The Pumpkin Plan - Speech by Mike Michalowicz

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So it's interesting how our life enters like a new trajectory sometimes over just a few words. And for me, it was the words, "You don't want to be that guy." Now, I'm from New Jersey, so it wasn't said that way. It was said, "You don't want to be that guy." Thank you. Thank you. Uh, I went to, I was in a computer business. I had a small little startup company installing computer systems. We had just achieved about $300,000 in revenue. Um, and just to be clear, the entrepreneur's definition of $300,000 in revenue, I was doing about $60,000 or so just using the old roundup metric. And I went to a Chamber of Commerce event And there— this was back in '96, '97, '99, whatever. There was all these small business owners talking, hanging out, shaking hands. There's one gentleman in the corner who was talking to no one. So I approached him. I was new to this event. I said, what do you do? His name was Frank. He looked at me, said, I'm a business coach. Now, this is around 1999, before, you know, business coaching really existed. I said, what does it— what does a business coach do? He says, a business coach, you wouldn't believe it, Mike. There's companies out there that say they're doing like, you know, $300,000. I'd be surprised if they're doing $60,000. And I'm like, really? There's companies like that? He said, yeah, I fix those companies. I make them successful. So I said, well, I'd love to speak further with you. And he came to my office and sat down with myself. My office was about the size of this podium. And myself and my two colleagues, we were crunched in there. This is how you sit in a crunched office. And the business coach Frank starts asking us tons of questions. He goes, what, what's the P&L look like? I need to see the income statement, the balance sheet, the cash flow statement. And I'm thinking, what are these magical words you're using? I've never heard of these terms. This is amazing. He went on for 3 hours asking ridiculous amounts of questions. After 3 hours of the Spanish Inquisition, Frank says, everyone please get up and just leave the room. So all my colleagues, including myself, I get up and behind my colleagues I start sneaking out. And he looks at me and goes, not you, Michael. Sit down. Which, has anyone ever seen The Godfather? I'm like, if I don't sit down, there's going to be a horse head in my bed. So I sat down and that's when he said those now for me famous words. You don't want to be that guy. And I looked at him and said, what are you talking about? You don't want to be the guy who one day ends up in a rusty lawn chair, sipping a half glass full of lemonade, regretting a life of toil. Toil, which I had to Google what toil means. Hard work, work that goes nowhere. And I said, I said, why? Why is that me? He goes, the life of every business owner, every entrepreneur, every person in this room is very predictable. He says our life is a direct result of the actions and decisions we've made over the last 5 years. Regardless of the economy or the appearance or disappearance of competition, Regardless of all the sways and what goes on out around us, he says our actions and decisions always drive the results. And he goes, those 3 hours, Mike, I was just asking you about the actions and decisions you were making. And clearly you're committed to doing the same things over and over. So 5 years from now, you're gonna experience the same results. And 5 years from that, the same results. And 5 years on and 5 years on, all the way to your rusty lawn chair with your lemonade. And he goes, nothing's going to change. He goes, he goes, Mike, can you see this in your mind? I said, yeah, I can see. No, no, no. Can you see what you look like in that chair? And I said, yeah, I said, I, I can see that, that, that my hair is thinning out and stuff. He goes, don't worry about that hair. I'd worry about this hair. It gets worse. It gets worse. He looks at me and he goes, I want you to keep this vivid image of your future and the regret you have. Think about that. And he walks out the room and I swear to you, he does. He walks out of the room, looks back, goes, but whatever you picture, don't picture what's going on down here. And he walks out. And I'm like, Is this a business coach or a sadist? Like, what is this? What is this insanity? I'm sweating, perspiration pouring down, nerves. He comes back in after a minute or two, felt like an hour, and he comes back and he looks at me, goes, you saw your future, right? I said, yes. He goes, do you want me to fix that? I said, yes, yes. I hired him on the spot, and I'm going to share with you what he did for my businesses and and what I experienced in growing my business, because I know you can do the same. But I will share this with you first. Before I go into what I learned, I did give you the greatest sales technique of all time. Go to any of your clients and do this move. They buy anything. Frank started off by sharing what he shared called the 5% rule. I didn't realize this, but I would argue for every business owner in this room, any free professional in this room, that you're doing 95% of your business right. I mean, you're attracting prospects, you're making them customers. I'm sure you— everyone in this room has raving fans about your work. He goes, but the shame is most business owners try to fix everything. We try to overcorrect. He goes, take the analogy of a plane. I live in New Jersey. No applause for that. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I live in New Jersey. And I, if I fly to California, he said, if a plane is off its trajectory only by 5%, the further it travels, the further it gets away from its destination. If you stay on a plane that's off 5%, you'll either from New Jersey land in Canada or Mexico, foreign lands. And he said, the correction is simply a 5% correction, not fixing everything. He said, the solution is often in nature itself. I'm sure you've even experienced this in your own work. It's interesting how many parallels run in life. And he says, instead of going through all these different charts and graphs, he said, the first thing I want you to do, the first task you have, Mike, is I'm going to send you to study pumpkin farmers. Pumpkin farmers. And he goes, not any pumpkin farmer, but colossal pumpkin farmers, because it's interesting what they've discovered. They change the growing process only by 5%. They change a few things. As a result, these pumpkins grow colossally. And you've seen them in your local newspaper, that farmer with the big toothy smile sitting, leaning against that pumpkin the size of a car. That thing, I went and studied that. So in 1999, I studied colossal pumpkin farming. And we're gonna share with you is what I learned in colossal business growth, what Frank mentored me around, and I learned from colossal pumpkin farmers. So I know this is the business track, but we're actually going to talk about pumpkin farming. Half the audience is like, "Get out of here." So let's start with it. The first thing I want you to be aware of is this thing called seed selection. Now I want to compare the ordinary pumpkin farmer and the colossal pumpkin farmer. The ordinary farmer has most of their sales, or around October, the fall season, right? It's the Halloween and the fall festivities that happen. 80% of your sales happen then. So you have to be in what's called the quantity game. If you're an ordinary farmer, you get as many seeds as cheaply as possible. You spread them out over your farm as widely as you can with hopes as much as will grow as possible. And if you— I don't know if anyone's ever gone pumpkin farming or pumpkin picking recently with your, uh, your kids or nephew or niece, whatever. I went with my youngest son this past year, and it's amazing, this massive field, how many pumpkins are rotting away and left over. But that's okay because ordinary farmers are in the quantity game. The more you can do, the better you'll do. I remember my son last year, he picks up literally the most twisted and gnarled pumpkin I've ever seen, and he goes, Daddy, Daddy, I want this one. I'm like, that looks like my mother-in-law. All right, yeah, clearly that laugh— you have a mother-in-law. Cheap shot, I had to get it in. And so we bought the pumpkin, but the vast majority is left at the end of the year to rot away. You make your money on volume, and you're in the quantity game. You have to keep on churning. What's interesting though is I discovered what colossal farmers do. Colossal farmers don't pick ordinary seeds. They don't spread them over a massive field. They pick colossal seeds. They pick a seed that's very specific to the, the soil content they have. They pick seeds that are very specific to their climate. And you can literally grow colossal pumpkins in Atlanta, Georgia. You can do it in the northern parts of Canada, in the southern parts of Mexico, if you pick the right seed. Our first lesson to growing a colossal business— you define colossal— just something you're very proud of, something that you envision