Why Full Transparency Is A Big Deal

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited to talk to today's guest for a number of geeky reasons. But before we talk to our guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, Six Sigma. You, you know him, you love him. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net, landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, you gotta check it out at the Land Geek. No, I'm sorry. Postingdomination.com thelandgeek Scott Todd. How are you, Mark? I'm great.

How are you?

I'm great, I'm great. Are you ready to talk to our guest?

I. I'm excited.

I'm really excited because Steven Wessner is the founder of Predictive roi and Stephen actually teaches these things that we call the eight money draining mistakes. And these are the things that literally cause a website to leak serious money every day. And Steven teaches companies and organizations how to fix them and how to fix them immediately. I'm really excited to learn how to apply what he calls the eight money making opportunities. These are the things that really matter because they increase the financial return on investment in the digital world by 200 to 500% or more in 12 months or less. This is like our land return, Scott. Yeah, all this can be done without needing technical skills. You know what, don't. This sounds a little too good to be true, but whatever, we'll get into it. Stephen is a digital marketing authority, entrepreneur, speaker, educator, and best selling author of two books, the Small Business Owner's Handbook to Search Engine Optimization and Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Marketing. Steven Wessner, you're a big deal. You've been featured in Inc. Magazine, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and the Washington Post. And finally, you're on a prestigious podcast. Congratulations.

Well, very kind of you. Thank you guys for the wonderful introduction and the invitation to be here. This is just going to be a lot of fun. The reason our podcast is great on Word Nation is because we've had great guests like you, Mark. That's why if anybody gets value out of our show, it's because it's chock full. Nearly 500 episodes of Great experts and thought leaders like you, Mark.

Yeah, and I have to say, like, as far as, you know, all the podcasts that I've been interviewed on, Stevens was the most amazing. And afterwards I had to like go and like, take like a cold shower and like, humble myself in some way because, like, Steven's like his interview style, like the guest just starts building and building all of a sudden, like, I'm starting to buy my own bs. Like, I think I'm a big deal by the time I'm done with it. And it's like, amazing. It's amazing.

So you are a big deal. Come on.

Well, you know, see what he just did there, Scott?

See, I believe him.

Yeah, see? All right, so let's get into Stephen Wester though. And before we talk about the eight money draining mistakes, Steven, how did you even get to the point where you developed predictive ROI and started teaching all of this?

Well, as much as I would love to say that it was, you know, this one night of inspiration and so forth, and I know I don't need to tell you guys that it's one of those things that took, you know, literally decades and meaning that I've been, you know, in this space really since the advent of the commercial Internet. So, you know, let's call that 1994 ish. Kind of around that time period and through that span of whatever that is, 20 plus years, I collected tens of thousands of data points. And being able to really kind of study what worked and what didn't work. Everything from making huge mistakes with my own money and having companies lose millions of dollars and to then having some things go okay and do all right. And then that led to a couple of books and then fast forward to today. But there is no such thing as an overnight success. And there's a lot of ebbs and flows and I've made some really big mistakes. Thankfully, I've learned from those too, and from making those big mistakes, I thought, gosh, there's gotta be a better way to be able to predict what our result outcome is gonna be at the end of whatever that might be, whatever that's a campaign or an email campaign or, you know, whatever, and then being able to notice the patterns and being able to stitch that together and guess what? Wow. There's a few vital metrics, and if we pay attention to those things and put them together in the right way and the right recipe, if you will, then we can help ensure our success. So that was kind of the way that it sort of happened, but it sure wasn't overnight, that's for sure.

I love it. And I know Scott Todd's probably thinking the same thing I am. Where you've taken the Peter Drucker method, the famous management guru, he's famous for saying whatever is measured is managed. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't necessarily know the key metrics to even measure. And so someone like you comes in and says, hey, this is what you should measure and this is what's going to get you the roi. That's tremendously valuable, don't you think?

