https://www.listennotes.com/e/154a7e0284bf4712999186e2161d83e8

Hi, I'm Victoria Wick, co founder of Victoria Wick Jewelry. And you're listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews episode 528, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority effect interview. How would you like to do $1,000 in sales? A million dollars in sales? $10 million in sales? How would you like to hear from someone who's done over 500 million dollar sales and turning your idea into a million dollar business? Victoria Wick is a true rags to riches story. Having immigrated from Korea with only $30 in her pocket, she has a very successful jewelry line that you've probably seen on Shop, hq, QVC and probably bought it. And I know when I'm searching for her new book on Amazon, the jewelry comes up just as much as the book does. But I'm super excited to have none other than Victoria Wick on today's episode to share with you what she did to go from rags to riches and just take the world by storm. Because there's very few entrepreneurs that can say they've accomplished any level of turning things around to even a small level. And she's done it to a big level and the heart she has and the people she's helped along the way. I'm very excited to bring my friend Victoria Wick on. She'll be right here right after we thank the sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's EA Publishing Method Book. Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Victoria Wick. Victoria, how are you feeling today?

Wonderful. Thank you so much for inviting me to on your show. It's one of the few shows I listen to very regularly as you know and I learn a lot every day from all your guests. You did an amazing job and I'm excited to be here.

You're too kind. I do appreciate it. But I'm excited to showcase you. I've always wanted to and I'm glad we're making it happen happen now. And congratulations on your new book. How does it feel to have it out there now?

You know we talked about publishing and I know that's your expertise and I know you do really, you know, amazing job at it. Thank you. I had no idea how much it actually takes to, you know, create a book, put your heart and soul into this thing for years and years and years and, you know, everything, you know. And yeah, most people really don't, even.

If they have the disorder.

I had no clue. I mean, you warned me and I had no clue. But once I did it, though, I am so glad I did it because I do feel like it's out there to help people who want to be helped. And, you know, one thing I will also tell you about this book is that I wanted to make sure that the book that I wrote isn't like a memoir. It's more a true how to and information that you would not ever get by Google searching or attending someone's masterclass. Every single thing is. I've actually done it, felt the failures, you know, when I didn't accomplish something and figured out how to do it. And then I'm just transferring everything that I know so that, you know. I mean, I can't say that everybody's going to be a millionaire, but some of them could be billionaires, and some of them maybe won't quite get there yet, but it'll still be better. You're going to be richer in personal life as well as your professional life. And that, I feel, is something worth going through all that trouble for. Really?

Yeah, absolutely. And I remember you sharing with me even years ago, like, I want to do this and hey, absolutely. And what I want everyone to know is your credibility with how you're saying, you know, there's so many. Like I was saying, there's so many people that go, I can help you, I can help you. But you've actually done it for, what, 30 plus years now?

35 years. 35.

I was going to say that. I was going to say that. And you didn't start off with a silver spoon, did you?

Oh, my gosh, you know, 30 bucks, right? I told you just before we got on, on the show that I spent some time with my mom this weekend. And, you know, it's interesting. My parents came here with five kids with 30 bucks to their name, with the family of seven. And you can't even imagine the hardship that they went through. I mean, I remember my dad coming home, like in Korea at that time, we didn't have oranges. You know, it's a different kind of a climate. And we came and we all wanted to taste the oranges. And, you know, he just bought one single orange and cut it in, like, you know, eight sections. And my youngest child got two and then each person got one slice. That that's how like dire we were. And I've had grown men cry over my background because, you know, I was just, you know, 12 years old and have having to help my parents raise the other children, they were all younger than me, so that my parents can go to work, you know, two jobs at a time. So from that background to, you know, my dream really was just to kind of sustain myself. It wasn't to be a millionaire, it wasn't to strike it rich, it just was to sustain myself, you know, have an apartment that I can pay for on my own, maybe have a used car. Like that was my American dream. So from that humble background, anything over that was just a bonus, so to speak. Yeah, it's an overkill. And you know, and I also wanted to be sure that I never lost sight of that. Meaning that, you know, I could, you know, I could have kept on going and said, you know, I want to be a billionaire, you know, I want to be the next whatever. But as you know, for me, family, friends, your integrity, customers, your reputation, these things are worth more to me than money, you know.

Agree. I know we've spoke many times about just family and the holidays and just doing stuff to that. And I think that's one of the most impressive things is you've been able to, you know, there's people, you know, hey, I don't want to downplay anyone who's got a six figure business or seven figure anything, but very few can say eight and nine in sales and at what cost? It's impressive you've been able to maintain the family side of it too. I hesitate to say balance because I think we both know it's never perfectly balanced. But how do you maintain it? Because I know people struggling that are, they wish they had the success but they can't maintain it at any level. And then the other people I'm thinking of, it's like they have not your success, but some level and they don't have it either. So how did you pull off both?

You know, it's really interesting. I don't, I don't think you've heard this before. Many, many conversations, right? We've had many, many conversations. I don't think you've heard this before. So when I got, when I, you know, came here, I went to school, I've been working full time Since I was 15 years old, you know, I wouldn't have transportation, so I actually took city buses. Like I have to transfer three different buses in la, trust me. That's not easy. Hours and hours of waiting. And I think my, my, I made like $2.10 or something, you know, per hour. So from there, you know, I decided I really had to go get an education. So I did that. I got, learned to speak English. I, you know, got a full scholarship at UCLA and then onto usc, got my master's, all that stuff. And when I was working, I realized I'm working in exchange for some kind of a money and maybe a salary.

Trading hours for dollars.

Yeah, much better than so many hours. But I mean, I was getting paid very good salary. But every time I got a promotion, I was working more and more hours, so I would never see my kids and they'd be like shipped off to a nanny or something. So I decided that I needed to be the mother, that my, my mom couldn't be a mother to me the minute we got here. So, you know, it's, it's not like, as, you know, I'm not saying anything bad about my mom. You know, I'd care about my mother more than anything. So I decided that I can't do that to my children because I had the option, you know, like my parents had to put food on the table. I didn't have that. I could put food on the table. I just couldn't buy luxury cars or houses. So I decided I'm going to be a mother. So I quit my job and it was up to me to figure it out. So, you know, when I started working, like, I thought, I thought I could do it, but then I realized I really couldn't. I couldn't. You know, basically when I sent letters to, you know, Neiman Marcus and whoever, it's 9 to 5, my kids are with me 9 to 5. So I realized that. But then, you know, coming from Korea, I mean, having to call my aunt and everybody, you know, in the, in the time zone, I thought, you know, what someplace in the world at 6 o' clock in the morning? It's like 9 o' clock in the morning. Like, you know, different time zones.

Love it.

Different time zones. So I ended up, you know, getting up at five o' clock in the morning and that was, you know, pretty early in the morning, about 10, 11 o' clock. Ish.

And that's California time.

California time. It's about, you know, some place in Europe. It's about anywhere from like 10 to noon. England, yeah, it would be 8 o'.

Clock stateside here on the East. So.

But I was up, you know, pretty early and I would, you know, I basically wrote letters to them and I used to fax them, you know, you remember we used to have a real fax machine. I remember those because when you call somebody on the phone back those days, back in 1989, it was like three, four dollars a minute to call someone. This is before cell phone days, but if you sent the fax, it's only like six seconds that the page goes, goes through. So I contacted, you know, everybody I knew, like pretty much got a, like a. I went down to downstairs to the travel agency downstairs and got there, you know, basically borrow their book and figured out basically contact fax, phone numbers to Harrods, London gallery stuff. Yet all the famous stores I just sent them, I got, you know, I had a lot of time on my hands and it turns out my designs were really well received. They were kind of just hand drawn. And so I opened, you know, I had, I opened all these stores in Europe and you know, the quantities were really small but because, you know, so. And then 4, 5, 5 o' clock in the afternoon, was 9 o' clock in the morning the next day in Asia, in Tokyo, Korea, you know, all these places. So I had my production people down there. So I, you know, I worked that 5 o' clock in the morning to 8 o' clock in the morning and then 5pm to midnight basically so I could be with my kids during the day. So I worked. It wasn't easy. I worked really hard because you still.

Made it work, same 24 hours everyone has.

And you know what? Once I did that and I was in all these famous stores, buyers from Neiman Marcus and you know, all these places in Lloyd's, Lord and Taylor, they actually called me and said, you know, hey, I'm going to see you. Like I was okay. So I actually had a global business before. I mean I really before I even.

