Use These Tools To Grow And SCALE Your Business | Joe Polish

What it takes to make money is very different than what it takes to keep it. And most people are so obsessed with making it that as they become more successful, they do stupid things, which winds up sabotaging their overall success. And when you do that, it takes your breath away. I mean, that's a major, major event. Not only because of the size of the money, but also because the loss is so devastating. And I had so much of my net worth. I had my self worth entwined with my net worth, which is a deadly combination. Look at your losses. It's not necessarily pleasant to think back on, but everybody's had some kind of loss that they've sustained as a result of a bad decision or excessive optimism. Unexamined assumptions, unexamined assumptions, faulty expectations, excessive optimism are killers. Arrogance is killers. Hubris is a killer for creating, sustaining wealth. So the goal to me is not to get it. The goal is to get it and keep it. You can get lucky and make it. And I know lots of people who got lucky. But the problem is they weren't able to keep it because they didn't have skills that would allow them to sustain. So the truth is, to me, sustainability of wealth is the holy grail. Your latest book, Mastering The Rockefeller Habits 2.0, scaling how a Few Companies make it and why the Rest Don't. What's this book about? Because I would recommend people get all your books and even all your Gazelle coaches. I mean, I've been to your events, you guys do amazing stuff and you have literally impacted, I mean, truthfully, with what your creation with eo, There are millions of people that have been impacted by the seeds that you planted. So this is your latest work. Who's it for? What's it about? What will people get out of it? Yeah, well, you know, a lot of companies start up and there's this craze about startups and accelerators and incubators and that kind of stuff, but very few scale up. And it's the scale ups, Joe, that really move economies, really drive innovation. And the problem is because they're not young, they're not cute, they're older, more established companies, they don't get any attention. And so we wrote the book for them. Those that have been kind of toiling away for five or 50 years and have finally figured out what they need to do and are going to take this thing from 10 million to a billion. And what are the key things that are necessary to scale up the company? Gotcha. Well, I was having a conversation with Dan Sullivan as You know, he's one of my dear friends, and he founded a company, Strategic Coach. And we were having this conversation because we have a friend. I won't mention his name. We all know him, who puts a lot of emphasis on trying to help startup entrepreneurs and putting together programs for them. And Dan just made this funny comment because, I mean, I want to help anyone that really wants to grow and learn. I mean, that's why I put out my free podcast. It's like this interview. We're putting it out to the world for free, just. Just so it'll help people that come across it. And dad made this comment. He goes, you know, there's all this emphasis on funding startups. He's like, if you really want to make an impact fund, people who've literally had to borrow the money, had to go into debt on credit cards, no one was there to help him. He goes, that's what weeds out the ones that can make it and ones that don't. I mean, if you just hand over money to someone that's a startup just because you should give them a reward because they want to start a business. He goes, the ones that are really successful, they've gone through the crap. They've gone through the hell that they've had to. And I just thought it was good. Kind of funny. No, he's right on. It's one of, I think, the problem with the incubators, they baby them too much, and then when they finally set him free, they didn't get some of the basic learnings from failing that are necessary to take the venture to the next level. And then what happens is when they do fail, it's at such a bigger level that it's devastating to their families, to their own net worth. It's a mess. And so I think you got to be careful helping folks too much in the beginning. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I heard this line, and I say this speaking from ignorance because I'm not parent. The quote was, don't handicap your children by making their lives too easy. Although I think that applies to anyone. I mean, you can really baby someone trying to start a business, and you can rob them of the learning that comes from it. Well, you've created a lot of tools. What is the Buckminster Fuller quote that you gave today? I'd love that quote. Yeah, I know. I'm a mechanical engineer by training. Got a worthless MBA on top of that. And Bucky had this notion that you can't really change the way people think. All you can do is give them a tool, the use of which will change your thinking. And I mean, think about what the phone has done to change our behaviors more than any other change management seminar that you might be able to go through. And so we're tool builders and we wanted to build some tools that help people make those changes. Well, I got a lap full of stuff here that I've, you know, books and everything here. So there's a bunch of growth tools that you have and you're known for the one page strategic plan. Talk about what that is and where people can get it. Because I want the people that are watching this and listening to this to not just have some business insight, but I'd like to send them off to where they can get access to some of the things that you have literally done with thousands of companies and have created that will make a big impact for them, that will allow them to think more strategically, more creatively. Talk about some of the tools you've created, specifically the one page plan. Yeah, it's the thing that we're probably best known for. Today, about 40,000 companies are using this tool. And it was a very simple idea. Everyone sits around and says, man, how do I get everybody on the same page? Well, you got to have the page first for everyone to get on. And we use the analogy of jazz bands. I love jazz because you can bring these players in from all over the world who've never played together. But there's got to be a few things that have in common. And one of them is we're playing the same song. And so we thought, hey, how can we put on a single sheet of paper a way for people to get down from their core values all the way to what is the thing we need to focus on the next quarter in a simple format that they can communicate that to everybody else in the organization. And it's this common set of music that people can all play together. So that's what it does. So where do people get this? Because I know you make it available online. I'll put a link to all the different places that I put this interview. So go to scalingup.com or gazelles.com, but scalingup.com and they'll see a thing that says the onepage tools. And we've got them in multiple languages from Russian to Spanish to French to English, obviously. And so it's there for people to use free of charge. We've had them up there for decades. Great. So what are some other tools that you've created that have been really helpful to yourself? To other business owners that you've done well, you know, it's a challenge. This whole life side and business side, everyone's talking about the balance. We see it more as a blend. And so we created a one page personal plan to go along with the one page strategic plan. So that if you can kind of as the entrepreneur get down and the executives in the company, what it is I need to do on the personal side and then look at that in relation to what I've got to do on the business side and mesh those up. We find people who are much more successful in both aspects of their business. And we mirrored the same people, strategy, execution and cash. But we said, look, let's look at the relationships, let's look at the achievements, let's take a look at those rituals that we do on a daily basis, our exercise and other things. And then obviously there's the wealth component that we have to pay attention to. And so that's become a tool that started to really catch hold around the world as well. And then we're known for this Rockefeller habits checklist. What are these 10 habits, these routines, ones that John D. Rockefeller had in place over 100 years ago that made him the wealthiest guy on the planet, wealthier than any of the guys that we have here today, except maybe Putin. And these are things that you can put in place in any company from startup all the way to the largest companies in the world. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So what's the best piece of business advice you've ever received and how did it change your business path and your direction? I think was, well, I received a couple of them. The first one was somebody said, don't spend all your money, kid, because it's really, really hard to make money and it's 10 times harder to keep it. I think that was one of them. And I think the other one was, you know, it's all about the numbers. There's only two ways to do business. Increase sales or decrease cost. That's it. And don't do anything because it's a, it's an ego play. Increase sales or decrease cost. That's it. And those things probably have been the ones and Everybody else knows all the other ones, of course, do what you love. Of course, do your research and everything else. But the room knows that already. So Fubu has. It's had 6 billion in global sales. What are the key elements, secrets and requirements of building, like a $6 billion brand that people here can utilize well, in the days that we built it, I think that there are a couple of things. First of all, you know, in business, it's purely about distribution. I think that you can have the greatest idea in company or whatever the case is, but you don't have a way to distribute it. It's a pipeline, it's a challenge. I think that to understand and don't fall in love with your product where you think that you're creating something new. Because we will never create anything new. It will only be a new position or a new angle on it, a new price. I always say Twitter was, as I shared with you before, it was a note on a pigeon's leg a million years ago. And I didn't put three sleeves on a T shirt. I just created a movement around it. So it's always a different positioning. And I think those are the ways. And then after you get to a certain level where you have brand equity, I think it's creating a large amount of really amazing strategic partners. You know, licensing, whether it's a territory or licensing a different angle of your product is important. I'm not going to understand the what they necessarily want in Japan, even though they want Fubu in Japan. It's a different culture. As well as I can do my men's business. But you and I were two guys. If you wear a 32 and I wear 32, there's two sizes, 32, there's 32 long, 32 short. If I sell a pair of seven or a pair of eight jeans to a female, there's 17 sizes because the thighs are too big, the butt's too this gaps over here. So I would license that business to an expert in that area because I don't have a lifetime to learn the ladies business as well. So I think that strategic partners are very valuable. Okay, so your friend Kevin Harrington was here earlier, and he was talking about Shark Tank, and he said that Kevin O', Leary, Mr. Wonderful, was a far better, more intelligent negotiator than you. I don't know your thoughts on that. He didn't say that. I'm totally kidding. I would