West Interviews Bob Andersen

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Bob: Bob Anderson

West: Welcome, folks, to today’s interview. And today, I’m very privileged to have with us Mr. Bob Andersen. Now Bob has been involved in property development for a very long time, over thirty years. And he’s in a conglomerate of people who control over $1 billion worth of property. And that’s a super, super impressive stat.

What’s more impressive is Bob not only has a personal portfolio but he’s also doing it day to day and he’s also teaching people how to do it. So we’re very lucky to have Bob with us today. And I want to welcome you to today’s interview, Bob.

Bob: Thanks, West. Great to be here.

West: Absolutely. Now tell us, Bob, when you speak to people and they ask you what it is that you do—because I know you’ve got such a range of skill set—what is it essentially that people need to know about you?

Bob: Well West, primarily, I’m in the property investment, property development area. But ultimately, what I do is I use property development more as a vehicle for getting property investment at cost price whether it’s for myself or for investor clients. Property development is really a vehicle to accumulate the asset class of property, primarily residential property. So yup, I’m a developer but there’s a reason for being a developer.

So what do I do? I’m a developer and I’m an investor and my clients are all investors.

West: So a lot of people who are kind of thinking of getting into development but maybe they’ve only done a couple of residential or maybe they haven’t done any property and they’re looking at getting into something on a small level, is that something that you help people primarily and teach people how to do as well?

Bob: Yeah. I heard Mal saying, “Never pay retail.” So myself, that’s part of the reason I got involved in property development, really. It was a vehicle for getting property investments at a—well, not wholesale price—but absolute cost price.

So people, sometimes they haven’t done a development at all and they’re investors with one or two investments of their own and they see that potentially property development could be a great way of accumulating property investments fast and at cost. So with those people, I have a whole property development education program for those people who want to make the next step up from property investor to just more property developer.

West: Wow. And I think there’s a perception in the public that you’ve got to be some sort of sophisticated, right up there and have done hundreds of deals before you can into development. I mean that’s kind of—when I was going through—at least, that was the perception. I mean if you look at a lot of the property work out there and books and tapes and seminars, they always show you a progression where development is like the ultimate goal. But you’re saying that people can—with some knowledge—get into property development and make it work for them.

Bob: Yeah, they can. I think one of the first things that people need to do is to know why they want to get involved in property development.

West: So find their reason.

Bob: Yeah…and a good reason. I was talking to somebody last week. He actually wanted to become involved in property development. So I put the question, “Why do you want to do this?” And they say, “Oh, I see property developers and they’ve got big fancy houses, they drive red Ferraris. They often have young women hanging off their arms.” And I say, “Well, that’s not a really good… It makes me sound very unsuccessful.” You know, I’ve been married for thirty years. I don’t drive a red Ferrari. And I haven’t got the biggest house in the suburbs.

But I think you have to go in there for the right reasons. And initially, as I said it’s a vehicle. It’s a way of accumulating wealth. It’s a way of accumulating property. So for those people, get the reason right first. And that’s important…having the right reasons.

Then the next question is ‘well, how do I get involved?’ And really, just like everything, you have to be educated. You have to gain knowledge and increase your knowledge for leveraging off people with far greater knowledge.

West: Absolutely. And you’ve got to learn from people who are in the industry and doing it and are the real deal. I mean, there’s kind of a lot of pretenders out there and obviously, I’m not going to name names or anything but there are people out there who don’t walk the talk and there are people out there who don’t actually do what they claim to do or say they do. And you have a record that just speaks for itself with all the developments that you’ve done: resorts, hotels, government buildings and all those kind of things that do that.

So how can people, I guess, identify who to learn from and what kind of signs can they look for when looking for a means or looking for someone to actually leverage from?

Bob: I think they’ve got to do a little bit of their own due diligence, really. In my case, I’m a real developer. I have a development company, Positive Property Strategies, where we’re involved in projects all the time. Even currently, you know, retirement villages, combination projects, townhouses, units—we’re always doing projects. And so I’m a real property developer, therefore, I have the ability to pass that knowledge on.

We’re like talking about people who may be trying to pass knowledge on that are not property developers but they’re outs… look, you’ve got to do your own due diligence on the subject.

West: So you’re a developer first and you’re teaching people afterwards. You’re not teaching people first as your core business and then kind of trying to do property development on the side. And I think there’s a big distinction, a big difference there.

Bob: Yeah, exactly. And I’ve developed this course. It took me quite a long time to develop it. It’s basically the culmination of nearly thirty years of experience that I’ve put into in my course. And I think that shows for anybody who really sees it.

West: Absolutely.

Bob: Credibility’s everything, really.

West: Definitely. And I definitely like to chat a little bit about it later because, you know, before our interview today, Bob was actually giving me a little sneak peek at the course. And it’s really exciting to see what he’s put into it. It seems like kind of a labor of love that he’s actually put almost everything into his brain that people can follow in a blueprint.

But before we get to that, Bob, why don’t you tell us maybe a couple of strategies that you recommend in today’s volatile environment with regard to property development? How can someone get into property if they don’t have, you know, a million dollars in the bank? And how do you specifically help people would be a really good addition to how people get in.

Bob: Yeah. Well look, knowledge is power. So first thing people need to do is actually to educate themselves—make an investment in their future. And that requires spending some money. That’s fine because the greatest asset is you have is yourself. So you need to invest in yourself. And there are sources of knowledge out there.

When I started, when I originally sort of moved from, if you like, from a short period in real estate into property development, there’s nothing out there. There were no books, there were no courses, there were no mentors. I did it the hard way. I made a few mistakes along the way. So increase that level of knowledge.

And then ultimately, you know, you have to make the first step. Some people keep accumulating knowledge, accumulating knowledge but they never make their step. Eventually, you have to make that move. I always say you don’t have to have an IQ of 150, you don’t have to be a multi-millionaire, you don’t have to drive red Ferraris to get into property development.

So start small. You might be looking at something like a duplex, two townhouses to get or maybe a triplex of three. You can get into that fairly readily. If you have no cash at all and you’re building up this experience, you can look at more creative ways of getting into things—joint ventures. I’ve done a lot of joint ventures and there are so many different ways of structuring joint ventures. You might look at joint ventures as a way of bringing in somebody with some money…

West: And you provide your time.

Bob: …and you provide your time and the knowledge that you’re building.

There are all sorts of things out there. There are things like using fancy stuff like call options and building equity into deals and that sort of thing. There are creative ways of getting in that requires knowledge of that. And also, look, at the end of the day you’re going to do some work.

So there are creative ways of getting in. But finance wise too, on the smaller projects, some of the banks are coming back in and starting to lend retail finance going for twos and three townhouses at higher LVR’s. So there are some too good opportunities to get in on the ground floor.

West: Absolutely. So even if you don’t have any money, you can still get your hands dirty and get some experience. And once you find some really good information that you can act on and find, I guess, a strategy that suits your personality, I guess—in a way, Bob—I mean, you were saying before that there are so many different things you can do but some people like to do something that’s more attuned to their personality and their risk profile I guess.

Bob: That’s right. Some people are more entrepreneurial. Basically, I’m a property developer or a property investor. Also, do you make entrepreneurs… there are things to suit people’s personality. Some people are more creative than others. But, you know, there’s a deal around the corner for everybody to fit everybody.

West: Absolutely. And I think, even that mindset in itself, people are saying that there aren’t deals out there. And someone like Bob who is day in and day out… there’s always a deal.

Bob: Yeah. And look, if you miss out on a deal of the year, the next one’s only a week away.

West: Absolutely. Absolutely. Wow. That’s powerful.

So what are some of the strategies that you give, Bob, to people who may have a little bit of cash lying around and maybe come to see you for, you know, “How can you help me, Bob?” What kind of things do you say to those people and maybe if you can give us a case study of how you’ve helped someone or given someone some advice or a strategy that has saved them some money or made them a lot of money?

Bob: One of the first things to do before you say, “I’m looking for a site,”—the first thing you do is not look for a site—the first thing you do is have a look at your structure. You need to get your structure right. And that will depend on what you’re going to do. Are you going to look for a site to flick. Are you going to develop something and sell it? Are you going to develop something and hold, the structure will vary.

Have a look at the finance and how you’re going to fund this thing: Are you going to use your own cash? Are you going to use somebody else’s? How it’s going to be funded.

But beyond that, before you start looking for a site, is to decide on the answers to those questions, then we have look at what sort of deal fits the person.

West: So kind of do it like a mini business plan.

Bob: Yeah, a mini business plan. Yeah, exactly.

Some people come to me that they’re already into development. They say, “Look, where do go from here?” Some people will say, “Look, I want to get into it. Where do I start?” Just start with the knowledge. Once you’ve got the basic knowledge, then you can build upon that with a mentoring program or whatever’s the next step. Now at the moment people arrive with a deal and a title. They already started. It’s amazing, you know. You see something has started. It’s scary sometimes but actually some people are actually in their first project and are quite lost. And I pick up people at various stages.

But as far as helping people in the deals, um, I mean you’ve met Ben Smith recently. Ben runs my portfolio turbocharger program. Ben started off basically as a mentoring student and I know he’d be right for the deal with a land subdivision, potential joint venture for a 20 lot subdivision. And I was like helping him with that in terms of how to structure the deal, how to structure the joint venture, how to make the win win with both parties. That was a great outcome. It was a great outcome for the land owner. It was a great outcome for Ben. And that was a 20 lot subdivision which actually, the way it’s financially structured, meant no money into the deal for the actual developer—it’s a 20 lot subdivision. Great outcome.

West: Wow. It’s crazy.

Bob: I often use that one as an example because it’s a very good deal of having… you can actually get into a deal and create at least…

West: So Ben obviously didn’t know that by his own back. But he got into the game and he came and saw you because he knew you were actually, you know, you know what you’re doing and you were able to systematically look at all the different aspects of the deal and put something together that was a win.

Bob: That’s right. That was a ‘no money down’ deal.

West: Wow. Powerful stuff.

So if someone is sort of getting—you mentioned before people kind of just dive in and they don’t really know what they’re doing. And I was also reading in your book, which we’ll talk about later, but what are some of the most common mistakes, Bob, that people make when they try and get in their first property development deal and they just, you know, they don’t know what they’re doing and they can potentially lose a lot of money? What are some of the pitfalls that people can stay away from based on your experience from the most common list of things?

Bob: One thing that scares me is that often with people starting out is they don’t know that they don’t know. It’s a dangerous thing. It’s a good thing to know that you don’t know but when you don’t know that you don’t know, that is very dangerous. And sometimes I go in some of the large property forums and you go and you see people coming up with a question, “I just bought a development site. What do I do next?” They’re asking other people out there who have never done a development for advice. That’s pretty scary stuff.

So where can they go wrong? Well, due diligence is a big thing when you’re looking for a site. Some people just launch out, they believe a real estate agent. Nothing wrong with real estate agents but caveat emptor: do your own due diligence.

I always say, first thing, get a little team together-be it an architect, be it a town planner and do your due diligence on the site. It might be a site without a development approval. What’s the zoning? What’s the likelihood of success on the development? What’s the yield? What can we get on it—two townhouses, four townhouses? Some people just launch out, buy a property without knowing and it’s quite scary.

So yeah, initially, the right sort of due diligence.

Know the structure before you enter into a contract. Some people just launch into a contract signing their own personal name with intent of developing and holding and then they find out, Well, I don’t really want it in my own name after all. And it’s an expensive business to try and take it out and sign personal name back into a trust or a company—whatever the structure is. So get these things in place early.

West: Absolutely. So I guess it all comes back to educating yourself and making sure that you have at least a base level of education. Personally, I actually respect people who dive in and do stuff but I think when there are things at stake, such as people’s lives and people’s families, you’ve got to actually have that base foundation. And I think a great step, as we’re talking about before, is going to Bob’s site and getting his eBook. I just spent the last few days reading it a few times and it’s an amazing, amazing resource. If nothing else, it’s free. It just teaches you everything…all the basics of property development.

And so Bob, for people who want to know a little bit more about your book, how did the structure come? And I’m guessing, over the years, you’ve thought, ‘How can I Put together something that just teaches people the backbone of what I do.’

Bob: Well, I wanted to get the basics out there because I was bumping into people all over the place, I was seeing…

West: You’re always getting the same questions probably.

Bob: They’re all the same questions and you know, as I said, you go into some of the property forums and you see what they were really doing. So I thought, ‘Look, at least let’s get some basic information out there about the development process, the sorts of development you can do, what are the risks or basically the advantages of doing property development. It’s about a 41 page ebook and it’s free. So that helps as well.

West: And it’s pretty damn good.

Bob: It just gives people a bit of a feel for property development: what it’s really about, what some of the advantages are, what the risks are, how you can get into deals. Obviously, here you can get a lot of wealth from it as well. So it’s a good first base, if you like, to go to.

West: Absolutely. And one of the things I noticed about it is people can start doing this in their spare time. I mean they don’t have to quit their job tomorrow and start going full—you know—full time property. They can actually learn and kind of do it on their weekends.

Bob: Look, I don’t want to make property development sound like it’s really easy. But it can be. With the right help, it’s relatively easy.

Look, very often people have done a course or start to mentor or have what I call a day job. And most of them are quite happy or quite comfortable to do, say, three townhouse projects—let’s say that’s an entry level: 2 or 3 townhouse project—in their spare time while they‘re currently in a full time job. A lot of that comes from two areas. It comes from getting the right help when you’re doing it. And then getting the right team of people around you.

And look, the thing is, once you start doing it, once you’ve done your first project, like you might do a 3 townhouse project—let’s say it’s a moderate but a successful one—you might pull, let’s say, $70,000 profit per townhouse. At the end of 12 or 18 months, it’s $210,000 worth of profit. But it could be a cash property if you sell them. It could be even better if you decide to keep some, because then you can hold it as a long term investment. And because you don’t pay tax unless you sell it, you’ve got this accumulating asset that you can still harvest the equity of. So all of a sudden, you know, the property development part time thing is making 3x or 4x as much as the day job. So the temptation is whether to do it full time.

West: For sure.

Bob: Some do it sometimes. Some people are happy to do a little project every couple of years. Use that to build their property portfolio with a long term goal, whether that long term goal is…it’s usually retiring early, change their lifestyle. Some people might develop three every 12, 18 months, 2 years. Sell one, keep two. Sell two, keep one. Use the extra cash.

West: I guess that’s all part of their strategy. Like the overall strategy that you were talking about before—putting down on paper what it is you want out of it. I mean if you want to travel the world for the rest of your life and drive Ferraris, you’re going to have to probably work a little bit harder than someone who just wants to be able to live and have their expenses paid by their investments.

So on that note, I was reading one of the principles you were teaching Bob, (in the book) where you teach people how a property developer saves way more money than a retail investor for exactly the same deal.

Bob: Yah.

West: Give us a really quick summary of how that process works. I thought that was really fascinating.

Bob: Okay. Let’s take a little three townhouse project, let’s say three or four townhouse projects. Just to make it easier to understand, let’s break it down per townhouse, okay? So we might be cutting a three townhouse project into three or four townhouse project into four. Looking at it on a per townhouse basis, so a typical townhouse, let’s say, might sell on completion for about $500,000—normal bread and butter townhouse in one of the suburbs. Now that townhouse is probably going to cost somewhere between $400,000 $425,000 to develop. Now what I mean by that is all the costs are going to run up to let’s say about $410,000 $415,000. That cost includes the land, professional fees of the consultants, the approval process, the finance, the counsel fees, all the bits and pieces. So what you’ve got on completion, you’ve got a property that’s worth $500,000. What you’re going to do, obviously, you can sell it at the end and you make a cash profit. You make a cash profit, it becomes income tax paid. That’s great. You get a bundle of money, you pay your tax and you move on.

The other thing you can do—and you can even do a mix of the two—is to actually hold that property at the other end. Now when you’ve developed—let’s say it’s worth $500,000. Now what’s the bank going to lend you? Well typically, a bank on an investment will say, “We’ll lend eighty percent without mortgage insurance.” So they’re only going to lend you $400,000 on a property that only owes you, let’s say, $410,000. So really, all you have to do is leave $10,000 into that deal. And the other $90,000 is profit. So the bank will lend you almost a hundred percent of your cost.

Now if there’s been even a smidgen of growth during that twelve month project, what was $500,000 at the beginning or say even a five percent growth, it’ll be worth $525,000 by the time you complete it. So they lend eighty percent of that and it’s all your costs. So really, all you’re doing is you’re leaving a development profit in as your deposit on the finance at the other end. So the bank is fully funding all your costs. So the equity that you put in on the front of the project to do the development, you can now take out, leave your profit in and hold that property. And really, that’s how you accumulate wealth.

So all of a sudden, you’ve got a property where you’ve got a twenty percent deposit which is just your profit. You’ve got your equity back out and you’re going to do the same thing again.

West: Wow. So it allows you to essentially replicate much more than if you tried to do it on your own.

Bob: That’s right. The normal way is to go and buy a $500,000 property for $500,000. By the time you pay legals and stamp duty, it might owe you $520,000—it’s worth $500,000—you get a yield of negative. So you have to put in your $100,000 from some of it—often it’s equity over other projects like properties or whatever. But what you’ve got to do now, of course you’ve got to wait for normal organic growth, you’ve got to wait for the market to increase your properties in value. When they have you refinance, you harvest your equity. So you’re waiting. You’re waiting on the market.

The other way you take control of and actually create that equity immediately is through property development. And that’s the principle of it.

West: Just from the structure and the concept. Wow. That’s powerful. Really powerful stuff.

Bob: So you accumulate a lot of property quicker. If your goal is to retire, then you’re retiring early.

West: Absolutely. Wow.

Bob: Or you’re retiring with more money.