Figured out, before the Internet, it sounds.

Like before the Internet I didn't even know what a global business was really. You know, I wasn't looking for it.

So where did that innate sensibility come into? Just, it sounds like common sense and it sounds great to me because I've done the same thing with time zones. I was like, hey, you know, when business closes here in eastern central, mountain Pacific, Hawaii, six hours difference, like if you want to be ambitious and go, go nuts, somewhere's always open. But where did it come from for you to go, I'm gonna attack all of these at once. Instead of just going, well, I want to stay in my local store because I feel like a lot of Entrepreneurs, they go, they get over the I'm gonna start a business and maybe leave my career. Regardless of if it's a lot of money or a little, they go into business, but then they still play it safe. Like, well, I'll take me. I went to the local businesses just because I could walk in there, I did not think, well, I can call six hours ahead and attack London and all these places. You just figured it out and went for it.

No, I didn't figure it out. I think that my background of being the immigrant that really didn't have options. I didn't have parents to lean on. In fact, I supported my parents since I was 15 years old. Parents to lean on. I didn't have alone I can go get. I didn't have a community that's going to give me anything. So I had to kind of do things on my own. And I think that believing that there, I mean I believed when things were really rough that I wasn't born, you know, on this earth so I can just starve and spin my wheels and just die. I felt that, you know, as long as I gave up my best, tried my heart, there was hope and it's going to happen someday. And so I kept looking, you know, there's gotta be something somewhere out there. And so I contacted all the domestic people first and you know, I got very low response. You know, I would send 50 letters a day, every day. You know, in those days I used to do the IBM typewriter Select. IBM select. And you know, I would carefully select them and, and I did that. Part of this is in my book talking about goal setting. So you know, you could go crazy, right? So. But what I did was I thought, okay, I looked at the direct response rates. It was like you get like, I don't know, 2 to 3% response rate and then only about, you know, 10% of those people. Most of the people, if they respond, it's like, no, I'm not interested. And so, so your actual response of turning anybody into a, you know, sale is like less than 1%. But I thought, well, you know, if I'm only just trying to pay rent for $1,200 a month or whatever for, you know, three bedroom or something. And I sent 50 letters a day, every day for 30 days, you know, 30 days a month. And I got one of those people to buy like four things that's almost halfway there, you know, based on my price point. So. And I didn't want to, you know, because for me it's like a steady you know, something I can handle. So I basically went down.

That's a good point. Because I think too many people don't do enough or, or they jump in and try to do too much too quick, right.

And then you burn out or you're just going through the numbers game. But what I did was if I said I, I'm going to do 50 letters a day, I went to the travel agency downstairs and there was a travel, like they used to have travel agents that actually helped you, you know, on vacations and stuff.

It wasn't Expedia ad.

No, I didn't have any. So I had to, I, I would borrow it. I would go down there, you know, tell them, I'll answer the phone for you and everything. But I just want to use your, use your book. Is it okay? And so I got all the gift shops, you know, all the places and I mean, I got some responses here and you know, there's a lot of things in the book that I'm not going to, I can't. Obviously we don't have unlimited time here. But just like the time zone thing, once you've figured out the time zone, then what do you say? Right. What do you say on that fax that's, that's going to be in six. You know, how do you catch your attention? Absolutely to.

Because you could, you could fax or email or text or whatever, but you.

Still got to get the attention. Right. You.

10,000 people isn't as good as 100. Focused with a good message.

Right. So how do you come up with the script? I carefully, carefully jotted down what, you know, I kind of really carefully vetted who I was contacting. Even six seconds to me was a lot of money. So I carefully, you know, jotted down like what they sold currently, what their price points were. I get all this newspaper ads about what? You get articles. LA Times would have articles about, you know, different department store trends or that Harrods is, you know, going after a certain kind of customer or whatever. I would use it. I would say, hey, you know, your new collection of, you know, whatever looks really great and you know, I admire them. But. And my current collect, you know, I designed a few pieces that might complement. Because I'm not asking them to get rid of their current, you know, because they, I'm assuming they have a pretty good relationship with whoever they were doing business with. You know, this might be something that that same customer might be interested in that you don't currently carry. You know, stuff like that. So you do so What I'm hearing.

Is you were always respectful and aware of what was going on.

Start with a compliment and a meaningful compliment that they understand that you've done the homework. They always appreciate anybody who understands your plate. So you start with that. And, you know, the other thing I found, too, is the U.S. buyers, you know, rarely, they would have to, you know, get back to you. Rarely. The British buyers always would get back to you, even if it's no. They, you know, I fax them and they, you know, they would say something like, you know, thank you so much for writing to me, but, you know, we're not interested. You know, I'd get a rejection letter and that to me. So when you, when you get rejections, this is the second lesson in the book, which is when you get rejected, that's great because they. So I would pick. That is when I would actually pick up the phone and call them and say, hey, you know, thank you so much for writing this rejection letter. It's the. It's the kindest, most polite and sophisticated rejection letter I've ever received in my life. And since you took the time to review my product and rejected it and, you know, as I told you in my earlier email, earlier facts to you, how much I admire your collection and your customer base and how much I want to be, you know, in your store. What would it take? Is there anything here that had any. Any hope or future here? And sometimes, you know, that they hadn't looked at it really, because they'll say, oh, let me take a look at. You can hear them shuffling. Or they'll say, you know, they look good, but, you know, I. I thought it'd be too expensive. Or they look good, but, you know, too small. But they give you feedback. And they'll say. So I would say, what I'm hearing is that if I did that in a smaller version of it and it was not as expensive as you thought, that you would use me as an opening. You would be willing to test me as an opening price point. And they're like, yes, or something like that. So then I would have a relationship. It was a lot easier to deal with that. With the reach once you got the rejection was a lot easier to deal with it.

It wasn't a rejection as much as an opportunity to at the very least learn. But you're so smooth with. So what I'm hearing is if I do this, then you would take me, assume the sale.

Right, right, right. And you know what? I. So I told you earlier that I got scholarships at Both UCLA and usc. And I did the same thing when I was in school. I would, whenever, you know, I'd get like, you know how when you get a grade, you get a test, the second test, you get an essay, whatever, you get a midterm. So when I first get my test, I would, you know, like, I would this classes. Like I did philosophy, it's all essays and you know, I got like a C plus or something in that first. And I would go make an appointment with the, with the professor and I said, you know, like, what is it? Like you didn't like my grammar, you didn't like my thought process or whatever. You know, what would it take? You know, what are the A students getting? Right? Like I, I want to be that. And they'll tell you, well, you know, you missed on this. You missed. So if you're telling me that if I focus on this portion of it. So next time you're doing a lecture, I really should be focused on this. And they're like, yes, well, you know, next time they actually look at your, your grade differently. You know, they go, oh, that's the girl that came over. So let me take a look at it. Because I gave her some points and you know, I don't want to now.

She'S following up on.

Right. So, you know, so I think that, you know, if you. So, you know, I basically even complimented her on the rejection letter. So I think that, you know, there's just a lot of, like I said, these are the kind of stuff that you'll never get in Google search. Right.

How to the intangibles. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Because most of that is the generic outline. Like, oh, you want a million dollar company? Well, get an idea, incorporate the business, get some legal structure, go sell it like obviously.

Or you know, do some direct mail and you're going to get somebody to get on the phone and buy everything. It's never happened to me that way.

I've actually googled how to publish a book and it's interesting that all of them are pretty much the same 12 bullet points. And it's like, okay, but what's the context for every single one? Because each step is about 30 hours of work.

Yeah. And it's, it's all like regurgitated information that is spun differently. Or you know, the other thing is that I, I wrote this book, Million Dollar Passion and I was talking about, you know, how to start a business, how to scale it. We're going to talk about scaling in a minute. And when I looked so My publisher had asked me to do a comparable, you know, book study. Right. So what books are out there? What am I competing with? And you know what, I googled it on Amazon and I found that the top 10 selling books on how to start a business and how to scale it are done by professors or people who are on the Internet. None of them actually had a business. And I'm like, how is this possible? You've never actually wrote a paycheck on how to actually make a sale to.

Either professor of economics.

