Michael Buzinski’s Framework for Doubling Revenue

Do you want to know the secret to Success? Welcome to rulesforsuccess.com a platform that unites the accomplished and the ambitious. This is where successful entrepreneurs reveal their winning strategies, their profound wisdom, and their practical guidance. Whether you are a pioneering entrepreneur, a determined business leader, or simply someone who craves success, RulesForSuccess.com is the podcast designed for you. We're here to arm you with the invaluable knowledge of individuals who have paved their own path to success. And now let's get into the show with dynamic host Joseph Varghese.

Greetings, everybody. Joseph Varghese here, rulesforsuccess.com I'm super excited today because I've got a good friend of mine, someone I've gotten to know for the past year, plus Michael Bazinski. Michael is also known as Buzz, so we might hear him refer to him as Buzz. His business also is Buzzworthy. His podcast is Buzzworthy. Exceptional marketer, leader, someone I have a lot of respect for. Michael's a lifelong entrepreneur, digital marketing thought leader, and bestselling author. Dubbed a marketing visionary by the American Marketing Association, Michael's sole mission is to reduce prevalence of entrepreneurial poverty in the United States. Buzz, as most people call him, has simplified digital marketing success with the Rule of 26, his latest book to help business owners avoid the time drain and frustration of managing profitable digital marketing campaigns. At least that's, that's, that's. That's his background. That's who he is. Michael Buzz, how's your world today this morning?

My world is great. I just got back from Costa Rica, so. And got my learn on with guys like Kevin Harrington and John. Oh, shoot, I just forgot.

Maxwell.

Maxwell. John Maxwell. Thank you very much. You know, it's funny. I was not a huge John Maxwell fan until just this last week. I've heard his name a lot, but I always equated him to guys like Tony Robbins and whatnot. And, and this is the second time I've seen him. And, and he is a genuine. I think he's the real deal.

Well, he's built enormous success from himself, impacting 50 years now.

I had no idea. I was like, oh, I guess I should read one of your books. So I, I checked out a couple on my Kindle, so.

Awesome. Well, there's something about being in paradise with people. Highly experiential, where you learn faster, you build deeper relationships, and there's not something about that. Of course, you and I have connected virtually. Right. But I'm sure if we met in person, it would be like, raise things up quite a bit. It's been my experience of when I engage people who I respect a lot of respect for.

Definitely. I think that, you know, with COVID you know, I, I transitioned my business from a brick and mortar to a virtual company at the beginning of 2019, before it was cool. And it's interesting because Covid forced us, you know, everybody to that virtual space. And, you know, you heard a lot about zoom fatigue and all these other things. And I think as we're coming back out of it and like 2021 was kind of a hybrid year. I think 2022 was. People were testing the waters and I think 2023, we're hearing like people are just rushing to summits and conferences, intensives and all those things because that, that human interaction that we just need, I mean, it's, it's built into our system. And so, yeah, it's really great to be able to have those opportunities to get face to face with people and really connect.

No doubt, no doubt. Your business, I mean, you're like, there's aspects of marketing, business building, scaling with what you do under The Rule of 26 book that's out now. How did that evolve? So how did you evolve into becoming an entrepreneur? Like, I'm guessing?

Yeah, my entrepreneur journey has been long and winding. I actually grew up on a farm until I was a teenager. Parents got divorced, moved to the city, lived in California. So there's Northern California, just kind of migrated down towards San Francisco, where I spent my young adult life. And I got into business. You know, I, I got a job at like 13 and a half at a burger King. And I quickly realized that, that I didn't want to do fast food, food industry stuff and got into office jobs and then into marketing and sales and marketing and all that good stuff. But I thought, you know, I was taught that, you know, you got those, those jobs in bigger companies and then you work for them for 20 years, you get a pension or 40 years, whatever it was. And my problem was I kept hitting these ceilings, these glass ceilings in these companies and these companies because they didn't have an education. So I ended up joining the Air Force at the age of 22 to get to basically get out of California. I felt I was kind of like stuck there, get an education, go see the world type of thing. And I'm third generation air course, so there's a little bit of that going on. And all along I was a musician. And unbeknownst to me, that was really where I was Learning entrepreneurialism From the age of 13, I was a professional jazz trombonist. And when that gig got done, we. I transitioned to guitar and had bands for 15 years. And it is like having a small business. And so when I got out of the service, I didn't finish the degree I started with. I didn't do a job that was transferable to the civilian life. And I had just got divorced and sold my house. So I had to do something. And one of the things that I really.