West: Definitely. Definitely. And I think that’s a distinction that people would do well to read about, go back to Bob’s book, check it out and really do some numbers. And for the same deal, as I said before, you can get up to twenty, thirty, possibly more percentage back on your money. And I think that’s really powerful.

I want to talk about one more concept before we start telling people how they can find out more about you, Bob. Potentially, for more sophisticated investors watching this interview, maybe they’ve got a little bit more money in the bank than someone who is just starting out and they were wondering what they can do, how you can potentially help them. How do you help people with a higher platform?

Bob: Well, a couple of ways. What we’re talking about, I guess, my whole thing’s property development so it’s really property investment but my vehicle of getting me faster to property development. So really, you can almost break property development into two areas:
You’ve got active property development.
And then you’ve got passive property development.

So active property development would be somebody who wants to learn the ropes, get in to developments, do their own developments. Okay? So they have to educate themselves and need a hand on the way through. And they become property developers. They may stay small developers or they may become big developers. That’s active development.

Now the other way is if you like is to get all the advantages of property development, but passively. So what that means, a passive developer, for instance, may be somebody who really doesn’t want to get involved in the day to day operation of the development. One good example could be a brain surgeon. So he’s just too busy operating people’s brains. So that’s a near enough to a 7-day a week job, 14 hours a day.

West: Yup. Absolutely.

Bob: So he doesn’t want to take his mind off that, thank goodness. So what he wants to do, he wants to work his money.

West: Yeah. He wants to use property development as a vehicle.

Bob: Exactly. So he uses that, his asset base and his cashflow, to accumulate properties passively.

So some of these high net worth individuals may come into a project with us. It could be a joint venture structure. We have different structures where people can come in on a passive basis. And that way, they can get the benefits of property development almost—well, not quite as cheaply as doing it yourself because obviously, if someone’s doing it for you…in our case they pay for that, but they can get—eventually into property way below retail price.

Like I say, I never pay retail. I mean I can’t pay retail for anything. Well actually, you know what? I just can’t go out, I can’t buy a car retail. I can’t buy a computer retail. I’ve got to find a deal. So I look for a deal with property.

West: And I’m really impressed by the fact that Bob takes that philosophy and it’s part of his mindset, it’s part of what he believes in. One question I would ask you, Bob, is about how you continue to cultivate your mindset and what are some of the characteristics of the successful students that you have, mindset wise, how they’re thinking, how they’re building their knowledge, what kind of philosophies are they taking into their investments?

Bob: Well I think, first of all, most of the people that come on and want to do a project, we only ask them why, what’s their motivation? Because if they don’t have the right motivations, it’s not going to work. And if things get a little bit tough, they’ll give up.

So having an end plan to it, they may become motivated to achieve that end plan. So once the motivation’s there, that’s the driving force behind it. So it makes them a lot more motivated and open to accumulating knowledge that they need. And if there are little bushfires to put out along the way and they’re motivated, they’ve got the end goal in mind, and they’ll deal with it. It will help them deal with it.

So that’s the right sort of mindset: is to go into it for the right reasons and not just for a red Ferrari. That can be a side road. A red Ferrari and a big house—that’s a side road.

A little while ago, I was talking to someone about the characteristics of a good developer, okay, in terms of being able to solve problems, being a reliable thinker. But as I said, you don’t have to have an IQ of beyond 140 or 150; just an average intelligence but a drive to learn and a drive to succeed. That’s a good work ethic. They’re the basis.

West: Absolutely. And I guess, obviously, when you’re looking at working with someone, you need to make sure that those things are in place. Otherwise, they’re going to waste your time and it’s not going to work. And obviously, time is money.

Bob: Yeah, that’s right. You know, if people move on beyond that or go mentor with somebody, they need to have all the basics in place in terms of that initial knowledge through the course or whatever and then that are of motivation because, you know, I wear a few hats. I have a property development business to run and I can only take on a certain number of mentorees, if you like. And it’s a matter of really choosing those who really want to move forward.

West: Absolutely. So on that note, Bob, I want to talk now about your mentoring programs. You actually offer a few things. We’re going to talk a little bit about your upcoming product which I’ve had the pleasure of previewing just a few minutes ago. But your mentoring program, people can actually leverage off your knowledge and have personal contact with you, is that correct?

Bob: At the higher level, yes. It’s all about… you know, this whole education thing of being educated and building knowledge is about investing in yourself and then leveraging off other people’s knowledge. You can knock five or ten years off your learning curve by accumulating the knowledge of…

West: Well, you’ve had 30+ years of experience and people can get straight into that.

Bob: The initial thing that people need is they need to build their knowledge up of what property development is, what it’s all about. Obviously, the more technical aspects, just the processes of how it works and sort of people that you integrate with. I’ve got a little saying to ‘what is property development.’ Well, what it is, it’s about managing people and managing processes.

So we’ve got the procedural part of property development. We’ve got the processes to go through whether it’s the purchase of the site, obtaining of the approval, finance, project management or sales—whatever it is—the processes. You need to know those.

The other thing is managing people on the way through. You’ve got various people to work with…an architect. The good thing is, you know, property development, you actually subcontract the areas of it. It’s a bit like renovating. You can go and renovate a house. You can just get a builder in to do everything or you can go and then start organizing one trade at a time. It’s been like that with development. You get a really good architect and then if you like, organize some of the other consultants on your behalf and you just control it.

But this knowledge base is the initial thing. So that’s what I call my property mastermind property development course—

West: And where can people go to, to actually get into that? Is there a site or…?

Bob: Well, initially, if they go to www.propertymastermind.com.au, that’s my website where you can download the free ebook. I think that’s a good place to start.

West: Absolutely.

Bob: Once they’ve downloaded the free ebook, then they’ll automatically be on my database. Once you’re on there, when I have a launch, I’ll start to send out a few emails. So I like to send out more content.

West: Just like this.

Bob: Like this, yeah.

West: Absolutely.

Bob: Another good, sort of, good content leading on to the course. And then the course will be available for a period of time. People, if they want to, can purchase the course through my website. It’s very easy to do.

West: Now the course itself, Bob, it’s a monster, of course, I’ll be honest. It’s got twenty something CDs, one big manual and a support manual, four DVDs, software program, retails for $400. Tell us about the actual structure of the course, Bob, and how it’s going to help people take that next level from not knowing where to go into having a blueprint to get into property development.

Bob: West, I built it in a sequential order I know that people need to know by now.

West: You were saying before people don’t know what they need to know. You know what they need to know.

Bob: Yeah, I know what they need to know even if they don’t.

So what I’ve built into the Property Mastermind Property Development Course is all the knowledge that they’ll need to take the next step into property development. I keep saying, you don’t have to be brilliant. It’s all sequential. People that have done it just say, “Look, it is really easy to follow. It’s detailed but it’s not difficult to understand.”

It’s built upon lessons, about forty one lessons or forty one chapters of covering everything from beginning to end. And within those lessons, I refer to a support manual which accompanies the lessons. I have a 370 page support manual. It’s all the things like check list and documents and templates of…

West: Exactly the stuff that you use in your business.

Bob: Yeah, but these are copies out of lots of my projects and the things that I use everyday.

West: But you paid probably tens of thousands, if not more…

Bob: I learned the hard way.

West: To develop.

Bob: Exactly. Yup. And that’s in the support manual saying Welcome to an area of lessons and say ‘refer to the feasibility template’ or ‘refer to the due diligence template.’ You go to the support manual and there it is.

So we’ve got the lessons. We’ve got the support manual. And beyond that, I’ve actually recorded this set of 20 CDs which is really the whole of the 41 lessons in audio. So if you like, you can put that on to an mp3 player and play it at the gym, you can play the CDs in the car. Because some people are more audio— they like to hear, they like to read.

West: That’s for sure.

Bob: So one can reinforce the other.

I put in as well a six-hour set of DVDs or live workshop I did with some of our investors. It was a closed door workshop. We go through the whole development process but in looking at different angles that aren’t in the lessons. Lots of Powerpoints. We’ve probably got a hundred Powerpoint slides in there in the set of CDs as well. We go through a whole heap of things: create a finance, the whole due diligence, the process. 6 hour DVD set.

Now beyond that, something new is I’ve done a series of interviews lately with my inner circle of consultants. So it’s me interviewing them. So I’d interview my property accountant, property lawyer, one of my builders, project marketer, commercial finance broker, my interior designer—these sorts of people. So that’s me interviewing them. That’s in a set of 8 CDs.

West: I imagine—I mean—the experience you bring to know what questions to ask. I mean you could put a newbie in front of these guys and they just wouldn’t know what to ask.

Bob: No. That would be a 30-second interview.

So I dragged out all the knowledge out of them. And that’s valuable.

Also, in my lessons, what I plugged in to the back of those is three case studies. So three deals that we’ve done, three projects we’ve done, real offers— a subdivision and two townhouse projects. We’ve absolutely pulled the deals apart, from how we came across the deals, showed due diligence that we did, how we contracted the deals, terms and conditions in the contract, how the deal came together, how we financed them, how we got the approvals, the project management side, how it all came together, the marketing, the sales at the backend on three of those. There’s no substitute for actually going inside real deals and see how that happens.

And also looking at our early bird special, for those who get in an order early, is I’ve done a series called ‘Under the Microscope.’ What I’ve done, these are sites that we’ve looked at that were on the market for sale and we got in and pulled the lease apart until about these are the things to look for in this particular deal. These are the things I liked about the site, the things I didn’t like about the site, problems that could arise…

West: It’s almost as if someone was looking over your shoulder and accessing your brain.

Bob: Yeah, exactly.

And the things that people come back to me often and say, “What’s the hardest thing with getting in your first project?” And people that are looking at getting into their first project say, “…to know a deal when I see one. If I see a site, how do I really know if it’s a deal?” So part of that is the due diligence analysis. And the other part is the pure number crunching. So this is my, if you like, my due diligence analysis of how I look at a deal.

West: Because, I mean, in thirty years you would have pretty much got it down to a fine art. Would it be fair to say?

Bob: It would be, yeah. And all of that—the due diligence stuff—is in the course. So that’s called Under the Microscope. I’ve pulled out five of those that I’ve looked at probably the last six months with full analysis. Probably an early bird special.

Now there’s something else I’ve put in to the course. It has to do with the number crunching. How you number crunch or feasibility analysis, all that’s in the course. We’ve got four chapters just about how to do feasibilities.

But I put a software program in there. Not just a cheap little Excel that somebody has put together. I’ve seen a few of them around and they’re just full of holes. This is a proprietary software package which has been on the market for twenty years. It’s called Feastudy. The deal is called Feastudy Lite. That’s the program. It’s an excellent program. And the recommended retail price is $440. And it’s great value for $440. It’s all you’ll ever need to do to do small development projects. I’ve put it in my course because I really want people to have a professional presentation when they put it before the bank or before a valuer. And also, it really makes the number crunching easy. I mean who wants to work out interest in a deal the long way?

It’s a great program. It’s constantly being redeveloped. Been around for twenty years. I’ve put that in the course.

West: Wow. Fantastic. So it sounds like, Bob, you’ve literally given the entire toolbox that anyone would need to get into property development from point a to point z: everything they’re going to need, the foundations they’re going to set. And we were talking before about information and education being the first step into getting in without getting burnt massively, and there’s literally no better way to get in from someone who’s done it for so long.

I, for one, am excited about the release of this product and I think it’s going to help many, many people avoid the traps and the misconceptions of getting into property development.

So I guess on that note, Bob, is there any parting words you want to say to people watching the interview, a bit of a sage advice or anything you want to impart on leaving?

Bob: On leaving? Uh, other than no matter what endeavor you want to get involved in, get a good ground. Look, it doesn’t matter whether it’s property or outside property, there’s just so much knowledge out there these days. Do the right due diligence but don’t be afraid to invest in yourself. The best asset you have is yourself and invest in that, increase your knowledge. With knowledge comes confidence. And with confidence comes the inner strength to take that step, that first step.

West: Absolutely. Beautiful. And on that note, just really quickly, if they want to get a hold of Bob’s free report, it’s at www.propertymastermind.com.au. I highly recommend reading the free report if you’re looking at getting into property development or even if you’re just looking at learning about the industry or taking another step in the right direction.

You can read more about Bob’s course from the links included in and around this interview. And I hope you’ve got something of value.

Bob Andersen, thank for talking to us. Hopefully, it’s added value to the viewers and I appreciate your time.

Bob: Absolutely! A pleasure, West.

West: Cheers!

Bob: Cheers.

West Interviews Brian Sher

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Brian: Brian Sher

West: Welcome to the call, folks. And today we’re very privileged to have Brian Sher on the line. Brian was born in South Africa and moved to Australia to study a degree in Marketing but he’s since gone on to grow many companies, one of the main ones being Vision Publishing, where he’s got some books—which I actually have in my personal library and I’ve been reading for a long time now and it’s been very, very useful for me. And Brian’s also been recruited as a dynamic and exciting speaker and adviser to many, many top business owners and professionals. So we’re very lucky to have Brian on the call today. And welcome, Brian!

Brian: Well thanks, West. How are you?

West: Very well indeed. I’m excited to speak to you today. Before the call, I was actually just reading through one of your books, How to make Money Out of Thin Air. It’s a fantastic read and I recommend people to go and have a look at it.

So Brian, why don’t you tell us a bit about your journey, how you got into, firstly, running these books, that would be a good start. Yeah, what was the premise behind you being able to reveal some of these secrets?

Brian: A lot of people ask that question. And the truth of the matter is, is that I don’t consider myself to be an author, I don’t consider myself to be a speaker, I don’t consider myself to be a business consultant. I just—like many other people—started life by thinking ‘What am I going to do?’ And having left university, I suddenly realized that working in a job probably wasn’t for me. So I just set out to do the best I could, you know. And what that means is that when you’re faced with the prospect of not getting a job, you have to start looking at the alternatives. And sometimes it was quite scary, quite unsure what to do.

And going into business at a young age, you know, is always a great thing because you start off with a lot of energy, enthusiasm; but the flipside of it is that you’re quite naïve and therefore you do things that you wouldn’t do if you actually had some common sense. And that’s your biggest advantage, really. Because, you know, how many people have you spoken to who have been in business three, four, five years and they say, “You know, if I knew back then what I know now, I probably would never have done it.”? I’m sure you’ve heard that many times. And I was in that boat—it seemed like a good idea to go into business and I was excited about the prospect of doing that and the thrill of doing it. And so off I went.

You know, I started a number of businesses in different areas and I met some great people along the way. And like everybody else, I had to learn and struggle and find the right way versus the wrong way. And there’s many, many wrong ways to do things badly but a few ways to do them correctly and pay the price like everyone else. I just learned things along the way.

You know, one of my early businesses that you mentioned was a company called Vision Publishing where we used to summarize business books. And so I was in a very fortunate position that my product was ‘learning’ and my product was to be the best business books that were being published at the time. So every day, I was taking a lot of great information from some of the best minds around the world and I was applying it to my business. And I found that a lot of the stuff worked. So over a period of time, I built a lot of content, a lot of things that worked for me. Because obviously, every business is different; and some things work better in some businesses and some things work better in others. But I found what worked well for me in a business of my size. And usually small and medium sized businesses operate differently to large corporate businesses. And being in a small-medium sized business, I found that certain things worked. And I wanted to document those. So I thought the best way to do it was to just write them down.

So I never set out to write the book. I just set out to document the things that I found were working for me. And that turned out to be a book that a lot of other people valued and found that something was really good. So that’s the road to becoming an author.

West: Wow. I just noticed on the back of the book here you’ve got a raving testimonial by John McGrath, someone who has followed in your footsteps and written a couple of books of his own. But he’s a very successful real estate agent. And also Simon Reynolds, who’s also a very well respected entrepreneur. So yeah, you definitely had an effect on some of these guy’s careers, Brian.

Brian: Well look, I mean, John McGrath and Simon Reynolds today are friends. I see Simon really and we do quite a lot of work together. And that’s one of the great benefits of achieving a certain level of success, is that you get to meet some really great people. I’m sure you’ve experienced it yourself, West. You find that people of that caliber rub off and you get to really lift yourself to level thinking that you wouldn’t otherwise achieve. So that’s a really good benefit and something which I treasure and value a lot.

West: Absolutely. I want to ask you, Brian, when you were looking at starting your initial businesses as a budding entrepreneur, did you have any really critical self doubts and barriers or obstacles or self talk that a lot of people go through? First, did you have them? And secondly, if you did, how did you break through them?

Brian: Well, you know, I would start this conversation by outlining for you one of the great things about being young and enthusiastic and having the great vision: the fact that you don’t see problems. You know, you just see all opportunity. And it’s only once you’re in business that you suddenly start your own limitations.

So starting out, I never had any doubts, really. I was just enthusiastic and I saw an opportunity and I went for it. I didn’t have to think too hard about it simply because when I looked at all my other options, there weren’t too many. So I just thought, ‘Gee, this is a good opportunity. I liked the idea of it and I’m going to do it.’

It’s only once you’re in business—and I do remember sort of three months after I started Vision Publishing and things weren’t going so well because the thought process that I had and how I was going to grow the business wasn’t working—and it was only at that point that I really had to start the true learning process. Because I thought I knew everything before going into business, but once you get there you realize there are a lot of things that you don’t know. And I went into a bit of depression, self doubt, loss of faith in myself. And I remember sitting in my office thinking, ‘Well, how do I get out of this without looking bad?’ That was my predominating thought. But fortunately, all the money that I had was invested in the business. And that kept me going.

West: So you were committed, basically.