Yeah. Professor of entrepreneurship or something? Yeah, well, yeah, you know, I can teach all day long, I can come up with theories all day long. But you know, in reality, in life it's totally different. I mean theory would be like, oh yeah, if you call, you know, 10,000 buyers, okay, who has time to do that by the way? You know you're going to get, I don't know, a thousand people. It doesn't when they respond with all the rejections, like what are you supposed to do with that? Right. So you know, there's tips on how to. Once you get that far and they say I want to, you know, try you or test you. You then have to understand your business terms. Who takes the risk, what are their, you have to understand what their margin requirements are. You know, if they say they won't tell you this. Every buyers don't tell you this because to them it's, it's normal. So if you say, well you know, this is a hundred dollars or something, Harrods London would take it, a hundred dollar item and they'll sell it for you know, a thousand twelve hundred dollars. Neiman Marcus here would probably sell it for about $800. You know, an HSN would sell it for like two hundred and fifty. So you as a. But then you know somebody, they're like, I used to sell duty free stores, I used to sell on the airline, I fly duty free. I sold all the cruise ship in the cruise lines. They all have different requirements, margin requirements, return privileges. They all also packaging requirements that are different because that all costs you like, whatever, you know, if you have to package in a certain way, it all, it's all cost. You have to come up with new packaging that fits them. And then you have to also understand that every business has something that's really valuable for them. For example, like Harrods, London had what's valuable to them is the glass space, right?

Because they only have realist, the sales real estate.

Everybody in the world wants to sell them. So they're limited by how much space they have for the jewelry counters right on in flight, airlines, it's weight because fuel costs money. So like liquor companies, you know, they weigh a ton versus jewelry, which is like nothing, right? And it's weight and space, which always like an ideal thing. In cruise ships, you know, they, they've got the same problem, which is space and also the inability for them to actually do real time sales analysis. Because you're on it, you're on, you could be out for a week, you could be out for 25 days depending on, so you can't restock. So you know, it's all these things. So you have, you have you as the, as the vendor, supplier, brand. The minute you understand what their margin requirements are, how they package and the.

Distribution channel, it sounds like, yeah, so.

All of these, you know, it's the more like I said, I, I've had to learn it on my own. If you, you know, as a starting business, I mean, you may be like, okay, you know, I want to start a gardening business. I got gardening tools that's going to make everything grow okay for you to learn all this requirements from all these different places. It'll probably take you 10 years because no one's going to tell you that like you can't Google search and say, what are the margin requirements? Or gardening tools for Macy's, for example. Okay, there's nothing.

Yeah, it might not even be public knowledge.

It's not public knowledge. And it might not even be some, you know, they won't never publish it. No company will publish that. There's only somebody who's ever dealt with them would know that. You know, and a lot of times they'll say my margin is like, for example, department stores will tell you our margin is 60%. 55%, 60%. Well, it's not true because even though their gross margin could be 55, 60%, they'll say, but we also need graphics fee, Internet fee, we need, you know, promotional fee. What are those fees? Because those fees could add up to another 20% by themselves.

Absolutely.

So their margin is actually not 55% or 60%. It could be 80%. So, you know, it depends on. I've dealt with all the different TV networks around the world and as an industry they are, you know, a certain level. But every company has their different, you know, like one company might want to.

So you're saying there's some subtle nuances between them.

All big. So I think that that's why I published my book because you, you have to be aware before you Quote a price. If somebody says, you know, okay, well, I'm gonna buy this necklace, you know, and that ring or whatever, and you have a price based on your cost, you might go out of business a lot sooner than you thought.

Because, yeah, if they don't disclose those fees and you don't ask, you don't want to take a 20% haircut just because you assumed it was here and they made it sound like it was less than it's going to be.

Well, also, when you, when you read the purchase order, a lot of times those purchase orders as book, as a phone book, because of all the terms on the back, the fine prints, they'll say, you know, we'll give you X amount. And then on the back side of the purchase order, it might say, you know, we have a graphics fee, we have, you know, promotional ad fee, we got this fee, that fee, you know, and you're like, okay, well when, when I get, when you get your payment, let's suppose everything sells and you get your payment and they deduct all that stuff. You realize, you know, you might call them and say, you know, what's happened? You know, there's a lot of different. And it's not like they're trying to take advantage of you. It's there. I mean, buyers can't be sitting there talking to every potential vendor. You know, here are the fine prints and here's like 18 of them. You know what I mean? They assume you do the homework minimum so that, you know, doing a lot of your homework. But I think coming down to really going back to your first question, which is how do you figure, you know, how do we kind of like go from nothing to finding your target market and then actually going and finding your customers while being a full time mother, you know, because my, my kids, like, I mean, I was.

Yeah, because if kids are a full time job and business is more than a full time job, and Last I knew, 40 hours for one, 40 hours for the other.

Right, right. Kids. My kids basically had, you know, me full time. So I, I worked around their schedule. They went to school.

And it's not like you clock out and they're, it's over and done with. You're still on call.

Yeah, 8 to 2. I picked them up at 2:00. I didn't do anything. Yeah, I just spent time with them, you know, did their homework, did their, you know, my kids played soccer, tennis, baseball, you know, all the AYSO stuff, all that.

Oh yeah, I was in soccer too with ayso.

Nyso, they did the basketball, baseball, and then they later on years, they did tennis, surfing out in California. Surfing is kind of big. So, you know, they did all that stuff. And I sat there with them from two to about five, cooked dinner with them five to six. And while they were doing their homework, you know, I'm basically, you know, calling them, calling the Asian production companies. And I'd get them started and by the time I put them to bed, you know, like 10, 11 o' clock in the morning, it's there like end of the day. So whatever issues they had, I can finish that up. And you know, two nights a week I was up till midnight because that's like 10 o' clock in the morning in Dubai. Abu Dhabi. Yeah, that's a real big business there. And because my time was so limited, I was very choosy with customers from day one. Anybody who hassled with me about, you know, returns or just a lot of stuff, I would just politely. Because I didn't need everybody's business. I only needed just a few. So I would just pick the ones that were nice to me, that were easier to deal with, that really needed me. And then, you know, so I was able to stay sane. And then at some point, I actually got a phone call. Yeah, I got a phone call from HSN after my products were Neiman Marcus for, you know, for a long, long time. And they wanted me to be on their channel because that they were back in 1998, they were just beginning to be like a blossom as a company. So that's where my TV career began. But I also talk about, in my case, they called me. But today, everybody wants to have their stuff on tv. And, you know, that's the one thing I can probably do a master class on, is how to get your product on tv. Because it's interesting, when I was writing my book, my editor said, you know, I don't understand, like, don't you have to pay to be. Don't you have to pay the TV station? Or don't you have to pay ad money to get your product on tv? Well, and then that's when I. It kind of like clicked in my head like, no, like, what I was doing was I was getting paid to be on tv, Right. Not the other way around. So I was getting all. I was, you know, getting an opportunity to build my brand and make a ton of money.

Authority positioning.

Yeah, and get paid to be on tv. So if you ever want to, if you have a product or service better.

Than just paying for an Ad.

Oh yeah, for sure. Right. And so that I think is something that, let's put it this way. There's only like, I want to say, half a dozen people. I'm going to be very generous. There might be 10 people that's been on TV for 25 years in a row straight doing a dollars per minute type of sales. I mean, I can't think of that many because you, you know, when you don't do the dollars per minute, you get taken off. So I'm still on tv. You know, it's just, it's just an amazing journey. And I think that. And you know, the sad thing is every TV station is desperately looking for the new it thing. So if you've got a new cream or new hair thing or new jewelry line or new way to do your asphalt or you got a new boat or anything like that, they are looking for, you know, to discover every buyer.

They're looking to fill that airtime.

Yeah, they're looking to increase their, their dollars per minute. I mean, if they're only doing, let's say, you know, 2,000 bucks a minute or whatever, they want the next product that's going to do $10,000aminute. You know, they're looking, they're constantly looking. And so it's just where understanding what they're looking for and then you got to talk about, you know, being able to go on TV actually and be succinct about it. There's a whole other art.

Why don't we, why don't we go a little bit deeper for the listeners? Because I venture to say there's very few people, like you just said, there's 10 people have done it as long as you as successful, if that. But give us a behind the scenes of what it's like doing stuff tv. And you've mentioned a few times the dollars per minute. What does that mean?