say I should have just let that go. No, no, no. I knew. I knew that Kevin's a great guy. And I'm actually representing him speaking. And I would absolutely make sure he doesn't get any more gigs after that. Yeah. If you were to get in a fight, a physical fist fight with Kevin o', Leary, you think you could take him with Kevin o' Leary or Kevin Harrington? Kevin o'. Leary? Well, both actually be interesting to celebrity death match. Well, so Kevin o' Leary I could take. Kevin Harris will crack my head to the white meat one day. I don't. You know, I think he's like 100 years old, but one day we all did push ups on the set, and I think I was on my 19th and he was on his, like, 107th. No, he's a maniac. He is a problem. He came to Necker island and he was like, in one of those sumo suits and everything, and I swear to God, he was, like, knocking everyone down. It was bizarre. You know, if you've ever been in his office, he does not have chairs in his office. He's too neurotic. He just has a table right there and a bunch of crap all around. Yeah, can I get a timer up here too, so I know where we're at? What are the little talked about factors that most successful people wouldn't want to publicly share that drive growth and success? Well, anybody that's really successful, such as yourself, such as Jay Abraham, and the people in this room that I respect, have always shared every single aspect of success. That's probably one of the things that you end up forgetting to share is that the opportunity to give somebody this knowledge only comes back to you. But I think other things that people don't share in success is. I really wouldn't know. Honestly, I don't come from that model. Any and everything that I can share in success, yes, I will. What is the road less stupid? How would you describe it if I gave you the opportunity to unwind any three financial decisions you've ever made in your whole life, how much money would you have? And there's not a person in this room that if I gave them the ability to unwind, any one of three financial decisions wouldn't have more money. It turns out that the key to making more money is to doing fewer stupid things. That's true. I don't need more good ideas. I need fewer ideas that I think are good that I've executed on. And so I've had the experience over the last 47, 48 years of being in business of having done some smart things where actually it wasn't that smart. But in reality, I was Lucky I happened to catch a big wave. And I mistook catching a big wave with being a good swimmer. And it's what Warren Buffett is very famous for saying. Most of you have heard it. You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out. And so the key is not can I make it? The key is, can I make it and keep it? Those are two entirely different skill sets, and in fact, they are almost diametrically opposed. What it takes to make money is very different than what it takes to keep it. And most people are so obsessed with making it that as they become more successful, they do stupid things, which winds up sabotaging their overall success. And I know this story firsthand, because this is one of the reasons I appreciated you so much, Paul, and your presentation is because I've had the experience of losing a lot of money. $100 million of my money that I made. I didn't inherit it, I made it. You were better off than me because you cut the bleeding at plus 600,000. I didn't cut the bleeding until I was minus 50 million. So I went from plus 100 million to minus 50 million in a matter of 24 months. And when you do that, it takes your breath away. I mean, that's a major, major event, not only because of the size of the money, but also because it's. The loss is so devastating. And I had so much of my net worth. I have my self worth entwined with my net worth, which is a deadly combination. How old were you during that time? 40. 40. And that was during the. For real in real estate. Real estate, yeah, A lot of. And what led to the loss? Look at your losses. It's not necessarily pleasant to think back on, but everybody's had some kind of loss that they've sustained as a result of a bad decision or excessive optimism. Unexamined assumptions. Unexamined assumptions, faulty expectations, excessive optimism are killers. Arrogance is killers. Hubris is a killer for creating and sustaining wealth. So the goal to me is not to get it. The goal is to get it and keep it. You can get lucky and make it. And I know lots of people who got lucky, but the problem is they weren't able to keep it because they didn't have skills that would allow them to sustain. So the truth is, to me, sustainability of wealth is the holy grail. Making it. I can catch a big wave, I can get lucky. I can happen to hit a crease in the market at exactly the right point and, you know, we can wind up being, you know, Affiliate associated with you or Tony Robbins or any number of other people. And, you know, there's a degree of luck in all that and there's a skill set in all of that. And so I'm very much about, let's make sure that if we're going to all this effort in order to create the success. And people do stupid things in the creation mode as well. People oftentimes think that if I just improve my product, that that would somehow allow me to create business or financial success. And yet the truth is, it doesn't require a great product in order to make a lot of money. If I ask you to think about your favorite restaurant, the place you would go to have a huge celebration, you're thinking about it. You know where it would be. There's not one person in this room that's thinking about McDonald's. Not one. And yet nobody has made more money in the history of mankind in the restaurant business than McDonald's. How did it happen? Is it because their cheeseburgers are so good? No, their cheeseburgers are horrible. Right? They are. Their French fries, on the other hand, are really good, but the cheeseburgers are horrible. What allowed McDonald's to make a lot of money was not an obsession with the product. It's never, write this down. This will be a takeaway. It's never what you do. It's how you do it. It's never what you do, it's how you do it. Southwest Airlines, their whole business model is put butts in seats and fly those butts from point A to point B safely. No mention of your luggage. Right. Your luggage is immaterial to the airlines. Whether it makes it or not, we don't care. Let's just make sure the person gets from point A to point B. Doesn't even have to be on time. Southwest Airlines has made more money in the last 10 years in the airline business than the rest of the airline industry cumulatively since Orville and Wilbur Wright. Now you think about that one airline has made more money than everybody else since Orville and Wilbur. How'd that happen? Is it because their planes are so good? Is it because their first class section is so roomy? Is it because the food is so outstanding? Is it because the hostesses and stewards and stewardesses. Is it because they're so good looking? No. I can't tell which is older, the stewardesses or the airplanes. Right. It's never what you. Southwest Airlines success is not based on what they did. It's how they did it. You name Me any product or service. I don't care what it is. Give me one week, you could say chewing gum, shoelaces, seminars, pins, socks, name me any product or service. Give me one week, and in one week I'll come back and name you one person who's made millions, hundred people that have gone broke with the exact same idea. The problem is, as entrepreneurs, we become obsessed with the product. We become obsessed with either the quality. And I'm not opposed to great products. That's not the message. The message is, what is it as a business person, what is it that we're focused on? The artist side of me wants to focus on the product and making it better and longer lasting and prettier and more robust. And I'm good with that. We need artists. The operator side of me wants to get busy and get a bunch of stuff done. I just, I got so much to do and holy cow, if it's going to get done, I'm going to have to do it myself because I don't know how to hire a team or keep a team or have a players or create a cult or I don't know any of that. I just got a lot to do. That's the operator side. The business person side says, wait a minute. The job is not to react to the problem du jour. What I need to do is leverage and structure. Write those two words down. That's the difference between a solopreneur and one person army. A solopreneur and a business owner. A business owner has mastered two things, structure and leverage. And without structure and leverage, there is not a way to create a sustainably successful business. I'm going to say the structure part a different way before I talk about leverage. Yeah, Opportunity without structure is chaos. The Achilles tendon of most entrepreneurs is structure. They hate it. That's why they started their own business, is because they hate the idea of having structure. And yet structure is critical for scaling. I hear a lot of people in here talking about scaling, or scaling is just a Silicon Valley word for growth. That's all it is. How do I grow this thing? Okay, well, if I'm going to grow this thing, I need structure in order to be able to do it. Otherwise I got kind of a fire drill working with a bunch of people doing a bunch of stuff. And it's not necessarily the most productive thing that needs to happen. Leverage, one of the highest forms. When I talk about leverage, most people think, oh, he's talking about debt. In reality, I'm not. I mean, debt is a Financial instrument, it's leverage. But the more powerful form of leverage is who's on your team. So I'm going to ask you a question. If I gave you an opportunity to build a world class team of A players, and the only people on your team were A players, I mean, seven footers, these are the Kevin Durant's, they can do it all. If you only had a team of A players, how many of your existing problems that you have right now would go away, disappear? It turns out the problems that most of us are dealing with are not even really the problem. Eunice, is where I need a little whiteboard, if I can get one right here. Joe just handed you a piece of paper a second ago and said thank you and said write down one of your biggest problems. So I'm going to ask you right now to write down on your piece of paper one of your three biggest problems. Maybe you just did that. Maybe you can refer back to that piece of paper. Maybe you're not going to have to share this, we're not going to talk about it. It's not going to be anything. So you may want to write really, really small so that nobody else can see. Write it really small and just write down or revisit one of your three biggest problems that you think you have with your business. Let me give you a thought. The exercise is over. You don't have to complete writing it down. The exercise is over. Every person here has an is line. This is reality. This is the way it looks. This is point A, point A. And the problem that most people have, in my experience, I know I have this problem, is that I'm not particularly honest with myself about the reality of my situation. I sugarcoated. When I was at the University of Texas, every day I'd walk past a little message etched in granite over the doors of a building. And the message was, you shall know the truth and the truth will set you so. You know this, right? And every day for four or five years I walked past this thing and I went, I don't know what this means. What does that mean? You should know the truth and the truth will set you free. Well, the reality, it dawned