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So we meet again after what, about a year?

Yes, about year, yes.

How you been?

Good, my friend.

Nice. Nice to have you.

Thanks for having me.

So welcome to another episode of the Askavi RF show, once again in my favorite city, Vancouver. The weather is not the best today, but Vancouver is always awesome and it is great to be back with my friend Dan Robb. And so, Dan, how's Vancouver? How's the startup scene? How's everything happening?

I think Vancouver now, it's booming a lot more for sure. You have a lot of tech companies actually in Vancouver, I believe, like, Vancouver is the kind of the Silicon Valley of Canada.

I'm so happy to hear that because.

It'S near us, it's just very close. A lot of tech companies in US and Seattle and things like that. Microso office here, a lot of headquarters are in here as well. So I think it's booming.

So when. So a lot of people wanting to start up on their own and trying to figure out what to do or they've got a pathway. Like, you know, people land up in Silicon Valley and they. Everybody pretty much, you know, has a company to go to or a business to start. But do you think Vancouver has come of age or they're still trying to find its feet?

I think, I think for any entrepreneurs who want to start, I think the biggest mistakes a lot of entrepreneurs make is, oh, I've got this idea, I've got this technology, I've got whatever. I never believe in that approach. I always believe in solving a problem in the marketplace, how I can add value in the marketplace. So I always look for problems to solve. So not just technology for the sake of technology. I get pitched all the time. Hey, Dan, would you like to invest in my deal? I've got this thing, it's going to be the next Facebook and I always just run because I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in, hey, you know what? Here's something that I can see a void in the marketplace, a problem not being solved, and then you create some solution for them, not for us, because I think a lot of startups, they focus on themselves, that, oh, hey, there's a bunch of guys, very smart. Let's create something. Let's create something cool versus what does the marketplace actually want? I think start with that.

Tell me when people are in Vancouver because you're the expert over here and everybody knows you and you meet a lot of people. And I loved your video, by the way. You did in the Toronto Hotel. Yes, I showed it to my team in the office. That was very cool.

Thank you. Thank you.

So when you meet people everywhere, do you find that Vancouver, and this is a question, I don't know the answer to it. Do you think that entrepreneurs in Vancouver are thinking global or they're still a myopic view that, you know, North America, 300 million people or they're saying the world, 6 billion customers.

I think a lot of them are thinking, at least some across Canada or selling to us, I think for sure. Because Vancouver, very small market for Vancouver. If you think in terms of people think of in Vancouver city. It's very laid back. It's kind of the retirement city. Toronto, Ontario. Yeah. That's where the business happens.

You know what I tell you? I always used to think Vancouver's laid back.

Yes.

One of the first people who changed that view because you're always on the go.

Yes. And I like it here because everybody else is laid back.

You know what, I say that to my wife all the time.

Yes. It's like if you go to, let's say you go to. I was in Hong Kong a few months ago. You go to Hong Kong, like in here it's nine to five. Right. In Hong Kong, you don't get off work at seven, you work six days a week. And people, the pace that they work. So if I work very fast, like it's easy for me to compete for me, people say, oh, I just want to work, you know, work smart. I don't want to work hard. Shit. But what if I work hard and I work smart, then I can dominate. So I like it because the competition is weak. Right.

But do you find hard working people here? Because you know, immigrants from all over.

Very few, very few. Even here, Even here. So if you do work harder, you put a little bit more effort, you go the extra mile, you stand out.

But so Vancouver in itself is a thriving ecosystem where you can build your brand.

Yes, yes. It has an infrastructure, a lot of resources, a lot of good people, great entrepreneurs. But just like anyone in the city nowadays, as you know, you're competing with the world. So it's very, very competitive. So it all depends on. It doesn't matter where you are. But I always tell people, think global but act local. Exactly right. So think in terms of global, what you're going to sell, Serve the whole world. You want to impact millions of people, but locally, how can you act step by step in locally, who can you meet, who can you network, what resources you can utilize? Start with that. But think global, but act local.

So you know this show goes out to at least 142,000 people every Tuesday. And you know, now it's going to go out to even more people. And so most of our Asian customers, you know, India, the Indian subcontinent, some parts of UAE and all that. And because I travel back and forth between, you know, I meet entrepreneurs on both sides. I love Dubai, by the way. You know, it's, it's booming. A lot of stuff happening over there. But when it comes to Vancouver in India, North America, and six months, it used to take six months for information from here to actually go get drilled down there. You know what? This is the new trend.

Yes.

Now it's about two months.

Yes.