And you're in your 20s as well. This is.

I was 31 at the time.

Yeah.

So so basically I needed to make a decision what I was going to do, you know, and a lot of my friends are like, well, I'm going to go work at Home Depot and I'm going to go do this. I'm like, no, no, no, none of that for me. And so I started a recording studio. I had really bad, bad situations as a musician in recording studios and I wanted to revolutionize how that happened. Unfortunately, surviving off a starting musician is a horrib that transitioned into a beauty production house. Working with the second poorest people we know in America. And that's small business entrepreneurs.

Yeah.

You know, we all live in this status of entrepreneurial poverty. And I didn't even really recognize that for 13 years. And that company grew into a multimillion dollar creative agency that I shut down at the end of 2018 because I was, you know, millions of dollars are flowing through, but none of it was flowing to me, you know, and so I said that was stupid and I didn't want to live my, my life that way. So I reinvented how I did. Business went completely virtual. And during COVID I was kind of, I felt bad marketing my services to people who absolutely needed me but had no cash flow to afford me. Right. And so that's where the Rule 26 came in. It's like I need to be able to simplify what the. The process of creating money from a website for service based businesses is, in a short amount of time, that it has the most impact. And so I just started doing my research of like really simplifying and bringing it down to as little of a process as possible. And I realized that there were a lot of vanity metrics. Right. Just like revenue in a company is a, is a vanity metric, revenue means nothing. Net profit means something. Right. Well, in marketing there's a lot of indicator KPIs or key performance indicators.

Yes.

And so I boiled those down to. Because most of those are vanity really doesn't mean much like they're, they're indicators, but they're not drivers, they're not revenue drivers. And so I looked at the. I found the three that have the biggest impact and when combined actually leverage your efforts. And that was the rule of 26.

Love it. Incredible. And your background, the creative background, a bit of the systems, being in the Air Force, going right into entrepreneurship, delving right into like, you know, struggling businesses. Right. And then like figuring out 26, that's excellent. I know also you're a big fan of Mike Michalovich and I know he wrote a sound your podcast and also he gave you this amazingly glaring testimonial for the Rule 26. A lot of his methodology is very simplified as well. Also kind of like yes, Parkinson's.

We have that in common. We're both polish and we love things to be simple.

I love that. Yeah. And people over complicate life, people over complicate business at times. And when you have the right metrics, right things to focus on each day that you're tracking the leading by numbers, of course you can do pretty extraordinary things. So tell us about the rule of 26. Like what, what are the three that stand out, would you say?

So the, the rule of 26 states that if you increase your unique traffic by 26%, your conversion rate by 26% and your average revenue per client by 26%, you'll get a compounded output of 100% more revenue coming from your website. And I really focus on the website because so many service based businesses ignore the most valuable asset that they have that they can own in this digital age. So many people look at, well, I have referrals, yes, but can you count how many referrals you're going to have? Very few people can do that. One thing by saying, yes, I will be getting X amount of referrals this week, next week, the week after and so on.

Right.

They're unpredictable. It's unscalable.

Right.

And the other one is word of mouth. Word of mouth only works when you have enough money to advertise word of mouth.

Right.

You go, you think of Coca Cola, Pepsi, Apple, any of those biggest billions of dollars, billions, multi billions of dollars spent on just making sure that that name sticks in your brain.

That's it.

From small businesses. That is not a sustainable strategy.

Right.

And that's only in when you get into a realm that you can afford that steady spend, advertising spend. So marketing for small business is so important and, and so the whole Book I reveal all that by page 22. And the rest of the book are tactics to feed those three KPIs specifically.

Amazing, right? When you keep really simple as well also. And very simple, not easy.

I think that's. You said a really, really powerful word there, Joseph. Simple. And a lot of people equate simple and easiest synonyms, and they're not right. Simple means that you have a clear way to do it, but the effort is not always easy. And so I share both. There are easy, there are easier things to do than others, but the harder they are, the more impact they can have. And so, so we do discuss that in the book.