Brian: I was committed. So all those personal development things that you read about—commitment and focus and persistence—those are all the things that are nice to read about but where they really come to play is when you are forced to make some really life changing decisions. Now I remember sitting in the office here in Sydney thinking to myself, ‘I really am going to be a disgrace to myself and to my family. And I’m going to let down my partners,’ ‘coz this thing’s going to fail. And I was in a lot of pain, you know, a lot of emotional pain. And this happens to a lot of people, not only to my self. And it happened to me many times. But because of that experience and having gone through that and succeeded beyond that first experience, I know every time I go to that place of self doubt, I know the way out. And a lot of people don’t know that because they get to a place of self doubt and they never found their way out.

I happen to be in that place of self doubt surely after I started my business, but the pain of it drove me to take greater risks and to try things that I ordinarily wouldn’t have thought. You know, it was a black or red scenario for me. So I decided, ‘Look, I’m just going to do this and see if it works.’ And I tried some things which worked really well. And the business dug itself out of making a loss to making great profits. And the business grew enormously as a result of that whole experience and that pain that I was in.

And I value that today because every time I have that self-doubt, I remember that and I know that that’s a good place to be because the greatest innovation and the greatest breakthroughs that ever happened in your business, in your life are at a time when you are in the most pain.

West: Wow. It sounds almost as if you…like expect to go into that phase whenever you take on a new venture or go through a phase in your business. And when you expect to go into that, you know that there’ll be a way out. And that’s a reassuring thought for anyone going into business.

Brian: Well, that’s a very fair comment that you made. Obviously, the smarter that you get, the more you learn, the less time you spend in that period of pain. The problems just become different. And then you need to learn different things at different times.

And you’re always learning lessons. You always find that there are things that you don’t know that cost you money…but at a different level. Rather than just judging success or failure, there are different things that cost you money that you still think, ‘Well, if I didn’t do that, I would have been far more successful rather than just successful,’ if you know what I’m saying.

West: Mmm. Very powerful. Do you have like a certain sequence of questions that you ask yourself when you’re in that period of pain or period of self doubt and you’re just not sure where to go next? And I completely empathize with that feeling of doubting yourself and not knowing where to go next and not knowing how things are going to pan out. When you’re in that phase, Brian, what’s the process you go through to start clawing your way back on track and staying focused?

Brian: The answer to that question is varied. But the basic process that I go through is I try to look at things in the simplest terms because I also think that once you get to that point, you’re not thinking clearly. You’re at a point where you’re under a lot of stress…

West: Emotional.

Brian: Exactly. Your cortisol levels are very high…in most people. And when you’re at that point, it’s very hard to think clearly. So you’ve got to take yourself back to a place of excitement. You’ve got to take yourself back to that experience of joy, you know, “Oh this is a great thing and this is the reason why I got into it in the first place,’ and get that excitement back. Because once you’ve got that excitement back, then you can start to see clearly again. And at that point where you can start to see clearly again, you can then start to say, “Okay, it’s a matter of just connecting these three dots.” And if you keep it that simple and you understand that business is just a matter of building a good product and selling it and you do that many times and you become successful, then the complexities are taken out of it.

West: Hmm, that’s powerful stuff. So basically you need to get unclouded so you can see clearly the path ahead.

Brian: Well, you need to firstly realize emotionally where you’re at. And the hardest thing to do is to do that. And a lot of people who are suffering in business just can’t see that, you know, the forest with the trees. And that’s the hardest thing. And the hardest thing is to actually get your self out of that.

What I would do if I was in that situation—now I just couldn’t see the forest with the trees—I would spend whatever money I had or I had left or I could afford to get another perspective, whether it’s a friend that you trust your success on business or a business coach or mentor. But not just any business coach or mentor. Because one of the things that I find—certainly for myself—is that people go and get advice from other people that are more messed up than they are. And I can never understand that. That’s like going and asking someone who’s homeless for advice on finances. You’ve got to go to the right people.

West: Exactly. And you probably have to invest in that.

Brian: Exactly. Today I’m very fortunate. For me, I’ve got a circle of friends who are successful. So I can ring them up and say, “Hey, let’s have coffee later (or lunch). I need to bounce some things off you.”

West: But you weren’t always like that.

Brian: But I paid the price.

West: Exactly.

Brian: I paid the price to get those sort of people. And today, fortunately, I can call a few of them friends. So I can get that sort of advice.

But you’ve always got to understand that free advice is never free. Because unless you paid for that advice, you don’t value it. And you should go and try to find the best people that you can that you can afford to help you get through that process.

West: Very true. Now that’s awesome advice, Brian. Thank you for sharing that with us. That’s going to be something I think people should go back and listen to again.

So I wanted to ask Brian now…with the kind of things you do today—you mentioned you don’t classify yourself as an author or a speaker—what kind of activities are you mainly involved in today? I mean, do businesses come and ask you to help them grow their profits? Or do they get you to look over some of their constraints? What are kind of the main things that you do today as Brian Sher?

Brian: For the last eighteen months… I’ve just returned from the US where I grew a business over there for three years prior. And so I’m in the process now of buying into and establishing a number of businesses, new businesses in areas that I’m familiar with, some that I’m not so familiar with. But I’m also on a couple of advisory boards of about seven or eight companies. I do that together with Simon Reynolds. So there are a lot of small and medium size businesses who really don’t have anyone that they can turn to. You know, large corporations have Boards of Directors, whereas small and medium size businesses (SMEs) really don’t have that mentorship that large corporations do.

So I have set up advisory boards that Simon Reynolds and myself work on, where we will become an advisory board for small businesses. Like the board of directors, we will sit with the business once a month and say, “Look, here are the five things that you need to do and here are the eight things that we feel that you’re making a mistake of.” And that’s been very powerful and very effective.

West: It sounds like kind of a mastermind group where businesses that don’t necessarily have access to very large networks can access people who have experience and proven records in the industry.

Brian: Right, right. But we do that on a selective basis. And we find that that’s working really well.

But the main game for me is to always… you know, I’ve been in business for myself. Advising is fine and I do a little bit of that. But to be in business for yourself is ultimately where I think the value lies because the amount of money that you can generate in your own business far exceeds anything you can do by being a consultant or by being an author or any of those sorts of businesses.

And in my book, How to Make Money Out of Thin Air, which you have a copy of, I’ve outlined 20 habits of the world’s most valuable businesses and 41 habits of the world’s most successful business people. And those are the sort of criteria that I try to follow myself personally as well as businesses that I look at and get involved in. Because I think that by having that checklist, it allows me—and that’s the reason I wrote the book; obviously because I like to keep a documentary of my own thought processes—is that if I’m looking at a business or if I’m consulting to business or if I’m helping out in a business, I look and compare that business against the list of the twenty habits of world’s most valuable businesses. Because if you can do that and you can say, well, this business or this potential business should add these components or should have these components, suddenly you can change your business model to be a far more successful business model than you may have started out with in the first place.

West: Absolutely. It’s very powerful to see that list. And it just minimizes your risk, obviously, and it minimizes the businesses’ risks if they can follow those key criteria which have been proven time and time again.

So why don’t you tell me some ingredients that if someone’s looking to build a million dollar business now no matter the economic conditions, what are some of those key ingredients that you look for? Or if someone came to you and was looking to build a million dollar business now in the current economic crisis, what advice would you give them Brian?

Brian: Well, the first thing I pull out is this list of habits of the world’s most valuable businesses and say, “Look, let’s compare your business against these.”

And I’ll run you through a couple because I don’t have enough time to go through all of them.

West: Yes. Give us the key ones.

Brian: Well, the first and obviously the most important is you’ve got to look at what market you’re in. And that sounds obvious. But a lot of people going to business, they’re really not addressing the market potential for what they have.
So for example, someone might come to me and say, “Look, I’m thinking of opening up a news agency.”
And I’ll say, “Well, that’s great! What’s your long term goal? How much money do you want to earn? And what do you want your business to look like in 5 years?”
They might say, “Well, I want to have a business that’s pulling in a million dollars a month,” or whatever their goals are.
And then I look at their business and say, “Well, the market you’re doing doesn’t match your life goals. It doesn’t match your potential.
Because if they’re going to open up a news agency, the market is limited to their neighborhood. In other words, someone who lives in Perth is not going to fly to Sydney to go and buy their news agency. So you’ve got to understand that your market is probably the most important thing. And that’s why the internet is such an exciting breakthrough for many businesses because all of a sudden, the person—such as yourself, West, you’ve got an internet business—you have access to millions, if not, billions of people around the world. And you can operate it from a location in your garage or your home. And that’s why internet is such a fantastic tool.

But if you’re selling widgets, if you’re selling a service or you’re selling consulting services, you can’t distribute that through…

West: It’s limited.

Brian: If you’re a doctor, how do you sell your services to the internet? So you’ve got to look at your market. You’ve got to look at your product first and say, “Well, does this have huge potential?” And if it doesn’t then you’ve got to realize that you’re limited to the amount of customers that you have. And you know, what’s surprising is…

West: Sorry I lost you for a second there, Brian. So you were saying about people not realizing the market potential of their business.

Brian: That’s right. And what’s so surprising is that people going into business or starting a business, they fall in love with their product and they don’t fall in love with their market. So they look at their product and go, “Wow, I really love this new paper that I’ve got! It’s a really different sort of paper.” And then I’m thinking, well, you know, how big is the market for this paper? They’re not really looking at the volume of business that they can generate should they be successful in their marketing.

West: So when you talk to people you basically give them a reality check and say, “Let’s face the facts. Let’s take a look at your market and let’s really figure out what the true potential is. And let’s not kid ourselves.”

Brian: Correct. Yeah. And you’ve got to look at every circumstance and say, “Well, look. Your market is limited.” But where I get excited is about businesses that have unlimited potential. One of my clients, she’s selling courses on how to write, how to become a screenwriter or how to become a scriptwriter. And she was just selling it in Sydney. And I said, “Well, look. If you repackage this and you make it an online course, all of a sudden you can sell this around the world.” You always have the potential to grow the business to a worldwide business. She just didn’t realize it. So that’s a success story.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who try to look at their products and want to sell it on a worldwide basis but just never will and never can because there’s no potential to do that. So that’s the first thing, West.

The second thing is…obviously, I’m a big believer in selling what I call leverage products. And I think you know what that is. A leverage product is something where you’re not necessarily selling time—because time is a limited commodity—so in theory, if you’ve got twenty fours hours a day and you’re prepared to work twenty four hours a day, you’ve still only got twenty four hours a day. Whereas if you make any product that you can sell that’s made by a machine, you can sell as many products of those in as many markets as you potentially can get to. And every time you sell a product you make a profit. So if you can sell a thousand products an hour, you can make $1 profit out of every one of those products, you’re making $1,000 an hour and you don’t have to be there.

West: Exactly. That’s powerful. And I think not a lot of people really maximize that concept even though they’re able to. So I guess that’s where you come in as well, as kind of a coach and a mentor to some of these people that come and approach you, to help them realize that potential.

Brian: Sure. If that’s what their goals are, of course. And then one of the other habits that I’m really big on is if you’re going to make a sale, you should have some sort of residual income. And I know you guys are big believers in that and it’s become a lot more popular now with a lot of online…

West: Yes, we call it a backend in the internet marketing world where we continually upsell or we try and get more out of them. But you’ve probably been advocating this type of business model well before it became popularized in the internet world.

Brian: Right. I mean, the online businesses have really picked up on that and it’s become really popular. And there are a lot of guys now talking about what they call continuity programs. And then there’s new lingo out called forced continuity and volume continuity and white continuity and black continuity. There’s a lot of lingo and jargon that’s developed around this but the bottom line to keep it simple is, you know, the most valuable businesses where if you look at them, they sign you up with a customer and you end up using them every month. Look at companies like banks, credit card companies. You get a credit card every single month and you use that credit card. They don’t have to market to you every month. You buy now and you keep the credit card for ten, twenty years. That’s why credit card companies are very, very successful.

You look at some companies, they sign you up—these days, everybody realizes you get a mobile phone for free because they’re not interested in selling you the phone, they’re interested in your mobile phone bill every single month. Those are the sort of business models that you need to look at and say, “Well, how do I take my business from a one time sale into a continuity sale?”

West: Definitely. And I’m sure there have been many instances where people have come up to you and said, “Brian, I don’t think I can create an ongoing, continuous income,” but then you’ve been able to show them how to do that based on those principles.

Brian: Well, sometimes you’ve got be creative. And sometimes it’s easier than others. And sometimes it’s more obvious than others. And sometimes there’s just no opportunity at all, in which case, you need to adjust your business model.

West: Yup. Powerful stuff.

Now tell us about the power of the Price Earnings Ratio, Brian, because I know that you’ve mentioned that to me in the past and how most businesses don’t even take that into consideration. So give us—for those of us who don’t understand what it is—just a quick explanation what it is. And then tell us how, as business owners, maximize our P/E Ratio.

Brian: I love this topic because this is the real business end of getting rich. And when people talk about getting rich and going into business, there are so many people in businesses today that have a business that effectively is nothing more than a job for themselves. And while they’re self employed, they really don’t have much value in their business because they don’t understand the P/E Ratio and they don’t understand what that means and they don’t understand how powerful that is. And they don’t understand the fact that if you employed these 20 habits that I keep talking about—of the world’s most valuable businesses—your P/E ratio skyrockets. And if you can skyrocket your P/E, you’ll skyrocket your wealth.

So let me just answer your question as to what the P/E ratio is. The P/E Ratio is basically a price earnings ratio. And what that means is that your business is valued being the price relative to its earnings. And the ratio is just the proportion between what you’re earning and what the value of your business is. Let’s take around numbers as an example. If you’re making $100,000 profit or you’re making a million dollars profit, what is your business worth? Now you can be making a million dollars profit and your business is not worth anything. Why? Because for your business to be worth anything, it’s like the real estate market, for the business to be worth anything, there has to be someone who’s willing to pay that price.

West: Exactly.

Brian: So for example… let’s use real estate as an example. If you have a house—and it’s a beautiful house—but that house is built on a toxic waste dump, even if it’s got harbor views, I don’t think you’re going to find anybody that’s going to give you anything for that house.

West: Yup. True.

Brian: But that house is undervalued to you if you’re prepared to live in it. It’s the same thing with the business. If your business is not structured properly and it’s dependent on you as an individual and it doesn’t have leveraged products and even if it’s making a million dollars profit, and it doesn’t have these twenty habits of the world’s most valuable businesses built in, your price earnings ratio is going to be almost zero.

And people who sell their time, who are consultants or doctors, lawyers, those sort of businesses really don’t have a lot of value and their price earnings ratio is very, very small.

On the other hand, you’ll find other businesses that are well systemized—again, which is one of the twenty habits—they have residual income, they sell leverage products, they create powerful brands, they’re not dependent on any one person, they’re usually the market leader, they attract the best and brightest people, they have few real competitors because they’ve differentiated themselves, they have high margins on their products, they don’t have a lot of real competition because they’ve differentiated themselves properly. And what they’ve also done is they’ve built an exit strategy from day one. Now, if you do all that, all of a sudden your price earnings ratio starts to skyrocket.

And the value of earning a dollar is different in two businesses. So if I was going to start a business, I’d be wanting to start a business or grow a business that has the potential for a really high price earnings ratio. And the reason for that is because if I’m going to build a million dollars worth of profit into a business and it’s going to take me five years to do that, what I want to do is make sure that when I sell that business like I would want to sell a house, I want to sell it for the highest value that I could. And to get a high price earnings ratio is the way to do that.

So if I was going to build a million dollars profit, I would rather try to sell my business for $10 million at a P/E of 10 than at a P/E of 1, which means I’m only going to get a million dollars for my million dollar profit. And if you try and sell your business at a P/E of 1, there’s almost no reason to sell it because why would you sell a business that you can earn a million dollars out of anyway? So there’s no point and no one will want to sell a P/E of 1. So every dollar that I’m going to earn over the next five years, I want to make sure that not only am I earning a million bucks but I’m earning a million times 10 (million X 10). Because I’m earning $1 million every year but at the end of that period, whether it be three years or five years, I’m then going to sell that $1 million for $10 million or I’m going to sell it for $5 million or I’m going to sell it for $20 million.

And that’s a really incredible thought process that very few people talk about when they start growing their business. Because if you can build a business with a high P/E ratio and you can build all these twenty habits in, you become instantly rich.

West: And it’s a completely different way of thinking from how most people approach business and business foundations, isn’t it?

Brian: The words are: “Start with the end in mind.” And that’s one of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

West: Yes. Stephen Covey.

Brian: You know, millions of people have read that book but if people take those principles and apply it to themselves on a daily basis, they can make a huge difference to their lives.

So when I think about business or I try to help people, advise them, I try to think of it in those terms and I try to drum those concepts into their head because if you’re going into business, there is no point in—unless you’re doing it as a hobby—but the point of going into business is to make a lot of money and to give yourself a lifestyle that you will enjoy, appreciate and you can maximize and you can value. But the best way to do that is to earn the most amount that you can in the shortest period of time. So I would rather have a business where it’s producing half a million dollars a year and has a P/E of 5 than a business that’s producing a million dollars a year and has a P/E of 0. Does that make sense to you?

West: Yes. Absolutely. Different mindset from what the masses are thinking out there. So I’m curious, Brian, with regards to online businesses…is it more difficult to determine the P/E ratio if the business is primarily online? Because I noticed you’re talking a lot also, obviously about offline businesses with staff and systemization and all that sort of stuff. I’m sure a lot of the principles will also apply for online businesses.

Brian: They absolutely do. The great advantage that online businesses have is that immediately a lot of those habits are already built-in. I mean, if you’ve got an online business, the first thing you have is you have a huge audience, you have a huge market that you can access to. Obviously if you’re selling left hand knitting business or something that’s really a niche market, you might find that you’ve got a decent size business because you’re able to sell around the world, which wouldn’t succeed if you were just in Australia. However, it’s still a relatively small niche market. But if you’re able to attract a larger niche market around the world, then it’s automatically built in. So that’s the first thing.