Through these shows and through, you know, friends like yourself, through entrepreneurs like yourself, through mentors like yourself, you know, I want to make this real time. We reach out to people in Asia saying this is how it's happening in North America, you know. So what do you think is the trend? I see a lot of people, you know, being mentored today. And you also mentor a lot of people.

Yeah.

How should somebody choose the right mentor?

Very good question. First of all, why do you need a mentor? I always believe in mentorship. My whole life I've had multiple mentors in my life. A handful of them had a huge impact in my life. So I'm a very big believer in that. And there's some entrepreneurs who don't believe in that. I'm just saying that's what works for me. I've read a lot of books, I've attended a lot of workshops, conferences, and they're all good, they all help. But what works for me is finding a mentor to show me the way. So I think the key to finding a mentor number one is you want to find someone who you can resonate with, you have good chemistry with. Not just I want, oh, that guy is very successful. There are a lot of successful entrepreneurs. But do you resonate, do you share the same values at the end? Because you could be spending time with the mentor and you want to think in terms of it's a long term relationship. It's not just, hey, let's have a couple lunch. That's not a mentorship, mentorship. It's years. I've had my mentor now one more than 10 years, the other one more than seven years. Okay, two mentors, main mentors, main mentor. One is Alan Jacks, the other one is Dan Penias. I have two. And I'm now searching for my third mentor as well. And I'm talking to different people. So when you Approach a mentor. I think you want to approach a mentor in a way that because your mentor is already successful, he has what you want. So don't approach them and say, I feel like it's their obligation to help you, because it's not. They might be very generous, but it's up to us and say, hey, what can we do for you? I remember my first mentor, Allen. I basically worked for him for next to nothing. For one year.

For one year.

For one year.

Wow, that's awesome.

For one year. So I was in the offers, I was cleaning the offers. I was stuffing, licking the envelope and putting the stamps on, taking to the post office because you run a direct mail company. I was writing, like, just doing anything, anything to help out. He paid me next to nothing just.

To stay around him.

Exactly. Because at the time, I had no money. I had nothing to offer except my time. So I said, whatever you need. So I did that. And at first he was a little bit skeptical because funny enough, successful people, when I first approached Alan, I said, I want to learn from you. He said, you want to learn from me? I said, yeah, I want to learn from you. Never. Nobody's ever asked him that. So you don't want a job? I said, I don't want a job. And you don't want money from me. I don't want money from you. You just want to learn. I said, I just want to learn. And he was. Nobody's ever asked him that. And I just want to learn. I said, whatever it takes. And then that's how we started relationship.

That's what you need to give. Right. So this philosophy is the same everywhere in the world. You come to Vancouver, you talk to Dan Lok, or you go to any other part of the world, you have to put in the time and you need to be high, hungry to learn. Right. So that's.

I always say, if you are not willing to invest time and effort in your relationship, why would you expect your mentor to invest time and effort in the relationship? It makes no sense. Your mentor is busy.

And also, tell me for people who are doing jobs, because, you know, I get this a lot, even from my company. We've got about 150 people. A lot of people.

Yes.

I tell people that, you know, believe in the person who's running the company. Believe in your mentor or your boss or whoever you're working with.

Yeah.

If you don't, just don't work. You know, if you do, if your line. Because then it's. Otherwise, it's like you said, it's 9 to 5 and 9 to 6 and it doesn't work. You know, either give it all you got or just do something else.

Yeah, right.

So what do you, what do you, what message would you give to people who are not really entrepreneurs yet still in jobs?

Okay.

Should they be unsatisfied that I'm not an entrepreneur?

No. First of all, I don't believe everyone should be an entrepreneur. Let me just say that, in fact, most people shouldn't be entrepreneur. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, if they. In terms of where they work, Every leader starts as a follower.

Every leader starts as a follower.

Okay. Yeah, you fall, you follow a leader first and you learn from the leader. And eventually if you want to become a leader, then you could. But it starts with a be a follower. It's like every teacher was a student. Right. And then I think once people have to understand you don't necessarily have to start a business to achieve your financial goal. Okay. You look at Bill Gates. Well, not just Bill Gates. He's got second right hand man, also very, very wealthy, also a billionaire.

That's a good point.