Can you give us some, like, some, some sparks of wisdom from the book as well? Like what are some things people taking. Taking away with their clients? Taking away with. But to people who've been reading the book, what are some things that are actionable that people take away with?

The first thing that they, they walk away from is the fact that one of the tactics, which is when I go to practice is the last tactic or objective, which is average revenue per client has nothing to do with your website. Meaning that if you we. I have a thing called the Prof. The perfectly profitable prospect, the P3.

Okay.

And so many people will look at their website and they'll try to put everything they do on their website versus talking directly to. I don't know if you ever read Donald Miller's Story Brand.

Yeah.

Okay. So utilizing some of those concepts there or I use that concept. I just interviewed April Hodges from storybrand while I was in, in Costa Rica, because that was like, I'm like, I love Story Brand. I love how it goes to the you of the you is not you the proprietor, but you the client. And talking to the perfectly profitable prospect filters out all of the other noise. Because as business owners, we always, when you first start business, you'll take all the business you possibly can. Unfortunately, most of those clients are not profitable.

Right.

So you might have a lot of cash flow, but they're not actually creating profit.

Right.

And so when we look at our average revenue per client, we want to look at the profitable average revenue per client. Right. And so who it might not be the person or the people who are spending the most with you.

It could be.

It's usually somebody right below that or in the middle that are basically in line with your values, with your process, and believe in you.

Yes, right.

And when you can get those three things all there and you then you talk when you talk to them and you understand their pain Points understand what they, what their needs are, what their goals are, how they feel, how they act, how they make decisions. And you translate that into your website and then do what I call the. Turning the I we us into the you and your. Of your conversation on your website. That's a big.

Let's go.

Right, just right there.

Absolutely. I, I would imagine with innovations with AI ChatGPT and tools, it makes a lot easier. Right. You can even put the story brand into template into chat or you can tell it like write this in the context of like story brand or TDP by feeding it the framework. What are your thoughts about that?

I love AI as a tool to accelerate the process, but really it's the, the output is only as good as the input.

Yes.

So when we talked about doing that market research with our current clients that are, we consider our highly profitable clients and we get all that, that information. If we don't plug that into Chat GPT and say, this is. These are their values, these are their needs, these are their pains. These are. All Chat GPT can do is regurgitate anything that you give it or it can fetch.

Right? Yeah.

So AI does not create new ideas.

Right.

It can take and, and scramble up what it can find or what you feed it.

Exactly.

So just remember that when you're telling your story and you're telling this and you're trying to try to tell the story from the perspective or the, the perspective of your perfect clients, what you're asking them to do is really say, hey, this is all the information I have. How are the top 10 ways I could present this as a headline, as a. Whatever you're trying to do.

Right.

And then from there you're going to then continue to optimize, or we call human optimize the AI by taking what you really like and then playing with it a little bit more, or maybe playing with it and then feeding it back in that same chat line and say, I really like what you did here. This line right here really grabs me because XYZ give me 5 other ways to do say the same thing and then see what you do. And then you utilize that process as a tool to get, to inspire you, because it's really the human element that will attract other humans.

Exactly, exactly. And you've tested, you've tested it out as well also. You engage, you share, you test things out accordingly.

I tell people all the time like, your current clients are the best resource you have for marketing research. And so many people forget that.

Yeah.

And so it's like and it's, you know, you have to be strategic about it, right. You can't just be every week going, hey, so my best client, I want to do some more marketing research on you type of thing. You, you have to work it into your conversations and you have to spread it out amongst yours. And if you don't have them, then going to social media and asking the questions is definitely there. I'm doing some marketing research for somebody who sells or helps people exit their companies and so I want to get some conversations going. So I went to LinkedIn and I said, hey, who here is looking to exit in the next three years? Other business have nothing to sell. Just want to get conversations going and see what their pain points are and all that good stuff. And then from those conversations, I'll feed those back to the gentleman that I'm working with so that he understands that, oh, these are their fears or they don't know what they don't know. And none of them are saying that the words that you're using in your copy, right. And all those other things that we as experts, we forgot how little people know of what we do.

