Life by Design: How Ben Glass Built a Business That Serves His Life

The Y2K hype is all a blur. You are looking at how the world is about to change. It's 1999 and you have discovered Dan Kennedy. Can you imagine how your life would be different if you discovered Dan Kennedy in 1999? Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. Today we're going to be listening to Ben Glass as he has a talk with Darren Spindler. Ben Glass is somebody that has been in the Dan Kennedy world since 1999, way back when Planet Dan was a product. Ben Glass has an amazing history of making his business work for him. I don't want to steal all the thunder. You're going to hear so many things that Ben Glass is able to do in his everyday life, and the list is going to shock you. There's so many different things that are so valuable. Then you just say, wow, I've always thought about doing that. Oh my gosh, look, he's doing this. There are going to be so many different pieces. I want you to pick up on these and say, how did he make it?

Work.

What are the key principles that he is taking into his business and implementing, and how can you do the same? And then at the end, Ben is going to give us a list of all of the best books that he recommends, including some from Dan Kennedy. Let's jump into Life by Design: How Ben Glass Built a Business That Serves His Life.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy.

The legend of Dan Kennedy should be acknowledged.

Ignore it at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by.

Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

Good afternoon, everybody. It is Darren Spindler, and I am with a very long-time Magnetic Marketing No BS member, Ben Glass. Ben is somebody you've probably read about in the newsletters, mentioned in many of Dan's books, and we're very thankful to have Ben with us today. Super excited about that. Welcome, Ben.

Hey, I'm glad to be here. It's always good to talk with you guys, Darren.

For those of you who don't know Ben, Ben is known as somebody who is the father of 9 children, 4 of which are adopted from China. Ben's also really a small business advocate. He also is a part of a nonprofit organization and he's a charity supporter. One thing that I really also enjoy about Ben is he is a soccer referee and he's also an advocate for stopping referee abuse, which I think in all shapes and forms is very important because I sit at my daughter's volleyball matches and I watch some of these parents and they are—

Crazy.

They are off their rocker. But Ben is also, you know, a top-notch attorney. Ben, you are located in the DC area, is that correct?

Fairfax, Northern Virginia, right.

Yep, so Ben, you also serve on the board of directors of an organization called Love Without Boundaries. You want to share a little bit about that?

It's an organization that we became attached to after we started our adoption journey, and it serves children in impoverished countries around the world. We provide everything from education and food. I'll say this, and it, you know, I'm an insider, but it is one of the most efficient charities you could ever imagine. We do a lot of really good work. And so I guess—

I mean, that when somebody gives you $100, like, the wide majority of the $100 goes to the right place rather than people getting paid?

Yeah, I mean, you know, people need to get paid, but they had hundreds of volunteers around the world. I would just say this, if anyone who's listening to this is ever considering international adoption or has adopted and has issues, you know, my wife and I are a really good resource on this. And so I always mention that because it's a challenge. It's a lifelong journey. And Love Without Boundaries is just doing so much really, really cool work. And I can even tell you at some point, just make a note, I'll tell you about the training center and how that ties into Love Without Boundaries too. How to make life efficient.

Yeah. Well, the other thing too, Ben, so in addition to your soccer refereeing coaching, I know something else about you. You're a CrossFitter, and maybe it's a different name depending on your opinion of what happened over the last few weeks, but you do high-intensity workouts.

I do, yeah.

And let's just talk about that for a minute because it's one of the things that I share with people all the time that often people don't understand that investing 30 to 60 minutes in your own physical well-being might be the single most important thing you can do to lead your team.

So we love our box, um, and we've— and it's a great example of a great community. But I got into it about— it's probably 3 years ago this summer. I'm 62. I got it mainly, Darren, so that I would be able to stay fit and reduce injuries. You know, it is challenging to referee high school and teenage youth soccer It's a lot of running and I'm not getting any younger. And so we love it. I've got about 12 members of my family between my direct family and the in-laws and stuff who are members of this gym, and it's a fabulous community. So the science is there, like the No BS World, you know, you have this group of people who are cheering for you. Some are farther along the path than you are. They're all very, you know, they're welcoming, they're helpful. And so, yeah, you know, I try to do. I want to be the guy that lives to 100 and can still get up off the floor, right?

Yeah. Well, I'm going to share a little tip. This is something I shared out in an email already to people who might be interested in, you know, investing in the replays of last week. So one of the things that I took away, uh, that Dan talked about, it ties to what you just talked about here with CrossFit. So it was all about the shed shop and why somebody would buy the shed. And they weren't enunciating initially, they were giving utilitarian reasons like, "I want to store stuff, I want to do this," but the why behind it. Well, he shared the story of the person who had the dolls, but your why story for CrossFit or fitness is not that they've got a bunch of equipment and not even the community, it is you need to keep up with these kids and there's a deeper why there.