Steve Job, right hand man, also a billionaire. Okay. So sometimes it's finding the right person to work for. There's nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly fine being a right or working for the right company. If they do, let's say in the future, go public. I mean, look, Facebook, when Facebook went public, a lot of people become millionaires. When Microsoft went public, a lot of people become millionaires. So that could be also it's a good way to do now. If people who say their inner job, they have the aspiration to be an entrepreneur, I always say, don't just quit your job and say, oh, I'm going to start my own business. That's the worst thing you can do. Because the worst time to start a business is when you're desperate and. Or when you just want to make money. Because business takes time. As you know, a job, paycheck, in 30 days, you're gonna get a paycheck. Business, you know, my friend, right? It takes years to make money. So when you don't have money and you want to start, people say, oh, I'm gonna start a business. I'm gonna make a profit in three months. You're not gonna make a profit in three months. You might not see a profit in three years. So what do you do? So I would say become a chicken entrepreneur.

A chicken entrepreneur.

A chicken entrepreneur. Like become. There are many ways you can do it. Example, let's say someone within your company, say, I work for your company. And I see, hey, you know what, boss? I have this idea and I think it would help the company and utilize some of the resources we have. Do you think I can start this project on my own, on the side? And if it works, is it okay if I, you know, do a little bit of revenue sharing, be a part of something like that? You'll be like, okay, what the heck.

Sure.

Right, right. It's that. So that's like an entrepreneurship, like a Chico entrepreneur. I'm utilizing the company's resources and every.

CEO wants those kind of.

Yes, yes, yes.

They want people coming and saying these things.

So you under an umbrella, that's one way to do it. Or you start something, what I call like a side hustle, a side business that you can do, you still keep your daytime job and you keep that. You start with that and keep that going until it makes at least two, three times more money than your current job. Then you can quit. I never, ever recommend people to quit and then start their own thing. It's the last thing you want to do. It sounds good. Sometimes you hear those stories or oh yeah, I find my boss and I start my own thing and now I make it. You hear one of those success stories, there are like 1,000 failures you don't hear about.

Right, Exactly. You know, so this is one of the reasons for this show is to capture real life stories. And because you meet so many people, what better way to capture stories through you? So this was actually very well explained. There are other ways of making money. You do not need to jump into entrepreneurship. And if you do want to, you can phase it out like you said.

Exactly.

But tell me in, in terms of, you know, we spoke about Vancouver, we spoke about going global.

Yeah.

You know, thinking local, being local, thinking global, all of that. But how do people look for opportunities outside of, you know, it's the whole world today. Every company can say that. If there's 7 billion people on, on the planet, why can I not be an international company doing everything? So how to, how do you teach people to think big, especially in, you know, a smaller place like Vancouver? Laid back mindset, if I can call.

It that, for thinking big nowadays, it's actually quite easy. First of all, if you want to think big, you want to hang around with people who think big. So if you are at whatever half a million, a million level, if you hang around with people making less than you, then you feel pretty good about yourself. But if you hang around with people who are making, you know, do running a 20 million dollar company, $50 million, 100 million dollar company. When you hang around with those people and not right now, maybe you don't know those people, but you guess you have access to podcasts, of access to, to YouTube just to get inspired and something. If you watch enough of that, it might click and say, you know what, maybe I'm thinking too small. I think Donald Trump has a great quote. My mentor says the same thing. If you could be thinking anyway, U.S. president. Yes, yes, he is your president. Who knows? We never know. You never know. So if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. And I believe including myself actually like looking back, that's one of the mistakes I made. My mentor always years ago told me, hey Dan, you got to think bigger. And I thought I was thinking pretty big and now I think I'm just thinking, I think I'm thinking too small. So that's one of the things, even starting this year, I want to think bigger, way bigger and just change the way I do things. I'm a little bit more aggressive. Just grow 10 times, 100 times. Yeah.

Wow, that's, that is thinking big. You know, there's this new company, I, I don't know if I should name the company right now there's a new company which came into India and became part of the hotel aggregation market. 22 year old guy, we spent a lot of time together and I wish I had invested in this company. Not that he asked me to invest but he had no money at that point and this was only one and a half years back and today he's raised $100 million.

There you go.

And he says his company is going to be worth, it's going to be a 2 trillion dollar company with a couple of percent in profits. That is thinking huge for a 22, 23 years. I think 2 trillion. And he said that is my five year plan, it's not my 15 year plan, I'm going to figure it out later. So people are thinking like, you know, to that level and with a business plan, I mean you have to have a logic. Yes to that. One thing I always tell people, you know, it's very interesting when you're running an agency like we are doing at Internet mobile, we get to meet a lot of kids coming in, a lot of entrepreneurs. Many people have gone up and done, gone out and done very well. And a lot of people come and say can I start projects on the site? And I love that one thing I Always try to ask and see is how close. And I know because I met your entire family last time and I told my wife about it. I think that has got such an important role to play in success. And I'm not talking about the family that you acquire after your wife and your kids. I'm talking about the that fact family prior to that. And why I'm saying that is because your wife, you know, we all love our wives and all respect to wives out there, but they know us after maybe 20, 25 years of our lives. I think my best mentor has been my dad and my mother.

