How To Scale Your Business with Mitch Russo

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. All right, welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad Costanzo and I want to thank all of my brand new listeners out there. We get new ones all the time. I get emails constantly from people who just discovered the show and reach out to thank me for letting you guys eavesdrop on some of the conversations that I'm having and recording on this podcast. By the way, for those of you who are not really familiar with the show and have just started to tune in, this is my platform to just have these conversations, conversations that I'd want to have anyway with people that I want to talk to about topics I want to discuss. And three years ago, actually three and a half years ago, I decided to record them and put it out as this podcast for you guys. But I want you to understand that every single episode that I'm doing are conversations that are very selfish and self serving because these are people I want to talk to. Because I know that there's insights, wisdom, guidance that I can use in my own business that my clients, my companies and my friends can use as well. But I love sharing it with you and I love hearing your feedback and I love getting itunes reviews obviously also self serving. But the emails that I receive. By the way, that email address is asking bradaconrappedbusiness.com where you can feel free to give questions, guest suggestions, topic suggestions or just have me clarify some of the things that I've talked about on previous shows. So you can always reach out to me at any time during the show. I will repeat that email address at the end. But today I want to dive in with my guest, Mitch Russo. So real quick backstory is a few weeks ago I was a quote unquote icon of influence. It said so on the badge. So it must be true at Steve Ulcer's new Media summit and at this summit, I got to meet Mitch Russo, my guest today and I was really impressed by just the quick conversation we had and his background. So you know, going back to 1985, Mitch Co founded a company called Time Slips Corporation which grew to become the largest time tracking software company in the world. And then in 1994, he sold it to Sage. Sage is a very big software company. And Mitch later went on to join both Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes to create Business Breakthroughs International, a very large company serving thousands of businesses a year with coaching, consulting, and training services. And Mitch was the president and CEO of Tony and Chet's company. Now, after the untimely death of Chet, which I remember just a few years ago, Mitch left Business Breakthroughs to help others build their business as a consultant specializing in building certified consulting and certified coaching organizations, which we're going to get into this concept of certification and why it's such a powerful path to profits. And he works with call centers of large volume, lead flow, and helping coaching organizations scale, which is a very, very important topic these days because a lot of coaches just get into it, and they end up either thinking, thinking it's going to be a great lifestyle business, or they grow to death and they just can't handle their clients and they neglect their marketing. And obviously, Mitch is a guy who's figured it out. By the way, a couple years ago, he published an incredible book. I downloaded it and started going through it this morning called the Invisible Organization, which is the CEO's guide to building a fully virtual organization. So there's the intro. Let's get into the conversation. Mitch, how are you doing, buddy?

Hey. I'm just great, Brad. And I'm so thrilled to be on your show. I really appreciate you inviting me.

Well, it's gonna be fun. As I said, you've done some stuff at levels that I know a lot of people just are aspiring to do so at working both in your own company and with such luminaries in this field, such as Chet and Tony, that I knew that you'd have a lot to talk about, and there is so much that we could talk about, so. So my only question is, what's the secret? I'm just kidding.

I can't tell you that. Don't be silly.

So, you know, a lot of podcasts, a lot of episodes will, you know, tell me your entire journey, tell me your entire backstory, and, you know, I'm really interested in that. Maybe one of these days we can sit down and have a beer about the entire journey and how you got there, but I value this time with you. I'm going to ask some. I'm going to start asking some meaty questions and. And give some people some epiphanies. Is that cool?

Okay, sure.

Cool. So you started. You started working with this. I guess this kind of goes back to the journey a little bit, but You've been working in the whole coaching and personal development and professional development world for about how long now?

Well, I mean, if you go back to my software company, I mean, that's what we were doing all along. So it's got to be 20, 25 years.

Okay, fantastic. And I read this in your book. Now, did you do this with the software company? Because you talk a lot about how different software companies can utilize a certification program to add a new profit center to their, to their people and to create. What did you say? Like creating experts, turning clients into experts.

You talked exactly.

Yeah. So expound on that a little bit because this is, by the way, for my listeners, this is going to affect not just people who are in the coaching and professional development world, but if you have a software. So I'll let you kind of take it from there and give me the. Give me the gist.

Sure. So I discovered this process by almost by accident back in my software company when I was running Time Slips Corporation. And what ended up happening, and I'll try and condense it, it's a bit of a long story, but here's what happened. We were growing so fast that we could not keep up with support. And we had a support center with about 40, 50 people, 10 taking support calls all the time. One in particular, one person, very influential person, about to review our software for the, I think it was the Los Angeles Bar association called up and said, you software stinks. It crashed my computer. I hate you guys, and I want my money back and I'm going to write a terrible review and blah, blah, blah. So that call got routed to me and now I'm on the phone and I'm listening to this person and I'm realizing that something went wrong. The software is fine. It's being used by 100,000 people at the time. So I said, look, I'm going to send somebody to your office to fix your program, so just hold on, let me get you some help. Now, I didn't have anybody on the West Coast. We were still a little company under 5 million at the time. And so what I did is I had this inspired thought. I said, maybe I can call my friend Ann, who is a legal secretary and a master at timeslips, and from a quick check, she's about 10 minutes away. So I called Ann, I said, ann, would you mind going over to this person's office and helping her and, you know, tell me what you need, I'll do any. And she was just so thrilled that I asked and oh, Mitch, I'D love to do that favor for you. Well, okay, fine. Anyway, she goes over there and now it's like I'm biting my nails dying to find out what happened. 4 hours hours go later go by and I get a phone call from Ann and she says, oh, it's all set. She just didn't do something with the database the right way. And we reformatted her database and loaded her client list and everything is running great. I said, ann, thank you so much. And then Ann said to me the words that changed my life. She says, oh, and the best part, she gave me $100 bill. And I said, Ann, that's so wonderful. And here comes the magic words. And if you want me to do this for any more of your clients, you let me know. And I had this realization. How many ands could I actually have doing this for my clients? So in that moment I started to mull it over and I started to formulate a plan and I ended up building a very brief training program and a test to see how many people could actually qualify. And we had started to sell that and we got it out there and it was starting to work. People were getting help. But there was a dark side to this story. We didn't do a very good job of qualifying. And some of those people really screwed up when they went into my clients offices. And it got to the point where it became so bad that I had to shut down the program.