Well, exactly, and it's funny because when you think about things that you would do for free even if they didn't pay you, that's one of— so refereeing for me is one of the things I've been doing since I was 16. I would do interesting— in fact, I like the interesting game with atmosphere that has a lot of people in the stands and that's challenging, right? That is interesting to me. And so to be able to do that and not suffer through it— you suffer through workouts, but like you said, they're short and intense, good coaching, and all the science about resistance and weightlifting just for people like my age cohort and up. It's all there. It's just totally supportive of if we do this, we'll live longer and we'll live a happier life as well.

And you're more productive on your day-to-day activities. So Ben, let's get into the meat of this. So, um, you have been a member of Planet Dan since 1999, which at this point now is 21 years. Oftentimes people will come in and they won't make it 21 days. You know, I used to be in the fitness business as well, so common correlation there. But a lot of people, you know, looking for the quick and easy. But I would say our best members are the people who have stuck around, obviously a long time, but you continue to invest and learn and grow. Why don't you talk about why, after 21 years, were you investing and having your entire team on the event last week.

Yeah, I mean, somebody asked me that recently. Why have you hung around? And, you know, I think most people come to Dan or come to the No BS World, the Magnetic Marketing World, looking because I need more clients, patients, customers, right? They come for the advertising and the marketing. And, you know, the truth be told, while that is very complex, we'll talk about it, you know, there's a limited universe. And within a couple of years, a good study, you could probably figure out like marketing, right? Yeah, I mean, hopefully, right? Um, but I— there's really— there's 3 reasons. Number 1 is just staying for the philosophy, and we'll talk about philosophy a little more. But, but having— for me, what Dan gave me many, many years ago was permission to live my own life, right? To shed whatever construct there is about lawyers or, or what trial lawyers should be or say, or tradition, industry norms, all that stuff. And so even on, so I've attended, I think, two other wealth events, Dan's wealth attraction events, you know, in the past, and I have notes. We'll talk about knowledge and accumulating knowledge. I heard the Johnny Cash story last week. That's the first time I've ever heard Dan say that story, but everything else I've heard him say before. And yet I was taking notes vigorously. Why? Because today I'm in a different spot than I was maybe a couple of years ago when I was last at a Wealth Attraction event. And it's just, for me, his philosophy, which has been consistent over time, is important. And we'll talk about using philosophy to live your life. Two, I think what Adam Witty has done in the last few years is He took an organization that was teaching people how to market and advertise, right? Which is one very important, but it's one part of a business thing. And what happens is, oh my gosh, if this stuff really works, which it does, you, you, you have to— you grow. It's just, it's just natural that you grow. Either you're taking the same number of clients and it's more expensive, or you're, as we have done in both of my businesses, there's just more people. There's more layers of people I have employed here, all of that stuff. And so, I think what Adam has added to it is how do we build real businesses? How do we create culture, enforce culture, hire, fire, create exit plans, all of that stuff? And so, that's— I think that was missing. Dan wasn't that interested in, you know, he was creating his own thing for his own life. And so, that's cool. And then, the third thing is just my friends, right? So, I've got I have good friends that I might only see, Darren, once every couple of years at an event. And yet we pick up the conversation exactly where we left it. And Bill Glazer is famous for saying, "The entrepreneur is one of the loneliest people in the world." And this is true. And there's not many people that you can have a discussion about, particularly if you're a business owner, right? About capitalism, wealth creation, doing it your way, shunning the status quo. And yet those people exist in this world. And what I'll say is, I found if you look at any sort of Planet Dan leader, quote, superstar, I found them all to be really giving people, sharing of their time, oftentimes sharing of their resources. And so those are the things, you know, Dan, Adam, and then the bunch of people that I've met over the years who are just Good people.

Yeah, I mean, the people that have been around a long time, generally speaking, they're, they're great people. Um, you know, they're out the hallways, they're approachable, the majority of them willing to share what's working, what's not working. And actually, it's going to tie into something that I shared with you. We're about to announce is the Dan Kennedy Secret Society, which is going to be some of our highest level members that have been around the longest that have the knowledge base of Dan and can share some of how they're implementing Dan into their business. But those people, um, they're easy to talk to when, when you're at an event. They're approachable.

And yeah, yeah, we'll talk about how to approach them because I want to, you know, yeah, we'll talk about that.