Online businesses don’t automatically have high margins. They don’t automatically have residual income. They don’t automatically have real competitors. So you still need to address a lot of those principles with online businesses. You still need to have an investor entry and exit strategy if you want to grow the business. You still need to keep innovating. Those are all the things that online businesses still need to do which apply to online or offline businesses. But, you know, online businesses have some advantages…just intrinsically.

West: Absolutely. I can’t speak highly enough of online businesses. I completely agree. I love having that worldwide audience being able to purchase from me while I’m out playing golf and while I’m sleeping. So that’s an advantage that I enjoy as well.

So is it an exact science, Brian, calculating the P/E ratio? I mean, can someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience or doesn’t have an MBA or an Accounting degree…are they able to pull from these factors you mentioned and get an idea of their own P/E ratio or do they need to follow some strict guidelines in order to look at how their business is currently standing if they have one?

Brian: Look, the P/E ratio, the market determines that; you don’t determine it. what I’m suggesting is that if you have these 20 habits built in to your business or as many of them as you can built in to your business, then your P/E ratio will be higher than if you don’t have them built in. Now what does that mean? I mean, what does higher mean relative to your own particular business? If you go to the Financial Review and you look at a lot of the public companies that are listed there, they will have a column next to their daily price quotes which determine their price earnings ratio. Now the price earnings ratio is simply the value that the market puts on the company based on the current earnings. So for example, if the company is doing a $10 million profit as a public company and the company is valued or the company share price is, say, $10, then how do you determine whether what the price earnings ratio is? Well, you have to look at hoe many shares are issued.

So let’s keep this really simple. To determine your own price earnings ratio, firstly, it’s only a calculation that you do yourself, it’s the value of your business that someone will pay when they buy your business relative to your earnings. So if you’re doing a $1 million turnover and you can sell your business for $10 million, then your P/E is 10.

Now most small-medium size businesses, if they’re private, will be valued somewhere between 3 and 6. That’s a rule of thumb. In other words, someone will come along and depending on how many habits you’ve got built in to your business… By the way, when I say 3, that’s a business that already has systems or already has products developed; it’s not a service business that depends on a doctor or a lawyer because that’s virtually worth nothing. But I’m talking about a business that already has a profit, it already has systems built in, it has a customer base, it’s got a track record, it’s been going for a number of years. You’ll typically get between… today, maybe a little less because the whole market’s depressed and the recession; if you were to sell your business, maybe 2 ½ to 6 as a private company.

But the idea is that if you are able to go in the right industry and you’re able to build your business where you have built in your exit strategy from day one, you may find that there’s a public company out there that has a price earnings ratio of 28 or 30. And by approaching that company and saying, “Look, would you like to buy my business?” they may offer you a price earnings ratio of 10 or 12 because they’re buying you at a multiple of 12; but for them, the value is 28. Does that make sense to you?

West: It does.

Brian: So they’re buying your business at, say, $12 million. At a million dollars profit, they may give you a check for $12 million bucks and they’re going to take your million dollars profit. But that million dollars profit is worth $28 million to them because that sort of capitalizes their business at.

So if you understand that principle and you understand that by thinking about your exit strategy from day one and always identifying a company that has a very high P/E ratio relative to yours and making them the target of your business, then you effectively could have an extraordinary result from a very small amount of effort.

West: And that’s the goal of business, isn’t it, Brian?

Brian: Well, yeah. It is a goal and certainly, you know, if I was getting up in the morning and saying, “Look, I’m going to start a business and I’m going to work really hard for the next five years,” I would rather walk away with a check for $12 million than a check for $2 million, wouldn’t you?

West: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So if people are looking at getting into business or selecting a business to go into—obviously we’ve talked a lot about the P/E ratio and the factors that go into that—are there any other factors that you look at apart from those key pillars? You know, maybe in terms of personality, whether it fits or lifestyle. Or are they the main things that you advise people to look at?

Brian: Well, look. I’ll jump to the other list that I spoke about, the 41 habits of the world’s most successful people. Because I think if you’re not passionate about your business—in other words, if I’m looking at somebody and they’re asking me for advice and I’m talking to them about their business, they may just don’t have the burning desire to succeed, which is, I think, the very first habit that you need to have and you don’t have the energy and you don’t have that passion about your business, then it doesn’t matter how good the idea is, I just don’t think you’re going to succeed.

West: Absolutely. And I strongly recommend everyone…is your book still for sale on shelves, Brian? Is it still out there in the market or can I buy it through your site or…?

Brian: The What Rich People Know, I think you can get on Amazon. You can order that on Amazon. And the How to Make Money Out of Thin Air, I think you can order that through Penguin. I don’t know which bookshops have them or still have them. But Penguin Books has it. I’m sure they can order it through those two sources if they really want to get it.

I think that it’s a great list to have. And it’s a great checklist.

West: It is. Absolutely.

Brian: I go and explain each one. And by the way, we started this conversation by saying that these things work in recessions or no recessions. It doesn’t really matter. It works equally and powerfully for you in a recession. In fact, I personally think the recession is really a good time to start a new business.

West: Because things aren’t as expensive. People don’t tend to chuck their prices up so your starting prices might be a bit lower or…

Brian: Well, yeah. You can get reasonable office space. You can get good stuff, you can buy desks and fans and whatever you need at discount prices. I mean what a great place to start.

West: Definitely. Definitely. Cool. Well that’s been a really good content packed call, Brian. I want to thank you for your time.

Actually, I want to ask you one more question before we sign off today. It’s actually about your books. I’ve been doing some courses recently that have all recommended having a book. And I was wondering for you, has it made a significant difference in your credibility, your ability to interact with people in gaining trust and building relationships? And would you strongly recommend that everyone has one?

Brian: Well, look. That’s a really interesting question. I believe that books should be strategic. And just writing a book can damage you as well if the book’s no good. I mean, I’ve seen some excellent books out there obviously. But if you’re going to put a book together, my advice is this: make sure that you’ve got some really good things to say that other people will value. There’s nothing wrong with documenting. That’s what I did. I just documented my thought processes and I think that everybody should do that. But the value of your book—if it’s not well researched and it’s not well written and it’s not professionally put together, it can do a lot of damage to you.

So don’t just think by going out there and writing a book, it’s automatically going to serve your purpose. Because one thing that I learned is that there are probably more people that I know that have written books than people who haven’t. And that’s probably because of the circles I sort of hang around in. But the bookshops are full of books and it’s very hard to know what’s good and bad. But writing a book is a really good thing to do to document your thought process. And I suggest that everyone at least start that process and see where it takes you. You’ll never know…you might be the next New York Times bestseller.

West: It sounds like it was almost a journal of yours that you decided to share with the world.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. I must say I started this interview, again, by saying I’m not an author and I don’t consider myself one. I write that stuff down because I thought, ‘Look, I want to keep this fresh in my mind and I want to document it.’ And certainly, if someone wants to know how to do things the way I do it, well, they can just read it. It’s certainly up to them.

And I’ve been fortunate that the book’s been successful. I think it’s in twenty countries now, in different languages. It’s very nice to see that happen but that’s not the ultimate goal. The goal is just to go out there and do the best you can and learn as much as you can from everybody and certainly, you can learn from someone, a person sitting next to you in the bus. You can. And you’ve just got to keep your eyes open and learn from everyone and everything around you. Use what you want; throw away the things that you don’t and I’m sure you’ll be successful.

West: Sure. For sure. So if people want to find out more about you, Brian, where do they need to go if they want to…do you have like a coaching program or a website that people can sign up for a list? Do you offer anything to the public that people can benefit from your knowledge, besides your books?

Brian: I’m doing some sort of advisory on a selective basis. If they want to get in contact with me, they can just go to my website which http://briansher.com.au/work-with-brian.html. Or just email me at briansher@bigpond.com and let me know what they’re thinking or what they’re interested in and we’ll go from there.

West: Great. Beautiful. Well thanks for your time, Brian. I really, really appreciate your knowledge and wisdom you’ve imparted on us today.

Brian: You’re very welcome. And thanks for the opportunity.

West Interviews Nick Cownie

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Nick: Nick Cownie

West: Nick Cownie is the CEO of Success Dynamics Institute. And I met Nick, I believe, on the Gold Coast actually, at a seminar. And we got talking. And nick’s doing some really good things with regard to human performance and maximizing human potential. And he runs many workshops. And I thought that we could definitely add some value from Nick’s experiences. So Nick, welcome to the call.

Nick: Thanks, West. Great to be here.

West: And I’d like to start, Nick, with why don’t you tell us a little bit about your company and what your company focuses on doing in terms of helping people with their mindset.

Nick: Absolutely. So my company’s called Success Dynamics Institute. And I started it in 2006 with my brother Andrew at the time. We’ve both done quite a lot of training in different areas. My background is as a Chinese medicine practitioner; I’m actually an acupuncturist by trade. And I ended up through some interesting circumstances getting interested in how people’s minds work and how they can learn to run their mind better to get the results that they’re after in their life, and formal studies in that area. My brother went off and did the exact same courses that I did and we thought it made only sense to team up and start a company together and take that message out to the world.

West: Interesting. The major clients that you deal with, Nick, are they people from all walks of life, all professions, all socio-economic levels in terms of your client range?

Nick: Our clients come from a few different target markets. We did quite a detailed market analysis when we first started the company to find out the kinds of people that are most interested in this kind of training instead of going ‘this is what we’ve got, who can we sell it to,’ we went about it another way after I spent some time with Andrew Grant at a seminar and he talked about setting up survey sites just to find out what your market wants. And I thought if we can do that on the internet why not just do that in the real worked. And I actually interviewed about two hundred and thirty-ish people and found that the people are interested in our training tend to fit into three quite broad categories:

Those people interested in business communication influenced sales type skills;

People who want the things that we offer just for personal development because we have quite a lot of training around wiping out limiting emotions that keep you stuck and repeat over and over again, patterns that keep coming up for people, habits that they don’t want anymore, all that kind of stuff, and really advanced goal setting procedures;

And the third group would be people who either currently are a practitioner or a therapist or coach in some capacity and they’re interested in up skilling or increasing their qualifications.

So we’ve got three clearly defined target markets. And we market specifically to each of those three and they tell it to different socio economic groups. So sometimes—depending on the program that we’re running—we’ll get people who are paying $10,000 a head, another time they’ll be paying $500-$1,000 per person. So it really depends on what we’re offering at the time.

West: Wow. That’s impressive, Nick, in the sense that you have three clearly defined target markets. I mean most businesses kind of try to catch everyone and try to cater a little bit to a lot of different markets. So I think that’s a lesson in itself for the people in the call.

But let’s talk about some specific areas that you’re an expert in. I mean, what are the biggest issues and problems that you encounter when it comes to people’s mindset and the limiting beliefs that they have on success?

Nick: That’s a really interesting question. I’d say that probably the main things—when it comes to people’s mindset—is first of all, they don’t believe that what’s possible for other people is possible for them. And that’s just not true. We’re all born with the same nervous system, two arms, two legs, two eyes and nose. The only real difference between the results that someone produces and the results that you produce is what goes on inside your head. So that’s the first area.

The second thing, I’d say, is that people allow their past to be a reason why they can’t achieve what they want in the future. So everything’s that come up until this point in your life—it may be fantastic, it may be terrible—but it doesn’t necessarily equal what you’re capable of in the future.

And those are the two main things that I’d say if people could shift those two, they’d have much greater chance of succeeding in their life.

West: That’s powerful. So Nick, I know that you approach clients on a personal level too, am I correct?

Nick: Yeah, that’s right. Yup.

West: And in these calls I like to obviously get as much information from you as possible… so if someone comes to you and wants your help, are they the first two things that you would try to address with them? I mean if I came to you as a client right now and I said, “Nick, you need to help me out. I’m stuck in these areas.” Will you sit down with me and try to address those issues?

Nick: First, what I’d do is I’d really want to get a very clear understanding of where you’re at now, exactly where you’re at now with no what I call hiding behind the mask. Because often, the first time I see someone, they actually want me to think that everything’s okay—unless they’re really at rock bottom or they’re really ready for change. So I want to know exactly where the person’s at now…

West: No sugar coating; without the fluff.

Nick: No sugar coating, that’s right. It’s really important. Because until you know where you are, you can’t accurately assess how far you’ve got to go to reach your goals. So that’s the first thing: find out where they are. Don’t spend too much time focusing on what’s actually contributed to getting them there because often that’s just a story that the person tells themselves to stay stuck.

The next thing that we’d want to know is where is it that they want to go. So what’s the outcome that this person wants for themselves and what’s holding them back? What is it that they need that they don’t have that, are there resources—people, time, money, particular skill sets—that they think they need or they’re not aware of that they need that are going to help them get where they want to go?

And a final and really important thing in that first kind of face to face contact with someone that we need to know is what are they getting out of being stuck where they are? We call that secondary gain. That’s, in any problem or any situation that someone’s not happy with, if they aren’t changing that on some level, they’re getting some kind of positive benefit for themselves by staying stuck. And if I can identify that, that’s where we’re going to get the most leverage to get them to their goals faster.

West: That’s an awesome process, Nick. How long does that initial process take usually for a client?

Nick: That takes usually between 1 and 2 hours to get all of that information. So once we’ve got all that information, we just then design a plan to actually start chipping away through all those things. And it’s usually very quick.

West: So it’s not a matter of you just asking them those questions and them just giving you the answer. Do you continue to facilitate? Do you continue to prod and poke and really massage them to give you the information that you really need? Or do find most people, when you ask them what’s their secondary gain, they just tell you?

Nick: Uh, I don’t think anyone’s ever been able to answer that straight out. It will be great if they did. It will make my life easier.

West: So how do you go about enticing that out of them?

Nick: It comes down to really skillful questioning. So there’s questioning techniques that we use that help the person access this information. Because what’s really important to realize is most of the time, they don’t consciously know what this is. They don’t know what the secondary gain is. They don’t know the reason they’re holding on to their problems. So we use questioning techniques that are going to allow them to access their unconscious part of their mind—or some people call it subconscious—and bring up that information so that it becomes apparent to them. And often, that’s a big eye opener in itself.

West: Can you give us some examples of some of the questions you might ask, Nick, because I know some out there are going to want to try and really suss out some of the stuff that’s holding them back and what gains they’re getting. So they can’t get it out on the first go, what else can they ask themselves or what kind of things can they do to really get to the core of it?

Nick: Yup. I’m more than happy to get into that.

First of all, we just take a step back. We operate on the assumption that every behavior has a positive intention either for your self or someone else. So even these potentially negative behaviors or ways of thinking—at the deepest level, way down inside—they do have a positive intention. And that’s what we try and uncover. So a lot of the time, we could ask the person ‘why do you do that,’ but then they just turn back to looking at the problem. Usually when you ask someone ‘why,’ they really get stuck in going back over their reasons and excuses and who they’re going to blame and point their finger at. So instead, we phrase the question: ‘What’s the highest positive intention of this (insert behavior here)?’ So it could be someone who’s a compulsive spender when they’re trying to save their deposit for their first home. And so: ‘What’s the highest positive intention for your self of spending that money when you tell yourself that you want to save it?’ And most of the time that we ask that one sentence, it doesn’t get deep enough because you need to ask three or four times to get past these conscious responses that they’ve—it’s the sugar coating again—they’re sugar-coated, so that it’s more acceptable to themselves. After we ask a few times ‘what’s the purpose, what does that get for you, what does that allow you to do or be or have,’ these are the kind of questions that really start to go to a more abstract level. And this is where the answer starts to come from the person’s unconscious.

West: Now that’s awesome. And I guess over time, the answer will eventually come out. And as you were saying before, that’s why it’s a lengthy process.

Nick: Yeah, that’s right. I mean just one of these points—like the secondary gain and the questions we’re talking about here—you can spend probably half an hour on that to really reach the point where the answer is going to shift it for the person. And if you stop—perhaps after twenty minutes—it’s still going to have an effect but you haven’t reached that leverage point that’s really going to tip the scale.

West: It sounds like it’s really crucial. And the other thing I wanted to mention is many people over time have possibly suppressed these reasons so they’re not able to immediately verbalize them when you ask them.

Nick: Definitely. That’s a big, big problem. I mean that’s one of the main reasons why people stay stuck is you’re fully aware that it’s all the unconscious programming and the suppressed emotions and experiences from their past.

West: Definitely. So Nick, once you’ve got all the information you need from them as a preliminary stage, then what kind of things do you do with them after that?

Nick: So once we’ve got the information, we turn our attention to what was it that this person said they wanted and how are we going to get them from where they are to their goals in the shortest, possible time with the minimum intervention. So we have the person asses—what do you think it’s going to be, what’s the biggest thing for you that if you were to shift that, would allow other things to begin to shift on their own. And perhaps we only need to focus on the top two or three things. And shifting these, we use techniques such as conversational hypnosis, neuro linguistics and a range of other processes. Some of them is just questioning, other times we have the person lie down and close their eyes and we use some guided processes where we talk them through specific techniques to get resolution on whatever the problem is and then turn their attention back to what they do want once we’ve wiped out those unconscious problems.

West: Wow. So you’ve got a whole gamut of tools that you can pick and choose from, depending on what you’re trying to get the client to do?

Nick: Yeah, definitely. I used to describe it as a toolbox. But now I think it’s more closely related to, say, a Bunnings Warehouse.

West: That’s pretty significant. So would it be fair to say that someone who knows or maybe have heard some of these techniques, might be able to work through some of the stuff on their own, basically if they the general fundamentals or do they really need to work with somebody—obviously the preferable option to work with someone like your self who is fully aware of how this psychological processes work—as opposed to on their own?

