Dan Kuschell: Masterminding Growth, Impact And Freedom

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.

Welcome back to bacon wrap business. This is your host, Brad. And if this is your very first time ever tuning into the show, welcome. I think you're going to want to hit subscribe if you're listening on itunes or jump on the newsletter if you're on the blog, because this is my platform where I share with you conversations that I have with people who are doing some really cool, amazing things, especially in the world of business. And I let you be a fly on the wall and eavesdrop and see if you can get as much value out of it as I try to systematically extract from their little brains.

Ha ha ha.

Insert evil laugh here. That being said, it is my intention for you to walk away with this feeling as if you should have paid for it and you didn't. And being like, wow, that was amazing. Today will be no different. I've got Dan Cashel as my guest. He is a husband, he's a dad, he's a serial entrepreneur and an Ang. He has started and built 11 companies and his first one in 1992. That's when I was graduating high school. He got his start in direct mail and he has been an expert at helping people build and grow their companies. In fact, after selling two of his companies in the late 2000s following a health scare, Dan spends a majority of his time working on projects that he considers fun, including helping Joe Polish, a friend of mine, build the genius network, which is a really fantastic mastermind of some of the top business leaders in the world. And Dan is a servant leader that leads by coaching, driving, execution, and teamwork. And what that means is that you'll convert a lot more leads, generate a lot more sales, and improve your profits. Without any further ado, I'd like to welcome Dan to the show. How are you, man?

Great, brother. It's great to be with you. A pleasure and a privilege. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Yeah, me too, man. It's. It's cool.

I've.

I've heard your name thrown around and, you know, the various circles that we've been in, and it was a really pleasure. I think it was Josh Felber who introduced Us, wasn't it?

Absolutely cool. Josh is a good friend.

Love Josh. So tell me a little bit. You know, we've talked a little bit offline prior to the conversation and you talked about a handful of concepts that you've got which may be opposed to the mainstream, such as, you know, talking about work, life balance, talking about how traditional marketing and traditional referrals are dead. And those are some pretty hot topics and pretty strong opinions. I'd love to hear a little bit more about those. But before I do, give the, give the listeners and myself just a little bit more background upon your journey to where you're at now.

Yeah, well, I spend most of my time, Brad, as a dad and as a husband, number one. And that's, you know, the biggest thing I take the greatest pride in overall because the saying I have is leadership is as leadership does. And so if we're going to be leaders or entrepreneurs, business owners, etc. And we are going to pride ourselves on building a great company, well, we need to have it at home. Because without it being fit at home means it's not going to be fit in business. And so that's the number one thing. Number two, I had an awakening. You know, in the late 2000s, I was building up companies. I'm your typical type A personality. You know, I never saw an opportunity I didn't like, at least back then. And I would chase, you know, a lot of shiny objects. And so I was building company. I had five companies and started in the 2000 range, built those up, had 175 employees, were doing great revenue, great numbers. And two weeks after my son was born, my daughter was two, woke up with chest pains and I ended up in a hospital for four days, had a procedure, surgery that was exploratory. But during that process, I mean, it was a real wake up call. I signed a disclaimer in the hospital on the second day, if you can imagine, first of all waking up with some tightness in your chest. And then you call your doctor, he says, why don't you get yourself to the hospital? I go into the hospital kind of more, as I thought, a precautionary thing. Go in and they take a couple readings and then all hell breaks loose. The next thing you know, they want to get me on a gurney. They're slapping all kinds of diodes on me on a gurney, rolling me into a room and like they're panicking. So of course I'm kind of panicking myself. And next thing I know, a couple days pass and they want to do this surgery, I sign this disclaimer. It says I have a 1 in x chance of dying on the table. And I mean it. For me, it was like a real wake up call. Sounds like it. I was consumed by my companies. Frankly, I probably would say I lost sight of some of the things that may be most important. I thought I had them together, but I realized today that I really didn't. And although it looked good from the surface or from the outside in, a lot of people go, oh my gosh, you've got some amazing success. I really didn't. So for me, that was a real turning point. Brad. Right. You know what it's like when you have that turning point and you just start to evaluate what you're doing and get more clarity. And during that process, I hired a coach, which I've always had coaches or been in mastermind groups. In fact, I figured it out. I think I've been to over.