on me later, is that as long as I'm lying to myself or not telling the truth, I have no opportunity to make a change. So it's why addicts don't stop using is because they say, well, I don't really have a problem, I can stop anytime I want. Yeah, I know it's a little bit. But you know, the reality Is I'm functioning right. It's why alcoholics or poor people pick a topic. People don't tend to tell themselves the truth. This is point A. We also have point B. Point B is ought. This is the way I'd like for it to look. This is point B. And it turns out that most of us are experts on point B. We have massive clarity on the way we would like for it to look because we've done all this visualization. We've done all this goal setting where you make a goal and then you make it vibrant, and then you turn it into black and white, then you bring it closer and farther away, and then you put music around it. And. And so we're really good at visualizing what ought. We tend to suck at what is. And when asked what our problem is, we describe the gap. The gap between where you are and what you want is what you typically describe as the problem, when in reality, this gap is not the problem. This gap is the symptom. I just asked you. Joe just asked you the last exercise you did, write down one of your three biggest problems, and everybody got busy real quick. We knew what the problem was because we were visualizing the gap between where we are and what we want, when in reality. That's not the problem. That's the symptoms. The gap sits right here. This is. Sorry. The problem sits right here. This is the problem. This is the obstacle that I need to overcome in order to move the needle on my is line. In order to move the needle on my is line, I need to get clarity on what it is that's truly blocking my forward progress. What's blocking my forward progress has nothing to do with where I am versus what I want. What's blocking my forward progress is the obstacle that sits right here. And it turns out, Joe, that the hardest part of thinking time is getting clarity on the problem. That is, if you don't have clarity on the problem, that is, you'll be tactical instead of strategic. So I say I'm 10 pounds overweight. What do I want to do about it? Well, as long as I view the problem as being 10 pounds overweight, which is not the problem, that's the symptom. Hello. Hello. Are you with me that? Being 10 pounds overweight is not the problem. That's the symptom. But as long as I identify being 10 pounds overweight as being the problem, then what I will lurch to is, okay, should I buy a jump rope or should I join a gym? Should I buy Oprah's Latest diet book or should I get a personal train? Oh, I know what I'll do. I'll get a piece of home exercise equipment. That's what I'll do. If I just had a peloton bike in my house, then I would get in shape, which is why most home exercise equipment and most diet books don't work. Because it's a tactical response to a tactical question. As long as I'm dealing with the symptom, I'm going to be dealing in tactical. And once I say it's not a tactical issue, I need to be strategic and think strategic and identify the problem it is. So here it is. And then I'll. I'll stop Joe. If I don't have clarity on the problem, that is, I'll build a machine for the problem that isn't, which is what we do 99% of the time. We identify the gap, call it the problem, when in reality it's a symptom. And we're highly tactical in our response because we have a tactical question that we've asked which winds up sabotaging our results. If you tell me your sales aren't high enough, I'm going to say that's a symptom, not a problem. If you tell me you don't have enough profits, if you tell me you have a crummy culture, if you tell me you have weak employees, if you tell me your balance sheet is screwed up, I'm going to look at you and say, all those are symptoms. What's the problem? So if I gave you an opportunity to rethink the problem that you identified a minute ago, is that really the problem? Really? Is that the problem? Is that the core root underlying problem that's blocking your forward progress? Or is there something below that? Something buried where you got to get busy and figure out what in the world is going on? So business, to me, is an intellectual sport. It's chess. Money and business does not respond well to emotions. Warren Buffett said it. Optimism is the enemy of the rational investor. It turns out in business, optimism is your enemy, which is why one of the pieces of advice that you gave is so good, Paul, which was, we all need a board. We need advisors. We need people that we will listen to. The higher you go or the higher you want to go, the greater the requirement to have somebody around you who will tell you the truth. Because I can't smell my own breath. I can smell your breath, but I can't smell mine. I can't see my own swing. I can see the shot I can't see the swing. I need people around me, watching me swing, who will give me advice. And then I got to be willing to hear that advice. As long as I'm arrogant, right. Unwilling to listen, it does no good to ask. So business is an intellectual sport, and the people that win the game sustainably have got skills and tools, which is why I wrote the book Let the Road Less Stupid. Yeah. Would you say that being a local business or having a smaller geographic area where you're trying to impact one community is easier or more difficult than is that, you know, for businesses that might be local? Local businesses, yeah. It's easier in the sense that it's less competitive. I mean, there is competition in the form of Yelp and these other national or international sites that rank for a lot of different geographies. But you're competing with smaller businesses. Like, if you're in the restaurant space, you're competing with local restaurants. And many of them don't know SEO from anything. And so you have a competitive edge if you know a little bit about SEO. And one thing about local SEO that's, that's, that's good to not only know, but execute on is that local links are important and make it right. A really good difference. So if you're chasing after links from the local chamber and convention and visitors bureau and local chapters of nonprofits, like, is that where things like writing articles on the local newspaper would be a useful thing to have articles on their site? Potentially. Let me preface that by saying you got to do a little bit of homework first to see if it is going to be worthwhile or it's going to be a waste of your time. Like, meta descriptions are not a total waste of your time, but they won't move you up the ranking. So it's very much a second order activity. If I would go to the local, let's say business journals website and see that they never link out in their articles, or when they do, there are no followed links, meaning that they strip any link equity from flowing out. I got you. Right? Right. So I'm checking, I'm doing my due diligence first before I say, hey, I will write for free for you. I'll be an unpaid journalist for you. That sounds great for them, but not so great for you if you don't get any juice out of it. So you gotta see if the juice is worth the squeeze yourself. Yeah. Before you just say, oh, well, Stefan said you should write for a local business journal. Your mileage will vary. It depends on the scenario. So if it's a local nonprofit and you're, let's say, on the board of that local nonprofit, like it's the American Marketing Association, Madison, Wisconsin Chapter or something like that, and you are putting a lot of time into, I don't know, an event that you guys are doing or the newsletter, or maybe there's a resource site or something that you guys are launching. I'm not saying don't do it because you're not going to get the link equity, but at least know ahead of time if you're going to get any SEO value from all those activities, because maybe that's going to be a consideration, you know, a factor in your decision to put all that time into it. Do you have any, like, I consider the nine word email like a magic trick that I can. We could share that with somebody. They could do it today and get some result. Is there any thing that would be something that everybody listening should be able to at least do this or this or, you know, maybe a couple of things if there's something that they could do to. To dip their toe in the water here or to get some kind of outcome. Yeah, yeah. So start with your homepage. That is the most important page of your site as far as Google is concerned in almost all cases. And start with the most important element of that page as far as Google's concerned. That's your title tag. It's the first thing, the most prominent thing that appears in your search list thing. And if there are no good keywords in there, that's a big missed opportunity. And then you think, well, what. What are good keywords? If you use a tool like Google Trends, which is a free tool, then you'll get a sense for which keywords are popular versus other keywords. You have to compare them with each other because the tool only provides percentages. It doesn't provide actual numbers. But if you put in, let's say laptop comma, laptops comma MacBooks comma MacBook Pro or MacBook Pro, you try and compare the singular and plural. You could put a little string of keywords there separated by commas, and you can see which one's the most popular. And then you could say, all right, laptop or whatever the keyword is, is the most popular. I'm not using any keywords right now. It's just the name of my company. And then it says dash homepage. That's a big oops. Let's fix that. And let's put our most important keyword that we're Trying to rank for. We'll put it in the title tag and don't make a like spammy keyword list for your title tag. Just make it read well and be value focused and maybe even have a, like, I don't know, a little bit of intrigue in there, kind of a curiosity gap. If they, if you're building up tension in the reader and the visitor, the Google searcher's mind, and then they have to click in order to have that, that tension relieved. You know, like buzzfeed is fantastic at this with their headlines, right? Yeah, they are. So if you, if you have some curiosity gap that you create with your title, that would be the best of all possible worlds. Keyword and value proposition and curiosity gap. But two out of three I'll be happy with as well. So just make it better than what you have now and that's an easy, easy win. The homepage will get re crawled by Googlebot very quickly, probably it will get re indexed in the Google Search index pretty quickly as well. And then hopefully you'll see some improvement. You'll maybe check the rankings beforehand, see, oh, I'm number eight now for whatever my keyword is. Let's see if I can move the needle a bit. And oh, wow, a week later I'm at number seven. Yay, that's a win, right? Another thing that you can do is to, is to get your Google Search Console account claimed if you haven't already. And then you can see not only what your position is for you as a searcher individually, but you can see the average across all of the searchers who are typing in that keyword and that shows up in your Google Search Console performance report. And that's a free tool as well. So if you don't have access to Google Search Console, just Google it and follow the instructions to add your site and for free. Now you're going to start getting data on how many clicks you're getting for which keywords, how many impressions, how many impressions don't lead to clicks, and then your ctr, of course, taking into account both of those numbers, the clicks and