And yeah, these are the consultants. You're saying you didn't do a good job of qualifying these consultants? Yeah, because that was, I actually just wrote that down, which is the very first. But what about question I had was what about like brand protection? Because they can, I mean if you bring the wrong people in to represent your company and they don't work for you, it can really, I mean it can do massive damage to your brand. So I'm sure that this is something that you've worked, worked with over the years.

Well, yeah, I mean I was pretty inexperienced at the time and I was trying to find a quick solution, but I recalled the whole program. I shut it down completely. I then called every person who had a problem and I tried to understand exactly what went wrong in their office. And they helped me and I was able to rebuild the program six months later. And that program was now so really well constructed that it scaled to 350 certified consultants. And if you read the book, you probably read that it became my third largest sales channel, generated millions of dollars, decreased my support expenses by 20% and I ended up building a group of super loyal people who became friends for life and friends of the company. That's the story of certification.

That's amazing. And you know, I see a lot of people, I mean, I see it because I've just plugged into this world. I see a lot of people coming out with certification programs now and a lot of people saying, oh, it's like, like it's the new thing. But I mean, you've been doing it, working with these, probably pioneering it for, you know, a couple decades, it sounds like. What do you think? Do you think that there is a bigger opportunity? I don't even know if this is the right question I want to ask or I was going to say, is there a bigger opportunity on the companies who are selling software solutions, etc. Or where kind of in the world of coaching and people who are working consulting and people working with clients, are you kind of focusing your area on one area, particular path or the other?

No, the fact that it's a great opportunity for lots of different types of companies. I've spoken to people who had credit card processing companies and wanted to set up certification. I've spoken to people who have coaching and training and consulting organizations, and certainly I speak to software companies regularly. So it's pretty universal.

Do you find, do you find that they have much reticence and reluctance to do this? Does it take much convincing? Because it's a little bit out of the box for them.

I try to convince them to not do it first to see if they have the fortitude. Because here's the thing, this is not easy. And while I understand the process and I can guide my clients through it, which is what my job is, some people give up because they just don't have the time and they don't have the fortitude to create the level of training, for example, that I demand before a program is released.

Okay, what, so what are some of those big areas like? Okay, so creating the time and energy to create that quality training. What are some of the other hard parts that somebody has to navigate if they really want to go into this in the right way?

Well, the first thing that happens with any client is I set aside two hours and we share a screen and I build a two dimensional model of their current business. And the reason I do that is because what we're looking for are opportunities where certification can make a huge difference in their current business. So that takes a couple hours to do. And then at the end of that, in session two, what we do is we just Decide that we have the business model. Right. And now we start thinking through what it would take to launch it and we come up with a launch strategy and, and then I provide my clients with the launch scripts so that they could record them.

What does a launch of something that like that from a 30,000 foot view, what does that kind of look like? Let's say that I've got a company and we'll just say it's a software company or a service based company and I want to. And I've got my certification, training materials and everything ready and I'm ready to bring it to the market. What's that typically look like?

It's pretty standard looking. It looks like a Jeff Walker launch. Basically three videos, an application process. They pay a few hundred dollars to apply and at that point we're not selling anything. We're basically allowing people into the program who are a fit perfect.

Yeah, I'm really familiar with, in more recent times, some of the companies on the SaaS level who've done this really well. Infusionsoft, like instead of hat, you know, you don't call. I mean infusionsoft has support, but if you want real expert support, there's all these certified partners, which is genius because obviously they're gonna go out and recommend infusionsoft. Click Funnels, Russell Brunson's company.

Yep.

Doing a great job of that. I know Digital Marketer.com has their certification so a lot of companies are starting to do this. And it's not, you know, SaaS, it's education companies, it's coaches. So you know, when you were working with Tony and Chet, so explain for, you know, my listeners benefit, what business breakthroughs was, what was the business model there?

It was, it was an interesting, wonderful business model that worked really, really well. Here's what, here's what we did. Tony, Chet and I got on the phone every Thursday night for months to figure out exactly what we would sell, exactly how we would operate and exactly how we were going to make money. And what we came up with was we were going to launch the company with an event and we brought 500 people to Las Vegas, to the Mirage Hotel, I believe. And we basically recorded about 60 hours of content. And it wasn't just Chet and Tony, it was 15 other brilliant people, including Jay Abraham and others. And what we then did is we went back home after that event was over, which by the way was very successful. It made us a lot of money. But we then took that content and we built the ultimate business mastery system. Out of that content. So we used the live event to create the content. We then created these. We'll call a home study program from it.

