TES 061 - How $1.25 and an Attitude Created a Multimillion Dollar Entrepreneur

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience Live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey everyone, welcome. This is Mel Abraham, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy. And today I get the great opportunity to have a conversation with a friend, a fellow entrepreneur, a change maker, a difference maker. You're going to learn about this guy Justin Harreld that kind of took Australia by storm, not only by his innovative ideas, but by his attitude. And you'll understand that when we get a little bit more into his story. And so let me give you a little rundown of Justin and his history and then we'll get his perspective because his uniqueness and distinction about how he approaches not only business but life will change the way you think about things. At the age of 25, with only $50 to his name, he kind of set about changing the course of his life. And he created a company called Attitude Inc. A clothing brand that ultimately became an international licensing success with revenues well over $20 million a year. And his success was so well noted that he was named the international entrepreneur of the year in 2005. Recently he's also awarded the Future Leaders award winning which recognizes him as being one of the 50 most influential leaders of the next generation in Australia. Recently launched a brand called Referus.com I'm going to ask him about that as we get into this, which is a brand new way to engage customers to become the biggest and most effective sales force for any business at a click of a button. I mean, in effect, it's a brand that allows you to create an army of salespeople through this process and utilizing today's technology, companies big and small around the globe are jumping on board with the new system at this as the success rate has been amazing. His website is justinharrell.com he receives thousands of hits a month. Also the author of eight international best selling books, he also personally mentors over 100 business owners each year. Justin is regarded as one of Australia's most sought after speakers with engagements booked all over the country and overseas, speaking in front of over 150,000 people a year. I also know that he has embarked on a new chapter in his life, recently married an incredible.

Entrepreneur, and a gift to have on our show today. Welcome, Justin. It's great to have you.

Thank you so much.

So do me a favor. Give us. Give us kind of your quick glimpse of your journey and if this is really where you expected to be, how you kind of ended up here in this process.

Sure. I guess I was what they now phrase as an accidental entrepreneur.

Even the word entrepreneur, it's something I don't sit comfortable with me because I think a lot of people want to be one, but I just want to do well. So if that's got a title, then that's great, but if not, doesn't bother me. I started my business really in a very Australian way. Over here in Australia, if you can upset someone, it's a good thing. So I had a lady. My father is a minister, and he was the head of the religion. So growing up in that, I had no problem with that. But there's always people telling me how I should be living my life. Not my parents, but other people. And I was 25 years old, and a lady who really had it in for me, I guess, over the years told me it had an attitude problem. So the only reason I decided to start a business was just to upset her the following Sunday by putting I love my attitude on a T shirt. And I went to the bank to see how much money I had, and at age 25, only had $1.25 in the bank. So my little brother Dean lent me some money. So it was $50, and I convinced a printer to print that up for $50. So I got four shirts made and sold three of those shirts to three of my mates. One of them, funnily enough, was my brother. So Dean had to pay me another $20 to buy the shirt and went to the church the following Sunday. And people loved it. And the lady was upset. She still is upset with me. So it's the best $50 I've ever spent in my entire life. But, yeah, so she. People just loved it. And I started to sell because I didn't know what I was doing. And that's. I think, the biggest key when I. Especially when I'm mentoring clients, is trying to get them to understand that it's okay that you don't know, because I think there's this pressure at the moment with so much information out there that we're supposed to know what we're doing. I actually like it when I don't know what I'm doing because that gives me more using the word, the more entrepreneurial sort of there to fit. There's an old saying, I'm not sure if you have it over there, but there's an old saying, you can't fit a square peg in a round hole.

Yeah, we have that too.

Yeah, well for me you can if you force it. So that's where for me entrepreneurialism is right at the start. Especially startup is forcing that square into the round hole. So.