to grow, that you have to pick the right seed. You know, the ordinary entrepreneur is in the quantity game, the better game. You know, I just want to get as many clients as possible. Often many business owners will look at their competition, say, oh, the obvious cheap thing to do, the easy thing to do is look at their website design. I'll just do their website just a little bit better. Or, or my competitor answers the phone on 2 rings, I'll answer the phone on 1 ring. The lesson is this: clients don't notice when we're better. That's the cheap, obvious thing to do. But they notice when we're different. And this is how we do it. Let me grab a marker here. Okay, we're going to use a Venn diagram to draw out what I call the colossal seed. The first element of growing a colossal business, the business that you envision, is is to have something that truly distinguishes you, that you're unique in the market. Remember this: better is not better. Do not be better than the competition. Be different than the competition. Often our uniqueness is something that we expressed as children, often something that maybe even we were picked on or made fun of because that was who we really were. You know, when you were in kindergarten or first grade, you didn't know the social norms. You probably dressed the way you wanted to dress. You act the way you want to act. But very quickly your friends say, "Oh, don't dress that way. That's not cool. You can't hang out with us." And the teacher says, "You know, color between the lines, otherwise you're going to get a low grade." So we start to comply. It's a societal pressure. But some business owners embrace their idiosyncrasies and they make their business an amplification of it. That's what I want to challenge you to do. Classic recent case study is Apple and Steve Jobs. It's an interesting example because Steve Jobs had something that he was made fun of for as a child. He was picked on by his friends for this behavior. His elders disciplined him for this behavior, yet he embraced it to make Apple an authority in the industry. Does anyone know what Steve Jobs was made fun of for, picked on? You can just shout it out if you know. Yeah, one person said buttons right away, so clearly you read my book. So the answer is this, and I bet most of you don't know this. Steve Jobs had a phobia of buttons. These things freaked him out. True story. You want to know why he wore a turtleneck? Because he couldn't handle this. And look at his pants, they aren't button flies, they're like spandex or something. Steve Jobs was made fun of by his friends because he couldn't wear buttons. That's why he always wore that turtleneck, because his elders, his parents, and so forth tried to discipline him to dress appropriately. But Steve Jobs embraced his fear of buttons. Now if we fast forward, when Apple came out with the first iPhone, they were looking at the, there it is, they were looking at the market of smartphones. The number one phone at the time was this thing called the, No, what's the next tower? What's the one with all the buttons? BlackBerry. I'm sorry, yeah, the BlackBerry. Who here had a BlackBerry? Just raise your hands. Okay, all these hands, okay. From here it looks like 75% of the people in this room had a BlackBerry at one point. The dominating force. Steve Jobs looked at it and said, the biggest opportunity in the future is not computing, traditional computers anymore, it's smart devices. We're gonna be the innovator of a smart device. He went to his engineering team and said, make a better, make a new phone, the iPhone we're gonna call it, and it's gotta beat the BlackBerry. Now his engineering team has grown up under this mentality of better is better, not different is better, uniqueness. Most people believe better is better. So they looked at the BlackBerry and said, oh, you know, BlackBerry has like, you know, 70 buttons on it, we should make 80 buttons. Steve will love this. And you remember those phones, like you could actually literally use a screen, you slide it up and it's like a full keyboard, pops out. So they went to Steve Jobs and said, hey Steve, look at this new phone we made. Look at all the buttons, Steve. It's like a scene out of The Matrix. He's like, that's amazing, right? I can't hold this for long. Yeah, thank you. Oh my God. Yeah, wait. Thank you. Thank you. My father's here. All right. Steve Jobs was freaked out. He's not— he goes, whatever you do, No buttons on the iPhone. And he went back and the engineering team designed a phone with ultimately just one button, kind of hidden away so Steve wouldn't freak out. As a result, Apple was the first company to blend technology with art. Bless you. Let it be known that scared the shit out of me. Most people are like, "Achoo!" You're like, "Achoo!" I'm like— You probably still have a BlackBerry too, right? Yeah, and here's the proof, right? So how many people now own an iPhone? Just raise your hand if you own an iPhone. Dominates the market. How many people own a BlackBerry? One alligator claw went up back there like, "Embarrassed, embarrassed to be alive." Yeah, different. The opportunity for every business owner in this room is to pursue different, be different than the competition, and massive opportunity will present itself. There's a saying I have above my desk from Oscar Wilde. He wrote the book called Dorian Gray, became, you know, multimillionaire in his time, I think in the 1800s. He's from Ireland, and he had a famous saying I have above my desk that says, be yourself because everyone else is already taken. That's the definition of it. Now, if you don't know the story of Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wilde became a multimillionaire in the 1800s, the equivalent of a multimillionaire today, but ultimately ended up destitute in jail, totally impoverished because he had the propensity to expose himself. Which I don't know, by the way, technically, if that's how you expose yourself. I just feel compelled. But there's a second lesson in here, and it speaks to this: you need to have top client demand. And I will tell you, for Oscar Wilde, that no one wanted to buy this. That's the second lesson. You must do something that's unique, but you have to have customers that want it. I mean, you could go to the next wedding you're taking photos of, whatever, you can wear a big Bozo the Clown costume and come walking in. You will get noticed. But I don't know if your customers want to buy that. So what makes you unique and intersects customer demand? Apple did it. You know, how they came to the market was they made a very unique product and they went after a very specific community. It was originally the creative community, media centers and stuff like that, and then they went to the educational market, and then they exploded. And you see this play out over and over again. There's a shoe— in the shoe industry, I tried to go back and investigate really old established businesses. I'm like, you know, how can you be innovative in the shoe market? For example, no one can, can make something unique in the shoe market, but we see it play out over and over again. I mean, the introduction— everyone, everyone here ever hear of Vibram, the five-finger shoe? Okay, yeah, it's great. If you haven't heard of it, consider yourself lucky. It's a shoe that's a glove for your foot. You literally can put this on and scale the wall and ceilings If you wear this thing, highly innovative, but it spoke to a market, what was called natural runners, people that wanted to run and feel like they're running barefoot. UGG dominated the market in the shoe industry. How'd they do it? They targeted that shoe. I don't know if you know, or boot, was originally made for surfers. They went to a very specific community. Surfers were getting— their feet were cold when they came out of the ocean. They wanted to put on something warm, but they also need something that's about this high so when they walk down the beach, the sand wouldn't kick in. That's how UGG got started. So what makes you unique, and who are the clients that resonates with? There's a third component to this colossal seed you need to do, and it's systems. And here's what I mean by systems. If you can attract prospects to your business, convert them to customers, have them raving about your experience, telling their friends about, posting all your work on social media, saying, you guys, I check this out, loving what you do, paying you well, all while you're sleeping. That's a system. If your business can run in its entirety without any of your conscious effort, that's a business that can grow colossally. And it's the intersection of these three that this happens. Now, I would suspect in this room many businesses have achieved maybe one or two of these things. I bet you a lot of businesses in here have something that's truly unique, and you have a customer base that's loving it, but you don't have it systematized. And then what you'll experience is called TFM, or time for money. The only way to grow this type of business is you got to work harder, more hours. I bet you many people can