Yeah, so like if you're in the old days when you used to have mail order catalogs, they used to actually look at sales on a dollar per square inch actually. You know, so somebody might, your product might have like, you know, I don't know, 4 square inches or 8 square inches and then in caseline, like in the department storage, like, you know, dollars per foot or something. And in on tv, the most limiting thing for them is prime time. Right. You've got 24 hours a day of airtime and 80% of that business being done during prime time. So during prime time you got to do so many more dollars per minute than when you're on like overnight when you know, very few people are watching. So your products have to consistently do so many thousand bucks a minute. Like every TV station has their own criteria and for different.

So like what's a range of that? You mentioned something low is 2,000aminute and upwards of 10,000aminute. What's the like maximum high end and is there even a thousand a minute.

For low end around the world? So, you know, I mean there's, I don't know, there is probably 50 or 100 different TV retailers around the world. Okay. So you got the major ones in the major industrialized nations like France, Italy, England, you know, and we have the US And I've done business with all quite a few of them. So they vary a lot and they also vary by product. So if you are like for example, if you're selling like Apple TV or if you're selling, you know, MacBook computers or you know, any kind of electronic product is going to have a lot higher requirement for dollars per minute than like jewelry or beauty or you know, the different. So even within the same network. So for example, jewelry. And I don't want to get in a lawsuit, I can't say this but for jewelry has a much higher margin and it, it ships very easily. Like it's cheaper to ship a piece of jewelry. Yeah.

You're not shipping a microwave or a 10 computer or something.

Yeah, or a TV that, you know, it's 45, you know, inches or something. So it's very low cost that way. So they actually have, they have a high dollars per minute requirement, but it's not as high as like electronics. Electronics because they have, you know, their margins are low outside anyway and they got a lot more competition and things are heavy to ship. So they, they got to do a lot more dollars per minute, but their margins are low. So at the end of the day they might have TVs, you know, cameras, they might have all these electronics.

I might have a power the camcorders, when those were coming out, like, oh, I need one and GPS need to get one of these. And it's like, look, it's got the travel strap and this and that, but even a small one is a couple of pounds plus shipping and all that.

Well, plus they can get damaged pretty easily. But I mean at the end of the day their margin requirement for the day been averaged out because you know, just say, let's say you're, you know, a TV station does really well with electronics. It's inconceivable to sell only electronics because Then you're going to isolate all the other customers, you know, who might buy jewelry. I thought about that and they really.

Do have small margins. I remember when I was working for a large retail store that's the opposite of bad buy and PS2 was out, it was 199 and we were buying them for 198, like 197.99. There's $2 on it. They're like, you need to be selling the cords, the chips, all the other stuff because that's where the margin was and they were big.

Depending on the products, like if you're in like beauty, the margins are much higher. But they also have expiration dates. Like if you jewelry doesn't have expiration dates, you can ship something today and it could be there for three years and nothing is going to sour. But if you were shipping a very organic face cream, you know, it might have a life, shelf life of two years. So by the time, you know, they sit on, you don't want it to go to two years. You don't want, you want the.

Or sooner if you're, if you're using natural ingredients and stuff, they could just break down like food does.

Yeah. So I think. But what the point I'm making is that basically doing your homework. So at that time in tv, you know, prime. So I was on prime time for many, you know, almost 20 years at HSN, it's. I guess what I'm saying to our listeners is that they're looking for the product that can do in any category. Let's say jewelry was doing in any given station. They were doing, you know, just take a number out of my hat. Like some stations will do 6,000 bucks a minute for prime time. Some stations will do a thousand bucks a minute. But every station, no matter where you're doing a thousand or six thousand, you want the next product. Next it product that's going to do the ten grand. You know, when I did a Times Square necklace, It was doing 43,000 bucks a minute. You know, nobody's ever done those numbers before back in 1999, ever. I mean, that broke all electronic record.

And what was the coolest part of doing that on top of breaking the.

Records being a part of history, I guess because that product commemorated the welcoming of the new millennium. Right. So it was a part of a celebration. So Times Square had a ball that was all sort of manual and then it went to digital. And you know, nobody, Y2K and all that. Nobody even knew it was. If we're going to work or not? No, they were hoping, you know, is.

That why it was manual? They were waiting after, until after the 2000 to switch it to digital.

They went, they switched to digital app when it was turning 2000. Right. From 1999 to 2000. New year is 2000. Yeah, it was, it was like a really interesting time, you know, but I think, you know, I had no clue what I was doing back then. I mean, like I said, I was never that much.

I would say you got to give yourself credit because you're talking about the late 90s, early 8, late 80s, early 90s, mid-90s. And then 99, you get the highest rating there. And I know there's something else you did for on New Year's Eve. Yeah, you clearly had enough figured out. I know you're always learning, but you are sounds like a great decade.

It was. And then we had the 9, 11 and not so great way then. But I think, you know, I think even with every disaster too, you do learn, you know, how people's emotions change and how we can cope with it and help. Like it's just. And like I said, I think I start my book out talking a little bit about my background, only to give the reader a little bit of context about the decisions I had to make and the decisions I made and how my philosophy was shaped. And then I go into talking about how your integrity never bending, like, you know, so many times when I was on HSN or even a lot of the department stories, cruise lines, they'll say, you know, I, you know, I'll say something like, I need to sell it for X amount. And they'll say, you know, right now it's selling for $149 and I really need to sell it for 99. We can do, you know, triple the money or whatever. And yeah, I could always go lesser grade of this or lighter gram weight, something or you know what, there's a lot of ways where consumers can't tell right away that there's a huge change or maybe they're, they know there's a huge change, but they will, you know, be glad to get it for cheaper. Right. But I never did that. I never budged on the integrity because I thought, you know, if I'm not going to have it, if I can't wear it, I'm not going to have my customer wear it.

Yeah, you want to be proud of it five years from now, 10 years from now, not, hey, it's real nice now and then.

Yeah. So what happened was Back in after 911 I heard from a lot of customers saying that a lot of things, you know, they couldn't buy stuff, know, for a while they didn't want to buy anything. But what they kept saying to me was that the stuff that they bought from me lasted, right? They lasted. They still looked very stylish and timeless and elegant. And it still felt good. It still felt like brand new. And I think wear it anywhere and they still got compliments. And so some of the companies couldn't withstand the bad sales decade and so they went out of business and a lot of the customers came back. When they bought anything again, they went to the short shot, which was me. So I think, you know, just by just having the, I mean, I never thought, well, if I had integrity, you know, I'm gonna have a great business 20 years from. I never thought that. It's just like that was just the way I was programmed or I was just kind of stubborn about it. I don't know.

But I think because you're being honest and true about it is the reason it worked. Because I, I, there's people we've turned down to help them with their books and publishing and stuff because I'm very much the same way. And it's like they just want to do it to get people money. They're like, if I do this, it's like a sales tactic, like, oh, that will increase sales 37% if we're honest with them. It's like you were contemplating not being honest with them, like.

Right.

I can't wrap my head around that.

But you know, in my business, for example, you know, some of the stuff that I do have some diamond accents, right? And you know, it's selling for $200 or 300, whatever it is, anywhere from, you know, 50 to $600 or something. And I tell people, I tell my customers, look, you know, these diamonds here are accent pieces. They are not your wedding ring. They were never designed to be that. They were supposed to be accenting the center stone. So it's all full cut diamonds and it's diamonds that I'd be proud to wear, but you know, I'm not. It's not like the, the finest quality diamond that you're going to buy at Tiffany's. So I'll let them know.

Flawless.