And my favorite four letter word has always been next. So if things aren't working, I'm quickly moving on to the next thing. So it just took off and I sold to my friends because I didn't know any, anything else to do and sold to friends of friends and after a while around people that liked me. So I then went into some stores and they didn't want it because they'd never heard of it, which was bizarre in itself because you wouldn't have heard about anything you've never heard of before. So my way around that was to get my friends to bring up the same shop week after week to ask for my brand. And after a while I went back in and the guy said, everyone's asking for your brand right now. He didn't realize it, just me and my friends. He put it in and sold out in two weeks. And then it sort of took a life of its own. And I quickly learned that, you know, opportunities are made and not many of them present themselves in front of you. And when they, even if they do, you've got to capitalize that in a very short period of time. And the ultimate outcome of attitude. I'm giving you a very long story. In a very quick time we were approached by a company, you have it over there, Philips Electronics. They approached us and wanted to license my brand, which I had no clue what that was at the time, but because I had a huge market share at that stage. There was over two and a half thousand stores here in this country, let alone all around the world. There was more who were stocking my brand. So they wanted to tap into that 18 to 25 year old market by putting my name onto their stereos and televisions. It was a huge deal. And then after that I figured out that I really did like the licensing thing because I got paid a royalty for every sale and then licensed the brand around the world to over 180 odd companies with over 900 products underneath those 180 odd companies, I got between 2 and 22.5% of turnover all because a stupid woman told me I had an attitude problem.

But did I expect to be here? Not at all. I'm a little bit different to how some people think, I guess or have heard stuff in the past where I actually don't aim too far out when it comes to goal setting. Only actually have ever had a one day goal and that is to do better than I did yesterday because for me that's manageable. I have clients that sit in front of me and I'll say, well, what do you want to get out of your business? And they go, I want a Ferrari. Well, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. How about you just pay your telephone bill off first and then we might go to the next level after that. So I didn't expect to be here. I'm extremely blessed that I am, but I don't take it for granted either. And the other thing for me is I write back early on. So I retired in inverted commas when I was 32 when I sold the brand. But I decided I was never going to stop doing business because I love it. And as you know, and you do as well, I speak in front of a lot of business audiences all the time, so I've got to make sure my content is current. But I love it. I love business.

But you know, the cool thing about you, Justin, and just so you know, and I think you said some really important things in there and probably the biggest one is that one, you didn't intend to do it, you started moving. And there's something that I talk about called the corridor principle, that the doors of opportunity are outside in the corridor and if we sit in our hole we're never going to see that. And the licensing deal was something that you didn't even know existed. But because you went out there, took action and got out in the corridor, things started to present themselves that you wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to do.

Exactly right. And most the issue with most people as to when they, why they never actually succeed. And it's not because of lack of skill because really the only thing I passed in school was lunchtime. So I wasn't the smartest cookie, but it was, it's more about. And when I talk, I actually, when I finish doing my whole story, the point I make out of everything. So the last 20 years of my life is the reason that most people would never succeed is because they wouldn't even go to that meeting in the first place because they don't know what it's about.

Yeah.

And the one thing that I know for absolute fact, and I don't care how long people who are listening have been in business, this is a 100% fact. And that is what you currently know is not.

What is needed to get to where you want to go to. And I can prove that based upon the fact that if it was, you should already be there then by now. So there's more stuff that we either need to learn, and I personally believe there's more stuff we need to unlearn to get ourselves to the next level.

Totally agree. So Justin and I kind of met indirectly because I happen to be out speaking to entrepreneurs in Australia. And I don't remember who the person was, but someone was in the audience and I was telling Justin's story because I wanted to tell a story about an entrepreneur, a dynamic entrepreneur. And I found. I just found Justin's story online. And as I'm telling the story, I guess they texted him and then they came up to me afterwards and said, I'm a friend of Justin's and here's his contact information. And we've kind of been in contact supporting each other's journey ever since. So it's really kind of cool that we realize that behind every entrepreneur journey is just a real person.

Yeah. And it's about not changing too. Like, I'm the same person I was before, I've got the same friends. Nothing's changed about me. And that's probably in the realm that I spend a lot of my time now, which is corporate speaking.

And mentoring. I guess the number one comment when I finish, people just come up and go, you know, you're just normal. And I thought, well, I'm supposed to be normal. And I don't want that success from a financial perspective to shape or change who I am. My net worth has nothing to do with my self worth, never has. So I need to ensure that I stay grounded. Hence why, you know, I'm just a guy that did okay with a few T shirts is the way that I view it from myself. And if I can assist other people to get to the next level in anything, whether it's in my information, my mentorship, or in products that we released through the world, then that's my role. And I've been blessed to have a crack, as we say, have it here in Australia.

Dynamite. Dynamite. So next question, which I.

If we had a chance to talk to some of your closest friends or customers, what you stood for. What would they say to us? What would they tell us about Justin Harold?