I think it's valuable, of course, but, you know, I have a biased view. But the other piece of it too is I hate that, you know, it sounds like I sound like I'm hating my colleagues or competitors in the marketplace. I don't hate them, you know, personally, but I hate how the quote unquote experts will say, this is really complicated, this is really hard, and sort of like patronizingly patting business owners on the head like, you should just let us do this for you, as opposed to teaching and educating and nurturing and sharing in full transparency. It drives me crazy. And so part of predictive roi's method in the very beginning and still truest today, is that we love to teach, we love to full and share in complete transparency. Just this morning I was doing a presentation, if you will, with a client, and many people will call that a pitch, if you will, in my particular sort of pitch style, if you will, is to actually show in complete transparency where a business owner ought to be making adjustments in the optimization in particular content pages. Insane. You know, we'd be happy to record the session, share this with your team. And you know what? If they can do it great and if they want to do it great, it's not an issue of can they from a competency perspective. It's just do they have the time? And if they don't have the time, awesome. And if you want our team to do it, great, we're happy to, but I'm never going to, you know, put up the smoke and mirrors to not share. And so it drives me crazy when experts do that.

I completely agree, Scott. Todd, don't you feel like there's so much sleaze in sort of like this information marketing where if you can't explain it in a simple way, then you don't really know it? Right. If you're trying to make it more complicated for somebody so that they have to hire you, it's really disingenuous and actually, I think in the long term will hurt you because essentially if you lie to yourself, you're hurting yourself. Where the Stephen Westner approach is the really the, you know, just being, you know, not just transparent, but having integrity about the entire Thing which is, you know, sad to say, I think, a breath of fresh air. What do you think, Scott?

I think that, too, like, I agree with you. I think too many, you know, network or information marketers, they're really just focused on the one thing not adding value. It's really about just getting your dollars, separating you from your dollars, as opposed to, you know, hey, here's. Here's a way that you can do this. And, you know, you put out a product that maybe can sustain itself for a certain percentage of the people, and there's gonna be a certain percent of people that are gonna need you. It's just the way that it is. Right. I'll tell you the other thing I don't like about. About these information marketers is when they're out there and they are there in front of their house with their Ferraris, you know, they just look like damn idiots. And I'm just amazed, absolutely amazed, when I see, like, on Facebook, you see, like, the video of the guy with the nine Ferraris out there in front of this mansion, and you see the people that like that, you know, because it says all the people that, you know that like it. And I just want to ask them, what's wrong with you? Don't you see that's, like, not true.

Yeah.

Yeah. Stephen, how many Ferraris do you have?

Steve, I'm sorry, I don't own any. Yeah, I have a nice Nissan Maxima, but it's not been shown on Facebook at all.

If you want to be like Steven.

Western predictive roi, right? Come see my dirty white Nissan Maxima that really needs a wash and an oil change.

But, Steven, how? You know, I think. I mean, you know, look, it's easy to pick on these guys, but, you know, ultimately what it comes down to is scarcity mentality and abundance mentality. Right? A confidence that if I can truly help somebody, genuinely, they'll come to me. How did you get to that point?

I think it's. So you mentioned Onward Nation. Being able to. And I'm not trying to sound patronizing here, in full sincerity, being able to interview people like you, Being able to interview people like Drew McClelland from the Agency Management Institute, being able to interview Avinash Kaushik, who's a digital marketing evangelist at Google, and being able to go to him, go to Google, and we sit down in a conference room, and in full transparency, he shares everything, Right? Because being able to go to New York City and interview Gary Vaynerchuk or being able to interview, like, Jay Baer, Being able to interview these incredible thought leaders who have everything to hide, right? I mean, they have the intellectual property, they have businesses built around the intellectual property. And instead, what they say to me is, just give it all away, Steven. Just take your best stuff. Whatever that stuff is, it. Just give it all away. I'm like, what? It's like, yeah, whatever you think your secret sauce is, teach that. Just give 100% of it all away. And if you give away your best stuff, your. Your. Your business owners, your customers are going to look at that and say, oh, my gosh, like, if he gave me everything, there's no way that I could possibly implement all of this stuff because I don't have the time, the bandwidth. It's not my vital function of priority. I sure as heck know who I'm going to hire, because he's given me everything. Well, I mean, isn't that the kind of customer you want, the type of rapport and relationship you want to have? So why not give it all away?