relate to that. The next situation is, I bet you some businesses in here have clients that love what you do. You have it automated, it's your kind of plug and play, but it's not distinct in the market. That means you're commoditized and you'll experience what's called DPP. Downward price pressure. When a customer says, oh, you're just another photographer, you're just the same as everyone else, they think you're a commodity, someone cheaper, and they'll look for a cheaper price, forcing you to compete on price. Situation you don't want to be in. Someone in this room— hopefully not, but I bet you someone in this room is very unique at what they do. They can deliver on a matic, but no one wants to buy it. The word for this is screwed. Yeah, that's just— let's not go there. Okay. Step 1 to growing a colossal business. Now again, colossal doesn't necessarily mean you have thousands of employees, but if that's what you desire, great. Colossal business is achieving that vision you have for your business. You have to have the colossal seed. You must be distinct in the market, clients want to buy it, and you can deliver automatic. When those 3 things are happening, you are positioned for a lot of growth. The second step to growing a colossal pumpkin, it's called sprout review. If you are an ordinary pumpkin farmer, you will go down your massive field. Remember, ordinary pumpkin farmers are in the quantity game. They go down their massive field on their tractor, and they're looking at the sprouts. They're actually looking for what's called weak sprouts, because if there's a section where the sprouts aren't growing, that needs a little help. So they'll loosen the soil, they'll give it some extra water, and to help it grow. The interesting thing is colossal farmers do the exact opposite. They focus on the strong. They walk through their fields and they look for the strongest sprouts, and they'll loosen the soil around that and give those extra water. And the reason is, is colossal farmers know this: something that's strong has potential to grow much faster. It has potential to become colossal. Well, entrepreneurs, most successful entrepreneurs know this too. Most ordinary entrepreneurs focus on the weak. What, you know, what's the weakness? What's the weakness? Who's the weakest colleague I have? I got to help them along, train them up. Or, or who's the, who's the weakest customer I have? That, that person that's just a real, real difficult customer. I, as the business owner, I'm just going to cater to them until that squeaky wheel is oiled. Or what's my weakness? Do I stink at accounting? I'm going to go back to school for that and finally master this. But colossal entrepreneurs know this truth, that weaknesses can be improved, but only by inches. Strengths can be amplified by miles. So colossal entrepreneurs will say, who's my strongest colleague? I'm going to defend and protect her. She's just gonna go out and do that one thing she does great, and we'll hire help around her. Who's my strongest customer? I'm going to focus on them and cater to them. They're going to have the experience of working with the owner all the time. They're going to get the priority prioritized. And what's my strength? Am I, am I great at the creative work? Am I great at the business side? Am I great at selling the work? What am I best at? That's where I concentrate my efforts. In fact, there's one strategy you can implement in your business today of focusing on strengths. In fact, if you do this, I would argue by tonight you're going to have a plan to grow your business colossally. What I want every person in this room to do is called a client analysis, and here's how it works. I want you to sort your clients out by revenue. Then we're gonna do this, what's called a CC analysis, and then the last thing is called community. I'm just gonna put com because I'm running out of space here, but I want you to run an analysis. What I want you to do is sort your clients over the last year by by the revenue they generated. Now, why do we do this? Because people speak the truth, not through their words, but through their wallets. Always judge people by their actions. I bet you've gone to customers and say, how's been, how's the experience with us? Fantastic. Best photographs we've ever had of us. And then they never do business with you again. Their action speaks the truth. In fact, I think our words we use to lie constantly. I know it even happened shockingly with this group here because I arrived early this morning. Some people are kind of coming in. So it's the third day. It's amazing. How you doing? Good to see you. I'm learning a lot. How's the family? Everything's great. How are you doing? Great. You guys are networking. Everyone's great. Fantastic. Perfect. Wonderful. Bullshit. Like, life is that perfect for everyone? Like, this is the mecca of happiness. Welcome to Atlanta. No, but we all know the game— social appropriateness. You know, you wouldn't come to me, Mike, how are you doing? I'm doing miserable. I would never say that to you because I know then you'd be like, um, I have a call I need to be on now, and you'd run away. I know the game. Funny story, I was in Copenhagen, this is about 4 4 years ago, I was invited to speak to a group of what's called mid-cap corporations. 1,000 people in the room, all from Europe. And mid-cap corporations are companies that do $500 million to $1 billion in revenue. These are big companies, and I'm teaching them this exact same process. Is anyone here from Europe by any chance? Any Europeans? Okay, so one. Yeah, alligator claw again. I don't know what's going on. Tell me if this is true. You can just nod your head. European presenters, as a rule of thumb, are meticulous, perfect. I've actually never seen presentations that were so good in my life. Every single presenter, perfectly dressed behind a podium, perfectly clicking and clacking the PowerPoints. It was unbelievably good. It was like this, a 3-day event. The closing keynote speaker is the only person not from Europe. It's this guy, Yucco the Clown from America. And the event is going, they have a host speaking and so forth. There's been no music or anything the entire event. It's very similar to this room, just kind of double the size. And I don't know if anyone here is also a professional speaker, but if you are, you have probably what's called a rider. A rider is a contract that says, when this guy speaks, like, please have a bottle of water on the stage, or second thing they say, like, you know, please play certain music. And for me, the music selection is called Jukebox Hero by a band called Foreigner. That's my song, I guess. And so this whole event, there's no music. I'm offstage, I'm down here. The host comes up and says, we'd like to invite up our next speaker, traveling all the way from the New York City area, Mr. Mike Michalowicz. And then all All of a sudden, the speaker— I didn't know they had speakers in there— crackles. You hear, I'm like, what's going on? And they had a DJ. I didn't know. He puts on Jukebox Hero. If you don't know the first note of that song, it goes something like this: boom, boom, boom. It's a bass. It's just boom, boom, boom. The whole audience goes, ah! And so what do I do? I go, yeah! I'm way offstage over here. I'm like, what would Anthony Robbins do? What would it Oh, Anthony Robbins would run on stage. So I do one of these. I'm like, hello Copenhagen. Yeah, you guys were more engaged. There was silence. Silence. I'm like, oh my gosh, what would Anthony Robbins do? Oh, he would do one of these moves. I can't hear you, Copenhagen. More silence. And it gets worse, it gets worse. So I start doing this presentation, I get all animated and jacked up, sweat pouring down, all gross. I do this, I draw this giant seed. You'll notice I always put the cap back on my markers because what happened in Copenhagen— oh, it's unbelievable. I'm drawing this thing up, I'm like, do you understand Copenhagen, the importance of us implementing this? We have to find the colossal seed. I don't care if you're zero in revenue or a billion. Most businesses don't figure this out, and therefore they get stuck. This will get you unstuck. You get this. And the lights are on me, the sweat's coming down. I take a deep breath for, you know, dramatic pause. As I do it, I decide to wipe the sweat off of— off of my brow with with the cap off. And I go like this. I drew the most massive unibrow on the planet. And no one said anything. No one. All of a sudden, everyone started taking notes. They're like this. They're like, what? What? One woman looks up between her fingers and she starts dry heaving. She's like— And I'm like, they love me. They really love me. This is working. 