impressions. And you can start making tweaks and seeing how you move the needle because you know, as Peter Drucker famously said, what gets measured gets managed. And if you're tracking your rankings and the traffic coming and so forth, you don't know if you're winning or losing. So if I. None of these, all of those words that you've just said, I have no understanding of as the technical terms of those. But I'm happy that I know that what these things are what that they exist. That there are who's. Who can help with this kind of, with this kind of stuff. I'm curious about is there. How would you budget in terms of the cost and the time of, of moving forward with a, an SEO plan and what timeline of when you might expect to see some results from that or what you might, what those results might be? Yeah. So the prices run the gamut and here's where you have to be very careful. Right. Caveat. Enter buyer beware. Because if you spend $500 a month on SEO, you're probably much worse position than if you spent nothing at all. Because the people who are willing to take $500 a month for SEO are not only not good at SEO probably, they are probably atrocious at it and in getting you bad results or no results and potentially lying to you in the process so that you keep paying them while you're still not getting the results. So the danger is you could end up with a sullied link profile where it's just toxic. People have linked to you that are spammy and are not legitimate websites or have they, they have bad juju. You know, it's like porn sites or scams or malware infected sites or whatever. They're linking to you now and they weren't before. And it's because of the, this bad SEO firm that you inadvertently hired. So you got to be very, very careful. If you don't have let's say more than a couple thousand dollars a month, then you probably better off not hiring an SEO firm until you save up, let's say 5 or $10,000 and you just buy a one off SEO audit and just stop there. If you hire somebody for even like 1500amonth, probably they're not going to be very good. It's rare that you could hire somebody good. It's like trying to find a house that is $20,000. Like what are you going to get, right? $20,000. Yeah, so, so I would. And I think that's what the audit thing, I think that's an important thing though to make, you know. But I often say to people to look at not thinking about it as an expense, but thinking about as a capital investment that because what you're doing with SEO, it's not an expense that you're. I spent 500 on SEO this month and I didn't get anything. It's not that, it's that you invested $2,000 a month or whatever. It was for a period of time to build this, you know, this SEO footprint or whatever you, I don't know what the word would be, but all of these assets that you're creating that are going to bring you traffic forever and ever and ever. And that's kind of a, I get it that that's a better way to, to think about it now. Now if you have, let's say five to $10,000 a month, then you could also, in addition to maybe doing some auditing of your website and finding all the issues and missed opportunities, might be able to do some link building as well. Now, PR firms are not inexpensive, but this is specialized form of PR that normally you either end up hiring a really bad firm that builds low quality links and those end up getting you in trouble. Like I described the link spam, that these are toxic links. The alternative is to hire a really good firm. And that firm charges kind of like a monthly retainer. And like most PR firms, they would charge that retainer and keep that retainer regardless of whether they get you the results or not. And that can be really frustrating. It's like the PR firm coming back to you saying, you know what, we couldn't get any results this month because coronavirus just took over the entire news cycle and nobody, like none of the journalists would return our calls. And they all. But we sure worked hard. Yeah, we sure did. And I'm like, that's not good consolation for me. I don't feel any better about that. So I want to get a pay for performance arrangement if I'm in the position of the client. So that's what we offer is pay for performance link building. That's awesome. So let's say that Your budget is $5,000 a month for that. So that's the monthly retainer that you would pay at the beginning of the month. And then the links that we build would be costed out based on the authority scores of the linking websites, like the trust flow and the domain rating Dr. Is metric in Ahrefs, another great SEO tool. And we just have a formula. Calculate what the price is going to be for that particular link. Yeah. And it adds up all those different links to the month's budget retainer. And then we move on to the next month. And if a link got stripped out of or you know, the, the opportunity fell through or whatever. Okay, well that's not going to cost the client. That's on us. We got to replace that link. And then we go and we replace that link and you know, it just have to backfill it from that previous month. So that's how we work on a pay for performance basis. And that's how I recommend finding a service provider that does this is if they're willing to put skin in the game and get paid for performance, then you've got the right firm working for you. That's amazing. I think we always thinking about that you're somebody and I think Tim was probably low balling you on your stats there. Now, with 2 million subscribers and 300 million views, I think you're substantially higher than that now. And I think that people look at those numbers and they kind of think, okay, yeah, that's what I'm going to be a YouTube star. You're probably in two camps. They look at it and think, yeah, I'm just going to put up a couple of videos and bing bang, boom, I'm getting millions of views on my, on my videos. And they get disappointed in that. Or there are other people who think I want to do this, but I don't even know where to get started. And maybe they think that it's too late or it's going to take too long to do it. So maybe let's kind of start there with what's the. Where are we right now at the lay of the the land here? I think it if you're inside thought leadership, which is the category I consider for entrepreneurs, where you're educating, you're sharing your knowledge, you're trying to get your message out there to the world. It's your number one strategy for 2021. People say it's too early. It's not in thought leadership. You know, YouTube's been around for I don't know how many years, a lot of years. I've been on the platform since 2009. Yeah. So it took me three years to get on, I guess, but it took me and I show my stats on my website. It took me five years to get to 9,000 subscribers on YouTube. Five years of making content and the next five years to jump to almost 2 million subscribers. And wherever we're at now, it's still very, very, very, very new in thought leadership in education. So there are tons of people who are looking. This is a classic case where there's tons of demand but very little supply. There's a few people, whatever you're an expert at. All of you are experts, right? You're an entrepreneur, you know a lot about something. Sharing that message, sharing your wisdom can be the path to helping get more clients into your business. And if you go to YouTube and you search for whatever you're an expert at. Think about what you would make a video on, what are you good at? What would you make a video on? Go to YouTube and search for it and then watch the videos that pop up. There's probably two or three people who've made videos on it and watch their videos and ask yourself, does this person know more than me about the topic? They might have the camera and the lighting and whatever set up, but do they have the knowledge compared to you on the topic? And for a lot of cases it's no. And so there's so many people. People are going to YouTube right now as a place to learn, not just entertainment, right? You go to Instagram for inspiration. People go to YouTube to learn. They will watch long form videos. The highest category right now we're looking at the one to three hour range for videos people will sit down and watch. And so if that's you, if you want to educate, if you've got a message inside you, there's giant demand, little supply and that's usually a pretty good model as an entrepreneur to get into. I think what's ramped up my personal, in my household, the consumption of YouTube is the smart TV that we've got the YouTube app on the TV and we're watching it on the big 70 inch screen, like watching regular TV and not watching it on the phone or watching it on the laptop. So it's just like watching TV and everybody's in HD now and there's no buffering issues. Like when YouTube first started in 2006, it was still buffering issues and things that were, it was kind of painful to watch, low resolution, all of that. But now there's really no difference between a broadcast cable and watching YouTube. Same, same kind of thing, you know. So there's that. I just saw an article in the, I believe started out in the New York Times and then it led me to some other reports and there was a infographic and breakdown of what they were calling the creator economy. And you may have seen this, but there are. They estimate the size of the creator economy at 50 million. People are creators, meaning if they take YouTube channels, Instagram, TikTok, all of those people who are doing stuff, it's at about about 50 million, which was like 1% of the 5 billion people that are online. So it's only, you know, you talk about it feels like everybody's doing YouTube channel, yet virtually nobody is doing a YouTube channel. In the big scope of things. If you've Got this. You look at it like that. And then of the ones that they break it down into professional and amateur, like ones who are, who have a certain number of subscribers, like how many people have 100,000 YouTube subscribers? The numbers even just get smaller and smaller, but yet the appetite for it continues to go up and up. You're saying about your. If you're going into the thought leadership category, which most of us on here are entrepreneurs, so that's probably a pretty good guess. What's job one? If we're going. Let's, let's start with people who. What can they expect? Or what would be kind of if we were going to try and create just a top level blueprint of what we need. What are the things that we need to do? Starting with, you got to get an idea of what your, what you're going to do and then what are kind of the steps on that. Most of it, job one is getting out of your fear. Right. I mean, the biggest thing, people ask all sorts of questions, like, oh, I don't know what topic to make, I don't know what camera I should buy. I don't know all these how questions, but you can give them the answers and they still won't do it. Same thing with your book. You can give people the exact book strategy. Yeah. And it makes sense logically. But they still won't do it because they're afraid, because they feel like they don't have a message worth sharing or because they feel like somebody's gonna. Somebody will read the book or somebody will watch the video and what they'll say. Or nobody will read the book or nobody will watch the video. Right. And how that makes you feel. So the biggest thing is just getting out of your own fear that when the camera comes on and you press record, you don't know what to say and you blank out. My best advice for that is momentum. Like just start and expect to suck. There you go. That was perfectly cued. It was great. We had the theme song come on at the right