Nick: You’re going to get a different class of results either way. So if you work with someone like me, generally it’s faster. I’m very experienced and I train people in how to do this. So you work with me, we find out exactly what the problem is and there’s no sugar coating it from yourself. That’s the main problem with trying to do this on your own…is that, often, it’s harder to get past your own sugar coating as you’ve termed it. It’s more difficult to put that aside. It’s not impossible. Many people do it. Now, I do that with myself all the time. I very rarely actually see someone else to work on my stuff if and when it comes up.

But my preferred option would be see someone for a short, sharp burst when you need it. And get the problems sorted out. And then move on to the next thing. You can learn these techniques and use them on your own. But I see that more as a follow up support for your self.

West: Okay. Very interesting. That’s actually a really good alternative and a good solution for people who are looking to gain that balance. Because obviously, a lot of our listeners on the call are people who desire to improve themselves and are always learning and are always consuming information. I think, to be able to get that good balance of information that you take in and from an expert such as your self, is always the best way to go.

Similarly, I used to personally train people. And it’s good to do it on your own but you’re going to get much better results in a lot quicker time when you’re working with a professional.

Nick: I think of it like pushing a car up a hill, you know. If there’s one person pushing the car, you might get there. If there are two people, you’re going to get there twice as fast.

West: Definitely. Great analogy. With regards to some of the modeling you were mentioning before… I’m a big fan myself of finding people who are doing what you want to do and essentially copying them, is that how you use the term modeling or…?

Nick: That’s pretty accurate, yeah. The way we use modeling is it goes a step beyond just copying people. So you can look at someone, copy what they do, check out their strategies and their approach. What I do goes a step further in terms of if you find someone who’s really producing excellent results in any area—the area that you want to really excel in—the thing that I mentioned before that separates them and their ability to produce those results and us and perhaps not getting there yet is only what’s going on in their minds. So we go straight to creating a model of what they’re doing in their own conscious mind. And we do that through various means: we examine their beliefs, their values, a range of what we call metaprograms which are the unconscious programs sitting above the ordinary programs that we normally think of, and other things like how they actually use their body physically. We put all of that together in quite a specific format that is actually designed by my brother and myself and then we’ve got a reproducible model that we can directly and hypnotically install into someone else’s subconscious mind to allow them to produce the same class of results in a fraction of the time it took the expert to do it originally.

West: Wow. So you essentially bottled the essence of all these successful people and created a model where you can essentially transfer it to someone so they can soak up the best bits.

Nick: Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly it. We’ve got the process.

West: So when you talk about modeling and someone comes to you and asks about, “How can I be successful? How can I model what someone else who I really respect has done,” you’ll essentially just tell them about that process rather than getting them to go through all the hard yards themselves and getting them to study it all themselves and try and copy things bit by bit.

Nick: Yeah, that’s spot on. There’s only really two ways to learn. And one is you learn by trial and error. Or the other way is you learn by other people’s experience. And this takes the other people’s experience school of learning and just accelerates the process.

West: I’m interested to hear more about how you actually go about installing that into someone’s—is it subconscious that you install it into?

Nick: Yeah, that’s right. We go straight into the subconscious mind. There are quite a few techniques that we use.

First of all, we can do that through conversational hypnosis. So we’ll guide the person into a trance, and through suggestion, help them shift their beliefs. We have a range of processes where we can teach the person—this is often more useful because this is something they can do afterwards when and they don’t need it, I hope—we teach the person how to identify their own beliefs and values and programming; and through particular processes, how to take their belief out and install the new belief, which perhaps come from the person they’ve modeled. It’s very similar to reordering your files in a filing cabinet, you know. If you’ve got a drawer that says ‘Great with money beliefs’ and another drawer that says ‘Terrible with money beliefs,’ you take the belief out of Richard Branson’s ‘great with money beliefs’ and put that into yours and take your beliefs from the ‘terrible with money’ drawer and stick those in the bin because their probably not doing you too much benefit.

West: Wouldn’t it be easier to take the money out of Richard Branson’s account and put it into yours? I’m kidding. Carry on.

Nick: [Laughs] If you find out how to do that, let me know.

West: Carry on. That’s really interesting, Nick.

Nick: So once we’ve told the person how to elicit their own values and beliefs in their unconscious programming—it’s really a matter of learning the really simple processes that teach you how to shift those things. And we also have processes where we look at the—we call it a strategy; it’s the order or the sequence of thoughts that someone goes through to produce a specific result. And often, we can tell exactly what that is by the words they use when they describe the process and where their eyes move, because your eyes move to different areas. For example, if you look up into your right, you tend to be accessing visually constructed images. Or, in other words, you’re making up pictures in your mind; whereas if your eyes move up into your left, with most people, then you are remembering visual images, so accessing visual memories.

So depending on the order and sequence that people do these things, we can find out what that sequence is—we call that a strategy—and then install that into someone else’s mind with a really simple process as well. When they’re faced with a similar situation, they’re going to go through the same thought process as a successful person.

West: That’s powerful. So you’re basically taking a lot of their nuances and little things that are not necessarily openly and widely noticeable, but you guys notice them because you’re so finely tuned into how the body and the mind works, then you can use that to their advantage in helping them.

Nick: Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly correct.

West: That’s good for me, to just summarize some of what you’re saying, Nick, even for my own comprehension just to make sure. Because obviously, a lot of what you’re saying is really good stuff and can be quite deep at times. It’s good that you’re able to do this as a service to someone rather than letting them do it on their own.

I’d like to talk about emotional mastery and how control of your emotions really dictates your quality of life. So in your experience of emotional mastery, Nick, what are kind of the major reasons that people come to you? Do they come to you to master their emotions to get out of certain states or to control certain states? Where do you fit in, in that spectrum?

Nick: That’s a great question, West. Where I fit in is… first, I don’t know about the idea of controlling emotions. I think that most people try to control their emotions and it’s really a losing battle. When they come to me and they say that they want things like control, in very subtle ways we guide them to realize that control is actually an illusion and they’re better off—I think it was Stephen Covey who said there’s only three constants in life. And that’s: change, choice and principles—so we like to get the person to the point where they realize change is inevitable, they can’t actually control anything, but they do have a choice as to how they respond. And we get them responding rather than reacting. Because when you’re in an emotional reaction, I consider that as no different than a little child’s toy where you press the button to turn it on and press the button to turn it off. So when they’re in that way of being, really, other people are just pressing their buttons and saying, okay, here’s the angry button. You press the button, the person falls off the handle. It’s not a very useful way of being. So we find those buttons, and if you like, snip the cords so that when the button’s pressed, they don’t go into that predictable response. They have a choice as to how they’re going to respond instead of being just a stimulus response robot.

West: Wow. It’s a great analogy. So essentially, you allow people to not necessarily choose their reaction, choose their emotion to a certain stimulus, but you allow people to not react to a certain stimulus.

Nick: We actually do both. See, if the emotional response is coming and it’s not their choice, chances are that it’s just been conditioned into them over a period of time or perhaps even in one really strong emotional event. And it doesn’t have to be that way. So what we do is we find out where and how that was created. And we don’t even need the actual content of that if the person can’t remember. If they can, it’s great; if they can’t, it doesn’t make a difference. We find out as much as we can about that. And through a really simple process, we disconnect the connection that was made at that time.

And we can use the same process that set up the problem for them. We can use to create the solution. Because you can get someone into a very intense, emotional state that they choose to be in such as feeling abundance or peace, calm, happiness, in the flow, anything that they can describe, as long as they can put a name to it, we can get them into that state, pump it right up and then set what we call an anchor or a trigger so that any time they want to be in that emotional state, it’s a simple matter of pressing their own buttons to go into the resourceful state that they prefer to be in.

West: That’s awesome. I was just talking to a friend today, Nick, about that very process, about anchoring. And it is very, very powerful if done correctly.

So you basically teach people how to get themselves into a peak state in whatever emotion that they would like, and then obviously help them create that anchor. It’s very difficult to do on your own, would you agree?

Nick: It’s difficult if you haven’t ever done it before. Once you’ve gone through the process once, maybe twice, for someone who’s guided you through it and shown you how it works, so you can hear all about it and experience it for yourself, it’s something that you can do any time you like and anywhere at all. When I guide clients or students through this, after we’ve shown them how to do it once, about ninety percent of them can reproduce that process for themselves any time that they like.

West: Great. One of the things I found—and you said before—that you want to ramp up the emotion. Do you ever find that people are hesitant to play full out initially?

Nick: Yeah, sometimes they are. The main time that I come across that—not so much in one on one sessions—but If I’m teaching a group of say a hundred people and we’re getting them all into that state, there’s going to be a few sharp people in the crowd who are uncomfortable or feel that they’re going to be judged or perhaps their emotional state that they want to go into is one that they’re not comfortable with in public group settings.

West: Interesting. And that’s great because I had a similar experience about where I was in a Tony Robbins seminar and there was five thousand of us trying to get into a peak state. And obviously with Tony—if any of you heard of him, he’s really an awesome advocate of what Nick’s talking about—but the audio and visuals, the music, everything in the entire stadium was geared towards up when you reach the emotions that he wanted you to get into. So it’s very powerful if done correctly.

Nick: That sounds fantastic.

West: And I can say that the anchors that I created is still far off very well to this day, some of the powerful emotions that I wanted to associate with.

Just as a continuance, Nick, how do people let their emotions sabotage their financial business and relationship success? Is that something that you deal with, with clients?

Nick: I do. Definitely. Yes. Really, it all happens in the same way. So the only time emotions are ever a problem for someone is if they repress it. As long as they’re expressing that emotion and it’s not excessive or unnatural or causing problems for them, then it’s fine to express the emotion. But we’ve been told over and over again in society that there are certain emotions that are okay to feel and there are certain emotions that re not okay to feel or express or show in public. And what happens is people push these down inside themselves and it never actually gets to get out so it finds somewhere inside you that it can get expression enough and that’s through creating some kind of physical problem or it might manifest as always being argumentative. In business, perhaps it could be fear causing someone to procrastinate and not make the necessary decisions. In terms of finance, often it comes back to fear again, people not prepared to take calculated risks in terms of investments or make the right moves when everything points at the timing being right, there’s just something inside that won’t let them take the next step. So that’s a few ways in which what you’re talking about, really affects people.

West: Yeah. And I mean there are obviously some telltale signs and symptoms that you must look for in order to tell that that’s happening to a person. And I’m sure you have a list of those. Would that be fair to say?

Nick: It’s not so much a list. It’s more how the person is interacting with other people and how they talk to people, how they use their body. So we look at their body language. We ask them questions about the emotional states that they feel most of the time, the kind of language that they use with themselves as well, their internal self talk. And obviously this comes down to whether or not people are happy to tell us this kind of stuff. I’m sure you’ve met people who use the words ‘can’t,’ ‘don’t,’ and ‘won’t’ all the time. And those are probably not the people that are going to reach the heights of success that they’d like to.

West: For sure. That’s really interesting. And I’m really curious, Nick… so someone, you find out that they have emotional repression for many years or decades or how ever long they’ve had suppressed them, do you actually facilitate them in expressing it or do you give them an outlet to open the force and not continue to hold it in?

Nick: What we tend to do—it’s a very interesting approach in that it’s quite gentle and non invasive and we don’t need to get the person to yell and scream and go and kick a punching bag or anything like that. I mean, that all works and that’s fantastic. The way that I like to work is we get the person to go back—some people call that regression; I’m not real keen on that word—we get them to go back to where it started. Because when that situation first became a problem, if you think about it every single second of our lives we’re in some emotional state—so right now, you know, you could be feeling calm and happy, other times you’re grumpy—at any point in time there are three things that are possible for us to experience. And that’s the emotional state that we’re in; the actual experience that we’re having—so what’s taking place; and what we are capable of learning at that point in time. Those are the three main things that are tied up in our experience of any particular time or thing.

If something has caused a problem for someone, let’s say the emotion became so overwhelming at the time that they were incapable of learning what they needed to learn at the time to allow them to move on so that it wouldn’t be a problem for them in the future, we’re not learning that lesson, they’ve created a pattern for themselves because your unconscious mind or subconscious locks those three things together: ‘Okay, this was the experience that created this emotional state where I was supposed to learn something and I didn’t get a chance to learn it; so I’m going to lock all of that together and then bring other experiences into my life, related and unrelated, where I can—and this is most important—where I can feel that same emotion again because the emotion is the key to learning the lesson.’

So we have the person go back. We find out what the lesson was that they needed to learn at the time, we help them release the emotion…

West: Just for a second, Nick. Can I drop really quickly? When you say ‘go back’, do you mean you get them to like close their eyes and visualize the actual event? Is that what you mean by go back?

Nick: Yeah, that’s right. We get them to close their eyes. We guide them back using our language patterns, we give them particular suggestions on where they’re going to go. We leave it quite open so they go wherever they like as long as it’s the very first time that caused that problem. And once we’ve got them there, that’s when that whole process takes place.

West: Wow. So once they go back and they’ve identified that particular event, that’s obviously a very strong foundation in you moving forward with them and getting on top of that particular emotion?

Nick: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And the thing is that most people, when we do guide them back, they may be expecting that they’re going to see something—and about 70% of people don’t actually see anything; 30% of people will see something and be able to describe the actual event to you—but most of the time, people are just very keenly aware of what the experience is, what they’re feeling at the time, sometimes they hear the sounds around them or they can even remember what was going through their head at the time. And this is even guiding people back to two years, six months old, in the womb. It’s incredible how far back people go sometimes and where these came from. And once we’ve wiped that out, you’re right—it’s completely foundational in being able to move forward. Because once we’ve unlocked that emotion, given the opportunity to learn what they need—and sometimes we even ask them to make a new decision about what that experience means to them in their life now—that is really powerful and creates the leverage to change.

West: So they make the decision at the time that it’s happening when they’re visualizing it or they make a decision now about…?

Nick: Yeah. Yup. We have them make a decision as if they were in that time right now. Because if you think about it, any belief that’s formed before it is actually solidified into a belief, you had to make a decision to accept that as true. So if you make a new decision about what that means, it’s no longer true for you and you decide that something else is now true and it changes everything.

West: Powerful. So it’s a new association, new association to that meaning which will result in different behavior.

Nick: Absolutely.

West: This is powerful stuff, Nick. I honestly think I’m going to have to listen to this call 2 3 times with the content you’ve covered today. It’s been really good. And I’m trying to logically sequence some questions and at the same time absorb the wisdom that you’re imparting on us. So I appreciate your time.

Nick: You’re welcome.

West: Nick, it’s been great today. I think that’s really been a jampacked-content call. Are there any parting words you like to say for, you know, bear in mind that people at the Money Mindset tend to want to take leaps in—they might be working jobs and they feel like they’re stuck, they’ve been banging their head against the door—is there any generic kind of advice or tips you can give those people, you know, the moms and dads who have been going at it for a while and not taken those exponential leaps like they feel like they should be?

Nick: So just to make sure I understand your question…is there any kind of ground level advice that I can give to moms and dads who are looking to change the results that they’re producing in their life?

West: Yeah. Yup.

Nick: Yeah, absolutely. First, I’d say ‘stick with your program’ because it’s going to seriously help uncover these unconscious issues that are or perhaps have been keeping them stuck. And I say that because, you know, I’ve received your program for awhile now and it’s incredible stuff. So that’s the first point, in my opinion.

And perhaps, they really want to get clear on that process of where you are at now, even sit down with a piece of paper and say, “This is exactly what’s going on in my life,” with no sugar coating. Once you’ve got that down—and this is the step people miss—they go, “What do I want?” You know, we’ve all seen The Secret and we know you’ve got to put your vision board up and visualize what you want everyday but if you just don’t believe you’re going to get there because of what’s happened in the past and get clear on where you are and what’s caused your situation, then figure out what you do want.

Be very serious with yourself about ‘what do I get out of staying where I am,’ because until you find other ways of satisfying that outcome of getting the good feelings or the good result from being stuck where you are, you won’t have the leverage to change. So I’d say those are the three keys.

West: What’s the key to—I mean, if someone’s getting something out of where they’re at, at the moment, and they’re sort of not happy with it but it’s not enough to take them over—like leverage, as you were saying—what’s the key to really pushing them over the edge?

Nick: I’d say the key to pushing them over the edge is finding something else that is going to satisfy that same—I’ll call it ‘secondary gain’ again—so it’s going to satisfy that secondary gain in a more productive way. So if the secondary gain is that they get to relax on the couch instead of spending hours doing their tax, then we need to find another way for them to be able to satisfy the good feelings they get sitting on the couch but also get the tax done.

West: Right. Interesting.

Nick: It all comes down to the feelings. We’re completely motivated by our feelings.

West: I appreciate the summary. I guess the last couple of minutes you just summarized the whole call into a couple of sentences, which is always good to wrap up on.

So Nick, I wanted to tell the listeners about what you offer. I mean, people who have resonated with what you’ve said—me, being one of them—if people want to come and learn…do people come to you to learn how to do what you do or do they come to you to actually be helped in what you offer or do you offer a combination of both? Tell us a bit about what you do.

Nick: Well, I definitely do both. I offer one on one private coaching sessions where we—this is for people who really want to break through the barriers to success that are holding them back—we do that one on one, face to face for people in the Sydney area or based in Sydney, over on the northern beaches here or over the phone or Skype for people who aren’t prepared to jump on a plane and fly down to Sydney…

West: It’s obviously not as effective but it’s the next best thing, right?

Nick: It’s still highly effective. My opinion is if you can get ninety percent of what you would get face to face without having to leave your home, it’s that good enough.

We also offer short courses. We have, at the moment, four main or key courses that we offer:
The first one is called Irresistible Influence. And this is where we help people become influential and effective communicators. So how to understand the ways that people like to receive information and package your message in the exact way that the audience or even the person that you’re talking to—if it’s one on one—prefers to receive that information so you’re never misunderstood again and it significantly raises your ability to be influential. It makes sales easy. It makes parenting easy. It makes relationships easy. It’s really powerful stuff. That’s a 3 Day program, by the way.