The other thing that you talked about is like, you know, the loneliest person on the planet. Obviously last week Dan and I spoke a lot about, you know, it was all about trying to get to a 7-figure income recurring. And, you know, you hit a lot of resistance when you make the decision that you want to become a 7-figure earner. And you come into, even inside your own household, you know, your mother, your father, they're like, man, you're working too much, or you're doing too much. And, um, there's a lot of that resistance. And part of being inside of a community like this is there's other achievers trying to do the same thing, and it's okay to do that here.

And they are good people. And so when they tell you that it's okay, it's not out of, you know, it's not out of bragging or anything. Usually it's because they're good people. And we're actually— so when you're a successful 7-figure earner, I believe that you serve your clients and your customers better, and you serve your communities and your families better, and it all works.

It certainly does. So Ben, you know, for a while you were also the operator of the IBA, which is at the time was a local chapter of, uh, Magnetic Marketing No BS, uh, members who would come in and you would see a lot of them come for a meeting, but then they'd probably exit. They'd be there for 3 meetings and they'd exit. Uh, there was people there for a year and they still struggled. Why don't you share with, uh, everyone kind of like some of your observations of why these people were still struggling?

Yeah, and it's not just people at the IBA. So there'll be people that come to events and corner you, and there'll be people who reach out to me and say, hey, you know, can I come over and pick your brain and stuff. And so I was thinking as we were preparing for this, like, all right, what do some people get really right and other people are just missing something over here? And I think the first one is, and Dan talks about this a lot in the event last weekend, which by the way, we had a little bit of a watch party here. I had my— we have a training center, had my team here, a couple of invited guests. We treated that exactly like if we had driven to Cleveland, right? So we had lunch brought in, we had discussions on the breaks, all of that stuff. Um, but Dan talks a lot about, um, philosophy and philosophy mattering. And for me, I think a lot of people skip over that to go directly to what do I put in a headline, how do I do a follow-up, what software will help me do all this. All very important, of course, but by philosophy, what we're talking about is, is you having a set of principles for living. And Dan said this last week. He said, you know, part of what we miss is just the cognitive, just carving time out to think. All right. Now, Dan doesn't say you have to agree with my philosophy, right? That's clear. But he encourages, and I think I've done a pretty good job at creating Ben's Rules for Living. Things that will make, I believe, make my life better. And I firmly believe, Darren, that if the biz owner, the entrepreneur, whoever it is, if their life is good spiritually, emotionally, financially, physically, everything else works, works from there.

Well, I think, Ben, you know, like, you're a perfect example of it. You figured out how to raise 9 children operate a successful law firm, a successful info business, still be able to participate and contribute philanthropically to the people that you, you know, organizations you care about, and also live life on your terms. And you're not nailed to the office, you know, 9 to 9, 7 days a week. You're, you're doing other stuff, right?

And so that's it. Again, that was the— for me, it was Dan giving me permission to build a life that served myself first, right? And I think people just kind of skip over that. And Dan, he's got a book, and I can't remember the exact title, sort of his autobiographical book.

Unfinished Business.

Unfinished Business is a great one. And kind of learning, you know, all of his backstories and his successes and failures and, and just figuring out, well, how did he come to craft his sort of modus operandi. I mean, there's a whole—

I think we have got a whole system about it.

And it's not that Dan's modus operandi would work for you necessarily, but you need to have one. And so, I just think that it helps when you have a philosophy of living and a philosophy of dealing with people, it makes decision-making a lot easier, right? Because you're not uncertain, right, for most of the decisions you have to make. So, I think I start there is And for me, getting introduced to Atlas Shrugged, which Dan introduced me to Ayn Rand, um, and studying that, and I think that's important. So I would just say don't skip the part where you sit and you think about your own life.

Well, and Dan talked about it, you know, this is— he hasn't really enunciated, I don't think, as much as he did last week of like this thinking time, and that he's talked about it and brushed on it, but last week he was very very like, this is very important that you do this work. You know, my friend Perry Marshall, he calls it Renaissance time.

Yes.

You know, he's got his Renaissance time every morning. But Dan, if you've worked with him, you know he lives his philosophy literally every day. Like, if I want to communicate, it's faxes and you get it back a day or two later. If he doesn't want to do a project, he literally does not do the project. And, you know, I think for all of us, we have to put ourselves and say, hey, am I willing to do anything for money, or am I going to do the things that I would like to do and live my life the way that I would like to live it, rather than just trying to grab money and put yourself in a bad trap?