Yes.

Both of them about 60 plus and they still work as hard and like me, if I get lost, I need to get them 20 minutes. It's not because they know that they will know every problem in the social media industry that I'm part of, but they know me and they know how I can get around a problem or whatever. So how important do you think having a mentor in a family is or just being surrounded by family?

It would mean if you have, if you're that fortunate that you have a supportive, your dad is successful or your mom and they could teach you and they could be role models. I mean, that's fantastic. I would say to the, the people who are watching, either way, if you have a very supportive family, they're your role models. Great. Learn from them, utilize. Learn from the knowledge, benefit from their wisdom. But if you have come from a dysfunctional family, your dad is an alcoholic, don't use that as an excuse. Right. Use that as a reason why I don't want to be like my parent. I want to make something of my own, that's perfectly fine. And if you cannot learn from them, learn from other people. The great thing is you can learn from anywhere. I mean, if you're open, you're humble, you are willing to learn, you can learn from anybody bad and good. I believe. So don't use it as an excuse. But it would be very helpful. Of course, like my mom is very, very supportive. My dad also very loving. But I didn't learn business from my dad. I learned from other people because my dad has never been a good businessman. He lost all the money being taken advantage by his business partner, took his money and this and that. So it's a reverse role model for me. But I love my dad. So either way. Yeah.

So in terms of, you know, now the entire business ecosystem is becoming the Internet.

Yes.

You place your business on the Internet and it takes off or goes out.

Yeah.

I see a lot of businesses. And, you know, I was walking down Realtown before I came here in the morning and I realized a lot of businesses. The husband, wife, the entrepreneur. I got a haircut in the morning at 9 and met the entrepreneur. Great shop and everything I couldn't find. And I loved the experience. And as soon as I got out, I was using his wi fi, so I was sitting next to his, his, his window. I couldn't find a Facebook page. So a lot of people are so busy running their business here and, you know, decent business in Galetown, I'm assuming they're making anywhere from 200 to $500,000. How do you, how do you, how do they take that to the next level? They're just too busy doing their operations.

Yeah.

And I just, just send a strong message out there to everybody. You know, a small business owner, should they not be worried about getting left behind in this day and age if they're only focusing on those 500 customers they built over the last 50 years? Because today they can get 500 customers a day with social media.

Yes. Well, it's like nowadays a lot of the people still operate based on. I think there's some business owners that are catching up. Small percentage of them and a lot of, let's say, retail, A lot of them, it's just still running the same old way. They're not thinking big, they're thinking a few hundred customers, a few thousand customers locally that they have. I believe now in order to survive in the business world is you got to be fast. I always say money loves speed. Speed is a new big.

Speed is a new big.

Speed is new big. It's not how big you are, because guess what? You've seen companies, huge, tens of millions, hundreds of million dollars in a couple years, they're gone. Like, look at Lehman Brothers, right? Huge amount of company gone. Could be years, history gone. It doesn't matter. I mean, look at even Target, right? Went into Canada, lost a ton of money. Big company gone. Because I think, I mean, even target, you look at Target, people watching, right? Like on a superstore type thing. They haven't done their research. Like, they've made a lot of moves that just were completely wrong because the seal was not. It's not. The seal doesn't understand what the marketplace wants. He thinks, okay, let's just renovate everything. And it's just the whole. Anyway, so speed is a new big. And it's about how fast we grow, how it's better to go fast, go big, faster, because there's so Many changes. So with these small businesses, I think it's. So I don't blame them because they are kind of small business owner or lifestyle entrepreneur. I love use that term. Right. A blogger, lifestyle entrepreneur. And that's perfectly fine. They're happy making that 5,000, 10,000amonth. And there's nothing wrong with that, I think. But for entrepreneurs who want to be bigger and grow bigger, then, yes, Internet. I mean, guys like us, we do whatever it takes, right?

Exactly. So, you know, for like, somebody making half a million dollars, they might have. They still might have the money to put aside for Internet marketing.

Yeah.

Do you think they should give it out to entrepreneur, to somebody to manage it or somebody to get a mentor like yourself to help them because they can't do it in house?

Yeah, it depends. So, first of all, I never like to give away just money to somebody to manage it, because it's your money, not their money. If you give it to a stockbroker, we've heard all those stories. Right. And they get wiped out. They have no incentive helping you grow. So at the end, it's your money. So I think we need to take responsibility. And so you just can't outsource your.