The second course that we offer is called Emotional Mastery. And that’s a 6 day program. We usually do that over two, three day weekends. And this is all the processes and techniques that I’ve spoken about that are actually very easy to do with your self. We have two types of processes. Ones where you need someone else to guide you through them and others that, once you’ve learned how, you don’t need someone to run you through those; you can do them on yourself. And we have all of those in Emotional Mastery. So that’s all about finding your blocks, getting rid of them, figuring out what you do want and getting that yourself.

Mastery, this is all about transforming other people’s lives. So this is where we teach people who are interested in using these techniques in either a coaching or more therapy environment. And often, the people who attend these courses either are practitioners or business coaches, managers, life coaches, executive coaches come to our programs a lot and they want to be able to help other people shift these problems and leverage the results that they’re getting. And often, many of the techniques that we teach here are a little more difficult to do with your self. That’s why we’ve created this separate program so you can learn how to guide people through these techniques. This is the course where we cover conversational hypnosis, which is how to effectively use hypnosis, hypnotic language patterns so that you can guide someone into a trance without them needing to lie down, close their eyes and go to sleep like in direct or clinical hypnosis.

And the final program that we offer at the moment is called Modeling Excellence. And I think of this as the mindset upgrade. This is where we teach the person in three days the step by step processes of identifying, replicating and installing in their own mind the success strategies, belied, values and unconscious programming, behaviors, habits of any successful person that they like. And that takes three days as well.

Once someone’s completed all four of those courses, if they choose to—now that’s not a requirement, they can do anything that they like—but if someone did decide to go through all four of those courses, they’ll also get the added bonus of an international Master Practitioner Certification in Neuro Linguistic Programming because I’m a certified NLP trainer.

West: Wow. That’s a huge gamut of success tools you have there, Nick. And I can understand why you described it as a Bunnings Warehouse of tools. Listen, I appreciate your time there, Nick. And it’s been certainly enlightening for me, listening to Nick talk about the mind and the foundations behind the mind and how it’s all come together and how it really works at the deepest level.

So Nick, thank you for your time.

Nick: Thank you, West. It’s been my absolute pleasure. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to your members and share this information.

West Interviews Tom Poland

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Tom: Tom Poland

West: Today we’ve got a very special guest, Mr. Tom Poland. I met Tom in one of his recent seminars and he was talking about entrepreneurship and a whole heap of things. But what really blew me away was his different approach. It’s not your conventional approach to entrepreneurship. And we’re going to explore a lot of Tom’s thinking throughout his experiences and the value he’s been able to add for his clients, and hopefully, be able to add to you as well as a listener.

So without further ado, Tom, welcome to the call.

Tom: Thanks very much, West. And thanks for having me here.

West: It’s an absolute pleasure. Why don’t you give us a little bit of a background on where you’ve come from so the listeners get an understanding from your perception?

Tom: Okay. Well, I started life as a teacher and did that for about twelve months before I quit. There wasn’t enough happening. Whilst I really enjoyed it, there wasn’t really enough autonomy. Then I started a series of my own businesses. In the middle, I had ten years in the corporate thing—very much enjoyed that. So I did a whole lot of stuff.

And then I hit this—I guess you could call it a mid-life chrysalis; I refer to it as a chrysalis. You know, it’s kind of that time of life when you start thinking, well, what the hell do I want to do with my life? And what’s it all about out there? It’s sort of like going back to when you’re sixteen and you start challenging some of those values. Sometimes you have those moments in life where the lightbulb goes off. In those days, I was a tape-o-holic. I’d have tapes in the car and I’d listen to them. And someone quoted Benjamin Franklin who said, “Time is the stuff of which life is made.” And I literally pulled my car over to the side of this country road and stopped and sat and thought about that because I had—in this corporate cage—I had five leave applications declined in one year because we were always restructuring or doing something. And I thought, you know what, I don’t have a life. I want to get my life back again. I don’t have control of my time but I want to have control over my life.

So I started another business. And that was back in 1995. I called it the Entrepreneurs Success Program. And I really wanted a vehicle that would add a lot of value to people’s businesses and their life. Our target market was very clearly people who owned their own business. And what we wanted to do was we wanted them to be able to grow their business but also have more free time, which meant we had to think pretty hard and long about exactly how you do that. But that’s just sort of kind of a snapshot of my business background.

West: Because I noticed that you have a strong emphasis on people doing well outside of their business lives as well. I mean, they need to kind of have balance rather than, you know, everything’s about the money. And that’s one thing that I really look up to in what you stand for, Tom.

Tom: Yeah. Well, if I could just reinforce that point…it’s just a whole bunch of things. Like, first of all, I think living your life that’s value-focused means you also have to prioritize those values. And when I prioritize my values, clearly, health was number one for me. If I did anything such as consistently overworking, it was going to diminish the quality of my mental energy and my physical well-being, then that was going to be detrimental and certainly not worth it.

And the second value that was most important to me was my family. I have four kids. I’ve got five grandkids now. And they were number two in my life. They’re only number two, because if I was dead I couldn’t help them—and that’s with the health thing.

And then the third thing was money. And that included the business. So I did things like relocated my business so I can be nearer my home. I made a commitment to my family. At that stage we had a foster kid at home. We had our own children at home. I was running two businesses; at one stage in two different countries. It was kind of busy. But I made an absolute commitment that I would only work late two nights a week, every other night of the week I’d be home by 6pm for dinner with the family and every weekend was absolutely sacred in terms of family time.

And West, the thing is, the moment you limit the amount of time you put into your business, you know what? It goes up because you have to think more. And that’s what I love about the work that you do—that money mindset. If you just rely on endless hours, that’s a no-brainer. Any idiot can work long hours. And it gets counterproductive. You know, some people should go home. It’s just like their body is in the office but their minds—lord know where that is—it’s not doing anything.

So one of the things I really want to strongly emphasize to people is that if you can reach an agreement, if you’ve got kids at home or you’ve got a partner—it’s different if you’re single—but even for the sake of your own mental energy and focus and productivity, if you limit the amount of hours you put in your business you’ll find the quality of your thinking will improve.

West: That’s very, very powerful. And it’s a win-win both ways, isn’t it? Because they get the quality time with their family and their own pleasure pursuits as well as a better business.

Tom: Exactly right, West. They get a bit of mental health. They get a bit of physical health. Their family gets to know them again and loves them and is enriched by them. And the business improves.

West: That’s awesome. I love that. And I’m looking forward to hearing what you are able to share with us a little bit later on because I know you’ve got something awesome happening with one of the groups that you’re running.

You mentioned before that you set two days a week to work late only and that impresses me, first off. And secondly, you have the self-discipline to be able to maintain that. And I know that a lot of the people listening to this call might set themselves goals but they just don’t seem to be able to stick to it. What worked for you, Tom? Like did you keep yourself accountable to someone or was it just something that you’re innately able to—from your training in triathlons and stuff like that?

Tom: Well first off, West, I discovered recently early on that there’s one thing to have discipline to do exercise and to eat right and all those other good things that we know that we should be doing. But the greater discipline actually wasn’t the things that I needed to force myself to do. It was the things that I needed to force myself not to do…like working mindless hours. So what I did—and a lot of guys and women have a business and they have a family—so I had a conversation—we used to call them ‘family conference time’—and the kids loved it. Any time there was a serious issue like ‘are we going to move house,’ ‘are we going to move country,’ ‘are we going to start a new business,’ ‘do we need to look at someone’s schooling,’ or whatever, we’d hold a family conference. And the kids loved it. we’d get the whole family together—it didn’t matter if they were three years old or thirteen years old, with the guys this is the issue, ‘what’s important to you, Libby,’ ‘what’s important to you Loribeth,’ Lance, Rachel—whoever’s there—what’s happening. So I reached an agreement with my whole family that that’s what I do. And if you really want to leverage discipline, share that with your family because, boy, they’ll remind you about it. But the other thing, I guess, is I didn’t want to sit on my rocking chair, age 75, and look back on my life and go, ‘Yeah, I really nailed the business but it’s a shame my grandchildren don’t know me and my kids barely talk to me.’ And I guess you’ve got to start with the end in mind and say, “Well, what do I really want my life to look like?” Therefore, how do I need to behave now?

West: Very powerful. And I’m sure you’ve actually set up a group of people that facilitate that way of thinking in a way that you’ve approached entrepreneurship and business, which we’ll tackle a little bit later on.

Now, I wanted to make a shift to talk about…I like to talk about the mindset you were going through. Firstly…for yourself, going through your own business; and then maybe some of the top clients that you’ve worked with, some of the change in mindset that you’ve helped them to achieve later on. But shifting back to yourself, when you were launching your business—and there’s always a lot of doubts that a lot of people have that’s self-imposed, conditioning that they can’t do it and stuff like that—did you have any of these what we call ‘blockages’ (in our program) that came up before you launched your, for example, Entrepreneurs Success program?

Tom: Yeah, I certainly did. And I think that’s a great question because often, what freezes people from jumping out of their corporate cage and becoming entrepreneurial is zeal, let’s face it. You know, I was…in 1995, the packages were around $200,000, there was company car, superannuation. I was pretty high up in the corporate scene. The problem was I didn’t have a life. But there was actually, relatively a lot of security there but those comfort zones can be very a insidious thing.

So to answer your question, what I did is I sat down—and I did involve my wife with this. My kids at that stage were a little bit too young to understand what was going on. But I wasn’t prepared to do anything unless I had the support of my wife. And I’ve got to tell you, she was amazing…a wonderful, supportive individual. But we sat down and we did this weird exercise that I learned from I don’t know who. But what you do is you sit down and you visualize the worst case scenario. And the worst case scenario in this case was we would lose our beautiful home, we would destroy what retirement savings we had, we’d have to give up our nice three-car family and probably get a pedal car or something. We’d have to start mowing our own lawns. We have to rent a house. And we went through the whole thing and we actually visualized it.

And once we had done that then all of a sudden, the motion comes up, you know, like, ‘Oh god, we’re going to die.’ And what it comes down to, it seems to me, is that we’re going to lose people we love. People aren’t going to love us anymore. But of course it was all ego, it was all untrue. But it was all unconscious barriers. And again, I just love what you’ve got West, what you do with your business because you’re smashing the stuff. And until you break the mindset, nothing’s going to happen in the physical world.

So anyway, we did this exercise. And as I said, you get a bit choked up and say, “Oh god, we’re going to die and no one’s going to love us and we’ll be homeless. We’ll be living in the gutters.” We actually really went through and visualized ourselves lying in the gutter. And you know, “Where are we going to sleep tonight?” And once we went through mentally and visually the pain of that worst case scenario, we snapped out of it and we said to each other, “You know what? Even if that happened, we could handle it because we’ve still got the family. We’ve still got our health.” So that’s what we did. And I don’t know… You’re an expert on this. I’m not the expert. But that’s what we did. And it was totally liberating because we had faced our demons.

West: Absolutely. I mean it sounds to me like you guys actually went to the point where you visualized it so vividly that you actually felt the feelings that you would have if that was your reality. And the fact that you guys can actually still love each other and still be together and still have your health and realize that’s a good thing, that would have been a overcoming a huge block for you.

Tom: Yeah. That was certainly a breakthrough for us. And the fact that my wife was so supportive—not a lot of wife would be, I don’t know—but she was prepared to risk and to back me up. I suppose that’s the other thing. You know, you’ve got to be able to earn that trust and respect with your wife by doing, you know, if you say you’re going to be home at 6 o’clock, get bloody home by 6 o’clock. Don’t phone 5 past 6 telling her you’re going to be late or you have to do whatever. But that’s what we did and it seemed to work for us.

West: Well thank you for sharing that, Tom. That’s very powerful. I think they’ll get a lot out of it. Do you actually find that when you speak to CEOs—I understand that you work with leaders of organizations and people very high up and medium to large enterprises—do they come to you for when they actually have self-doubts and they’re unsure of where they want to take things or there’s uncertainty in their company? Is that the kind of thing you talk to them about as well or do you just focus on…?

Tom: No. I focus on two things and two things only: getting a better strategy in their business and executing it.

I should just correct one small thing: I work for people in all shapes and sizes of businesses. With the larger businesses, I tend to do consulting work—for the Australia’s largest university, some multinationals I’ve worked with—but that seems to be strategic consulting work. I have a few clients from the old days that I do personal coaching with; and that is mindset stuff. But what you’ll quickly learn with these guys and women is that they put their pants on one leg at a time. And they have the same fears and doubts. They’re probably better at masking it than some of us, but they have the same fears and doubts and concerns as well.

You know, I really don’t buy into the idea that we can get ourselves to the point where we are totally free of the stuff. I suspect that as long as we’re in a human skin, we’re going to have something that’s coming up as a blockage—which is great for you because you’re always going to have a business—and then if we didn’t, we wouldn’t even be in a human skin. That’s part of the point of being here, part of our purpose in life: is to overcome these obstacles. And again, I just like the work you’re in because you’re dealing with the reality, the mental reality that most people face.

West: Definitely. And thank you for your kind words there. And I completely agree that it’s a process. And it’s kind of a journey that will never end. But as long as you’re aware of the journey and you’re always working on it and talking to people like yourself, getting a coach or getting someone that can point you in the right direction, then you’re always going to be ahead of your competitors and you’re always going to be on top of the game.

Tom: Yeah. I think that really comes down to being very self-aware. My lover had to rush back to Germany. Her mom’s ill, unfortunately. And so I’m here on my own and I just noticed my mind starting to think thoughts that created feelings which I didn’t enjoy. I’m not saying I’m very good at this but I was at least aware that this was happening and then I could start doing the visualizations, the affirmations that turn the mindset around. So to me it’s not about not having the stuff happening, it’s about knowing how to handle it.

West: Definitely. Another powerful analogy. This is going to be a call that I’d probably look back on and listen to a few more times before I release it to the guys to soak up the wisdom here.

Now let’s take a shift now to…for the people who are looking at getting into an entrepreneur mindset, Tom. And this is where you’re a real expert at. Maybe they don’t have a huge business at the moment but they’re thinking of starting an offline or online business—maybe from a strategy perspective—do people come to you and do they consult with you for that? What advice would you give them?

Tom: Looking at someone who perhaps want to start a new business? Again, my business is an extension of my personal philosophy in my life purpose and everything that I do—well I hope it does—that’s my intention at least. So the first thing that I’d want to know is, is this new business really going to add value to people’s lives—either professional life or personal life? And I know it sounds kind of like a dumb question but, I mean, if you want to start manufacturing cigarettes or any sort of…

West: Just to make money.

Tom: Yeah, just to make money or you just want to flood some products because there’s a big margin on it—forget it. I mean, that’s not fulfilling. And what someone like that would find is that their self-esteem suffers. They never feel fulfilled. They can have millions and millions of dollars in the bank—and I’ve met these guys—smiling happy families and inside feeling empty. So to me, it’s got to be fulfilling from a life purpose-perspective. It’s got to be able to add value. To me that’s the first one, the first P.

The second thing is you’ve got to be passionate about it. Don’t just do something for the money. Create a marriage between passion and purpose. To me, that’s the best of both worlds. Look, I don’t really go to work. I go to have play. I have easy play which is my leisure time and a hard play which is my work time. But it’s still play. It’s still stuff that I enjoy doing. And I’ve long since got past the point where I’m prepared to prostitute myself just to make some money.

So the first thing is: is it purposeful? Is it going to be fulfilling for me personally as an extension of my gifts and what I’m here for on planet earth?
The second thing is: do I love doing it? Do I love this game—whatever it happens to be?
And the third thing is: the pennies.

We’ve got the purpose. We’ve got the passion. Are there pennies in there? Is there a margin in this product? Because I don’t care how much you love washing dogs, there aren’t any money in it. There’s just no money in that. So those are the three things I look at: the purpose, the passion, and then the pennies.

And then once we’ve gone through those conceptual questions, I want to know what is fundamentally and radically different about their value proposition to everyone else’s in the marketplace. And so there’s only two ways you can do this. Are we going to be fundamentally different or are we going to be fundamentally both? If you’re real clever, you can do both. And I need for this person to be able to clearly articulate to me what their competitive point of difference is. In other words, why are you clearly and compellingly different? Or why are you clearly and compellingly better than other people in the marketplace? And it doesn’t have to be a product, West. That’s the thing. You don’t have to have a product that is stunningly better or stunningly different. I mean that really helps a lot, but you could have much better marketing compared to others.

West: Or even the customer service.

Tom: Exactly. I’ve now got eight of these things that I reckon the MBA teaches this three—I don’t think that’s true—I think there’s eight. You can have better leadership. You can have a better team. You can have a better product. You can have a better customer service. You can have a better marketing, sales, etc. You can have better money management and pricing and all those things that go with that like cashflow and clients. You can have a better digital platforms that support everything else and you’re going to have better data analysis.

I think of those as like eight pillars. You know the Parthenon in Greece, this big marble Parthenon, there are always pillars?

West: Yes.

Tom: Think of it as like eight pillars that you can build in your business.

What I suggest when I work with clients is I say to them, “Pick one. Not any one. But pick one that is going to give you the most rapid penetration into the marketplace because that’s what strategy is about. Strategy is about beating your competitors. It’s like war. It’s like a sport. There’s a scoreboard step called market share. And if you will pick the right strategy and execute it successfully, the scoreboard will work out for itself.”

West: I’m loving these analogies, Tom. I’m trying to madly take notes and give a good interview at the same time.

Tom: You’re doing a great job. I’m enjoying it.