200 live events, trainings in my career since 1989.

So I've had a lot of personal development. I guess I'm a damn slow learner, thankfully. I guess there's a lot of clients probably would say about me and others like me is I'm a slow learner with money.

There you go.

But what happened is I hired a coach and we started really flushing through some really important things for me. And it was one of the first times, Brad, that I started to evaluate what did I really want? And you know, there were three questions that came out with this coach, her name is Christy Lopez. And those three questions that I still. Every decision I make today filters through these three questions. I consciously thinking about these three questions regularly. When opportunity comes, I think about these three questions. So it's number one, what do I want? Not what did my wife want? What did my kids want? What did my 175 employees want? Or others, what do I want? That starts there. And you got to get a little selfish to be selfless. You've got to be willing to go inside to get what you really want. So what do I want? Number two, who am I? Strip away the labels, right? I don't like labels.

I think we were talking a little bit offline. I think you and I are kind of a similar mold, right, Brad? When you strip away the labels, who are you? Who am I?

You could call these the characteristics. Maybe you could call these some of the values that you really hold true to 100% of the time. So who are you? Is the second question. And the third question is, what do I stand for, which are really more about the values, but really going deep, you know, what do I stand for in business? What do I stand for at home? What do I stand for as a husband? What do I stand for as a. As a dad? Right. Although. So when I got clear on those three things, for me, not that this is the best choice of everything, part of this. I was also a part of Genius Network. I was the third member in Genius Network. I've been in the group five years up to that point. I'm still, to date, the second largest personal referral of clients to Genius Network. I'm big, big ambassador, big advocate. And although I'm in a role where I'm now like a growth.

Partner for the company and Joe and building and growing the company, I also was a client for five years and happily did that. One of the things I remember Joe sharing at one of the events that I felt like he was speaking to me as I was going through this, he says, in order for things, or if you want to have a breakthrough through, you've got to be willing to break something. Right. And I think at that same meeting, Tim Ferriss was there at that meeting. And he also. He said, in order for things to be excellent or be willing to destroy anything that which is not excellent. Right. And so I took that to heart. And for me, what I decided to do, Brad, was sell my companies. And so I. I didn't know how to sell a company and exit a. So I know you've sold a company. You had built a very successful online business, as I recall it, in information products starting in 2008. Today you do consulting, so you help people do that kind of stuff. Well, I had never been through it, thankfully. I asked a couple Genius Network members, they referred me to a couple resources. So I put a plan together. I built evaluation. I started really getting serious about systems and processes in my business to make it more valuable to a potential buyer. And, you know, I kind of leaned on some of the E myth theory from Michael Gerber. You know, find good people to run your systems and build great systems. And so I started systematizing some of the other functions. I was really good at systematizing marketing and really good at systematizing sales in a company. But I hadn't really paid attention to those others until the time came that I was serious about selling and I started building that. And literally 18 months later, I had a buyer. Two years later, I had sold the two companies and then stayed on as advisor for a while. And it was really A gift to be able to take that time, number one, sell those companies and then spend time really working on me. I spent a lot of time working on my health. I've since lost over 60 pounds. I've kept it off for well over five years.

My marriage today is better than it's ever been. I've got two incredible kids. I was basically able, Brad, to be a full time dad. Right? I mean, what is that worth to have the luxury? And so I feel so blessed and grateful that I had that. Now being the entrepreneur that I am, I just can't damn help myself.