Oh, look, I. It's funny because as you know, I only got married last week and when people, people are doing, you know, their opinion of Justin or opinion of Renee at the wedding, the most common thing, which is really hard to sit there and listen to people talk about you, but.

Especially with my friends, you never know what's going to come out. But the most common thing is that I wear my heart on my sleeve and always have, you know, I'll go for the underdog. I'm always battling there for the underdog. And I think. I don't know what they'd probably tell you that I've just kept it real.

Making.

Sitting in a tree doesn't make you a tree. Making money doesn't make you a success. That's just a byproduct of doing it all. So for me, I'm just. I've been given a great opportunity. I've grabbed it with both hands and sometimes other people's hands at time the same, same time to make sure it doesn't go away. And I'm just continually doing that all the time. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't really think about it a great deal. I've got integrity and ethics are probably the very top of my tree when it comes to the character traits that I will always abide by. The way I was brought up, which I'm glad I was brought up that way. And in the win win situation, someone's got to win before I win. That's just the way that I've been raised. So that's why I find business very easy and very hard to do. Easy because I'm going to make sure that everyone wins hard because I find it that people seem to be. Find it easy to be dodgy than to be ethical these days.

And the one thing in our short time knowing each other I can absolutely attest to is you are what you see me are on the surface you're true to your word and you're pretty well transparent and direct. I mean it's just, it's no B.S. and here's the way it is and here's what we need to do. And.

It'S a refreshing.

Change from some of the stuff especially. Look, we're going through crazy, crazy, you know, politicians these days here in the States. And it is certainly refreshing to have complete transparency and, and know where you stand. So.

Oh, you gotta be. That's the Only thing I can do, I don't have to wake up and think of, how am I going to be today? It's the. I think it's by default that that's all worked out. I. At the start, even speaking, the best example when I first was asked, a lot of people want to become a speaker. And I never. That wasn't me. People just asked me, you know, because I had a lot of media attention over here, could you come and talk at our conference and stuff? And go, okay, well, I really have no idea what to. To say because for me, it was no big deal that the business went well. I just had to make sure I had more than $1.25 in the bank. So.

So then when I started speaking at conferences and then I looked at how other people were presenting or what their content was, I was sitting there going, you're kidding me. Like, there's nothing out there. And when I finish, people come and go, thank you so much for being so refreshing. I found that difficult because I wasn't being refreshing, not just being myself. And then over a period of years, I figured out that actually being me was what, what people needed to see because I want them to be like that in their own business. Don't change who you are. See, personality will outweigh product every day. And most employees are forgetting their personality and leaving it at home because they've been drummed in their head that they've got to be product driven or process driven, and it's not the case. Like the consumer these days. You've got me on my bandwagon now, but the consumer these days has got one thing more than ever before, and that is choice. So the product. There's a million of those products everywhere. So what's the difference? And so the difference for me is my. Is me. I don't have to make it up. I can just get out of bed and be me. So that's why I find it very refreshing to be me today, because I'm now accepted for who I am. Where, realistically, when I was younger, I used to get in trouble for who I was. So it's pretty cool.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what society needs to see, business or otherwise. It just needs to be real. And I love that theme. If you looked at it, and I think that if you looked at it, the habits that you have, which ones? I mean, what couple of habits do you think contributed most to. To your success that people can kind of take away?

I think, as I said before, the four letter Word next. Like I'm a. And this goes against what a lot of people have learned, I guess, or have heard in the inner commas motivational aspect of stuff. I'm a very good strategic quitter and I think a lot of people need to learn that skill because not every. Everything is going to work right. People hang onto it for too long, then they get themselves all upset because it didn't work. When I sit there and go, well, it wasn't going to work in the first place. So if only you just walked away quicker, you wouldn't be emotionally attached to the non outcome because it was never going to be an outcome. So when I start seeing things either slowing down or not going the way that I need it to go, not the way that it is going because sometimes there is a natural progression, but sometimes that natural progression is not where I want to go, then I'll just quickly move away. You know what? This, this is not going to work. And I own 18 businesses and they all feed into each other in a direct or indirect way. So if I then start something new and it's not feeding into anything else that I'm doing well, that requires a lot more work than if it had fed in. So, so that makes it easy decision. So I'm out pretty quickly. And I think the other thing is stickability too.

