product, why should he? But by the you know I bought his product, I’m a customer, you know, I just – I send him a friend request, send him an email, say hello. And I did this with everyone. So first you wanna kinda come across different, anyone you know if I want someone – if I want to interconnect with someone I would buy their shit. Because at the very least it’s a kinda small token to say, “You know I’m interested in your product, your service, you know you what you’re about,” and it wasn’t necessarily – there wasn’t like a grand master plan. I just felt it was a logical thing to do, you know? Bought their product, use it, you know, give them a testimonial a bit of feedback. Say hello, get a connection with them. But then equally the main thing that I’ve been particularly good at is going to – and you know paid Masterminds, paid events, you know we each went to you know we were at Titans, we went to Ryan’s Ocean’s Four, been to Joe Polish’s 25k, you know? I go to these things and I pay to be there. You know I’m not a free loader. And when I’m at these events like I see networking, it’s one of those words I find really quite unpleasant. I don’t see what I do as networking. I actually really love people. And if there’s gonna be one secret is really loving connecting with people, hearing their stories and having a genuine interest in them. If you go into these kinda conversations just thinking about yourself as in, “What I can get out of this?” It always feels wrong. I mean and we won’t name names, but do you remember the gentleman who just collected business cards at Titans? Remember that? Jonathan? John McIntyre: Yeah. Dan Meredith: Did it dip off there? Sorry mate. John McIntyre: It jumped off – well actually I made a mistake. I’ve been putting myself on mute coz I may or may not be eating my lunch right now. And seeing when you put yourself on mute… Dan Meredith: Sorry mate, I apologize. John McIntyre: … and then you forget about it. Dan Meredith: So yeah do you remember the guy at Titans that just collected business cards? John McIntyre: I do, yes. Dan Meredith: Was – didn’t you just find that cringe worthy? John McIntyre: There’s a lot – yeah. And there was totally – and this is like events in general. There’s always the – like there’s always that guy, obviously, … Dan Meredith: Yeah. John McIntyre: … he use the field which are those guys who – it was just weird about it. It just like come on man like just be cool. Dan Meredith: And that’s it so, I would say most of my best, you know, if I’m gonna have to call it networking, would happen at the bars afterwards. As was in it’s really casual. I mean, yeah, there might be someone who I might you know – who I’m thinking you know I’d really love to talk to them, but I wouldn’t steam over and go you know, “Oh ho talk to me.” John McIntyre: Yeah they say that. Dan Meredith: You know Mister Person of Influence. John McIntyre: That’s right. I might you know… Dan Meredith: We still have Dave Kennedy, remember? John McIntyre: Yeah. Dan Meredith: And it’s like just – you put yourself in a situation where you’re likely to talk him and so, I would either stand at the bar or you know if I see them going somewhere I’m gonna go – I might walk along near them or get into lift with them and just – it’s a natural process. You don’t see me darting across you know a bloody conference room trying to grab someone’s attention coz it just looks awful. So I mean the key, to say is not – so a couple of keys from network is number 1 is want to actually be friends with people. Like you know be a normal person. Just be interested in their story as much as they hopefully will be in yours. And number 2 just be natural, you know if you don’t end up meeting someone, I mean this is a little tip from my recruitment days and I used to do it when I used to go to these big industry events. The very – you know if you didn’t get to meet someone it’s no biggie. I used to find by sending them a message afterwards saying like, I did this, we got a few people who are at Titan’s who I just didn’t get to meet. “You were so damn busy.” I’d literally drop them a message on Facebook or in their email or on their blog or whatever it was and say, “Hey we were both at Titan’s really wanted to you know have a chat with you at some point. Shame we didn’t get to meet. When would be good for a you know quick 5, 10 minutes on Skype?” John McIntyre: Yeah. Dan Meredith: How casual was that? John McIntyre: Super casual. Dan Meredith: You got the commonality of the event, I might even mention something so, I might say, “Yeah didn’t get a chance to see you at Titan’s by the way what did you think of Ken McCarthy’s bit? I really loved that on the end of the first day.” So you got a nice little you know shows you were there. It’s real, it’s human, and then just be normal. Seriously the best thing to say about networking is just be – don’t be a freaking weirdo. John McIntyre: I mean part of this comes down to like just sort of just social skills. Like you get a lot of – and this is the funny thing too. Like this internet marketing thing like attracts a lot of weirdo’s coz you know you can sit in your computer inside in your dark basement, and you know – I don’t know advertise porn or something weird like that. That’s – but so what you see you got these like people – you know I will get into it who never – I don’t know never you know – they just didn’t develop social skills so, then you go to these conferences and there’s these people who – they’re just weird. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean they can be… Dan Meredith: Yeah weird is cool. John McIntyre: Weird’s cool, but when it comes to networking like it helps if you’re going out – take some time to develop and learn how to be – be cool. Dan Meredith: Yeah it’s like – and to be honest it’s a learned skill. You know I’m not naturally you know super, but it is true mate. I sense it is – hey shut up you! Pig head [?]. But it’s you know it’s a practiced skill. So this is sort of the day when I started in recruitment, I was told to go out every lunchtime to practice my people skills and get someone’s address every day. So day in, day out it’s just like whether it’s you know running or weight training, or dieting, or anything it was consistency. So I spent you know weeks and weeks and I think it was months – about 2 months, I think I did it, for every single day forcing myself to interact with strangers. And I was a naturally, quite a very shy, quiet kid. I really was. You wouldn’t believe it, but this is a practice in learned stake. And it can be learned, but you kinda have to – you know the first few times you do it it’s like kinda going up and asking out the first time. It’s like awkward. You bumble, you don’t know what to say, you say something stupid, but it’s just practice mate. And that’s what I did. I used you know a couple of months in my early 20s I just went out day in day out spoke to people. Very uncomfortable to start off with, but it became natural to the point where I can do it anywhere now. John McIntyre: Awesome. Hear that? Dan Meredith: Yeah mate. Just yep. Just was… John McIntyre: Yeah I don’t know what happened with whoever this was. So you’re just gonna edit this out then. Dan Meredith: No I’m gonna leave this totally in. Brilliant some really good job. John McIntyre: So what were we talking about right before I rudely interrupted that? Dan Meredith: It was – I don’t know coz you – I’m really got pleased you did that with me probably wouldn’t do it with any of your other guests so, thank you for treating me like a lower class citizen. We were talking about… John McIntyre: It’s the third day I’ve missed the protein delivery. They keep coming and then I’m up here or… Dan Meredith: Oh sure I’ll stop. John McIntyre: … they can’t get it in so… Dan Meredith: First world problems John, how are you coping in your tropical paradise? Do you want to take a moment to have a little cry? John McIntyre: No it’s more like the third world I think man technically. Dan Meredith: Shut up. Any… John McIntyre: Anyway. Dan Meredith: Anyway. We just wrapped up on networking, I believe. John McIntyre: Networking all right, yeah, yeah. So point of merit here at your network, I love that – where I thought there was – I never seen it codified like this in the way of all – to jump back a little bit to these so, I’ll buy someone’s product, send them something cool, and then try and get on the phone with them to be like, “Yeah I just thought you know I wanted to connect with you.” And it’s amazing how… Coz people do this like I mean this is how when you got on the phone on the first time. You know I’ve had this happen before with other people. They email and – you know like if you sound cool in the email usually I’d be like, “Yeah I’d be happy to go on the phone with you and have a chat.” If you sound fun, if you come across like, “Can I pick your brain… Dan Meredith: Oh stop yeah. John McIntyre: … I’d like to ask you some questions on my …” If it’s anything to do with business I’m like it’s like, “No. There’s a coaching call like you know you do get paid for a coaching call or consulting for that,” but if you just want to have a chat and you sound fun and yeah you just someone I like to connect with then cool let’s connect. Dan Meredith: I think the people who you know, just a little tip, you know buying someone’s product immediately makes people take you seriously. It’s like you’ve invested, you know, I’m not talking necessarily like a $5, $10 eBook here, but if you bought someone’s calls or you’ve invested in one their coaching pre ops so, anything like that anything with a you know slightly higher dollar value. Like you know you’re a customer. And they, you know, you’ve clearly invested in their product, then they’d likely to take you more seriously. And like this John said – you said there John. By being not weird it gets you very far. John McIntyre: It’s interesting… Dan Meredith: It’s really not that terrific. John McIntyre: The frame’s interesting too. So if you come out like, “I just bought your product and like you know…” and you sort of kiss my ass a bit or kiss whoever you’re trying to get to it’s actually like, “You’re really amazing and like you must be…” like you basically imply that they’re so much better than you they’re not gonna want to connect with you either. Dan Meredith: No. John McIntyre: You really need to like approach it like… I – we’re on the same level. You’ve just – you’re just a little bit – a couple years ahead of me or something like that, but I’m just like you, let’s have a chat. It’s got to be like that. Dan Meredith: Yeah and the thing is, what I found is if you just go in and blow smoke up people’s backside, yeah, then you just come across as a little fan boy, what I used to do is – I you know this is something that so many people don’t do is – I bought in every sample and I bought your product – I bought your product and immediately used it. John McIntyre: Yeah. Dan Meredith: Then I called you to say I – basically with the – game me some feedback. And you I said about, “Do you want a testimonial or anything I’d be happy to give one,” you know? And it’s not just – it wasn’t false, it wasn’t disingenuous. I’d used your product, I’d put it in my fitness business and The Autoresponder and it worked. John McIntyre: Yeah. Dan Meredith: So you know I used people’s products. You know I don’t necessarily – I would buy it one day and then message you straight away to talk to you about it. It’s like I’ll use it, implement it, try it, you know? Give feedback where it’s – you know where it’s appropriate. And yeah that’s right I don’t treat you know even when I was you know piss poor and had nothing. I never saw these people as better that me. I just thought, “Okay you’ve been doing it longer than me.” John McIntyre: Yeah. Dan Meredith: And that’s it it was a time thing. You know scroll forward nearly 2 years and you know I’m sort of caught up and accelerated past some of those people that I used to buy their programs. John McIntyre: Yeah. I mean the interesting thing here is that like we had the – I’ve had this conversation like these sort of questions with a lot of people. And it’s subtle – it’s stuff like – you know when you say like what does it mean to be successful? Or like how do you get success? It’s like set up a landing page, especially in a you know marketing niche. Like one how to write copy – and all of that’s important, but what you’ve done, I think, is really accelerated your journey looking from the outside in is just the people that you’ve met. It’s probably been about learning from them you know just changing that peer group, but also getting the mentoring from all these different people. You have all these additional perspectives that that then – coz yeah every time I’ve been to one of these events especially the high level ones when you spend a couple thousand dollars to go, it – you have these conversations that shift about the way you think about things. That then changes how you start operating and acting you know as soon as you leave that event and then everything else changes as a result. Dan Meredith: I, yeah, I completely agree with you. I sort of say you know I did a webinar for my little group the other day and one of the questions are what was you know the single biggest thing that has changed you, your career, you know,  basically your trajectory? And it’s been having mentors and coaches. I’ve literally, consciously surrounded myself with people way better than me. And every time there’s a skill I’ve needed to learn – so for example when I needed to learn how to write emails, I badgered you know Ben Settle to coach me. When I needed to – I felt I needed to you know learn funnels hassled Ryan. And you know worked for him for free for 9 months for coaching in lieu for that. And now my current mentor, I can’t sort of name him at the moment, but he – he’s never worked with anyone before, but he lives life exactly how I want to live life, but on a huger scale. So he’s obviously doing what I want to do and that’s a key thing. If there’s someone out there who is living the life you wanna live or doing the work that you wanna do pay them. Give them money to share some of their time. It’s a shortcut to the top. So yeah I’ve spent you know six figures this year – well like 12 months alone on mentoring and coaching which my friends think is utterly ridiculous, but that has paid back multiple times over. And equally due to the fact that I’ve invested in these people I’ve become friends with their friends, I’m in their networks, I’ve scaled up incredibly fast. And that’s something people need to comprehend. You know there’s a lot of – there’s a lot of mentor bashing online sometimes you know people moan that they don’t get this or they don’t get that out of it, but they’re just people at the end of the day. They can’t make you do the work. So if my coach or mentor says you need to write this, you need to do that, you need to connect with these people, you need to put out this bit of content, whatever it is they tell me to do I just do it. I don’t question people who are better than me. You know I’m not gonna take nothing horrible, not gonna take some advice from someone who’s say lower down relatively because, well, they haven’t done it yet. But you know these people are 7,8,9,10 – I mean my mentor’s think 11 figure earner. He’s crazy. Why would I not listen? But you know I’ve paid a princely sum to have his ear you know a couple of hours a week and everything he tells me he’s done it – it’s the shortcut to the top. And it’s a you know a big takeaway for anyone listening if you’re still listening. Bored you to tears by this point. He’s a you know a good mentor, a good coach, will not only develop you as a person, but will bring you into their world and open some seriously big doors for you. John McIntyre: Yeah the mentor thing’s interesting coz I’ve found you know over the last year is this probably had a like 3 or 4 like specific mentors that I’ve hired to actually you know help do certain things and they’re good – I usually find it’s an interesting thing. You need to find people who you have chemistry with, that’s one thing. But I also find that partly you know it’s very much doing what they tell you, but then certain mentors like certain people would just be good at different things. And like one person is gonna be you know a generalist, you know, sort of like he’s gonna be able to help you with the general perspective about things and help move you forward. Once you got that handled though you probably gonna be better off getting a new coach that’s more going to be focused on the specifics. This is what I found. It’s been my personal experience that you find that each coach for each person – just like we all have a specific thing that we’re really good at and where we can add most of that have value and that’s what you find with a coach. He’ll add – he or she will add most their value in one I find – one main area and then you’re gonna be a lot better off going to another one coz should of been exhausted – you’re gonna get the growth that you’ve got from one mentor and then after that you’re not gonna get that much growth, it’ll be like incremental gains. Then you go and get a new coach and of that month or two that you first work with them I find you get huge amount of growth initially. Dan Meredith: Yeah maximum. John McIntyre: And then diminishing returns over time. And so you go to the next one. You keep learning from all of the different coaches. Dan Meredith: I find 3 months is a good, you know, I say that to my coaching students as well when I say you know I aim for a minimum of 3 because I struggle to do you know – you – I can get some quick results with people, but I find within 3 months you’ve cemented it and anything longer than that, I don’t find you really need it to be honest. And I agree what you said and move to the next one, but I’ve – I had a – I did a video about this couple of weeks ago while I was out in the States. And I see it – I kind of categorized it as coaches and mentors. So I see a coach is someone like you said that teaches you a specific skill. So I want to get better writing sales pages, okay well this person’s good at that you can teach me how to do that. I find a mentor is someone who takes more like the 30,000 tribute and is more guiding you as a person throughout like a business, personal and emotional journey. So there’s someone who’s looking after the – all of you and wasn’t that not that you know I think mentoring is a longer relationship, but coaching, yeah, I think – I see coaching as more like a skill acquisition thing and yeah every 2 to 3 months changing out for someone else who has the same you know has that sort of another area that you want to develop is a brilliant idea. John McIntyre: Yeah I like that it’s a good distinction. So we… Dan Meredith: So… John McIntyre: So… Entonces as they say in Spanish. I’m learning Spanish, I’m trying to get a go on… Anyway entones we’re coming up right on the end man so, before we go… Dan Meredith: Cool. John McIntyre: … what – I’m sure there’s gonna be people who want to go and search you out, find your Coffee With Dan or find you on Facebook or hire you as a coach or something or just tell you how handsome you are so to speak. Dan Meredith: You doll. John McIntyre: Where are you know where should they do that? How should they get in touch with you? Is there anything… Dan Meredith: Yeah. John McIntyre: … any product that you have that people can buy or what? Dan Meredith: Nah not yet. I’ve got a few little things in the process, but yeah if it’s at my website – well I’ve actually got my blog is quite entertaining which is called deathgloryordisappointment.com that’s where I just ramble about things. You can always get in touch with me through there or feel free to join my group if you’re on Facebook and just search for Coffee With Dan if you see a kind of astute gentleman holding a very small espresso cup in the image, that’s me. It’s a free group, it’s an accountability group, it’s absolutely buzzing. I’ve got to be honest I am really proud of it, the people in there are quite lunatics. There’s an awful lot of swearing and abuse, but I’ve never known the amount of work done ever. I’ve just – crazy what’s in there. So yeah join the group or send me a message via my blog and yeah I like talking to people and meeting people as you clearly gathered. So yeah please feel free to connect. John McIntyre: Boom I just clicked join the group so, it’s pending application. Dan Meredith: Well I was not be so rude as to have Facebook appearing already [?]. You know I wouldn’t be so rude as to go and answer a protein delivery. Screwing the thing you’ve promised me for a year, but you know here we are. John McIntyre: Here we are. Man it’s been good to chat I’m gonna have a list of… Dan Meredith: Mate it’s been too long. John McIntyre: It’s really good. Dan Meredith: Thank you very much nice to speak to you. The post Episode #130 – Dan Meredith on Sacrificing Everything For Rapid Growth (how to put your money where your mouth is) appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

