by admin | Nov 30, 2018 | Podcasts
Many people want fame, but if you don’t have the right information, it can be hard to use that fame to make money on social media. In this episode, Dan reveals what you need to know about how to make money on social media. The answer is probably not what you think.
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How To Make Money On Social Media
How do you make money on social media? How do you make money with social media? If you think of social media, you have different platforms. You have YouTube, you have Facebook, you have Instagram, you have Snapchat and you have Twitter. I could go on and on and there are new platforms coming up every single month, every single day. If you look at social media as a platform, it’s a very limited way of looking at it. I simply look at social media as attention. It’s an eyeball. It’s where people nowadays spend the majority of their time hanging out. That’s where the attention goes. That’s where the eyeball is. A long time ago, the eyeballs could be on newspapers, it could be on TV but now it’s all on social media. That’s what social media is. How do you make money? The question is how to convert that attention into money? You could make money on selling something. If you have your own product or service, you’re using social media to get eyeballs, to get attention, to get views and then you will convert that attention into a lead.
When you get the lead, you may follow-up with them. You may get them on the phone. You may drive them to your website. You may drive them to your webinar. You’re actually selling your product and services. That’s one way to do it. Another way you could do it is you don’t have a product and service, but you have fame. You have a big following. You are doing what we call maybe a brand deal, an endorsement deal or a recommendation. Now, brands and companies are paying you to access that attention, those eyeballs. Let’s say you have a million subscribers on YouTube. Companies, if it’s the right audience, they’re willing to pay you a pretty large sum of money or even on Instagram to do a single post or to do a collaboration video or an endorsement video. That’s what they’re paying. They’re paying for that shortcut, they’re paying for that attention span. They’re paying for those deals. You can do that as well or a brand deal.
You can also do a collaboration where you are promoting maybe other people’s products and services. It could be an affiliate marketing deal that you got the attention and you’re promoting other people’s offers. You can make money that way too. When it comes to social media, there are many ways to make money. Nowadays, the line between social media and marketing is very blurry. It’s not so much like, “I do offline marketing. I do direct mail. I do TV marketing. I do Facebook marketing.” Social media is marketing. All these other channels, it can be offline channels, their attention is more difficult to get attention from the customers. How many hours most people spend on the phone? People are watching more YouTube videos than watching TV. People are reading more Facebook posts and news versus reading newspapers. You can’t sell to them if they’re not paying attention to you.
Before they can spend money with you, they need to know you. If they don’t even know you exist, they’re not even paying attention to you. It’s very difficult to do anything to make a sell. I think they think of social media as like, “As long as I get attention, I’ll make money. Let me build a following, then I will make money.” It is wrong. I always ask people. Let’s say you’re building your Instagram followers, if you’re not making money with 20,000 people, what makes you think you make money with 40,000 people or 60,000 followers because you cannot multiply zero? You don’t suddenly get to a point like, “I have not been making money through the whole journey,” and suddenly when you have 100,000 people, you’ll make money?
Think about it. It makes no sense. You need to have a solid business model. You need to have an offer that converts. You need product and services that people want to spend money on before you get that attention. If your stuff sucks, more attention to something that’s lousy, that is not going to make you rich. That’s not going to make you money. Assuming you’ve got something that’s really good, now you get more attention to it. You get more sales, you get more buyers, then you grow and you scale from there. Then you can scale your business very quickly because with social media, you can reach billions of people around the world like that. That’s what makes it good. You’re putting debt on steroids. You’re getting way more people paying attention to your stuff.
Make Money On Social Media: You need products and services that people actually want to spend money on before you get that attention.
Another mistake I see people make especially young people, Millennials, “I just want to be famous on social media. Dan, how can I build a social media following like you?” I’d say, “You’re so young, you don’t have enough experience. You’ve got no substance yet.” You have no substance building that and getting more attention. That doesn’t do anything unless you want to be Justin Bieber or something in the entertainment industry. That’s a different story. In fact, you’re a young dude, you’re a young guy, a young girl. That’s not how you build a long-term business. You might make a little bit of money short-term, but you’re not going to have success long-term. You need to have depth, you need to have substance. It’s like, “Dan, I want to be a personal brand.” You are nineteen years old, a brand of what? You don’t know anything yet. Build a brand on what?
When you build a brand, you’d let the world know how stupid you are, how naive you are, how incompetent you are. More eyeballs do not help unless you’re a genius. If you are, good for you. I’m talking about most people. Fame for the sake of fame is stupid. You don’t just want to be famous. You want to be rich and famous. It’s fortune and fame. More fame should bring you more fortune when done properly. That’s my take. The downside when it comes to social media is there is a huge sacrifice you have to make. People don’t address that and I want to address that. When it comes to social media, when you’re creating a content, when you are an influencer, when you’re a thought leader, when you have so many people watching you and consuming your content, it is not easy. It is not easy to be prolific and to be creating content all the time.
Like now, besides running all my companies, I’m trying to squeeze in the time on my way somewhere to make a video to share what I know with you. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all these things that is not easy because you need to be creating all the time. It is very exhausting. It’s not easy and for most people, you need to put in the time, you need to put in the effort and you may not see a result in a while because social media is all about eyeballs. It’s also about building trust with your target market, with your followers. It’s not an overnight success. That is very difficult. The second thing about social media is once it’s on social media, it is on social media. Once you have chosen this path, like I did, there’s no turning back. Knowing that it would affect my privacy, knowing that I would get haters, knowing that I would get criticisms. Knowing that I need to sacrifice a lot of different areas of my life if you want to do this because there’s no going back.
What’s been seen, cannot be unseen. When you have tens of millions of people watching your videos and consuming your content, you can’t go back. It’s not like Men in Black, I can wave a magic thing where you erase the memory. They cannot. Once you’re out there, there is no turning back. You are out there. Your stuff is out there. Once you are that public figure, that’s it. You have to ask yourself, is that what you want? Because there are many ways to make money. This is not the only way to make money. There are many people who make a lot of money without being a public figure. This happens to be what I like to do. I like to teach. I like to share with what I know. I like to use my personal brand. That happens to be my strength and what I don’t mind doing so that I’m okay.
For most people, if you’re more introvert and maybe that’s not what you want to do, maybe you don’t want to be recognized on the street. When you’re having lunch or dinner, someone walked up to you and said, “Can I take a photo with you?” Maybe that’s not what you want. I don’t mind. I’m okay. I like meeting with people who consume my content, my fans, my followers. I’m okay with that. Maybe you’re not okay with that. I would say that’s the biggest downside. There’s no going back. Once you’re on the internet, you’re on the internet and this stuff doesn’t disappear. You have to consider that. I would say that’s it. You don’t mind that and say, “I’m willing to sacrifice. I’m willing to pay that price,” then by all means, go on in social media. Have a business model, have some substance, deliver value to people, promote something that’s good, a good product, a good service and then you can make a lot of money.
by admin | Nov 29, 2018 | Podcasts
People ask Dan all the time how to get money to start a business. They ask for handouts or they ask him to invest in their business. You don’t approach a successful people asking for something. You approach a successful person, add value, and give them something first before you ask anything in return. Listen to this episode to discover four ways to get money to start a business.
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How To Get Money To Start A Business
Almost every day, I get a private message on Facebook, email or Instagram, DM, someone asking me, “Dan, can you loan me $5,000? Dan, can you lend me $10,000? I’m going to pay you back. I need to start this business.” It’s almost sometimes a handout. Here’s the thing, just because someone is successful, they are not obligated to help you, if you don’t help yourself. By looking at the requests, I know the level that you are at. First of all, clearly you have not studied my work. Maybe you saw one post of mine and then you submit a request and say, “Dan, give me some money.” Here’s the thing, if you studied my work, you know I’m all about adding value before I ask anything in return. It shows me you have not studied any of my work. Second is you don’t approach a successful people asking for something. You approach a successful person, adding value, giving them something first before you ask anything in return.
The third is if you have no money, think about if I’m betting on horse racing. You as a jockey as an entrepreneur, you suck because you’ve never done this before. The horse, your business, your idea probably sucks too. If I was to bet on a horse, why would I bet on you when I am getting approached by an award-winning jockey with a track record with a horse, and I turned down 99% of those opportunities? I don’t even know you. Why would I give you money? It is your fault. Let me give you four ways that you can find money to fund your business. Number one, you can find money. The first group of people you go to is what they call sharks. They are the people on Shark Tank. They are the venture capitalists in the world. They are the professional investors in the world. Chances are maybe many years ago, they started like you, like me. They were entrepreneurs and now they’ve made their money. They have a pool of money and they are looking for smart investments, experienced entrepreneurs to invest in.
There’s a reason why they are called sharks. Chances are they want to make more money. They want to put their capital to work. They only usually invest in proven investments. They bet on proven award-winning horses or jockeys. They don’t bet on an idea. They don’t bet on pie in the sky. That’s why you see on these shows and people say, “I’ve got this widget. I’ve got this idea. I’m very passionate.” You have no idea how to win the race. You have no business skills. You have no business acumen. The fact that you have none is the fact that you need $5,000, $10,000 to grow your business. Believe it or not, that tells people a lot. When you’re dealing with sharks, knowing that you could get money from them if you can manage to convince them. However, you will need to be prepared to give a good chunk of your company because they’re risking their money on you. Chances are they have a lot of experience in business. They might ask for a big piece of your business.
Chances are, if you’re reading this, 99.99% of the people reading this, you’re not going to get money from venture capital. You’re just not there yet. Number two, it’s what I call dolphins. The dolphins, they are the financial institutions. They are the banks. They are the credit union. They are institutions where you can borrow money. Many years ago, even trying to get a line of credit for $2,000, they wouldn’t give it to me. Now, my bank is calling me all the time, “Dan, do you need money? I can loan you some money. Do you need a mortgage? Do you need more line of credit? Do you need another credit card? Do you need more financing for your deal?” I said, “I don’t need money.” “If you need it, give me a call.”
Here’s how usually banks work. They loan you money when you don’t need it. Dolphins, they loan you money when you don’t need it. They don’t loan you money when you need it. They don’t loan you money when things go wrong. They don’t do that because bankers, dolphins, they are very conservative. Although you might think dolphins are nice animals, don’t be fooled by that. Dolphins can also bite your head off. The teeth are as sharp as a shark. Don’t be like, “I’m dealing with a dolphin. They’re nice.” They make their money on the interest, the money they loan you. They’re a money-lending business. They want to protect the investments. It’s no different. There is a time and place for dolphins. Chances are, maybe if you’re starting from scratch, this is your first couple of businesses and you don’t have a track record, it’s very difficult for you to borrow money from dolphins.