Okay. So people would get.

Just.

Just jumping in here. So people would get. When they signed up, they would get obviously the recordings from the event, but then they would get supplemental materials, homework study materials as well, correct?

Yes. We built. We built entire training programs from many of the videos. Great. So that box, when it arrived, was about £20, and it was filled with binders and DVDs, and we even included an MP3 player. I mean, it was overwhelming. It was a lot of stuff in there. So here's the model. We got on the radio, and this is where I got to learn how to really, really optimize radio. We got on the radio. We started out by spending about 25,000amonth on radio. And we drove people to a phone number. The phone number was answered by a virtual call team of which the systems behind that were one we had to build ourselves. And then once those calls were answered, we needed to close them on a $239 webinar, which then led to the sale of this home study product for about $4,000.

Okay.

Now, once they bought the home study program, we gave them four free coaching sessions with the home study program. That allowed us at that point to make sure that we didn't get a return, make sure the client was getting immediate benefit from the product, and introduce them to the rest of the products that we sold. So that model ended up creating a $25 million a year company by the end of year three.

That's fantastic. I'm just writing some of these stats down as we going through that. So now that's. Yeah, that's fantastic. So the certification that came, did that come next? Was that part of this business model too?

Certification was not part of this business model directly because we never sold it, but we used many of the ideas that I talk about. When we would bring in coaches. We had over 50 coaches.

Okay.

So we had an amazing. Stephanie Vaughn was the coaching department director, a manager, vice president. She was incredible. She had her systems down beautifully. She really knew how to train coaches. And so in the end, what we had was a team of very well trained coaches that we could deploy to all of those people buying those home study programs. So from there, after coaching, the four free coaching sessions was over. We'd upsell them to a coaching package. Now, one of the things we learned is that coaches, as hard as they try, they're not that great at selling Rare coach you could really sell. So we built a separate team called the concierge Group. It was called Client Services. Client Services would then build relationships with all of the coaching clients just to stay in touch, be interested in their business, offer some help when they could. But at the end of the four free sessions, it was many times the client, the client relations group, client services group, that would go and sell, upsell all of our other services. And we had several. So that was the business model. And the reason it works so well is because we focused entirely on what the client needed and made sure to deliver it.

Yeah, no, I love it. I mean, very familiar with the organization. I've studied some of the, like what you were saying, some of the radio to the. To the phone call, to the process. I've studied that in the past and thought it was really brilliant the way that you guys, the way you guys did that. Now I want to diverge a little bit because you mentioned this in your book and then you just brought it up. So radio. Yeah, I know you guys did a lot of radio. And you know, new media and media is changing so damn quickly that I know a lot of people in, especially people like myself who are much more adept at new media, neglect radio. Now, do you think that that is a really big mistake to neglect radio right now, or do you think it is kind of on the down slope or are you still using it?

I think radio is the direct mail of the 1990s. I think people now have basically discarded radio as a solution to marketing and only big companies truly know how to utilize it, which is a mistake. I think radio can be used by any size company and radio is now accessible to any size company. You could buy ads on Sirius XM on select channels for $50 or $60 an ad and get nationwide coverage. Why wouldn't you do radio? Now? The stats are that 90% of Americans listening to the radio every week.

Really? Yeah. You know, it's one of those things, like myself, I'm so disconnected from that world in that everything I listen to is streaming digital, like I'm pulling it, as opposed to just stumbling across that. I don't even have broadcast. I don't even have cable television. It's all like Netflix and Hulu and itunes. So it's really easy for people like myself to just discount that and think, oh, nobody's listening to that, nobody's using it. But in reality, there's still a lot of people who are.

That's right, a lot. And more importantly, the nature of radio has Changed. The ability to understand our markets has gotten much better. And by the way, the things that you call radio of the past had been redefined as well. Most radio has a streaming service. Most terrestrial stations now have streaming services. When I say radio, I also mean things like Pandora or, or CNBC or other things that years ago were not considered radio. They are today now.

That makes a lot of sense. On the, on the. If somebody was going to decide to put radio as a, as a channel for themselves, and I know this is totally dependent upon their budget and their size, et cetera, but if somebody wants to start to toe in the water and commit to a campaign and say, let's try this out, if you were going to give somebody like, you know, advice to do this, would you, A, like where, which would you tell them to look at? Fm, AM serious, anything like that first? And then would you also tell them that they should test out A, a certain budget or B, a certain time frame to get it to work? Like, what would be your 30,000 foot advice on somebody thinking about exploring radio?

Yeah, I would, I would start out with setting the objective. I would want to know what they really want to accomplish.

Like, let's say leads, let's say. Sure, I'm a direct response guy. So let's say leads.

Okay, so let's say leads. Where do you want those leads to go? Meaning? You mean you want them to go to. You want to go to a webpage? You want to go to a phone line?

Let's say a phone line.

Good. Okay, who's going to answer the phone?

That would be a call center.

Cool. All right, and so that call center is creating leads and dropping them into your infusionsoft system. And those leads will be followed up. Now would you want your call center to sell them something or just simply collect the lead?

Let's say if I was just starting off and I wanted to start to test the efficacy of this channel, I would want them to just collect the lead, do some really basic qualification and stick them in.