2 hours of this torture. At the very end of the event, a person comes up to me in broken English, says, "You need brow." And I discovered the horror on my face. The lesson's this: I don't care where you are on this planet, we all lie to each other. We all lie. We'll never say something because we don't want to hurt the other person's feelings, but our actions will show the truth. And that's the lesson. You can survey your customers, you can ask them how you're doing, and they'll lie to you. Think about the last survey you took. You know, the survey with all those questions, like you answer the first one like, oh, maybe it's this, the second one this, third one you're like, oh, let me start designing a pattern here. Haha. You start, you know, it's page 6, you're like, well, I wonder if I can click this with my foot, right? You've done that. You've lied. So we need to sort our clients out by revenue because they're demonstrating through action. If they are buying your services repeatedly, or again and again, or more and more, that means they love you. I did this for my own business, and I remember sorting this out my one client was doing about $30,000 in revenue, which was huge for me. I had another one that was doing about $15,000, and then this was doing $5,000, $4,000, $4,000, and then $3,000, $3,000, and there's always like people down here. Some were doing $100. Some people down here, I'm like paying them to work with me, you know. And then once you do this, then put their names to it. So this was like a bank, this was a hedge fund, blah, blah, blah. And so forth. I did this all out. Now I realize most people in this room are B2C. This applies B2B, B2C, it makes no difference whatsoever. So I sort these out by your client's last name or whatever. That's the first analysis. Remember, they're demonstrating through actions they love you. But I want you to do a second analysis that I call the crush or cringe factor. It's a real simple analysis. When the caller ID pops up on your phone, what's your reaction? Is it a crush? Are you like, oh, you're calling me? Oh, I love you. Yeah, did you hear me say that? I'm sorry, it was awkward. Yeah, that one. Or is it the cringe factor and you're like, oh my gosh, these people are still alive? And you go for the hang-up But you know, the iPhones nowadays, like everything switches around, you answer it and you're like, oh God, right? And they're like, hello? And you, you heard me say that? No, no, no. I was just so excited you called. Here's a technique. I was in Mexico presenting on this concept and this one entrepreneur there told me like the best technique. This gentleman, he says, if you ever answer a phone call that you don't want to take, he says, take your phone and kick it out from your face so it lights up a a little bit and look out the side of your eyes and push on and off the mute button while you're talking. It sounds like you're disconnected. It's not like a bad connection, right? So, so the cringe customer— the cringe customer is where you, you answer the phone and you're like, I'm sorry, I think we have a bad connection. Don't hang up. That's a cringe factor. And on this analysis, what I want you to do is next to each customer, put either a frowny face if they're a cringe or a smiley face. Okay, so just make— I made the Elephant Man there, but you know what I'm saying? Just make like different, different ones. And it's the intersection of the customers who pay you the most or demonstrate they value you and you give them a smiley face. You want more. You love them are the ones we want to clone. This is the process of cloning. You may notice that sometimes your top customer up here is actually in fact not your best customer. Sometimes a customer pays you very well, but they're difficult to deal with. In fact, when I did this analysis, my top customer— this was B2C— well, I'm sorry, B2B. This customer was a bank, and they would order computers from our little company. And then sometimes a few days before the order of their 10 computers, they would say, oh, we had a board meeting, we had the cancel the order. Well, I bought those computers with my own credit cards, maxed out my credit cards, and they were sitting in my office. And then a panic went through. I can't afford to have these computers. They wouldn't engage me. My second customer— this was a hedge fund— called me and said, hey, we want to order maybe 6 computers. They buy less, but they would also say, we just FedExed a check to you to pay for the computers. We realize you're such a small business that would put a cash burden on you, so So there's a check in the mail. I love them. I really love them. Go through your list and find the customers you love most. Then I want you to write their unique characteristics. Now, most people in this room are B2Cs. Is it men, women? Are they married, single? You know, what's their, their religious preferences or sexual preferences? Whatever it is, document that stuff all down to know the community that you're serving well. What happens here is we're gonna concentrate our efforts. If you want to grow a colossal business, take care of your best customers better than they've ever been cared for and find more people like them. That's all you need to do. But here's the great irony: most businesses focus on their worst customers. Maybe you even do this. You know that squeaky wheel cause? And they're like, you know what, this photograph she took, really, the portraits did not come out the way we wanted. I look near perfect, but not perfect. So we're dissatisfied. You need to do these again. And if you don't do it again, I will go on Yelp and give you like a minus 3 stars. I don't know how you do it, but I will figure a way, right? You know these jackwad customers, they're nightmares. But here's the thing, we go out of our way, we're like, oh my God, just care for this one customer, do whatever it is, just get them out of our hair. You'll do extra work. You'll, you'll, you'll, overdeliver, and maybe they won't even pay you just to get them out of your hair. And what do they do after they hang up the phone with you? They call their best friends. Never forget, birds of a feather do flock together. So they call other jackwads and they go, you wouldn't believe it, there is this photographer who you can bitch and moan to, they'll do this most amazing work and you don't even have to pay them. And they tell their friends, and we constantly attract customers down here. In fact, I bet I bet you if we look at many businesses in this room, we can rattle off more bad customers than we can good customers because we're concentrating our efforts here as opposed to there. So I want you to focus on your best customers. Once you do it, meet with them face-to-face, take them out to lunch, get time with them. Even if they're remote from you and you got to hop on a plane, meet with your best customers. We want to clone them. I found in fact there are 3 magical questions questions that we can ask to clone our best customers. I took my best customer out, his name was Larry, and I took him out to lunch. I said, Larry, I just love doing business with you. I want to thank you for that. And I said, I do have some questions for you. Here's the 3 questions. First question, I said, Larry, why do you keep working with us? What am I doing right? That's the question. Now this is a Jedi mind trick I just revealed to you. What am I doing right? Larry said, you know, Mike, what I love about your computer company is that when our computer network goes down, we're a hedge fund, you're getting yourself or one of your technicians on site usually within a couple hours. You know, the last computer guy took almost a full day. We're a hedge fund, we're doing trades, we have backup systems, but when our main system's down, we need this fixed. You get on site quickly, he told me. Now here's the Jedi mind trick. When your best customer tells you what you're doing right, they in fact won't tell you what you're doing right. They will tell you what they judge you by and what you actually need to improve. So when Larry said, Mike, I noticed how quickly you get on site in 2 hours, I realized in that moment I need to get on site faster. So I set myself up that whenever there was a challenge, I would dispatch my technicians or myself usually from another client, and I'd always be within a 20-minute radius. I was getting on to Larry's, to Larry's office whenever there was a problem within like 30 minutes. Larry was blown away. He's like, this is unbelievable what you're doing for us. But the thing is, he told me how to amaze him. Whatever you're doing right, you must do better. That's the answer. The second question— don't write this down just yet because there's a little Jedi mind trick here— is what am I doing wrong? There's a problem. Don't write that down yet, because if you ask your customers what you're doing wrong, Never forget the unibrow experience I had. People lie to you. So if I went to Larry and said, what am I doing wrong? He'd be like, oh no, everything's great. Instead, ask this question. Ask your best customers, what's wrong with my industry? What's wrong with my industry? Because now it's the person outside the room. Listen, at the end of this event, I could say, how was the speech? How was it? Did you like it? It was great. It was amazing. If I leave this room You guys like, did you see that vest he was wearing? Did not work. Did not work. But you would never— you would never say that to my