Scott Todd, he's got a tremendously wise point. What are your thoughts? He does.

At the same time, there still is that need, I think, to. I don't know, I still feel sometimes the need to kind of like, you can't give everything away, can you?

Yeah. Yeah, you can. Because even, like, even when I. When I interviewed Jay, he said, he goes, okay, so let's think about McDonald's secret sauce. He's like, you know, you can actually Google and finally get now McDonald's recipe to their secret sauce. And they gave it. They gave that away, their secret sauce recipe. Now no one's going to sit down in their home and make their own Big Mac. They're going to still go to McDonald's and get it if they want to truly get it, right, so that you can get the secret sauce because you really enjoy the flavor. So having the recipe out there is not. Because people are going to take that in house now. So here's. We're sort of like putting our money where our mouth is, if you will. Like, we have a book coming out in September, mid September. It's called Profitable Podcasting. And, you know, I'm proud to say it's. It's like the deepest, most comprehensive book on the planet with respect to podcasting, how to build your business using it. Okay. And for a while, we thought about, we're going to build a, you know, $997 course, and, you know, it's going to be by the book, and it's going to be an upsell and you know what? We're not doing that. We're going to actually build all of the course curriculum, except we're going to give it all away. We're going to go so deep in teaching the curriculum around the book. Except. And it's going to be so incredibly in depth, it's going to be so comprehensive. There will not be another resource on the planet that is as deep as this, except we're just not going to charge for it. And so I hope that some people buy the book. That'd be awesome. But more importantly, I hope that in full transparency, business owners are able to get all of this. Because I know then there are going to be a certain percentage, of course, not everybody, but a certain percentage who learn this and say, man, there is no way that my team has the time, capacity, bandwidth to be able to implement this. And I know exactly the company that I'm going to hire because of it. And we won't have to sell them on a single thing. They will just know that we're the right partner for them because of our transparency.

Yeah, but I mean, like, you see, you're using that as like a lost leader. You're, you're using that as like a lead magnet in a way.

Right?

Like it's, it is a blown up lead magnet. But if that was, if that was your. Only if you didn't have a backend service, there's no way that you would do that.

I don't think we do it with everything. So.

Yeah, so how do you make, I mean, like, there's no way that you can sustain a living just off of book sales.

I disagree because Chris Anderson wrote a book on this called Free how to Monetize Free. So Stephen can give it all away, but then if he has a, you know, like Onward Nation, if he's got a million downloads a month that are free, right. FreshBooks is coming to him and giving him ten grand a month to just do, you know, a simple payroll ad.

Right, but that's not, I mean, like, I hear what you're saying, I agree with what you're saying. Like, you know, I think that there's a lot of people that give away a lot of stuff for free, but at the same. And good stuff too. Right? But there's no way that the planet. I just don't think that like you could give it everything away. Like, it's just my opinion, right? Like, I mean, I think that there has to be some tier, some level up there that says we're going to give this stuff away for free. But then we've got more too, because that's your intellectual capital, that's your intellectual.

Property or well, and that's exactly why we're doing what we're doing. And we have been doing what we've been doing. And like on this, I'm saying that we need to do this. But like when you mentioned Mark, the eight money draining mistakes. And so you know Darren Hardy from Success magazine, when he was a publisher of Success, he said, you know, let's sit down and we talk about the eight money draining mistakes. Awesome. In full transparency, I explained all of the money draining mistakes and then how to fix them. And I wasn't afraid in doing that that someone was going to take the IP and do it for themselves. We have a provisional patent on that process and I wasn't afraid of anybody taking the ip. What I want to be able to do and how we present ourselves to the world is that so a business owner can look at that and say, oh my gosh, I mean, like here it is in full transparency. This is the exact blueprint that I need in order to be successful. However, I know that my team is focused on other vital priorities and vital functions and I, and if I distract them for doing this stuff that they're not going to get these other things done. Why not hire these people? Because I know that they know what they need to do. I'm just going to hire them and then our business is going to blow up as a result. So I have no problem in us giving away literally everything in full transparency because I know that we win as a result of that.