Beautiful. Okay, so now the question is, what market are you looking for? Are you looking for a particular ethnic market, an age bracket, a gender?

Well, let me give you an example. Let me give you a real example. So I've got a client. Okay, I've got a client. And this actually may be perfect for it. When I reread what you were talking about, I was like, we gotta explore this. So they are a service for real estate investors. Okay, so for real estate investors, hire them to do all of the seller prospecting marketing. It's like an entire virtual back office for real estate investors. And the bottom line value proposition is look, we get your phone to ring with sellers and it's pretty much hands off. So it's ideal. It's not a how to get rich in real estate. It's nothing like that. But if you are investing in real estate or trying to start and you are serious, then it is an absolute perfect place to explore.

Great. So with that, we know it's a business number one, we know it's attracting people who want to spend money on building a business number two. And now what we need to do is look at the stations that reach that market. Yep. So we look at, for example, it sounds like a national offer, not a regional offer. Perfect. So now we look at Sirius. SiriusXM. Absolutely perfect. So we go to the channels that are focused on business. Now here's an insight that cost several million dollars.

I'll PayPal you when we're done.

Excellent. Any talk radio station is where you will find business buyers.

Yeah.

So B2B can be sold on any talk radio station on Sirius, but certain stations are even better. So if you can get yourself onto like Fox News or CNBC or the political shows, there's a right wing channel, a left wing channel, forgetting the politics, both of those work equally well. At that point, you're going to be paying anywhere from 50 or $60 per spot to 500 to $800 a spot, depending on when and where you want it. So at this point we need a budget. And once you tell me what your budget number is, and it shouldn't be less than $5,000 at that point we need some spots and we don't want one spot. We want to test two, possibly three spots. Right. And then we know we want to be in drive time because that's when people are in the cars commuting.

So let's say. Yeah, let's say there's a $10,000 budget. And so you would want to. When you say two or three spots, you mean like so, so different shows and stations and whatnot?

No, I mean actual radio ads.

Okay, gotcha.

So we're going to record say two or three different radio ads.

The copy is what you're saying.

Yes, gotcha. And we're going to have talent read that ad. Unless you're Tony Robbins and you can read it. And then what we're going to do is we're going to select three stations and we're going to select two or three day parts, which is when the show would run, we're to going when the ad would run. And we're going to get a separate 800 number for every spot in every station. And that's where we're going to get our analytics. Now we start running ads and we're watching our dashboard and we're looking for lead flow. And it's amazing how quickly you'll be able to same as an Internet campaign, a Facebook campaign tells you in hours. Same with radio, once your ads go live. And it will build with radio, which is cool. So if you're getting a good response on the first couple of days, man, that, that's, that's a good tiding.

Absolutely. So with. With about a $10,000 budget or. Actually, let me ask you this, because we all know, those of us who know, we know that it's. It takes multiple contacts to get somebody to typically call like one radio spot. Somebody hears it once, they're like, they're not as likely to call as if they hear it like eight times.

Right.

Has there been any good rules of thumb that you've seen in the radio market for how many. How many, you know, spots. Not, I guess, not just copy spots, but how, how long it would typically take to, to give it. To run before you call it a success or failure?

Yes. Let's again start with some basics. People don't listen to radio all day. So what our job is is to catch people when the most or spend that money when the most people are listening. That's the first thing. The second thing is, is that if somebody hears a radio ad once, a very low percentage of people will pick up the phone and call. Why? Number one, they're driving. Number two, it's the first time they heard. Typically takes two to six impressions on the radio before somebody who's interested and who's inclined to will pick up the phone and call.

No, that's what. That's what I thought. That's actually less than I thought it would be. Have you found. Because a minute ago you mentioned like, drive time.

Right.

That's where they're mainly listening to. But then like you said, a lot of people are driving and listening. They don't necessarily pick up their phone and jump on it right there. So there seems to be a little bit of a conflict. But do you think that it's the drive time is still the best spot for the dollar. And are the calls to action, to call, to text to anything else that you've kind of seen work better than others?

Yeah, unless you're carpet bombing A city with radio ads. The best thing to do is always use a easy to remember 800 number, a vanity number, and people will pick up the phone while they're driving. Remember, you could hit Siri and say, dial. Most cars have digital dialing, voice dialing. Anyway.

Yep. When you guys were. I may have read this wrong. I may remember it wrong, but when you guys were doing it with breakthrough, business breakthroughs or. Yeah, I think that's what it was.

Right.

When people called the number, were they first going to a recorded message or was it going directly to somebody live?

Our goal was to get it to somebody live.

Right.

But if we got hit with 50, 60 calls when one spot ran, then certain number of those people are going to go to voicemail.

Gotcha.

Okay.

And I didn't know if it was voicemail or if it started off maybe this wasn't you guys. Where I heard it started off with.

A.

Recorded message that said, you know, thank you for calling, blah, blah, blah. And if you'd like to get this, press 1, where it would just make sure that it wasn't just people who are so scared, scared to talk to somebody. They were just trying it out. And then when they press 1, it would connect them. So I didn't know if there was anything specifically.

It depends. Yeah, we wanted live. We knew that we had approximately a 19% closing rate on call on qualified callers. Great. So we wanted to get live people.