So I couldn't stay like, whatever someone might call like, compared to my version, I would call it retired. I couldn't continue to do so. I did still work on fun independent projects and stay active with keeping my brain going and, you know, all those sorts of things. And Joe stayed in touch with me during this process and that's one of the coolest thing. I took a break from Genius Network after five years and he stayed in touch. He's like, hey, are you doing all right? Anything you need? I'm like, hey, it's good. And so then I came back into the fold after about two years. Ish. And one of the members was like, what are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm basically being a dad. I've worked on my health, as you can see, so that's important. And I'm working on fun projects. Like you ever thought about teaming up with Joe? And I was like, well, no. And so he got Joe. Richard is his name. Richard Ross. He's been a part of Genius Network since the beginning as well. And he connected us, Brad, together and we had a conversation about it and then, you know, we had a six month ongoing conversation. Because you get two entrepreneurs together, I mean, you can either have magic or you can have like, you know, just total freaking chaos. Right? And so we had the discussion six months, we decided to team up. And it's now been just over four years as of now. And it's been a fun run, building the community, building the group, and we get to serve some of the most amazing leaders in the world. And our direct byproduct, we've grown the community to about 250 current active members in Genius Network. We sell out our annual event now every year. And.

The strategic byproducts that we get, I mean, the ability to influence influencers, just something that I love, I know our bigger vision and why I feel excited to work with Joe is it's about reducing suffering Number one. Number two, it's reducing suffering for entrepreneurs. And you know, as much as I'd like to say I've got it all figured out, man. I've got now I've learned to have built so many healthy boundaries and rituals just to really protect myself from me.

Yeah, right.

So I don't make the mistakes. And I think because I've had a lot of experience over 20 plus years, a couple decades of business and I've made a lot of mistakes, of course, but a few things that work when we share those things with people, people seem to get excited and really resonate with the background as well as the context of what they can do moving forward. So that kind of sums it up. That's the long version.

That's awesome though. You said you were, did you say you were the third member of Genius Network?

That's right. Like the red headed stepchild, you know, I wasn't first and I wasn't even second. I was third.

Was he, what year was that?

2000. Well, 2006. October. I can remember like yesterday he called me because he, he, he. Joe. I Met Joe in 2000. How we met was actually interesting. At that time I was doing speaking on different stages and so I was in an event, I don't know if you know John Childers, but he had a, at that time the highest paid speakers training in the world. And he had me speak on his platform and use how to use radio to generate lead sales and profits. And so I was speaking at his event, Joe was in the audience and he bought my program and I was in Phoenix. So then Joe and I got together, spent some time and then it seemed like every like six months Joe would call me and go, hey, I've got so and so in my office, right? He's a super connector. And you know, whether it was like Brian Tracy or Les Brown or you know, Jack Canfield or whoever, he'd go, hey, you want to come by? And I'm like, yeah. When? It always seemed like it was 15 minutes away and you know, I rarely made it. In fact, I don't think I ever made it to any of those invite. But I just always appreciated his generosity. In October 2006, he called me and said, hey, I'm thinking about starting this group. He called it something else at that time, but he goes, it's 25 grand to join. Do you think you want to be a part of it? And as I recall it, I said, you know what, Joe, actually if I write you a check for 25 grand, I'll start showing up to these cool things you invite me to. Yeah, count me in.

There you go.

That was the start. So officially though, I wrote the check in October 2006 and he started the group in 2007. And get this Brad, his original vision back then, he goes, I'm going to have 20 of the smartest marketers in the world in this group. And that's it. That was his big vision of what it would be. And today we now, you know, it's less about info marketing or publishing. I mean we've got over 180 different niche industries in the group, 10 different countries. And so it's a diverse group of all kinds of brick and mortar businesses. You know, thought leaders, experts, authors, and maybe like 2% are like in the info marketing space. Right.

What do you think has been one of the keys to.