How To Get Money: The best way to find money to fund your business is to get the money from your customers by going out and selling something.
The third is what I call fish. Fish is your family and friends, your relatives, your brothers, your sisters, your mom and dad, your vendors and your suppliers. Chances are not to put you down, those are the people who are dumb enough to loan you money. They will be dumb enough and say, “You’re a good guy. You’re a good girl. You’re hardworking. I believe in you. I’m betting on you because of the relationship,” not because of your track record, not because of your skill but because of relationship. “Here’s $5,000. Here’s $10,000. I would invest in you.” I remember I borrowed money from my uncle to start my business. I lost all his money. He was a fish. I’ve done all of that.
The best way to find money to fund your business that I believe that I’ve used my entire career is you get the money from your customers. How do you get some money? You go out and sell something. You get some sales. It’s the easiest way to get it. You don’t come to me and say, “Dan, gave me $10,000.” What can you do for me? Offer your service, offer your skill and offer your expertise. You make the money. Show me that you can make money. Show me that you can add value. Go to your customers. I have done business with the dolphins, I have done this with sharks, but ideally, go to your customers. Sell something.
Let’s say you’re a digital marketer. You want to start a digital marketing business. You want to help people do graphic design. You don’t need a lot of money. You don’t need to borrow a ton of money. Print business cards, create all these fancy things. Go sell something. Get your first client, that’s how you get the money. You get the money from your customers. “Dan, I don’t know how to sell.” That’s why you don’t have money. You don’t have money, you don’t know how to sell. What makes you think you will know how to sell when they give you more money? When you get more money? It makes no sense. If you don’t how to swim in a swimming pool, what makes you think you know how to swim in a lake? What makes you think you know how to swim in an ocean? You’ll be drowned. You’d be dead.
You can’t even do the little kick in the swimming pool. You can’t even float at the top. That’s what I’m talking about. You can also get money from the customers in many other ways. Maybe it’s paying events. Get them to pay in events before you even make the thing like a Kickstarter. You have an idea, you’re going to pitch it. You’re going to get it out the marketplace and you see if people like it. Have your customer fund your business. It’s the best because there’s an invested interest or even a subscription model. Have them pay on a monthly basis. I love that model. Paying events, subscription, Kickstarter, all of those ways can have your customer fund your business. You get that going first and you prove your model.
Once you have a proven model, then you can take it to the dolphins or even the fish and say, “I’ve got a good thing going on. I’ve done as much as I could with my ability. I’ve gotten to this point, but now I’ve got a proven thing. I want to scale.” When you talk to the sharks, when you talk to the dolphins, they’re more likely to listen to you and say, “You’ve got a good thing going on. You have already got revenue.” Before you make the thing, you’re making money. Before you even do anything, you’ve got reoccurring income every single month, “This guy is not so bad after all. Maybe he’s a decent entrepreneur. He’s got half a brain. Maybe let’s bet on this guy.” That’s what I’m talking about.
That’s how you fund. It’s never about the money. Money goes to the people who don’t need it. Money goes to the people who know how to multiply it. It is not lack of money, it’s you lacking the ability to attract money. It’s not about lack of money. There’s so much money out there. Banks, investors, they are flooded with cash. They want to put their money out there because every single day the money that’s sitting in a bank, they’re not putting to work, it’s costing them money. They want to invest in good deals and good entrepreneurs, but the problem is there are so few of them out there. When you approach them, when you have the right mindset, the right skill, they would fund your deal. Your customers would fund your deal.
by admin | Nov 28, 2018 | Podcasts
In this episode, Dan interviews Brandon Carter. Discover how Brandon went from being a drug dealer, having nothing, to starting a seven-figure business in the fitness industry. Brandon talks about how to leverage social media and how to build your brand on social media, as well as how he started building his high-income skill. Listen to Brandon’s story and get inspired by what’s truly possible when you commit to achieving your goals.
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How An Ex-Drug Dealer Started From Nothing To Build A 7-Figure LEGIT Business with Brandon Carter
I’m very excited because from time to time, I would have special guests visiting me in Vancouver. Brandon is here coming all the way from New York.
It’s my pleasure.
Brandon has built a very successful fitness business, a seven-figure business also came from a background with nothing starting from scratch. We’re going to talk about that story, but we’re going to talk about how to use social media and how to build your brand on social media. Brandon, you have over 760,000 subscribers on YouTube, over 140,000 on Instagram and 1.5 million on Facebook. You’ve used that to build your business versus a lot of people who just use social media for the sake of fame. Maybe tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into the fitness industry.
I’m from Chicago, the south side. This is a rough environment. I got a little bit in trouble. My parents sent me to military school in Wisconsin. I got there on an affirmative action-type scholarship. I was the only poor kid there and the only black kid there. That came with its own set of challenges. Kids would make fun of me and stuff. I’d get into fights. They weren’t racist or anything. The kids were just jerks. The kids were just mean. I get into fights. I was like, “It would be great to win these fights.” I want to beat people up. I don’t want to get beat up if I’m going to fight.
I said, “I need to start working out. I need to start training.” I didn’t know what I was doing at first. Initially, I was trying to figure it out. I was reading magazines, muscle magazines. I’m 35. The internet wasn’t what it is now. You can go on YouTube and find a bunch of videos. Elliott Hulse didn’t handle videos yet. I had to try to figure it out on myself. I had to read books and stuff, which is probably better than going on the internet. I have some progress but not really. It wasn’t until that summer I started training with this guy named Arron Muhammad, who’s a friend of the family. For years, he was voted number one trainer in Chicago. He’s actually Steve Harvey’s personal trainer. He travels with him. He definitely knew what he’s doing. He let me work with him. He’s a friend of the family. I made a lot of progress that summer. I went back to school and I thought, “I can’t wait to knock one of these,” but they didn’t mess with me again. I didn’t get that big because it’s only a few months ago. I had something the new gains, but it was more of the confidence.
It’s the confidence because now they’re going to think, “I better not mess with this guy.”
Predators look for prey. I wasn’t exhibiting the characteristics of a prey. Instead of messing with me, these same kids are now asking me for advice. I started teaching them what I learned and I noticed I like training people and seeing the progress they get. More importantly, seeing how they change, how their personalities changed.
Before, they have a lot of anger.
They got stuff going on that’s why they were stupid.
It gives them an outlet.
It’s like the guy who’s writing crap on this video now, he’s got a lot of problems. What’s the matter with you? People don’t behave like that. You need to work out and get some confidence. I digress. We all started getting better grades. I noticed it was a bigger deal. We weren’t just changing their body. We were changing everything way more. Fitness, in particular, you have to set a series of goals, make these promises to yourself. You’ve got to eat right. You’ve got to get enough sleep. You’ve got to do all these things. When you make these little promises to yourself and you keep them, you start to trust yourself more. You got to believe in yourself more. Imagine if you make all these promises to yourself. You have some goal. You want to do something. You keep telling yourself and you don’t do it, how much confidence do you have in yourself? How much can you believe in yourself? Why should you? You shouldn’t.
After a while, the track record is so bad.
Seven-Figure Business: When you make these little promises to yourself and you keep them with, you start to trust yourself.
If you can get these wins every day and you set these goals, these little small goals and you hit them, now you could start setting bigger goals. It builds a confidence that can’t be replicated in another way because you have to do it every day.
It’s so interesting because my story is so similar to yours because I was getting beat up when I was in high school. I was one of the only three Chinese in my school. I was getting beat up and bullied. That’s how I learned. I took martial arts lessons. The funny thing is after I took martial arts lessons, nobody beat me up anymore. I ended up teaching some kids martial arts. From there, I assume you have developed this passion for fitness and then you started training people.
I went to college and that was my job during college. Personal trainers typically don’t make a lot of money. You can’t scale that business, but what was good though was my first sales job because being a personal trainer at a big gym, you’re more of a salesman than you are a trainer.
You work with people all the time. You talk to people.
You have to sell them the packages. You’re a salesman and you deliver the service.
You’re selling and you’re fulfilling it.
It was my first sales job and that’s when I started building what you call a high-income skill. That’s where I initially got it. This was at age seventeen. I realized that I like it and I started studying that really heavily.
Did you ever think you’re going to be in magazines, a photo shoot, all these things when you started?
I wanted to be a musician. There are some YouTube videos of me playing the guitar. You can find it somewhere around. If you do find it, you will be amazed. I thought I was going to be a professional musician in some capacity. I got signed to Sony Records after college as a rapper. I dropped when they merged with BMG. This thing I’ve been working on my whole life got ripped underneath me. I went back to my selling. At this point, I was like, “I don’t know if I want to do personal training. I don’t make a lot of money.” I’m going to sell something lucrative. That was when I started selling cocaine.
This was a long time ago.
You don’t need to go looking into this, any law enforcement. It’s way past the statute of limitations. I left a lot of stories out. I’m from the south side Chicago. I was familiar with this line of work. I started selling cocaine. You mentioned the magazines. At the same time, I got scouted by an agency, doing fitness modeling. A flamboyant guy came to me in the street and he said, “You should be a model.” I thought he just wanted some booty but no, he was for real. He sent me on a casting that day and I got it. It was for Vibe Magazine. It was a big deal. I was like, “That’s cool.” I was doing that a little bit, but all that money was going back into cocaine. I was invested in it. I was getting more work. I told my agency, “I know you have a sister agency in Miami. Send me down there and I’ll do some work down there.” I was doing that because I knew that it was cheaper in Miami and more potent. I get that there and bring it to New York, then I can step on it, which means dilute it and make more. I started doing that for a while.
This is not a joke.
Seven-Figure Business: I wanted to build a business and I had to do it online. I knew that online was the only way to do it.
No, I was doing that and a lot of things happened around. I was making a lot of money and living the lifestyle that rappers talk about. I was doing it. The stuff that rappers talk about. My life was a rap album. Everything changed. I got a call from my sister and she said I need to call her back right away. I got a call, a text message and it was tons of text messages I missed. I called her and she said, “Our father is missing. He left a suicide note.”
How old were you then?
I was in my early twenties. I couldn’t believe it. He was my best friend, my role model. I flew back to Chicago and it was true. I felt like I needed to change.