West: Thank you. That’s great. I love your analogy of the Parthenon and the pillars. And I’m sure that you actually teach people through your philosophies, your products, your websites, and your programs how to actually define and develop all these different pillars. My question is—for the viewers on this call and now we’ve got limited time here—talking about purpose and passion. For someone who is sort of unsure, what advice or tips would you give someone looking to find what it is their calling, so to speak?

Tom: I call it your passion history. The seeds of purpose lie in passion.

West, just to tell you what most people do—and what I did initially as well as I was looking at dropping out of the corporate cage—I looked back and said, “Gee, what have I done in the past that I could do in the future?” [Imitates sound of a buzzer in a quiz show] It’s like I could do consulting work. I could do management. Or I could do whatever it is I’ve done in the past.

West: Because that’s a natural question to ask, isn’t it?

Tom: I think it’s a very limiting perspective. I mean you can plan based on the past if you wanted but all you get is more of the same. So what I call the passion history…you know, for example, when I did this exercise myself before I started the Entrepreneurs Success Program is the 80-20 Circle. I looked back, and the moments with the greatest fulfillments for me were when I supported someone to make a shift in their business or their personal life. They were at, say, on a scale of 1 to 100, they’re performing at perhaps level 20. And through a process of working with them and their commitment and everything else as well, we can go from 20 to perhaps 80. Or we could take them from 50 to 100. Or whatever. But there was a change in their life professionally and personally for the better. So that’s what I got off on. That was my passion history. That was the moment when I felt really, really fulfilled. And it doesn’t have to be something as sort of grand as that.

But to give people a story to illustrate: I sat on a ferry—this is a few years ago—and I was going to the other side. It was kind of a bit crowded so I ended up sitting next to this guy and ended up having a conversation. You know, “What do you do?”
“What do you do?”
And he said, “Well, I design car parks.”
I said, “You design car parks?”
And he went on for about—the whole ferry trip was about a quarter of an hour—telling me how you can get more cars into a car park but you could actually have the access and the exit even better and he drew some stuff. And he was getting off on this. And I thought, isn’t the world a wonderful place? I don’t like to design car parks. But here’s a guy who’s helping other people because of his passion and his capability in designing car parks.

I can think of a lady in the States that I’ve just been introduced to who helps breast cancer sufferers either go through the process and to recover…guess how? By giving them fly fishing. When she looked back on her passion history—she was a recovering breast cancer sufferer herself—she loves fly fishing. She has built a $1.6 million a year business. And if anyone does this, google fly fishing breast cancer recovery, she’ll be there top of the pops.

West: That’s amazing.

Tom: So look at your passion history. For goodness’ sake, do not get sucked into prostituting yourself doing some multi-level marketing thing you hate. If you love it, great! If it makes a difference…great. But if you don’t like it, don’t kid yourself. You won’t stick at it. Find something that really makes a difference, that you love to do, and there’s plenty of money in it as well. And that means you’re going to have to think.

West: Sit down and maybe go fly fishing is probably a good place to start. [Laughs]

Tom: There was another guy—just to tell you—this guy is a stockbroker. He was a stockbroker and he used to skive off from work because he hated his job and coach his son swimming because he loved to do that. And he was approached by a little person—now I’m not talking a child, I’m talking what people used to call a dwarf—and the little person said to him, “Do you know of anyone that can coach us little people?”
And the guy says, “No, I don’t.”
And the little person was after a coach actually for her son.
Anyway, this guy went home and had a sleepless night and thought, “I’ll set up a coaching clinic for little people.” He quit his stock brokering job. He now makes over $600,000 a year teaching little people how to swim.

West: That’s awesome.

Tom: And that’s the power of segmenting the market as well, which is a little byline there. That’s a strategy. Both of these people have picked a strategy which created a niche in the marketplace that was so niched, no one else was even there. They made the competition irrelevant because there wasn’t any.

West: I mean the last thing a competitor would do is think, ‘Let’s set up something as obscure as that.’ If they do, at least you have such a huge first move advantage. And obviously, if you’ve done all the right strategies they’ll be hard-pressed to catch you.

Tom: Absolutely. First advantage. And you’ve got your own name in the marketplace. But the point is that both of these people did something that they were passionate about. And to me—I mean, I’m real happy to work harder from winning. And I’m real happy to work harder from loving it. But I would have to drag myself into the office if you—I mean, well, I love these accountants, okay—but if you said to me, “Tom, you have to be an accountant for the rest of your life,” I’d find the nearest cliff and jump off because there’s no passion enough for me.

West: For sure.

Tom: But just to finish off, don’t just settle for the passion. Don’t just settle for something that’s really worthwhile. You can’t make any money out of it. Do the purpose. Do the passion. And do the pennies. You do that…the world will be yours—with a lot of hard work and thinking. But that’s the starting point.

West: That’s the starting point; a very strong foundation. Now I wanted to touch on a few more things before I leave you today, Tom. And one of them was leadership. Because I know that’s an area that you’re an expert in and people from all around the world come to you and talk about it.
What leadership obstacles do you see future business leaders need to address and overcome?

Tom: There’s a bunch of them but there’s only two that will be critical because everything else falls under these two. What normally happens is the leader does an MBA or something ghastly like that and says, “Oh gosh! We need a mission statement.”
And then they go, “Well, geez, if they want to see some cashflows, a bit of a strategic plan. We need a five-year cashflow projection. And someone—quick!—work on a spreadsheet.”
And then they go, “Oh boy, it’s still not working. Oh, we need a USP (unique sales proposition).”
So they whack that up on the wall and then they go, “We’ve got to have meetings. We’ve got to empower people through these meetings.”
And the problem is, is that they’re all good ideas in and of themselves—most of them don’t work, by the way but that’s part of…

West: Well I have to say, Tom, really quickly, that I do have an MBA and that sounds very, very familiar.

Tom: Sorry about that.

West: No, no, no. Listen, to be perfectly honest all the business plans and spreadsheets…by the time you finish them, your idea is already obsolete.

Tom: Yeah, my apologies.

West: No, no, no. I agree.

Tom: I’m sure you got a lot of value out of it. But it’s just…I mean I’ve stopped teaching mission statement, I’ve stopped teaching value statements, I’ve stopped doing USPs because people don’t use them. And if people don’t use them they don’t work. I mean they might work if people use them but people don’t use them.

West: It’s good in theory.

Tom: Exactly. But the first obstacle is what I call the conch shell effect. And let me explain. You know a conch is a sea shell? In the Bahamas, they dive off these long boats and the pick up 5 or 6 conch shells. Someone in the boat drills a hole through the shell, they tie a string and they throw it back on the water. So there are 5 or 6 conch shells in the water. Then they go to the next site. And at the end of the day, they come back and pick all the conch shells up. Now here’s the question: Those conch shells can swim and they’re not fixed to the ocean floor but why are they still on exactly the same spot when the boat comes back just waiting to be picked up?

The answer is pretty simple. One of them steps in one direction, another one in that tied bunch swims and feels it and pulls in a different direction. Now you’ve got 5 or 6 conch shells all swimming flat out, all pulling in different directions and going absolutely nowhere. And that’s what I mean by the ‘conch shell effect.’ Lots of people in the business working hard, working long, all good ideas—got the mission plan, got the business plan, got the meetings set and got the product review—but not all going in the same direction. Now the answer to that is better strategy. And that’s the thing that I bring leaders back to time and time again: “What’s your strategy?”

An international property development company asked me to review their strategic plan—which I did—and it was like this small encyclopedia. So I went to the CEO—and I took a bit of a risk; and we’ll call him Sam—I said, “Sam…”
He said, “Did you review the plan? What did you think?”
I said, “Why, it was spectacular. Can you turn to the page that has the strategy, please?”
He said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Well, can you show me in here what you’re going to do differently that’s going to kick butt in the marketplace?” I said, “Clearly you’re doing a lot of stuff that’s working because your business is growing. But I see cashflow projections, I see how many units you’re going to have, I see all these objectives…but I don’t see a clear articulation of what makes you different.”

So the first problem is getting leaders to understand strategies are not objectives. It’s not mission statements. It’s not any of that stuff. It’s clearly articulating through one of those eight pillars what you are going to make to strengthen your organization that none of your competitors can match.

So the first problem is ‘conch shell effect,’ and that’s overcome with better strategy.

The second problem I see leaders falling into is if they have a clear strategy, they’d get into what I call pinball leadership. Now if you’ve got a pinball machine, there are basically two things in that machine: A couple of flippers and there’s a pinball. And in my experience in life and in business is you’re either a pinball or you’re a flipper. If you’re a pinball, you’ve got to work and you answer emails and you bounce off client requests and you bounce off meetings, you bounce off staff issues and you bounce off a complaint, and you bounce off a problem with the IT…and you spend your whole day and all week—and possibly all year—reacting.

But the answer, of course, is to find a structure of accountability and reviewing focus. So you regularly put aside chunks of time to execute that strategy which means putting into place business processes, developing people and processes. And that’s how you execute strategy.

So the two problems:
The conch shell effect can bully the ship. You can overcome them with a bit of strategy and a better execution.

West: I love those analogies. And I think a lot of people who’d be listening to this call and just shaking their head and thinking, ‘I’m a bit of a pinball, unfortunately.’ But fortunately for them, we’re actually going to tell them a bit more about your 80 20 Club. You got me really excited when you mentioned. But before I ask that, I’ve got this question that I really want to ask you, Tom. You were mentioning before that you did a triathlon or you have done triathlons. And I just wanted to get a sense of the mindset that that has taught you in life in general, not just for running your business, but some of the values and some of the things—because it’s not just a normal triathlon, I believe. You did like an Ironman or some crazy distance—tell us about that really quick.

Tom: Okay. One of my philosophies is to set what I call Extraordinary Personal Goal or EPG. And an extraordinary personal goal has a few characteristics:
The first one is that when you tell people about what you’re going to do…they’ll either say, ‘Wow,’ or ‘You must be crazy.’
The second characteristic is it has to take you a long way outside your comfort zone.
And the third characteristic is your grandchildren will talk about this at your funeral.

If you can go tick, tick, tick…you have yourself an EPG or Extraordinary Personal Goal. One of the ones I set was to do an Ironman Triathlon which was a 3.8k swim, 180k cycle ride and then that’s the warm-up for a full marathon 42.2k run. And that’s one tough day at the office, I can tell you.

West: That’s crazy.

Tom: That’s one of the bunch of other sets I’ve done. But they all really come about to the same thing: and it’s an expansion of your mental capacity. You put yourself in a situation where it’s tough or you’re scared or you have self-doubts or you run out of money or you run out of time or you don’t know what to do next—a whole bunch of things.

I did Mount Cook as well, the Grand Traverse of Mount Cook. Now if anyone is thinking it’s kind of a small mountain, more people have died on Mount Cook than Mount Everest. It’s a tricky son of a b*tch. And I’m a mountaineering bunny. I’m no expert. I was pretty stupid about mountaineering but I was just smart enough to know that I was dumb at it. But I had a good guide so I managed to live.

But all of these things serve the same purpose. And that’s the expansion of human potential, expansion of your mind and your thoughts. And it’s uncomfortable. I’m not an advocate of creating some sort of comfort zone and, you know, these guys that tell you to ‘come to our wealth creation seminar, you’ll have all this money, you’ll just be able to retire and do whatever you like and la dee da dee da.’ Sorry, but that’s crap. You’ve got a human spirit. You’re here to grow and to learn and to develop. It’s the conscious creation of a big obstacle that you overcome and go through. When you get through to the other side, you’re a different person. And to me, that’s a big part of what life is all about.

West: And obviously it’s spread into all other areas of your life: your business, your family. It’s helped you to grow in all those years as well.

Tom: Yeah. And it doesn’t have to be the outdoor stuff like I do it. You might be doing your own art exhibition or getting your book or poems published or something like that. When you get through the other side and you’ve been through all the obstacles—the internal obstacles and the external obstacles—and you still succeeded, as I said, you’re a different person. And the resilience and the persistence and the resourcefulness and the creativity and the innovation and all these other things that you develop, you can carry those over into your relationships, obviously in your mental health, into your business. Because when you hit an obstacle, hit a problem, you know you will find a way through. It might take you some time, you might not enjoy the journey very much but you don’t sit there and go, “Oh dear, I better just give up. It’s too hard.” And I also think, West, it’s a bloody great example for your kids.

West: For sure. For sure. And I’m just marveling because I’m actually an exercise physiologist as well. And knowing those numbers—I’ve trained a lot of elite athletes but most of them would be absolutely crazy to tackle something like that. So congratulations from me on doing that and still being alive at the end.

Tom: You’re very kind. I trust you. I mean I pretty much sucked at everything that I did but at least I did it.

West: You did it and you’re still alive.

Now 80 20 Club…I’m really excited hearing about it when you were mentioning it to me the other day. I want you to tell us how it was conceived, how it differentiates from other groups that are out there.

Tom: I really appreciate the opportunity, West. And thank you for that. This came about as a result of thirteen years of the Entrepreneurs Success Program—1,476 clients over that thirteen years, from small business to large multinationals. And I kind of got to the point where I was thinking, you know what, I’m ready for something different, something new. So I got a clean whiteboard out and thought, ‘If I was going to start a program or experience that was going to really, really, powerfully support people to grow their business quickly and increase the value of it quickly, what would I do?’

It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I did sixty seven interviews with past clients. It didn’t take me too long to figure out that a cohesive, aligned, streamlined strategy such as what I’ve been talking about is the first step. But once people have that, they were saying, “Okay, so now I know what I need to do but, Tom, do you know what the problem is? I’m not doing what I know I need to do. So can you give me a structure that keeps me focused and honest and accountable so that I push through the barriers of pinball leadership and actually execute the strategy.” Because, you know, it’s like a rugby team or a soccer team—it’s no good having a great strategy if the players don’t execute it.

West: Yes.

Tom: So how do we the 80-20 Circle? Well, first of all, I work with every single client one on one until their plan is set up. I share them what they need to do, I share them how they need to do it, I listen to them intently and we create one market-kicking butt strategy. And once that plan is finished—it’s a very simple plan, by the way, West. It’s not complicated stuff. It’s just needs to be prioritized and documented—once that plan is completed, they’ve got their better strategy. And normally, they’re pretty excited about that.

West: Absolutely.

Tom: The next thing is better execution. How I work is that most of my work is done virtually. So it’s on the phone, over the internet, webinars, which—for people who don’t know—is an online seminar, teleconferences, and video conferencing. Every single month, a client of mine, the first week of the month they turn up at this circle meeting with their peers and colleagues and they report on their progress. And there’s something extraordinarily that happen productivity-wise. Like next Wednesday, you have to report to your fellow circle members and tell them what you did about what you said you were going to do.

West: Yes. Very powerful.

Tom: Absolutely. Its like if you’re going for a run in the morning and you’re going to go on your own—well maybe it happens or maybe it doesn’t—but if you’ve got a friend waiting for you at the end of the street at 6am, you’re going to get out of bed.

West: Exactly. Or if you have a personal trainer who’s going to keep you accountable.

Tom: Yeah. And we have a special system called the ‘yellow card system’ which really increases the intensity of accountability. If someone doesn’t make progress on their plan and at the end of the day they tell us what they’re going to do, then they get yellow carded and they go away for two months and get themselves up to date. And during that two months, they still pay their fees which we donate to charity.

West: So it’s almost like taking it out of soccer where they get a yellow card. It’s almost like warning.

Tom: Yeah, that’s what I call it—a yellow card. For two months, go away, get your projects up to date and then come back. In the meantime, you still pay your fees but they will go to charity. I will not collect your fees. Well, I collect them but I’ll pass them straight on and send you a receipt.

So it’s that accountability thing. You know, if you just show up and say, “I didn’t do anything again,” well, sorry, you’re yellow-carded. So that’s week-1 of the circle meeting.

Week-2 is I have a business growth webinar. So we empower people through education. How do you hire good staff, how do you keep them? How do you create a competitive advantage through segmenting your marketplace or repackaging your product, etc? So week-1 is a circle meeting: accountability; week-2 is the webinar: empowerment.

Week 3, I do a laser-focused coaching course one-one-one with my clients. And it’s real laser-focused. They come with a question, a problem, a situation and we drill down into individual issues.

And Week 4, I do an interview like this with someone.

So that’s the circle. That’s the cycle. That’s how it works.

West: Wow. That’s impressive. We’ve got listeners on the call who want to find out more. What do they need to do, Tom? Do they just need to go to your website or do you have an 80-20 website or…?

Tom: No, I don’t because everyone else has one.

West: Okay.

Tom: So if everyone’s going west, I’ll go east, thank you. Pardon the pun, West. But what I do is I invite people who are interested once a month to attend a preview online. If anyone is interested, all they need to do is email me at tom@tompoland.com.

West: That’s your personal email, Tom.

Tom: That’s my personal email address. Well, I have a personal relationship with every client. I don’t want to lead this thing to the point where I lose touch with the client.

So all they have to do is email and say webinar or interested at something like that. And as a little bit of a gift to your listeners, West, I’m really happy to offer them an ebook which is Your Extraordinary Life. It’s filled with how to figure out their life purpose and how to set and achieve goals, like there are EPG examples. It’s a 103,000 words. It took me two years to write. It’s been published in the USA, Australia, distributed in New Zealand. And I’m giving them that for free, if they’re genuinely interested in knowing more about 80-20 Circle.

West: Yes, wow. Thank you for that. They’ll appreciate that. So that’s awesome, Tom. I love your strategies and I love your philosophy, what you stand for. I think you’re an advocate for personal, you know, people growing as people rather than just business. That’s very refreshing to see in the corporate arena, so to speak.

Is there anything else you’d like to add, Tom, before we wrap up?

Tom: If I could just say one thing, West, it would be back yourself, believe in yourself. Sure, have doubts but then act as if you’re confident anyway. I just see so many people underselling themselves. And again, I love what you do.