Growing a high level mastermind, which truly is a master. It's not a seminar. It's not. I mean they're all a players who are in the group and what do you think spend the real key to that. And here, let me, let me give you some context to this because you know, I've got a mastermind and we charge $15,000 for annual membership and it's, we've got a lot less, we've got about 30 members and it's a, it's a great group and it's all high performers. But I know that one of the challenging parts is if you, you know, we don't have a super specific sales funnel that we put people through and whatnot. A lot of times these are built upon the strength of myself and my partners connections and relationships already. And I know that that can be a challenge if you're asking people to, that you already know who already have access to you to pay for more access to you and some of the people that they might be able to get without you and then once they've kind of made those relationships churn, can happen. And I know that there's a delicate balance when you're doing high end, you know, keeping it valuable enough for the biggest players to, to pay and play, but then also recruiting some of the people who are aspirational, who want to be where those high players are. And you know, you've always got kind of like that balance. Have you noticed that? How have you guys kind of overcome that?

Yeah, I mean it's a great question and you know, so number one, we're very fortunate. Joe is who Joe is. Right. You know, there's seven degree. What is it seven degrees of Kevin Bacon and two degrees of ease of jail.

Yeah, exactly. Very much so.

So, you know, that's number one, is that that leadership and his ability to be a super connector, super influencer. Outside of that, you know, I think you bring up some great, great questions as I see it. And I don't know that I have a formula for this, but if I had to articulate like a couple of the key things and I'll also try to relate this to your audience, Brad, for their businesses, right. Because as I see it, most of us in the future are in the business of creating a certain emotional feeling, right. And the ones who get it. There's one of Joe's right hand people, his name is JR he has this saying, he says for those who get it, no explanation is needed. For those who don't know, explanation will do. Which I just love. If we realize.

Even Jeff Bezos recently when he was asked about where you see the future going, he says, well, I ask a question of what is going to stay the same, not what is going to be different in the future.

Smart.

And to some degree, I look at how we're building the community that, you know, a lot of automation, a lot of technology, what is it? What is that really doing for all of us? It's pulling us apart, right. It's making us more disconnected, more distant, if you will. So those companies, those businesses, you know, like a Starbucks, right? Look at what it, what business is Starbucks really in? Yeah, I don't see that they're in the. My perception, Brad, is they're not in the coffee business. They're in the experience business and they're in the entertainment business to a degree. And I think if we all, number one look at our businesses, how can we connect people? Create a creating model, either offline, online or a hybrid that brings people together to connect while creating an experience, while creating entertainment factor in it. That's a business that's got a longevity model, right? It's got sustainability.

Yeah.

Because as things continue to get more distant and technology creates that space, an artificial intimacy, it's the companies that can pull people together that either a can tap into the artificial intimacies in technology today as well as tap into creating a great community experience and an entertainment value that they can't get anywhere else. So that's a. I'll call that a solid foundation of it. The other parts I would say is creating a process around and I'd even go one step first. Beyond that is getting really clear on what it is that you know, a company, like in your case, asking about a mastermind, what is it you deliver.

You know, overall and really getting clear on the message of what that is and try to get it to a place of like, what is the emotional outcome that someone gets? Like, many times when I advise for company and I. Brad, you're great at that. I know you're being very kind asking me these kind of questions, but you could teach people this stuff all day long.

So I appreciate, I appreciate the collaboration on it, right? Which is, you know, most of us get our messaging wrong in business, and it will always evolve if we're really striving to be better all the time and not get commoditized by our competition. But number one, the framework is identify what are the outcomes that someone gets from an emotional level. Like Tony Robbins talks about his six needs, right? Which is certainty, uncertainty, significance, love, connection, growth, and contribution. So those six, how can what we deliver in our businesses, in your case, the mastermind. But as you're to listening, listening right now to this show, in your business, if you can articulate your outcome, like the main two or three key things that someone walks away with when they do business with you, you will get these emotional benefit outcomes. Now, you don't say it that way, but like, people go to me, Dan, what do people get in Genius Network? Well, they get connection, they get collaboration, they get contribution. Not available anywhere else. The way we do that now, then there's a deeper layer. What does that mean? Right? So now you create a framework of what that definition is, which now it comes down to your magic sauce. Right? Great biography. I read years ago about Disney. One of the key points I took out of it that Disney talked about is you can steal my idea, you can't steal the magic. Yeah, right.