You never saw him after that?
I went to his funeral but I didn’t want to see him. It was a closed casket. That’s when I felt I needed to change my life because he was doing some stuff that he probably shouldn’t. I had another friend around the same time went to a girl with him, his name is SV. He got sentenced to life in prison for being a criminal. Another friend named Esco. We were in the same line of work. He was found in Jersey. He was murdered. I thought, “I need to change my life.” You become like the people you’re around. This was happening and that seems to be the trajectory of my life. That’s when I said I’m going to stop doing all crime and I’m going to go 100% focused on something that would help people, something legal.
Your father has passed away. It was a wake-up call and maybe in some way, deep down where if you continue on that path, that’s not going to make your dad proud.
It definitely wouldn’t make him proud, but maybe even worse. I saw what that did to my mom. I was with her when the cops told her they found his body, so imagine if she lost me too. A wake-up call is a good way to put it because now I have to take care of her.
You cannot be the reckless person anymore.
I was thrust into this position where I’m the man of the house, of family, from my sister, her, my mom’s mom who is old. My sister’s son, everybody. I’m the guy now. I have to provide and be able to take care of them because no one else would at this point and myself now because I was a reckless kid. That’s when I got to get serious. I went back to what I do, personal training. I wanted to make a lot of money. It doesn’t make a ton of money, especially not the money that I feel I need to make for my family and even the lifestyle I wanted. I like things. I got two jobs, two additional jobs. I started working for a moving company in New York. In New York, moving is different because a lot of the places have elevators. All day I was lifting stuff up and down. On the weekends, my buddies had a restaurant in Queens and I was the manager of that restaurant working, moving companies, training people in hours ahead.
Working odd jobs here and there.
I was trying to feel my day would work seven days a week. I wanted to do something in the fitness industry and I wanted to build a business. I figured I had to do it online. I knew that online was the only way to do it. All that work and then trying to build an online business at the same time. It was basically two years in a struggle.
What were you trying to do online? Were you trying to offer, get more clients, personal training?
I had a workout program, trying to sale. I also saved up enough money to start my supplement company. We have one supplement like this fat burner, Tea Rexx, and it was those two things. I was trying to build it, figure it out. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked. After some time and fast forward, now we have about fifteen employees and a penthouse office in Manhattan. It’s not as nice as this one, but it’s nice. We’ve got customers all around the world. The office is right next to Central Park. I got a 2 Comma Club Award from ClickFunnels. We have a seven-figure business. That’s basically the story in a nutshell. It’s a wakeup call.
Important Links:
About Brandon Carter
Brandon is a certified personal trainer & nutritionist. Fitness model for Nike, Puma, Adidas, Men’s Health, and other major brands & CEO @ Bro Laboratories & High Life Clothing.
Since it’s literally been my job for the past decade to stay ripped year round, I’ve tried every diet imaginable.
Paleo, Atkins, Intermittent Fasting, Steak & Eggs, etc. If you can name it, I’ve tried it. My goal in trying all these nutrition plans is to find something that can not only get you shredded and help you make serious gains but also keeps your energy levels high so you can stay laser focused throughout each day.
If you ever have a question on fitness or personal development, I’m your man.. just shoot me a message on any of my socials and ill get back to you!
by admin | Nov 27, 2018 | Podcasts
Mike Dillard is an entrepreneur in Austin, Texas. He built his first million-dollar business by the age of 27, teaching small business owners how to effectively market their products and services online using “attraction marketing” strategies. In 2010, he founded a financial education company in order to teach others how to achieve financial freedom through investment strategies commonly reserved for the wealthy. Combined, his businesses have produced more than $50 Million in revenue without outside funding. In 2017, Mike developed the world’s first fully-automated hydroponic system for food production, EverGrow. His primary company today is Self-Made Man which provides the knowledge and skills entrepreneurs need in order to achieve their goals in life and business.
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How To Consistently Make Millions Online – For Decades with Mike Dillard
I am very excited. I have the privilege of introducing you to another successful entrepreneur, a father, an investor, a podcaster, author and freedom fighter. He is a mentor to hundreds of thousands of people. His mission is to empower the people who want to change their lives, change the world with the knowledge and skills that they need to do so. Not only is he an entrepreneur, he’s also a very good friend of mine. I’m very glad that we can reconnect. Mike, welcome to the show.
I’m glad to be here, Dan. It’s a pleasure.
For everyone who don’t know, Mike and I met at a three-day Robert Kiyosaki event. At the time, I was still building the company. I was becoming more successful but at the time, Mike was already very successful. Mike, at the time you were just planning to launch The Elevation Group, which was one of the most successful launches online with over $10 million in sales in one year. We know where you are now. Mike maybe take us a little bit back and say where you were and how did you get into what you do?
I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur probably by the time I was in high school waiting tables at the original Romano’s Macaroni Grill in Boerne, Texas. That was before it was bought by Brinker and turned into a chain. I realized how much it sucks to have to wait tables on the weekends when your friends are out having fun. The fact that somebody always had control over my schedule along with the amount of money that I could make did not sit well with me at all. That is what planted the seed to become an entrepreneur. I can remember getting home from work at midnight, 1:00 in the morning smelling like food and I would decompress. This is in high school at the time. I’m in my parents’ living room watching TV and what is on at midnight at 1:00 in the morning? Infomercials. Tony Robbins and Carleton Sheets and all of those guys would fuel my fire to follow that path even more so. That was in probably late ‘90s, early 2000 led to an interest in the network marketing industry. That was all that was available at the time if you were a broke kid in their late teens or early twenties to start a business at a reasonable financial clip. I got involved in that industry. It took me about five or six years to figure it out before I made any money. Then I discovered Dan Kennedy and direct response marketing and applied those skill sets to network marketing for the first time. Instead of going about the industry as it traditionally would have been through.
Which is starting with family and friends. Dragging them to meetings and all of that.
Friends and family or holding home meetings or hotel events, which I didn’t like any of that stuff. I learned how to start generating leads online. Google AdWords had just come out at that point. Email auto responders had just come out at that point. I taught myself how to write sales copy and essentially wrote a long form sales letter that sold the business and the products for me. I would generate leads on AdWords. I send them to this presentation which would generate interest or not and I would only talk to people who are essentially ready to sign up. That changed everything for me.
That was revolutionary. It was never been done before. It was a new concept.
Not to that degree and not online. There has been some offline stuff previously in the past, but I introduced that industry to the internet marketing world and married the two for the first time. From then, within eighteen months I went from waiting tables to making my first $1 million.
At the time you were about 27.
I started that progression probably at 25 learning that skill set and then by 27 I hit my first mill.
Magnetic Sponsoring: How To Attract Endless New Leads And Distributors To You Automatically
Is that also when you launched the Magnetic Sponsoring? That’s your first book.
That started as a training manual that I wrote for my team. It essentially taught attraction marketing and applied it to that world. How to you use direct response to essentially attract your prospects to you instead of chasing people down and cold-calling them. It went from a training manual into a book. That was my first info product that I ever created and sold and that took off.
Did you expect that it would sell that well?
I’d assume no. Within three months, I was selling a physical copy of it that I’d get made at Kinko’s for $3 apiece for $40 online on Google AdWords. I was making $50,000 to $60,000 a month from the sale of that book within a few months. At that point, I figured out what I’m good at here, which is direct response marketing and taking complex things like a business opportunity. Communicating them in a simple format that a lot of people can grasp and understand. It went from there. It turned into a publishing company for five years under the brand Magnetic Sponsoring with multiple products and courses. The business did about $25 million in revenue and then I moved on to Elevation after that.
That’s one thing that I resonate with you and why I have so much respect for your work. A lot of people in the education space or the information publishing space, you noticed the same thing, a lot of our friends that’s the identity. That’s all they do and then they stay there for many years in spite of the changes within the industry and things that are happening. They’re stuck. They always do events. They always sell information, but you did something different. It’s very difficult for anyone and they say, “I’ve got a business that’s produced tens of millions of dollars,” and to let that go and to transition into something else, I’m curious what inspired you to do that and what’s your thinking process?
You know after being in that industry for six, seven, eight years, I became the number one distributor in the primary business that I was building. I built a huge brand for myself through Magnetic Sponsoring. I sold millions of dollars’ worth of eBooks. After five or six, seven years of that, I didn’t have anything else to contribute. I felt like I’d said everything I needed to say. When people would ask me questions, “How do you build a business?” I’d either be like, “Go read the book, buy the product. Everything is there.” I’ve done it all. There were no additional challenges in that industry for me and I started to get bored. You’re never staying the same in business. You’re either growing or you’re fading, and I could see that that had started to happen to me in that regard. I lost my passion for that industry. I was like, “What’s my biggest problem now personally?”
It was money. Figuring out what to do with the money that I had made. Here I was a kid in his twenties making millions of dollars. I was blowing it on houses, cars, trips, and all kinds of fun, crazy stuff. Then I hit 30 and I was like, “I’m officially an adult now and I haven’t saved any of this money that I’ve made or invested. I need to stop wasting this opportunity and grow up here and learn how to invest it.” All of my businesses have always been built around a personal problem that I’ve been inspired to solve for myself. I figured, if I have this problem there’s probably a large number of people who have it as well. In the internet marketing world, the network marketing world, there’s never an end of people or information who are willing to teach you how to make money. There were very few people out there who were willing to teach you what to do with that money once you made it.
How to keep the money not make it multiply.
I wanted to figure that out and that’s when I had the idea for The Elevation Group. I was reading about finance and investing every single day. That was my biggest personal passion, trying to crack that code. I was not the expert in that industry, so it was a very different approach to the business because I’m no longer the guru. I’m the village idiot who doesn’t know anything about money or investing and I’m trying to figure this out. How in the world do you start a business around that? The logical conclusion was to essentially be like Oprah, be the host. Oprah’s unbelievably successful. All she does is sit and ask other people questions. I was like, “I’m going to start a private monthly membership site and the tagline is essentially learn how to invest like the rich.” The way the rich invest and manage their money is completely different than how the average middle-class person would. I was going to do an interview format. Once a month we’d find someone that I’m learning from or investing with. Maybe it’s in multifamily real estate, maybe it’s in precious metals, maybe it’s in fine art or maybe it’s an oil and gas. We’re going to interview that person on camera and we’re going to turn that into a monthly lesson. I’m going to document everything that I’m doing with my money. If I make an investment, I’m going to document that on the site and for better or worse we’re going to learn from it. If I do well, great. If I bomb and lose my money, then that’s an even more valuable lesson learned.