Not everything is going to be easy either. So I get there's a natural progression. But sometimes, especially anyone listening who's trying to start a business at the moment and has never started a business, well, odds are you're not going to know what you're doing, which means you're going to get frustrated, which is no more anytime. This is the thing that just boggles my mind I guess when people seem to get frustrated, especially in startup. Anytime that you're out of your comfort zone, this is common sense.

And you know, common sense is actually like deodorant if you really want to know. The people who really need to use it rarely do. But common sense says that if you're outside of your comfort zone, you will be uncomfortable. That's, that's the whole purpose of startup. It's. You're uncomfortable because you've never done it before. Right now for me, I live in my com, in my learning zone, outside of my comfort zone. I can't live in a comfort zone. And you'll never grow your comfort zone while you're in it. So if you start to embrace that level of oh, this is getting scary, right? Succeed big time. If you won't do that Then you're only going to get the same results you've always got. And unfortunately some people's results have always got is none.

Right? Absolutely. They just, they cower and they don't.

They.

They're not willing to try.

Look.

We in it. I kind of talk about it in the context of let's prototype things. If we know that we're just prototyping things, we know that we're not putting everything in it. We're testing it. We're testing it. We fail it fast or we succeed.

And we just get on. It's not that hard. Like, I think what we're gonna do is simplify the whole process more so inside our heads before outside of our heads. Because if we get it, to me, business is as simple as one plus one equals two. Yep. So it's more difficult than that.

Yeah. It doesn't need to be complicated. It's common sense.

No. And that's where like I'm different too. A lot of people, I guess, and hopefully now accountants are listening to this one. But I've never done a profit loss, never done a forecast, never done a budget, never borrowed money, never had an overdraft. So I've never done anything you're supposed to inverted commerce do in business, but it worked for me. So I think that's where. Especially in startup. Startups, my little pet baby with everyone. But in startup, there's a whole lot of people trying to get everything right first. Well, says who? Like why do you need to do that?

Yeah, yeah. This, when you start to look at things. I think this next question really, I think is gonna.

Because I love the way you look at the future, but looking out into the future, the next five to 10 years, where do you think we need to spend our time? I mean, where we can have the greatest impact. And I know that you and I kind of have similar bents on this, but. But I'd love to kind of get your perspective for the audience and all that stuff.

Well, I don't know. I can't remember what, when I set those questions, what I wrote down, to be totally honest, because my view changes every day. But I think people are spending too much time looking into the future. I think the way the business is going to go, if we're going to talk from a business perspective coming up, or having systems, procedures, anything that actually engages the customer in a quicker way is where business needs to go. I think if we as individuals want to look forward. Well, and I get this all the time where I sit down with people and they're telling me their tenure, five year plans and it's awesome and it sounds good and if they wrote it down, it looked great. But I just look at what are you doing now?

I just would rather look at what I'm doing now. I have no clue where I'd be in 10 years, to be very honest. Or five years. Pretty easy. Because if you ask me 20 years ago, where would I be in 20 years would be nowhere near where I am right now. Yeah. So what it's proven to me is because of the power of opportunities and being in the right place at the right time sometimes. But doing things in a way that opens up more doors. See if opportunity is not knocking at your door, build a door. Pretty simple stuff really. So that's where for me now, I don't know, like this new business that we've just launched globally, if you ask me, we've been working on it for a year now. If you asked me a year ago, where would we be the year? Nowhere near where. This has gone global in a matter of weeks. Nowhere near it. Had I planned that this was going to go global in 4 years time, guess what would have happened? We would have gone global in four years time and I would have missed the opportunities that have happened over the last few weeks. So that's why I don't allow time to be a factor in anything that I do. So a lot of people that time master them. I master the time aspect. So does it need to be done now? Does it not need to be done now or could it be done now? We'll just cross that bridge when we get to it. I've had people sit in front of me and go, look, it's not the right time for me to grow this part of my business right now. It just boggles my mind once again, why not? Like Suzu.

Yeah.

And I think we sometimes allow our circumstances to dictate to us how we operate. And that's essentially using an analogy like getting in the car and saying to the car, will you drive me where you want me to go? Instead of we're in charge of that problem. So if I don't like the road I'm on, I'll take a different route. So same in business. I mean just, just have fun with it. Like that's all I do. So I have no clue what's going to happen tomorrow.