I love it. Okay, now that's. This is excellent. And it is one of the things that I'm going to be exploring. As I said, my client was actually asking me, you know, what are some. Because we've been primarily doing a lot of the lead generation on Facebook and some other channels. And he was asking me what I recommend for others. And I thought about radio, and that was interesting when I was kind of glancing through your book that you mentioned that. So this was very helpful. I appreciate that, Mitch. I want to shift gears a little bit.

So.

Back into the coaching world and different than traditional coaching. I want to take this to another level. I've got a couple of clients. You could say they're celebrities. One is a celebrity. One is, I guess, a business celebrity luminary. He's very, very well known in very big circles and like the biggest of circles. But he has been on the speaking circuit recently quite a bit, and he has been, you know, highly sought after. But he does not have officially, like a coaching program, business model or anything like that yet. It's something we are planning out. And there's a lot of concerns. Such as, such as brand reputation. Super important. He doesn't need to do this. So he doesn't want to overextend himself, but he does want to help the people. He wants to build an organization that utilizes a lot of his really all about personal and professional development.

Right.

And we've been exploring this. We even explored the concept of certified coaches for him because he's only got so much time to do this and he is such a luminary that, you know, when you started working with Tony, Tony was, I mean not even arguably he was a celebrity, especially in certain worlds before you guys started to work together on business breakthroughs.

Right.

Like he was well known from a lot of his infomercials, etc.

So.

And probably Chet, maybe to a little bit lesser degree with Chad. But there's a lot of, there's a lot of cool opportunities, but there's a lot of little landmines, you know, that you have to navigate when you're dealing with somebody who's already a celebrity brand. And I actually, I've been doing a lot of thought because I've got another client who is a fairly well known celebrity as well, who's very interested in exploring, exploring this too. And I see this as probably a trend that has not quite taken off yet, which is where either celebrities, and I'm not talking about Brad Pitt style celebrities, I'm talking about people who are either really well known business or from entertainment world champions and this, that or the other are wanting to get into this. But they are trying to do it in a way that doesn't look like they're just trying to do a money grab.

Right.

And that they're trying to do it in a very integrity based way, but also build something big and real. And they're not just looking for a few extra bucks for like a lifestyle business. If they're gonna do it, they want to do it big and right. So first of all, big first question is have you ever really worked with, dealt with, thought much about this whole world of working with celebrities or semi celebrities to create this opportunity with them?

Oh, absolutely. I do that every day with my clients.

Nice.

I have clients. One of my clients is ex NFL football player. We're building out his platform right now. It's going to be transformational for him and for the people he's involved with.

So you don't have to name any names. But what is the overall business model of that? What's that look like?

Well, it looks like many of the business Models we see. But here's the difference. He has a very passionate fan base and he's never found a way to serve them in his highest capacity. So that's why he asked me to help and I got busy with him and we discovered many of, like I told you before, we do that two hour strategy session up front, and we discovered many, many areas where we could completely monetize what he can create so that it creates income for him and his family, but more importantly, it gives many more of the people who love him access.

So, and this is perfect. So a, an NFL, a former NFL player is well known. What, what kind of impact does he want to have? Like, what does he want to teach? Like, high performance? Does he want to teach anything? Is there anything in particular that his angle is why people would pay to learn from him?

Well, I'm not going to tell you the specifics of his program. You don't have to, but, but I will say this. You can teach whatever is. In this individual's case, he has a particular mission, a passion, and he's discovered a process that can transform others the way it's transformed him.

Beautiful.

And that is what we, we are codifying right now and creating a system by which we can deliver that to people so that they can get the same transformation and benefits that he's created for himself.

Now, is he going to offer, so beyond just a, I'll call it like a home study digital program, is he at the moment thinking of offering more like, access? Because that's the nicest part about, you know, somebody who's already got high credibility and status, that people will pay more for access to them than the information that they have.

Yes.

Are you guys also exploring that like the highest levels of.

Multiple levels of access? Great.

Yeah. Because that's exactly what I'm exploring with my clients and as I said, trying to navigate around a couple of those things. But I do think, like, when you look at celebrities, I mean, we're in a really weird, you know, we're in a really interesting time right now because up until, I guess, social media, Facebook and Instagram especially, in order to be famous, you kind of had to be famous. You had to do it the normal way. Now you can have a million, 2 million, 5 million whatever followers on Instagram and you've done nothing but take photos of yourself and shared memes and people find you funny and you're, you're Instagram influencer and they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars and paid shout outs and everything else. And they Are they have legions of fans as real as any other celebrity. And it kind of makes me wonder like if I was a celebrity who. Maybe I'm at the tail end of my career, maybe I haven't done anything in 10 years and. But I want to kind of come back. I'd be looking around at all these people like, who the hell are these people? Like, why are they getting all this attention, making all this money?

Who, who are they?

What have they ever accomplished in their lives? And I can almost see the competitive spirit coming out where they're like, no, I. Who are they to teach other people how to have success? Let me add them.

Right.

So I'm starting to see that. So I just wonder if that we're going to see more of that. And I hope so because I mean, how cool is it that you start to see some of the top level people sharing their insights and look no further than that masterclass.com which is now doing it, bringing in the top, you know, screenwriters and actors. I bought the one on Steve Martin teaches comedy. So it's kind of cool to see these super luminaries, you know, teaching.