I love it because the model is you share your journey. You document your journey and you’re going to be the guinea pig for the audience.
When I had this idea, the first thing I did is I went, bought and studied every other major financial newsletter product out there, Stansberry, Agora, Motley Fool, all of them. What I realized is that all of these guys have been doing the same thing for twenty to 30 years. They have a physical newsletter or its email but it’s all text-based and it’s all stock charts and stock picks. Boring technical stuff that is for their primary target audience, which is usually people in their 50s and 60s. I intentionally said, “I’m going to do the complete opposite of what they’re doing in every possible way. If they’re putting everything in writing, I’m going to do everything on video. If they’re using technical charts and technical analysis, I’m not going to use any charts or any analysis. I’m going to use layman’s term and I’m going to speak how I normally speak.” That was the approach from a look, a feel and a brand and we instantly stuck out, overnight.
A huge part of the success was the authenticity, the vulnerability, the transparency. In the sales webinar, the first thing I say is, “I’m not a financial expert. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m going to figure this out. If you want to follow along then let’s do this together,” essentially. We charge $97 a month or $597 a year with the thought that if anybody applied one of these lessons over twelve months especially through the resources and the Rolodex, they would be very handsomely rewarded for that price point. Within the first seven days, I just launched it to the list that I built in Magnetic. We did $3.2 million. We brought in 8,600 plus members in a week and it took on a life of its own from there.
In the first year, the list grew to almost 400,000 people if I’m correct. Almost $10 million in the first year.
We eventually had around 50,000 active members around the one-year mark when we had done about $10 million in revenue.
That’s grown significantly. I’m curious because people only look at and hear these numbers, I want to dissect what is the secret sauce from the Magnetic Sponsoring? It’s also what you teach in the program about building that list and from there how you leverage to the next venture. What do you think made that successful and how could our audience as an entrepreneur apply those lessons their business?
First and foremost is taking a long-term approach to your personal brand and your reputation. The only reason Elevation Group was as successful as it was right off the bat was because I had built up trust and rapport and a list and a customer base for five years previously through Magnetic. If I had done those people wrong or compromised myself in some way, then that wouldn’t have happened. Piece number one is treat your audience well. Be cool to them and never put money before your trust and your relationship with them. I don’t promote anything unless I personally, truly believe 100% of it and I’m a customer of it. For example, I did one affiliate promotion this year. For the entire year, I’ve promoted one product that was not my own. If I wanted, I could do it every single month and I could promote. It might work a few months but eventually people are going to feel like cattle essentially and that I’m using them to make money and that’s not going to work out in the long run.
With that being said, I did one single promotion. I sent four emails. It was for a cryptocurrency newsletter that I had been a customer of for probably nine months. I absolutely loved their research and it was the best that I found in that world. I had no idea if my audience was into crypto or not. I said, “This is a great publication. If you’re into this space or if you’re thinking about getting in it, at least acquire some of this knowledge which is produced by a very successful hedge fund manager. Consider reducing your stupid tax when it comes to this new space.” Four emails were sent, and I sold over $1.2 million to $1.3 million of that publication at $2,000 apiece and made around $600,000 in commissions, which is 100% net profit. That’s only possible because I have a great relationship with my audience and I haven’t been pushing stuff down their throat for the previous year. That’s one of the other big things for sure.
Make Millions Online: Treat your audience really well. Never put money before your trust and relationship with them.
That’s a very big point because sometimes people put money first or they keep promoting all kinds of products because I’m on your list as well. With Mike, it’s always like your podcast, Self Made Man. It’s value. I rarely see any promotions. Even the content piece, even as little as the podcast notification, those emails are very well-written. The content is always awesome. It’s building that good wheel in trust so when you do offer something, people might be like, “Mike sent out four emails,” and he made $600,000. It’s not quite exactly like that. It’s because of all the little steps, all the relationships building, all these years.
That’s cashing in years of equity.
It’s not like four emails or easy money to $600,000. It’s not like that and I love what Mike said about it’s something that you love, something you subscribe to, something you use. You don’t even know. You say, “This is what I like. I benefit from this. It’s a very chill and cool approach. If you want to enjoy this, this is something to help you, check this out.” It wasn’t like a super hard push promo or anything like that.
Just being authentic. That’s it at the end of the day.
Talk to us about The Elevation Group. You launched that and it became very successful. After that, what happened?
After Elevation Group, we had a rough spell where one of the people we ended up promoting, ended up being a con artist. That threw a huge wrench into that business in a very unexpected way that consumed about two to three years of my life. By the time that was all done, and those guys went to jail, I was ready to move on to something else from stress and emotional baggage and all of that stuff that surrounded that. I essentially gave my half of the business to my partner at the time, Robert. He continued on with it for about a year before he sold the company. I was ready once again for another challenge at this point between magnetic and elevation. I’d been in the information publishing space for ten years. I’d made over $50 million in gross revenue and I was tired of it. I was tired of being the guy because it’s a great business to be in especially if you build it around something that you’re passionate about, but it’s a treadmill you can’t get off of. You can’t sell the business.
You’re the guru, you are the expert. People want to buy you.
I can give it to my business partner, Robert. He ended up selling it for pennies on the dollar essentially. Tony Robbins can never sell his company.
I guess without Tony, there will be no Unleash the Power Within.
People think you’re in the publishing business but you’re not. You’re in the leadership business and you can’t sell a company like that. Once again, it’s a treadmill you cannot get off of and I was tired of it. I wanted to do something different. I was inspired by Peter Diamandis’ work around all of the exponential technologies that have started to come online over the last ten to twelve years. The decentralization of so many different industries and I live right across from the corporate headquarters of Whole Foods here in Austin. Every single day, I’m at Whole Foods walking through the produce section, behind groceries. I thought it was absolutely horrific that you essentially have to be wealthy in America in order to eat food that is not covered in poison. That’s the most ridiculous thing ever.
For me, I saw a convergence of technologies and timing coming into play in the agricultural industry where the technologies essentially coming online to allow the automation of farming, specifically through hydroponic format. People are into health and fitness more than ever. They’re into detoxing more than ever. They want to buy clean organic food but it’s expensive. How can we decentralize the agricultural industry was the question that I started to ask myself and how do you reduce food cost by 80% to 90%? The only way to do that is to essentially decentralize it like Airbnb did for the hotel industry, Uber did for the taxi industry, 99Designs did for design worker or Odesk did for outsourcing tech work. You get rid of all of the intermediate infrastructure.
If you want to reduce food cost by 80% to 90%, it’s easy. You get rid of the farm, you get rid of the tractors, you get rid of the farmers, you get rid of the eighteen-wheelers, you get rid of the processing plants and you get rid of the grocery stores. At the end of the day, it was like we have to start and end the entire growing process in somebody’s home. If we can decentralize it and put three-square feet of organic farm in everybody’s house, we don’t need these fields upon fields of farmland that are being polluted on a daily basis. I had no idea how to grow plants. I have never had a garden. I didn’t know anything about hydroponics. I didn’t know anything about building a technology platform. I started this journey by buying five books on hydroponics off of Amazon and by going to Odesk.
I had a vision in my head for what I thought the product could look like and I picked up a picture of a nice kitchen off of iStock photo or whatever. I went to hire the designer on Odesk and I said, “Put this Voss water bottle here in this kitchen setting. Take off the logo, fill the middle with plants and put this little logo on it.” That gave me essentially a visual aid to then go jump onto Google. I started doing Google searches for industrial design companies. I’d never talked to an industrial design company. I didn’t know what to ask or who to ask for. I started cold-calling them and I said, “I’ve got this idea. Can I email it to one of your account reps and go from there?”
That little aid gave me a foot in the door in a lot of these companies who thought it was a great idea. I eventually hired a company out of Silicon Valley. One of the top three industrial design firms in the country who has done a lot of cool, high-tech products and for me, I wanted to build something that looked like a modern piece of art. If Apple was going to design an automated farm for your living room or your kitchen, what would it look like? This company specialized in creating tech products with that look and feel. That started that two to three-year long process. We were all figuring this out as we went. I was sketching things in a notebook. Drawing ideas, trying to figure out how can you create a unit that can grow enough food to meet all of your produce needs or greens needs on a monthly basis for at least two people? How do you design a system that can have that growth volume and plant volume within a given footprint, space or size constraint based on the fact that it has to fit through a standard sized door frame?
Make Millions Online: You cannot get off of the treadmill by doing the same thing. You have to do something different.
That was our primary size constraint. No matter where this thing goes, it has to fit through the smallest standard sized door frame there or else someone is not going to be able to get in their house. It’s going to be a disaster. That gave us our basic size constraint. Then we played with all kinds of geometry and angles based the amount of space we would need for the plants, the amount of space we would need for lighting, the angles on the lighting and all of that crazy stuff. Eventually, over the course of a year and a half, we put together a working prototype, which I still have a few feet away from here in my living room. That was an interesting process. I like to tell people that you’re going to pay your stupid tax one way or another when you get into anything new. Option A is you’re either going to pay for your stupid tax in the form of education, you’re going to pay money for courses, for consulting, for help and expertise or you’re going to pay in the form of mistakes because you didn’t go get those things.
For me, we had a great design team but no one on their team had ever worked with hydroponics or growing plants either. We were missing one key skill set, which was the actual horticulture side or agricultural side and that was a huge mistake. We had to go back, redesign things and shift things. At the end of the day, I ended up putting in at least $1 million personally to get that prototype made. Then about two years in, I got to a point where I was like, “This is exhausting.” To make $1 million in cash, if you’ve got a profitable business, let’s say that’s 20% to 30% profitable which is a very high profit margin for the average business, you’ll typically only find in internet info publishing. You’re still looking to get $1 million in cashflow. You’re looking at a business that has grossed 4% to 5% in sales to end up with a million in profit that you can then go put into another project. That’s a lot of money and I was like, “This has been a year and a half, two years, I’m a $1 million into this. How much more is this going to take to get to production ready? We’ve got to go through tooling,” which I didn’t know about when I first started this thing. We’ve got to go through safety testing and we’ve got to design the boxes. We’ve got to build the website, the shopping cart, the customer service team and at this point, I still don’t have a single employee. I have the design firm that I’ve outsourced this to. They came back to me and they were like, “Probably you’ve got another $2.5 million.”