So true.

And messaging goes. I think even if you get right to the core of getting clear on the message, it even goes, goes that, so what are like two or three, ideally three key things in an emotional level that people will get from you when they do business that you can articulate, then the next layer is what will that mean for them? So for what? You know, when people have connection, collaboration and contribution with Genius Network, with these experts, thought leaders, top leaders from all over the world, what that means for them is they get clarity, they get confidence, and they get direction. Right as a framework. So those are. And then what? And then even go deeper. What does that mean for them? And now you can get into like some of the, I'll call it the standard benefit stuff. You would see in normal copy, which is, you know, like what does that mean? It's going to create opportunities, working together, creates strategic partnerships, joint ventures, deal making and heck, even lifelong connections and friendships not available anywhere else with some of the best like minded peers and entrepreneurs in the world. Yeah, right.

So that's so true. And you know, that's one of the things that I know that the people in our mastermind get the most out of is just being able to go somewhere several times a year where you're surrounded with like minded people who are going through the same struggles, who are going through the same doubts and fears and stuff. They can't talk about this with their family and their other friends. They can't talk about it at church, they can't talk about it with other folks. And they absolutely love coming to have that place that they can have that camaraderie and that understanding shoulder. Like man, I'm going through these problems.

Exactly. Yeah. And so to come back to your original question, like what are some of it? So outside of the what business are we in? Right. And getting clear on the entertainment, the experience side of it. Now, how do we articulate our message? Like who are we as a company? And then how do we articulate it? Because at the end of the day, Brad, as you know, what really will make a difference is when you can get people telling your story as well or better than you. Yeah. So by having a simple, like I call this a three by three framework of messaging. Right. So it's what are the three emotional outcomes they get? What are the three.

Means that they get from those and what are the three benefits that they get? Right. When someone can get really clear on stating that like in your question, the mastermind. But as you're listening, ideally you can put this in place in your company. The 3x3 framework. 3x3x3 framework.

People will be able to now tell your story easier. So what we have, we now have advocates and we have, Joe has had advocates for years. But when we got really clear on what were the three emotional benefits people get from our community and we started really articulating them clearly, consistently, regularly and all the time. Time. And talked about connection. Right. To otherwise inaccessible experts. The ability that this isn't your typical seminar or mastermind, that you come here to collaborate, you're both a student and a teacher at the same time and that you have the ability to be contributing to helping entrepreneurs get to the next level, get their next business breakthrough. When we articulate that easy connection, collaboration, contribution, we have People singing that song very easily, and then they'll fill in the gaps of the other couple layers on their own. But it starts with that first one being really important and powerful. So that's a second one, Brad. The third is really identifying a process around what your model will be like. In Genius Network, we have this, and there's a step before it, which I'll get to too. But in Genius Network, we call it the five step return on genius process, right? Because we believe everybody has a seed of genius in them. Now, some people already have already figured that out and they're fulfilling that genius. Other people are fighting it, right? They spend more time working on their business or in their business versus on it. They're plateaued. They've got lots of blind spots. They feel stuck, they feel overwhelmed, right? So we help them get that return on genius. And so we have five distinct steps that we guide our members through annually to get their return on genius. Right? That's our version. Now, how did we get to naming it? Number one, you know, Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, he's been a member for six years. You know, he runs Strategic Coach. He, you know, probably the most successful coach for entrepreneurs in the world. He says those who name the game own the game. Right?

That's true.