And I don't disagree. I think that if you're in the service business or you're there, I think that that's a great piece. I mean you can give everything away. There is no secret. Someone will figure it out. Right, but, but if you don't have a service to sell, I mean, cause you're still selling something at the end of the day. So at that point you would have to hold back some of your information, some of your shortcuts. Because if you're just. If you had no backend services, then that's where I'm talking about. You would lose your Internet, your intellectual capital.

Right.

You can't give everything away for free.

Yeah, I don't know, I think it's just maybe a different view. I can't think of an example where I wouldn't give something away unless I'm a manufacturer or CPG or something like that. But because then obviously someone's got to pay me for my hard cost to produce a thing or whatever it is. But I think if you're, in my opinion, if you're a business owner of a professional services firm and your client is engaging you for your intellectual knowledge, right. Of how to solve a particular problem that's going on in their business, that where we're going in this kind of competitive landscape is the owners who are willing, the thought leaders who are willing to give away their best stuff and to be able to give it away for free will are going to be the ones who win over the market versus the info marketers who want to have an opt into a this and then an upsell to that. And I'm not saying that that is a bad thing, but I'm just saying that the ones who are fully comfortable in just saying I'm going to give you all of my best stuff and for 98% of you that's going to be enough. And then the 2% who don't want to do any of this work themselves, but are convinced by what I gave away, those 2%, I can build an 8 to 9 to 10 figure business around that at the right scale.

And I do agree with you, like the professional services piece, right? Like if I had a professional services firm, that's fantastic to get your name out there and build that reputation. Because you know, if I were an accountant, man, I would be out there teaching people how to do their own accounting, right? Like, yeah, it's going to hurt me because, well, I shouldn't say it's gonna hurt me. There'll be some people that are diyers, right. Like they're gonna go do it themselves. Great. Then when they need something done, they're gonna know who to come to.

Right? They're gonna come to me.

But I think that the key there is that professional services, you have to have the back end services there because otherwise you wouldn't have any revenue streams at all.

Oh, absolutely. Okay, so maybe I was missing that earlier. You're right. I mean, so the reason why we have Onward Nation, I mean Onward Nation exists on the front end of predictive roi. Predictive ROI is my core business. That, that is our, you know, content marketing and lead gen agency. I mean that's why we exist. That's our right.

I'm with you.

And so we share all of this great content so that then somebody will say, geez, you know, how could I put this into practice and how could I do this? And then we do have that team of, you know, 14 people that do that on a day to day basis.

Right?

I'm with you.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, I totally get. I want to pivot here and talk about the 8 money draving, draining mistakes says, you know, I'm just going to read through the eight real fast for everybody. No baselines or smart goals, lack of distinction, high bounce rate, SEO done poorly, not knowing your customer, poor customer experience, too much institution speak. I love that people want to do this with people. Ambiguous calls to action. Steven, how did you develop these eight money draining mistakes?

Well, it was kind of a humiliating experience and then a great experience, all in the matter of about six hours. And so Darren Hardy, as I mentioned, he was on our board of advisors for about 12 months for predictive. And the way that we started that relationship was I flew out to San Diego from Wisconsin. I flew out to San Diego to spend the day with them. And it's just he and I in a hotel room and this like six foot whiteboard. He's like, okay, tell me about your business. This is really early on. Tell me about your business. And I said, okay. So I'm at the whiteboard, I'm kind of mapping things out and, and I sit down, I'm trying to give him like the predictive ROI methodology, right? He's like, that makes no sense to me. What? He's like, that is. He goes, really? That's stupid. He goes, I don't think you really have much of a business here. I'm like, what are you talking about? And he says, look, I've told you I'd stay for the day and we'll see if we can get this figured out. But really, I think we just, we spend the day together and then that's it. And I don't think we have a, you know, I'll kind of let you out of the 12 month, you know, commitment that we talked about and me being on your board. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And then during lunch, you know, he and I are sitting there having lunch together and then light bulb went off on both of, you know, both of our heads, kind of that proverbial light bulb.

He goes, wait a minute.