Internet marketing and say, somebody deals with. You need to get your hands dirty. You need to get involved.

Yeah. You got to know, like, even before you outsource, I think at the very minimum, you got to know your stuff. It's like if I want to hire an SEO company and I want them to optimize my website, get more traffic. Well, if I'm paying them whatever, 5,000, 10,000 a year, 20,000 a year. If I know nothing about SEO, how would I know they do a good job or not? They could be bullshitting me and say, hey, young.

Most cases, they would be.

They would be. They would be. Yeah. If you don't know. But if you know what you're doing and say, hey, you know what? How does this. What's your plan? What's the campaign? Well, we're gonna do on site optimization. We're gonna optimize your title tag. Okay, that makes sense. So I know you know. I know you know what you're doing. I could do it myself. I have enough knowledge. I just don't have the time. Fine, I'll give you the money. You do it, and you provide a report. That's okay. And that's the problems. Sometimes people, they outsource, and then they have a bad experience, and then they blame all these companies. They rip me off. Right.

You've hit the nail on the head. One bad experience and you know what?

Everybody's bad.

Everybody's bad.

It's like, it's like, man, I've had one bad day. You know, all the women are bad. It's not like that, right? No, no.

And then Internet marketing doesn't work for them.

Yeah, it doesn't work for me. Yes. Right.

So at that time, the business is taking a beating. So at. So should they be doing courses? Because this is what I always propagate in my, you know, to my clients. Go out and do courses. You know, I see that you do some great, you know, Tuesday afternoons or evenings. Just go learn. Yeah, just go learn and then hire somebody to do it for you.

That's why if speed is new big, it's not how much you know, it's how fast you can learn. I remember years ago, I was attending an Internet marketing conference many, many years ago. And it was like a, I think it was a two day conference, two or three day conference. And after the first day, at the time the speaker was talking about, oh, you have like a pop up on your landing page to get more opt ins. More opt ins. Now this was back then, it was like revolutionary, right? And then, so that's the first day to talk about that. And then that evening, day one, I went back to the hotel, I told my guy, hey, let's implement this. And next day I go back to the conference a few hundred people and say, hey, you know what? I implement this, it works. I almost doubled my conversion getting more opt ins. Guess what? Out of the hundreds of people, I was the only one to implement that fast. It's that day that I know, you know what, maybe I'm not the smartest, maybe my English is not the best, but I can sure outsmart and I'll learn and outwork these guys because I can implement that much faster. So that's been my model. So I'm very impatient. I always get stuff done fast. Nothing gets done without a deadline. So I'm very always pushing and just getting a lot of stuff done.

I see that you keep in shape. So do you work out?

Yes, I work out. Yoga in the morning, morning a little bit. I should work out even more.

That correlates directly to the business, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. If you want to be high performance, you think in terms of anything, let's say you want to be a high performance athlete, we got to practice, right? If you want to be a high performance singer, you got to practice. Same thing with entrepreneurship. No, A little bit, but not that good? A little bit. I do karaoke. Nitty vividian there, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So we maybe pick up another YouTube video of your doing karaoke.

There was this one on Facebook, man.

Is there?

Yeah, there was one on Facebook. Yeah. Yes. So. So learning going courses. Absolutely. We all. Nowadays, there's no excuse. You and I have same access to the same books, same videos, same podcast, same courses. Why don't people took it, don't take it. I don't know. But it's not like there's some secret information. Oh, only we can have it and you can. No, the book that you read. The book I read, anybody reads, you could read it. But people don't. People just don't.

They just want it, but they don't want to put it in the house.

It's like I always tell people, think of in terms of many years ago, 50 years ago, 1% of population, like if you look at 65, right, most of them would be broke. Right. A small percentage, maybe 15, 16% would be okay. And then you have the 4% that are well off and 1% that's wealthy. Now you think in terms of Internet now of with all the knowledge, all the information, number doesn't change. Seriously, the number doesn't change. It's still the same. And guess what? The number is not going to change even with all the information.

You know, I see that as an.

Opportunity because human nature is human nature. The 1% is the 1%. The winner is a winner, loser is always a loser. It doesn't matter. It's like the people who need like motivational business information, the people who need the information the most don't seem to be seeking it. You don't see someone, a homeless and reading Think and Grow Rich. They need it, but they won't read it. The people who don't need it, like they're already successful. They're looking for the extra edge. They will read it. So I learned that many years ago and I'm not going to try to change that. It's not my job to change that, you know, so. But it's human nature.

So, you know, because again, coming back to the fact that we, we talking to a lot of audiences in India and I take this show to different parts of the world. I take the show to about 12, 15 countries every year.