Yeah, and you and I could do 3 days on this subject alone, but I would, again, I would just say don't skip and don't be skimpy about thinking about. So, just one simple exercise, take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle. I always have this in my journal. It's like stuff I don't like to do and stuff I love to do. And I'm constantly trying to eliminate, delegate, or whatever the stuff I don't like to do. And so, it's being conscious about how you actually spend your day and being conscious of what drives you. What What is it that someone else would see as work? Like for me, so refereeing is really hard, right? But I love it. I enjoy it a lot. Anyway, think, think. That would be think more.

Yeah, think more and have your philosophy on what will you do and what will you not do. That's a good starting place. The other thing, Ben, this actually is one of the things that Advantage is one of our core values. Is lifelong learners. So why don't you talk about why these people that drop off quickly, they're not lifelong learners?

Well, so I don't know why they're not, but I would tell you that being a lifelong learner— again, something Dan talked about last night, it's one of the equities you have. He talked about in terms of in your business, I think in your life. But, but how can you be on— how can you be a serious Planet Dan Magnetic Marketing, no BS person and not at the very least own every book in the No BS series. I mean, they're like $15, right? I don't know how many there are. It's on my shelves because I've got like every edition of every one. It may be $100. Like, how could you not? And so, well, someone will come to me and say, hey, would you spend some time with me? I'm like, okay, great. Have you read this? Uh, no. All right, well, go call me back after you go on Amazon and buy the book for $15. And read it, right? And so, you know, again, his life's work is compressed here. Yes, there are lots of other products that expand upon this in the magnetic marketing universe, but at the very least, if you don't own every single book in the No BS Series and haven't read it, you're not, in my view, you're not serious.

Well, it's one of the things that, you know, Dan talked about last week also, is like, what's the one thing that you know at night when you go to bed that you didn't know in the morning. And we had a funny situation come up with the video crew, uh, last week. Uh, if you were on it, you saw how we were switching at times from, uh, different cameras, but then at certain points PowerPoint presentation would come up, and we only needed that a handful of times. Well, they couldn't quite figure out how to do it with like one click. They were like doing all these weird things, and I'm like, this isn't going to work when we're trying to like do it quickly. Well, somehow they figured out how to do it with one swipe of the, the mouse pad. And I said, boys, remember the last session when Dan said go to bed at night and learn one new thing today? This was your one thing today.

It's actually— so in COVID, right, I've got, um, 5 of my kids are living under my roof now because they're college kids. So it's actually a thing that I talk about. I push them on at night at dinner, like, all right, so what did you learn today about anything? They don't always have an answer for that, but it— but it's ingrained in me that, you know, the other thing that I think is for someone who's been around for a long, long, long time is like figuring out how to organize all of this because Dan has produced a lot, Magnetic Marketing, the company has produced a lot. And I see people like, well, I've got, you know, 18 years of binders on my shelf. Okay, great. But are they cataloged? Do you know where to go get them? I've got a thing, it's about 200 pages. I call it my manifesto, which is, it's a long document, but every time I see something, either some copy Dan has written, and it's not just Dan, but some other, authors and thought leaders too. But it, and it's all just sort of cataloged there. So, so I think the principle here is reading or absorbing a product, reading a book, absorbing a product with deliberateness and taking notes and figuring out, okay, where does this fit in the whole scheme of things?

Um, well, it's taking knowledge and applying it because just continuing to learn is not good. I mean, after this call, one of my team members is actually coming here and we're in the midst of a deep dive in some digital media buying stuff, and we're in the midst of a digital media buying course, but we're doing it workshop style, like 4 hours at a time, and like implementing as we go. Because if you just sit and watch the course and you don't like start implementing, it's going in one ear and out the other. You gotta, you gotta apply this stuff.

Yeah, we'll, we'll talk about— you just made a great point. I'll come back to that too. So, um, so, so those are a couple of things. You know, the next thing that I observe is people who are really smart, who go, yeah, I think Dan's really smart, but I don't like his politics, or I don't like his harsh reality. And I'm like, okay, but actually he's demonstrating something. He's demonstrating the principle of stand for something and you will be more attractive, attractive, right? You may repel, fine, but I guarantee you, you'll be more attractive to at least some segment. And so, you know, just take for example like newsletter writing and stuff, and lawyers are shy about taking positions, I think. And if you read mine, it's all about— I was joking with my team today— it's all about get up, make your bed, get your button gear, go out and produce something in the world, right? These are like the secrets to success. And so I would not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Is that the saying? Um, if you don't like Dan's political views, because the principle is what, what are yours? How are you articulating them to your market, right? And don't be afraid to. Like, of course, I learned a long time ago from Dan, if you're not pissing somebody off during the day, you're probably not doing this right. And it's, and it's okay if you have an abundance mentality. There's enough customers, clients, patients out there in the world. I mean, I'm in a highly competitive market, the automobile crash market in the DC area, right? Yeah.