face. It's socially inappropriate. So ask your best customers what's wrong with your industry and they'll tell us what we need to fix. I asked Larry, what's wrong with the computer industry? He goes, oh, computer guys. He goes, you know, the last computer company, we used to get these things called the PalmPilot. They never heard of the PalmPilot. Okay. Everyone raise your hand if you're over 45. Okay. If you don't know what a PalmPilot is, it is a smartphone that was neither smart nor a phone. Yeah. Digest that one for a little bit. And, uh, they cost about $250 or something. And Larry said, you know, our last computer guy, when the, when the, uh, when the PalmPilot didn't work, he would charge us like $500 to repair it. That's, that's total highway robbery. Just get me a new smartphone. So I'm taking notes like, make it— there's a new way to make $500. It ain't smartphones anymore, or, you know, Palm Pilots. What's wrong with your industry is your biggest opportunity for differentiation. Improve what you do right, fix what the industry is doing wrong, and your colossal seed will explode. Third and final question. I said, now Larry said, Larry, you know, I gotta ask you, what other vendors, what other people do you depend on? What other vendors do you depend on? Actually, that's such a juicy question, I'll save that for the end of today's presentation. What other vendors do you depend on? Oh, one last thing. If you wanna get the best answers out of your customers, this works like magic, definitely write this one down. When you're at lunch, order martinis. Very effective, not for yourself, for your best guess. I went through this process with, with a friend of mine. I'm in a group with him, a mastermind, and he said— the reason I wear these, these bracelet things is, is because he actually manufactures these things. He makes different tchotchke things. He'll take an established brand. This used to be, remember, Lance Armstrong's Livestrong? Like, who wants that anymore? But He would then make all the clones of these things. He went through his analysis, found out that his number one customer in revenue was Walmart, but he went through his analysis, found out that his number one customer in revenue was Walmart, but actually in his case was not his true number one customer. It was very hard for him to deliver to Walmart. They would say, you know, when we order 100,000 of these bracelets, you have to deliver them on a Monday morning at our docking station, whatever, between 11 and 11:30. If you're outside that time range, we're gonna penalize you financially. You had to put the SKU 1/4 inch below what's called the lip line, or the bend in the box. And if it's anywhere outside that range, we're gonna penalize you. And I'm not picking on Walmart here necessarily, but Walmart does this for their own efficiency. But my friend Joe couldn't comply. He actually found out his number one customer was actually a little bit more down the list. It was a place called the Dollar Store, if you've ever been there. Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, there's all those knockoffs. Here's what he did in his office. Once you identify your best customer, remember, prioritize them. Here's how he did it. He put a sign above his own desk, and he did with a couple of his colleagues, and the sign said, we have a policy to answer the phone on the first ring. He says if the first ring comes from the dollar store, their true number one customer, start taking their order immediately, because while you're on the phone If Walmart calls in, let it go to voicemail and then call them back. Standard stuff. The next sequence of events showed true prioritization. It said we always answer the call on the first ring. If Walmart calls first, immediately answer the phone, start taking their order. But if while you're on the phone with Walmart, the dollar store calls, immediately hang up on Walmart. Immediately hang up on Walmart and take take our true number one customer's order. This customer was blown away. They've never been catered to this way. And the word started to get out. Joe's little company started off, I think it was like, you know, $500,000, maybe a million dollars in revenue, which is substantial at this point. But it took 20 years to get to a million dollars in revenue. Grew to $4 million, $8 million, $27 million. Took 4 years and he sold his company. Colossal growth by focusing on his best customers. Okay. So these are two steps growing a colossal pumpkin. Let's get into the third step. It's the watering process. If you're an ordinary pumpkin farmer, you use a technique called saturation. Perhaps if you flew in, you may have seen these fields that get saturated, and if you drove in, you'd see them out there too. If you're flying, you ever see those circular patterns on the ground, like when you're landing? It's not UFOs, apparently. Those are farmers, and what they do is they have these massive watering structures. There's a pipe in the middle and there's this massive tube. It can go like 500 yards long, or they can get so big, and they'll go around real slowly saturating the ground. And the reason— you've probably never seen one running, or rarely do, because they don't run during the day. They run at night. There's too much evaporative effect during the day. So these these systems go. And what they do is they saturate the ground because they have one shot per day to give these seeds water. So they go over it, and in the process they actually kill a lot of seeds. The little sprouts will split and die, or they'll rot out because they get oversaturated. The colossal farmers I found did not use a saturation approach. They use what's called a quenching approach. It's a very subtle difference, but the impact's significant. Significant. They will go to the strongest sprout, give it the optimal amount of water— not saturated, just the optimal amount— and they'll leave it. They'll come back 2 hours later and they'll hit it again. They can water a plant 10 or even 15 times in a 24-hour period, but the pumpkin responds with explosive growth. They can grow 15 to 20 times faster. They can literally put on 50 pounds a day. Yeah, what? What? You can't do that at McDonald's, right? Like Well, I almost, I almost did a Trump joke there, but I'm holding it. Hold it in. Hold it in. All right. So that was hard. That was hard. We need you to crunching process. Now you, you have seen the saturation process. I know you've seen the saturation process. You ever go to the networking events, particularly in the olden days, you'd go to some event, it'd be room like this. People are drinking that, you know, muddy coffee, and they have that croissant in their hand, which is like a wedge of tar and rock. And they're sitting there, and you're talking to your friends. Hey, I haven't seen you in a while. How's business going? All of a sudden, while this networking is going on, the door swings open. Some guy comes in, smoke rolls out. He's got spurs on his boots, you know, the six-shooter, which aren't guns. Those are his business cards. And he comes walking in like this. And he's there to do one thing: start networking. And he starts handing out cards. Ding, ding, ding. He's like, oh, I haven't seen you before. How are you? Good to see you. We should do business together. Biz, biz, biz, biz, biz. You're sitting there, you got your coffee in the one hand, you got your croissant, and you've never been so grateful to have that rock and mud in your hand because you're protected. Both your hands are occupied. And that's when he comes up to you, he sizes you up, and that's when he goes, Ah, he takes the card, jams it right into your mouth, and you're like, I've been hit. That guy goes back to his office and he sits there waiting by his phone. He's like, no one's calling me. I was networking. Where's all the business? Of course he's not going to get business because he's killing the roots of relationships. It's too much, too fast, too intense. But that's old school. We don't do that networking anymore. Now we do it through this thing called remarketing. Have you heard this on the internet? That's where that freaking advertisement chases you everywhere. My daughter just got her license recently and I started to research out the safest, affordable, economic cars we bought. She actually bought the used car. I was doing some research. I found out ends up the Toyota Corolla, very safe bet. I'll never forget the Toyota Corolla because I was on the website just looking at the new one. I looked at a green one. Now every website I've gone to for 2 years, that Green Goblin is chasing me. I hate Toyota. Hate them. They've saturated me too much too fast. There's another technique called quenching, and quenching is where we simply appear and educate and entertain and serve. Just do what's in the best interest of the customer, making them know we're available but not pushing a decision. In fact, this has happened to every person probably in this room. Anyone see the most recent Olympics? One person. Okay. So the Olympics is this gathering of amazing athletes from throughout the