But you're open, you're open to it. You're not so set in a pattern. You're not so set journey that says it has to happen this way. Whatever comes your way, you're willing to deal with it.

No, exactly as I was talking to before we started this thing, we're going to franchise conference today with all the franchisees. Franchise or sorry, from all over Australia. Now, that only came up last Thursday. The opportunity I could have gone. You know what, it's Saturday morning here. Beautiful day. Really a great time for me to jump on my Harley. I'm not going to go and do that now. No, I'm going to go there. I know by Monday there'll be more opportunities from my. What we're going to go through today at the conference with refer us than would have been there had I gone onto my Harley. That's just common sense.

Yep.

But where's that lead us? Don't know, don't care. But really excited.

That's awesome. That's so awesome. As we look at that. So. And I think that that's an important thing for us to consider is be present in the moment. Be present to the opportunity that might pop up. Because I think both your journey, my journey, if I look back a decade ago, I certainly wouldn't have expected to be where I am. I wouldn't have expected to be in situations I wouldn't even have expected to be chatting with you. I didn't even know who the heck.

You were back then.

And yet the opportunity came up and even how we connected was just seizing the opportunity and, and, and just staying in touch, saying, yeah, I don't know where we're going, I don't know what we're gonna do together, but let's just stay in touch. And here we are kind of doing different things and possibly more stuff together. So it's exactly right. We gotta, we gotta stay present in the moment.

So, yeah, now we do. And that's the thing. Most people don't. They're living in La la land. Yeah.

And someday. Someday. Well, someday's not a day of the week, so let's get over it. Let's live today.

Well, yeah. And that's the problem that I think. Oh, it's not a problem. That's one thing people need to get their head around right now is, you know, I don't care if things have not worked for me in the past. Don't care.

Yeah.

But it's not going to stop me from giving it another crack right now because some things change our mindset, change the landscape of business changes, the type of people we're dealing with, changes. But I've had meetings where they've flat out said, no, we're not interested in something. Go back two weeks later, the mindset's changed in that business, or the staff, more so, have changed in the business. And I present the exact same thing. And they go, this is brilliant.

Yeah.

When he said, I haven't changed. So that's where, you know, no, is not my father, he's a very smart man, but he used to come up with all those little sayings that everyone's heard of. But my dad's always said, there's no such word as can't.

Right.

We'll just keep on giving it a crack. So once again, round peg, square hole.

You know, which kind of looks at this, this. The next thing that I call the nightmare gift is that, you know, when we are out there putting ourselves out there the way you do in what you're doing, inevitably things happen. You know, things happen in our past that at the moment that it happens feels like it's absolutely devastating. It's that nightmare in our life that at some point, as we get distanced from it and we take the learnings and the lessons from it and look back on it. I know for me, it was my partnership breakup in 96, 97. Then it turned out to be one of the greatest gifts and kind of a turning point for me that I know that had that not happened, I wouldn't be here having this conversation with you, Dave, you know, what was it in your life? What was that one, one of the places. Because I'm sure there's many of them that look at it and say, how did I transition? What allowed me to get past that nightmare and see the gift in it?

I think too, for me, it was probably a personal thing. Where.

Was a breakup of my marriage where you sort of sit there and go, I've been doing everything right, been working my rear end off to give.

Lifestyle, and it's all gone. It's probably the thing for me I struggle with the most because I actually, and I call it, I lost my mojo because the reason as to why I was doing it had gone. So you sit there and go, how does this work? Couldn't see a way around it. Like everything else in my life, I've been able to control. And this first time I was out of my control. So I struggled with that for a fair while. And it wasn't until I met my now beautiful wife who also owns very successful businesses, that things started to make sense. So out of one tragedy and misery came something that just was even better, gave me back my spark. But Actually gave me a spark in a totally different way. Released me, I guess, into being a better me.

So, yeah, look, business stuff. I've never really looked at any business.

Failure or things that don't work as anything other than that. Just part of the process.

Right.

I'm a realist when it comes to all that sort of stuff. So not everything's going to work. And that being the case, I'm not going to put too much money into anything just in case it doesn't work. So don't take their financial aspect out of it then. I can still be more entrepreneurial. But all my stuff's been like, I had a major motorbike accident when I was 17 where I died, and I was in a coma for five months. But, you know, what's that taught me well? Don't get on the back of a bike with a guy that doesn't know how to ride it.