If you are a sales person, If you are a business owner with a sales team.. ..this episode is for you. Not much needs to be said except for the fact that this episode might change your life. Because today, Do we really need to cold call until our jaws turn to mush? Bryan Kreuzberger’s Breakthrough Emails method is something any sales person can do instead. Something anyone with a product or service can and should utilize. It’s the way he goes about email that makes sales people feel like a kid on Christmas morning. So it’s well worth you check this episode out. Let Bryan tell you how, as much as subject lines are important, ..if you’re sending crap, You’re going to get a crap response. But the problem is, That most people don’t know they’re sending crap… So how are you supposed to build and scale if you can’t even get your target market’s attention? That’s where Bryan and Breakthrough Emails come in. In this episode, Bryan reveals what’s crap, and what’s not. And not only that. Bryan creates a whoe case study of his system and we break it down VERY detailed. He also reveals how to identify your exact target market and talk to them and them only. Because if there’s anything that years of cold-calling taught Brian, It’s that it doesn’t work. And that working smart is a MUCH better way to spend your time. What Breakthrough Emails allow you to do, Is talk to ANYONE at ANY LEVEL at ANY business. You’ll soon forget about the 2% response rates and countless hours of chasing your own tail after hearing this valuable sales related episode.   In this episode, you’ll discover: how to identify someone with real pains (find out exactly who has need for your product or service) the Deep Sea Fishing Technique that uncovers five must-have opportunities for your prospects (forcing them to reply) why this Tony Robbins quote, “You want to influence people based on what already influences them”, is so vital how all you are doing with an email is creating an opportunity for the person (reveal the built-in opportunities) a method that will identify your top ten customers (then what to do right after once you have) Bryan’s method of taking prospect phrases and infusing them in his emails for greater reactions why asking “WHY?” is the most powerful question you can keep feeding to prospects during interviews (listen to how Bryan does it to me) why this bullet-point is more important than the rest (“Map your solution to whatever it is that ails them.” – Bryan) the Gary Bencivenga technique that Brian uses to successfully open and close sales how to do really amazing things by thinking like them (it’s easy with Bryan’s Waterfall Technique) the tootsie roll analogy that will help you uncover deep hidden pockets of gold to reference while pitching learn how to uncover fears, frustrations and desires during interviews (and how to focus on the right 5 to use for all future client outreach) two little known reasons why choosing a niche is a fantastic thing to do.. (these benefits will grow exponentially too) how to leave a lasting impression in your email closings that will force prospects to reach out to you with interest. Mentioned: Breakthrough Email (go through the free template walk-through to get started) /pro /leads (apply if you have a product or service over 20k) megan@breakthroughemail.com (email her with any questions) Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntrye: It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy, I’m here with Bryan Kreuzberger of Breakthrough Email. Now Breakthrough Email is probably the best rated cold email system I’ve ever found online or even heard of. And the great thing about it and why I thought this – today’s you know today’s episode would make a great – I think it would be really good is that you can – a lot of them come to me and they ask you how do you get clients? When you’re starting out how do you go and get clients? Or even when you’ve been doing this for like… How do you go and get clients? If you don’t have an email list, if you don’t have a website, or if you don’t any sort of normal way to go and do it and so, you know that’s where cold emailing comes in, but the problem is most people go and do cold email and the response rates are you now less than 10% sometimes down to like 1% or 2%. So you’re sending 100 emails and maybe getting 1 or 2 to reply to you. And usually it’s with companies that don’t even have that much money. They’re at the lower end and if you’re emailing people at the higher end you know 10, 20, 30 million dollar revenues and above you probably not even getting a replies period. And so what’s great about this system, and what I like about, it is that it allows you to go after any one at any level. And you can go in and you can get these amazing response rates at companies where most people would never ever, ever, ever be able to get an appointment. And so I thought we’d get Bryan on, have a chat about how to do it, the nitty-gritty, and so you can walk away and apply it in your own business. So yeah Bryan, how you’re doing? Bryan Kreuzberger: I’m doing great, excited to be here. John McIntyre: Cool good to have you. Before we get into sort of like the nitty-gritty of what this strategy is and how it works, can you give the listener a bit more of a background on who you are and what you do? Bryan Kreuzberger: Sure so who I am and what I do. So we certainly help companies generate leads you know and find new business and also you know increase conversion for sales. Who I am as a person you know I grew up in Northern California, graduated college after 9/11, and was trying to get a job and just couldn’t find a job anywhere and you know that’s really kind of the origination of where I started realizing just the value of connections and contacts because you know I wanted to get into consulting, wanted to get a job and you know I just – I had no contacts. So I ended up getting a job in sales and I was such a cold calling every day looking for an Oracle Consulting Firm down in southern California and I just hated it. You know we had great products, great service, but you know no one had ever heard of us, and it’s my job to go out and sell and you know typically like our – my sales manager would just say like, “Listen you got to pound the phone, it’s a numbers game.” And from what I found it’s actually not a numbers game. And if you’re cold calling you’re just – you’re wasting a lot of your own time, but just because people aren’t there. The pickup rate’s not there. And you know fast forward years later I was in New York city still you know in charge of you know my own book of business selling advertising to Best Buy, McDonalds, those types of companies and that’s when I discovered cold emailing. And you know really my life changed within about 18 months of learning how to use the email to get meetings because I was able to find the actual decision makers who could buy our products and services. At that time we were selling to advertising space, but you know it really it changed everything for me and I did not tell a soul once I learned you know this secret because this was my super power, but now we you know we help companies and we help primarily enterprise companies you know get their foot in the door with Fortune 1000 type decision makers. John McIntyre: Awesome, awesome okay. I like it too. I like how it sort of come together coz a lot of people put together systems – never really based in reality. They sort of sit down and come up, “Ah what can I sell.” I like how this is developed from just the trenches, you’ve been in there doing it so, yes so all right so, what we chatted about before we just hit record then is instead of just going through – running through sort of a conceptual list of you know tips and tricks and sort of how to do it would make it – make it more of a case study. And it would be based on the idea of right now, in my own business, I’ve realised that if you’ve been listening to this podcast it’s been going for over 2 years now and some of the mistakes I’ve made in the last few years is one thing was never doing recurring revenue which is a sort of a long story, maybe time for another episode, another thing was never defining the target I was going out – so the target prospect and what I mean by that is with this podcast, if you ask me what the audience says I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’d say that anyone who listens is interested email marketing, but that’s not saying much because anyone who’s in business and wants to get clients or customers is probably going to be interested in email marketing to some capacity. So it doesn’t give – doesn’t get me much information on how to go and find those people and so, what I realise is business gets a lot easier when you can clearly define who you’re going out to, what problem you’re  solving for them. And there’ll always be much more scalable because if you have a customer who’s the same as very clear target you can go after – you know there’s thousands of them out there in the world. If you can figure out how to reach them you could sell them the same thing over and over again to all the different ones. It’s easy to systemize, easy to scale, and it’s easy to find them. So with all that I decided to go in the first direction I’m testing, going in, is ecommerce email marketing. Coz they all use the same software, they all have relatively the same thing, they sell physical products, and as far as the email marketing’s concerned they are – they all have fairly similar niche for the most part. So it’s a very clear type of prospect and it’s a very clear offer that I’m giving them, it’s a no brainer because in some cases it can increase their revenue by up to 50% so, for a $10 million company that’s $5 million from email. So it’s great up site. So with all of that to get back to the cold emailing aspect is now I’m faced with this challenge of how do I go after these people? And how do I go and find them? And so with all – instead of, like you said, doing the conceptual list of tips and tricks and stuff that we go through Bryan’s Breakthrough Email system and how would you apply that – how would you apply that to say going after these ecommerce clients so, I’m all used to this. I’m actually really interested to see where this goes. So what’s – where do we start with this Bryan? Bryan Kreuzberger: Let’s see so where – like how did you decide ecommerce for you? John McIntyre: Well, I mean, part of it was realizing that – I think one of the you know big mistake I mentioned was not doing recurring revenue. The whole reason why I was transferred here – and I think that’s a long story, but basically I started to think you know how can I restructure things? Now how can I go and find a client where I can offer some sort of recurring revenue service? And ecommerce seemed like – ecommerce is something I thought about for a long time and started sort of pursued it, but they have – I mean there’s like a set up thing that they need to do. They need to start up a whole bunch of automated campaigns, but they also need to do ongoing – there’s, I mean, there’s ongoing newsletters and promotions and ongoing development of all the different funnels that they you know may have. And so yeah… Bryan Kreuzberger: So have you done ecommerce? Have you helped some clients out for – with ecommerce? John McIntyre: I – yeah I got 1 client right now, we’re just running a promotion for this week. Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay. John McIntyre: And I got a few more as well that we’re just – we’ve just started working with. Bryan Kreuzberger: So my approach to like for any business, and this works for anybody listening, is first just identify like who your top customers are, right? By revenue, by profitability, last year – couple of years, like who were the outliers? You know who’s number 1,2,3 like to 10 and just write them out, right? So okay who, based on everything that I’m doing, is paying me the most amount of money? And what’s the profile of those people? So hopefully ecommerce – because strategies like your strategy is the first thing, right? Are we contacting the people that are going to respond and you know you already have a lot of like expertise and credibility in that space. Does that match up for you? John McIntyre: Yeah I think so. Bryan Kreuzberger: Or would… John McIntryre: Well I – there’s things well like it’s like the thing about my business and probably a lot of no opposition to business is you could go out and sell say a sales letter for you know some sort of sales file for $10,000 $20,000 or $50,000 depending on the client. So it’s good money in that sense, but then what ends up happening is you have a good month and then the next month on day 1 you start at 0 dollars again and you got to start getting on calls and emailing people in marketing. And so I think partly it’s about goals. It’s like what I want to have is a business that on day 1 I’m already starting at say at least $10,000 or $20,000 revenue. That’s important to me for some probably some of the long term vision of the long term things I’m trying to achieve. And so I would prefer that over having an amazing month and then having a bad month or 2. And so that was the aspect of going after looking at – I need to find people who can afford to pay it – can afford to pay for decently high you know so they’d be able to pay $5,000, $10,000 for a setup. Maybe $20,000 for a setup fee and then a monthly retainer for just like managed services. Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah. So they have an on and going need. John McIntyre: They have an ongoing need, right. Whereas if I go and sell a sales model to someone – in some cases I might able to get a percentage you know percentage of the cut of the revenue of that funnel, but some – I mean those deals depend – they’re not that common and they’re not always reliable. So yeah talking about more ways basically to find like it’s a bit like an abundance source of customers that need or clients that need that ongoing service… Bryan Kreuzberger: Right. John McIntyre: … and to ecommerce it seemed like the natural thing coz you can go and find companies that you can – they’re easy to find based on revenue as well coz you can just go look at their Elixir ranking which gives you a decent indication. Sometimes their revenue’s published online anyway so, it’s – it seems like as far as how much you charge it’s just a relation to what’s their revenue? And then what sort of impact can you make for them so, yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So right now – if we had like look at the 3 steps or how I think about cold emailing there’s you know who you send to, right? Who you send your email to, there’s what you send and then there’s how you send it like what systems do you use? Are you using TAD app or BuzzBuilder or using Outlook or Gmail, you know, whatever it may be. The who you send to is actually the most important because you could have a bad email and still get a response if you, you know, identify somebody who has like a real pain or real issue. And, you know, there are ways to find out like the trigger events, there’s 4 like who you know, based on your products or service, all ready has a need for that and like the metaphor I use is like if you’re going fishing you know imagine there’s 3 lakes your gonna choose from and the first lake has lots of fish in it, right? And the second lake you go to has lots of fish that are big and these – and these are like just these giant fish. And the third lake you go to has all these you know big fish and they have a lot of them, but they’re also really hungry and they’re actually hungry for what you have. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So the first step is identify the right lake for you. You know where are the fish that are big, that are hungry that you can identify that will actually bite at what you have because really it’s kinda like casting a line. You’re – you know you’re sending the email, do you have these issues, do you have these like problems? Here’s an opportunity for you, what do you think? you know if it makes sense let me know how your calendar looks. So for the people that don’t respond we can assume, since we’re doing a bunch of work up front to identify like what we’re gonna send them and actually create an opportunity, most people when they send an email it’s like, “Hey let me tell you  about me, right?” Like “My name is Bryan Kreuzberger, I’m the founder of Breakthrough Email, I really think we should talk, you know? We’ve been in business for 25 years and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right like in all – because I – people that go to our website, Breakthrough Email, will send me their emails and I see what people are sending and it’s just like man people aren’t responding this is just talking about yourself. It’s like when you went on a date with somebody and all you did is talk about yourself. And you haven’t even met them, right? They’re not gonna be interested so, you – you know you want to engage them and you want to make the opportunity about them versus let me tell you about you know me. And that’s kinda first mistake – let me tell you about me. How people normally think about it it’s like, “What subject line do I use?” You know it’s the subject line just need to get them opened and then they’ll respond, but if you send them crap, which most people are, I mean if you’re getting 1% to 2% response rate you know 3% to 5% there’s something wrong, right? 97% of people are saying, silently, they’re saying no thank you. So within your strategy you know identify your top 10 customers and then I would just go after the competitors of those customers, if you can, you know if you don’t have customers yet there’s like another process to that and we can you know like identify that. The great thing about emailing is you can connect with anybody. Now pretty much anybody in the world checks their own email because – and especially in any business or any organization they don’t outsource it to their assistants because you know they’re boss, they’re shareholders, they’re board members, they’re you know everybody is emailing them and that’s like the – it’s the number 1 form of communication. Everyone’s going back and forth you know how many phone calls do we jump on a day? How many emails do we you know send or respond to? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Does that make sense? John McIntyre: Yeah I’m reminded of something someone said recently which you know triggered a I guess an insight for me with that. It was this idea of like so like we’re talking of sales on the phone actually. This was like closing deals on the phone. And I remember we were chatting about this idea of you know I was thinking like how to sell, what am I selling? Like that was putting a lot of attention and energy into focusing on that. I wasn’t really making that much progress and then 1 day we were chatting and he mentioned something, that was basically what you said, like 80% of this game is who you’re selling this to. How do you sell it – well I think it’s about 70% say who you’re selling it to. Maybe 10, 20 – maybe 20% of it is how you sell it or – yeah and then maybe 10% is what you sell. So what you sell is relatively easy to figure out, the how’s you need to learn that, but the ultimate – but the highest value here, the most important thing is who you’re actually trying to talk to. So… Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah you’re trying to find a product customer match. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? And so the more skilled you are at identifying you know who it is – now most entrepreneurs, sales people, business owners that first year they’re kinda throwing spaghetti against the wall, right? Like they just kinda don’t know what’s gonna stick. I mean for us like I was really committed and excited about you know working with entrepreneurs and you know I was always in sales and I didn’t think like okay you know I’m not gonna focus on sales, I really want to work with entrepreneurs. Absolutely I want to because they’re gonna go out, take a risk, create something, change something in the world and make the world better. If they can just learn how to connect with those people because they don’t necessarily have all the sales skills you know I’ll give them that and what I found is that you know a lot of the entrepreneurs they were just in love with their product, right? They’re in love with designing it and getting in the middle of it and working on their website and you know doing everything that they do and they didn’t really have a sales issue yet. In a couple years they’re gonna say, “How am I gonna grow my business, how do I get more customers, I just want more customers,” right? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: But like if – there’s always that lag time before like you realise what business you’re in. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: And the sales people like, “Man I hate cold calling, what am I gonna do today? I can’t pick up the phone another time,” you know another day. Like, “I just refuse to do it.” So they just like jumped on everything. And that you know what I realised is that you know pretty much I know I was the customer and when I originally went out to entrepreneurs I didn’t get much attraction and I said to myself, “Listen I know this needs to be – like I can’t die without like sharing this with people.” Just because the whole process is so brutal and it’s so easy once you know all the steps. And so that’s why I shifted the focus to you know predominately most of you know most of our customers are sales people or business owners who have a sales team. John Mcintyre: Yeah okay, okay. So that once you’ve done that – once you’ve – coz I think – I feel that you know that’s probably what’s happening. I’ve been doing this for 3 years – about 3 years. I was in the Philippines when I started in 2012 I think was the first invoice I sent so, just over 3 years ago. Coz I’ve been travelling around and for – in and having a lot of fun and you know it’s been good. So I’ve been doing projects work so, it’s a you know a one – once a you know job’s finished I can then take some time off and relax that sort of thing, but now it’s like, “Oh I want to build a business that’s gonna keep like a system that makes money even when I’m not there, even when I’m not selling and marketing and getting on the phone and –” that sort of thing. And so part of that is realising to the – to the decision to try and do that was probably sometime in the last 6 to 12 months, but then it’s only sort in the last year that’s it’s like, “Oh I never actually defined who I was trying to reach for the last two and a half years. “And that was probably one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made because that then changes – that then makes every other step that comes after that what you – you know what I was selling and how I was selling it. It makes all those steps infinitely harder so… Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah your customers are dictating your business versus you dictating your customers. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right and you know and you’ll get busy and all of a sudden like, “Hey I don’t wanna work with these kind of customers,” and you kinda – and you know you keep graduating up, but you know from what I found you know selling to GE, Absolut, Bank of America, MasterCard, you know all these just giant organizations you know they would spend 10 times more money with us and you know the – what they asked for from us was you know a quarter – like our 20% of what the small businesses ask for us you know for the same… John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: … amount of money. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Or for you know 10% of the money. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: And when I was really you know when things were really going well I identified the like, “Man these 5 customers are bringing in tons of revenue,” and I needed just double down on them and all their competitors because there’s certain nuances about what it is that we do and how the customers respond. Now I don’t know everybody’s business, but you know we have 25,000 people in our email newsletter list and you know I could go out and interview everybody to figure out what to put in their email or they could go out and interview their own customers. And if you interview your customers so, if you have ecommerce customers you need to identify – like the email really is just a – you’re creating an opportunity for the other person. “How can I create an opportunity for somebody else?” So if you email me and say, “Hey do you want to be on my podcast?” that is a built in opportunity for cold email, right? So like the opportunity is do you want to market your shit, you know? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Do you want to market your company or your product? Do you have a reason to get it there – out there in the world? I have an audience and they’re in alignment with you, right? Do you want to talk? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So you know but it’s only one opportunity. I – typically an email will go through 5 different opportunities, I call it the deep sea fishing technique and so, have you ever been like deep sea fishing? John McIntyre: Never, no. I’ve been fishing. Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay so, do you know the difference between deep sea fishing and… John McIntyre: I really have no idea. Bryan Kreuzberger: So you know say you’re in a river you have your line, you throw it in the water, right? You know maybe you catch a fish, maybe you don’t? Deep sea fishing you know you have 5, 10 lines in the water. And you’re trolling so, you’re trying to catch you know multiple fish. So if you go to the ecommerce company I don’t necessarily know what specifically their issue is. I could show you probably how to find out you know a bunch of issues that they have kinda like reverse hack based on you know what’s on their website, what you know what they’re posting online, but your customers do. So we wanna match your current ecommerce customers to your prospective prospects because your current customers are gonna think exactly like your current prospects or very similar at least. And they’re gonna have similar issues. So if you have you know 5, 10 ecommerce companies it sounds like you – you’ve got a couple so, at least we have a starting point. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: But when you’re in – when you’re out there talking to customers you’re going to be essentially interviewing them. Like what’s your pain? What’s your issue? Here’s you know here’s what we can do to present – potentially solve it. You want to – I’m a big Tony Robbins fan, but he says, “You want to influence people based on what they’re already you know what – you want to influence people based on what already influences them.” John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So you know when you go in – into your meeting or you’re talking to you know your current customer, “Hey before we started working together what were your issues? What was your fear, what was your frustration, what was your desire?” Most people, what I found, they – they’ll say that they want certain things, but they only want or you know they only desire that or want that because it’s something that they’re frustrated by, right? Like I want to do email marketing because why? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Coz you want more customers. You know I want to do cold emailing because I hate to cold call, you know? And I hate to cold call because I you know I fear the rejection on the other line, it feels like a waste of time you know I wanna find a better way and you know and as you kinda unfold the emotions behind it. And so our job in the email is to first – so we’re kinda moving from who to what, right? So to determine what to send talk to your current customers and just ask ’em, “Before we were working together –” and when people normally interview people they’ll interview them from the prospective of you know how is life now? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? Like a testimonial or something, but like what was your life like before we met, right? You go to the doctor’s office, you’re you know your shoulder hurts you know tell me about how you felt, you know, when you came to the office or before you came to the office. Why did you come to the office that day, right? “You know I was like well my shoulder was hurting, but like I woke up one day and my arm was numb and it was 3 or 4 minutes before I got circulation back and it just scared the shit out of me, you know? And I was like I gotta call the doctor.” You know it’s been 2 months, but like that moment something changed. And so we won’t know like we wanna identify within the ecommerce company what is it that you know what is it that they’re frustrated by? What do they fear? You know what do they desire? Now can you answer that from like say from the perspective of – in your clients? John McIntyre: There’s a few things. I think some clients – well some people – I’ve heard of one company. Now they’re not a client, they won’t … Bryan Kreuzberger: Let’s just – I want to deal with certainty. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? So like who is the client that you have that actually talked to or somebody that you haven’t worked with, but you have talked to them? John McIntyre: Okay. Bryan Kreuzberger: Can you think of it – anybody like that? John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah of course. Bryan Kreuzberger: So like I don’t want to go off a websites, I don’t want to go off of like – I want to go off of like real human you know the phrases that they say because we actually take the phrases that they say and then we put those into the email. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Now if for everybody who like wants like a cold email template we’ll like include it you know a template that you guys can use, but I want to get into like what’s more important about this so, like think of that client. Can you share their first name? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. John McIntyre: Yeah well let’s skip the name. Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay. So you can think of the person, right? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So before you were working with them what were they frustrated by? John McIntyre: They were frustrated because they had tens of thousands of email addresses in their database and they heard that you know marketing could be used to generate a large amount of revenue from that, but they haven’t done – they hadn’t done anything on it and they didn’t have these skills or the expertise to do anything about it. Bryan Kreuzberger: So why were they frustrated? John McIntyre: Missed opportune – it was a huge missed opportunity. Bryan Kreuzberger: And how’d they feel about it? John McIntyre: That fear of missing out or that fear of you know when you have a business and you know, as an entrepreneur, you go in the business to… Bryan Kreuzberger: Wait I’m gonna stop you. John McIntyre: Yeah? Bryan Kreuzberger: I want you to just be that person, right? So I’m you and I’m interviewing you. John McIntyre: Okay, okay. Bryan Kreuzberger: So – because at one point you started going into like I could tell it was like that fear of missing out. It’s like… John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: … I don’t know the answer, but I kinda maybe it sounds like this. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So you’re that person. Okay so, you have to – how many email addresses do you have? John McIntyre: Got 50,000. Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay you’ve 50,000 email addresses and you’re not doing – and so how do you – like how do you feel about you know not generating any revenue with your email addresses? John McIntyre: It feels like a complete waste. We’ve got all this – so you know it’s all like an untapped resource. Yeah it feels like we have this – we’ve built up a you know a substantial business and we’re always looking for ways to grow and we invest all this money in advertising and marketing on the side and designing and all that, but here we have this database that we’ve never really touched. And … Bryan Kreuzberger: Now why is that? Why haven’t you touched it? John McIntyre: For a long time I just didn’t think that you know email was – I just thought that – I never even thought to email and you know if anyone ever mentioned it I just was like, “Well no one even does that. No one opens those emails, no one buys from that sort of stuff,” so I didn’t even think it was worthwhile. But then obviously over time started different – I’ve been in Masterminds or conferences things like that I started to hear more about this you know this email marketing thing that it was actually – it wasn’t just this sort of spare me idea that no one actually bought from, but it was actually a viable way to generate revenue for my company. Bryan Kreuzberger: So why would you do it now? John McIntyre: Coz certainly now I’m curious. Now I’m like I got this database and I want to see if it works. Coz if it does work I mean that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars or maybe millions of dollars to the company and that’s like that we don’t have right now so… Bryan Kreuzberger: Well why not? Why haven’t you done that before, right? You kinda known about it for a while, sounds like you you know you have some other expertise like why haven’t sent emails to the list? John McIntyre: I think the hard part, and this is actually from the mouth of someone I spoke to last week,  you as a store is you know it’s easy to find a designer or it’s easy to find someone to edit the website or it’s easy to find a lot of those sort of straight forward things, but emails are very specialized skill especially yeah it’s a very specialized thing so I can have a guy… Bryan Kreuzberger: Wait can I have you go back? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Go back to the other guy. What would he have said? John McIntyre: What would he have said – what was the question? Bryan Kreuzberger: The question was why haven’t you done it? You’ve known it – you’ve known about it a couple of years, but why haven’t you done anything about it? John McIntyre: Probably it’s probably laziness. Probably just being busy running you know busy with the day to day operations of the business. And just haven’t had time to sort of invest in this area and it’s been a little – it’s one of those things you know it’s – every time – we all know we all put stuff on the list and it just sits there for a long, long, long time till we you know make time for it coz whenever I actually just happen to have time. So there was that and there was just the idea that I didn’t have anyone on the team that I could really trust to take care of it because, I mean, yeah it’s no one – like you said no one’s special like I don’t have somebody specialized in this and you know if I do it I wanna do it properly. Bryan Kreuzberger: What was the real reason he finally pulled the trigger? Like what was the event that led him to like actually saying, “Yes I want to work with you, let’s do this.” John McIntyre: Like as in what prompted him to call me in the first place or what prompted him… Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah like what happened right before? And you may not know the answer. John McIntyre: What happened been right before? I don’t remember specifically though I do remember it – something – he’d been to a Mastermind or he’d heard about it before… Bryan Kreuzberger: Let me take a step back so, I keep asking you why… John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: … and qualifying things because why tells me your motivation. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? So if I’m gonna write an email to somebody and I wanna – influence them based on what are the influences – influences them. I don’t want to convince them. Like one thing I’ve learned, taking over a thousand sales meetings, especially with guys who are like in their 50s and 60s and they have you know a thousand sales reps, who are really good, all calling on them. Like I’m not gonna outsmart these guys. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? I’m not gonna like do some sort of presentation and like you know wow them and they’ll say, “Yes Bryan you know your guarantee is so amazing like we’re in.” They’re like you know… Let me like because I don’t care about you. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So we have to identify through questions like what is it that motivates them and really like what’s their pain, right? So what’s their fear, their frustration, or what’s their desire and you need to be in a real pain you know because there’s an opportunity cost of like why am I going to take your meeting? Because that’s really in a cold email what somebody’s trying to decide to do. Like, “Is it worth my time to meet with you? Out of the million things that I have and you’re making a request, like why do I care?” John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So you know asking your clients why, why, why, why? And you know which gets you to – so like a – an idea to think about this. Imagine like an onion and you’re peeling back the layer of the onion. You know that’s kinda the common metaphor, but imagine a Tootsie roll in the middle of that. So you got to get to the Tootsie roll and like and then you gotta like lick the outside of it and get to the like the you know the crunchy part. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So when you’re asking your clients like there’s gold in there, but a lot of times we just – you don’t even know, right? Or you know the kinda first level or second level of the onion, but we want to get to like you know like really like what was going on you know with this email list and how did it – what was your fear, right? Like the fear might be, “Well I don’t want to send an email to 50,000 people and pissed them off or send them something that’s incongruent with what we’re doing or hurt our chances somewhere else or –” you know all that – so there’s a – you said you know somebody to do it properly or trust to take care of it, right? Trust is – that’s fear. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? I’m afraid something that might happen. Plus I don’t have the time. The frustration – the frustration we probably have to dig into like the revenue and what you’re frustrated by and how the other things working that you’re doing, perhaps? I’m not sure because we haven’t got to it yet, but there’s something underline the iceberg that like is motivating this person to do it. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: And so, our job when you interview is you want – so you know what is your fear, what is your frustration, what is your desire? And we want probably 4 or 5 that you’ve heard a couple different times from different clients, right? So like I’ll go out and interview 5 or 10 clients and then you know you find that like man these 6 or 7 I’ve heard multiple times, right? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Or these 3 I’ve heard 3 times each you know these 2 I’ve heard twice and these like a bunch of different people like you know said it at different times. So you want to identify and in your email – in your paragraph like, “Hey here are the 5 ways I might be able to help you.” And I don’t know which of those 5 are gonna hit that person you know and say, “Oh man he’s speaking to me,” but in you know copy writing advertising the seg – you know connect with them where they’re already at or connect with them you know based on what they’re already thinking about. So we wanna reference something that’s already going on. So that’s like – in coaching 1 of the things I’ve learned in coaching you know use metaphors. Give somebody an example like when I describe the 3 lakes and the fish and the big fish and the biting fish and you know that – I gave you a picture in your mind and you know in writing people think in pictures. And you know we wanna like to speak as we talk and then like create a picture in their mind and connect with them based on what is already going on in their world. And the great thing – and there’s 2 other reasons that you – that why picking a niche is really good that you didn’t mention. 1 is you’re an expert in it, right? So if you go and have 5 clients that are all in ecommerce all of a sudden you’re taking a 1– and my best idea’s is just taking a 1 idea from 1 client, which was frankly their idea of what they’re trying to do, and then I was going into another meeting a week later and saying, “Hey have you ever thought about this or tried to do this? Is that something you could be interested in?” “And then you know what? Gosh you know we were just talking about that, you know?” Or like, “Oh that’s a really good idea, how would that work?” or, “You know what? I haven’t really thought – what is that?” or, “No that’s not really like something we care about,” right? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: And what you’re doing is you’re becoming an expert in that category and the deeper and deeper and deeper  you get into it, the you know the kinda of the bigger moat you have because you become that much better and that much more of an expert. And then the other is the credibility, right? So in an email they may not know you. And I think you do this in your email like, “Hey,” you know, “I have this list. I think you know this many people listen to it, these are the other people I’m interviewed.” Right? So you do want to namedrop a couple of your clients because you haven’t heard about Breakthrough Email, but you know just the fact that I’m on this podcast it gives me a certain level of credibility, but if I’ve used the system for McDonalds and GE and Best Buy and Absolut Vodka and Home Depot and you know all these different you know organizations there’s implied credibility there so, when you you know include in the email template just on breakthroughemail.com. That last sentence of the second paragraph? Some clients include that that’s the peak end hypothesis. So that at the end of the paragraph the last thing they’re gonna remember is the last thing you wrote. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So we want to emphasize that. So we want to tell them like, “Hey you’re Burger King – I’ve also worked with you know Taco Bell and McDonalds and you know Cluck-U Chicken,” you know or whatever. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: They’re gonna take your meeting and I’ve seen the responses from people. It’s like, “Hey they’ve met with these guys so, we should at least – at least take a look at it.” John McIntyre: Yeah okay. And then so a question with that is if you – coz sometimes you worked with McDonalds, everyone’s gonna know who McDonalds is. What if you just worked with clients in an industry where they’re unlikely to know who they are, but they’re still clients in the industry? Bryan Kreuzberger: If it doesn’t help you then don’t include it. And you can find like other forms of credibility, right? So like how many people have you like influenced or have heard your thoughts on email marketing? John McIntyre: Yeah probably hundreds of thousands I guess. Bryan Kreuzberger: Like pick a number. John McIntyre: 150,000. Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay and how much increased revenue do you think, if you estimate, like per person have you helped them increase? John McIntyre: Per person I’ve no idea. Bryan Kreuzberger: Just guess. Just pick a number. Something conservative that like you’re like comfortable with. John McIntyre: It might be $10,000 per person. Bryan Kreuzberger: Okay. Let’s use 5. John McIntyre: 5? Okay, okay. Bryan Kreuzberger: Like let’s be super conservative. John McIntyre: Okay yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So if we take 150,000 times 5,000 that’s 750 million. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So in your email like maybe they’ll have something you know a client that they know, right? But you know I’ve helped over 150,000 you know email marketers and copywriters generate over $750 million in new sales. John McIntyre: Right. It’s $750,000 in sales. Bryan Kreuzberger: No $750 million. John McIntyre: Coz but then you say – you said $5,000 per person. I thought you meant $5.00, okay. Bryan Kreuzberger: You said 10,000 I said 5,000. John McIntyre: Okay yeah, yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Is that right? John McIntyre: Exactly yeah. I thought you meant $5.00 not $5,000, but yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Oh I didn’t know. John McIntyre: If you do $5,000 its $750 million correct. Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah it’s a big number. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So their fear, right, the person that you’re writing to has a fear. Will this waste my time? John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: And in most emails and when you look at it you know, like you read it and you’re like, “This person obviously hasn’t spent the time to really figure out like what the opportunity for me is. They don’t get it. I’m not gonna take the meeting, no thanks. I’m not even respond. Coz if I respond you know it’s like I’ll have to send a cease and desist letter for them to like give up.” John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Because people are like, “Hey it’s a numbers game just be persistent.” It takes 12 contacts. It doesn’t take 12 contacts you know you can write 4 emails and get 80% of the companies to respond, but you have to know what to say and we actually prepare a lot more to determine what exactly to say to create the opportunity for the other person. John McIntyre: Right. Bryan Kreuzberger: We need to like get in their mind like be in their shoes and think how they feel. So if we can have empathy for them and really understand like, “Man this is what’s going on with this person or what I imagine is going on with this person and here’s how I could help them in their life.” You give that email and you’re like, “Man you know I don’t know what it was about your email, but there was something about it like I’ll take your meeting.” John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: You know or you use the waterfall technique where you, you know, we get into – it’s like when you’re thinking like them we can do like really amazing things so like the waterfall technique is you know get to the decision maker by going above everyone who they report in to and have them delegate it down, right? So the CEO may not have to meet with you of you know Best Buy, but the VP of Marketing is your point of contact or your target. You know write to the CEO, write to the CMO, write to the like VP of Advertising, and tell them all you wrote to each other and use like the inherent social leverage already in any organization to your advantage and then do you know do what’s – get the CEO to do what he already does really well which is delegate. Right? So like I came up with that idea you know based on I mean reading mostly about psychology, but thinking in terms of the customer. Like what is – what is already going on in their world? I’m in some 25 year old sales rep in New York City trying to get a meeting with somebody who I know – everyone’s telling me, “No that’s not how it’s done. You can’t get a meeting with this person,” but I just feel like okay what’s going on in their world? You know what is this person think about? And you know part of their job in any business whether in Thailand or Columbia or New York or Germany is to do a good job in the eyes of the person that you report in to. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: You know and a lot of jobs that’s like half your job is you know they may think you’re amazing at it, but if you don’t play the game, especially at larger organizations, you know they’re not gonna keep you around. John McIntyre: Right okay, okay. This is solid man. This is really good stuff. Bryan Kreuzberger: What do you like about it? John McIntyre: What – I think I liked the focus on the strategy over what to say in the email. I thought we were gonna spend the podcast talking about what the actual email says, but this is, I think, this is much better. And I hope the listener thinks so too. One thing I wanted to ask you about though which is sort of a side note on all of this stuff. You mentioned sort of back towards the beginning – you mentioned that you’re going after these big clients you know like Absolut, McDonalds, GE these sort of clients. Bryan Kreuzberger: Sure. John McIntyre: And they’ll pay 10 times more for the same thing you’ll be offering to a small business or basically like they’ll come in and they’ll pay 10 times more, but they won’t – they’ll – like they’re demands – they won’t be anywhere as near as demanding as some of the small business clients who pay way less. Bryan Kreuzberger: Sure. John McIntyre: And so that’s interesting you say that coz then other people – another take on this is that if you go after enterprise you go after people you know companies over certain point of revenue. The sale site would get too long and it becomes a whole lot of bureaucracy and just managing the whole thing becomes a nightmare. And you know they you know the I in it goes, but therefore you should work with small businesses coz then you’re you know it’s just all easier, it’s faster, it’s you know blah, blah, blah. But it sounds like your strategy is being to go out to after some of the biggest companies that like you know the biggest companies out there that could use your systems. That’ll be like the equivalent of me going after – I mean I doubt Amazon meets up with their email marketing, but Amazon’s probably the biggest ecommerce company to start up there. Bryan Kreuzberger: Plus it’s – and there’s somebody at Amazon who’s saying they may be better at it than you or I, right? But there’s somebody there that says, “Man how can we increase this 2%?” John McIntyre: Right coz 2% means you know $2 billion or something. Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah like there’s somebody there that’s wracking their brain to try and figure out a way, right? John McIntyre: Right. Bryan Kreuzberger: They may be a thought leader, but – you know I was a swimmer you know Michael Phelps is still trying to figure out like, “Okay you know I know,” you know, “I won 8 gold medals, but I’m trying to make next year’s Olympics what do I do? I need to like make the team.” John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So there’s always – no – but they may not have pain. They may not have an issue. Now a long sales cycle – so, within our system or our training getting the meeting is the first step, right? I break down – sales down like a 2 step process. This is by Gary Bencivenga, a copywriter. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Opening the sale and closing the sale. So opening the sale – you could do email marketing, you could do advertising, you could do like content marketing, you could do cold email, cold calling, like whatever. Direct mail, trade shows, whatever gets you there. I liked email – I liked cold emailing because I got to choose who I was writing to and what I found in sales, especially with a lot of large organizations – there could be 3 people, there could be 500 people at the company that could hypothetically take a meeting with me, but there was typically only 1 person who is going to say yes. There’s lots of people that could say no to me so, like imagine a 16 year old who wants to buy a car and he goes on a car lot and tells the sales person like, “Hey my parents said I can buy any car that I want. I really want the red Mustang.” So they do the test drive, he’s like, “Yeah it’s my birthday they said I could get –” you know the kid’s rich, family’s rich, so that the sales person’s like done deal. Like you know mom and dad come the next week to you know go to the car lot, all of a sudden mom has a totally different opinion of what kind of car her son should have. You know and the dad has a totally different feel for you know what kind of car his son should have, like they don’t want to buy him a sports car. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? Like they have – they’re gonna buy him something totally different so, and in sales on that second process when you say, “Hey I have a long sale cycle, people aren’t converting.” You have to look at like why that is. It’s because you never actually were even talking to the person who can make the decision, you know? And people say, “Well we’re in talks with these people,” you know like when I hear somebody say we’re in talks with it’s like they don’t know what they’re doing to influence the person. And no offence because I was there too, right? Like when my first sales calls I was like inside and I finally got to outside sales as my second job. I was meeting this lawyer and I shook his hand and like my hands would always get like really sweaty before like a meeting. And like I have a napkin in my pocket and he like turned to me and my CEO and he’s like, “Are you nervous?” and thankfully he was looking at my CEO. He’s like, “No why?” he was like, “Oh because I just shook your hand and like – or one of your hands and like it was all sweaty.” And I like my stomach dropped. I was like dying inside. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Because I didn’t know what do to you know and I thought like you do presentations and you follow up not – not the case. Not what I recommend so, when it comes to larger sales cycles you need to identify what to do. At the very least have the opportunity to get in – your foot at the door because if you ask a lot of questions, if you ask the right question you can start I you know understanding like what is their frustration, what are they trying to do, what do they want, why do they want to do it, you know why now, and then you could potentially present what you do as the solution. But it’s all about asking questions and then you’ll continue to adapt. Like people who get funding you know, they’ll say, “Oh 122 VCs said no to him and it was the 123rd that said yes.” And they’re typically highlighting like persistence, but do you think the 122nd meeting looked like the 7th meeting? John McIntyre: No, no. Bryan Kreuzberger: No it’s totally different, right? Because it’s like you’ve been doing it for like 2 years or 3 years. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: And you start to get a little bit smarter as far as what to do. And now if you never get the meeting you have no chance, but when you realize that like you can just use an email – and I had no resources. Like I couldn’t – I was a sales person I couldn’t influence marketing, marketing wasn’t generating leads for us. You know I hated to cold call so, I figured – and the customer hated it. Like I hate when I get telemarketing calls so, why should I do what I already know people hate? And I hear their voice like, “Oh I thought you were somebody else.” You know that’s the only like 4% is people pick up the phone when you call them so, I lost my train of thought, but like the idea is you can do it – sorry the second half of the sale. You just need to identify like what are – what’s really going wrong. And most of the time you just don’t know what’s going wrong because you haven’t taken formalized sales training. John McIntyre: Yeah okay, okay. I mean so basically – so the end of all that then is basically you can go after – well like enterprise doesn’t have to have a long sales cycle. The trick is talking to the right person and the sale can happen very quickly. And then as far as the actual work and that’s just how you structure the deal and how you – and that’s probably a different issue. Bryan Kreuzberger: The work yeah the work is I mean the – you just wanna like map your solution to whatever it is that ails them. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: Right? So like if you’re an acupuncturist or you’re like a – like a you know a normal doctor or you’re a say neurologist? If somebody comes in with like migraines and pounding headaches like they’re each going to give them a different solution to the same problem. John McIntyre: Yeah. Bryan Kreuzberger: So like whatever your solution is just map it to the problem of the headache. You know whatever their issue is. Don’t say, “Hey I can really fix your shoulder and your posture and something else,” so they don’t care about. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. Okay,okay. Well I want to keep… you know what’s funny is I actually – I want to keep going is besides it’s been so good so far. Bryan Kreuzberger: Well listen I’m here to – I’m here to provide value so, if you’ve – if you wanna go a little bit longer we can. John McIntyre: I’ve actually go – I would, but I’ve actually got to go. I’ve got another call in about 5 minutes to get to. But this has been great I think this is really helpful and you’ve got, as far as the actual template goes, let’s talk about that. Let’s spend the last minute talking about what do you actually offer? You’ve got Breakthrough Email and you’ve got a paper lead style approach that you also do. So can you tell – tell me a bit about that. Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah so let’s see. Where to start? So I’ll start at the cheapest which is free. So you go to breakthroughemail.com just download our template, try it out you know I kind of – I walk through like one of our templates. You know we have dozens in our training. The second is – we have a course and essentially I’ve identified everything you need to do in the front end to get the meeting and everything you need to do to convert the sale faster or convert the sales that are already in your pipeline. So there’s like 2 modules. I think its breakthroughemail.com/crow, but if you go – if you go into the subscriber you’ll you know you can do a webinar or learn more about it. And then what – also for organizations who have products or services that are over $20,000 and we will go out and do the emailing for them. So we – I write the emails, we send the emails, we generate the leads, and we do it on a per appointment basis. So I’m only charging for the appointments that we send or that we send you on and that’s how we structure that. So that’s to – you know it has to be the right type of company or organization, but a lot of technology companies, lot of media companies like all kinds of different types of products and services and you know that’s only – and it’s only for people that are established and like they just need to kinda need to pour some gasoline on the business because they already have a proven process, the clothes, they just need more leads. But to apply its breakthroughemail.com/leads. L_E_A_D_S, but you know and if anybody has any questions you can just – you can actually set up a time to talk with me. Just to email megan@breakthroughemail and then we can talk. It’s M_E_G_A_N. John McIntyre: Awesome, awesome. I’ll have links to all of that in the show notes at themcmethod.com and the for being with us [?] it’s breakthroughemail.com for the template and to join the list and then breakthroughemail.com/leads for the paper lead system so, Bryan this has been epic. This has been really cool. I’ve learned a ton so, thank you so much for coming on and talking about it. Bryan Kreuzberger: Yeah thank you. Thanks for having me and just connect with people. You know? Just spend a little bit more time learning whether it’s for me or somebody else. Figuring you know really proofing your email, double checking it, and send a couple of emails that you’ve been thinking about to people because a lot of times you’re surprised that people will actually respond. The post Episode #129 – Bryan Kreuzberger on Becoming a Superman Sales Person Overnight with “Breakthrough Emails” appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