world. You've got to see this. It's unbelievable. I know, I know. It took my breath away too. 40 years ago. He's 40. No, a lot older. So I'm throwing— I'm so thrown off by my own joke. I'm like, that was so funny. That was so funny, Mike. So you watch the Olympics. I don't know, there's a couple Olympics ago, right? You know, Bob Costas. I don't remember this Olympics. Bob Costas is announcing and he has this eye infection that— you remember that thing? Like Quasimodo's coming out of his face and like, oh, like You'll put that on TV. Thank you. He's like, oh, Michael Phelps won the 100 billionth gold. We're going to go to the gold medal ceremony right after this commercial break. And you're like, thank God, because I don't want to see that. It goes to commercial and there you see it, that liter of Coke with that perfect bead of sweat dripping down. And then a polar bear hand reaches up and grabs and starts drinking it. And we love it. Now here's the interesting thing. Coke doesn't say, Coke's not thinking, oh my gosh, or we're not thinking, oh my gosh, I am watching the Olympics without drinking a Coca-Cola right now. I need to race to the supermarket to get myself a Coke. And I was like, oh my God, I'm watching Olympics and I don't own a polar bear. I need to buy one. No, no, no. What they're doing is simply entertaining us because they know that the next time we are making a decision around purchasing soda and we see a liter of Coke and a liter of generic soda Soda, we had the propensity to buy the Coke. Brand loyalty, right? And we all know the ingredients are the same. It's carbonated water, caramel coloring, and sugar. We know it's the exact same thing. In blind taste tests, 95% of the world population can't tell the difference, but we buy the Coke. And how behavioral wiring is, because we have such an affinity toward the entertainment we've experienced with Coke, we're like, this stuff does taste amazing. I think there's hints of ginger in there, right? We love it. Now listen, none of us here has the Coke budget, but we have the opportunity to do the exact same thing. Appear in front of your best customer frequently. You know, when you're out to lunch with them, ask them where they congregate. They don't use those exact words because that sounds kind of weird. But as Larry said— hey Larry, I said, I've never worked with hedge funds I asked him, like you before, where do hedge funds go to get education and learning? He's like, oh, there's two hedge fund conferences a year. There was one in Long Beach, California, and one in Greenwich, Connecticut. I was going to the Chamber of Commerce all the time. I'm like, do you go there? He's like, no. So what did I start doing? I started going to these two conferences. I was the only computer guy there. I started lapping up business left and right. And I know you're not surprised. It's just showing up. Ask your best clients, say, where do you hang out? Oh, you know, I'm in the pool community. There's a pool club. Everyone goes to the pool club. Be the only photographer there. Not taking pictures without permission, but, but be the only photographer there, and you'll start building rapport. You'll, you'll start appearing in front of them frequently. Listen, the more frequently we see someone or experience something, the more we inherently trust We trust it. It's wired into our minds. I'll prove it to you through a little story. I, um, it's a funny story, get prepared. My second business was in computer crime— pause, pause— investigation. I was in computer crime investigation. My company actually did the Enron trial. We were one of the biggest investigators on the Enron trial, along with sadly some of the biggest murder cases in US history where there was computer forensic evidence. We were involved in those cases. Christie Brinkley's divorce, her 1, 2, 3, 5th divorce, the guy named Peter Cook, if you remember this. We were the investigators for that case. At that time, my business had grown significantly, had 35 employees. But sometimes as a business owner, You need to make sacrifices and do the work yourself. Even we have 35 employees. So I had to work with Christie Brinkley. Yeah, my wife still does not buy that line. Um, but we were acquired. Has anyone here ever sold their business? Okay, so you can testify this. It's in the— if you haven't sold your business and you aspire to that, I wish that upon every person in this room. It is an amazing, an amazing day. You go through this thing called the Dancers. Let's watch the wining, dining. And then the final day, the final day was in a conference room that was literally a little bit bigger than this room. I, just to give you a sense for this, I was all the way on that side of the conference table. We're gonna do some running here. I'm all the way over here. That was awkward. I'm all the way over I'm over here at the conference table, and the managing partner who's facilitating the acquisition's all the way down there. Between us are the suits. All these people have flown in, they're wearing their nice ties and stuff for the meeting, and they're just taking notes. Yes, yes, yes. Let's say this is the managing partner, John. I'll say I'm down there. John, the managing partner's here. He grabs his phone, he talks with the legal department. I don't know why I emphasized that towards you. Legal department. And he says, oh, that's wonderful news. He puts down his phone, he grabs one of those little mini microphones you see at airports, and he goes, Mr. McCallowits, that's my name, we'd like to congratulate you. That was our legal department. You're now part of Robert Half International. Now I'm all the way, all the way. Oh my God. Holy cow. We need a break now. So I'm all the way over here on this side and I go— by the way, this is not a business tip, okay? John pushed down the button, says, congratulations, you're part of Robert Half International. I push down the button, say, pardon me, John, would you pass the Grey Poupon? Yeah, totally not a tip. Do not do that. The best part is everyone at the table, all those suits They start going, this guy's a genius. We need more mustard at our meetings, John. So yeah, no surprise I was fired from Robert Half International within a year. So here's what happened. So true story. I want you to realize we are all unemployable in here, okay? There's one company that'll hire us, our own. So after the acquisition, all the suits are like, that's great, that's great. I then— it's just so exhausting, just trying to buy time. They then walk me to my new office. Now this is in New York City, Avenue of Americas, the Rockefeller Christmas tree. That's what I'm seeing outside my office window. I sit down around 3 o'clock in the afternoon. First call is to my wife. I said, biggest day of my professional professional life has just happened. Yes, the check's been deposited. Yeah. Oh, you're going shopping, are you? Okay. I'm like, and then I tell her, I said, I don't know. I've never been an employee in my life. First time ever an employee. I said, I don't, I don't know if I should do this, but I think to put my best foot forward, I should kind of burn the midnight oil. I'll be the last one to leave. I'm an employee. She's like, that's a good idea. Bye. Have fun. I start clicking, clacking, clicking, clacking. 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, click clack. I look out the window, door, people are still working. 6, 7 o'clock, like, what animals? They're still working. Now these people have flown in from all different conferences and so from all different locations for this conference and they didn't have family to go home to. So everyone's burning the midnight oil. Like, I'm like, is it 9 o'clock? Like, how much Tetris can I play? You were fine. So I, uh, so 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, finally the place vacates out so much so that they actually turn off the lights. So now I'm in the dark. I walk over to the elevators. I push the button and I sit waiting for the elevator. Elevator comes up, opens up, the scariest human being on the planet. Is in there. Does everyone know Freddy Krueger? Yeah. Freddy Krueger is like a fashion model compared to this guy. This guy is sitting in there. This is, I think, 2003. He's sitting there smoking a cigarette, not like this, but like this, which we're in a building in New York. There's no smoking. But he goes like this. He takes a drag. He looks up at me, goes, are you going to get in? And throws the cigarette butt at my foot. By the way, the only voice impersonation I do is the Godfather. You're going to get in. That's the only one I can do. You're going to get in. Maybe you haven't known one person sold a company here. Maybe you haven't sold a company, but have you ever been in a professional environment where you're about to get murdered? Because this is what happens. It's interesting, our brain splits in half in the moment. This side of the brain said, "Mike, get in the elevator like a professional." This side of the brain had a slightly higher voice, said, "Run, baby, run!" And it's fascinating when our brain gives us two