Episode #563 - Basics To Being A Successful Entrepreneur with Matthew Pollard

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

So the thing is, it's like you getting people that are currently hot. We used to use this expression, we hired a lot of part timers into the financial services industry and they would say, well, I get in and you're going to get these 30 year veterans or 10 year veterans come in and say, who are you? You're part time, you've only had a month of training. And he said, yeah, I had a month of training and I know more than I said, you don't have 10 years of, you have one week of training. 52 times you see the same stuff you learned the first week. We're learning new stuff all the time because basically in our business we replaced other people's stuff. So every time we did business, we learned about somebody, you know, some other program. And so the thing is, it's not calendar, you know, like biologic age, you know, it's like I am, I know you think I'm a teenager too, like you, But I am 74, going 75 in April. And so. But my biologic age is 61. So you know, the DNA and all of that stuff, you know, for all of the other things. So you don't have to be limited by your just physical measurement type thing. You know, you could be as young as, not as young as you want to be, but you could be a whole lot younger. And the thing is, are you fresh? You know, is it new? And this is why I am such a fan of anyone who even has the guts to run a program called Rapid Growth, because so few people understand growth. The thing is, one thing that keyed my whole existence was someone said grow or die. And I bought it, I understood it, you know, grow or die, it's like gravity. I don't want to die, you know, I want to grow because I want to live, you know, I want to enjoy. I don't want to give it all up. I can't. I don't want to be looking at my, you know, past. I want to look to the future. And so that means I got to grow. And so when you have that mindset, it informs who you'll listen to who is currently hot and in our company, that's why every Monday I'll have people on the current hottest people, people in the company and I'll just let anybody Listen in. But we want to pick their brains because they've figured something out or they're doing something now that works today.

Absolutely.

So you can trust it because they've got results today. And that's why I was telling you early on, I'm very maniacal about who I get on here because I really can't talk to anybody else because.

Well, I'll tell you this, I. I spend two weeks a month getting better at what I do. Now, that sends two messages. One is that I have to make enough money in the other week to run my entire business or that I've got great automation in teams. Well, the answer is both. But the truth is that if I'm not focused on getting better every week, I can't charge what I charge. And I don't feel authentic about telling people how to do things. I go down rabbit holes on purpose. My job is, in my mind is to find out what's working, figure out how it all pieces together. I mean, in small business, it's hilarious watching people do this, but people focus so much on the shiny objects or the tactics. And tactics don't work without strategy. And what's interesting is you're right. I call myself the rapid growth guy. Now you can decide whether that means business growth or emotional growth, because the average mindset is not capable of dealing with rapid growth. It's terrifying. So you have to upgrade both.

Right?