time. Expect to suck. Expect to suck. Here's what happens, Dean. So people, they watch a video or they see. Maybe they see you on this podcast or they see Joe or they see how great Tim is. They watch somebody else and they say, okay, I might not be at that level, but I can be like 85% that level because I have a good message. And then they get in front of the camera and then they press record and they blank out and they mumble some words and then they watch it back and they said, wow, I really suck. I thought it would be like 85%, but I'm really only 20%. And then they never post and they never create. Mm. Don't expect to be great at anything the first time you do it. Where did this come from? Why do you expect to be able to be great on camera the first time you're doing it? So just expect to suck. Expect it to be terrible. Expect the audio not to work. Expect interruptions to happen. Expect your dog to be barking. Expect the camera to fall over. Expect to suck. Awesome post. And then do it again tomorrow and do it again tomorrow and do it again tomorrow and you'll find, like anything else, that the more reps you put in, the better you get at it. And one way that I find helps people is to think about what is your message? What is your ultimate message to your audience? Or even more insular. Look at your family. Look. If you have kids or want to have kids, is your message to them. Only do things when you're perfect, only release when it's perfect. Especially something that's creative. It's impossible to be creative and perfect at the same time. Yes. So we're not living our own message. Of course your message to your kids is not going to be only released when it's perfect. So you have to go off and do it yourself. You can go back and watch the videos, the early videos on my channel, and they're still embarrassing to watch, you know, cringe. Every time I look at it, I'm still proud that I did it, but I kept the videos up. I haven't deleted the content because it's good to see. I want people to see the journey, the show. Hey, I suck too. It took me five years, guys, to get the 9,000 subscribers. They sucked pretty badly. But you get up and keep going. And so I think more than the how to have, like, what, What. What camera? What phone? Like here. This is your. This is. This is your camera, right? Film. Hold it this way. Sideways and film. Right. In the worst case, you do it like this. Great. You sucked. Release. Do it again. Another video tomorrow. Yeah, right. We're. We're creating all of these how to questions, which then is just our head getting us stuck in procrastination mode, thinking we need to have the perfect plan before we launch, where the answer really is. If anybody's interested in making a YouTube channel, your next best action item today is to pull out your phone, flip it horizontal, and go film your first video. I don't know who took credit for this. But, you know, I'd heard a format of, you know, getting your first 24 kind of videos out there, your first six months. If you're going to do one a week, is to think about the top 10 questions that people ask about whatever it is that you do that you could answer for somebody, one question per video, and then the 10 questions that they don't ask, but they should be asking as another opportunity for you. And then four videos that are, here's what to do next. Like, sort of things that you can do to get started with someone. And that would be a really good kind of easy way to get a little bit of a Runway, to get the framework for it. And the important thing, from what I've heard you talk about and seen observed with everybody, is to get in the right cadence of just of publishing on a consistent schedule. That minimum would be once a week that you're posting up at the same time and just get 10 minutes as your target to go. What would be on that checklist of if we were going to say, get the format right? So we're kind of like measuring twice, cutting once. We just get the contextual format for it that we're going to post on. On. Is there a particular day that's better than others? Is there, you know, if you were to say, just follow this kind of blueprint, or is it whatever day it is, is. Is the right day. What have you learned being around all these dogs, about caring for yourself, caring for others? I mean, there's got to be so many lessons that have come from this that most people would never even think has happened. I mean, you've probably gotten bit by dogs, I imagine. I've never been bitten. Never. And let me tell you why. People often say, I don't believe that's true. So you remember I washed dogs for seven years, had the franchise for what, 13 years, and then now we're back in into it again. Is that when a dog goes from its environment into yours, it's not protecting your environment. If you go into their environment, there's a big chance that you'd get bit if you were washing a dog in their environment. So first and foremost, it's coming into yours. So it takes away that elimination. Now they're more worried about being scared rather than being protective. So that's the first thing it eliminates. And the second one is people who have got those really vicious dogs don't bring them to get washed. They don't want to be embarrassed and have this big, dangerous dog coming in There knowing that they're going to bite you, especially here, if they're going to get sued if they bite you. So it just doesn't. It doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. So what do you think that animals actually do for people? I mean, here you are on this mission with Bathe to save, and you want to save all these dogs. It's one thing about saving the life of a dog, but there's something way beyond what do I represent and what they do for people. So what is it? I think it ends up boiling down to the human element. I've actually thought about this myself, because on the surface it's about saving the dog's life. But when you save that dog, doesn't it go to a family and be a part of a family environment? So really, in the end, it ends up being that communication skill again of wanting to connect with the human on the other side. And the dog pretty much is the conduit. That's how I've sort of seen it. But I think from the people that are living in this world, it's really about saving that dog's life. But they don't understand that it goes to a. Well, I guess they understand. I'm not saying that they're naive, but it really ends up helping another human being at the end of the day. So really it's all that connection on the outside. That's why we do it all at the end. Even if it's a subconscious level. That's why we're doing it. Yeah. So you have three rabbits in your rv? Oh, God. We don't start with that. What's the story on that? Why do you have rabbits? All right, so when we were over here, we. We said to the kids that, you know, they wanted a dog all the way through, and we were in a couple of beautiful homes that just really wasn't right for. And I'm gonna have to put this down to your fault, sweetie. I'm sorry. But it was Aria's youngest daughter's. We celebrate our half birthdays. We call them a celebration day. So when you're six months older, we have just the five of us, we call it celebration day. Okay? So we go to the pet shop and there's this little rabbit. The kids are wanting this rabbit and we say, oh, be so cute. Let's just get a rabbit. So I really don't want to get a rabbit. It's so small. Put it in a cage. So we get the rabbit. Then about two weeks later. Was it two Weeks later. How long afterwards was it? Oh, was it? So I don't know. I think Rachel might have had a couple of wines, to be honest. I don't want to throw you under the bus, but we get down to the pet shop and there just happens to be a male rabbit there and she's like, wouldn't it be great just to have these little tiny rabbits running around and we can sell them and the kids can make a little bit of money and you can teach them entrepreneurial skills. She totally sucked me. And I thought, alright, let's give it a go. So we get these two rabbits and they had eight babies. So we have all these rabbits jumping around the house this whole time. And they totally fell in love with the two rabbits, like, really honestly, just because they haven't been outside of our family. You remember we're in America with no extended family. Right. Right now, little family and long and short of rabbits, ended up having three litters. And we. We've now got the mother, the first litter child and then the third litter child, the son. Yeah. And you just can't separate it. It's going to become a zoo. You're going to become the mobile zoo. Yes. I think that's how we're going to be. This is like, God, Noah's Ark or something. But it's going to be like Anthony's Ark. It's going to have every animal and you're going to wash them along the way. And we've got our dog, We've got our little, little bubbles. Our rescue dog as well. Yeah. And the three kids and the wife and it's. I'm just known as the bus driver, mate. I just drive the bus. That's all I do. You know what, though? It's a fascinating life that, you know, that you signed up for that you do, but it's kind of cool. So where are we going to see you in like three years? Well, right now we're involved in a stack of companies, almost like 21 companies and 35 different business partners. And what's great is it's all been leveraged. There's just one business that I've working with a partner of mine. I've got to get sort of back on track. But all the others are great and they're all sort of coming to market at the same time. We'd love to sort of live in America and Australia six months of the year sort of thing, so we can sort of go back and still have that cultural connection and come over here. It doesn't Mean it's six months and six months, like two months there and two months here. Ultimately we'd love to do that collectively and run our companies and be a part of it all together. Well, here's the thing because I'd like to get your perspective on this because most people are not going to be traveling around the country, especially a country that's not even their primary residence. But you're doing this, I mean it reminded me of, I can't remember the guy's name, where he had taken his three kids. Very interesting because I thought of this when I, I saw you this morning with your whole family. And they went sailing for like almost a year. I think it was like nine months. And they had to home school their kids, I guess boat schooling them or is what you would call it because they're literally on a boat and traveling just around the world in a sailboat. And the first couple months they said the kids would just argue and they were bored out of the their mind. But then after a couple of months they would start reading and they started getting along and they just started doing things that were different than anything that they had ever done before. And you know, in the beginning the kids thought they would absolutely hate it. But after this was all done, they became more grounded, they became more peaceful. And it like, because I had spoken to this person, you know, many years after they, in this adventure happen. And so the kids were much older and everything, but it was just something about getting away from modern life in the way that they're used to it. And so I think the thing that's most interesting to me about what it is you're doing is how this totally shakes up your conditioning. I mean, you know, God, talk about getting out of your comfort zone. Seriously, the transition periods. I actually spoke in front of 16 entrepreneurs just the last time before, before we went back to Australia