It’s rough figures.
When I first started this, I thought the estimate was $500,000. I’m looking at $3.5 mill at best estimate with a mill already in. That left me with one option, which was to go raise money and did I want to do that? I don’t know, not really. At the same time, a primary competitor in the space, they’re called Click & Grow, had been around seven years but they only had a little countertop system that grew three plants. It grew basil and mint. I was like, “That’s cool but that doesn’t solve the problem. It’s not putting food on people’s plates at a reduced cost at scale.” They were backed by Y Combinator, seven years old that had a staff of twenty people. What I didn’t know is that they’d been working on for the last two years on much bigger systems.
Right around that time when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with EverGrow, which is the name of the product. These guys come out with three new products in the span of three months. A system that grows nine plants, 35 plants and 51 plants. They have a better business model. They sell little seed cups like Keurig coffee cups, which is great from a renewable revenue standpoint. They didn’t need to have all of the sensors and tech that we put in our systems because of that either. Their 35 plants system compared to my plants system would retail for $1,000 and mine would have to retail for $3,000. I’ve got this competitor who’s got $20 million to $30 million in funding and a team and a seven-year head start has now instantly come out with a much more competitive-priced product.
It didn’t look as good as EverGrow, but they beat us in every other category. I was like, “I can’t go raise money in good faith from people I care about knowing that we’re going to be second best in the market at this point.” I was like, “What do I do?” I ended up calling the founder of Click & Grow, having a few conversations with him and I end up investing six figures into them during one of their bridge rounds that they were raising. At that point, I pulled the plug on EverGrow. I wrote off my $1 million to loss, invested in Click & Grow and my hope and expectation are in five to seven years when they have an exit, I’ll make my $1 million back. It was a very interesting project, one I’m super proud of because we did it. I am very proud that I went in with this massive game-changing idea in an industry that I’ve never been a part of. From the ground up, took it from an idea to a living, working device that’s in my house right now. In that aspect, it was cool, at the same time I’d love to have my $1 million back.
It’s something I had to do because I would have spent the rest of my life wondering and regretting if I had not. I pulled the plug on that about nine months ago. You can go to EverGrow.com and I put up a whole video on the entire story. You can see the system. It’s a good lesson learned for entrepreneurs who are afraid of failing or whatever it may be. For me, instead of putting up a victory for sale video for the system, I’m putting up a, “I struck out,” deal. If you look at the comments below it, you’ll find that all it did was increase the emotional equity that I have with my audience. I’m taking them through my journey for better or worse, being transparent and authentic with them. They’re unbelievably grateful that I’m willing to do that and it builds an even stronger bond. There’s a lot of positive and upside that you can take advantage of if you’re willing to be authentic.
I’m curious about your perspective. Here’s what I’ve learned. Maybe you and I think alike and because you agree with this as well. From the information publishing business, what I’ve learned is it’s a great cash business because the margin is good. You can make a lot of money with relatively very little cost and you can scale that pretty quickly. We went through the same thing, the car, the house and all that stuff. You blew the money. Now, you know I’ve got to save it. It’s one thing to make it, it’s a whole other thing to keep it. Then I deducted it from the profit of putting it into other real businesses. It has nothing to do with me. It’s in jewelry, it’s real estate, it’s those more tangible assets. I’m fortunate to do that. I figured that for me, both worlds that I know the information side, the personal branding side, that’s good. It’s almost like I look at it not as a business, I look at it as a skill. You can speak, you can sell, that’s a skill that we have that brings an income, but when you convert that into tangible assets or build net worth, what’s your take on that? I also want to have you talk a little about Tiger 21 as well.
The ability to make money on demand is a skill set. It’s a skill set that’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing that you can do that but in my experience, it’s been a curse because you don’t necessarily have the same amount of respect for money that you would otherwise. You’re like, “I’ll put $500,000 into this or I’ll go buy that or whatever it may be,” because I know if I need money, I can go make more. That will work for a little while but as you start to get older, it gets tiring to have to do that or to put yourself in positions where you weren’t as responsible with your money as you should have been or conservative. For me, that’s a lesson I’ve had to learn as I’ve gotten older, which is the fact that it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much you keep. For those of you who are getting started, maybe you’re making your first $1 million this year. All I can suggest is to put a plan in place. A financial plan in place for your life when it comes to saving, investing, spending and a charitable giving side to it. If all you’ll do is put a plan in place, you’ll succeed. If you follow the plan, you will absolutely succeed. If you don’t put a plan in place, you’ll spend the money and that will lead to a less desirable result so that’s the biggie.
Sometimes entrepreneurs that we think although you might have the phenomenal year of that product or that tipping point where, “This is awesome.” Sometimes entrepreneurs are like, “This is what I’ve learned, I thought before it’s all because of me, my ability, my skill, my vision and my team that I’m able to pull this off.” As I get older, the whole factor of it is I’m like, “That maybe is 20%. A lot of that is timing, a lot of that is marketplace. A lot of that is not just because of my skill and ability.” It is a factor. We don’t always have those wins and there are ups and downs and that’s one thing that why I have so much respect. You share the good, the bad and the ugly side of the business. It’s not always, “We all win all the time,” it doesn’t always happen. What about your involvement with Tiger 21? For our audience who don’t know what Tiger 21 is, give them an overview and why is it such a powerful social networking group?
Make Millions Online: There’s a lot of positive and upside that you can take advantage of if you’re willing to just be authentic.
Tiger 21 is a social group or a mastermind group for essentially high net worth individuals. They’ve had their exit, they’ve made their money and they’re trying to figure out how to invest it wisely. What to do with it from a legacy perspective whether it’s family planning, asset protection, philanthropy, whatever it may be. Robert and I were the founding members of The Austin Chapter years ago and The Austin Chapter is a little bit different. In most Tiger 21 groups, you’re going to find the average age of the members is in their 50s or 60s. In Austin, the average age of our members is 40s or 50s. It’s definitely on the younger side. All of us are still active building businesses. We’re all founders and we’re in our prime revenue-generating years, but at the end of the day the value that I get out of it is deal flow.
From an investment perspective, we get pitched every single monthly meeting by at least one or two businesses that have been vetted but by Tiger. It could be in all kinds of industries, real estate, oil and gas, tech, pharmaceutical. Just sitting through dozens of those pitches, I’ve learned a ton. Being the youngest member in our chapter and the least successful by a long way, the biggest value I get out of it personally is that I’m surrounded by individuals who are more successful than me and that’s a rare opportunity. If I’m in my circle, I’m usually one of the most successful people and there’s not a lot of value in that. It might feel good but you’re not going to grow from it or learn anything from that. For me, I like being the dumbest guy in the room for once but that’s what Tiger’s about.
To give our audience an idea, what’s the criteria to be a member? I know that Tiger at this point is letting in 500 members who they manage over $50 million in personal assets or something like that.
It’s one of the most concentrated groups wealth-wise in the world.
It’s very private.
The minimum criteria to be considered for membership is at least $10 million in net worth and other than that, you would go potentially get a chance to sit in at one of your local chapters’ meetings and you’re going to be vetted by the group. They’re either going to say, “Yes, we like John or No, we don’t,” from a personality fit perspective. The group gets close because you find out everything about everybody’s stuff. You go through one member’s financials where everybody gets a binder everything about your financials on a monthly basis. You do that once a year as an individual, but you’re doing that if there are twelve members in that group. Every single month you’re doing essentially a portfolio defense. That gives everybody else in the group the chance to say, “You’re at risk here. There’s an opportunity for you here,” and get a group mind think if you will around somebody’s life. Things get personal and you have to fit in to your group because you become close.
It’s a super high-level mastermind group. Not just you get ideas but you look at their portfolios and their financials. That gets very personal.
You get very close to the guys. You talk about the problems people have in their marriage or their family or things like that. You start taking trips together and it becomes a cool group.
The membership fee is how much?
I believe it’s $30,000 or $35,000 a year. At least it was when I joined. If that’s on the high-end, then it’s not something you should be considering. If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re in the building phase right now, you are much better served if you join EO than Tiger. You’re going to get the most value from Tiger if you’ve had an exit, you’ve sold your business or you’ve got at least $10 million laying around that you’re looking to protect or to invest or to diversify or whatever it may be. Then you’ll get a lot of value from it. If not, EO is a better choice.
Then also they talk about the age group. What about businesses in terms of Tiger 21, are they mostly in financial or all kinds?
They are on everything. A lot of it depends on the location. In the New York group, you’re going to find a lot of guys in the financial sector. Here in Austin, it’s very diverse. We’ve got people from almost every industry.
Now, we have a pretty good picture of your career. I’m curious if you could time travel back to one of your early startup days and have a ten-minute conversation with your former self to communicate any lessons you’ve acquired with intentions of saving yourself mistakes, headaches. What would you tell yourself?
I wouldn’t pursue building businesses that had an exit opportunity first if I could go back. I would have focused on that again because if you’re going to spend five, six or seven years of your life building something. It’s nice if you’re building an asset that can essentially be sold and you can retire off of that if you wanted to. The companies that I built previously haven’t had that opportunity, which was something I would change if I could go back and do that again. Then have a plan when it comes to your finances. What you’re going to do with the money once you start to make it because again without that plan, you’re going to find ways to get rid of it very quickly. Those would be the two biggies for me.
Are you still active in the whole internet marketing space? I know you do a little bit of the coaching, little bit of mentoring through your Mike Dillard mentoring. I don’t know that you’re still active in that. I guess for someone who wants to learn from you, they can go to your podcast but what are some of the other ways that they could do that?
MikeDillard.com is where I’ve got everything. EverGrow is on there, Self Made Man is on there. We’ve been working behind the scenes on turning Self Made Man. After EverGrow, Self-Made Man became my primary project. How I can turn Self Made Man into a business that I can sell it at some point in the future is the goal for me. We’ve been working behind the scenes on turning it into that, building the tech infrastructure to allow that to become essentially its own brand that I’m not a part of. I’ll host the podcast but that will essentially be it. We’ll be launching that here. I can’t go into too much detail because I haven’t told anyone anything about it yet. We’re getting close but the whole goal is to essentially build a big platform that serves entrepreneurs and that becomes a competitor to Entrepreneur.com or any of those other Success.com publications. We’re working on that every single day and have been for the past year and looking forward to giving birth.