So I would like, in your case, Brad, look at what is your process and really kind of break down what that is in the. We call it the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit of the business. Before someone comes on board with you as they're going through the process as a client, and then the after experience after a session with you, what are those things? And come up with a three to five to seven step framework. So you can name it. But then to even identify what that is, a great simple exercise, which we modified it from Strategic Coach, but I'll use Daniel Dan Sullivan's framework for it. He calls it a DOS conversation, if you can, Brad. And again, this is a great exercise as you're listening to this for your listeners, as you're listening right now, I encourage you to really take this to heart. Although I'm answering for Brad based on the question I'm trying to make this applicable as you're listening too, is who are your five best clients that you've got right now? Write their names down, first and last name, and then really take a couple hours collectively to sit down and get in their shoes. And the way to get in their shoes is, okay, let's say you have Bob Smith is one of those five people. You go Into Bob and you. Okay, what are Bob's biggest dangers? Now, you might know this because you've had conversations. You might guess this up front, you might speculate it up front. You're just taking, you know, there's a couple ways to go about it, and I'm going to give you two ways to go. Start with just your thinking about it to begin with. You know what, what do you anticipate? Bob's biggest dangers? What's keeping him up at night? What are the biggest threats? What is he overwhelmed by? What do you anticipate? Bob's blind spots and the things that are keeping him stuck. So that's step one for that individual. Step two is what are Bob's greatest opportunities? Right. As you look at, like what he does in business, who he is as a client, what are his greatest opportunities in the world? Right, that he's going for that he's motivated by, that he's excited by. Okay, that's the second step. Then the third step is what are Bob's greatest strengths in his company? Right. For your clients. Now, as you're listening to this and maybe you're not in the coaching business or running a mastermind, think about what are you doing? Your clients dangers, what are their opportunities? Right. What are their strengths overall, as you know, just maybe as a human being or as a person, depending on what your business might be. But right, so now you've got that you're taking edge and now you do that for all five individually because everybody will be slightly different. If you really take this serious and deep dive, then what you might want to do is the second layer of this is actually go to each of the. Hey, you know, I was thinking about you today. Bob Smith.

And I have a couple questions. These are going to seem really strange and out of the blue, but I was just curious and I had made some notes beforehand. I'm just curious. What are your. What do you consider your greatest dangers?

What are your greatest threats? What are your greatest blind spots? And get confirmation of what. Now these are your five best clients because you want to duplicate and replicate. Who are your best clients? Not your worst, not your mediocre, not the freebie clients, but the ones now you have to. Now I'll even go a step before this. What is your ideal client? What would you define as your best client? So for us, we have values that we really look for, not only with clients, but our team members, our partners, our vendors, suppliers, etc. Basically, stakeholders.

They're equal. So we have eight. They're adapted from Dan Sullivan as well, strategic coach. He calls this the five ways you get paid. And then we've got a couple add ons. So it's do they appreciate us in value and do we appreciate them in value? In other words, when we get together, do we grow and appreciate, not depreciate like most stocks and investments that are done wrong. So is there an appreciation and is there a gratitude of each other working together? Do we enhance each other? In other words, when we get together, our talents grow, right? Enhance each other, do we utilize it? In other words, if you're eating our dog food, are we eating your dog food and are we willing to do that? And do we like to do that? So utilize each other. Next is refer, do they refer people to us? Right. Number five is what is the reward financially from them? You know, you might think of like, who have been your best clients for five years that have paid you the most that are, you know, fit those other four categories or whatever your categories, we define them and you want to do the same because our system may not work for you, but those are the first five. Then the others are resourcefulness. Are we mutually resourceful human beings, innovators, entrepreneurs? Do we anticipate each other's needs before they even ask us for help? If they do ask for help, are we able and capable to deliver it and figuring out a solution for that? And then lastly is the desire to learn and grow. Do we both have a mutual desire to invest in ourselves and, and learn and grow? Right. So another one that I've seen where most people make this mistake too, when they identify their ideal client, they forget to put can afford my services.