Yeah, I'll let them know these are accent pieces. They're good enough for me. Very good. Enough for me to give to my mother. Give it to me. So, you know, this is what they expect, right? So, you know, if I'm selling emeralds with a lot of emeralds have flaws. I'll tell them everyone is going to have a flaw, but the flaw range is this to this. And I Show them all 5 type of ranges so that you know, they know that when they get it there's going to be a little bit of. That's the beauty of emeralds, by the way. You know, they're not supposed to be flawless. So being as honest as you can up front, let them know what they're getting because, you know, I'd rather them not buy it, then tell them and then, and then they're going to return it. It doesn't do anybody any good. So I think, you know, I, I purposely started my book with the emotional stuff, you know, just being steady. How to goals, set goals and how to, you know, the other thing really great about goals too is this when you set your goals and it's in writing. I remember one time, it was probably 9, 11 year. It was just horrible. You know, real estate was bad. My husband's in real estate business and you know, my jewelry business was like took a real dip and it as it should have and I was feeling down and my husband said, you know what you, your goal for last year was, you know, to do like $300,000 or something and you did a few million dollars. And so this year, yeah, you may do nothing, but in, in the five year projection, you are well ahead of sure with what you thought you were going to be. Right. So sometimes it gives you a tool to look back and you know, like say, hey, you know, that was, you know, I can do this. So I, I think that, you know, properly setting your goals on. Because when you actually say it's like losing weight, like if you say I'm 100 and you know, I have a friend of mine who was like 175 pounds and she wants to lose, she wants to get down to 130. Okay, well fine. You could go and you know, go on a bad diet. You could do all this stuff or you could sit there and go, you know what? I just want to lose 20 pounds this year. Right. Or you know, 10 pounds this year. You could break it up into smaller chunks, smaller chunks and you could say, you know, she got it down to like having to cut out 300 calories a day or something and walk like, you know, 30 minutes a day. And yeah, some days you, you know, and when you have to cut out 300 calories a day, it could be a glass of wine and couple of chips or it could be Bread with jam in the morning or whatever it is. But, you know, some days you're not gonna be able to cut it out, you know, and some days you might cut off 500 calories. We don't know. But at the end of the month, if you. If you. Instead of losing, you know, I don't know, £10 or something, you might only lost £8. You're still. You're still going to be better off, you know, at the end of the year. You're going to be, you know, a lot, you know, lighter. Right.

Why do you think so many people in business get so caught up in the metrics? Because what I'm hearing a lot of is, you know, have a solid goal, but be flexible with how you get there. Because to your point of 300 grand in the year and you do millions, and then it takes a hit, you're still beating the spread. You're still ahead. Why are. Why are we, as entrepreneurs, so concerned with, like, oh, it doesn't. You know, I think it was Mark Victor Hansen, when I had him on the show, he was talking about, like, they wanted to sell a certain number of books, like, do $100,000. They did 96 or 98. And it was like, no, we weren't bummed about it. We were excited. We never even thought this was possible.

Right. I think, you know, that's why I started the emotional part of this first in the book, because that's everything. To me, your mindset is everything. It's how you handle, you know, you have to understand who you are. You have to understand yourself and what your end goal is. If your end goal is just to make a bunch of money, that's different than. For me.

It's very transactional.

Right. For me, it's changing my lifestyle. It's changing my life goals. It's changing generational relationships. So for me, those other things, you know, there was whole other issues that I had to deal with now, and I stayed true to that, by the way. So, you know, back in 2004, I decided, I'm going to retire fully. This is 2024. I'm still working. So obviously that didn't work out. But in 2004, when my contract was up with the TV station, I decided, I'm going to retire fully. And at that time, the vice president that was there at the time, you know, for jewelry, said, you know, we can't have you retire. Like, we have so many customers. Your business is great. Margins are great. It's not easy to find a brand that's already established that already lives at our home. It's like one of our home brands. So what can we do to, you know, why do you want to quit? You want to go to another network? And I said no, if I ever want to, if I ever thought about going anywhere else, I'd talk to you guys first, you know, because you were, you know, I'm so grateful for everything that they've done and plus all my customers are there, but I need to be home. And you know, my kids are now grown and, you know, they're going to high school, college, and this is when they can get in real trouble. And I definitely want to be there, you know, so that's when they said, okay, we're going to make this worthwhile for you. You know, we're going to really make it easy so you don't have to do your production. There's a lot of different things that we could do to. So that you could accomplish both goals. So, you know, every time I prioritized my personal life, things got easier on the professional side and because they actually took off a lot of that, you know, the production quality stuff that, that they took over, my business actually quadrupled after I retired, really. And so that year for 2004-2008, it. It quadrupled. So. And it, and it was a multi, multi million dollar business. So all I can say is that, you know, the first two chapters about my book, you know, of my book, talking about just really understanding who you are and more importantly, understanding who your customers are and to see if there's a real fit. Because if your customers don't value quality, if your customers don't value all the stuff that you've gone through, right? If your customer just wants to pay cheap money and just be one and done, then you're in the wrong place. You don't need, they don't deserve, you know, your heart and soul all the time, 100%. So make sure that you really understand who you are, what you're willing to do and set some boundaries and then make sure that you then go out. Make sure that your target market understands that. Because I'm telling you, like my customers, you know, and I thank them from the beginning to the end, you know, the beginning of the book, the end of the book and in the acknowledgment, you know, they are such a gift to me, like they were a true gift and are because, you know, I meet them at airports on a flight, you know, it could be flights from here to Tokyo, here To London. I mean, I meet people like all the time that have my jewelry on. Or I met people in publishing, like publishers who actually said, oh my God, you know, I wear your jewelry. So it's, that's just been a gift that, that we had that, that 20 years time, 25 years time now. So I guess in a short, but you know, in a long. That was a long winded way of saying that. Understand your target market, understand what you're doing, and then go after it. And if you're willing to do that. I don't know of anybody who's written a book that's this comprehensive. Here's the other thing. I didn't want a book that is so comprehensive that looks like an encyclopedia.

That's awesome. I put the same thing in mind. I didn't want someone being out and about reading how to publish a book and someone's asking them if they're reading the yellow pages because, I mean, we could make it 600 pages, but that's.

Too much to ask from any reader in time commitment, you know, like, I really wanted them to be able to, you know, and just pick through it if they want to. If you already have a business and you want to basically put it on tv, for example, I teach you exactly how to do that. Exactly how to do that. And you know, I've known plenty of brands that started that way, and they're bigger brands than mine right now. And if you just want to scale your business, you know, why don't you.

Touch on scale real quick?

Yeah, a little bit. Okay. So, you know, and you know, in the publishing business, there's all these buzzwords, right? People have buzzwords and they've got all these like 10 steps or bullet points that everybody uses. In entrepreneurship, people talk about scaling all the time. Okay.

Yeah.

Main difference between scaling and growing your business is this, like when you first start out your business, like I did, okay, I started with just a few thousand bucks and then I went to like, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars and then from there to a million dollars. Now if you do a $200,000 year, one, and it, you know, it takes you heart and soul, you know, let's say you're running a restaurant and you, you know, have you and your daughter, your mother, everybody working, okay? And you make your 200 grand, then you want to open a second location and you then spend the 200 grand you made into the second location. And basically, because you have to shuffle back and forth, the same people are doing all the stuff and maybe the second one is doing okay, but the one suffering because you can't be at places. So now after you put the 200 grand, instead of making 400 grand, you are now making 270. Okay. You can sit there and go, you know, I'm growing. I got the second location. I got additional 70 grand. Maybe I'll open the third one. Maybe I'll make, you know, 350 next year. Right.

Who's staffing it, though? If you're. If you're using, like.

But even if you could staff it, that is what I call growing. Okay. That's just growing your business. That, to me, if you ask me, that's a hard way to grow your business. It's. It's destined to fail at the end. Like, you're gonna burn out. You know, like you said, if you're staffing it, they don't have.

Yeah. Because with those numbers, it'd be hard to get to half a mil, let alone a mil.

Right. But let's say you. So. But scaling is different. Scaling is when you, you know, first do your. Let's say, you know, first you. Let's say you, like a dentist, you start out with your first location and, you know, he's doing, I don't know, $5,000 a day or something. And then you learn how to do something. You figure out how to. How to do something really good, and you come up with, you know, a way. A new machine or a way to do something better. So the second location, you're doing 10 grand a day. So even though you spent the money, you're doing 10 grand a day. So like, in my business, like, when I went from doing, let's say, you know, $10 million to $50 million a year, I actually reduced my staff because I, you know, they basically took over some of the production and. And a lot of the responsibility. That's how I was able to move to San Diego. So they, as opposed to being in la, at a huge staff of warehousing, shipping, and quality control, all these people, um, I was able to actually, because the orders were getting too big where I couldn't. I couldn't do it. I couldn't actually have enough people to manage to quality control this stuff myself. So we basically shipped that out to a company that does nothing but QC for you. And it was like 50 cents of an item or something, because that's all they do. So once, once we dropped it out, I didn't need the staff here, and I also didn't need the space for it. Yeah, either Insurance, because that's a big.

Job, and that doesn't sound like a huge investment to pull it off proper.

Right. It was just actually much less. So I was able to quadruple my money and cut the expenses. So I went from, you know, I literally quadrupled my business, but the net income basically was more than quadruple.