Mike, I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but it feels to me there’s a term called disruptor. It feels to me that every industry you get into, the home business industry, the investment world, that’s what you do. You see a certain way of things being done like, “I can change that up.”
It doesn’t interest me to copy what other people are doing constantly. That works well for the information publishing space because it’s a very simple business. You don’t necessarily want to do anything disruptive. The money that those businesses have brought in have allowed me to take some much bigger chances to do something that is much more unique and has an opportunity to disrupt things. It’s nice when you can build something that makes an impact and that raises the bar versus everything else that’s out there.
Mike, thank you so much for inspiring us with your story and all the battlefield, the lessons you’ve learned and sharing your thoughts and ideas. We love you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Dan, I’m happy to support you. Thanks for what you’re doing and thanks for having me on. It’s good to hear from you again.
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About Mike Dillard
Mike Dillard is an entrepreneur in Austin Texas. He built his first million-dollar business by the age of 27, teaching small business owners how to effectively market their products and services online using “attraction-marketing” strategies.
Combined, his businesses have produced more than $60 Million in revenue without outside funding.
In 2015 he launched the SelfMadeMan.com podcast to provide leadership and mentors to entrepreneurs. The show hit #1 on iTunes within 24 hours, and guests have included Tony Robbins, Daymond John, Kevin Harrington, Gene Simmons, Chris Sacca, and Mike Rowe.
He spends his free time pursuing his passion for auto racing, competing in the Baja 1000, Mint 400, PCA, and Pirelli World Challenge.
More information about his current projects can be found at www.MikeDillard.com
by admin | Nov 26, 2018 | Podcasts
Lisa Nichols is one of the world’s most-requested motivational speakers, media personality, and corporate CEO whose global platform has reached and served nearly 30 million people. From a struggling single mom on public assistance to a millionaire entrepreneur, Lisa’s courage and determination has inspired fans worldwide and helped countless audiences break through to discover their own untapped talents and infinite potential. As Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Motivating the Masses, Inc., one of the country’s only publicly traded personal and business development training companies, Lisa has helped develop workshops and programs that have transformed the lives of men and women and altered the trajectory of businesses throughout the country and across the world. Lisa is also a bestselling author of six books. Her seventh book, Abundance Now, published by HarperCollins, continues her journey with her fans, providing a clear and practical blueprint for personal success drawn directly from the life experiences of its beloved author.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Abundance Now: The Secrets To Maximizing The Value Of Your Personal Brand While Impacting Millions Of Lives with Lisa Nichols
I have the privilege of introducing you to another successful entrepreneur, world-renowned speaker, and six times New York Times bestselling author. She’s someone who has helped millions of people worldwide to breakthrough and discovers their own untapped talent and infinite potential. Lisa, welcome to the show. A lot of my audience must have heard of you. They’ve read your book. We know where you are now but part of the reason why I have so much respect for your work and why I love you much is where you came from. Share with us a little bit about your background for those who don’t know you.
I’m a self-made entrepreneur. I’ve been running my company for many years now. I am what you would call a late bloomer. This is the truth. I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was 28 years old. I tried a lot. I say this not with sorrow or as a victim, it’s my story. It shows you can do anything with what you have. I grew up in South Central Los Angeles. I had three fights a week to get home from school. I lived between two gangs. My highest grade all through school was a C plus. I found out in my mid-twenties that I was functionally dyslexic, which was why I struggled so much in school but I didn’t know why that was in school that I was. I was one of those young adults where I had a lot of potentials. I just didn’t know how to channel my energy. It was one of those things where I sparked when I touched projects but I didn’t know the thing that I was passionate about or the thing that I was good at for long-term. I sat inside of confusion for a while. The one thing that was frustrating about the confusion was I knew that I was talented. I knew that I had that thing I heard everyone said to me, “She’s got potential,” and potential to me was like, “One day in the future, she’s going to be somebody but right now she’s a hot mess.”
It took a while for me to discover what I was particularly masterful at. What was my purpose? What made my heart sing? What brought me joy? While I was searching for that, I unexpectedly got pregnant with my son, Jelani, and became a single mom. That was a pivotal place. It felt like rock bottom. I ended up having to get on government assistance and food stamps in order to provide for him. Even though I had a job, the job couldn’t provide for both him and me. I hit a pivotal place in my life when I was 29, 30 that said, “Are you willing to live the rest of your life like this, robbing Peter to pay Paul?” One week I have a feast and next week I have famine. There’s inconsistency. I say often I was broke and broken. I have this series of many years in my twenties where I was on a path and trying to land at Lisa. I wasn’t trying to land at prosperity. I wasn’t trying to land at building a business. Not like a lot of the brilliant young entrepreneurs like you that I run into now, I wasn’t there.
I was simply trying to find my oxygen. I was in survival mode and I was in the space where I said, “I’m not willing to live the rest of my life this.” I wasn’t just for surviving. I needed to save myself from myself. That’s my origin. I tell people when they say, “What inspires you?” Somewhere along the line after I got into action, all of a sudden creativity, prosperity and possibility inspired me. I wanted to be a change agent on the planet. I wanted to make the dash between my birthday and my transition day. I wanted to make that dash mean something. I want to make the dash dance. Somewhere along the line that became my driving force but that wasn’t initially my driving force. When you ask, “Tell me where you come from, Lisa? Tell me how you were in your younger years?” I have to be totally transparent with you and say, “Initially, I wasn’t running toward making a difference in the world. I wasn’t running toward living my purpose. I was simply trying to outrun being broke and broken.
We go through stages in life, including myself. First is survival and then go from survival to security, go from security to success and then from success to significance. We have to put the analogy of put the oxygen mask on ourselves, save ourselves before trying to save the world. From where you were struggling financially to where you are now. Over the years you’ve coached millions of people. Why do you think most people don’t experience abundance in their lives?
Most people think it’s because they don’t do the right action steps, but I believe that there’s something that precedes that. The belief system that they have won’t allow them to choose to give themselves permission to have abundance. Their belief system says that struggle is the norm. Their belief system says that making money has to be hard. Their belief system says that they’re unlovable. Their belief system says that suffering is sexy. Their actions will always reflect their belief system but since we only see actions, people only measure actions. Why don’t I get up early? When they ask questions to coaches like me or you, they’re asking you questions about their actions when in fact, they need to be committed and to ask questions. How do I shift my belief system around money? How do I shift my belief system around relationships? How do I shift my belief system around health and wellness?
Abundance is a 360 experience. It’s not about balancing your bank account or the toys in your driveway. Abundance is about the quality of the relationships around you. Most people who are not in healthy relationships are not in fulfilling relationships. They’re not even based on what they’re doing. They’re not in healthy relationships based on what they think and what they believe about themselves. When you ask me why won’t most people achieve it, it’s because they haven’t given themselves permission to have it. They’re operating in 2018 with a 1995 belief system or even worse, a 1965 belief system that they didn’t even create. They were born into it. They were born into it culturally. They were born into it gender-wise. They were born into it economically. They were born into it spiritually, religious-wise. They adopted belief systems that the people around them, their family and community had. They never challenged the belief system or they develop some unhealthy belief systems themselves.
One of the quotes that you said is, “The distance between you and everything you need and want is your language.” You’re saying that part of the belief system is made up of emotions and words. Is that right?
Absolutely. Your life is a physical manifestation of the conversation going on in your head and crossing your lips. We want to make it complicated so that we don’t have to be responsible. We love to make it complicated because then we don’t have to be responsible for doing anything about it. It’s simply that the life that you live right now is a result of all your choices. Whether you’re living the life you love, the life you want, the life you admire or the life you hate, regret and want to run away from. Either way, your life is a result of small choices. It’s not one big choice. It’s a bunch of small choices. Your choices come from the things you think and the things you say. Your thoughts and your words create choices. Choices create life experience.
How could someone be more conscious about that? Are you saying that I shouldn’t be negative or I should change my “vocabulary” my language, what I say to myself, what I say to others? How could someone stop making that shift?
I wish it were that easy. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. Let me tell you why most people won’t shift their mindset, why people won’t step into a space of abundance. I’m not saying this to be negative. I’m saying this because the truth is sexy. The truth is fair. The truth is the way you show love. Sometimes, the truth does not come served with warm cookies and milk. The reason why most people won’t step into abundance nor do that mind shift of how do they do it. I’m not declaring that if you hear my voice you’re not going to do it. I invite you to do it. I’m simply sharing with you why most won’t, but definitely take it on and run with it. In order for you to truly have a transformation in your life experience, in order for you to truly assess and shift your mental conversation. You have to first acknowledge the toxic conversation you’re currently living in. I had the pleasure of watching myself on the Dr. Phil show. I partnered with Dr. Phil and the show aired. I had a viewing party and afterward, the 30 people that were in my office were asking questions.
One of the things that I said to the students in my office was, “The reason why people don’t get to possibility is that first, you have to confront pain.” What I mean by that is you asked, “How do you shift your thinking to positive thinking?” First, you have to confront the truth of what you’re currently feeding yourself mentally. You don’t brush by it. You don’t mention it at the moment. You got to look at it, analyze it. You’ve got to dissect it. You’ve got to own it. You’ve got to peel it back in its layers. The next step is you go into what it’s cost you to think this way. I do transformational workshops and I tell people all the time, “I’m coming for your breakthrough.” Your breakthrough sometimes comes served with some caliente. It’s served with some cayenne pepper.
The first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to find every place in your life that’s a pain point. We’re going to find out how you got there. If we don’t analyze how you got there, you’re going to be like a rubber band. You’re going to keep slingshotting back to that same place because we didn’t put a label on the behavior. When we put a label on the behavior that this behavior equals this outcome and I don’t want this outcome, the more we polarize the spotlight on it. The more it can’t hide behind excuses. It can’t hide behind overwhelm. It can’t hide behind being lonely. It can’t hide behind your family doesn’t support you. It can’t hide behind whatever sexy story we give it. The more we shine a light on it, the less it’s able to hide behind those things that it’s been successful hiding behind in the years previous.