Many, many people looking to do cases.

Plenty of people looking to do cases. And so I think don't ignore— I mean, Dan really is, he really honestly is a blessing to the world because I do think that he's right on, you know, this business stuff and the marketing, the attraction, all of that stuff. And just, if, you know, if you don't agree with him politically, just like stay. Don't leave the room, right? People leave the room.

Here's the model. Like you said about Dan's philosophy, Dan's philosophy doesn't have to be Ben Glass's philosophy.

Yeah.

And I would say that some of the people that I see who kind of are flash in the pans that come through, they try to model Dan and be Dan and not themselves. Yeah, and I think that's a big mistake.

Yeah, so one of the core values at our firm is be authentic, which means the you I see here is the you I should see on the outside world. And it's really easy to find— to see someone who's not authentic. But the principle that Dan teaches is, and he again from last week, tell your own story. And Donna Kretsch, Donna Kretsch was telling us her presentation was awesome. Like, you have your own unique story that nobody else in the world has. That's equity.

That's everything.

They can steal your trademarks, they can steal your intellectual property, they can never steal your story. You just have to figure out a way to create a platform. Donna was saying, um, to be a voice to the folks who, who will follow you, who buy from you, you know, whatever.

Um, so Ben, the other thing that we get all the time is my business is different. So really, the whole, the whole point of magnetic marketing is your business is marketing You just happen to have a different deliverable than I, but people get hung up on, you know, they think that, you know, their law firm isn't the same as the bakery down the street. Of course not, but like in the marketing business.

Yeah, so they'll tell me my clients are different. Oh, you don't know, my geography is different. You don't know, there's an 800-pound gorilla in my area. At the end of the day, no matter what the business— and Dan tells a funny story of like, um, uh, you know, uh, high-paid prostitutes coming up to him when he's selling the magnetic marketing thing, right? Going, hey, let me just say what my business is, will this work? And he goes, yeah, of course, buy the deluxe edition. But we're communicating with human beings no matter what. If you're a quote B2B, whatever, it doesn't matter. You're communicating with human beings and you're trying to, I think, persuade them at least to pay attention to, to notice you, to then find that you are interesting, and then you can start sort of a sales communication. But there's, I mean, all you have to do is print a list of all of the different occupations and companies that have come through this world and been successful, and you're gonna find, you and Adam go back and look, you'll find somebody successful in every single, from the most commoditized business to the most odd thing you didn't even know existed.

I mean, people from quilters to big B2B manufacturers. I mean, it runs the gamut.

I tell lawyers who disagree with this that when you're talking to a jury, it's the same thing. I got, you know, 6 or 7 or 12 human beings in the box, and I'm trying to persuade them to trust me, right, and to listen to me first, right, and then ultimately to agree with me. So, so the 'my business is different' is just a total— it's a pessimistic attitude, which if you hang around with the philosophy and stuff we talked about already, Darren, you'll see now. And we can point, we can just point to somebody who's successful. And all you need to know is that someone like you has been successful, right? Dude with a pizza company in COVID-19 reporting best months ever. Like, okay, let's get to learn who this guy is Darin Spindler, right? Yeah, my business is different. I sell pizza. I got crushed.

Yeah, plenty of them out there getting crushed. You know, another one that you, you had sent to me is, you yourself as the entrepreneur are willing to invest in yourself, but you forget that, uh, if you want to go far, you need a team and you gotta share the knowledge.

Not only do you need a team, but so I would go, I would, uh, back when I was young and learning about Planet Dan, and I would go to these 2 and 3 day events, and I would come back like with just a head exploding. But then I had to start at ground zero explaining why we were going to change things, what we were trying to accomplish. And so I learned slow on this, and I would encourage people to learn to take this and be quicker, and that is to bring team members with you to events. And today, if there's things going on around the country that I can't get to, I fly team members there. Now, here's what I hear, Darren. Gee, Ben, if I let Susie go to the— and see the world of Kennedy, Susie might leave me. She might get really good at marketing and leave me and go compete with me. And the answer is, well, what if Susie stays with you for 5 years, doesn't get any better at marketing?

All right, much bigger problem.

Yeah, exactly. And so if you live in the, uh, again, philosophy the world of abundance, right? There's more, and this is a miracle, you know, for most of your members.