So does scaling. What I'm getting is, it sounds like the scaling has more to do with the efficiency and the margins than just straight up going, hey, we're growing it. We just started, you know, Right.

Scaling is using fewer resources, less money to grow faster. That's what scaling actually means. So, for example, let's say that's actually.

The fun part, finding the inefficiencies, right?

So let's say you came up with a way to, you know, make shoes, okay? And, you know, you were doing your own production, you got your own engineers, you got your own buyer for leather, you got all this stuff, and then you are selling it to some department stores doing all this stuff, and you're having to explain to everybody who you are, you know, how your leather is better than everybody else's, and, you know, on and on and on, and you do this forever. But. And here's another thing. Let's say you built a brand. Let's say you're a Gucci, okay? Well, Gucci can come up in vinyl shoes that they don't have to have any leather, Right? Because people come and knock on the door because they have a brand name, so they don't have to go and tell, you know, tell everybody, you know, who they are. They don't have to, you know, I mean, people basically come in looking for it, and they're willing to pay 10 times the price for the same shoe. I mean, if I came up with a vinyl shoe, I'm gonna have a tough time selling for 20 bucks. You know, I might have to keep it away for free. I might have to ask. But to pay you 20 bucks to see if your foot hurts, Right? So part of the way you can scale it is coming up with a brand, you know, building a brand from the get go. You know, a lot of people don't understand building up business is a whole different thing than building a brand, you know, so, yeah, if you're running a store like the shoe store, if you sit there and you don't have a brand and nobody knows who you are and, you know, you're just doing a functional orthopedic shoe or whatever shoe that you happen to be selling, and you come up with the way. And you say, you know, it's costing me, between the engineers and this and that, it's costing me a million dollars, maybe $100,000 a year to make all the stuff. And I can make 10 grand or 20 grand, or at some point, you might even make, you know, you spend a hundred, you might make 50 grand. Okay, that's building a business. You make a little bit more money than what. What it costs you. But if you build a brand, you could get there and go, you know what? Here is so and so brand. And, you know, it's costing me 100 grand, and I can make half a million bucks with that. That's a brand. So how do you then build a brand? What is a brand? What does it stand for? And, you know, with no money, because, you know, if I had unlimited amount of money, like an Estee Lauder or, you know, a gm, I could build a brand. I mean, even then, it's hard because you got to really advertise all that stuff.

Yeah. But then where do you. Where do you start with it, and when do you start with it? Because I've heard so many people, even when I'm giving presentations into the audience, and they're like, well, you know, you ask them and they're like, well, I just got started, or I've been in business 10 years. I want to build a brand. And it's like, well, why? If you don't. I feel like if you don't have a product line, if you don't, if you aren't really truly the best at what you do, you need to work on your craft and you. And systems and all kinds of stuff before you try to do anything else. I mean, what. What does your company stand for? What does the brand stand for? If you don't know, how do you convey that?

Right? So I think that's another thing that a lot of entrepreneurs don't understand is, like, if you want to build a brand, I mean, if you think about it and you go, I mean, all of you who are listening right now, you could sit there and go, you know what? That's a really good idea. I should be building a brand. Right? And you think to yourself, okay, you know, that woman knows what she's talking about. I should go tomorrow morning and build a brand. I could figure out how to build a brand. And when you build a brand and you go, what do I. What does my brand stand for? And how does this compete with everybody else on the market? How does it solve anybody's problems? And what would it take for me to build a brand? When you start looking at it that way, when you start actually looking at what it would take to do, you know, that's when you realize, I really need this or I should have been doing that. Because like you said, a brand has to stand for something. And in the end, as an entrepreneur, and I should have started this whole interview with this philosophy, which is, as an entrepreneur, as you know, the only way you make money long term, you can make money short term, but only way you make money in long term is if you solve. If you change somebody else's life for the better, if you add value to somebody else's life for the better, right? If I sold you a pair of shoes and let's say I sold Gucci shoes and you know, it gave you status, it makes you feel good, you can close a deal because a lot of people think you're rich or, you know, whatever, or if I sold you orthopedic shoes, that actually helps you feel better and you know, helps prevent injuries, whatever it is. If I sold you security systems, you know, it helps you prevent a robbery or gives you a lot of comfort, whatever it is, you have to add some value to somebody else's life long term. So then when you're building a brand, you have to figure out, okay, why is my brand here? You know, what problems am I solving and for who?

Here's what we do. Here's what. It's the greatest product since sliced bread, but you don't know the market.

Right.

So I have a compelling enough offer.

Yeah. So I go extensively into how to build a brand when you're a small company with no money, because I've done it and you can build your brand. I mean, I think I advertise, like I want to say, I've tried it and in those days, money wasn't, you know, you didn't spend the kind of money you do today. But in the 35 years I've been in business, my total ad budget was probably less than $10,000. And at the peak of my career, I did over 50 million bucks a year. So think about that.

That sounds like a pretty good roi.

It's a very good roi.

Now, you wouldn't be be upset if the growth and the numbers worked out to 9,982% growth. You're not going to get bent out of shape. It wasn't 10,000, would you?

Am I just kidding? No, but I think, you know, I mean, being an entrepreneur, we all of you who Are listening. If you're an entrepreneur, you're probably as crazy as I am. I mean, there are the definition of a business. Difference between a business person and an entrepreneur, I've been told, is that entrepreneurs take more risks, right? So we, you know, take our risks. We, you know, put our hearts and soul into everything. And I'm telling you that I have, because I didn't have a mentor, I didn't have any connections with anybody. All I had was, you know, hope and guts and grit and desperation, basically, and some common sense that I've had to learn all this on my own by trial and error. And I'm gonna say to you, I've been very privileged to. And I think I've been very lucky. I mean, I'm not gonna ever discount that. I. I kind of hit the jackpot. Whether that's divine intervention or just pure luck, I don't know. But I will tell you that I've traveled all over the world, you know, I've trucked all over Middle east, all of the Americas, all of Asia, most of Europe. And I've sold to places most many people don't even can't have a name. I mean, just my products are sold in 75 different countries. And it's not, you know, that's why I said some of that is luck that with every customer. I mean, when I went to the Middle, I flew out to Middle east and everybody was just like a floored because they're like. It was like right when the middle tensions were so high, they were just floored that I just showed up there by myself, you know, of female Asian women, like. Like a short little girl by myself, you know, trying to learn the market, you know, and all that, and American.

How dare you?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, everybody. All my Middle Eastern friends are like, you sure you want to go over there, you know, right now? Because the front pages were just all full of like, you know, So I said, yeah, you know, I want to. I have faith and I want to know. I want to know my market. I want to meet the people in person and I want to, you know, like, really invest my time and understand what they want. Like, understand what the customers there want from me. So I think that, you know, I've been to everything I wrote in my book is something I have experienced that myself. That you're never going to find in Google. You're never going to find it in somebody else's book. You're not. And it's going to work. That's the other thing. I mean, it's going to work. You know, I've done nine figure business. I mean, when I wrote the book, as you know, it took me three years to publish it. But when I wrote the book, it was, you know, over $500 million. But today that number has grown quite a bit. So, you know, it's going to be a really short time before I hit the billion dollar mark. So I think that, you know, coming, you know, with no money, never got a loan for my business or anything else. I always lived below my means. And, and you know, this, and I'm not going to say this to other people, but you know, you know this, Maya, that I always still remain very humble. I'm always open to learning and listening 100%. And every day is a school day. And you know, it's, it's a great.

Yeah, you've always been super down to earth. That's why when I was doing your intro, I'm like, I know this isn't even covering everything. You didn't even mention the New York, the ball you designed below deck. I know there's stuff even I don't know. And it's just. But that you're not like, you're not about that. You really, truly have that heart. And I think that's what resonated when we, we got connected. I was like, you're, you're just cool.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. You know, it's, it's. I mean, I don't know. I've done a lot of so many things I've done. I was thinking about this the other day. It's not in my book. The Times Square necklace is not in my book. I did the, you know, the, the jewelry for the Oscars, like when they, the Empire event. That was like the first AIDS charity that raised money. I did all jewelry for, you know, it was like Vogue, Christie's and Oscars. Like they had a huge auction that year. And I forgot to mention it in the book too. So it's just a lot of things I.

Second edition or second book?