At a high level. So anyway, that's a step even before these few that I'm describing, Brad. So now coming back to the dos, you do this with your five clients, you start to see some similarities. So like for example, our ideal client in Genius Network is Dan Sullivan. We have a lot of great clients, but Dan Sullivan is the number one. And here's why. Appreciate and value. Joe's been a client of strategic coach for 21 years. Dan and Babs have been in Genius Network for six. There's no trade, there's no affiliate deals ever made. They pay us, we pay them, and that's very clean. And they don't even ask each other for deals. It's just a very healthy, organic relationship. They both appreciate each other, both enhanced each other's businesses. You know, both have utilized each other's businesses easily. Joe is the top referrer and strategic coach. Having referred over 200 members to strategic coach, Dan has referred over 55 members to genius Network in his history. Right. So very healthy. The financial reward. Dan recently, you know, he did a tool that he calls an impact filter and he says that he can easily attribute a minimum of $20 million in net growth in his businesses to his bottom line from Genius Network that he's crafting. So that reward. Now, they're both resourceful, they're both anticipating each other's needs and it makes it easy and exciting. So you identify who your ideal clients are. The other thing is Dan has a respect for direct response marketing. So in our community that's another key factor we look for is does someone have a respect for direct response marketing or selling? So one of the strengths we saw in all five of our ideal clients, just to kind of take you behind the curtain here and be the wizard of Oz, if you will, for our clients, we found all of them have a real affinity for direct response marketing. Although maybe they weren't that great at it, but they all had very solid sales processes in their companies. Now they may not have been leveraging those sales. In other words, they had a means to convert a sale. Now by nature, as you know Brad, most entrepreneurs, business owners are really good at one of like two categories. The sales and marketing side because we can just sell stuff, or the product and service side.

Rarely do we find people who are really great at actually both of those. So the majority of people we end up talking to are really great rate or at least have an affinity or strong resonance to sales because people who kind of poo poo direct marketing or selling, they're just not a fit for our community. But we found that that was one of the key traits in this DOS conversation model, this unique process that ultimately led us to come up with our five step return on Genius process.

So kind of summarizing all this, so not, you know, again, I don't know that I would go this is a three step formula or four step form. But a couple key points is identify the business we're in, how do we create a great experience entertainment factor around it for our potential clients. Next is who are we as a company? Right? And starting with our messaging today, and our messaging today will likely be different than it is a year, three years, five years from now potentially. But what is that three by three by three matrix that we could do to articulate our message really effectively and well and then get inside of our clients shoes and identify the DOS conversation, their dangers, their opportunities, their strengths. I Think those lend itself to being able to attract. And then the last thing, Brad, I'll share. And I could spend hours with you brother on this. As you could tell, I get excited about it. You can tell I'm reading all this off a script.

I actually can't.