How would you like to be featured on Entrepreneur.com, The Huffington Post and The Content Marketing Institute among many others? Imagine the status you gain when people see that… Well after listening to this episode, YOU WILL be well on your way to getting featured anywhere you want. Mike Fishbein’s here to tell us how. He’s got some tips, tricks and especially some bulletproof strategies that WILL get you featured. Mike’s managed to publish himself on the biggest sites on the net. And now he’s on the show to reveal a ton of his tacts.. His guest-blogging tactics will teach you to attain industry leading companies featured (“As Seen On…”) on your site. His tactics will make you better at whatever you do, Because once you’re featured on the big sites, You’re a pro.. ..in my eyes, and in the eyes of all the more customers you’ll gain from it. The bottom line is this: YOU CAN DO IT TOO. Yes it is more than possible. Listen in now and learn how.   In this episode, you’ll discover: how Guest Blogging places you directly in front of your target audience (use it instead of trying to get to them with your own blogs’ posts) the fact that guest blogging would never hurt your main domain (it will only boost your blog) ways to distribute your work, get seen and get paid… all without forking over cash for advertising and PR that blog post after blog post after blog post may not be the answer (learn what works better and takes about a million hours less time to do) Exactly what to say in your follow-up emails (great to learn… it’s something you’ll be doing a lot of!) how a STORY can be the foundation of the value you give as well as everything that attracts them and keeps them on your stuff where to look for the “write for us” link that top sites like Entrepreneur offer (the very first step to getting a powerful guest post published) the absolutely PERFECT way to write a cold email that pitches your guest blog on to major sites (hint… you’ll be using one of your posts) the key locations to place a first name tag within your marketing materials or content published (HUGE) the ONE main question Mike asks within his cold outreach emails (plus a second one he uses sometimes) a new personal angle to guest posts and the fact that it could be even more beneficial with the right website. the morbid fact that people don’t reply… and the wonderful way to get them to Mentioned: Guest Blogging Masterclass – Mike’s book Mike’s Blog The End Of Jobs by Taylor Pearson Entrepreneur.com Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: Its John McIntyre here the auto responder guy and I’m here with Mike Fishbone. Now Mike is a guest, I don’t know exactly what …to introduce himself in a second, but basically he’s a guest blogger and he has been on sites like entrepreneur.com, the Huffington Post, the Content Marketing Institute. And so basically he’s mean published himself on some of the biggest content on new sites on the internet, which is great because then you can obviously get those as seen on, put the as seen on section on your website with the logos of these sites and a lot of people I think struggle with getting on these sites. So, they want to go and pay an agency $5,000 to figure it out for them, instead you can just follow Mike strategies and you can do it all yourself and … so he’s also self-published a book on Amazon called the “Guest Blogging Master Class” which goes to exactly how he does it and that’s why we’re having a chat today. So, thought to be a great guest to chat about. Guest blogging or guest posting is a way to get traffic and built up your sales. So, Mike! How are you doing? Mike: Thanks for having me. I’m doing well. John McIntyre: Good to have you on the show man. So, before we get into the guest blogging needy greedy strategies, can you give the listener bit more background on who you are and what you do? Mike: Sure, yeah, I’m a blogger, content marketer and a serial self-published author on Amazon. I started blogging about three or four years ago now and it’s been a long and fun journey in the blogging and content marketing world. John McIntyre: Nice, nice, okay, very cool, very cool. So, let’s get into it and let’s get discuss blogging thing. Imagine that most people understand what it is. It’s where you go on and blog a blog post or put on someone else’s site, talking on some of the misconceptions. What do you get wrong about guest blogging? Mike: I think a lot of people avoid it. I think them sort of have this kind of syndrome where they sort of think that their site is like a sort of a special snowflake and I was certainly guilty of this when I first got started. I was thinking man; I have this new site up. I can’t wait to build it up. I have such a great content. I can’t wait to get out there, but you know what I was doing no matter how hard I worked on the actual content or how hard I worked on the promotion of the content, I just wasn’t getting much traffic. I was looking at my Google Analytics account and it was not saying good things that were very inspiring to me. So, you know guest blogging really helped me just get right in front of my target audience and so I guess the issue there is like people are very concerned with sort of owning their content and focusing on their own blog exclusively which certainly is value, when I still do certainly post on my own site, but I think guest blogging is a great way to sort of expedite that process. Yeah, you mentioned before like you need to hire a big PR firm or something like that to get published and I actually, you know, again I’ve done that as well. I paid a lot of money and it hasn’t helped all that much and conversely when I just do it myself with things as simple as a well articulated cold email. I have been able to get on a lot of these sites. So, it doesn’t hurt your main domain and it’s relatively easy to do if you just do it right. John McIntyre: Okay, okay, so one interesting thing, I was just actually reading a book recently by … called the end of jobs and he mentions this and he give some examples of his planning to the book launch. In the back of the book just sort of described goal setting process and tasks managing process and he made a really interesting point which a lot of people don’t think about, which is that a lot of people go out there and not published 300 blog post or you know a couple of years, but then they have got barely any traffic and they don’t make any money and the solution is to keep publishing more blog posts, that’s what they used to do. The challenge though is that you’d be better off creating 5 or 6 amazing blog post. So it’s really, really just the best blog post in the entire industry on your topic, putting those on your site and then spending the rest of your time working on the distribution which basically means instead of going if you’re not gonna spend money in advertising you want to do all this with PR, instead of right publicity to amazing blog post for your own site and then spent the rest of your time doing any more blog post for yourself. Going right, just going right guest post for as many different sites as possible. That would be a more effective strategy then publishing an average mediocre guest post every week, something like that. Mike: Yeah, I like that strategy a lot. Especially, I think is content marketing, blogging is getting a little bit more competitive. I mean nowadays you can build a website literally within a few clicks of a mouse. So, lots and lots of people are you know creating content, I guess the quote from Gary Vaynerchuk is you know everybody is a media company now. So, you know I’m seeing some other things you know what I put in the effort to go the extra mile and create a better post, you know disproportionately higher returns. So, I agree with you know putting a lot into individual posts. John McIntyre: Okay, so let’s get into how it actually happens? How do you go on entrepreneur.com? You mentioned well-crafted cold emails, so let’s start there, how do you find the person to email and what does the email say? Mike: Yeah, so a lot of the sites will have some kind of contact page or contribute page and you know again like a lot of sites are actually looking for your content. They’re in the business of content, like entrepreneur is a media company, so you know they thrive on traffic in the way they get traffic is through really good content. So, if you have it, they want it and so a lot of sites will have a contribute or write for us or guest post for us or just simply a contact page and that’s often in the header or in the footer or you can try just goggling for like entrepreneur write for us or entrepreneur guest post you know and usually you will either find in header or a specific email address you should reach out to you if you want to contribute or some kind of contact form. Again it can be different for every site. Once you find that, what I like to do is actually have a post already written. That’s something that I do, that’s a little bit different. This just got to me better results than simply saying here is a few ideas or here’s a bit about me and like that I just like to say send a specific posts and it seems like it makes easier for them to give the GO-NO-GO and that I’m contributing quality stuff and all that and then the email that I sent is literally like five sentences long. Its hey, you know address it personally, you know would you be interested in a post on a topic? John McIntyre: You address a person; you just do it like hi David, something like that? Mike: Yeah, I use the person’s name. Sometimes, I use the site name in the subject line somewhere, like contributing to entrepreneurial. John McIntyre: How do you know, like entrepreneur.com is a big company? So, how do you find, how do you know who you’re emailing, so you can put their name on it? Mike: See, well some sites directly say like reach out to you know Emily or whatever it is. Otherwise, a lot of sites have like a team page and you can look at the name and either is like a contributor’s editor or just like an editor. You can see their names. I’ve also used LinkedIn to browse through company to bring up the company page on LinkedIn and see if I can find an editor’s name if I can. John McIntyre: Okay, okay … you say hi David, what happens after that? Mike: It’s usually just you know would you be interested in a post on your site or entrepreneur on the topic of X. Do like one sentence introducing myself like I do XYZ or maybe you know I’ve been published on you know so and so sites previously, but that’s not even necessary. Then I say I just wrote a post titled this, it covers XYZ and then I’ll just say would you be interested in publishing a post on this topic or you know maybe something like you have any feedback but usually yes you know would you be interested in publishing this and I fire away you know some … that’s all it takes, like literally I have been published on sites with just that. But a lot of times it takes a lot of follow ups, especially with the site like entrepreneur and entrepreneur particular is probably the hardest one for me. It took me months of following up. John McIntyre: Interesting, interesting because I have a friend who writes for entrepreneur and I haven’t actually asked him how he does. I think he recently did, you go on the Sales force blog and you get response blog and he did like everything was just like chatting to Sales force on twitter and just emailing back and forth and may have just … and they went for it and then the same thing happened with Get Response. So, a lot of the time it sounds like just the hardest part is just reaching out. I don’t know a lot of people would play with on entreprenuer.com and they wouldn’t even bother reaching out to them because they’re like oh I could never write for these people. Mike: Yeah, you can do it. Again, like if it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, like I am not. My posts are like play in the promotional for my site or anything like that, like again the site wants traffic and really good content. So, if I can provide with them at that and they you know they have staff writers that they would otherwise be paying a full-time salary to do this stuff, so if you do, if you really are providing by making it mutually beneficial, you can definitely do it and you know there’s definitely some truth like I said to entrepreneur being harder to get to but a lot of sites that are smaller and more focused can be a lot easier and still deliver really great results. John McIntyre: I think a big part is, I was actually chatting to someone … get a deal with the site. I get a ton of traffic in the online business space right now. We’re doing a blog post every week for them and the blog post it will be doing that be good that be great blog post, but they’re not personal sites, like this sort of thing you’d expect in a blog, like 10 things of this or fifteen templates for this, so that’s sort of thing. And it’s been working well, but when I spoke to the guys on the site today, we’re chatting about brainstorming ideas for better posts and then some interesting points because …tens of thousands of customers that need help with email marketing and I come in there and I’m like instead of saying he is … filling the blank subject lines which is one of the most we did. Instead, we go in there and we say something like the story about how I built a business that allows me to live anywhere I want to travel in the world with email marketing and so adding it instead of just going straight for needy greedy like tactical blog post that you see on almost every site on the internet. You start like opening up with. I don’t know if this will work as well with entrepreneur or some of these sites, may be it would, but getting more personal about the stories and the struggles, and because that really connect with people a lot more than sometimes just generic blog post material. Mike: Yeah, I love that. I mean people love stories and that’s really what people engage with, like when you can get an emotional reaction with people and you know that subject probably is great and just telling a story and using like actually illustrate the advice that you’re going to give. Again, I think that’s something that’s super evaluable and I think that’s something that you know the smart editors who know what their readers want like that’s definitely something that you know … resonate. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah, I mean what sort of stuff do you write about? Mike: I do a lot about marketing and yeah this is something else you know tactical posts and that’s really definitely valuable in term of you get some response or if working more on, talking more about my blogging journey and some of the campaign’s that I have actually done and giving more behind the scenes look at stuff I’m actually doing. John McIntyre: Ok give an example, like what was the last blog post that you wrote or guest post that you wrote? Mike: I think one of the more recent ones was on content marketing Institute. I wrote about you know how to get published on top sites was really just about the process of kind of like you know reaching out and following up and all that stuff and I told this one story about networking and how I used some networking to get in. There is it was the story about how I actually met Arianna Huffington from the Huffington Post and I just talked about how I was so nervous and I didn’t feel what are the and all this stuff and I think that’s the kind of stuff that people can relate to and yeah I guess kind of it inspires people but it also illustrates some good advice about getting out there at networking. John McIntyre: The fascinating thing about this stuff is like I teach people to write emails, you know great emails that connect with their target market and a lot of it comes back to I mean not just telling stories like once upon a time kind of stories but opening up and big real as a person, revealing more of who you are yeah as a real human being instead of just talking in a conceptual nature about a topic. You know I did a thing recently wrote a blog post about a trip to Necker island with Richard Branson and it was being the most popular blog post ever written and there was some takeaways and then there was a few like you know actionable takeaways, but that wasn’t really the focus. The focus was just to use the story and use a few things I learn and how I struggled and all that sort of stuff and it really resonated. People were really; really responsive and so its fascinating how you can take instead of … like oh I have given so much value and overwhelming with you know just help them and solve all their problems and yes that’s true but instead of going, I say here’s five tips to do X, Y, Z. What’s going to work a lot better is going to be like, here’s is how I achieved ABC and then XYZ just happens to be the tips. So, then you have a story about how you always down and out how you almost ran out of money, …bankrupt or you broke your leg, whatever happens the story becomes the sort of the foundation for the value that you’ve given the stories at entertainment value, but when you still giving value in the phone tips or strategies or advice or something like that, but when it’s built on a story it just connects and goes through so much more. Mike: Yeah definitely that’s strategy, that’s… a great post. John McIntyre: So, what’s next? So, you go on to entrepreneur.com, you email them and send it off and then what happens? Do you need to follow up with them three times, five times, ten times or something like that or what are the next steps or do you just wake up you know a week later and they say use your article already published. Mike: Yeah it often takes some following up. I mean entrepreneur for me was like the most extreme case where that really took me like two to three months of following up like almost once a week. Some sites that can be easier like literally just one email, especially if you’re already in a relationship with them, but usually I find it the averages about you know 1-3 follow-up emails. Usually, follow-up is about like once every five to seven days which is the quick note. It is just because a lot of these editors are very, very busy. They maybe even get a lot of pitches for press coverage in guest posts and feedback in a million… things. So, it does often just take you know if you follow up emails. John McIntyre: Okay and then what do you say in the follow up emails? Mike: I usually just ask have you had a chance to check out the post. Is there anything I can do to improve it, something like that like just two sentences? John McIntyre: So, no … like hey how about a chance to look at it, any good that sort of thing. Mike: Yeah, like I try to do like a lower pressure ask, like hey do you want to publish this. That’s like a lot of work on their end. Like hey have you had a chance to review it that’s like a much smaller action, much smaller next step. John McIntyre: ok that’s really very simple strategy just going out there you email. How many people would you have to get in contact for like you got a hundred percent hit right or? Mike: Oh! No, yeah, I definitely don’t get a hundred percent hit rate. I would guess that I am like 50 or maybe a little less maybe 40 percent but you know that’s fine. This is sort of you know what it takes. You know no hard feelings or anything like that and it’s all pays off even with all the reaching out that doesn’t lead to the publication. John McIntyre: Right, have you been able to get feature on sites like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal? Mike: Those have been tough. I don’t think I’ve tried those sites specifically but there’s definitely been a couple a really big sites that are like still chipping away at. John McIntyre: Okay, okay this is interesting. It’s a fun little game to play to see like what it takes. I like the fact that you followed up, it took you three months with some of with entrepreneur.com, that 12 follow-ups. Most people would follow up twice. A lot of people asked me about this with the podcast that I do with some of the guests that I get and the answer every time I just follow up, like I will follow-up on once a week until they say no and most people never say no. They eventually just do it. All they just stopped replying and after 10 or 15 or 20 none replies I use to start to get a little bit easier on them but it really isn’t a follow-up. That’s really where the magic happens. Mike: Yeah, so many things. I was just joking with a friend recently about like probably like how much money I made from setting follow-up emails, like it’s annoying, but the truth of the matter is that it works and it’s really important. John McIntyre: Yeah, cool man. That’s pretty cool. Cool little strategy. If people want to learn more about this and get more information, get the strategy to get on the books that you’ve written, where should they do that and how should they do that? Mike: Yeah, I got the book on Amazon just called the guest blogging master class. You can also get a free chapter at guest blogging masterclass.com and I’ll send you to my blog which is mfishbein.com. John McIntyre: Perfect! Mike thanks for coming on the show man. Mike: Thanks for having me John. The post Episode #128 – Mike Fishbein on Getting Tidal Waves Of Traffic and Sales For FREE (insane guest-blogging tactics) appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Nick Quick is on the show today to talk email marketing. He uses his skills to make email marketing work like money magic for all of his clients. So today, You’re gonna learn how to keep your emails fun and engaging… …every single day. Because people DO want daily emails (even when they say they don’t). They just have to be good enough to engage them and make them want to open each one they get. Nick and I also talk about email marketing strategy. Because daily emails aren’t always the answer. But sometimes they are. The answer lies in the testing, And finding out for yourself the hard way. Learn the 3 resources Nick uses to come up with brilliant head snapping email subject lines every single day. Between these 3 resources, You will have an endless supply. Because you don’t always have to rely on your genius. Nick leverages some very cool resources you’ll wanna check out around halfway through the interview. Learn how to chisel your email marketing because if you have something to sell, Using email is a way that’ll tap into the vast majority.. ..letting you provide value to as many people as you possibly can (and grow yourself a nice hefty income at the same time).   