Absolutely. And I think that there's, what we're seeing is that the idea of access, the idea of learning from famous people with a special gift, that idea is expanding every day. And that's what's so cool. You get to watch as new ideas come to the surface for how those people can, can work individually almost with the masses, if you will. I mean, yes, Steve Martin's going to make some money from doing it, but at the same time there's that feeling of I'm really helping others giving back. Exactly. And that's part of what this is all about. That mission is all about giving back and finding the best way, the optimal way to do it so that it benefits everybody.

Absolutely. And when you have those people who have super legitimate credentials to where they don't have to talk about them themselves, you just know who they are. It's like, well, obviously, because it's one thing for somebody to try to build a name for themselves based upon. Look my past experience and let me share all these testimonials and you know, it can be hard because you're competing more and more against more and more people because there's so many, there's. There's so few barriers to entry to actually being a coach.

That's right.

And these days it seems like everybody coaches. Coaches on how to coach. Coaching on coaches or coaching.

Right.

But there's, there's so Few people who. Who actually can walk the walk. Talk the talk. That's, you know, by the way, why I invited you on the show today, because obviously, you've got the credentials, you've done things at a very large scale. And kind of going back to the topic of your book, the Invisible. The Invisible Organization, Right?

Yep.

So one of the things you talked about, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the business breakthroughs with Chet and Tony, that was. Would you say $25 million? And didn't you say that you ran that from your home office and you had how many employees and they were all virtual?

We didn't have many employees at all. Maybe two or three. But we had staff.

Staff.

And they were. Yes. Every one of us who worked for the. Not every, but most of us who work for the organization, we worked as vendors to the company. So we would submit an invoice, and our invoice would get paid for services rendered. And as a vendor, any of us, including me, could have been fired at any time and replaced, because that's the status that makes sense for a company like this. But, yeah, we were about 300 strong, and we had people in, I don't know, 18 countries, I guess.

That's fantastic.

Yeah.

It can be a lot to manage, too, I'm sure. But that's why you build the right infrastructure and people and monitoring systems.

Exactly. It's with. Without the systems and without the talent, the key talent that we brought into the company, none of that would have been possible. Right.

How did you. Just kind of jumping back, I just kind of had this thought, what was the genesis of your relationship with Tony and Chet to where.

You know, you.

Started the conversations about business breakthroughs? You know, what was. What was the start of your relationship with them?

Well, that. That. My relationship with Chet went back to my software company days. And Chet was a salesman calling on me, trying to sell me ad space, and I became. I became one of his what. What he would call a. A Dream 100 client. Okay. So Chat would make a list of the top clients he wanted, and he would call those his Dream 100 clients. And that's a concept we would teach. So when you build a Dream 100 client list, you then know that you could spend far more to reach them than you would any other client because, you know, the return is so large. Right.

Whale hunting, basically.

Exactly. And I was one of those chat. So when that took place, he made an extreme effort, you might say, to reach me. And I was impressed with his persistence, and I was impressed with his knowledge of the marketplace and his ability to basically offer me different ways of using his tools to get my message out. Eventually it took a year. Eventually I relented, if you will, and I advertised and it was so successful that we then became. And that's how we built a lifelong friendship.

That's beautiful.

Yeah. And we were friends for all of those years. And I, Although it's. It was bittersweet. I was there the day before he passed away. I had the last conversation with him before he died. Really?

Wow. Yeah, that. What was that, 2000? Was it 2012?

11. Oh, no, I'm sorry. It was. Geez. I think it was 11. Yeah, it's.

It's weird. I mean, it kind of seems like yesterday. I never knew the man, but I'd studied a lot of his stuff and I remember when it happened, I was like, wow. It kind of shook a lot of the community of people who just really, really respected him and the value that he's added to the market.

Absolutely. He added a lot.

Mitch, as a, as an entrepreneur, yourself as a CEO, what are some of the areas that you, that you consider yourself weakest in? A lot of people say, yeah, what's your superpower? I like to say, what are some of the areas that you've found that, look, I'm not good at this aspect. I don't like this. This is where I need to hire partner or just completely eliminate. Because we've all got our strengths. We've all got the stuff we either suck at or we hate or we hate and suck at it. What are some of those areas of yours?

I got lots of them.

We usually have a lot more than we have on the other side.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I frankly couldn't make a Facebook ad work if you took a gun and made me try. So I need help there. And I, you know, I have a Facebook guy that I like now. I mean, there's. I know how to do back end work on websites, but I have someone far more competent than me to do it. So.

A lot of technical stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And I have a great VA who helps me with the social media stuff. You know, I just want to focus on where I have the highest value. What do you think that is basically helping people. And I do it the way I talked about with, on a one to one basis, but. Brad, I have a secret project I'm unveiling soon. Do you want me to tell you about it?

I do. Secret project alert.

Now. You. You're not going to tell anybody, are You?

Not a single soul.

Okay, good. So one of the things that we did at BBI is we actually offered all of our clients the chance to work with an accountability partner. And we charged $1,800 a month for a CEO to get 30 minutes a week with an accountability partner. And it was a very successful program.

You said you charged them how much?

$1,800 a month.

Wow. Nice.

And what I mean, the justification was is that's less than the cost of a secretary. And that CEO would never let a secretary keep them accountable.

Right.

Yeah. So we had a pitch and it made sense and people bought it and it worked for a while and it worked well. So recently I with a group of my Internet marketer friends and everybody is complaining about the fact that they've sold a lot of programs, but they have less than 8 to 12% of the people who've completed those programs.