He goes, I think what you're talking about is a series of trap doors right? Where like money is leaking out of their business. I'm like, yeah. And so then he jumps up to the whiteboard and he's like, you know, this one about like goals. He goes, now I totally get that and how that ties into SEO and the predictives. That you're talking about. I'm like, yeah. And then all of a sudden, like when the dust had settled, we had these eight sort of trapdoors, these money draining mistakes where most business owners make mistakes and they largely don't have anything to do with technical stuff. Some of them do, but. But largely they don't. And then he's like, and then I think once a business owner gets those things fixed, the eight money making opportunities is like if they put a, like an outboard engine on the back end of their boat and then zoom across the lake, that really accelerates roi. Right? I'm like, yes. So to directly answer your question, Darren and I, you know, and his fingerprints are all over our business model about how to fix where you know, these simple decisions or these simple mistakes I should say that business owners make, once you fix those, and then really how to accelerate things with the opportunities. But that's where it came from. Yeah.

And then I love the eight money making opportunities and you know, we'll send you guys the, the links to this, but harmonize offer with need. Build your list. So important. Nurture relationships and increase sales. No friction. Lead generation. The form that visitors use to enter their email addresses need to be an environment that encourages trust, create anticipation. Right. Social media done right. Which is, I think that's interesting. Use our 6 to 1 ratio for posts, 6 professional or life posts for every one product or sales post. Multiply conversion rate by 200% to 800% and then are you still encouraging people to use Adroll, Stephen?

You know, if not Adroll, then another retargeting platform. But Adroll continues to get, you know, better and better. But I do still like it. Their user interface I think is still really quite good. But whether you like Adroll or you like a different one. But retargeting for sure.

I think retargeting just in Facebook is a good idea.

Oh for sure.

Yeah. And finally conduct a B testing to further increase conversion rate. So, you know, when you say harmonize offer with need, what does that mean?

Well, it's kind of a great illustration of, and you guys are probably quite familiar with it, but it's that sort of the sales strategy of feel felt found, you know, I understand how you feel. I felt the same way too. And then I found this. Right. And so being able to really put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customer and not falsely, not patronizingly, but really developing rapport. So then you're harmonizing your offer with their need from an emotional perspective and really speaking their Language. And that does some great things. Not only does it develop rapport and trust, which are really necessary for any true business relationship, but it just takes the depth of that relationship to a whole nother level and really breaks down defensiveness. So you can have a real, true conversation like we should be having with our customers and prospective customers. So that's. That first piece is really getting the language right and really understanding sort of the relationship. Aikido, using another word from Darren, but really understanding that relationship. Aikido feel, felt found and to create the right momentum in that relationship.

It's fantastic. So before we get to our tip of the week, Steve, even you've had over 400 guests on Onward Nation, right?

Yeah, just actually did interview 488 this morning.

4:88. All right. You're having a dinner party. Okay. You can invite three of those guests.

Holy bananas.

To your dinner party and you can ask them all one question that you just, you know, you felt like if I could have just gotten that question answered, it would have been, you know, just mind blowing. And I just didn't get to answer it because of time or, you know, it was Gary Vaynerchuk and I was intimidated or whatever it was. What three podcast guests would you love to have over again for a nice dinner? And what would you ask them?

Okay, wow, that's. First of all, that's gotta be like, professionally one of the hardest questions anybody's ever asked me before. But. But it's a really good one. And that's how we roll, right? And it's making me really think on the fly. Okay, so you mentioned Gary, and Gary would have been on. On that list. And so. And the reason being is because when I first interviewed Gary, he was one of the first interviews I'd ever done, podcast or, you know, video whatever it might be. First time I'd ever been in New York City. I mean, I was terrified. Okay, So I would love to interview Gary again, and I'm sure I'll have a shot to do that. But. But I would love to interview Gary and I think what I would ask him would be, you know, what is it about his personality and self awareness? Let me rephrase that. How was he able to sort of dissect himself intellectually? That gave him the self awareness that he now has, because I think that he's probably one of the most self aware people that we have sort of amongst our midst right now and is very comfortable in talking about that. But I think arriving at that level of self awareness for most People is hard. It's easy for him to talk about it. And so I think being able to understand more how he dissected that, learned from it, and then capitalized on that as a strength of his would be an interesting conversation because again, I think most business owners struggle with that. So that would be Gary first.