signals because our body follows suit. This guy sits there like, you're gonna get in? And my body goes, ah, yes. And I literally crawled into the elevator like this, which apparently is a very safe way to navigate elevators. And I'm sitting here I hit your funny bone, didn't I? I got it. I got— oh, now I'm going to start working you. So I'm sitting there. I'm sitting there. Oh, I got you now. Yeah, we're locked in. It's just me and you now, sister. Me and you. He didn't kill me. I know, I know. You're like, you sure? No, he didn't kill me. I'm still here. I'm still here. He didn't kill me. 2 days later, I'm in the room. I push the button to the elevator and Krueger's there again. You gonna get in? I saw this guy 5 to 10 times within a month. By the 5th time, I'm like, hey Freddy, what's up? I bought you a pack of smokes. Here's a lesson. Not a single person in this room, not a single business in this room is as scary as that guy. He literally could be a murderer. He could be. But the more frequently I saw him, I trusted him more. I had more confidence in him. The more— you don't have to be a fabulous salesperson and Mr. or Mrs. Razzmatazz. Just appear in front of your prospects and they will start to trust you and like you and know you, and you'll start to win business. And they're sitting right here. You already have them. Just find out their community. OK. Oh, did you like it or do you want to be done? All right. I love you guys. I love you. I love you too. I love you. I could feel the vibe when I walked in. I was like, yeah, we got it going. Not a creep. That sounds so creepy. I did not know. I mean, like soulmates, not like creepy. That was— yeah, you got— okay, okay, okay. She's like, I'm calling my husband right now. Is there any murderinos in this group? Okay, so just pepper spray the guy is what you're thinking. That's an inside joke that really fell flat. So let's just skip that. Fourth step to growing colossal pumpkin is called root analysis. Now here's the thing. I don't want you to be afraid of math here. This is not a math term. Root analysis is where you literally look at the roots in the ground. Do you know the ordinary pumpkin farmer doesn't even care about that? They're looking at the surface level. They're just putting chemicals down. They see signs of what's called blight, which means disease. You throw down some chemicals. Colossal pumpkin farmers instead look at the root system because the root system feeds the entire plant. It's the most critical part of the plant. It's just underground. So these colossal farmers have these goggles that like firefighters use to look through walls and stuff if there's a fire. They use the same equipment, thermal imaging equipment and so forth. And I can just, I can kind of feel the vibe here. I know a lot of you are like, I don't even know if I want to be a photographer anymore. I kind of want to be a colossal pumpkin farmer. I get it. Just so you're in the know, we don't call ourselves Colossal Pumpkin Farmers We prefer to go by Lords of the Gourds because we're that cool. Second thing is, if you go to a colossal farm, be careful of these things because they can see through your clothing. They like to play a joke. I'm at this colossal field. Is Hells Angels coming or something? What's that? So I'm at this field and there's like, you know, 4 or 5 colossal pumpkin farmers all with their thermal imaging equipment. They're looking at the ground. I'm sitting there just fascinated by that. At the exact same time, they all look at me at the same time. They look up and they go, ooh, if you laugh at that, you have a dirty mind. Filthy. All right. What matters is under the ground. How does this translate to what we do? Most businesses look at the surface level. Most businesses are doing the surface-level marketing, level things. How do I do Facebook ads to get more leads and so forth? I'm not saying they don't work, but it's so obvious. The biggest opportunity we have is the root system, and the root system to our growth is called the vendor well. It is all of those other companies that your clients are being served by that could serve you. When I asked Larry that third question, I told you write that down. What other vendors do you depend on? Larry looked at me and said, why are you asking that? I said, Larry, if I had relations with your other vendors, maybe we can collaborate and collectively serve you better. I was like, no one's ever asked me this. And if you ask your best customers what other vendors they depend on, they'll be blown away because they've never been asked that before. So Larry said, I'll introduce you to everyone. The security company— there's a company that made the trading desk for hedge funds. I remember calling them. And I called the owner of it and said, hey, I have a great client named Larry of this hedge fund. He's like, Larry's a great client for me too, which you'll find your best customers are also the best customers of all these other vendors. So instant rapport. I said, hey, I want to see how I can serve Larry better. If I get a better understanding what you're doing, I can serve Larry better. You know, the mistake businesses make on here is say, oh, I can call this other vendor and say, who can you introduce me to? Can you give me leads? That's not the game here. It's about serving your mutual client better. So he says, you know what, it's funny you called because we noticed that computer companies often installed the data wires in the wrong conduit. He goes, there's a whole different conduit section you're putting in the electrical for data only. Put it over here. So starting that day forward, we put the electric, the data in the right conduit, which meant when the table expanded or shifted or whatever work they did, The network hummed along. It never broke again. The, the trading desk guy was thrilled. He's like, oh my gosh, I never have problems anymore. Larry never complains. Larry was thrilled. He's like, we can do anything we want to our system and we have no more problems. This is wonderful. Larry, our mutual client, was thrilled, and the vendor was thrilled. You know, in most cases, the traditional thing to do is you look at your clients and say, hey, how, how was your experience? With us, and the client says it was great, we loved your services. Remember, unibrow, people will lie, but they say it was great. We know the classic response is ask for a referral. That's fantastic that you enjoyed our services. Do you have any other friends or perhaps family that would also like to work with us? Ask for a referral. And that's when that client writes down a number that starts off with 555. Yeah, you're like, that doesn't— that seems like a movie. We get bad referrals. If you ever have asked for a referral, you notice how sometimes, or many times, you get bad referrals referrals. Why is that? Think from the client's perspective. If we're doing the obvious thing and asking for referrals, what we're doing is hurting our clients. We're first saying, thanks for your money, but your money's not good enough. I need your family too. Or I'm diluting, meaning, hey, thanks for the referral, but I don't have time to do your work anymore. I have to focus over here. So why would a client want to refer us? By focusing on the vendor well, I'm not diluting my attention. I'm concentrating my attention. I'm saying, how do I serve you better? What other vendors do you depend on? I'm gonna work closely with them. And I've worked with photographers, I'll tell you. You ask your best clients like, oh, where do you get your makeup done? Who does your clothing? Who's your jeweler? It's like there's so many opportunities. You know, Nordstrom's could be an amazing resource for you. You introduce your, your client introduces you to someone that sells their clothing and you try to serve them better, saying, how can we take, more flattering photos. Maybe, maybe when we're done these photographs, with the consent of the customer, we can release the photos to you for your own publicity. Thrill the other vendor is the goal. Well, that's what I did. I never asked for a referral, but the magic happened. About 3 months into this, this trading desk company was so happy about how we were trying to cater to them that the call came in. They said, we found another hedge fund, they want our trading desk. It's just like Larry, it's a clone of this customer. In fact, He says, but they don't like their current computer guy. Would you be interested in the work? Now, I don't know if you can see how much my beard has grown, but it goes all the way down here. It's my evil stroking thinking beard. Yes, it's partly invisible, and there's a curly Q right here. I don't know if you can see the curly Q, but when I got the call saying, oh, you'll introduce me to another client just like Larry, let me think if I want that. Yes, and within a year, this company introduced me to 10 clones of Larry. My company exploded. It wasn't only the trading desk company. I built another relationship with another vendor called Goldman Sachs. They're basically a bank for hedge funds. 