No, I think this book is pretty comprehensive, I think. Listen, if you ever wanted to start your own, especially the creatives, because, you know, if you are creative, they think that you don't have a brain or it's a tough road or, you know, many of you, like, I was, you know, very creative my whole life. And I paint, I play the piano, I do all that. But my parents made me go to, you know, get an MBA in finance of all things. And yeah, I got, that's the best example, I got straight A's. I actually got a scholarship, a fine school. But if I had to manage money for a company, that company would be bankrupt, like in 10 days. Trust me, like, I'm horrible at it. No, if I had to be, like, if I was in a government job, this country would be bankrupt. So, you know, I think that if you are in a creative business, creative world, you know, you might be an inventor, you might be a painter, you might be a gardener, you might be a landscape architect, or you might be a chef, you might be, you know, a carpenter. In fact, I have a, an example of a carpenter and somebody who like wanted to open a restaurant that they test marketed everything and got their customers without ever opening their first, before they got their first store, before they got the, before they got their first location.

Oh, no kidding.

Well, yeah, there's all these different ways you can test market and get your business down pat before you start advertising or getting a location. Because hey, you come here to get a location, you might go, you might realize like, you should have opened it, you know, another town next door or whatever. You're stuck in a five year lease. Why?

Because when you're dealing with the physical brick and mortars, it's about the foot traffic coming through there too, right?

But also, you know, like, if you're a carpenter in a brand new town, how do you, you know, let people know you're there? Right? There's a lot of different ways you get pr because I was always very scrappy when it comes to getting pr.

I was just thinking I was gonna make a joke about guerrilla marketing. And when you said if you're in a new town, I'm like, well, you could hand out stuff on the street corner when people are stuck at the red light, or just hammer a tin trash can and let people know and hand out business cards. But the reality is some of that stuff's more effective than, you know, do a million dollar ad campaign plan out, you're talking to the wrong people and it hits one tenth of a percent.

I mean, yeah, I got a. In the book there is an example of a carpenter who really, truly very talented, like carves, you know, not just like, I mean, amazing. And he came to a new town because basically he, his family moved and you know, he had a broken relationship or something and he needed to move, came to a whole new town where nobody knew him, and then when he wanted to start his business, basically he ended up, you know, starting from scratch. And I think within a couple years he's now doing these multi, you know, 10, 20 million dollar homes. And you know, just like he, he today has like 26 people employed doing that. So I mean, just a lot of different way. You got to think outside the box a little bit. I just tell people, you know, what if you start your business with 50 grand? You don't really start thinking until you lose the 50.

Right.

You know, until you are down to nothing, you know, and then, and then you, and then when you finally get a second chance and you know, your mom or whoever says, you know, don't give up, don't give up, you know, you're almost there and you, you're hanging on, you're like, you're just waiting for that next mistake, for you to shut that down emotionally. That's how people think. So I just a point where you.

Either you're going to succeed no matter what or you're going to give up on it.

So I mean, what. Especially for those people who are creative, this, this book is definitely for you because I understand how creative people think. And I understand because Even now after 25 years of straight, every month being on TV on a dollars per minute, where you're being judged by that. And I think I shared this with you before, like when I go on TV again like next month, I'll be on for like nine hours or something. Every minute I'm on, I'm nervous because I'm, you know, even after all these years, because when you've had ups and downs, wow, entrepreneur, you never think. Like I always think, oh my gosh, what if like they hate this collection? What if I totally misread the market? Or what if this turns out to be a total dog? Like, what if it completely like fails or something? Like, you know, you think about that, you know, these doubts kind of seep in because that's our nature to survive. And so it's, you know, I talk a lot about, you know, how to hang on to that hope. And when a hope is just pie in the sky, you being stubborn or when a hope is actually validated with your skill set and patience. Yeah.

Putting in the work behind it. It's not, it's more of a timing thing. It's not will it happen. It's just a matter of when. Like I'm doing everything that's required.

Right, Right. And you know, it's not an overnight thing and I don't want to, you know, let anyone think that you buy the book and you're going to be a millionaire. But I do think that if you're willing to work at it and you follow. It's just really common sense.

You at least have a game plan that you, you know, I remember when I started, it was like, there's no rhyme or reason. There was one year, my whole game plan that no one gave me. It just was logic. I go, I think 2008, I go, I didn't get the result I wanted the last year. I'm gonna do literally the opposite of everything now. That made me take more risks. But some of the stuff that was working, I didn't really have the foresight to go, maybe you don't change that. I wasn't cherry picking. I literally just did oppos, everything. If I said no to this event, I said yes to it. If I. You know what I mean? And it just changed up the variables. You got, you got to do something. You can't play it safe like that. And it's interesting, you, I'm a little surprised about the TV comment you just made because I thought that a couple hundred episodes ago because, you know, I have so many of the show now that I used to get nervous and everything and I'm like, why am I still. Even before you got on, I know I've known you, I know what I'm doing. And I just like, was like. But you know what it means. We still care.

We do.

When you don't get that nervousness, it's like whatever happens, happens. And it's like that's not usually the best quality or you're at least going through the motions or something. Even if it doesn't completely blow up, it's just going to be flat.

No, I care. I care. And I think that being nervous and I know a lot of people who've been on TV for like two years that are about to get off. And I know that they'll be about to get off, like just by looking at it, that they have all the confidence in the world. I don't know why, you know, when.

Some of it is a degree of acting like, it's just. They know how I mean, like literally actors who can go, this isn't my personality, but I literally become someone else. Do you think they're just putting on like too much of a show that is a drain on them even though they can pull it off flawlessly?

They could. But I think one thing I didn't learn though, and one of the reasons why I think my brand took off the way it did on tv is that our customers, customer, any customer, can see authentic authenticity or Somebody who's not authentic acting, you don't want to be disingenuous. Yeah. So you just can't fake that. You know, when you're on live tv, if you're not authentic, they can see it. And you know, I don't know, when I was in hsn, I think I was across like every movie star there is, you know, selling jewelry. I mean, look, I'm not going to sit there and say, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to be on the next movie and I can act just as good as they do because I'm not an actor. I can tell you I'm going to suck. If I ever got a part in anything, even a one nighter, I would suck. So why would some of them think that they could just, you know, design jewelry, wake up in the morning and just design jewelry? Because they've been, they wore a few, you know, designed by some.

Live is different than prerecorded too. It's one of the reasons, truthfully, I decided to do live from day one because people show up differently if nothing else.

Right. So I think that, you know, authenticity is key. And I think in my book, I do talk about that. I talk about using your authenticity to build your brand. Because by now all of you who are listening probably understand the brand a little bit without ever looking at it. Just by listening to me talk, you probably will. If you Google search my jewelry, you'll find that it's not flashy, it's very timeless, elegant, respectful, always a little bit of discipline. Even when things are big and bold, they're still very disciplined. That's my personality through and through, you know, and I like things that kind of are, you know, think I, I love working with nature like florals and, you know, little critters because they've been here like a billion years before us. So I want to say that, you know, if you're not authentic, you're not going to, you're not going to make it. That I'm going to tell you right now. I mean, you don't have to buy the book, I'll tell you that right now. But if you want to build something and you know one thing, many of you might have great ideas. Maybe you were stuck at a job like I was, or maybe, you know, you want to spend more time, your job is paying you really well and you know all that, but you, you're spending a lot more time at work than you want to. You know, they, a lot of companies talk about work, life, balance and you find out it's more work and there's no life. You know, in most of these companies that the more they talk about it, you find that the more.

That's funny. I've never heard that. The work life balance. More work life.

Yeah, there's more work and there's very little life. So when you're in that position, you go, you know what? It all sounds good, but how do I get started? How do I get started? And what do I do? You know, in the meantime? I got to pay rent, whatever. I deal with all that in the book and how I dealt with that. And so, you know, it's. It's worth a try. So if you do try to buy the book, you can buy it on Amazon or, you know, all the bookstores, but just leave me a review. It doesn't have to be a good review. Just be an honest review. I don't ask anybody to write me review.

Authenticity, huh?

Honest review. You can sit there and say, this is too verbose, or, you know, I found this chapter sucks or whatever. I don't care. Just write me a review so I can actually get better. That's. That's all I ask.

It's a. It's a pretty. Pretty good ask. I. I recommend getting reviews and everything, and it's fun. I mean, one of my favorite things to do is just go onto YouTube and Amazon and just read or watch whatever, and you get the truth from people. There's no marketing team, no nothing. The people are like, do they really think this video is good? Like, that's what they're thinking. It's awesome.

Yeah.