Yes.

We work with about 550 brands in about 25 countries and we show our latest videos to most of our clients so that they can learn every time from what we're doing. What do you find in terms of when you hire people and somebody says, you know what, Dan, I'm already successful and I made this, but I'm never able to hire the right person. Do you get that alone?

Sometimes? Because I think people's skills is not taught in school. So we might be very good with technical skills. Maybe it's accounting, maybe economy, maybe it's even marketing. But people skills, People don't really know how to read people well, but when you have, when you've been exposed, like with myself, like you same thing. When you speak in front of a lot of people, you learn to read people well. It's like if I meet someone, a stranger, I talk with them in maybe four or five minutes. I know a lot about the person, not what they say, everything. And I look beyond then just what they say. I would hear from what they say and listen behind the meaning. Okay, what's the underlying belief? Where does that come from? And so I think when we hire somebody, when you're looking to hire somebody, I'll give you a couple good tips. Okay, Number thing that I personally look for is loyalty. Loyalty is number one for me.

How do you find a loyalty before.

You know, background check or all that? First of all, I don't believe in a resume. It doesn't tell you anything. I like this. And if you can see, I always ask them to tell, let's say, oh, do you think you're loyal? Or this and that. Well, tell me a story. Right? And I would also look at some of their past. Like, do they jump from one thing to another?

Yes.

Okay, do they? I also like to know what, that, what their background is. Example, if their parents came from a. Some kind of retail. Or like if their parents have good work ethics. They usually have good work ethics if they grew up in that kind of environment. So ask about their parents, what's going on? I also ask about how they would handle certain situations. Okay, here's a scenario. How would you deal with that? So that tells me a lot as well. Also what I call give them a doofus test. Check if they're doofus. So I would tell them to do something just obscene. Example would be, I would say, okay, for the interview, I want you to bring me the sports section of the sun or the Province, which is our newspaper here. Particular sports section from the Sun. So when they bring. If they show up with no newspaper, I ain't hiring them.

I can find it.

Guess what? If, if that they're making excuses for that at the job, they'll make excuses.

Excellent point.

Okay, if they don't bring me, say they ask for the. The province, they bring me the son. They're not listening, right? So that I know. Because how you do anything is how to everything. If they bring me exactly what I want, that's okay. That means they are the kind of guy you give them. You tell them to do this, they'll do exactly that. Not who I want either. I want people to go the extra mile. One time when I did this, a guy came in for the interview. He brought me both newspapers just in case. In case, right?

That's not bad, right?

That's not bad, right? And then I had one. One time, I was looking for an operating person. Lady comes in, she said I memorized all the scores because she thought I was gonna test her. That's good. That's kind of who you want. And I even had one time. I don't want to get off the camera frame, but one time. Sometimes they say, pretend it's a newspaper. I say, have a seat. And I purposely put the newspaper on the seat. And one interview, so he's the seat, right? I put newspaper here. He would just sit on the newspaper. It's like this guy doesn't even think, like, should be okay, right? It's very basic stuff, but okay. That means if I'm not looking, what is he gonna do in my company? It's just like, okay, nobody's looking. He doesn't even think. It makes no sense, right?

So like you said, so how he does anything is how he's.

Yeah, I like to give them like, test. What kind of ice cream do you like?

Right?

They're like, huh, like this. It just throws them off. I like vanilla. I like chocolate. Okay. Why? Like, it's just those type of questions and the way they answer, the way they handle themselves. I want to know. Excellent.

No, no. This last section, I think I've taken away something very, very big. And I'm going to use the ice cream part and the sports section for sure.

Yeah, Just small things. Ask them to give them some small tasks before you hire them. You will know. But most importantly, I like people who is. Except it's a sales position. If it's a sales kind of position. I like people that's driven by money. But if other types of positions, I want to hear from them. They're not just driven by money. One more quick tip maybe before we go. So there's three types of employees, right? You have first, what I call a grunt. A grunt is someone who just when you ask them during the interview, they Are like, well, you know, after the, after the interview, you ask them what kind of questions do you have? You know, how many hours after work, how many holidays do I get? What's my overtime? So they just grunt, they just want to drop. Right, okay. And then you have what I call mercenary. A mercenary, they just want to work for money. How much I get paid, what's my salary, what's my. It's all money related question. And that's okay for certain positions, sales, you want a hungry guy who wants money. And then you have what I call patriot. A patriot is totally different. They're not just working for money, they're working for. Cause they're looking to belong to something. They would be asking you questions. What is your culture? What is your value of the company? Where do you see the company going? They're giving you feedback. That's a patriot. So a grant. A mercenary or a patriot. So I want as many patriots as possible within the organization. Some mercenaries, some grant because there's some work, you know, it's just need some grunt. It's okay. It's okay. But you want more patriots in your company than anything else.