The next thing that I would say is look at building a filtering process for your potential candidates, right? One of the things that when I came in working with Joe, because I'd done this in my own companies, as I built up somewhere between a 15 and $20 million company, I had realized that I want to know for me, I wanted to know the kind of clients that I want to work with and I want to work with a certain type of client. I don't want to work with a certain type of client. So I built and have built in my companies and clients I've worked with and also here now with Joe, an application process to pre screen our candidates. Not as a tactic, but really as a principle based model. And people really feel it when they come through our process. So like even for our annual event, which is a premium event, I mean, let's face it, it's ten grand to attend. So just by the mere nature of the fact that it's ten grand to attend, there's a certain point person that won't be in the room, which we're grateful for, right? But by the mere nature of that, that's a good filtering mechanism. Number two. And like your program at 15 grand, what if you, and maybe you already do, but maybe, just maybe a little bit of this conversation will help you redesign it a little bit to give you that little slight edge advantage. So we have an application process even for our, our annual event, where we want to know about a company, what drives them, their revenue, what their biggest issue, challenges are, etc. And then we schedule, if they're qualified with a certain revenue model, then we schedule a conversation with one of our executive team. Although we will look to enroll them in the event. We've had people tell us, number one, that the application process that they go through was a game changer for them in their business. The conversation ends up being something where they get incredible value from. I can't tell you how many people, because of the different types of questions that we go through and so on in that process, that they go, wow, even if I never do business with you, I got so much value out of this. And so what it does, our process is all thought through, Brad, that even that process of attracting and acquiring the client, even if we don't do business. It leaves someone not just as a fan for us, but what I like to call. And I don't think I invented it, so it's not really that I call it this, but what I would refer to as a super fan. See, all of us in our business, if we create the right experience in our models, going back to the very first thing I talked, what business are we in? Like, Starbucks experience, business, entertainment factor. If we can create a great experience and an entertainment factor for those people that are on the outer. Like, I look at every business like a target, a bullseye on a wall, where in the middle you've got your clients who literally, they're just. Brad, they're waiting for you to offer something, they're going to buy it. Right. You know, you can think of your three to five people right now that if you offered a program or a product, they just going to raise their hand and say, I'm in. Right? Yep. And we all have that. It might be five, it might be 50, it might be 5,000. But they're that centric group of people. Of people are just raving fans who will buy your stuff. Then on the outer circle, you have people who buy some of your stuff. And then there are people on these outer circles as you go out, out, out on the target, you can call these, like your Twitter followers, Facebook people, etc. And what all of our businesses do one way, they either repel people away from this circle or they. If you can picture two lines drawing from the outer circle down towards the middle, really marketing and selling and creating the right experience will just simply be like a ball rolling down from the outer circle to the inner circle. It really just becomes a timing factor of when is it right to do business with you versus it being a yes or no if done right. So those are a handful of the things, Brandon, that I could share, and there's certainly a ton more now.

I love it, man. It's very insightful, very impactful. I can tell that you guys have put a lot of time, thought and energy into creating that environment for folks.

If people want to know more and if they want to get more from you and more from Genius Network, etc. Where do you suggest they go?

Yeah, simple. Go to geniusnetworkevents.com you can check out what we're doing with the event and the type of people that we attract. That's the simplest way to be able to reach out and learn more about what we're up to.

Fantastic. Well, Dan, man, I really appreciate Your time on the show today, this has been enlightening for me. I know for the audience as well. Are there any nuts you're trying to crack right now? Are there anything that we can potentially help you with?

Certainly looking for more opportunities to be on great guest on other people's shows like this, Brad. I would say that would be a great one. And also looking for great guests for my show which is called growthtofreedom.com as well. I love it.

Well, thanks a lot again, Dan. I really appreciate this. And for my listeners. Go check it out. Go check out geniusnetworkevents.com and check out Dan. I'll also put all your links in the show notes here that people can listen to for. For anybody else who has got any questions or insights or challenges or if you're stuck and you kind of want a second opinion on the business strategy that you're doing and maybe it's not working as well as you thought it could or should. If you want to get ahold of me, just send me an email directly to askbradaconwrappedbusiness.com and I look forward to reading your emails and seeing if there's a way I can help you out. Dan, unless there's anything else, man, I really appreciate your time.

It's been a pleasure. Brad, I think I'll leave with one important thing. I mean, first of all, I just want to acknowledge you for the great work you are doing. I know Josh got us connected. He's been a genius network member and a great advocate ambassador for us. You live by this. You're a leader by example. And that's one of the things that I really appreciate about you.

Thank you.

The most expensive information, right is bad information. The most expensive lesson is when you don't take action. And one of the things is most people will avoid joining a program like yours, Brad. Maybe because of fear, uncertainty, loss, potential loss, that sort of thing. And I encourage you to really reshape that. Brad, you're doing so many incredible things. I encourage you to check out what Brad is doing.

Take an opportunity to invest in the offerings that Brad is giving you. And working with Brad, I look forward to deepening our relationship, seeing how we can help each other more in the future.

Ditto. Brother. I appreciate you and I appreciate all those words. Those are great and I look forward to meeting you in person someday.

Absolutely.

Alright guys, tune in. If you're not subscribed to the show, make sure you are so you do not miss a single episode. Got some great ones. Coming up for you, and I'll see you on the next side.