So important to get in dialogue, right. It's so important to ask people questions and social media is very useful for that. But most, most mortally pick the phone actually. Yeah, you leverage that toward actually having a conversation with people, find other pain points where they want to go. And I mean people will tell you right there and then what they need. Right.

Your website is a conversation starter. So if it's not conversational.

It'S going.

To kind of lose, it's going to miss the mark.

I certainly have to revamp what my websites and I'm going to tap into the. For that.

Yeah, well, I'm, you know, we went back and I'm like, my website needs to be revamped because we utilize a different framework before we, we really started adopting the, the story brand framework. It's about them, it's all the you, yours. But we end up with the us in there way too fast. And, and so that's where, you know, the cobblers, kids have no shoes type of thing where you're like, okay, yeah, we definitely need to play with that.

A little bit more.

But if, if you go to ours, the I, we have a thing called the I need. The I need is from the perspective of the client, not us.

Right.

And so that it is saying you without saying you, but it's not putting them as the hero before the need.

Right.

The need is tactical and I've just Come to this conclusion and in my methodology has changed over the years and that strategy is the first thing because blind tactics are beaten by sound strategy every single time.

Exactly. Exactly. Incredible. Well, let's talk about some of your real rules for success. Right. Love to hear what he. I mean, 20, 30 years on this path. You know, being an Air Force, being a musician and building multiple businesses, having an agency, doing all great things now with Rule 26, Helping Organizations Scale. And I know you have an event coming up soon, so we'll talk about that too as well. But what are some of the rules? Your rules for six? What are things that keep you engaged to be successful in your day? Maybe things in the morning, evening that keep you engaged that perhaps the other our podcast listeners here could get value from?

You know, for the last couple years, I moved from Alaska where I lived for 17 years, and we moved to Springfield, Illinois where we knew no one. We came here for my wife's career and my company had gone virtual. So I told her, I said, listen, I'm now virtual. I've been here for a long time. I love Alaska. But your career is not going to blossom in Alaska. We need to get you closer to where you need to be. So this is where we ended up. Then Covid hit like four months later. And so we were stuck in our house, locked down. And, and, and it is a small community, so it's not what, you know, it's who you know, type of thing. So one of the things that keeps me engaged and I started creating rituals for the day. And so fitness is an extremely important thing to me. And, and I always strive to be in better shape. I don't always succeed, but the, the, the exercise is part of that process.

Right?

So getting up early and people talk about like, well, you know, I, I get up at 4:30 in the morning every day and people. 4:30 in the, in the morning. I mean, I'm in a class at 5am now. There's a lot of people who work out at home. I cannot get up in the morning and work out at home. I need. Because I'm, I will talk myself out of it. I know myself well enough to know that I need to be somewhere. If I need to be somewhere, I'll be there because I'm responsible for being there. Right? So getting up at 4:30, being in a class by 5, getting home by 6:15. And then there's a morning ritual, you know, making sure, getting your vitamins and you're getting ready and all that stuff. And I work from My own home office, as you can see. And my wife's like, you always, you get dressed like you're going to work. I was like, yes. Why? Mindset. I am now ready for work. I am now walking into an office that the only thing that happens in this room is business.

I love it.

Now I am Michael Bzynski, the CEO of multiple companies. I have responsibilities to clients, I have responsibilities to employees. I have responsibilities, my community. That here I am, right? But I took care of Michael Bazinski, the person all the way up to that door. Physically, mentally nurture, nutrition, the whole nine yards, right?

So you've got the gym, you've taken your vitamins. And now next thing, of course, is that you're walking into office as a CEO, dressed as a CEO, all prepped for that. Simple. Great. Yeah, yeah.

And then the day goes right. And so one of the newest things I'm now I'm doing is the EOS life. And I got the EOS life journal. That helps me keep focused on the things I need to get done that day because I got a little bit of adhd, some would probably say a lot of it, a lot of adhd. But I will flow with whatever is in front of me because I'm a problem solver. That's my job, solve problems. So I'll go problem, problem, problem, instead of prioritizing what problems are the most important today before I even get started. Everything else can take a back seat. If there's time for it, great. If there's not, it gets reprioritized for the next day or maybe some other time. And so my whole, another ritual that I have is that I schedule everything because anything that is not scheduled does not get done.