Yeah. So I think my stuff's been. Because I do wear my heart on my sleeve, anything from a personal perspective seems to affect. It has affected me more than, you know, a business thing not working. Because it's funny, you know, a lot of people do live to be that business person, but my businesses are the things that I do to get the stuff that I want, so I just got to do them well so I can then have nice stuff or be able to provide for my family better. So part of that process is something's gonna work. Some things are not gonna work well.

It's true. And, yeah, I hate people. You know, people ask, you know, you're flying on a plane, and they go, so what do you do? I said, I'm an entrepreneur.

And they, like.

They want to look at you like, well, is it contagious? It's like a disease. And it's like they believe that, oh, you're a daredevil, you're risk takers.

And.

And I think actually quite the opposite. We are risk mitigators. We look at things, we analyze things, we find ways to build things and do things to create a better life for people in that process. But it's not about just going out there for an adrenaline rush. And look, I'm a CPA by education, so the last thing you're going to compare, kind of put in a bucket is an accountant say, yeah, accountants take a lot of risk because we don't. And I think that entrepreneurs, when they do their stuff, don't. But they're willing to move like you're saying. They're willing to read the signs and say, Time to get out. Let's move on.

Exactly right. And the other thing, for me, it's all about trying to find that shortcut. That's why I think entrepreneurialism is so. It might take me a long time to find a shortcut, but there's a better way of doing everything. There's always a better way. And what we have as a culture within all of my stuff is what's the better way? Don't do it because it's always been done that way. That's not a solution to anything. I want to be at the forefront of innovation.

It's the death knell of a business to sit back and that's always the way we've done it.

Well, that's what's happened with the current business that we just launched. We go into places and we've had 100% success rate, which is a pretty, pretty good statistic to have. But we're always met with. We've always done it this way. Well, just because you've always done it a certain way doesn't mean it's the right way. And I think that's where we've got to, as business owners really take a little bit more of a risk. If you're not a risk taker, this is probably the best way to take a risk and go, you know what, what part of my business right now could I potentially approach in a different way? Not the whole thing, because if you're not that type of person, that's gonna freak you out. But what one thing can we do a little bit differently? What can we make a little bit easier? I think any integration with consumer, customer or client, if we can make that simpler for them, your business will grow straight away anyway.

Huge.

Just because for the last hundred years, my company's been doing a certain way with our customers. So what? Exactly.

Exactly. And I think that that's kind of this venture that you're in right now.

And the thing that we've been talking about, this tech, I think this is where we go. If I ask you this concept of what's one of your technology tools or tactics that has kind of shifted your ability to connect or be productive at the highest level? Because I think that this is really kind of cool.

As a development from a technology standpoint, a customer standpoint, and a consumer standpoint.

Yeah, look, it'd have to be. And luckily for me, in this conversation, it has to be the thing that we've just launched, the one thing that will. I always do what I call a stock take in My business and most people go yes. So do we know? I look at the stock take of how we're doing things and are the things on the shelf, are we still doing stuff in our businesses or processes that are out of date. So we constantly do that all the time. I've always grown my businesses through word of mouth. It was a natural thing that happens. And if your business, anyone listening? If your business or new clients.