75 Larrys they gave me. My little company still exists today. Sold it to private equity. It's called Olmec, Olmec.com. You can Google it or go go to the site— was acquired by private equity because of our explosive growth. Because all we started doing is asking our best clients about their vendor network and serving the network. In other words, on classical growth. The fifth and final step in growing a colossal pumpkin is the pruning process. For my brothers and sisters who are now lords of the gourds, we call it killing, not pruning. That's for the weaklings. But here's the process. If you are growing colossal pumpkin, as the colossal pumpkin goes, if a little pumpkin pops up on the side, you immediately cut it off the vine. You kill it instantly. Because, you know, every second the little pumpkin's allowed to grow, it's taking away nutrients and vitamins and water from the colossal pumpkin. It's actually prohibiting the growth of colossal pumpkin. And you kill it instantly. There's no, like, awkward, like, oh, between me and you, I'm so sorry, I'm going to give you A 4-week severance package. We'll find you a new place to go. No, they remove the pumpkin instantly. It's funny, there was an interview with Steve Jobs right prior to his passing. The journalist, she asked him the best questions. The book is, I don't know, about this thick, but I hope you get a chance to at least read a summary of it, because embedded in there is the best question that could have ever been asked. The journalist, she said, how do you have so many successes under your belt? Now, just to quantify this, Steve Jobs grew Apple from startup— he was in a room just like this— to hundreds and hundreds of millions before he was fired from his own company and then was asked to come back to bring it to billions. In the meantime, when he was left that company, he started Pixar, which became a billion-dollar company. He did have a failure, was called NeXT Computers, that achieved a hundred million dollars in revenue. I want that failure. I really want that failure. They said, Steve, how did you do this? And he said, if I have to attribute it to a single factor, it's been my discipline of saying no to some of the greatest opportunities in the world. Those little pumpkins, you know what we call them as entrepreneurs and business owners? We call them opportunities. Oh, there's an opportunity here. I could do this. Oh, there's an opportunity over there. Opportunity, opportunity, and we're constantly distracted. And as a result, all of our time, our resources, our energy gets diluted, and the colossal pumpkin never comes about. In fact, you could— you can go to any farm anywhere on this planet, drive down a country road, massive farm, you'll never see a colossal pumpkin or any vegetable just miraculously growing out of nowhere, because the process of doing everything prohibits colossal growth. In fact, as I share the system, the Pumpkin Plan system, people say, that's interesting, Mike, you're talking about niche specialization, focus, actually removing customers, focusing very narrowly. That sounds risky. I don't know if I want to do this. Give me a guarantee, Mike. And the beautiful thing is I do have a guarantee. The bad thing is it's not for colossal growth, it's for ordinary What I found is you're guaranteed never to grow anything colossally when you focus on the ordinary. You see, these farmers that do ordinary pumpkin farming are spreading all the resources, all the energy everywhere, and they'll never be able to grow something colossal. Interestingly, when I was interviewing these colossal farmers, they aren't guaranteed colossal growth. Sometimes literally the pumpkin grows so quickly it splits under its own weight. Other times, you know, with the seasons that we're having nowadays, these crazy storms come through and it wipes out your pumpkins. Other times, competitive pumpkin farmers at midnight will come with their shotguns— not at you, at your pumpkin— and blast it. Yeah, they're a little loco. Yeah. But here, what was fascinating, every Colossal Farmer I studied When it didn't work out, they simply said, oh, guess it wasn't my season. They went right back to the shed and grabbed the next seed and started the process again. This system I just taught you, this is the system for colossal growth. It's a form of specialization targeting, becoming masterful at one thing, growing explosively. But most people won't do it because they want to try to do everything well.. I worked with a photographer in Denville, New Jersey. He's my guy, and his business was struggling, and what we did, we went through this analysis, and we found his best customers were doing memorials effectively, and I said, why are these so impactful to people? And he said, because they're sharing their stories in this picture. It's someone that's left us on this planet, but their story hasn't. Well, we started to interview customers of theirs and see how important these photographs were, and when we really understood what the customers wanted, we made a small change that resulted in explosive growth. We started to embed the actual stories in the lapel lines. We would use micro fonts. We learned the story of the person that we were photographing, and then we would put their stories embedded in micro feature or micro font in their lapels, and no one would know it. But after this person passed and they had the photograph up there, people look at it and look at a normal photo, but when you had a magnifying glass, you could see the story in there. This guy's reputation exploded as business grew colossally because he understood his best customer and over-catered to them. Colossal growth. There is a risk, maybe it won't work out, but I can guarantee if you stick with it or over and over again. It's just a matter of time before it captures your season and experience explosive growth. I met with Frank recently. Frank was my coach, my business coach. I shared in the beginning, sound like the Godfather. He's quite elderly now. I was one of— I feel so blessed— I was one of about 20 entrepreneurs he worked with. He grew a company called Konica, which maybe some of you are familiar with. Konica started in Japan. He's the guy who brought to the US, started it up, grew to $100 million plus in revenue before he exited and decided to follow his life's passion, which was coaching at that time young entrepreneurs. And I met with him and 20 other or so entrepreneurs worked with him. And I still meet with him. His wife sadly had become very ill. She's now passed. But when I met with him last, a year ago or so, I was going to his condo. That's where we'd meet. Knock on his door, and his wife was still around at the time. He was a full-time caregiver for her. I knock on the door, he opens the door. It's 9:30 in the morning. He opens up, he goes, yeah, which is New Jersey, just roll with it. And I go, hey Frank, I'm here for a meeting. He's like, that's fantastic. He goes, I got good news. I have a caregiver here today for my wife. Why don't you and I go out for a little lunch? And I remember looking at my watch, I'm like, Frank, it's 9:30 in the morning. He's like, "I got an early bird special." Which I don't know if there's any moral to that story, but even rich old guys like early bird specials apparently. So it was from Fuddruckers. So we drove down to Fuddruckers for a hamburger. This is not my steering wheel, this is my hamburger. And I remember taking that first bite into that hamburger and I looked at Frank and I asked him a question. I hadn't asked him in almost 25 years. I said, Frank, the first time we met, you said— share the story of how I don't want to be that guy, the rusty lawn chair, all this stuff. I'm like, that was so insane. Why would you do that? And he looks me in the eyes and he starts laughing, like an old guy's laugh where laughing reverts to choking to death. He goes, "Oh yeah, that's— that's— that's— and after the near-death experience." He goes, "I do that with every entrepreneur I've ever worked with, Mike." He goes, "You have to understand." I tell everyone that story. He goes, "The reason I do that is many people are here today in their business, wherever it is, and we're frustrated. We don't like it. We're stuck, we're upset, we're disappointed. We're never hitting those targets. But when we're told there's an opportunity here, he goes, this requires a leap of faith. And therefore people don't do it. He says, most people will stay comfortable in the uncomfortable space and never change. He goes, the only way I found I can change people is to make them more fearful of staying put than making the leap. That's why I shared that story. I want you to think of where you are today. If you're thrilled, if you're loving business, Kudos. Stay on that path. If you're frustrated, if something's not working, it's likely you're stuck in a 5-year pattern. And if you keep replicating it, you're not going to move forward. And the solution now— well, now you have it. It's the Pumpkin Plan. I look forward to meeting you in the lounge. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Rock on. Thank you. Thank you.