In this episode, you’ll discover: the Open Volley Technique that uses 5-7 emails to ensure you’re whitelisted to help get you in contact with prospects several different things you can do right now to get your people opening emails (and the bad apples off your list!) why Nick doesn’t believe hard selling on each email is a good way to go (learn what he uses to sell loads of products instead) how to craft an enticing email in reverse (use this backwards technique to bulletproof each email you ever write) the nifty technique Nick uses when he’s stumped and has got nothing to come up with genius subject lines  how Eugene Schwartz influenced Nick to craft emails that readers can’t get enough of from day one Nick’s email idea generation technique that nails a message and subject line instantly, everytime (no matter the end goal of your email) why you should never commit to action based on what customers say... do it based on how the react to things Nick’s outrageous email subject line technique that lets him disregard open and clickthrough rates yet still rake in massive sales Mentioned: Headline Smasher EmailMarketingDone.com/mcmethod (go here and get your free gift just for listening or reading this ) Digg.com Redditt Ben Settle Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: It’s John McIntyre here, the auto responder guy. I’m here with Nick Quick. Nick we met on Facebook and instead of email this time we started chatting in Columbia which is where I am right now. Started chatting about email turns out Nick has an email marketing business with you know he’s living a life here in Columbia and I thought we get him on the show to bit of a chat about his process, you know how he gets clients and how he writes his email. So, we will talk about this today. So, Nick, how are you doing man? Nick: Hey, I am doing fantastic, excited to be here. Let’s talk some email huh. John McIntyre: So, before you into the exact process, can you give the listener just a background on who you are and a bit about your story. Nick: Yeah, exactly, I started marketing about ten years ago and it was back in the time when I really didn’t have any business opinion on online marketing. I just knew that I hated my day job and decided to start something different and for a long time I was just falling flat on my ass basically. I was just straight yeah working right until I discovered the power of email marketing and once I was able to harness that power, that was when I was able to really kind of hit my full stride and start really making some sales and was able to get to a point where I was able to be not worried about paying all my bills, now that I got to the point where money was just flowing in and it was about that point the people in the niche that I had chosen were starting to pay attention to my emails. They’re like wholly crap. Those were some pretty interesting emails you’re doing in very different styles in a very different way and so some other people ask me to start writing some of their emails for them and then that kind of translated into finding some people that were sending a lot of traffic, but weren’t really capitalizing on their emails. I approached them and asked them if I could do the email marketing for them. They said yes and then I just started taking clients from then on and so it’s been kind of a wild adventure of finding different ways to make people buy some of the craziest stuff, but people they love buying. Email marketing done right. They love to buy. John McIntyre: That’s true man. That’s email for you it’s interesting. I’m curious how did you one thing that stands out there in that story is like when you decide that you going to go for some more clients, how did find the people who were driving whole lot of traffic, but weren’t sending emails? Nick: I started asking people that they usually like beer … people to people that nobody really knows who they are, but I started just kind of asking around, trying to figure out. I knew one guy, now don’t judge here. He was a spammer but he also was collected a lot of leads and just emailing but emailing just … so I approached him to start off with like listen you sending out crap, you are sending out millions of emails that are horrible, why not have me write them for you and we’ll split the profits and you know he’s hesitant at first, but just try it out a few emails and see what happens and just after a couple of emails he was like alright this is going right, let’s keep this going on. So, it’s kind of how you do it. You cannot just ask around looking for people who know traffic, because one thing that I’ve noticed is that most guys were really got the traffic is terrible copy and vice versa those who are really good at copier typically terrible traffic. So, it’s good to find those kind of ways that you can meet up where one can do the one side of the business and the other can do the other side of the business. John McIntyre: Right, absolutely, absolutely. So, you mentioned that when we first started chatting that you hate auto-responders. So, we get an email guy right here who hates auto responders. So, tell me about that. Nick: It’s not that I hate auto responders; I just don’t find them as effective as just writing fresh daily emails. I don’t find there is much fun either to sit down or write an auto responder sequence. I find it much more satisfying to come up with daily creative stuff. I don’t know, I guess it stretches my thinking muscles a little bit more, flexes them a bit if you will too come up with something new, some exciting new way to pitch the same product that I am pitching everyday … that list. So, I think it gives me more of a creative outlet then an auto-responder kind of … forget and I also think in a lot of ways, I mean, I do have a lot of auto responders sequences that are in my series or in my system, but the bulk of the work is done from my fresh daily emails, if that makes sense. Like, I do want to get them excited to open my email, there’s an auto-responder series for that. I do want to get them excited about the product pages bought and hopefully you know push them towards another products, so I have an auto responder series for that. I want to get people off my list that aren’t opening, so I had a series for that, but other than that it’s just fresh daily emails. John McIntyre: Nice, feel like Benson Nick: Yeah lot of like Benson. In fact, he is probably my number one influence on being able to learn the craft of email marketing. I have learnt more from him than just anyone. John McIntyre: Okay, okay, so tell me about this process that you follow, because you mentioned a few times the process that you follow for these emails, some sort of magic recipe and you got a product …so what this process? Nick: Yeah, I have got something I call the opening Bali and it’s just a quick sequence and its five to seven email that gets them excited to open the emails, so that they are putting you into their priority inbox to get them responding to you so that, I mean I’m not teaching you anything new here, but if you can get somebody who respond back to you and you responded them, it looks like you’re having a conversation. So, Google and Hotmail and all those things are going to start putting your emails into their priority inbox instead of going off into the promotional stabber. Got for … going off in the spam box, so just things that will beat them into that, things that keep them excited to spread the word. There is you know several different things that you can do right off the bat that will get them excited to want to open your emails and also check to the curb those who don’t want to hear from you every day. I don’t … right after that but I am probably gonna be emailed you every day and some days I might email you twice three times a day. If you don’t like that you can go ahead and get off my list. John McIntyre: So, how do you do this several … excited about. It’s very easy, but how does it actually work. Nick: We’re going to think about it. I mean just going back to kind of Aug Schwartz type where it’s just what’s the conversation that they’re having in mind when they signed up. What is that they just signed up for that? They were excited enough to give you their email, so they did want to hear from you and right there’s actually kind of a key mindset that you need to have. A lot of people think well people don’t want to email that much and I say people do if you, they just don’t want to be you know boring stuff every day, but if you can keep it fun and exciting, yes they do want to hear from you. So, when they signed up they are kind of showing yes, I’m raising my hand and want to hear from you what have you got. So, keep it fun, keep it entertaining and people will want to open them or they get off your list. John McIntyre: Yes Nick: So, either way you win. There’s no sense in having a list for people who don’t want to hear from you. John McIntyre: So, how do you break that down? So, when it comes to being fun, being interesting how you actually get inside someone take, because a lot of people struggle with that. Nick: Yeah, it is one of those things where it goes into researching a lot, looking at the motivations. I think at the very core people have the same basic motivation for everything, but I mean take for example let’s go with the solar panels. That’s pretty dry topic right, pretty boring. Well, did you know that they’re actually coming down in price and that’s why there’s such a huge increase in the amount of solar panels that have been installed in the U.S. Why, because China created a whole bunch of extra one that they couldn’t get rid of, so now they’re the entire surplus Chinese are exporting their solar panels over to the U.S. so you can do subject lines something like Chinese and the Asian watch out and it ties into how all of these Chinese solar panels are coming and how we should snatch them up, well we can, because they are way underpriced. So, that was just one of the things that when I was doing the research for such a boring niche, I was able to come across this. That’s one of the reasons that the prices for them have come down drastically in the last 2 years. John McIntyre: Yeah, okay, interesting, so that’s interesting because you know like a story the Chinese invasion they … of patriotic American would open that. So, how would you codify that? I mean it’s an interesting question of like it’s easy to make examples of interesting. It’s easy to describe what interesting is, but what would be like the three steps or the five steps to writing interesting emails? Nick: Alright, here’s what I usually do. You can do this how everyone. A lot of people will write their emails personal, they try to come up with the subject line later. I will sometimes have an idea of what I want to accomplish, you know, whether it’s I want them to go check out the sales page, or want them to hit reply. Figure out what it is that you want them to do first. At the end of it you want them to go check out the sales page for example, okay, so that’s the angel. Then, I’m going to start with the subject line and usually what I try to do is come up with something that is either outrageous or something that’s going to get people to want to open them. Now, honestly I don’t really pay attention to open or answer click through rate. I really only pay attention to sales, but if I can get a catchy subject line, then I want to backwards create an email that would justify whatever subject line that I came up with. Now, I’m going to give you three ways that I come up with subject lines when I can’t think of anything and guess what you don’t even have to come up with yourself either. There are three resources that I go to all the time and yeah maybe I’ll … tweak it a little bit here and there, but to come up with a really good headline, there’s a few websites out there. One of them is called headlines basher and what it does is it takes like click paid type, subject lines from different topics and smashes them together. So, if you went there you would see all sorts of crazy subject lines. In fact, let me just pull … see there you go. So, now you got something outrageous like that. John McIntyre: Pretty you are right … reportedly found in Martian meteorite. Nick: So, you take any of these subject lines and come up with the way to justify it. I mean that’s the biggest thing is if you do it outrages one like this you’re going to have to have a good payoff for it. So, come up with a creative way for you to justify whenever it is here. So, yeah if you are ever at a loss for what your subject line is going to be? Go to this site. Another thing that you can do is subscribe to direct.com. I don’t ever even read their emails. I don’t visit their site, but I will just put a little filter for dig in my Gmail and they have some really amazing subject lines that you can just take or tweak it to your own purposes to pitch your own niche and then write something that flows from that. That would be a good payoff. More on a practical level, if you want to just be straightforward, what you can do is go to any sort of subedit for the topic at hand. So, let’s say you’re in a fitness niche; you’d go to one of the fitness subedit and just see what’s booted up to the top, because whatever has been booted up to the top is obviously getting a lot of tractions, giving a lot of action. It’s probably also going to get a lot of action you will eat even as well, so you can use whatever subject lines that niche happens to have that seems to be popular and craft an email that’s coming from that subject line and from there find, once I have got that idea then the email itself just kind of flows and yes it does take a lot of practice. It’s one of those things that I know when you are first starting out writing emails and when you are coming up against the daunting task of writing every day, it could be a little bit scary at first, but the more you get in the habit of doing it, easier becomes and the more right kind words are going to flow. John McIntyre: Yeah, I mean it’s interesting how anyone else doing daily emails. I haven’t done this in a while, but daily emails was, you should get in, you get some momentum going and if every day you wake up and you write an email you should yeah you get in a habit of doing it and then when you sit down it’s not actually that hard you think of ideas and you just start spewing out ridiculous stuff and you find a way to turn it into an email. Nick: Exactly, exactly, it just becomes a habit. It just becomes … actually is therapeutic, you feel good when you do it. You enable to get out all of those demons and get out all of that … that you might have and then get out all those jokes that you want to get rid of or stuff like that, so it does becomes really therapeutic creative outlet for you, becomes one of those. John McIntyre: Yeah interesting, okay, okay. So, then what about you, when you wake up in the morning, like what’s your day look like. It sounds like you spent a little time writing emails. So, what is your day look like? Nick: Yeah, I mean it is slow start at first. I’m not much of a morning person. So, before my coffee nothing is happening. Please don’t talk to me before that happened or I might blow up, but after I get my coffee, I mean, I’m ready to go and I’m all fired up. I will start writing emails. I will start if I had an idea of what I want to promote and if I have the angle of just dive right into it. If I need to do a little bit of research or come up with some angle to start pitching whatever it is that I’m pitching, then I’ll start going through the three sides that I have just said right now or I mean another thing which you can do is look at the covers of magazines that are really popular. That would be related to your niche. They usually have some good stuff that you can steal from or tweaked a little bit. I usually wouldn’t say they had great headlines. Just straight of a cover to your subject line, but they do have some that you can with a little bit of tweaking you can use. So, then I just start writing emails and honestly within a couple of hours I’m usually done … between five and ten. John McIntyre: Okay, okay and that takes three hours, four hours. Nick: Yeah depending, it’s funny because sometimes emails just come out of you, just naturally and you’ll have done in 5 minutes and then every time you just sit with that blank paper, that blank screen in front of you trying to figure out exactly how to do it or some you get halfway through and you realize this is going nowhere, its going down … It’s kind of crumbling under its own weight, so you have to start over, but no big deal. I usually try to just keep things, I try to keep keyboard moving. I try to keep my fingers typing even if its bunch of gibberish. I can then go back later and edit them. Though, a lot of the times I don’t need to. John McIntyre: Yeah, okay, and then so what mistakes have you made over the last … Nick: What mistakes haven’t I made up? I made a lot of them. Related email marketing I would probably say first being dogged thinking that people didn’t want to be contacted all that much. I did a survey awhile ago my list asking them how often they wanted to be contacted and what would you guess they would say like? Once every week, once every two weeks, some like that? Yeah, it’s pretty much there, typical response and I think if you ask people … tell you, but if you’re writing something they enjoy, they’re going to want to hear from you a lot more. So, never really go by what they say. Go by what they respond to. That’s more going to be a more accurate gauge for you. You’ll notice at first when you start, I mean, I was scared at first when I started … like everybody’s going to unsubscribe. I’m going to get so many spam complaints and honestly I didn’t really get that many. Sure was there a period like birthing pain period where there were few more unsubscribe then the normal, yes. But probably most of the people who would never going to buy from you anyways. They needed to get off and then Igot a more proactive period getting them off the list, then I did back then, but yeah so thinking that people didn’t want to be bothered that much by email was probably my biggest mistake. So, once I have fixed that, things really shifted. John McIntyre: Nice, I found that too when I first get into this. When I just getting started. It was the same thing. I was like oh I was just doing what most people do, just signing every 3 days or once a week or something like that. Switch to daily, is an auto responder initially expecting people to get really annoyed at me. There was someone who was like that, but generally speaking the most people were happy about it and not only that if they miss the day or if you change that and skip the day or something, you will get people with email… where is my email? I didn’t get one today, if something happen, if you lose it or something like that. Since, I stop doing daily emails, I even know, I too send email. I just did because it’s not often right now. I often get people are saying where are my emails. You are still doing the daily stuff anymore or … stop receiving him. Nick: Yeah, yeah, and here’s another thing that it just occurred to me that I was really dropped in the ball on early on that you think that people are going to be prissy if you pitch in all of your emails. I pitch every email that I sent out. I don’t really send out any sort of hard content whatsoever. Someone, who might appear like, it is that really isn’t more entertaining actually giving out the solid content. I used to be scared to put in a pitch. I just want it hey just go check out this free thing and it kind of reminded me of something that my grandmother used to say, why buy the cow when you’re getting milk free and the same with your email marketing. Why you going to buy any of your products, you’re given it every day in your emails, you’re giving away free anyway. So, if you have something of value, something that people should want to pay for it, that is something that would solve their problems, then you should be pitching it. You should be letting them have that. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the ethical thing to do, sell them. John McIntyre: Absolutely, 100%, just an interesting thing, I use to think like 100% stuff like that but was always like that in every instance. Why she find the answer will be wondering sometimes you know much more open approach works better for example I got an email this morning from which you know so he sent an email I thank you basically want to make sure he’s free information is better than most people’s paid information in the history of the season to send that information to send out that’s better than what you pay for with most other people and his strategy is totally different to say what you’re doing more than you know I’ve done the cost and he’s got a very big business. Nick: Yeah, yeah absolutely. John McIntyre: So, there’s this newest answer where both strategies can work that I don’t actually know which ones the best. I used to I probably even now have over saying that premise approaches the more better approach this can become more that way as the time goes on. Nick: You know I had no idea I know what seems to work for others you know if they’re free stuff is great you can get this idea will then there will be even more great but with you can give it is kind of a little bit different it’s why I would say that I’m putting out more entertainment and I think right now I could watch when a remedial courses for example. I think probably doesn’t matter and I probably gain as shit and I learned so much stuff from it or house of cards season three on Netflix in my queue that a lot yet which is more appealing to me right now I’m ultimately believe that remain course would certainly better, but the back of my mind just like most people I want to be entertained. I want to be entertained the more tempting people need to do right now, I am not saying now we give in to temptation neither do your customers and potential customers, but I think the value that you’re offering when you’re offering entertainment especially become kind of disguised are not necessary disguise that comes mixed in with some teaching is really offering of values that they can really get anywhere else you could be entertaining that might just be the most highly valued be out there is to be entertaining. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah I mean this time and i never thought about this for a long time did you see what happened to the next 5 10 years the content marketing which way, but it seems like you found 20 perhaps like the more aggressive approach doesn’t work will be accompanied the way it does for small operator. Nick: Agree and I don’t think you should just be aggressive in your sales approach. I mean should you be promoting, yeah of course you should, but should you choose to be doing straight hard peaches not your email no don’t do that then people will and should be boring and it’s predictable and not be fun. John McIntyre: Yeah, so we run on time and before we go though give the listener like if someone wants to find out where you are and what site is to buy the products. What’s the best place for them to do that? Nick: I’m going to give you one of my paid products for free for all of your listeners, so what they can do is to listen to this right now and just go to email marketing done dot com slash McIntyre and then you will be able to get the opening sequence where I review exactly the step-by-step formula for creating that route in its response from the get-go that I can I referred to earlier I’m just going to give you that program that works for free. So, just go to that URL that I just mentioned emailmarketingdone.com/McIntyre and choose for free. John McIntyre: That’s the micmethod. Nick: Ok let’s go with Micmethod, emailmarketingdone.com/ mcmethod. John McIntyre: Awesome, Nick thanks for coming on the show man. Nick: Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure to be on here. The post Episode #127 – Nick Quick on Landing Clients and Sales With Enticing Daily Emails (learn how to write them) appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Who better to tell you about your entrepreneurial-triggered manic depressiveness than a serial entrepreneur whose been through it already? Peter Awad has been through enough ups and downs, And aided enough of his peers, To know this ride is real. Entrepreneurs facing depression is more common than you might suspect.. ..because no one ever brings it up. Peter’s on the show today to talk about what he terms, “The Slow Hustle.” Not only is it a new podcast he just started with a goal to share between fellow entrepreneurs and find answers. The Slow hHstle lets you handle life’s little stressors in order for you not to get bogged down. Because life will bog you down sooner or later. It’s important to handle these as an entrepreneur to stay on top of your game to be and stay successful. Without a clear mind, being an entrepreneur is nearly impossible. The Slow Hustle helps you realize what’s important in life in and outside of your career. When you see someone juggling 4 businesses, 4 kids and holding down a good marraige and household with ease, That person has mastered The Slow Hustle. Learn how to do it for yourself. Learn how to find simple solutions to all of your life’s hardest answers. Because there’s always a simple solution.. ..you just have to find it. The Slow Hustle contains answers for any and all entrepreneurs going at it alone today. Enjoy.   In this episode, you’ll discover: relief over the fact that if you’re not pissing people off, you’re not doing it right  the ideal way to handle yourself and your business once you’ve actually achieved everything you were striving for  how to zone in on negative thoughts, pin point them, and direct them in a way that will create positive effect in your life (this always turns into productivity) how to watch out for industry baggage.. (find out how people outside of your industry are your answer) insights to the difficult side of the business when no one else is sharing (learn about the dark side of entrepreneurship so little talked about) a brilliant little trick that will surely give you a mid week (or anytime) inspiration and mental clarity boost so you can get back to what you need to be doing in a positive way. Mentioned: Abundance SlowHustle.com Email him directly at Peter@slowhustle.com The Slow Hustle Show on iTunes @peterawad Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: It’s John McIntyre here, the auto responder guy. I’m here with Peter Awab. Now Peter came in the wire email. He’s one of the guys who understand … and originally I thought to go on his podcast, because he has a podcast. A little bit confusing and then I done on the phone that I find that it was about doing a podcast on the email marketing. So, once you do that sort of that we had a a topic which I am very passionate, which is this idea of the slow hustle and well I don’t actually know too much about it, but I have got some ideas that I think what it’s about and probably get into that and that’s previous thing, it’s a slow hustle and I’m really curious to find out what that means and hopefully that means walking less and still getting great results and business. So, yeah, Peter how are you doing man? Peter: Great man, thanks for having me John. John McIntyre: Good to have you on the show. Before we get into this tell the listener a bit about who you are and what you do? Peter: Yeah absolutely man, so some may call me the serial entrepreneur. I don’t really like that phrase a whole lot. I just like hacking on ideas that are intruding to me and so being in e-commerce business since 2000 and then four years ago started a content marketing platform that’s currently patent-pending called “good blogs” and then you know in the quote-unquote spare time working on a few other ideas and one of them that was in my head for a while was this idea slow hustle. I did have a name for a while and it’s just essentially what it is addressing the Dominican president nature of entrepreneurship and so you know pretty much anybody that I’ve ever talked to about these feelings pretty much respond with that Oh you too! What you do with that? I thought I was the only one. I think it’s because that a whole lot of people talk about it. So, when I say manicdepressive it’s like you know that’s example I have is that you know one day you can leave work you know your office and feel like you’re really crushing it, like you’re on top of the world and everything is kind of going right and in a very next day or the next week you can feel like the business is crushing you and typically there are like really small things that trigger those feelings. Sometimes you can pinpoint and sometimes you can’t, but any entrepreneur that I’ve ever talked to …have some one person say no I’ve never felt that way. Everybody have ever talk to you seems to have that same feeling, the same issues. John McIntyre: Now interesting question on that note is isn’t manic-depressive because I’ve had that experience and I know who is in business has that exact same experience, but an interesting question is people manic depressive and then they get into business or are they manicdepressive and that’s what draws in the business or is it because they’re in business, this business makes them manic-depressive. Peter: I think it’s a latter and I think that what happens is that you get a few things, one you know you’re not … to before we spread a recording is that when you become less connected to the business, like you’re not dealing with kind of like that you know the hands-on portion of business, whether it’s email, if you have somebody else to an email or something like that you feel little less connected and then sometimes that will lead to you feeling may be less effective, if you’re not getting those real quick you know boosts, the high you get from like you said going to inbox zero or something like that and so then you start to question whether you’re doing things right. You start to may be question whether you’re as smart as you thought you were or I mean I remember talking to someone who is like you know I get twenty, thirty responses that are positive on a project that I just released and then I get one MI critical negative response and that kind of sense into a tailspin and then you start to question kind of everything is doing. So, I think that you know those things plus maybe even if you’ve gone the other side your nose is too close to the bark sort of speaks and you’re really watching like every single metric there is. You can always find something negative and in that can send you down the rabbit hole and feeling like maybe things aren’t going so right. John McIntyre: How’s your mind with that of this story in abundance if about how is basic explains why then use is so negative, because a lot of real things is you know just to sell newspapers and that is why it is, but that doesn’t really explain why is that way and the reason if you look at like evolution or evolutionary psychology is that when you have you’ve got like two sets of mention positive information or negative information and positive information is not very valuable survivor, because if you go you know if in a little … the jungle and you are like positive information is just not line out there or if you believe it all great what was in the line, if you don’t believe it will great still say if anyway. Negative information on the other hand that there is a line there if you believe that greatly prepare if you want if you done. So, negative information has a high survival value. What that means is that over time would be basically bread or evolved to our brain why to filter out positive information and like prioritize negative information because it increases our likelihood of survival, so and whether all like this I think it’s really easy like you can get a whole bunch of positive feedback and people will say good, good. All these great things about you and bit sound just like one bad thing and it’s very easy just because you have a brain works which is zero in on that thing and make that you know just let that screw up your whole day or whole week. Peter: That’s very interesting and it makes me feel better actually, because then you could say well I don’t really have too much control over the fact that I feel negative about. I do if feel about this negative situation or the way that I’m focusing in on it. But at the same time it’s really interesting to think that you can have twenty people you know virtually or in person patch you on the back and you get one person to say, you know, I don’t really like the way you did that and to focus in on that one person were statistically it’s like such a small percentage of the feedback you’ve received. John McIntyre: I think … why follow that the psychology side of it is so interesting is because you can’t change millions of uses that original. I just find understanding or I just find something like you know … but you’re not going to change that like its hot water into the very … in the brain. But what helps I think is when you go well hang on, that’s just its normal like and it’s going to happen every single time and it’s never going to go and even get better at dealing with it, but that general preference for negative information it’s always going to be there and this is why I like you know like click it on the line or look at the you know procrastinating and we see some sort of crazy positive story. it’s kind of interesting, always see some crazy others been a tsunami and you know whatever, when much more likely to click on that and it’s always going to be that way, but the best bit or the good bit is when you understand that you can … it’s just not brain like you know it’s just not brain but prevailing negative information of a positive information and then you can sort of get some distance from it. Peter: Absolutely and then there’s always the idea too that if you’re pleasing everyone, you’re not getting negative feedback from you know the crowd or the audience so-to-speak. You’re probably not doing something right, because I mean you want to have a strong enough opinion where you’re appealing to a very specific audience and everybody else this is … careful what you’re doing, and so if you’ve got it, just watered down, like so watered down whether you’re messaging or your product and you’re just kind of trying to please everyone, you please no one. Everybody’s heard that phrase, but I think there is a lot of truth there and so it’s almost like I mean, if you like you said once you understand it and you embrace it and you move on then you can say look you know I kind of going after some of this negative feedback, because otherwise I’m not being specific enough. I don’t have a strong opinion. John McIntyre: Yeah, how’s this relate to the slow hustle? Peter: Yeah, so I think one part of it is this manic-depressive nature and understanding what triggers are and so how you get an example from really early episode of the podcast. Friend of mine who’s working in downtown project with Tony Hsieh was talking about how, you know, he realized kind of a pattern with himself. Every Wednesday morning he was kind of down and then you start to procrastinate because he just didn’t want to like face kind of the rest of the week ahead and realize that Monday and Tuesday he worked really, really hardly, kind of burned at both ends and by Wednesday morning he really just had nothing left in his brain. He just couldn’t handle all this stuff is getting thrown out on that. Maybe you could handle on a Monday or Tuesday and so what he did is he scheduled a kind block on his counter recurring every Wednesday morning that he would take his motorcycle and kind of drive up into the hills or travel into the mountains and just let himself unwind, let his black brain kind of clear out and then when he came back it was kind of like he had another Monday morning and he would get a lot more productivity and it and he would be a lot more happier for it and still like you said once you identify that you are you know that you’re going to have some negative feedback and then you’re going to maybe respond in a certain way figure, you figure out how to handle it and some of it is just kind of like, you know, whether you have this meditative process of riding your motorcycle or something like it, going for a run really early in the morning. Just finding some of these scheduled recurring events on your calendars that you make some space to clear your mind and do whatever it is that you need to do, have a more of a positive attitude to be able to deal with the stresses that are thrown at you as an entrepreneur and I mean the reality to me is that the more you can handle these tough situations, stressful situations the more productive and the more successful you’re going to be because then you can look at them with a clear mind, handle them and move on and get wrecked the rest of your day of rest your week. So, you know the other part of slow hustle and the example that I’d like to give is that I’d like to know how someone who’s running 1,2,3,4 businesses, like to talk to a guy at a day. He has four boys and he had a company with almost 100 employees, doing 15 million a year in revenue and my question is always like how did you do all that, do everything he needed to do that was … with that activity and still stayed married. How did you still see your kids grow up? What were you doing, like what system did you have in place in order to make sure that you were still living, to make sure that you still have your priorities straight. To make sure that you didn’t look back in 20 years and wish you would have been a completely different, because nobody in their right mind would be under deathbed and say I wish I worked more. I don’t know a single person that would ever say that, because it’s ridiculous right. Everybody wants this usually spent more time with their loved ones and so would that perspectives and understanding that you know situation that truth of that, then what can you do now to make sure you don’t have those regrets moving forward and so that for me is really the most important part. I have four 4 kids myself and so it’s like you know I want to make sure that I realize what I’m giving up and so if I’m spending eight or ten or twelve hours in the office today, am I going to be ok with the time value associated with that. Am I going to be ok with what I traded for you know that the number of hours in the office and if the answer is no then figure out how to get it right. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah, an interesting question here is because I think we first get into this. It’s the desire for freedom and money and you know things like that, but then what happens is you get to a point where I think you get a lot of what you want or you get that lot you want and what’s next and like you know you keep doing it for money or you’re going to build a you know you can make a million where you go build 10 million dollar business, this is what’s the next thing and …with the family but what about someone who taking … divorce stunning couple of times, but she put in position like that where it’s let’s assume like take someone who’s got a vision to do something very specific in the world and … like that the money, but when they’re on the deathbed, they’re going to wish that they spent more time with their kids or they’re going to wish that they help mankind to get the mosque. Peter: It’s a … point man. I think that you know I talked about you know mosque actually quite a bit and have an article pulled up right in front of me about mosque and so it’s interesting that you that you brought this up. Somebody to send it to me this morning and I think that you know this dude an anomaly we all know that and we know that he gave up his family and his kids essentially said he couldn’t chase these dreams of his and he’s doing some amazing things for Humanity. There’s no doubt about it. The question that you know will be answered a long time from now hopefully is whether or not he looks back and says yes I did all these amazing things for humanity and I am happy or ok with the decision I made to give up family for this to chase this vision. I’m really interested to know and that will be a long time from now I just stated and whether that’s the case or not. You know, I don’t think there are too many mosques out there right, so unless you … mosque you had a huge visions of autonomous vehicles and rockets template that they can lend themselves back or they took off and hyper loop, then I’m guessing that you’d probably would be happier spending that time with family and keeping that balance v/s letting everything else go to the wayside. What do you think John? John McIntyre: I think that is really hard question to answer. I think this is very much about like what’s that vision that you have for yourself. For me personally it’s a bit like I don’t have a family. I don’t even in a relationship right now. So, maybe I’m not the best person to ask … kids first then I have a better answer, but I wonder, for me personally, I think this is very much personal, what I guess what’s important to you. I really struggle with this because some days I love to go up and just devote myself to forget about family, forget about any of that and just go out to some crazy, crazy stuff, but at the same time there are other days when you know I’m glad that I am living in Colombia. I have this amazing lifestyle. I can travel around … work from anywhere where there is an internet connection and a lot of people dream about and it’s a great life. I mean it’s a lot of fun, it’s freedom and this autonomy, it’s amazing, but in me that I know that even right now and anyone who’s been listening to me or reading some of the stuff that would notice about me. There is that pardon me it’s like … more out there. It’s … like the whole thing like … it’s really like you know eventually settling down having a family, having kids or is it some sort of worthy mission did you have? Is it a mix of both? Is there absolute answer to it or does it really literally just depends on you as a person and are they different? Is everyone going to be fulfilled by settling down and having a family because again if even … I grew up in a family where my parents go to divorce when I was 7. So, I grew up in a broken family and a lot of people … what that does is it teaches you or maybe at least makes you think or wonder if them is really all cracked up to be and then I will obviously ended, obviously why people who grew up like that, think like that, then I was really grew up in really great families. You should think family is great and so I just look around also kid and look at other families and there is some really happy family, really happy marriage. We got really deep right now, but it’s a real happy family, really happy couples that day. But I think they’re often, I think to me … as far as I can … more often the exception and the rule and so I wouldn’t want to get into relationship and have kids unless I was sure that it was going to be one of those good relationships that I have seen people have, but I’m not. I think a lot of people are like this as well. There is not a lot of faith in some of these old institutions which then go as well if that institution is not as good as everyone thinks it is, or maybe there is other stuff that I would like to think. Maybe that’s why I’m actually more curious and interested in some of the stuff … is doing for example. Peter: Yeah, absolutely anything you get on it you know a few good points there is that you know what is meaningful to you and I think that you know you ask you know you made a statement earlier, like may want to build a business when it … on a revenue, hit there and it’s like what’s next and I think that you you’ve got to keep the perspective as far as like what is meaning for you? Why are you going down this path again. Like, what’s the point right. Is it autonomy? Is it the ability to travel and lived from anywhere? Is it so you can do humanity a greater good? Is so that your family can be comfortable …what the goal was to begin with, right. My family and I, we travel quite a bit. More about to take a you know a ten month stint around the country here in the U.S. and I get folks that are you know they have all kinds of different opinions … actually going to chronicle the process can be very interesting I think to watch from the outside, but you know some of the folks who are like oh let’s can I cost a lot of money, right and then I’m going to cover all that in the podcast too and actually there is cost very much at all, but you know let’s say cost X amount of dollars right and then I asked folks like well would you take a 10 grand or 20 grand a year pay cut to be able to do this and be able to work from anywhere and the reason I ask that question is because let’s say you had a certain threshold of X amount of dollars you want to make per year right and then you surpass that, most folks aren’t willing to back up on their salary in order to have certain freedoms even know they really do want it right and so but if you had the prospective in remembering what the goal was to begin with, well then given up a certain amount of revenue or salary, have you want to call it in order to have this autonomy that everybody wants to have is pretty easy, but folks don’t, one thing is that they forget what the goal was in the beginning and they don’t know kind of what’s meaningful to them, like what’s most important and doesn’t have to be family. It could be autonomy. It could be you know maybe one day you’re off and work for the peace core you know, but losing sight of that and just working for work sake and working 40 hours a week because that’s what everybody does which is not a good answer right and so just doing these things just because everybody else is doing them and forgetting why you’re going on the path to begin with I think. John McIntyre: yeah, I think like a lot of people don’t have that clarity and when I woke him up at school which you know I went to grow up in Sydney went through electronics selective schools not cool and everyone was expected ever know their graduates don’t you get started you both need to get jobs all that stuff and I never want that and I don’t even know why not get my unreachable water like deep down I don’t really know why I was like that and other people want but I see that the in a lot of places especially in Western society what happening is the description of what you meant to go to school and go to college get a job maybe start of minority startup script stories in my head and I don’t know why it is that most people don’t question that story enough they did a little bit when they’re 1892 kind of pushing are making an aggressive testosterone is waging what I love most people used to settle down after a couple years of fighting and they come down and they just settle into like this the story that society gives them and I don’t know why that is why do you hate it but not really running like not willing to do what you say drop this out about you know be held remote work for more freedom. Peter: Well, I mean it’s funny, so I just got here said go and speak a few weeks ago. He had, I mean had a lot of kind of … Education talk and you know for folks out there that are pro you know higher and pro traditional schooling and I mean to offend, but the same time the idea is that we’ve got this based in kind of an industrial sector and we ran into post-industrial society. So, these systems are built for jobs. A job system that no longer exists right or it’s dying and I don’t know how you want to look at it and so you know you go through middle school you know elementary school, middle school, high school. Maybe get an MBA. You go get a job. You work you know forty five years you retire that it doesn’t exist anymore right. Now people are still following that same path and so I think that you know we’ve got the system that’s broken. The system is designed for a job you know a job system that doesn’t exist right. It’s not there. It’s dying along with newspapers and magazines right and so there is a Mark Twain quote that I love and it’s whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect and I like it because when somebody says well you don’t do, you know, what you want to do nobody does that, nobody does that. It’s not normal and make good on the right path, because when I find myself just doing what everybody else is doing, living where everybody else is living. Living how everybody else’s living that I know I’m doing something wrong. When, I say that because that’d be the kind of like this you know like this herd mentality where he just like he’s gonna do what everybody else is doing, you don’t really know why, but just what everybody does you. You get married, you have kids, buy new house, new cars, you work a job you don’t really like and that’s what everybody does and that’s for me is like okay, because you’re already doing that I need to figure something else out and to me like another quote that I recently from a friend, a storyteller, he said you know and it’s a quote from a …he said you know you find yourself, your character at a crossroads. Your character has two options. You can go down the path that’s tried-and-true. You pretty much know how it’s going to turn out or you can take your character down into the deep dark forest and you always want to take your character into the deep dark forest. Sometimes it’s going to end up positives and sometimes end up negative, but there’s only one way to find out and show that for me it’s kind of what drives a lot of the decision-making process and in our household. John McIntyre: Yeah it’s very interesting people don’t like talk about this whole like the intelligent didn’t even know there are a lot of some people smarter than others and I think some people have the capacity to question a lot more people 2012 done on you know and understand how long with whatever the story is that given that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that but should I think it’s a fascinating thing that happened and what also happened to it you’ve got the same scripts that that happened at every level of the game can I say I’m a run on a community right now online of unfairness built but you never like to complain about you know when you when you first one already complaining jokes about how you know when you thought the side of it and you tell your family your pants whatever it was like a crazy person ever going to work with what the hell you doing you cannot completely rule out a lot you know and entered its pressure from the outside that you not going to be successful and even if you try like you know you should just take what you take with us a fortune and I’ve noticed is you get the same similar the same old similar scripts happening in our culinary community where one of them that I’ve seen if what happened to go through this approach to business and make some money to get to a point that motivated by money so you know what connection to stop thinking I used or they have you must or other people who were doing this much bigger stuff you know doing so you know I thought of doing stuff that much bigger than that’s the thing that I can really change the world and they see that I think I’m definitely into this group is why I like money like a lot of fun having fun and not want interest in building a you know a one million dollar company chairman of the company or you know something just something like that it seems like I I might as well just relax and hang out at Columbia College the money not that interesting so that I can I let you know what would you like to get involved in some crazy stuff value for example give me know what you end up with you know co-founder and senior couple of law and Lebanon conversation face to face sometimes there’s always a few people who already knows you’ve been through that period where people said they couldn’t make it and they and they and they will tell you they can adapt the people who want to question the roof attended community of it and they said I should stay small and you don’t you need to make some money focus on going on a small businesses began to tell me a little bit of money before you make a lot of money like this attitude you got to do this is gripping having the head to do something small before you go into something big and I think it’s fascinating just like that script we all have that apparent corruption on a parent or friend to their word is trying to start a business that happened at every level of the game. Peter: It does and I think that what happens in my opinion is especially when you’re seeking advice from somebody that’s within your industry to have all this industry baggage and so even folks that are super creative, I mean, I find myself in the situation as well, as like oh nobody does it that way. You don’t even want to try that, because that’s just not going to work and it’s interesting to me that you get advice for people that are outside of your industry. They will say why don’t you do this way, which is a seemingly of seniors ridiculous question where somebody within the industry and he would never ask, because they’ve got this baggage in the back of their mind that you’re nobody does it that way and you just fill in the blank whatever the example is, but those crazy ideas are obscene or absurd I should say, absurd questions are kind of weird most creative ideas come from and so I don’t know what the process would be to get yourself out of that except for I always like to ask people outside of the industry have absolutely no understanding of how it works and I like to throw my, run my ideas pass them and see kind of what ideas they come up with. This happened to me the other day where I was on the other side and that’s all. I know this might be ignorant question, so please don’t be too critical, but what if you did it this way and everybody in the room was like holy shit man. We never thought of that, like we never thought of it that way and it was only because everybody back the certain product a certain way and they’ve just never seen another way and haven’t thought about it that way. It’s very simple solution to a super difficult problem that they’ve been having and I just hadn’t thought of it because they were so entrenched in it. John McIntyre: Yeah he made me how to cook so how does this relate then to circle back to the slow hostile what are you trying to achieve with this law for you really try to teach people I know it’s a bit of that the manic depressive illnesses just how to deal with Vetted. What’s the end result you’re moving towards? Peter: Yeah, it’s a deep question man and there’s a bunch of different things here I play. One is I don’t like the fact that you know it’s entrepreneurs, we only share the rosy side of things. Like, you hear about people with massive exits. Hear about people getting lots of funding. You very rarely hear about the difficult side of the business and I had someone the other day, they started a company and six months later she comes up to me and said hey I just want you to know that I understand. I understand a lot of stuff and a lot of the reasons you say things in a certain way and enact certain way, because from the outside things looks rosy, … looks easy and now I understand like all these other things that are really difficult that nobody even talks about and so one of the reasons are the goals is to bring some of these things to light, not too depress people, but to make them feel like they’re not the only ones out there that are having these issues and then inevitably through these conversations in interviews that we have on the show, they can learn about ways on how to deal with them, curbed them, keep them at bay as much as possible … like I mentioned earlier like the motorcycle riding and the other side is just the loan asset-backed is just like you know keeping the priority Street and figuring out these different mechanisms, a lot of them tactical on how to make sure that you do just that, you know, that you take care yourself and your family and your friends and not do so yourself and what’s most important than what’s meaningful in life. So, it’s a heavy answer. That’s what I’ve got. John McIntyre: Cool, well right on time. So, let’s wrap it up here. People want to learn more about you or the podcast or if they want to get in touch with you or any product people can buy, where is the best place to do all that? Peter: Sure man, no miniaturization right now. This is like a passion project so-to-speak. We’ll figure that other part of the business out later, but right now just this is some of my most meaningful work and getting tweets and emails and texts from people saying they listen to an episode and implemented similar strategies that we talked about made a real difference in their life like that like those are the highlights of my day man. So, you can check out slowhustle.com. hit up slow hustle on iTunes to download or subscribe @ Peterawad on PETERAWAD on twitter at slow hustle on twitter for the show and Peter @ slowhustle.com … email me directly, I love chatting with people man, so I can do that all day long. John McIntyre: Peter thanks for coming on the show man. Peter: John! Appreciate it man. The post Episode #126 – Peter Awad on Conquering Entrepreneurial Manic Depression with The Slow Hustle appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.