Oh, and I'll bet It's only like 20% who've even started the program. Right. It's terrible. That's execution of that is such a, such a nightmare in the industry.

Well, what would you do if I told you that I think I solved the problem?

Well, that's like one of the holy grails in this industry.

That's right. And I'm filing patents on it right now. But I'm going to tell you about it.

Beautiful.

So here's what it is. And the reason I'm going to tell you about it is because I'm going to release it in the next 30 days. I have built a peer to peer platform software AS a system SaaS based platform where people can meet and set up accountability sessions between each other. I have some very powerful matching algorithms that I've developed. I built a very highly carefully crafted interactive system where people can be on the phone and on the computer at the same time working together. I built dashboards to keep track of statistics so that we know whether this accountability coaching is working. And I'm bundling this all into a system that's going to cost less than $97 a month. Wow. And once you become a member, you have unlimited access to as many accountability partners as you like. You'll have a membership, a private group where you can get education ongoing in areas that you want. There'll be all kinds of guests, brilliant geniuses like yourself, coming and presenting to this group. So this, to me is my dream. This is how I could help the most people I could possibly help.

I love that accountability is such a key driver and it's one of those things that when I've had accountability partners in my own business, I've done a lot better. And when I've let it go, I haven't. And you know, it's so easy to cheat on ourselves, right? It's so easy to. Because we rationalize everything. Maybe it's accountability about working out, maybe it's accountability about getting projects done that we're working on. And we're like, well, especially if we're our own boss and there's nobody to hold, you know, like you said, you're not going to have one of your underlings, one of the peasants who work for you. I'm joking. Hold you accountable because that's also just weird. And they're not going to hold you accountable the way they should because their paycheck depends on it and they don't want to piss you off. So, yeah, this is strong. I love that. And it's. So is this something that, okay, obviously people can buy it, they can come straight to you, but do you have plans to integrate it into other people's programs whereby, let's say I've got a big coaching program or I've got some. Something like that, and I want to utilize your service to facilitate the accountability platform for my stuff?

Absolutely. That's exactly my plans. My plans are to work with many of the thought leaders like yourself and have you introduce my program to your clients. And this way what you end up with is happier clients who will buy more from you if they consume and benefit from your materials. Right.

And that's the key all the. And you know, a lot of times people don't need to even get all the benefits that you promise from your program. If they get any benefits at all, any benefits at all, they will come back and buy more because there's so many times that they buy stuff they don't get any benefits from and it just, you know, it's the program of the month and then they're on to something else. But if they started to get results, they could start focusing on the, on that and come back and buy more and more. So now I think that's fantastic. So you're launching in 30 days and I'm sure you'll share with me a link so I can release it on your show notes here. So everybody who's listening right now, ideally, and I definitely have some enough in the, in the pipeline where I can release this once you have actually created it. So unless there's a link you want to share, I can just say, hey, guys, check the show notes for the podcast and there will be a link right there for Mitch's accountability program. That's fantastic. What's a nut you're trying to crack right now? And I mean by that, I mean what's it could be A person you're trying to meet, a skill you're trying to master, money you're trying to raise, a business initiative that you're trying to get done. Is there anything that can help jog my brain or my listeners brains to go? I, oh man. I may be able to help Mitch here.

Sure. I am looking for an operations person. I'm looking for a person who has the kind of breadth of business experience where I can train rapidly, have them step in and run my operations. I mean I am at a point now where I really need to focus as much as I can on my highest level of deliverable, which is still working with a select few private clients, building out my platform and expanding it rapidly so that it can help as many people as possible.

I love that. Have you ever, have you ever read the book by any chance, Rocket Fuel?

No.

So I interviewed the author of that or the co authors, Mark Winters on my show and so Rocket Fuel is an amazing book and guys, the link to the book will be in the show notes as well. And it's the concept that, you know, it's between the visionary, what he calls the visionary, and the integrator. And the integrator is just his other word for operator. And how, you know, a lot of CEOs have operations managers and a lot of times the relationship doesn't work out. It's a, it's two things when you've got the right combination of personality traits but, and there you follow the right framework for working together, it becomes like rocket fuel. And to go a little bit further, it, you know, he even has some personality tests to say how much of a visionary are you, how much of an integrator? And you know, here's your strengths, here's your weaknesses here. And it really is amazing how the integrator loves to do the stuff you hate to do and vice versa. And the framework for the, for the dynamic between you and your integrator, even if they work for you, has to be one in which they have equal or sometimes greater say in what gets done than you do. So I'm a high visionary and a relatively low integrator. So I may come and give what he calls organizational whiplash to the company. I've got this new idea. I just talked to Mitch. We're Gonna go do radio ads.

Right.

That would be a perfect example. Just got off this podcast. Okay, stop everything. We're gonna do this. The integrator's role would then be just like, okay, give me all the information. Let me go map it out. An execution plan. Let me see if the company has enough resources to do this without derailing us. And I'll come back and Brad, I'll either give you the green light or the red light or the not yet light on this. And as a visionary, I have to be willing to acquiesce that control and say, okay, because you've got what's best for the company. So he just goes into detail about that of just how it's one thing to find him, it's another thing to have the framework for the relationship. And I just love the book because I am such a need of the same thing in my life. So you'll get my second choice of referring to you.