So I want to ask you, we got time for the wheel. Wheel of whatever. Before we thank the sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. Would you like yellow or black? I have a feeling you're going to say pastel, but you do have to pick one of these.

Those are pretty harsh choices.

I have to stay on brand, too, but.

I'll go with black, because when in doubt, I go with black.

Good. Okay, black. Let's see what question you get. Oh, that's a good one right there.

Yeah. What is it?

So my question for you is, outside of all the success of business and everything, what type of movies do you like to enjoy and what do you do in your downtime?

Okay, so movies. My favorite movie of all time is the Godfather. I would say.

Can't go wrong with Italian. That's what I like to say.

Yeah, I love it because everybody in the. In the movie is so imperfect. And yet you really, like, fall in love with the bad guy at the end. Michael Corleone is like, you know, he kind of tries to go straight, but he doesn't. He ends up with this business where, you know, and the music is fabulous and all the scenery, you know, I mean, the music from Godfather, you can't, like, it's just amazing. You know, I just. It's one of my favorite soundtracks, so. I like that. And it's classic. You know, it's a. There's a romance story. There's a lot of human, like, survival. I mean, I don't condone what they're doing, but I love that.

Yeah.

So. And what I do in my downtime, I. You can't see it, but I've got a grand piano here. I play the piano, I paint pretty actively, and I spend time with my grandkids and my mom, as, you know, I, you know, she's getting older, so I want to make up the time I didn't have with her when I was growing up.

Great balance. Out of curiosity, what kind. What, what. What is your grand piano? Yamaha? Steinway?

No, it's not one of those famous brands. I'd have to look at it. I bought it some time ago. It's not. It's a baby grand. And I bought it when I was. When we were. I mean, long time ago, 20 years ago. I will tell you, I have, you know, now I reached some amount of success and I. I do live in a nice home and some. But I. I have people come here and they think, oh, my God, it's such a beautiful home. Whatever. They don't realize a lot of the furniture, not a lot. There are a few pieces of furniture that are strewn through here. My home that I bought, like, for 20 bucks, you know, way back when. I mean, literally, I have a round table, some candles on it still. I should actually post it on Instagram that they're just like, pressed boards, like a circle press board with, like, legs that are on it. You know, like, before you paint it, it's just like passport. Like, it's actually kind of like now not even flat after all these years. So when my husband and I first got married, we didn't have any money, and I went to, like, what we considered, like a lumberyard, and it was already cut there. And I bought it. And so what I did was we couldn't afford a table, so I bought it and I went to the, like, a fabric store. We used to have a lot of fabric there. And I would buy the yardage that Was left over and I sewed it table cover and so you know what's underneath, nobody knows. And when we moved here to this house which is you know, much nicer house than I've ever owned. The furniture movers like you sure you want to take this thing? And I said yeah, I do.

There's more meaning to that than anything else.

Yeah. Reminds me of where I. How I got started and. And I have you know a few other pieces. I've got a. Like a old TV that I. I think if I turn it on right now we just have black and white snow on it now.

But so surreal. I have a TV I bought in high school still because it was. It's a JVC flat screen and I still have stuff that is from years ago as well. I. The reason I was asking mainly about the piano. I. I play piano alto and tenor sax also. And it's not a famous grand piano either but it's what dad and I used to play and it's from the. You know it's in the family and everything so I'm always going to have it.

It's. My TV was Zenith. I think it's a really.

I remember Zenith.

That's like a little bubble and I bought it used and I think my piano shaffer something like that. But anyway it wasn't a famous brand or anything like that. And you know I have yeah pieces of furniture around my home. I still have them because I know it's there and my. When my daughter got married and my son in law comes in, you know and I think he. They've been married for like five years and I think the other day he kind of ran into one of them and I told him the history behind that particular piece. It's like oh my God, that's so nice that you have that like you have that history. So you know, I'm gonna get it one day, you know. So yeah, you know. So I think you just gotta be grounded and you know I. I just think, I think this whole reason why I'm on this podcast now number one other than your charming personality Mario and how great this podcast is being produced. I told you I complimented you before we were on live is to give everybody the idea that if you have something that you think you can help other people with and, and you really focus on it, you under just a few little steps, you could impact the world in a way that you can't even imagine. You know, if you think about how our lives today have changed from my parents generation like today We've got Google, Apple, you know, Facebook, all the social media. Yeah, you get all those companies right now you look at how Facebook got started, Apple got started. You know, most of these companies except Amazon was started by people who are dropouts from school, you know, with less than 5,000 bucks. Think about that. Yeah, so you know Steve Jobs, I mean, if you saw the story, I don't think he even spent two grand. I mean, he, he didn't even, he went to college and just like didn't pay tuition. He just kind of like sat in classes, learned. So I'm just saying that you could be sitting on a dream business that could literally change how people live and communicate and you know, just start somewhere. Because it's got to be. If you're not working on your dream right now and you're working at somebody else's company, you're working on their dream for some little money nuts. If that's your thing, you know, go for it. But no, it wasn't my, I don't.

Want to say unacceptable, but maybe not encouraged.

Yeah, for me. So for those of you who are hoping to do that, this is an amazing, I mean, you know, we just got there talking about making money on a dollars per minute and it's pretty significant in my case. It's very significant. So writing a book is a real money losing, you know, proposition. But I didn't do it for the money. I did it to help people. So. And I.

And that without a doubt comes through.

Thank you.

Okay, let me ask you this. A couple last things. What, what books have you have helped you the most in your business journey?

Oh, there's been so many. I want to say there. Well, one book that I really like a lot for, for those of you who are starting out now is a book called Tipping Point. I don't know if you've. I love that book because it talks. It talks about how you build your business until that tipping point and then everything is, becomes easier.

It is more fun on that side of it.

Yeah. The Good to Great is another book that I love. It's about how when things are good, like you're making 100 grand a year or, you know, you're making 200 grand a year at a company. You don't think about greatness because things are good, you know, like, like schools in a lot of schools in America are failing, but because it's better than some countries or, you know, other places, we don't ever fix it. We don't ever think about how great it could be. Right. So. And I think it's good because for. And it talks about real life companies that actually were good and then they actually ended up going bankrupt because they didn't think about Great. And so, you know, it goes. And then it also goes through the companies that actually, even though things were good, the founders kind of, you know, or whoever changed it, thought that things were gonna go bad at some point. And so they took drastic action and made it great in many cases. So I love, you know, books like that. And I mean, I read all the time. I like this year I was looking at my Amazon account about all the books I bought. I think this year, and this is February, I read already like 30 books.

Oh, wow.

I read a week or something. And this, you know, I read a lot of books. I. I'd say I read about 50 to 70 books a year. More than a. More than one. That's a lot.

And I'm a publisher.

Yeah, that's a lot.

I gotta ask you, I'm just throwing this one in here. Book, Book or audiobook?

You know, it depends on the book. Right. So I would say for business books, I prefer audio.

Okay.

But you know, because sometimes it's easy. I mean, it's hard for me to like sit and like read a book, you know, with grandkids running on, whatever. So if I'm driving or, you know, to see my mom or even when I'm at night, everybody's asleep and I don't want to have the light on. I can, I still listen. And I've had books that I listened and then I still went out and bought the book to go back and look at the charts and things like that. But if it's a fiction, I prefer having the book there because I tend to read those when I'm on vacation or when I'm in the backyard by the pool, I don't want to have a device on me.

Yeah, I'm the same way. I prefer the book. Book, as I call it, but also follow along with the audiobook because you can still highlight and do different things. But yeah, sometimes it's nice to just get away from all the lights, camera, action and just go, ah, a tree, a bench, the boat. That's it. Physical book. Well, thank you for that. Where would you like people to learn more?

Yeah, go to. I guess the best thing to do is go to Amazon.com and look at a Million Dollar Passion. And like I said, if you read it, please go ahead and write a review. And you can also go to victoriaric.com and you'll read about this book. And I actually wrote a science fiction as well and all my jewelry and you know, my background, other stuff. And you know, if you want to have questions about anything that you and I discussed here, they can just click on contact me and you know, write me an email and I'm more than happy to answer any questions.

Excellent. Well, I'll make sure that's on eainterviews.com for your show notes. But thank you so much, Victoria. It's been an absolute pleasure as always.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening everybody and thank you Mario for inviting me to your amazing show.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you on the next one. Have a great day and God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to consider connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.