I have an exercise that I have my students do. I’ve been doing this exercise for many years and having my students do it for several years. When I tell you it has transformed more internal conversations, it has healed more relationships and it has gotten more people up off the couch, up off the blame game into the life they love. I call it exposing the lies. In this exercise, you get about six sheets of blank paper or lined paper. You get a pencil and you get a red pen. You initially take a pencil and you have four categories, money, relationships, health and wellness and spirituality. In those four categories, you take one category at a time and you write with a pencil the lies you think in that area. Around finances and money, what are the lies that you think around money? You write down with a pencil, “Money is hard to make,” and then you skip four lines. You then write your next line, “Money is the root of all evil,” whatever it is for you. You write all these lies but between every lie, you skip four lines. You go to your next category. What are your lies about relationships? For me, one of my lies was I can never be as successful as I am and in a long-term relationship. Another lie is men won’t want to date me because they’ll compare themselves to me. Another lie is I can’t get in a long-term relationship because I’m always traveling. We all got lies. You dump the lies. Expose the lies. In the light, the lies have less power. It’s in the darkness that your lies have a lot of power.
Now you’ve written six pages, seven pages, eight pages. The bigger you play in the world, the more lies you have. People sitting on the couch every day watching Bridezillas or watching housewives of somebody, they don’t have a lot of lies because they’re not up to a whole lot in life. There’s no judgment to that. Know that if someone has two pages of lies and you have ten pages of lies, don’t think that you have more issues because you’re worse. Think you have more lies because you’re playing bigger in the world. Once you’ve exposed the lies, this is critical, you sit with the lie and you read the lie out so you understand like, “Look at all the junk I’m climbing over. Look at all the junk I have to rise above every day to reach the next best version of myself. Look at the junk that’s in its way.” Own it. This is why most people won’t do it. No one wants to do that. It’s painful.
No Matter What!: 9 Steps to Living the Life You Love
I was doing this one night on a red-eye flight. I’ve decided I’m going to do my expose the lies. I used to do it twice a year just so I can keep exposing my lies. I’m playing big. I’m on the red-eye flight and I’m doing it. I’m crying and I’m going, “I still got this stuff. It’s still here.” I’m doing it from my first solo book No Matter What! It gives you instructions in that book. This woman was sitting across me she goes, “Is that book by Lisa Nichols?” I said yes, and she didn’t know it was me. It was a red-eye flight. It’s 2:00 AM. I have a baseball cap on. She’s like, “I love her,” and I’m sitting there crying doing this exercise. She didn’t know I was crying. She was like, “Is that her latest book?” I was like, “Yes.” She was like, “Do you mind if I read it when you’re done?” I said, “I’m not going to be done. I’m doing some intense work in this book and it’s going to take a while because it’s heavy work. You can take a picture of the cover if you want and you can get it when you land if you like.” She’s like, “Thank you.” I was so into the work that I wouldn’t jump out of it. You expose the lies in each area, your esteem, your body. I had so many lies about my body.
You look awesome. You lost so much weight. That’s a transformation there.
That’s because I keep doing the work. I live in the work. I never only teach the work that would be crazy about me. I live in the work. You’re going to have six pages, eight pages of all these lies written in pencil but you skip four lines in between each lie. Go back and with the red pen write the truth between every lie. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is the management of the brain. The red is powerful because the red’s going to pop out at you while the pencil is going to be duller. The lie is duller and the truth pops out. I didn’t say write the truth that you can believe. I simply said write the truth. Most people will get stuck here and they’ll go, “I don’t know what the truth is,” but you know there is a truth because you identified this other part as a lie. Every lie has the truth. You write the truth even if you do not believe the truth yet. Many times, I wrote the truth and I couldn’t believe it yet. I just knew it was the truth. You asked the question, “How do you shift your mind?” It’s giving your mind an option because right now your mind doesn’t have an option. It just got your lie, that’s all.
Unlike any other time, it’s getting to a new possibility in the most healthy, organic, realistic, bite-sized, digestible, palatable way. For years we’ve been talking about, “Take a new possibility,” and we try to grab it and then we look up. Six months later, we’re back in that old thought. Some days, 60 days later we’re back in that old thought because we didn’t walk to it in a comprehensive way. This takes a lot longer. See how long it’s taking me to even tell you that. I’m going to give you something that if you stopped reading and you went and did this now, you will look up at the end of this exercise. You will know more. You’ll feel something different. You’ll have a tool in your hand. Let me walk you all the way to the end. Now you write the truth in red ink between each lie. You write and you sit with it. This isn’t a fast exercise so don’t say, “I’m going to do this on my lunch break. I’m going to do this on a commercial break of a show.” This is when you say, “I’m going to give myself a couple of hours to do the work on me.” The first part when you’re writing the lies down in all four categories, you may want to get up. Take a walk, shower. Get some air because you’re backstroking in the mud of your mind. You may want to feel like you want to clean off and then go do the truth, and then you write the truth down.
Once you write the truth, you have the lie, the truth, the lie, the truth. The beauty of that is you’ve only had in all the years past lie, lie, lie. What you’ve done is you’ve done a pattern interrupt, literally in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. You’ve interrupted your lies with the truth; lie, truth, lie, truth. You did it in red ink then you want to read five times, the lie, the truth, the lie, the truth. Walk away, get some water. Read the lie, the truth, the lie, the truth. All six pages, all eight pages, you want to do this. It’s like an Olympic athlete and their coach says, “You need to run this 100-yard dash. You need to run these hurdles. You need to run this 220-yard dash. You need to run it nine times in order to get your form together.” You’re not going to run it four times. You’re going to run in nine times. Your coach, because you’re an Olympian, I’m telling you to read it five times, the lie, the truth, the lie, the truth.
What happens after that is when you’re grocery shopping or when you’re on a plane or when you’re taking a hike or when you’re in a business meeting or when you’re writing a sales plan. When you’re on stage and you have to make a pitch, you’ve got to sell you and you’re nervous. When you’ve got to make a sales call at your desk, you’re nervous and that lie pops up. If it was on that sheet of paper, your mind is going to automatically see the truth in red ink afterward. Once you’ve read the lie, the truth, the lie, the truth five times, then and only then do you pull out your eraser and you erase the lies.
Abundance Now: Abundance is not just about the balance in your bank account or the toys in your driveway. It is about the quality of the relationships around you.
That’s why you need to use a pencil. It’s basically rewiring the brain with a new belief system.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming, reprogramming your brain. You don’t bounce to new possibility thinking. You’ve got to reprogram your brain. That’s like your car’s not working, the engine failed. Someone says, “Let’s keep trying to turn the ignition on,” and the mechanic says, “No, we need to rebuild your engine.” That’s what we’re doing. We’re rebuilding your mental engine. It’s a beautiful engine as is. We just need to clean it. We need to detoxify it. We need to give it more tools. It was okay back then but it’s not okay for now. We need to give it some more tools. We turbo boost your engine by interrupting your negative thoughts with a new belief system, a new truth and then program you. I didn’t say anything about removing your negative thought from your head. I don’t know how to do that, that would be magical. I’m one of the most possibility-thinking people on the planet. I still have my negative thoughts. The difference between me and the average person is that when I have my negative thought, I bounce back sooner, quicker and faster because I created a safety tool for myself.
I can also see why it’s helpful to at least do it once a year or once every six months because it doesn’t matter where we are at. As we climb higher up the ladder, as we get more success, different lies show up, “I don’t want too many employees. This is it, I hit a glass ceiling. I don’t know if I can expand anymore.” All of these thoughts, all these lies would come up and it’s useful to use this tool.
What I love about this tool and this exercise is that it fits everyone, everywhere. I give the same exercise to senior vice president executives at Fortune 500 companies and they’re like, “I needed this twenty years ago.” I give the same exercise at my teen workshop and seventeen-year-olds are like, “I needed this last week after my math test.”
I definitely want to get this question in because this is a personal question I would love to ask. What are your personal branding strategies? You’ve built such a successful company. It’s personal-branding-driven. What’s your take on it? What are some of the things that you recommend to do for any entrepreneurs?
This is the season where people are looking at building their brand. I get to share how I’ve done it. I’m going to give you seven things real fast. Number one is to define your USP. Define and be clear on your unique serving proposition, not selling proposition. What’s your fingerprint? What’s your DNA? What’s your characteristic? What’s the unique experience that you offer? It doesn’t mean you’re doing something different than everyone else. You’re speaking. You’re inspiring, but how? What’s different about the way you do it? My USP is that I get intimate. I’m edgy. That’s what people can expect from me. I’m going to give you a cyber hug all day long. I’m going to hug you. I’m going to hold you. I’m going to disrupt you, but that’s my USP. Everything I do goes through that brand filter.
I could see how this relates to you. I remember when I watched The Secret. All the teachers are good, but you have your own unique serving proposition that you’re so different from everybody else. It makes you memorable for sure.
Number two, don’t try to out-noise other people in your industry. I normally don’t answer questions with a negative to don’t do something, but there’s no other way to say it. We’re in a noisy market so don’t try to out-noise other people. Don’t try to out email them. Don’t try to out-video them. Don’t try to do that. Find the rhythm of the communication that feels good to the market you’re serving. What works for your market? Bigger than what works for you is what works for your market. Sometimes the frequency that my markets want to be touched does not work for me because I don’t want to touch that often. I’m more committed to what they need than to what I need and my commitment is to serve them.
Abundance Now: It’s in the darkness that your lies have a lot of power.
Number three is to understand the scale of impact. When you’re marketing or when you’re building your brand, there’s a scale of impact. Live has the highest impact. Video has the second level of impact. Pictures and content have the third level of impact and the fourth level of impact is just words. How that looks is can you do a live event or can you do Facebook Live or YouTube Live or Instagram Live. Second are videos, promoting videos. Third is pictures with your post. Fourth is just an email or a post. Understand the scale of impact and play inside those scales.
The fourth is to be interruptive. Be interruptive to your audience. Be interruptive whether it is funny, whether it is inspirational, profound. Giving them what I call carefrontation. The fourth is to be interruptive or funny or inspirational or profound. Don’t just give me information. Give it to me inside a context. Give me energy around it. Are you the guy who’s always going to be funny and give me content? Are you the guy that’s going to be interruptive? Are you the guy that’s going to be inspirational? Are you the woman who’s going to give me deep, rich, soulful, edgy, disruptive truth? The fifth point is always live inside the 80/20 rule. If you’re going to offer anything, if you’re going to sell anything, if you’re going to point us to anything, give me 80% content and value and only 20% offer, point and marketing. When we don’t feel good, when we feel icky, it’s because someone gave us 80/20. They gave us 80% marketing, bragging and pointing at themselves’ ego and 20% value.
The truth is you give so much value they want to buy from you. They will be asking you, “Can I buy your offer? What training do you have coming up next?”