Yes.

And also if you don't, if you don't fill your, your, you don't fill your calendar with what you need to get done, you will do all the other things. Exactly. Your mind will get busy with busy work before it tackles the big things.

Really, really brilliant advice. Anyone? I consider myself a bit neurodiverse as well. Also a lot of my clients are who are high level entrepreneurs. And these are really key, simple things to take on each day. Having it in the calendar, having it in front of you as well also is a big thing as well. Also having the why in front of you. My why is like I have symbols of my own why, the things I stand for around me visually. So I'm always conscious to it as well. Also including my values, family and so forth. It's really, really, really simple.

Definitely and that's like part of the eos is that you actually review your core values for your company, which are usually as an entrepreneur and leader, are anchored in your core values, usually. And then you look at your vision, your mission, your purpose, your goals and all the other stuff. So you're looking at it every single day, even on the weekends. So Saturday and Sunday you're supposed to be in that journal. Even though it's a business journal, you still do it because your brain never shuts off as an entrepreneur.

That's true.

So you can write, get stuff down. Right. And you can take some notes. And then every week you spend some time of reflecting on that week and how you can make a better week. And I don't know who coined it, but there's somebody who says, you know, if you could get one percent better every day, within a year you will be three and a half times the person you are today.

Absolutely. We live by that. My business, the Kaiser principle, talks about that. And I love the way atomic habits. James Clear goes deeper into that. That distinction is a whole book we're at. He does a great job at kind of emphasizing that. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Compound growth.

Yeah, that compound growth is huge. And it's hard because you as a leader, I find that high functioning CEOs and companies and stuff like that, the leadership is really good at it. It's getting that to permeate into the lowest level of the company. You're never going to get somebody. Well, I shouldn't say never. It's so hard to get people who are in the positions. I don't know how to say it, but like every single person is important in your, in your organization. Without them, your organization is not what it is. But there are certain people who take on certain types of jobs that are repetitive so that they don't have to apply themselves. They don't have to take on the hard work. It's just something that they've chosen to do. And those people are not going to do the mental work that we're doing in journaling, in planning, in scheduling and going to the gym. They just won't. It's not part of their core values.

Right, right.

Their personal core values. So we have to accept that and we have to find out what their goals are and what they want to do and let them have their rituals that make them successful in what they do for you because that's all you're responsible for.

Yeah.

Once they walk out, clock out, check out whatever that looks like for them, their life is their life. And you have to respect that space. Like, I don't like or friend anybody that works for me on social media. They can connect with me on LinkedIn. That's about it. But like Facebook, Instagram. No, that's not. That's that you have to keep that barrier.

Right.

As far as that goes. Because you. One of the things I've seen is that there can be animosity with a leader that's too personal with their. Their crew, and that they will. Yeah, they'll start. They'll start pushing their personal values onto their crew, saying, hey, why aren't we all working out? Why don't we all work out in the afternoon? Or why don't we get to work early and we'll. We'll all do calisthenics together and stuff like that. And it's like driving people away who, like, fitness is not part of my core values. I don't belong here.

Really? Really. I never thought about that way. And that's really integral. I mean, part of the distinctions we play with my business is we rise to the expectations of our peer group. Now, if the people that we engage with, our clients or even, you know, people who work for us, they're in that peer group component of things, and their values are different. Perhaps they live in another country of, you know, have employees who work in Asia as an example. They don't necessarily adopt my Western values that I live by. And it's really interesting. I also have family in Asia too. I found he's from South India, and I was present that that might be there too, as well. Also those friction points at times, because I am an entrepreneur, and I have embraced entrepreneurship at a high level with my clients really supporting people who are neurodiverse. So I love the way you framed that. I'm going to have to rethink that with regard to not just my employees, but also members of my family, people I love. Right, right. Real people are people I have a lot of respect for. But if it does create animosity and friction, my whole world is about how do we minimize friction, increase flow each day with the people we love, particularly our clients, so that we're able to accomplish more, Stay in our zone of genius so really fast. I've never heard anyone frame it that way, brother. So that's something that I'm gonna ruth like. I brought value.

I've done my. I've done.

You always bring value. Every conversation, really.