Yeah. Okay. Now this brings me back to the section on personal branding. A lot of people want personal. Could be employees or people who are thinking of becoming entrepreneurs, small entrepreneurs, big on all kinds of people. Personal, how important?

I think personal. Nowadays you are a personal brand. Regardless if you think you're a personal brand or not. We all have a brand. Your Facebook page, it's a brand. If I go to your friend and I ask your friend, okay, what do you think of you? They would think of, oh, he's a nice guy. I can always count on him. He's a great friend. He's a nice. You have a personal brand. I think the problem is most people are not very conscious. They're not building their brand intentionally. So if you don't build your brand intentionally, the marketplace, the people around you, they would create a brand for you. So since you're gonna have a brand anyway, you might as well intentionally, strategically create that brand. What do you want to be known for? How do you want people to perceive you? What do you want to be known as? As your expertise. He's the go to guy. He is the master programmer. He's the superstar salesman, whatever.

And you have to have a niche. You can't be a masterpiece.

Yeah, I mean, it will start with a niche. And I recommend people who, I started off more of a niche, now I'm more broad.

What niche for that? What Niche was that?

Yes. Like, you know, Internet marketing. That was my thing. But now my brand is broad in business and things like that. Right. Even you go back even earlier, my niche was copywriting.

Okay, right.

Copywriting, marketing, Internet marketing. Right now it's general business. Right? It's. Yeah, it's wider. But you got to start somewhere. It's easier if you start with a niche to make a name for yourself. Then you have a group of people. It's like the concept Seth Gordon talks about the tribe, tribal leadership. It's about gathering a group of small people who share the same value, who would follow you, who believe in your message. Even start off as simple as like a dozen people. From there, that dozen, they would bring in some more people and then some more people. Some more people. It's not like one. Now you have a million followers. It's like nobody gets to do what you do. Like a hundred. It takes time. You start off with handful. Right? Same thing.

So you know what? Another thing is that there are these two people I like to talk about, and I always say this in my shows that I've grown up with siblings, I've grown up with a lot of competition. I've grown up with some of my friends. We started the business together. I've never been jealous of anybody. I always wanted these people. If somebody had something that I wanted, I said, you know what? I love that guy's success. I want it too. I didn't say he shouldn't have it. One guy I'm really jealous of, his name is Gary Vaynerchuk. What does he do to get it right, according to you? I want to know what he does.

I love Gary. First of all, I love him to.

The point of jealousy.

I love what he does. He's very good at what he does.

He's so general. He doesn't talk to you about a particular topic. He talks to you generally. He's charismatic.

No, I think first of all, he is very clear.

Is that the epitome of a personal brand being as real as possible?

Yes. But I think you look at his wine library tv at the time, he was, hey, this is Gary Vonach. It's a very clear brand. He stands out. And then from wine, as a wine guy, now it's more social media business guy. So he went broad, which is also very strategic because Gary is starting now a venture capital fund. So he wants a bigger audience. It's very smart on his end, I think. Now what did he do right? I think, first of all, he's always he's relentless. He just. Relentless. Like, he's tweeting, like, all the time. Keep promoting. You look at some of his latest videos. He has people following him around the DailyVee show and all addicted to it. Yeah. So you're watching that. I think that's very, very smart. And not everybody's willing to go to that degree to do that. I think it's so from there, just rent, like, just whatever it takes. Promoting all the time. And he has a very clear message what he's about, what he's not about. I mean, I love the way he does things. I love his answers.

And he's definitely putting a strategic business angle to whatever he says.

Yes.

But it's also coming from the heart. It's a mix of. It's a mix of both.

Yeah. And it's. I think it's when it comes to personal brand, it's. You have to be yourself because you can't be fake. It's transparency is authenticity. Be yourself. Be your best self. And then you want to amplify that on the platform. So these are qualities that you have. But amplify that using different channels. Not just that, but amplify it, and people can see that.

And Grant Cardoni, what do you think about that?