because we go back a couple of times a year. And he said, tell everybody about what it's like taking risk. I said, I don't see myself taking a risk. I had a big blue dog. That wasn't a risk. You know, going around the country, are you kidding me? This shit isn't going to work. That's not a risk. It's getting out of your comfort zone. Going from Australia, our home, forever. I'm such a patriotic Australian like you wouldn't believe. I think I speak more Australian being here in America than I do actually back in the States just to keep that authenticity. I mean, I love it so much, love interacting with you guys. So Coming over there, that was so uncomfortable. Knowing that we didn't know what we didn't know. But I just knew it was going to work. That wasn't a risk. I was fucking frightened as fuck. How's it going to work? We didn't know what to do it. So getting out of your comfort zone is the biggest thing. And then when we go from, we get it all back and we're successful again and whatever you define success, and then giving all that up and going into a 200 square foot RV, that was so uncomfortable. That transition was so difficult. It was unreal. But now we're on the other side of it. It is unbelievable. It is so much fun. And the kids, they've just grown to a level of if you interact with these guys, they can speak to anybody on a level of just great sense of awareness. They can talk to adults, like adult. They've picked up so many incredible skills listening to my negotiating deals. Like even when we went to, oh my God, we went to LA, to Vegas. And you got to remember, parking this 60 foot train is very difficult to. We can't reverse it and we can't do a short U turn. So we can only go straight or a big area. So we're looking for a huge car park on the Vegas strip. We find one. We go into this particular car park. The guy comes over and he says it's $10. It says $10 on the site. $10. This is like $50. Look how big this thing is. I said, well, how much is it going to be? $30. I said, how about 20? All right, 20. But the reason that I do that, I just show the kids that a price that's sort of set forward, there's always that negotiating limit. If it's stuck, then it's stuck. But at least you ask the question, what I always say to your kids if you don't ask. So those things are just, oh, we should actually show them a couple of things that we know together. Yeah. And what we found is great car park right in the middle of the strip. Isabella did a video. We were behind MGM grand. The Aria built in New York. New York. What was the other one? Monte Carlo, right on the strip. And at nighttime the lights were just up for 20 bucks a night. I know, okay, obviously we've got a nice coach, but for 20 bucks a night in Vegas, you can sit in the car park and we stay there for two nights. That's fantastic. Unbelievable. They're the little things that are, that are just something awesome to take away From. Yeah. Love it. Love it. So what are a few of the best business lessons that you've discovered over your career? I think having great partnerships. I'm not an employee guy. I don't want to have a bunch of employees working in the business. That's sort of not me. I love having the entrepreneur to entrepreneur being business partners together so we can actually bring all our best angles to the game and own it together. So as long as I've got control most of the time in my company, I can be the decision maker. So I'm the one that's loud and proud that's going to make it work. I don't want to be stuck in a boardroom. All right, Anthony's got these things on the agenda. That doesn't work for me. I might be out here right now just at lunch. Bang. Pull the deal off, guys. You're not going to believe what I pulled off today. Yay. Rather than, oh, guys, listen, I've got a great opportunity for you. This is what could happen. By that time, that guy's gone into another deal. As long as I've got that control, then everything's great. But I think it's more about partnerships with me. Because if you own the company wholly and solely on your own, then you celebrate the wins on your own and you go through the bad times on your own. But if you've got three or four or five different business partners together, my God, the celebration of success together is just magnanimous. You know what's interesting about that? Because I've heard completely opposite views. You know, some people love partnerships, others, like, they don't want to be partners at all. So it's the big takeaway that I got from what you just said is that knowing what your wheelhouse is, you know, knowing where your boundaries are and what you're really good at, and if you're not good at something, going and finding someone else that has those capabilities, well, congruent. I have to be congruent. If I'm not congruent, I just won't even contemplate the opportunity. Yeah, well, and plus, you said earlier about the gut feel feeling going into relationships, like, every time that I have ignored that, whatever you call it, intuition, that gut feeling, the thought, I mean, it expresses itself in many different ways. But whenever you get a sense that this is not a good deal, you should probably pay attention to that. Yeah, I agree with that. Sorry, I look like I'm going to sneeze here. That's why I keep grabbing my nose. Maybe there's something happening that's telling me, yes, that is a. A year ago or so, hardly anyone had even heard of Periscope or Meerkat or Blab or Facebook mentions. And right now we all have this portable television studio in our pockets and we could broadcast to the entire connected planet for free and build an audience. And what we're going to talk about today is about owning time, which is really the most valuable asset that we have in our lives. And it starts with a little story. About 15 years ago, I was in Palm Desert with my then pregnant wife, Vivian. She walked into a little shop I called a friend of mine. His name is Merlin Quiggle, I kid you not, that poor man. And Merlin is a producer. He produces all sorts of events and he's been doing marketing for about 30 years. I said, hey Merlin, what are you doing? He says, I'm buying Rolex watches. Three of them for people who are responsible for giving me all the business I've had for my 25 year career. I said, that's a really nice gift. Why are you giving them a Rolex watch? He said, who do you think they're gonna think of every time they check the time? I slapped my head and I thought that was one of the smartest things I've ever heard. I don't know if you know this, but do you know how many times the average person checks their phone every day? Okay, the average is 150 times. And if you think about it, if you add up the number of times that people check their phones, their watches, their desktop, laptop computers, tablets, or watch their interactive televisions, it's incredible. They are trading and giving their time. And more importantly, Apple won. They're almost worth a trillion dollars right now, right? It's because they own your time, they own your mind, they own your risk, they own your bathroom, bedroom experience, your car experience. So what we're talking about today is how to be seen, heard, viewed, listened to, anytime, anywhere, on demand, on any device. Because that's the business we're all in. And I like to think of it as if you can own someone's pocket in their bedroom and bathroom. Something is happening. It's very, very public. So right now there's roughly 300 million interactive televisions in use. If you add up Apple TVs and all the doodads and gadgets that are connecting TVs these days, roughly 2 billion tablet devices, 3 billion Internet connected laptop and desktop computers, and we're at about 7 billion or more, growing very, very quickly. The number of Internet connected accounts. Most of us have 6 to 25 Internet connected devices in our homes today. Okay, that's after just doing a lot of surveying. So the next thing. Oh, and there's about 4 billion smartphones that are being sold every two years. That's actually according to Peter. So if you think about the level of access we have to multi trillion dollar infrastructures and brands that are willing to broadcast your message across multiple channels to any device, anytime on demand, the question is, what do you need to do to stand out and be in front of all those people? So again, look at all these brands you got. The most valuable brands in the world are willing to broadcast and distribute your content free of charge, giving you access to their customers. So if you think about it, and this is the way I think about it, right now we are all in the education and entertainment business and those who take advantage of disruptive technologies first, the winners historically, and you look at some of our entertainers up here, all of them have figured out how to own time. So the question is, how are we going to take advantage of that as marketers or business owners or people who want to change the world? One of my goals is to create a million entrepreneurs before I passed. And as of almost three years ago to this day, I finished my very last cancer treatment. So I'm lucky to be alive and I came back with a new vision. A very I just wanted to do this. This is what charges me up. And I think there's a renaissance going on. Right now. We have the ability to broadcast a message. Why not do great things? Why not create immense wealth using entrepreneurship as the model? So if you think about the evolution of marketing feedback, the challenge is how do you get as much feedback as possible so you can change and refine your message. If you think about direct marketing, direct mail, it used to take a couple of weeks or months because you'd have to write your letters, send them out and wait and see what the response was. Now if you just advance your radio and commercials, social media, ads, etc, etc, we can do it quickly. But now it's possible to do it in seconds and that the big idea is feedback driven intimacy. The faster you speed the process of gaining trust, the more time you own. It's just a matter of time before someone will want to buy from you. To say, I like this person, I think they can help me and I want to connect with them. I know they've got a tool or a resource. I got that from Bill Harris originally. I kind of messed it up right Now, I like this person. They really know what they're talking about, and I think they can help me. There you go. So what's the solution? Well, it's webcasts. Now, a few years ago, in about 2009, we started experimenting with these. These are live online, interactive broadcast. The opportunity to broadcast video, interact with an audience through chat, be able to say, hey, share this online and click a button to buy. Or we could actually create products these ways. Back then, it cost 20 to $30,000 to do a show. Now you can do it with Google Hangouts for free or Blab or any of these other tools and create a very, very rapidly engaged audience just by talking to them. And whether you're talking to one or five or 50 or 500 or 5,000 or 500,000 people, which you can do for free, you can create this feedback loop through chat and actually read the minds of your audience in real time. So the way we've been using it and teaching a lot of other entrepreneurs how to do it, and just think about this again, I think a renaissance is about to occur. Television production is going to change dramatically because of this technology. It's going to radically change education, too. So what we started doing is this notion of something called you everywhere now. So if you can create content once and distribute it in real time to as many devices as