You know, it's funny that you say it that way, because I had my dad actually joined my My mom and dad joined me in Costa Rica. The family is encouraged. So people brought their kids, their wives. I brought my wife last year. She came with us. This year my parents came. I encouraged them to go to a couple things. My dad finally did decide to go to a John Maxwell talk. He's retired, you know, and he's like, ah, what am I going to need from this? I was like, well, John Maxwell is a, you know, if you know John Maxwell, you know, but, you know, it's a person.

It's.

It's all about leadership in life, not necessarily business. And so he went. And he was really happy that he went, right? But then he also got to see me interacting in. And this is a room of 200 people. And I end up being. Anywhere I go. I am noticed. It's not that I'm a loud person. I'm a boisterous personality. Obviously people can hear me. My voice carries that whole nine yards. But I go out and I meet people. It's time to be with people and listen to people and stuff like that. So he actually got to watch me at work, which. And my mother as well, who neither of them been in marketing, they're both worked in management and at hospitals and stuff like that, where he's like, you do your job, you clock in, you clock out, you do. That's it done. And so it was interesting for me to have them look at that and then go to my wife and say, he's in his element. And my wife's like, yeah, this is Buzz. This is Buzz. I'm Michael Bazinski to my. My family. Right? That's Buzz. And, and that's where he shines. And so you understanding that your, your employees have those two sides of their coin as well, and, and really being able to give them the freedom to have their personal side of their coin be whatever they want to be, and that it feeds into who they are at the company. So I always look at my. My folks, especially my leaders, and say, hey, listen, you know, what are you wanting to do here? What are your goals? Not my goals. What are your goals in this company? What are your goals in the next year to three years? I never go past three years, stupid. But what are your. Where do you see yourself in three years? And most of the time it's it, you know, they don't know because they don't think that. But if I just ask the question and then we work on the next 12 months, that's enough for me to know that they're still in the right place for them. Because when it stops being the right place for them is the time that I need to help them transition an alumni into something that's better for them and put somebody else that then needs to be in that seat and have that right place, the right person, right seat for the right reasons.

Hedges, take a stand for them. You're being present to where they want to be in three years. Aligning them with the roles that are in alignment to that, ensuring that they have an extra strategy for themselves so you can put the right person in that role in three years.

So 90, 97% of the people who will work with you will not be with you in five years.

Yeah, that's, that's integrity, brother. It really takes to be a stand for people to know their mission and what they're up to. It's integrity. I'll tell you.

I'll tell you Joseph, that's definitely the reason you start with it. But the byproduct is you have a stronger company because you continually are putting the right people in the right seats for the right reasons.

Instead of so many, so many gems in this conversation and, and I am going to get the rule 26. You just like. Cause me, I'm going to like go, go there and go and tap into it and that's going to be in my next read. I encourage your audience if you walk away. We'll summarize some of these gems on our website rulesforsuccess.com Key things that Michael's talked about. We'll also work on getting this transcribed. There's a mind map too that my team has put together based on some things he shared. We'll optimize that. Get that on our website rulesforsuccess.com definitely tap into Michael's book and it's. That book is at rule rule26.com correct? Yeah. Rule of26.com rule of 2 number 26.com and also you have a page where there are links to all things buzzer worthy. Your businesses, your projects, your book. What is that link? Clarify.

That's links L I N K S Buzzworthy biz.

Fantastic links. Buzzworthy biz. We'll also have that on our website rulesforsuccess.com this has been an absolute pleasure connecting with you someone. I have tremendous respect for you and it's so great that your dad and your parents got to being Costa Rica to see you in your element and you know, I just think it's so valuable to have the people who brought us into the world, see who, who we are and how we shine and continue to be proud for, you know, your, your accomplishments as they, as they progress, impacting millions of people with both your book and podcast and much more. I appreciate that. Well, Michael, I appreciate this. And thanks to our audience. Watch this virtually right right now. And once again, rulesforsuccess.com access this and more resources about buzz. Michael Bazinski, it's been a pleasure.

That's it for today's episode of rules4success.com podcast. But the journey to success is far from over. Join us next week for another inspiring conversation with a successful entrepreneur. Until then, remember to be bold, be courageous, and go after your dreams.