Yeah, Grant. Grant is also, you know, hustler. It's awesome. And you know what, regardless if it's love, Grant as well, you know, Gran or Gary or whoever gathered socks, you know, whoever, you know, you notice it's just one thing in common. They just keep promoting themselves. It's like when we growing up, we are taught not to toot your own horn. You want to be humble. Like, you know the Asian culture. Right? Be humble, you know, blend in. Yeah. You know, don't stand out. Don't make noise. Right. But nowadays you have to make some noise. You have to stand out. You have to do something a little bit outrageous to get attention. That's why we're red. Right. You'll be talking about the guy in the red suit. Right. It's the same thing. So I love both of them. I think for our watcher, for our viewer, is just look at those people and say, you know what? Of course they have their abilities. They're good. But anybody can do it. That's what. Anybody can have an iPhone and you can make video. Anybody can. You can create a ton of video. You look at Gary, you look at Grant, how many videos they created, how many interviews they give, how many. They just constantly promote their brand. I give about one interview at least once a Week, that's my commitment. At least once a week. When Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, when they're promoting this book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, you know how now they've sold hundreds of millions of copies, but people say, oh, they sold millions of copies. Hundreds of millions of copies. Well, at the time when they're promoting the book, they were giving at least one interview per day for a few years. That commitment to promote a brand, right, you got to get it out there. So I tell people, whatever it is, press, if it's a hundred thousand viewers, if it's 10 viewers, doesn't matter, do it. Just do it. Like I said, always be somebody. Do something and be somewhere, right? Just be somewhere, anywhere.

As long as you're alive. Just keep going.

Just keep going. Just. Even if it's one person listening to the podcast, do it. It's because it's practice. And then eventually you would have two people, three people. My first seminar that I did, very first, I. Three people, including my mom. Three people in the audience right now. You can speak to thousands of. But it started off as that small little seminar.

How are those seminars going in? Is there a link that we can put in here?

Sure. And I think the best way, go to my website, Danlok D A N L O k dot com. It links to everything else.

Okay, we put a link on danlok.com.

Sure.

And so people in India and people watching this show, if they want to get in touch with you, so they go to the website.

Yeah, danlock.com, danlock.

You have a Facebook page that.

Exactly, exactly. It links to my podcast, Shoulders of Patents, where every week I interview a successful entrepreneur. It links to my YouTube channel. You can go to YouTube and search Dan Lok as well. It links to all the books that I have. Everything is there.

And tell me when you come into.

India, whenever you invite me, man, I would love to go to India because.

The audience there is crazy. It's new. It started. See, but what I say in some of my shows is a lot of people want to understand India and come and make it in India.

It's very simple.

The reason that India's have. It's obviously opened up, but it opened up in 91. In terms of the economic activities, what's happening right now in India is that people realize that from the time they get up at 5 in the morning, I have to go to work at 9. Why do I have to get up at 5? Because I might have to change two buses. Three buses stand in line. I might have to, you know, maybe the water is not coming at home. So he has to get his water, he has to come back home, maybe cook for. So he's used to working 18, 20 hours the day and he's used to seeing his father never taking a day off working external Sunday because he gets paid more.

Yes.

So today he's got that in his DNA.

Yes.

And so when the world is coming to India with this inherent DNA of, you know, let's work 20 hours a day, it's booming. But through this show and through entrepreneurs like yourself, I want to bring to Asia and other parts of the world.

Yes.

Indian subcontinent, basically where I travel anywhere from, say, Sydney to Dubai and everywhere in between.

Yes.

All the information that's happening in North America in real time. And I think through this show, in the last 45 minutes of one hour, with this awesome video production that Jeremy has captured for us, I think we've been able to bring some real time messages to them. Thank you very much for being on the show.

Thank you.

I am going to be in touch with you because we are through this show. What we're doing is we're going to invite startups and we're going to tell startups to come and showcase their idea on this show. They have to make a short video and under three minutes, send it to us, we're going to send it to you and we're going to choose the two best ideas and give them feedback.

Oh, that's awesome. I love it.

I love it because the startup scene there is booming because Everybody is thinking 6 billion customers. Yes, everybody think big. So it'll be great to have some startups sending their plans and then whenever you have time, maybe you can get something.

Absolutely. And then I love the Indian culture. One of my, you know, heroes, it's Saru Kang. I watch all his movies. I mean, I love the guy, so I'm very much in. I love the Bollywood.

You mentioned that.

Yeah, yeah, I just, I watched the latest movie. You know, it's all that. I love the Indian culture and like you said, it's very good work ethics. I have a couple people, programmers and developers in India as well. Like you said, good work ethics people, they're used to working hard and now they can work from home. It's a paradise for them, right?

Exactly.

It is.

It is so great. It was a great show.

Thank you.

We look forward to being in touch and we look forward to getting a lot of startups sending us the startup ideas so that both of us can discuss them and send you back our feedback. Thank you very much for watching one more episode of the Ask Aviana Show. Stay tuned.

Thank you.