Excellent.

If I find somebody. But that's great.

Yep, it's great.

Highly recommend that book though. The. That's fantastic. So Mitch, where else can people. If people want to go down the rabbit hole, that is Mitch Russo. Where can we send them besides obviously your book, the introduction Invisible Organization which I recommend. Your website is MitchRusso.com youm've got a great podcast called your first thousand clients. Correct?

Correct.

Fantastic. So there's a lot of places people can go. Is MitchRusso.com the best jumping off point to learn more, to get in contact to find out what you're offering?

It is. MitchRusso.com is where you can both see and subscribe to the podcast link, listen to episodes. It's where I have over 60 business blog articles which I refer to with my clients all the time. It's also the place where you will see all of my initiatives. I have another site called mypowertribe.com which describes the entire certified consultant program and that also is accessible from MitchRusso.com program.

Perfect. Yeah. I highly recommend everybody go check that out. I know I will be when we jump off the phone. Last couple questions. Mitch, is there anybody that right now you turn to when you need either advice, especially when it comes to business related things. Advice, a sounding board, somebody to brainstorm with. Somebody that you just really, really trust. Because I mean you've got such a high level relationships with people like Tony and other folks that I'm just curious on who do you go to when you need.

Yeah, sure. I mean I have my own kitchen cabinet. I mean those are the people who can sit around the kitchen table with me and brainstorm. I mean, just to make it clear, I have a coach and I work with my coach regularly. My coach is invaluable to me for both mindset issues and rational reflection. Reflection on these crazy thoughts and ideas that I have. So, I mean, it's a great relationship we have. And then I have basically a circle of friends from people who are just luminaries to other smart operators who nobody's ever heard of. Right. So I think it's important to spread your network as widely and as deeply as possible.

I couldn't agree more. I mean, that's the exact reason that I started to do this show, was for access and influence. And that term, I throw that term around a lot, but it actually goes much deeper because access has more to do than just with access to people. I mean, if you don't have access to money, to loving friends and support, supportive family and everything else like that, if you don't have access to education and skills and, you know, safety, you know, you don't have anything. But if you can build access to them, whether you own it or you can borrow the access and you can build influence with other people who can help you get more access, it just becomes such a compounding effect. And it's, as I said, it's one of the reasons, primary reasons I started this podcast was so that I can have access to influential people and have these conversations that can help, you know, me compound my growth. So I appreciate you for being a part of that. And I've taken a lot from this, what I was going to call it an episode, but this qualifies as an episode.

What I love that. Well, we're both doing the same thing for the same reasons. My podcast, to me, it's a sacred ground. The way I think about it, it's the place where I get to build those kind of relationships that you described. And I'll tell you right now, if I never ever shared a single episode, it would be absolutely worth every minute and dollar I spend on it.

Yeah, I say all the time, even if my mom was the only one listening to this, I would still do it. Although I will say one of the frustrating parts. So I've been in the business for about 10 years in the information marketing business, and I remember back then when access to information like this, access to these interviews was so hard to get, that a lot of times it was somebody's back end offer. Like you would get a CD of the month, like an interview. I Remember, one of the first guys I saw doing this with was Eben Pagan with his dating advice business, Double youe Dating. And he had, what was it, interviews with dating gurus for 20 bucks a month. And it was quite literally a podcast just like this. And one of the things I love about this new media is it allows us to, to get out there and to build this name. But one of the things I hate is it cannibalized an entire profit center. I mean, now interviews are a dime a dozen. Good interviews are not. However, good interviews are not. But I kind of always found that interesting that this is the kind of stuff that we used to sell for a back end offer.

Sure. But don't forget, we've really moved. I mean, we've evolved. Now information is basically free and implementation is what costs money.

Absolutely.

And that's the better way to do it. I would rather share everything I know and publish it freely on my website. Not so much because I think people are going to go off and do it on their own. It's because it helps people understand me better.

Yep, yep, I agree. I agree 100%. And it's, it's where I've moved as well. So, Mitch, I want to thank you very much for being a guest on the show today. This is great. By the way, where do you live? I don't even know that.

I'm right outside of Boston.

Okay, so we are on the other side of the country. I'm here in San Diego. So yeah, my, my winter is still not around the corner. Yours is probably starting to get cold.

Up there already, I imagine, even though it's 70 degrees here today.

But yeah, global warming, it is real. Thanks a lot, man. Hey, to all my listeners, guys, if you appreciated this, the single best thing you can do besides leaving me a review on the old itunes machine is share this episode with your friends, share it on social media and tag me in the. Tag me. Tag Mitch. Both of us, when you're sharing it and let us know that you appreciate it. We both took time out of our day to do this. Obviously we would have done it as we just said, even if you weren't listening. But the fact, fact that you are and if you got something out of it, if you took notes, if you got something great, share it. Share it with other people who deserve to see it. And as I said, tag us in it. Remember I told you that I would give you that email that you can reach me at the end of the show again? You can do that@askbradaconratbusiness.com you can think of anything. If you can't think of anything, just do this. Send me a book recommendation business, a personal development book, a book that's changed your life. And just say, brad, this is a book I read. I think you'd love it as well, and I appreciate that. And if I end up picking it up and reading it, I will give you a shout out on the show once more. Mitch, thanks again for being a guest on Bacon Wrap Business. And you guys stay tuned for the next episizzle.