possible, the notion is you could perform your content as an educator, as an entertainer. You could convert it very quickly into a video and distribute it on the major video sites, chop it up into chunks. You could also turn. Turn it into a podcast. You could save it as an audio, you could save it as a video. We've also started converting that content into books, putting them on Amazon and taking advantage of that channel. What we find is that someone that watches a live video is going to be different than someone who watches a podcast or listens to a podcast or reads a book or a paperback book. Same content created over and over again. Then we can put it and create podcasts, one of the products, rather, one of the strategies we've used is we will perform a product live, interactively, getting feedback and adjusting our approach and saving that in a membership site in real time. We're able to create a documentary in real time as well. And we've seen other people start using the strategy over and over again. Then you distribute to social sites, same content repurposed, reused to blogs. And also it helps you get attention in the traditional media as well. Well, so again, create once, distribute everywhere, any device, on demand. We've Been calling this the you everywhere now strategy or approach. So I want to show you something I call the Intimacy Dashboard. Because the question is, what do you need so you can read the minds and build an intimate relationship as quickly as possible with this engaged audience. So this is one of my studios. It's a whole bunch of monitors. The good news is you don't have to have all this fancy equipment to make this work. Work yourself if you're using something like Google Hangouts. But we've broken it down into what tools you need to read this information quickly. So we have a timer, make sure we're on track. A presentation prompter, cameras above it so we can look at the screen and see what we're about to present. Maybe you've got a keynote presentation, you've got some notes, your next and previous slide, a monitor so you can see what the audience sees. But here's where things get interesting. Using a Google Doc, I have a producer who's typing notes and telling me what people are saying in real time, keeping me on track. So you only need one assistant to do this. Sometimes I have team chat, my technical team saying, here's what's going on. The shopping cart's down. Wait for a little while delay, all right, then the stats so I know how many people are watching, how many people are in checkout. When I say click the orange buy button, how many people are buying so I can acknowledge the people who are investing in real time. And finally, the viewer chat. This is the hub of everything because I can ask a question, get feedback immediately, adjust the presentation, adjust the approach. So quick study. J.J. virgin. Got to talk about her. She's my sister from another mother. We started doing podcasts together, or rather webcasts. She's had multiple six figure days, New York Times best seller status. We're converting on shows that last seven to eight and a half hours. Most people say that's impossible. They stay, they watch and they buy. Converting 38 to 52% of the average viewers into buyers because they're engaging intimate conversations. And the most important thing that JJ said to me is, look, I learn more about my audience in two hours than I have in 10 years doing surveys as a result of doing webcasts. We've also put this together. A combination of a PBS special with a TED Talk. Nine presenters all together. Dave Asprey, Elizabeth Lombardo, performing, cooking, bringing on guests. And the results. 30,000 opt ins, 9,000 viewers peak an average of 5,400. But here's where things got interesting. Almost half the viewers bought the product because they felt like they had an intimate relationship with J.J. virgin, okay? And the other viewers. And in a replay with live chat, people think and feel and this is done completely transparently, no shenanigans going on. They are still interacting with the host because someone is interacting with them live with chat able to replay that over and over again. The long format, eight and a half hour shows, people said, this is crazy. Who's going to stick around? Almost 40% of the average viewers stick around to the end. And we started a health network as a result of this. John Assaraf also used the same thing, recording weekly evergreen webcasts that play over and over again. He's producing a million to 2 million in sales with a cold audience. How can you make your competition irrelevant? And I'm going to push it a little further. How many of you in this room would like to make the competition irrelevant? Well, this is the answer to these questions is really the essence of wow. And I'm about to share with you a strategy behind the powerful approach I systematically use to get results for my client. And we all know that delivering good products, offering good rates and really providing great customer service is merely a prerequisite to staying in business. Nowadays, you must wow your client if you want your business to soar and not just survive. You have to keep them coming back over and over. And to find this insight, I examine what is probably the most crowded market on earth where maybe 50% of the population is your competition. And yet despite the grim outlook, many succeed to attract and retain a customer for life. And actually in this very room, several of us have many years of success from this battle won from these battles. And what I'm talking about, what I'm referring right now, is the dating market and is an evolved state of commitment marriage. And what better guide and what better source to learn from in this market than the book. The five love languages in this book, which actually was surprisingly translated in 50 languages and was bestselling on the New York Times for seven years. I think Dr. Gary Chapman, who wrote the book, actually outlined five key categories for how we express and how we receive love. And these are gifts, word of appreciation, quality time, physical touch and act of services. And to really grasp a little bit the importance of that is that each time somebody tell me, well, how do I do to know actually what language to apply? Because what's the point of applying a language that won't fit? You know, it's like telling you, Joel, you love gift, but I'm going To give you word of appreciation. So what I always say it's always involve a little bit of work is that you before falling head over heels, of course. And applying those love languages, you got to really figure out what is the best language your clients respond to. And for that you got to find out through their colleagues, assistant partners, peers, what's really how they express love to others and what is their routines, what is their hobbies. And that's why today I'd like to give you some example about how to apply how we apply the five love languages. But also for you, how to apply the five love languages. So the first love language is gifts and beware. Because most people miss the take the physical gift to be the important aspect of gifting. Well, actually this is the trap to avoid. Actually what's really, really most important. It's all the effort and the care you put into getting and each time giving the gift. And that's what will actually really keep you leave your clients really beaming. And I'd like you to introduce you to my hockey loving Kevin, which is one of a good, good client we have in Denver. And I decided to surprise him. I know he loves gift and so we, him, his wife and his executive team, we invited them to a game of the Avalanche. I don't know if you have any hockey fans here, but not that many, I guess with the weather outside. I understand. And we decided to invite him in the box, in the box at the Milehouse stadium and see the game. And when they came at the box, here was a sign brick. And the importance of that brick is that it came from the forum which is for Orchiphon is a kind of a kind of a hockey temple because that's where the former hockey arena where many people saw the Canadian win Stanley Cups. So we had that signed by Patrick Roy, who was all time goalie and also at that time coach of the Habs. And also in the room they had a Carey Price autographed jersey. So of course they were kind of wow by the personalization and rare nature and also what these gifts represented a little bit between the interests we both share. So now you wonder, but how could I apply? It's good for you, Eric, but how could I apply? Well, if you can think about, I got some ideas from you actually. And I miss the thing. Of course, when you do that new competition, when you do it over time, new competition become irrelevant. So now for you, for you, what could be the gift language you could have. Well, you can do as you can see on the screen, Even tickets, gift card, autograph book. And I can tell you, when you practice that kind of language with your client, well, your competition become irrelevant. The second love language is word of appreciation. And I use that a lot to building rapport with my clients through building through sending more often because they're actually the one who will make us stay in business. We send a lot of greeting cards to express our gratitude most of the time. And each time I to actually be able to praise the clients we have in front of the colleague. I never do that. And it's very, I never miss to do that. And that's very understated, but so powerful. So if you have clients, never take them for granted and give you some example. Of course, again, when you do that over and over, competition becomes irrelevant. And I want to give you an example of what could be your word of affirmation. Could be sending emails, phone calls. I prefer the really personal phone calls and of course mail thank you note. And when you do that over and over, when you communicate like this with your client, well, your competition becomes irrelevant. The third love language is quality time. And actually this is what you see on my right, which is on your left. What Actually, Chris, which is a financial software company owner, he experienced with us, he came down to check out our operation and finalize a contract that he finally signed. And at the end of the day I say, well, we have a gourmet dinner cruise plan. Why don't you join us? And he was blown away because of course it was like music, fireworks. So this was really like when you start to invest time and get to know better your client. Of course, because the idea here is not to. To use that memorable experience you did to extend the conversation you have in the boardroom, but really to get to know better your clients. And what happens, of course your competition become irrelevant. So some of the ideas I have for you, and maybe you already do it, is what could you apply in terms of investing time and getting to know better your client. You have dinner invitation, sharing a special event or volunteering together. And when you do that, well, your competition becomes irrelevant. And the fourth language, physical touch. And I want to be very clear here. If you like to hug your clients, you can. I mean, most of them may like them, but I'm not referring to that here. I'm referring to when it comes to courting and developing relationship. I talk about FaceTime, the real face time, you know, when once a year I go and I visit my client because there is nothing better than just talking through the concerns from the comfort of the office. And we always do that. We have like a customized scorecard and so they grade us and that's kind of keep us