What I would recommend to most people, and this is really interesting when I tell people to do this, is stop worrying so much about the tactics, because a great strategy will leverage new tactics and old tactics in a way that runs circles around your competition. When I talked earlier about if you can't articulate the value of what you do in two and a half minutes when somebody's politely listening, what chance do you have online? Well, it wouldn't matter what online techniques I had, if I didn't know the right strategy, I wouldn't grow. I. And so what I always recommend when you're considering rapid growth, I always tell people to stand still for a period. And it's so weird. We live in this instant gratification society that we feel like if we're not employing tactics today, then we can't get to the outcome that we're looking for. And I'm like, no, you need to stop for a second and make sure the strategy is right. And whether that's health and fitness, whether it's business growth, you have to stop and look at the tactics. And the best way I can frame this, actually, I'LL give you an example. I went with a language coach out of California. She taught kids and adults Mandarin. If you think about something that's commoditized, that's it, right? You take charging 50. She charged for over a decade 50 to $80 an hour to teach somebody Mandarin. Now, sure, she could say, I'm better, I'm more experienced, like a whole bunch of people promise, even if they aren't. But she had this issue, people moving into California willing to do it for 30 to $40 an hour. And so she was struggling to get new clients because the price competitiveness had grown then in China, thanks to this global economy we lived in. There were people in China offering to do it for $12 an hour on Craigslist. On top of that, thanks to our friends in Silicon Valley who have built software, I can now say, hey, Larry, I'll teach you, man, or you teach me English. We just won't charge anyone anything to a person I've never met through this portal that marries people up. So now she's competing against free. Now you tell me how good a Facebook ad or how good a Facebook post or an email has to be to get beyond that problem. If you've got a vanilla message, tactics don't work. So she came to me and she's like, Matt, can you teach me? Can you give me some sales strategies in order to close more deals? And the truth is, yes, I can. But again, it only has a certain amount of success because you're competing in a crowded market. So what I said to her is what we've got to do is avoid the battle altogether. So what I did is looked at all the clients she worked with, and she worked with hundreds over the years. What I realized is there was two specific customers and literally two that she helped with far more than just language consulting. Now, here's what I will tell you. Everyone listening to this. They have unique competency skills, talents, past experience, passions to serve a demographic. Yet more often than not, we don't articulate that to our clients when we're trying to close them as a client. But it's what they discover later, which is why we have raving fans, why people refer us endlessly or are happy to continue to pay our bill, even though we're not the cheapest we. Now, what I realized with Wendy is there were two executives that she was helping that were being relocated to China. And the things she helped them with. Well, understanding the differences between China and the US like how to learn the language and also focus on reducing Your accent. Because if you don't reduce your accent, people won't spend the time. It's about respect in China. How to handle a business card, why it matters. E commerce in China versus the Western world rapport. Like in the us If I'm trying to sell you something the end of the, you know, 45 minutes, if I'm terrible at sales, I'll say, do you want to move forward? And if you say you want to think about it a week from now, if you still say you want to think about it, I know my chances of getting that sale are gone. Yet in China, they're probably going to want to see me five or six times before they discuss business. They might want to see me drunk over karaoke once or twice, but they're not talking about transactional 24 month deals. They're talking about 20 year deals, 50 year deals. So they want to know the character of the person. I'm like, Wendy, this stuff's mind blowing, right? This is so much more than just language education. What are you doing? And she's like, well, there's just a few things. I'm just trying to help. Stuck in her functional skill. I said, is it fair to assume as a result of the assistance that you're giving these people, they're going to be more successful in China? Yeah, I mean, that's the point, right? So great, we'll call you the China Success Coach. Then we restructured and we created what we ended up calling the China Success Intensive, a five week program that worked with the executive of the spouse and the children to be relocated across to China. She like, she loved the idea, but she's like, well, who do I sell it to, right? What she's asking is where do I go networking? Who do I market to online? Said, well, who do you think your ideal client is? Now she was going to get this wrong again. Doesn't matter how good the tactics are, she would have had less returns. I said, who do you think your ideal clients are? And she said, well, obviously it's the executive. And I'm like, I understand. I mean, it was terrifying for me to go from Australia to the US and they speak the same language. Imagine going to China. I just don't think it's your ideal client. She said, well, obviously the companies would pay it. I'm like, yeah, I get that. I mean, they've often got millions riding on the executive being successful. I still don't think it's your ideal client. Frustrated, she's like, well who? Then? I said, I think Your ideal client is the immigration attorney. She looked at me like I was speaking a different language. And I said, think about it for a second. These people make five to $7,000 for doing dealing with all the bureaucracy that comes with a visa. They're going to get a client, they've got staff to pay for rent. They'd be lucky to make $3,000 for success per successful visa. I said, go and offer them $3,000 for a successful introduction. So instead of networking everywhere, she's going to networking events where immigration attorneys hang out and they're like, I love the idea of this. Double my profit for a simple introduction. What have I got to say? She said, all you got to do is say congratulations, you know, you now, you've now got your visa. I just want to double check you're as ready as possible to be relocated across to China. And they'd be overconfident. I've got my visa now. You know, the kids are learning the language. I'm getting pretty good at it too. We've got our place sorted. I think we're set. And all they would have to respond with is there's actually a lot more to it than that. I think you need to speak to the China success coach. Wendy would then get on this phone call with a terrified person with an organization motivated to pay, recommended by their attorney. And she charged $30,000 for doing this for a five week course minus the 3,000 commission. She made 27,000 for the easiest sale in the world. That's rapid growth. Now rapid growth doesn't mean rapid staff growth or rapid revenue profit. That's a huge amount of profit. $27,000 for a simple introduction and a five week program. And she did that at speed. Why? Because she took a second to step back and say, what is it that I do above and beyond my functional skill? For her it was relationship, E commerce and respect. What is the higher level benefit China Success for me? I'm a branding expert, I'm a social media strategist. I'm a specialist in helping introverts obtain success in sales, networking, public speaking. I am master in nlp. Truthfully, I'm too many things and nobody cares. They don't care how hard it was for me to learn these things or how long it took me. But when I say I'm the rapid growth guy and I specialize in helping introverted service providers obtain rapid growth in their business, the simplicity of that message is what gets me heard in a crowded marketplace. You can attach that to any tactic whether it's overused, horrible or the silver shining bullet. And it will always outperform people that are tactics first because they won't stop for a second to catapult forward.

That was fantastic. Great illustration, great insight for her and I know a lot of people are thinking and got to be reassessing now how they look at their own business in light of that.

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