Well, and it— this ties back to your philosophy and my philosophy to some degree, because we have the similar one in this respect, is you got to have a team in order to execute this stuff. You cannot possibly implement all this stuff on your own. It's literally impossible.

I did. I did in the beginning. You probably did at the beginning.

I did.

But Once, once you get to a point, it's—

yeah, well, one thing that Dan talked about last week, the difference between 6-figure and 7-figure is you got to do different things differently.

Yeah.

And you cannot just work more hours at a certain point. Like, you can only get so far by, by working more hours. At a certain point, you got to find leverage, and some of that leverage is through team members, but more importantly, competent team members.

And I'll give you another example too, because folks on the, on the call will rec— some will recognize the name Kia Aryan. Kia's done work for me for years, done work for Dan. She's a graphic artist, but I introduced her to Planet Dan. And so Kia became— she was already good at what she did, right? But she didn't know what we know, and now she does, and now she even teaches it. And so having a vendor partner who understands, uh Good friends.

Another— it's another thing that Dan talked about last week is the essential equity was trusted vendors and partners. Like, you got to have them.

Exactly. And so share the knowledge, um, because it's, it's the person with the closed mind who says, oh, I'm afraid they'll leave me and compete with me. Well, how— now it's your job to figure out how do we make this win-win so I keep the person if they're a right fit for you still. That you keep them. How do we make it win-win? That's a whole— again, we could do a couple hours on that.

Yeah. But, um, so another thing that people, you know, are unwilling to do is like some of the hard work that's necessary. I, I can share another example from— it's weird, we go back to last week again, right? But like we talked about, in order to do sometimes, uh, create a 9-minute video that could be the asset that catapults you and frees you up. Yeah, there's a lot of hard work that goes into that before the 9-minute video, but it's the freeing, uh, element after it's created.

Yeah, so I think it is, you know, and we talked about this last week as well, is like, if you're going to run the business that runs the marketing, and eventually you're going to outsource or bring people into your own office who are good at the marketing, you still have to understand it. And so back in the day I was building Infusionsoft sequences and I was building landing pages. Again, I was new at this. I didn't have a lot of money. It was like discovering gold really for me. And so, people will think, well, if I do the one thing, if I do a newsletter or I write a better headline, then that's it. No, there's lots of moving parts. I think this is what Adam really has helped bring to the Planet Dan world is this is hard work, okay? If it was easy, everybody would be uber successful. It's study, it's execution, it's working on things like how do I hire the best people, how do I create win-win compensation plans for them. And so the good news is, Darren, for most of us is that most people will quit. All right, and so that's good news for guys like me, good news for guys like you, because we're willing, have been willing, and continue to do the work. Now, the work we do today may be different. My work is much more CEO-ish, is much more, you know, developing the relationship, developing the ideas for what do we look like 3 and 5 and 7 years out, what's my exit plan, right? Yeah. But this isn't, this isn't easy. Running your own business isn't easy, but the tools are there, the models are there, the people there to model are there. And so now it does take you getting up and doing something and doing the, the extraordinary, at least for some period of time.

Yeah, well, Dan talked about it, you know, the, the misnomer in Think and Grow Rich, because it doesn't just like— you don't just think and it happens. There's think and do the work and grow rich.

Um, so an example is, okay, you know, use a newsletter, again, mailed monthly newsletter, not just emailed. Okay, great. And I'll have lawyers say, you know, it doesn't work. Like, well, show me your newsletter. Okay, and it's boring, right? Because there's no— been no study of the craft of personality and writing, of, of taking positions, of including great offers and stuff in your newsletter. So, um, again, good news is there's, there's products and there's people who are models for all of this stuff. And today, someone who joins the no BS world, I think, can leapfrog a lot faster than I did. Especially, I heard you were talking about this virtual boot camp. It's a really, really good idea, right? Because here's— now we're going to help explain sort of like how the whole picture works. First, then you can plug in where your weaknesses are, you know, where you've got.

And they're not even going to be able to be allowed to be a member of the newsletter until they go through the boot camp moving forward. Because one of the things that, you know, even for me when I first began this journey was I found a book. I had been taught some direct marketing from a coach who was actually one of Dan's students, so I had a grasp on it. But man, if you don't have an initial grasp of it in some foundational level, it can be overwhelming and confusing. So, we want to put you, put people on the path, not any path.

Exactly. Exactly. So, I think that's, that's a really good idea.

So, Ben, why don't we talk a little bit about, you know, and this again, it's weird, something that we talked about last week, uh, as a big factor for people who want to get to 7 figures and beyond is their generosity. Why don't you talk about how this is done properly?