kind of accountable. And when we do that, when you have that level of presence and they see how we engage, well, obviously the competition becomes irrelevant. That's the people I should have put that slide before. So I'm going to give you some example. For you, physical touch could be visiting client in the office, participating to an event that actually your client is hosting, or showing support in a person in grief. So now the last and of course when you do that over and over and you show how much you care, your competition becomes irrelevant. So the last love language is actually act of service. And one of a good client is here, Scott with his wife Kristen. Scott is a really elite dental consultant in Nashville. And when I got wind that he was planning a weekend for his wife in Montreal, I kind of arranged a guided weekend of adventure. So took care of a presidential suite accommodation, did the tour guide for them. And of course I was not always there with them. But whether I was there or not, of course they were of course really blown away. And you can see this is where they were in the cathedral. And this of course makes your competition irrelevant. So if you have active services you can do. It's not always about us. You, you could be referring a prospect to your client, giving expert advice to one of your clients in actually a project that is not going to bring you any money or sponsoring one of your client advice. And when you demonstrate that kind of involvement, of course your competition becomes irrelevant. And I want to say that I want to caution you because you know, it's like with your relationship, you're not the beginning is like we spend countless hours with your time and attention to court. And most of people sometimes when they get to their first transaction, then they forgot about the client. And the only way you're going to stay in business is that if you constantly think of when is the last time I wow them, when is the last time? So today I know I'm a little over my time, but it's because, you know, the euro is a little bit more expensive. So the thing is that I give you a roadmap to actually identify and harness your love language in your business. Now what I want you is to go out and fall in love all over again with your clients. And by now I hope I have convinced you that by applying the insights of the five love languages, you can systematically wow your client and make your competition irrelevant. So by A show of hands, who in this room has themselves been hospitalized, had a loved one hospitalized, or let's say a good friend in the last three years? So that's over 50% of the room, Right? All right. So on the other hand, who in this room, by a show of hands, has never been sick a day in their lives? Never been sick a day in their lives? Nobody. So that leads me to the point of this presentation. If an unexpected medical crisis were to happen to you, to me, to the entrepreneur, would your business survive or would it implode or even destruct? Because this is the thing we want to ensure strong continuity of our business, no matter what. And there's a lot of things that we can do to protect our businesses. But there's one thing that, in my opinion, you must do. But in my experience, very few of us have actually done it or we haven't done it in the way that I'm going to talk to you about today. Now, this one thing is cost effective for most people. We're looking at under $1,000 or even under $500 to get this accomplished. And it's actually pretty simple and easy, easy to implement. But like I said, very few people have done it. Why haven't we done it? Well, the first reason, and I think the most obvious, is because it's not something that's very pleasant to think about. We don't want to think about it, and it's just frankly not exciting, right? It's not an exciting thing to think about. But also, a lot of times what I've noticed is that people make a lot of assumptions about the law, Even extremely educated people, people that are very knowledgeable about a lot of things, like the people in this room make assumptions about the law that, to be quite honest with you, are completely fatal to your business if you get stuck in this position. Additionally, we, when we're talking about these topics, a lot of times it's in either the context of business formation or it's in the context of estate planning, which the focus of estate planning is, is for the most part on death planning. Right. What happens if I die or when I die? Because it's not if, it's when. But I ask you, what happens if you live? So before I get into the things that you need to be thinking about and how you need to think about this, I'd like to share a story with you at 11:16am on January 4, 2015. I was many things. I was an entrepreneur. I was a wife to my husband Marcus. I was a Mother to my then 4 year old son, Merrick. I was a daughter, a sister, an employer. I was a lot of different things to a lot of people. But something that had been brewing inside of me, unbeknownst to me, came to a head that day. And I ended up in the emergency room of a hospital where I ended up spending over 30 days straight. I was in two different hospitals, I had four surgeries, I was given over 50 different medications, and I saw over 40 doctors. Like I said, all of this completely came at me from nowhere. Imagine yourself in this position, right? What would it be like for your business if you had to spend 30 complete days of having no ability to be in contact with your business or to run it? But then let's take it a step further because of course, you spend 30 days in the hospital, that's not the end of the story. I had another 60 days of just recovery and then a whole other year till this day of getting back to health. And so. But the 90 days that I spent out of my business were crucial, right? And think about yourselves in this position. Would your business survive if you could not run it for 90 days? And that's one of the things that we need to be thinking about. Because a lot of times when we have done anything related to this, people will say to me all the time, I've got that taken care of. I did my power of attorney, or I have that in my operating agreement or whatever, right? But have you thought about it? Because you know, we don't have cookie cutter businesses, right? Nobody in this room has a cookie cutter business. If you're in this room with this group of people, there is no way that your business is exactly like anybody else's, right? My business is nothing like Denise's business. Denise's business is nothing like Joe's, nothing like Michael's, right? None of us have even remotely similar businesses. Similarly, none of us have cookie cutter families or life situations, right? Some of us are married, some of us aren't, Some of us are divorced, maybe more than one time. Some of us have children, some of us don't. Some of us have many children, right? And so these are all dynamics that play into this thought process and this conversation. But what happens is that it's a byproduct or we think of it as a byproduct and not as a conscious planning thought process. And so that's one of the things that I want you to be thinking about is what assumptions are you making about the law and what can happen related to, to Your business in the law. Because for most small business owners, and when I say small, I'm not talking about small in money, I'm talking about small in operational size for the most part. Now, what I see is a lot of times people that have a larger operation have thought this through a little bit better or have things in place, but that's not always the case. So we need to be thinking about it. But what assumptions are you making? I mean, who has the legal authority. Authority to go to the bank and conduct banking transactions on behalf of your business? Does somebody actually have legal authority to do this? Probably not. If you don't actually have a specific legal document or plan in place related to that, who has the ability to enter into contracts, make capital purchases, hire and fire employees, Sell your business at. At what is considered fair market value at the time, if that becomes necessary. Right. So these are all questions that need to be answered. Now, by the way, I do want you to know that I have prepared for you, which will be given at the end of this, a list of 25 things that at the minimum, you should be thinking about that will be handed out. So you don't need to write any of those down, but it's just something that you need to think about. Who has the legal authority. Authority to do these? Because without the legal authority to do this, your business can implode or even destruct. Now, in my case, luckily, because this is what I do for a living and I think about it every single day, I had that plan in place. And for my business, one of the people that was key in that, was a key employee that I have in my business who's worked for me for several years, knows my business inside out and backwards and who. Whom I trust implicitly. Now notice that it is not my husband. Okay? And think about this, because for some of you, if you have a power of attorney in place, it may cover some of your business things. And usually when we're talking about our personal estate planning documents, it's our spouse, if we have one, that's the person that's in charge. But ask yourself this. I mean, you know, we all can imagine, is our spouse the right person to be running our business? And for many of us, the answer is no. You know, it doesn't matter. Your spouse can be a perfectly competent, brilliant, wonderful person, but they might not be the right person to be running your business and specifically not the right person to be running your business in the event that you have a medical crisis. Because imagine here I am in the hospital for 30 days. And during which, by the way, I received what was considered to be a death sentence at the time, I got diagnosed with a very rare lung disease called lymphangioleiomyomatosis. And so in this context, I have this rare disease. I mean, all this stuff is going on. The last thing my husband is thinking about or cares about is my business. The wife of his wife, the mother of his son is dying in front of his eyes. That's the last thing that he can think about is what's going on with my business. He would have been in no state to operate it on my behalf even if he were the right person to do so. And so in the unexpected medical crisis situation, we need to be thinking about this. Even if your spouse is the right person, are they the right person in that kind of situation? And do we need to have a backup? And of course, on many levels, and we know this just as a general thing, it's always a good idea to consider keeping your personal business and your business business separate. Right? And there are many good reasons for doing that. So one of the things that I get often asked by entrepreneurs is, well, then who's a good person? Right? Like who do I pick? Because I don't know who to pick. And that's right. Once again, getting back to the cookie cutter thing. So maybe it's a key employee, Maybe it's your in laws, maybe it's your brother in law, Maybe it's your brother. You know, it could be a lot of people. This is something you need to think about at the end of the day. The unexpected can happen to anyone at any time. We all know this. Shawn's story earlier today. You need to go see your business lawyer and get this done. We all make hard decisions every day. This is just yet another one that you need to do. Get it done. That's just Smart Planning 101. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you. Watch them.