Retention and also introduction to your business if it's not. The number one area is word of mouth. If it's not in your business then you're not doing your business correctly. We will always and has to be word of mouth because that's the greatest foundation. So we just found over the years that that's what's happening. I've never advertised, I don't spend any money on marketing. Never have. People just bring business thing all the time because we're doing a good job. So I looked at that and thought well that's just a natural thing for us. And people are trying to do that now through social media. So how can we now get that in to a business? There's two ways that as you would know that business get valued these days. Firstly is their turnover or the the financial aspect and that's what most people are aiming for. But the second one which is the new way is also the reach. So how many people are they reaching whether it's making money or not? You have a look at the WhatsApp app that sold for $19 billion. They had reached, that's why it sold for that much. They didn't weren't turning over $19 billion. So what we decided is to come up with a tool that any business who has a customer don't care what sort of business it is. How do you get them to become your greatest referral? And we looked at different referral models. I've always looked at different referral models and they're so convoluted and just too hard to get your head around. So I thought well hang on, companies out there are spending a lot of money on marketing. Let's just use the billboard perspective. They've got the billboard up the top but everyone's got their face in their phone. Well why don't we put a company's business on the phone? Which it is refer us is a system that then also downloads, not an app but it also downloads onto every single one of your customers phones for free. So you could have a million customers referring you for free. You offer a reward but when they've Got in there in front of one of their friends, they can just say, oh, look, I know you're after. Well, use a hairdresser. You're after hairdresser. My hairdresser is fantastic. Here, give me a name and number. Put it into the system. Push the refer us button. Off it goes, your referrals done. That goes straight through to the business. You're out of the equation. Now as the Referral takes about 10 seconds to refer someone, you don't have to know a great deal about the business, you just know that they do a good job. Then the business then will contact that person. If they become a client, you get rewarded with whatever the reward has been set up for by the actual business in the first place. The biggest aspect of it all is the reach part. So then all of your customers and referrers can push their social media button on the app on their phone and that then will go to their own Facebook page and they can promote that business now to all of their people with their own unique code. So for me, I've got four and a half thousand people on my personal page. If I was to promote you, you get in front of four and a half thousand people that you would not normally get in front of. Now, on top of that, they say on average people have around about 300 friends on Facebook. So I'm now, if you times that, then by the four and a half thousand people, I'm really putting you in front of 1.35 million people. From me, clicking one button and you go straight through to other people. So we're going to give you reach. And that's why every company that we've seen so far have started off with some of them. Yeah, look, we've seen this sort of stuff before. When we finish, they go, how do we get it?

So let me, let me map this out for folks. What this is, is, is a system. It's called Refer Us. And I as a business, become a client of Refer Us. And I have my clients and they can download this system onto their phone. So as they go about their day, if someone needs what I have, they, they simply connect us through their phone. It sends me a note. It sends them a note. If the person hires me after I contact them, the person that referred me gets a prize, whatever it is. And the person that came in, I might give a discount or some sort of incentive to. And it's completely transparent.

It's 100% transparent. That's the thing. I want my clients to know that if they've given Me and I've always been this way. But if they've given me a referral, there's a whole CRM back end that goes with this, this program which not only you as the business have, but your client or your referrer has the same system for them. So they can see what we've done with that referral that's come in and as soon as that referrals come in to us and become a client it ticks off in the back end and that original referrer gets an instant SMS saying please contact us for your reward. So that way it just keeps on. And when that's happened to me, I give you a perfect example. I put it out to. Because you can promote your own business through your social network as well. It's not only about social media, this is, yeah, also about traditional. But I put it out to my four and a half thousand people.

To become my referral. If you wouldn't mind, just become my referral picked up over 480 odd people within a day who said, yeah, love to. Thank you so much, Justin. And I pay 10% of my speaking fee. Following week I get six speaking jobs, so I get paid six grand. So six speaking jobs. I made $36,000 in one week. Two of the people that referred jobs to me had never heard me speak before. Wow. And this is where we've got something that no one else has done. So what we're doing in business and with referrals up until now, two things. Number one, we just, it's one to one. Here's my little referral card. Next time you have a friend that needs their hair done or whatever, can you give them this card and they can come in one to one. We're now one to 100, one to a thousand for me, one to 1.3 million people we're going to put you in front of. And the other thing that goes wrong is we don't actually.

We don't know really who's actually referring us now in the back end of this system. This is the powerful part for me as well. I now know who my top referrers are, how many people they've referred, when they've referred, why they've referred. So when it comes to launching a new product as a business, do I go, okay, let's go and spend a fortune on trying to get new customers in or do I go, hang on, let's go to my top 50 people.

Yep.

And get them to. And give them an experience and, and treat them really well and give them A red carpet experience because I know they're gonna go and impact another 100,000 people without me doing this beautiful stepping smart.

Now that is cool, because now we're marrying because I believe that.

Social media has actually in some senses de. Socialized us because we've disconnected. And this brings that connection back. It's really cool. Really cool. So I'm going to ask you one more question and then we'll give them where they can get in touch with you. And I'll make sure that we have the links of all the stuff that we talked about in the notes too. But this is what I call the doozy question for some people. But I gather what I think your answer is is just knowing you and hearing some of the other answers. But if you could go back in time to day one of your startup time and had 15 minutes to kind of whisper in your ear about what was to come and in hopes to maybe saving you some mistakes or heartache, what would that conversation go like? What would you tell yourself?