So there's several different levels. What I'm referring to here, and Dan talked about wealth account and giving account and things like that, what I'm talking about now is having a default attitude of when you encounter somebody, of defaulting to what could I do first for this person, to help this person. What do you need? We ask this a lot here, like, what can we do for you? Most people say nothing, I'm, you know, I'm good. But looking for that opportunity, and here's how it comes up in the Planet Dan world, is someone will see me at an event and they'll say something nice, and can I have breakfast with you, or they'll corner you, but then it's like LinkedIn, right? The next thing is, I've got something unique you've never heard of about. I think it'd be a great value to your member. I'd like to sell it to you.

Yeah.

All right, which now I'm running the other way. Yeah, rather than asking me, hey Ben, like, like, I'm starting a business, would you share some time to give me some tips? Absolutely, if I think you'll do something. Or, hey Ben, what can I do for you? Oh, well, hey, it's Darren. So, uh, do you know any lawyers? Yeah, great. Uh, you know, I've just published a new book. I'll tell you what, Darren, I'll send you as many copies of my book for free if you just promise me that you'll hand them out to your lawyer friends and I'll even autograph them. And if you like, I'll send them directly to lawyers and say, hey, Darren Spindler, you know, bought this for you. And so Zig Ziglar, you know, and I think this quote was brought up last week too, you can get everything in the world you want if you only see that enough people get what they want first. Now it doesn't mean a totally subservient, altruistic attitude. Doesn't mean that, but it means looking for the opportunity. Because here's the thing, as business owners and as Planet Dan longtime members, we know a lot about a lot. We just do. We know a lot about business if you've been in this world and you're successful at all. And most people don't. Most people are struggling. But if I can say, how can I help you? So we built, when we built all our space for the law firm, we built podcast studio. Now we do videos to promote our own stuff, but you know what else we do? Like, we look around. Hey, business owner, doctor, CrossFit gym owner, come on in. Let me interview you and let me promote you. Let me create a video about you. Oh, how much will it cost? Oh no, I just want to talk to you. I just want to learn about you. We'll put it up on YouTube. We'll give it to you. And so thinking as you build out your business of how you could create assets for other people. It's why we built out our training center, right? In part, we open up our training center. So, we've got about 8,000 square feet, 1,100 square feet of training center. We open it up. You have a charitable group, a sports organization, a political group. We've had knitters, right? We had knitters. There's a knitting group here. Actually, you mentioned that earlier. Come. Oh, by the way, the libraries are all closed for COVID, right? We can play safe here. Here's space, come and use it. And so I've just found, and Dan said last week, he said, you know, some of this will sound a little woo-woo-ish, and when I first heard it, I thought, oh, that's weird, right? It's not weird. And Donner talks a lot about this too, Donner Kreft.

You know, I have, so my, I have a family member who, like, the way that I approach a lot of things in life is quite different, and I had a few items that I I could have sold for decent money, right? And I literally, I gave it to somebody who could use it right now because I didn't need this specific item. And it was multi-thousands. I just like, it's out of my way, it's out of my hair, you need it. And they're like, why did you do this? I said, because somewhere down the road this will come back to me. And probably in, in, in numbers much greater than what I just gave away. Like, I never even thought about that, but like, people who are programmed, like, man, I have this item, and if I give this to somebody who could potentially use it and they're in more use of it right now than I am, uh, it's sometimes not worth the money. Like, the connection down the road, and the more of these little things you seed, the better you come out at the end.

So one of our internal mantras here is Be the person that your vendors, whoever works with you, be their favorite, right? So our landlord here, we, we're their favorite. We're convinced just because stuff that we do in the building for other people. The folks who come and clean our offices at night, right? They know us. We take care of them in many different ways, right? So just again, that attitude drives endorphins. I have found at least for me, um, and it really— because so many people don't live their lives like this, Darren, it's easy to be like noticed and remembered and recognized. That's not all why we do it. It makes you feel good. And if you've been successful, again, you know a lot about a lot, or you've got things that you don't need anymore, somebody else could use it. And I tell them, when you're done with it, pay it forward, give it to somebody else, right?

Well, we had, you know, at the beginning of the COVID situation, one of the little dough shops here in town They decided to close down because they didn't have enough activity. I said, well, my manager reached out to me and she said, can we see if we can sell their dough? I said, yeah, reach out to them. We ended up being their first wholesale account, which sprung them to a bunch of other wholesale accounts, which got them through COVID. Now, what happened? That story was shared thousands, tens of thousands of times here in our community, and All of those people remember that. Now we did something else like that with a different promotion, with a different business. Thousands of people saw it, all with two little acts that cost me literally nothing. But people remember every one of those acts.