When you give great value, then all you do is get access. When you don’t give good value, you’ve got a sale. The sixth way is to lead with authenticity, transparency. Be willing to be vulnerable. If you’re totally comfortable with everything you say every time, you’re not playing big enough. You’re not risking enough. You’re not on the edge enough. You’re trying to stay safe. Be vulnerable, be transparent and be authentic. The seventh and final is before you open your mouth, whether you open your mouth in a book, open your mouth on stage, open your mouth on Facebook, open your mouth in any other social media, open your mouth at an event, open your mouth anywhere. Give people you. Do you want to answer the question, “What do I want them to feel when they finish hearing from me? How do I want them to feel? What do I want them to think?” If you answer that question before you do anything, then everything you do will lead to that experience and have more paths. These are the things that I did.
I was looking for one tip, but thank you so much. It’s like over-deliver and that’s also a part of you as a brand.
Abundance Now: Amplify Your Life & Achieve Prosperity Today
I did write the book, Abundance Now, so I’m always giving you more than you expected.
I’ve read all your books. I read them multiple times. I’ve bought multiple copies and gave them to my students, my mentees. People like us teachers, we read many people’s books but I always find your work has so much more depth. It’s like a nice bottle of wine. You can always go back and revisit and you’ll find something more. It’s not one of those books where you read it once and then you put it away. That’s part of why I’m a big fan of your work. I have such a respect for what you do.
I appreciate that. What you also feel when you pick it up is you feel my sisterhood with you. Not only I pray you’re getting content, but you also get community. You feel like reading together.
It’s very much like, “Yes, I’ve done that too. Yes, I feel that way too.” It’s like I’m nodding my head as I’m reading through the whole book.
You’re like, “We’re in the same tribe. We come from the same village.” The number one negative experience that people have is the experience of feeling lonely. There are people who are in relationships, in households, in marriages, in companies and they’re around people but they’re not with anyone. The greatest gift that you can give someone while you build your brand is the gift of connection. When you tell me you read my book and you’re nodding with me, it makes my heart leap because I wrote the book so that we can be connected. That you wouldn’t feel alone in that moment.
This goes so much deeper. It’s not just a book. It could be your article, it could be your podcast, it could be your video, it could be your live event.
To be clear and answer your question, “How do you build your brand?” It has to be in all those things. It can’t just live on one platform and not another. Treat your brand not like it’s a lane, but treat your brand like it’s a superhighway.
For our audience who wants to go a bit deeper besides your books, what programs would you recommend entrepreneurs that you offer and recommend them to look into?
I have a program that I created that when I finished creating it, I laid in my bed and I cried. I cried tears of joy because I said, “If this program could represent my legacy, I’m okay.” I feel like I’ve been impregnated with this content for years but I didn’t know if I can pull off pulling it all together. It felt like it was this big massive ball of fire in my soul. I prayed one November. November’s always my prayer time that I do what I was supposed to do this year. What more can I do? Who else do I need to touch? In my prayer time, it was downloaded. It’s time for you to create this. People have been asking me for years, “Help me inspire people the way you do.” I don’t speak on stage. I’m not a stage speaker but I do want to inspire you with my meetings. I want to inspire people in my home, in my church. I had speakers coming to say, “Help me hone my message,” but the biggest thing that would rattle my core is when people would say, “Help me tell my story.”
For years, I didn’t have an answer for them and then they would follow it up with, “You tell such great stories and they’re masterful,” and here I was confronted with, “Lisa, I consider you to be the best at storytelling. Help me,” and my answer was always, “No,” and it wasn’t, “No, I don’t want to,” it was, “I don’t know how.” In my prayer time about a few years ago, I asked the same question I ask every year, “What should I be doing?” The universe, God, Divine, whatever you want to call it, downloaded to me and said, “Quit being lazy,” and I said, “Lazy? I’m on the road over 200 days out the year. What do you mean lazy?” In my stillness, because I got still for days, I kept going in, “What does that mean?” Then I heard, “Quit making excuses.” I’m like, “I don’t make excuses,” and then it got narrow saying, “You don’t know how to teach people how to speak as powerfully as you, but it doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to teach them.”
I was disrupted. I locked myself in my home office for a few days. I put Post-it notes all around the walls and I started writing what I did. I didn’t write what I said, but I’ll write what I did. I started writing things like a pregnant pause. Verbal highlight. I go up and I go down and I whisper even. I write something else. I go into the valley and I bring them back out. I wrote something else. I open the back door. I’m making all these little phrases that no one else would understand this phrase. I pick apart everything I did and then I started describing what that was. Let me describe what that is. I look up and I got probably about 26 of the wall Post-it notes. Each one is a different technique or something that I’m doing. I worked on this for months and months. I went and I videotaped them.
Abundance Now: When you give great value, you get access. When you don’t give good value, you’ve got to sell.
At the end of the whole process, we have a new program that has only been in this format that it’s currently in for less than a year. It’s called Speak for Ultimate Impact and Profit. It’s powerful. I’m seeing people on the other side of it, having taken the course. It’s video, it downloads into your computer. You can repeat it as much as you want. I give you homework to do. When you do the homework, you’re writing your signature speech. I teach you how to offer with dignity and integrity from the stage. How to make a pitch? I was just doing it. Now I feel like, “I have a solution.” I have an answer when people say, “Can you teach me how to tell my story?” “Yes, I can. Get on our campus and pick up SUIP,” that’s our nickname for Speak for Ultimate Impact and Profit. “My students said to invite people who are considering getting the program. It’s a home study course. Look at each video a minimum of twice, ideally three times. That’s what my students have said because I’m going into such detail level that it’s a repeat. You get it best when you repeat.
Out of all the guests that have been on the show, I could tell even what Lisa has shared with us. I can tell you if you’re a fan of my work. Right after this interview, Lisa, I’m going to your website and I’m investing in your program. You’ll see an email coming in the location, I’m placing an order.
I appreciate that. I’m excited about what you’re going to get, Dan. What I know about you, and I have done my research on you too, my friend, is that the world needs to hear more of you. The world needs to hear more from you. They need to hear from you because of what you have on the inside of you. They need to hear more from you because of who you are and how you will be a part of that whole healing modality, financial freedom, image freedom, all of that. If I can, which I hope and pray I can. If I can be a part of helping to take your message to the next level so every time you open your mouth. Whether you’re speaking one-on-one or one-to-many, you are able to have an impact. The exact impact that you wanted and the only time the impact isn’t what you thought it would be is because it’s exceeded your expectations. That would be my prayer for you.
What I love about you getting the program is that one of the bonuses, I put a radical bonus in, was that you get a ticket to get to my special event. Every year it sells out. Every year we have standing-room only. Twice we’ve had the fire marshals call it on us because we were a fire hazard. We sell tickets. We fill up 75% of the room. Everyone waits for it every year. It’s called Speak and Write to Make Millions. When you get this program, I bonus you a three-day ticket to that program so I’d love to have you there. Once you get the program and you see the date for Speak and Write to Make Millions. If that weekend allows you to come, please come so that I can run you up on stage. Show the world to you so they can see us hold hands and help build your brand. Share this beautiful, probably slightly unique audience to you and you with them. I love that part because it gives us an excuse to get belly to belly, heart to heart, soul to soul and share a hug.
Thank you, I appreciate that. I want you to see that’s what makes something successful. Truly it’s being generous, collaboration, not competition. That’s how it is for successful people. We want to help each other. We want to support each other. Lisa doesn’t have to offer that to me but she’s nice enough, she’s generous enough. That’s how this works. I hope that you get something out of it. It’s not just buying a program. I invest in myself. It doesn’t matter. You learn from someone who’s a master at what they do. I want to make sure they get a domain name. If my audience wants to get this program, the best way for them to do that is to go to MotivatingTheMasses.com.
Abundance Now: When we’ve been blessed and have gotten gifts, all we do is turn around and, from our overflow, serve others.
If they go to that website, the program is Speak for Ultimate Impact and Profit. They go to programs and they select Speak for Ultimate Impact and Profit.
If you are getting the program, I’ll definitely be attending the main event and also hope to meet you in person. If you do see me in the audience, on the stage, make sure you grab me and shake my hand. Give me a hug. I would love to meet you in person as well.
I can go a step further than that. I’m going to have you stand up and then I’m going to have anyone who’s in your tribe stand up so that you can see them all and they can all see you. We can celebrate you and them. To your acknowledgment, thank you for acknowledging my intent to give and to pour into you but let me tell you why I chose to go that next step. You reached out to me as someone who’s chosen to learn from me. What I know is that my life has been transformed because of the generosity of others who I was reaching out to. When we’ve been blessed, when we’ve gotten gifts, all we do is turn around and from our overflow we serve others. I appreciate your acknowledgment. This is what I’m supposed to do. I say supposed not from a rule or regulation, but this is humanity. This is society. This is the village. This is a tribe. This is a community. You and I are in the same community. This is what I’m supposed to do. You’ve chosen me as a coach/big sister/soul sister and my job are to find every way possible to hug, wrap and help you feel safe while you take big leaps.
I appreciate that and I appreciate you, Lisa. Thank you so much for inspiring us with your story and the tool that you’ve given us and thoughts and ideas. I love you. My audience will definitely appreciate it.
I love you too. Let’s find excuses to play together and call it to work. Definitely, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. I always say we try to find a way to say yes every single time. We don’t ask if, we ask how.
Thank you so much.
You’re welcome.
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About Lisa Nichols
Lisa Nichols is one of the world’s most-requested motivational speakers, as well as media personality and corporate CEO whose global platform has reached and served nearly 30 million people. From a struggling single mom on public assistance to a millionaire entrepreneur, Lisa’s courage and determination has inspired fans worldwide and helped countless audiences break through, to discover their own untapped talents and infinite potential.
As Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Motivating the Masses, Inc. – one of the country’s only publicly traded personal and business development training companies – Lisa has helped develop workshops and programs that have transformed the lives of men and women, and altered the trajectory of businesses throughout the country and across the world.
Lisa is also a best-selling author of six books, and her 7th book ABUNDANCE NOW, published by HarperCollins. In ABUNDANCE NOW, Lisa continues her journey with her fans, providing a clear and practical blueprint for personal success, drawn directly from the life experiences of its beloved author. ABUNDANCE NOW is the follow-up to Lisa’s New York Times bestseller, NO MATTER WHAT.