Four words. That's all I'd say. Don't change a thing. I had a feeling. Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah, some stuff's gone down that probably wasn't the most pleasant over the last 20 odd years, but it's made me who I am today.

Yeah.

See, the one thing that you can't unscramble eggs and I think the biggest thing that people make a mistake is if they've done some. Made some mistakes. Sorry, if they've made some mistakes either in business, personal life, whatever, they're too busy trying to undo that. There's no point. It's already been done. And so for me, the things, the successes, the highs, the lows, they're all part of shaping who Justin Herald is. And I like the guy that I am a lot more than I'd actually like the guy before I started. So those things have shaped me. It's. It's the, the clay makers hands of the last 20 years have actually pushed and prodded and actually turned in now. Where will I be in the next 20 years? Probably a totally different person, I guess.

With, with the experience. But I, you know, I wouldn't change anything, you know, and I actually, I'm a bit different because a lot of people aim for the highs. I actually aim for the lows. I embrace those, to be honest, because it's. When you're at that point is when you know where your strength is. Not you, not your. Know where you suck and you know, what you're good at. And that Actually brings out the stuff that needs to be changed. So, yeah, I wouldn't change a thing, mate.

It's the greatest point of growth and learning that comes out of those. And I think that as entrepreneurs, as people trying to be successful and if we can embrace those down times, those challenging times, that when we come out of them, we flourish. Like you said, it's a different person, a different business, a different dynamic comes to life in us. I know for me, at one point I got one third of all my net worth wiped out in a Ponzi scheme and I could have crawled into a hole, but who I am today is carved by that. Could I have said, God, I wish I didn't go through that? Yeah. But 18 months later, we rebuilt it to three times over where we were before we started. And I think that it's that that creates us and sometimes we're afraid to embrace that. But I think you've said a couple things that are a theme here, and I hope that the listeners really take away. One is to be more in tune with the moment. Two is to realize that for lack of a better term, crap is going to happen and be okay with it and let it go. And three is to embrace it for what it is, learn from it and get on with it. I mean, I really think that's it.

And I think number four, if you don't mind me putting another one in, is you're going to get dirty. When you dig for gold.

Don'T assume that everything's going to be rosy. It's not easy. If the success was easy, everyone would be successful. So it's not for everyone. And it's not one of those things that I must be cut out for it or I must know. I think everyone can be cut out for it, but you just got to figure out how hard is it going to be and am I willing for the fight.

Beautiful. Beautiful. One last thing, Justin. People that want to find out about Justin Harold or what Justin's doing and some of the things out there, where can we send them? Where should they go?

Okay, so for the me part of it all, justinherald.com is probably the best way to go. It's where that's my speaking site, my mentoring side, I guess. And there's some product on there as well for the refer us thing because it's something that, as you know, it's my passion right now. Because when you're getting franchises all over the world saying we want it, it's something that I'm thoroughly enjoying and that's referrefer us refer us.com and look, mate, anyone that goes there will set up a code. If they put in the coupon. Mel, Mel. We'll give them a 10% discount straight away. It's not expensive, this whole thing. And this is when we tell people, this is people just freak out, especially corporates when I tell them how much this is going to cost them for the year for their entire company. And that's $400. That's all it costs is $400 for a year.

It's about a buck a day. Come on, we've spent more than that on coffee.

Yep. And then if you don't own a business, you can even be for free a refer us referrer where we pay your referral fee for that. So but the other thing that we'll do for anyone listening, mate, if anyone joins up, we'll also have system to set it up themselves with them as well. So it only takes 10 minutes to set it up. But we want to make sure that anyone that's a servicing or our businesses are all service focused. We want to make sure that we give such great service. But also if you're going to purchase something, we want to show you how to use it straight away so you can get straight out there and start marketing your business to have a greater impact and reach.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Justin, I know that you know you're across the world in another hemisphere and I can't tell you.

How grateful I am one for you reaching out the way you did, the way we met and being open to having conversations and having the chance to develop a relationship and friendship with you. And I look forward to seeing some of the incredible things that you're going to continue to do and how we might be able to do some things together. And so thanks again for being part of the show.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

All right, my friend, be well and we'll talk soon.

Thanks, Matt.

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Foreign.

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