Okay, great.

The other next would be Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank. And I think it's to really even go deeper into persistence and grit and tenacity and why he feels so strongly that persistence is one of the shortcuts to success, even though that sounds very counterintuitive. He was one of the gutsiest guys I've ever met. And I think being able to really understand that to the core, I think would be. Would be great. And I think my third, and this is just so challenging because there's so many people who are deserving to be on this list of three. But I think if I was going to choose a third, it would be Drew McClelland from the Agency Management Institute. And many of your listeners might be thinking who, because Drew is his thought leadership is so deep in the agency management space and ownership of small to mid sized agencies. And the reason why I would put him on this list is because not only is he a very close friend of mine, but he's also one of my most influential mentors in business and in life. And he's probably one of the most gracious, generous and thoughtful people I've ever had the privilege of being able to spend time with. And many of our guests I met through Drew. But the way that he walks through life and the way that he cares about people and the way that he is so in tune to the nuance of relationships and how just when you need it, you'll get a text from him, or just when you need it emotionally, you get a card in the mail and with an expression of how much you mean to him. And that takes a talent and a gift that I'm hopefully developing. But I think it's also rare and to be able to really understand where that comes from. I know that it comes from his mom and his dad, but really being able to understand that at an even deeper level I think would be really valuable. It's great.

Great Scott. Todd, any thoughts?

Kevin Harrington, man, I'm a big fan of Kevin's. Gary Vaynerchuk, big fan of his as well.

Kevin.

You know, Steven, one of the things that you said is early on in this podcast is you talked about the ability to connect dots, you know, and I'll tell you, like, I think that that's what really makes business leaders strong. I mean, strong business leaders are those people that can connect dots and see patterns quickly and then take action on them. And Kevin is one of those guys, you know, Mark, I don't know if you know Kevin's story or not, but he's like the king, if you will, the grandfather, the founder of the infomercial.

Yeah, he's.

I mean, what. I mean, the fact that he, you know, he was working in this medium, which was he was selling franchises over TV commercials, and then he all of a sudden he goes to, like, this homes, you know, program or this home and garden show. Next thing you know, he's like realizing, like, man, I can put a pitch man into a commercial and revolutionize the way that Americans buy things. It's just genius.

Totally.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love that show, too. Just really cool. Steven Wessner, I'm gonna put you on the spot now. You ready?

Mm.

All right. Your mentorship has been amazing, but we're going to ask you for one more piece of advice. A website, a book, a resource, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Well, it's not new, but I think it's profound if you implement it. And my guess is you guys talk a lot about the E Myth revisited by Michael Gerber. And I'm actually just now going back through it yet again to restudy it. And I think his strategy around building your business as a franchise or having that concept as a franchise where it's fully systematized and so forth, that no matter what kind of business you're in, if it's passive income streams, you're building a service business. Like when I'm building a predictive ROI or you have a thingamajig that you manufacture, I think Michael's wisdom applies across all of those industries. So I would highly recommend that not only that somebody reads it and studies it, but actually applies it to the point where they build that system, that business development system into their business.

I love it. I love it. Scott. Oh, before we get to Scott, I'm going to give my tip of the week. So my tip of the week, I think, is the best tip. Sorry, Stephen. But it's learn more about you@preictive ROI.com and again, I'm going to have links to the website and the. Of course, the. The eight money making opportunities and the eight money draining mistakes. So I think that's going to Be super valuable to everybody. We all know Stephen's giving it all away anyway, and I would recommend going to the Onward Nation podcast and you can see, you know, some of his amazing guests there@predictiveroi.com podcast. Scott, Todd, are you ready for you give your tip of the week.

I am, Mark. Sorry about that. Okay, my book is. Or my tip of the week is a book, and it's actually by Kevin Harrington. It's act now how I Turn ideas into Million Dollar products. I literally just got done listening to this book over the weekend. And, you know, the first part of it, I was like, okay, this is the guy's life. Whatever, there's nuggets in there. The second half where he basically shows you, like, looking over his shoulder, how he connects the dots. Genius.