Plus you had hired somebody who's got the right values, who saw the opportunity, who recognized and said, yeah, this is something like Darren's not going to be mad, he's going to be happy, he's going to try to figure something out. And so that's what makes business Running a business is as simple and as complex as all that. It's why so few people are actually successful, you know, in the first year, the first 5 years. And it gets back to what we talked about at the top of the call. It's about philosophy first. Everything else can be— all these other talents can frankly be purchased, right? Yeah. Living your life in a way that recognizes that we are blessed to be in America, we are blessed to live in abundance, COVID has been hard, yes, we get it, right? But it's the small biz entrepreneur who's gonna lead us out of this, no doubt, right? It's not the leaders.

Adam and I just had that conversation this morning. So one, you gotta have a great team, and we have a whole process like inside of both Advantage and my restaurant for how do we bring teams. I'm sure you have one because you do have to have the girl, in my case, my manager, who recognized the opportunity and she lives our culture. To a tee every day when I'm not inside the four walls, which actually I'm barely there at all. I'm here at my office, I'm doing the marketing, I'm building the culture stuff. But today Adam and I were having a call about video folks because the guys who did our video last week were awesome.

They were great.

And one of the things they told us was every one of their events have been canceled from now to the end of the year. These guys are doing Major League Baseball, they've been doing political rallies, they're doing every— like, all that stuff, it's all off the books. So we're about to create our own original content for BATV, Business Advantage TV. Well, one of the guys shot video for Undercover Boss. One of the guys, uh, was part of Wife Swap. And these guys have television background that we don't have, right? And I said to Adam, I said, we can be their lifeline to get these guys through this. And it's like, you know, Adam's like, entrepreneurs are the greatest force for good.

It's Ayn Rand's principle that, that you look for every relation, look and look for win-win, not for I beat you. A lot of people misunderstand her philosophy like entirely. Um, it's— and you've got our— my reading list, you could maybe just put it in the show notes or something. But, but look for a win-win opportunity, and that's exactly what you did, um, there. And it just, it's just awesome. So that was great.

So Ben, um, What are some, some books that you highly recommend to people right now that they need in their library?

Yeah, sure. So we already mentioned the whole No BS series. The book that I've been giving out the most the last 2 years is a book by Cal Newport. It's called Deep Work. And in this world of everything is electronic and we open up, you know, all different ways for people to communicate with us, it just reinforces the value of quiet time and thinking. So I don't have email on my phone, you know, I don't take inbound calls. But Deep Work is one of the books I read every single year just to remind me, because you get off track about that. We've been great fans now of Traction and of How to Be a Great Boss, Gino Wickman's books are awesome. And then of course, you know, Atlas Shrugged, and the book that I just read, which if you're interested at all in the philosophy or you think that you are totally against what Ayn Rand wrote, read Who Is John Galt Anyway? by Robert Trusinski. It's an excellent book. It's an easy read and it's good. There's a couple others, but, but, you know, I'm a 70-book-a-year reader. Not every book deserves to get read to the end, but I absorb and read with purpose and ask myself Why is this in front of me today?

That's great. So oftentimes when there's a downturn like this, people start thinking about getting into the information business, um, obviously taking their expertise, whether that's in a hobby or whether it's in a, in a niche like yourself, uh, lawyers. Um, can you, uh, share with folks like maybe how you got started and, and what it's meant to your business?

So I got started because Well, let's see, let me make a very long story short. One day on a Diamond call, Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy are on, and I said, how do you know when your stuff is good enough to like take to market as an info business? And they said it was good enough. But again, don't underestimate the work involved. Just because you've got something with a headline that says, you know, how to make millions with your law firm or, you know, your dog grooming shop, doesn't mean that this actually people are going to buy it. So, I would say this first, what are you doing today to become a person of influence to that community? Are you giving? Are you participating in things like this or, you know, even Facebook groups and social media? Are you giving? Give away your information. I think that's— so, when I started, I actually had people who followed me because I was speaking about marketing. And again, I mean, what I was talking about back then is very naive in many respects compared to what I know today.

Um, but sometimes better to know not all the things behind the curtain.

Yeah, yeah, but it's, it's, it's a highly successful business and I've got it engineered so that, you know, I'm— I contribute a significant important part, but in terms of the total work, I've got a great team that produces a lot of— I'm the philosopher-in-chief now of Great Legal Marketing.

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