All right, give it. Give us one genius example. I'm skeptical.

Well, he's basically showing, like, how. I mean, because he's telling the whole story about like the, the, the Ginsu knife and the Waka China. He's talking about the ups and downs in there, but really it changes the way that you. You kind of look at everything around you. Because again, here's a guy that was successful in one area. He was selling franchises over a TV commercial. But what started that was he saw the opportunity because he noticed that there was dead air in there. Like, he's noticing that the networks are going off the air, and he's like, there's got to be something better I can do with this. And he just leaned in a little bit. He just researched it and uncovered, like, man, I can buy 30 minutes of airtime for like $100. This is insane. So that's what he did, is he leaned into it and then he's like, well, I can create a TV show. And he created a TV show about franchises and selling of franchises. That's what he got going with. And then that business became a little bit more competitive. And then he's literally walking around a home show and he's watching this guy, this pitch man do a knife pitch. And he's watching him over and over and over again. And he was amazed that people were like, taking out their wallet. He was even finished. He's like, wait a minute, I can take that idea and combine it with this idea. Blue Ocean strategy, right? Marry these two ideas together and boom. And they film the commercial, the 30 minute commercial. They film it in one night in a grocery store for, like, I don't know, just a couple thousand dollars. This was back in the, in the day. I mean, today we could probably do it with our cell phones.

Right, right, right.

But yet he's connecting the dots, right? He's looking at, okay, well, if I did this, I marry this together. So he's always looking for things and products that he can, like, marry together, ideas that he can marry together.

It's.

It really gets you thinking, like, man, what if I did this and this? What could I do?

I love it. I love it. All right, well, I do want to remind all the listeners that the only way, the only way we're getting the quality guests like a Steve Wester Predictive ROI.com is if you do three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got a rate, and you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of your review. To support thelandgeek.com, we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit. Today's podcast is sponsored by postingdomination.com thelandgeek start automating your Craigslist postings in your Facebook postings in today and dominate Steven West. Are we good?

Yes, but I just. Before we go, I just wanted to say thank you for the invitation to be with the two of you today. Really enjoyed the conversation, really enjoyed being able to learn from both of you and your perspectives. It was just a lot of fun. So thank you, gentlemen, very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. I mean, Scott, are you getting the sense of how Stephen is so gracious?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I'm telling you, this is. This is what happens when you get on his podcast. Right. I mean, it's just. It's an incredible feeling, like unlike any other interview. You gotta. If you guys aren't listening to Onward Nation, you really should. It's. It's incredible. And I mean, he gets amazing guests like me, so.

And Kevin Harrington.

Right?

And. Well, okay. And Kevin Harrington, you know, billionaire Gary Vaynerjack.

I could say that. Kevin and our neighbors, we kind of. We kind of live in the same metropolitan area, so maybe we're neighbors. I don't know.

Okay.

Maybe I fit in there somehow.

I don't know.

So, Stephen, we're going to ruin the podcast for you at a count of three.

Are you ready?

Sure.

This is going to be your ninth money draining mistake. Ready? 1. 2, 3. 3. Let freedom ring. We've done this, like, a hundred times. It's not getting better.

It's just more and more. I don't know.

I thought that was pretty good, Mark.

I thought it was okay.

I mean, it's like one of the best.

It wasn't too shabby.

See?

We'll get better.

We're gonna get better.

Maybe we need to do it in person in a studio and then just run it. Yeah.

I don't understand. I mean, you're so attached to Tampa Scott. Like, you got to come out west, man. It's beautiful here.

I'll be there.

No humidity. It's a dry heat.

I'll be there in August.

Well, that you're gonna hate. I'm never moving.

I've been there once in August. My feet melted off.

Yeah, no, August is the worst month. But really good rates for boot camp. It's 80 degrees in the pool, so it's all good. All right, Steve. Well, this is great. I want to thank you again. I want to thank all the listeners, and we'll see everybody next time.