You know, when you catch yourself doubting, when you catch yourself like, ‘Oh god, I’m a screwball’ or ‘I messed up again,’ or ‘didn’t do it again,’ hook into those affirmations, hook into your visualizations and get your mind back on track because nothing happens until you think it, until you want to make sure you’re thinking the things that you want to happen.

West: Well, on behalf of all our listeners and members, Tom, I want to thank you for an absolutely mind-shifting call. It was awesome. I realized how valuable your time is so I’m sure everyone here would really appreciate it. So thanks again, Tom, and we appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Tom: Thank you, West.

West Interviews Bret Thomson

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Bret: Bret Thomson

West: Welcome to the call, folks! And today I’ve got on the line with me, Bret Thomson. Bret’s a good, personal friend of mine. And I call him the ‘Thomsonator’ simply because he does so much damage when it comes to writing sales copy. And he’s recently had a really good workshop with the Grants. If you don’t know who they are, they’re a husband and wife couple who are making serious waves online. And they come to Bret to teach their premier clients how to kick butt online. And Bret’s been mentored by one of Australia’s most respected copywriters in his own right. And he’s now working for one of Australia’s most respected direct response marketers as his primary copywriter.

I wanted to hit Bret up today for a few reasons but let’s welcome Bret to the call. Welcome, Bret!

Bret: Thanks West! I appreciate it, mate. I’m going to say too that I like to call you ‘West the Lohcomotion’ because you seem to power on in everything you do.

West: You do have a way with words, Bret. I actually really like ‘Locomotion’ a lot. I might steal that later on so I appreciate that.

I’d really seen a shift in Bret. ‘Coz, you know, we’re buddies as well as colleagues in the last couple of years. Bret has really come from humble beginnings where he was kind of searching for different areas to go from. And we’ve got some similar mentors and a lot of similar people who we interact with work-wise. With Bret, I really saw an acceleration of his results in his professional career. And in the last twelve months or so, I really wanted to tap into some of the changes or some of the unique characteristics that have characterized his acceleration. Because a lot of people, when they get online or they look into doing a new venture, they get stuck in certain areas or they try a lot of different areas and not make real progress in any one area.

So Bret, my question is…the big shift you had in the last 6-12 months, what have you identified as been—if we were to break it down—kind of the key things or characteristics that have happened to you or differences that you’ve made in your life or some of the key activities that you have done in the past that has caused this change?

Bret: Very good question. The answer to that is probably not what you’d expect and probably not what I’d expect if I was listening in on this call and waiting for an answer to come. But to answer your question—what has changed the last 6-12 months to make it happen—to be honest with you, not a lot. But change actually happened many, many, many years ago when I decided to commit myself and to become successful.

I developed a passion for personal development books, audios, CDs. I turned my car into a mobile university of success. I went from going through school without reading one single book. A year after school, I read an article that explained how alcohol affects the brain. So I decided there and then I would never, ever, ever drink again.

West: Goodness. That’s hilarious.

Bret: So the change happened many years ago.

West: So it hasn’t been an overnight thing? It hasn’t been something that you’ve done immediately. It’s been progressive. But people have only really seen the results in the last 6-12 months. But the change has been going on for awhile now.

Bret: It has. I’ve developed this attitude and beliefs and standards that I live by which tends to be uncommon in the average person—which is not too hard. But I guess what has changed—I jumped on a different horse. And I had all these different ideas. I went through so many years just chasing shiny light bulbs and whatever I thought could get me there.

And then finally, I stumbled across copywriting purely by default actually because I had a business idea which I was trying to get off the ground. It wasn’t going too well. And because I just had a determined nature, I persisted and persisted until I finally ran out of all my money. And then I had to learn marketing and copywriting skill to try and resurrect that business.

West: Wow. So you were kind of almost forced into it, in this case?

Bret: Yeah. Pretty much. I remember going to my first ever copywriting seminar which is at the Grants. And that’s, I think, when I first met you West?

West: Yeah. Could well have been.

Bret: And I remember just sitting there, walked in as a business owner. And I drained myself there. I spent my last $500 to get in there. And those two days, I did the petty job straightaway and I applied the skills into my next promotion and saw phenomenal results.

Then other people who are in my database just started seeing emails from me. And one particular marketer, he rang me up and said, “Bret, you need to stop sending me emails.”
I said, “Why is that?”
And he said, “Because I’m so busy. And every time I start reading yours, I can’t stop reading it ‘til right at the end.” And then he put sort of my mind to—‘listen, you could make some money writing for other people because there’s not many people who are very good in this area.’

Anyway, so word got out and I started writing for other people and they started getting phenomenal results as well. And then it escalated.

Once I decided to write copy, like anything, I threw myself into it. I invested the money to learn. I put in the hard hours to craft my skill.

West: Was it at that point, Bret, that you realized that that was a path you were going to go and then you just focused a hundred percent on that?

Bret: Yeah, but only on a short term. I still thought that this is a means to the end. You’ve got to understand, West, I went through school and I failed English.

West: And now you write for a living.

Bret: Yeah.

West: And get paid bucket loads to do it.

Bret: Yeah. I’ll tell you that. If my English teacher knew how much money I make and how I make my money, she would roll over in her grave.

But I threw myself into it because I thought, well, this is my primary source of income right now. So I did. I think I crammed about five years of education into six months. And I invested time and money in the very best courses to do that.

And then I went into partnership with a friend. We bought a product that we were going to market. And I said, “Here’s a great avenue where I can pour my skills into for myself instead of writing for other people.” And we took a product which everyone else in Australia was struggling to sell for $498. And I looked at the sales copy and I knew I could improve it straightaway. So I worked my magic onto the sales material and I sold the exact same product for $1,497 and I outsold everyone else by 600% across Australia. And the only thing that changed was copywriting and some creative little added value bonuses which took nothing out of my time and things like that.

West: Wow. It seems to me people are severely underestimating the power of words in marketing on a mass scale.

Bret: Absolutely. I remember sitting in the seminar and Mal Emery got up on stage and said—and this was before I knew what copywriting was because three years ago, the only way you would have met me is if you went into a nut and bolt shop in Tweed Heads—and I went to this seminar and I didn’t know what a copywriter was. And he said on stage, “What I’m going to share with you now will put more money in your bank account in the fastest amount of time than any other skill you could ever learn. I was sitting at the edge of my seat, I said, “Whatever comes out of his mouth now, I’m going to do it.” And he said, “Copywriting.” And I’m like, “Nooo.” I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was but, just cos it had ‘writing’ in it. And then he introduced Pete on stage. And now, I’m Mal Emery’s personal copywriter—which is funny—how that all came round.

West: Definitely. Because actually, Pete used to be Mal Emery’s copywriter, correct?

Bret: Yeah, that’s right. Pete has outgrown that position. He’s doing some amazing stuff…

West: On his own, yup.

Bret: Well, Mal’s always got a team of copywriters doing his behind stuff but he handpicked me out to do his personal work. And that happened 12-18 months after I first started learning.

West: Wow. That’s such a steep curve there. But as you were saying, from a mindset perspective, it had actually started many, many years before that.

Bret: Yeah, spot on. And here’s something funny, West. I’ve gone on to do some amazing stuff, and pretty often, some amazing, incredible opportunities through my copywriting. And when I tell people what’s been offered to me, they’re just in awe. And they look at me and they say, “But you seem so stable and balanced. You don’t seem very shocked.” And I said, “Well, I’m not actually shocked. I’ve been waiting for this to happen for so long and this is only just the start.” And I know that now.

West: You were expecting it to happen.

Bret: Exactly. I was expecting it to happen a lot sooner, actually.

West: But you’re there now.

Bret: Yeah. But there’s still a long way to go and I’m really enjoying the ride. But it’s really cool. The other day—this is an interesting story, West—I think it was yesterday actually, I got a phone call from Darren Stevens, who’s…

West: Yup. Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus—helped with their marketing campaign. Teaches people how to write bestsellers.

Bret: That’s right. He’s very well connected around the world. To cut the long story short, I’m promoting a seminar concept for him and he’s going to take it all around the world. And they want me to be a part of it and link me into the backend and the product and talking on stage. And they’re talking to Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham and all those people. And they’re going to promote it through those lists and the Frank Kern list

West: That’s crazy.

Bret: Yeah, I know. And I must admit I showed a sign of weakness in my mind at that point. I thought, ‘Those guys…’ I mean, I’ve got a very high opinion of myself and vision and picture of success for myself but that scared me a little but. But I didn’t show that. I said straightaway, “Yes. Let’s do it!”

West: That’s awesome, man. Congratulations!

Bret: You’ve just got to put yourself out there and just clean up the mess later.

West: Definitely. Definitely. And we’re going to get to some of the fundamentals in the call, on the building blocks of how you got to where you want to go. And one of those was, you know, I used to call you up months ago and you’d always be under a really tight deadline and you’ll always be out working till the wee hours of the morning. And I wanted to get into your mind during those times…what was driving you and how you kept yourself going through it because for some days you didn’t even sleep, is that correct?

Bret: Yeah. This success hasn’t come by luck.

West: Yes. Yes. You worked your ass off and I can vouch for that.

Bret: Yeah. And I still do. A lot of people see me on stage and they think, ‘Oh wow,” say, “Great.” And it is. It’s fantastic. I work from home. I get to hang out with my kids during the day and my little baby who’s never known their dad to shoot off to work…

West: Well, congratulations Bret. I haven’t seen your new baby.

Bret: Yeah. That’s exciting.

I sacrifice a lot and I work hard. But to answer your question what drives me, I’ve got this deep-seated burning desire to create the ultimate lifestyle of success for myself and my family. That’s a big thing. I never lacked motivation. All I have to do is think of my boys and my little girl. And also…I don’t know if it’s personality based—I think it might be—but I always, always feel I have to do a good job for someone.

West: Even if that means not sleeping for the night.

Bret: Yeah, that’s right. I think reputation is everything. A lot of people might take shortcuts. And it’s easy to do. Even in our industry, it’s easy to take shortcuts and just cut and paste stuff. And a lot of the time I get asked to write copy with extreme deadlines from Mal, Mal sends me all these other examples that I can get inspired from. And I look at them and I just still, to this day, I never ever cut and paste anything out of anyone else’s. Everything I do is…

West: Wow. It’s from scratch.

Bret: Yup. I’ll do some of my own stuff from other industries and reword it and things like that. But now I just feel obligated to do the best job for anyone. And that’s what keeps me up all the hours of the night and missing sleep until it’s done. I just don’t want to get a bad reputation of doing a half-hearted job.

West: Yeah. And look, I can tell you now, I mean, if you mention the word Bret Thomson in the internet marketing circles or marketing circles or even colleagues, people who only have glowing word and compliments to say. So I can definitely vouch for Bret. And I’m a big fan myself. So it’s definitely something you’ve managed to establish.

So Bret, tell me about…I know how you have to stay really focused. And a lot of people listening to the call would really benefit from knowing some of your—like time management techniques. How do you allot time aside? How do you get rid of distractions? How do you really laser-focus in on the task and not let the outside world and internet and all these other things take over what you’re doing so that you reach your outcome?

Bret: A good question. And this answer might give people a lot of hope out there: If I ever, ever throw on a time management seminar, DO NOT GO. Because it’s still something I’ve got to work on.

I go through ways when I come up with systems and do things and then I’ll go back to other ways. So that’s probably not a fantastic answer for you. But at the same time it says that I’m human…

West: Yeah, yeah. And here’s the thing—you deliver on your deadlines, like, all the time. Is that correct?

Bret: Yeah. Yup.

West: So actually, whatever it is you’re doing it’s working for you.

Bret: Yeah. And if I have to stay up ‘til early hours in the morning to get that done, until I’m happy with it, that’s fine.

West: Because, you know, we’re talking extreme deadline. We’re talking like one day seminar having a full sales page written overnight—you were telling me about Mal Emery’s little project.

Bret: Yeah. The Mal Emery Live War & Recession Boot Camp. It was actually worst of that…Mal has a program which is called The Million Dollar Makeovers where a business owner can get all his marketing campaign written up and done for you. And that takes a couple of writers about two or three weeks to get that back and forth, and the research and things like that. So Mal puts on these seminars and said, “As a prize, we’ll pick someone from the crowd, we’ll interview them onstage and then we’ll get Bret to write a copy overnight and deliver it to you the next day.” And he goes, “Bret you know we can pick someone from an industry you’ve written before and blah blah…” And I took on the challenge and I’ve done six of those. And basically, they pull someone on the stage, we interview them and I’ll write their sales—like long-form sales—which could be anywhere between 10, 14, 16 pages.

West: And this is really compelling stuff. It’s not stuff that you just pull from other places. It’s all from you and it’s all based on the copywriting principles that you preach.

Bret: The first one I did in Brisbane… I’ll tell you what I did first. I did a full long-page sales letter for the website. I adapted that so it can be an offline sales letter. I did three cover letters and a lead generation ad, a full advertorial—a full-page ad, and a full page editorial which we call a tear sheet. I did a 1-800 phone script and also autoresponder emails. Now I did that pretty much in 24 hours from scratch.

West: That is insane.

Bret: It is insane. And here’s what’s really surprising and I’m quite proud of. The first one I did, Mal got a copy of it, he was so impressed with it he emailed it to all the other copywriters and he said, “From now on, when you do your Million Dollar Makeovers, it needs to be at this standard.”

West: Wow.

Bret: So they’ve been doing it for years, a lot of them have been writing longer than I have known about copywriting, and now it has to be a template.

So I’ve done six of those and some of them have been my best work. So how do I do it? For me, I break up my project into bite-sized chunks. And this is what I teach in my—I’ve got a product called the—7 Hours Sales Letter. And this is how the product came about. I developed a system where I could write a long-form sales letter in 7 hours or less. The way I did it is, I dedicated some time slots to certain components of the sales letter; because all the sales letter is, is just pieces of copy that’s just glued together and flows.

West: Yah…that appeals to different emotions and follows a structure.

Bret: That’s right. So I dedicate an hour on headlines, an hour on bullet points, and two hours on the offer and things like that. I got through all of that copy by doing that.

West: Amazing. So your seminar where you teach people that system has come about as a result of loads of experience where you try to streamline the process?

Bret: Yeah. It’s a great example of saying ‘yes’ first and thinking about the consequences later…exactly what I did with Darren Stevens.

West: But the thing is, you’ve actually got it down to such a fine art where you can help people get to the same result in much less time than it would if they actually tried to nut it out themselves.

Bret: Yeah, you’re right. That was very exciting, when I wrote my first ever workshop—two days. And prior to that, I was always in the crowd listening. I think I had about 130 people. It was jam-packed. They pretty much all had laptops facing me. And I was working with Andrew and Daryl. And Daryl was a big part of this. And at the start I said, “Who in the room believes or has a lot of self-doubt and think it’s possible that they’re going to write a sales letter in 7 hours?” And a sea of hands went up. I said, “Excellent!” And three days later, they all finished it and the test results were bouncing off the wall. It was incredible.

West: That’s awesome. Very, very cool.

So obviously, trying to pack this call with a much content as possible, would you be able to give us the essence of the 7 Hour Sales Letter in a couple of minutes?

Bret: Sure. Basically, I can give you an overview of how I break it up but there are systems inside these chunks of time which make that possible. Well, here’s the thing…in a standard—when I write copy, believe it or not, but I’ll spend between eighty to ninety percent (80%-90%) of my time researching and ten to twenty percent (10%-20%) writing. Because one thing I’m recognized for more than anything—even over and above my writing ability—is coming up with the big idea, the big hook and the twist that makes their businesses jump off the page and separate them from everyone else. So that comes from research and understanding the client. So the 7 Hours Sales Letter doesn’t start at the research. You have to have already done that—that’s the key. So when it’s time to actually write—mind you, before I take on a big client, I wouldn’t do a 7 Hours. I’d spend a lot more time. This is for anyone who wants to do it in 7 Hours. I say that to cover myself in case any clients are listening.

But I’ll spend an hour writing headlines. Typically, when I write a headline for a sales letter I’d write a 100-150 or more. Even if I think the third or fourth is it, I’ll keep on writing because I still amaze myself at what comes up at different angles, different twists and things like that. So I have a big brain dump of headlines.

The next thing I do is spend an hour writing bullet points. And there are templates and methods which can help people get that skill quite quickly.

And then I’ll spend two hours on the offer. And a lot of the time, I might actually write the offer before the bullet points because some of the bullet points would come from the offer. But the offer includes how you introduce the price, and how you structure what you’re offering, what bonuses you’re going to throw in, what kind of guarantee you’re going to offer, how you’re going to add some urgency or scarcity and things like that. So the offer is the engine room of the sales letter. So basically, I spend a couple of hours on that.

Then I’ll spend a couple of hours writing the body of the copy, which is the introduction… and there are techniques and templates to teach people how to do that.

West: Kind of building up the problem and, you know…

Bret: Yeah, exactly. Building up the problem.

West: Aggravating it, as Andrew and Daryl would say.

Bret: Yeah, that’s right. That’s a form that we follow, which is: problem, aggravate, solve, prove, call of action. And that’s the basic formula which we run by. But with the 7 Hours Sales Letter, it’s a lot more in-depth than that. We write 2 hours for the body because in the body, we have to do the intro, the problem, introducing the price, introducing the product and then the close as well. And the P.S’s. So we put a couple of hours on that.

And the last hour is graphics and layout. And that’s, again, winding back the clock from all the recognition and praises I got, the layout and graphic and design of my sales were commented probably more than anything else. And also the conversational copy but that’s another subject. But I mean, you can be the best copywriter in the world but if it looks messy and it looks ugly, then people aren’t going to stay on the page and read it. If they don’t stay on the page and read, they might not actually get to the call of action and order. So those are my tips on how to make that flow really well and look attractive.

West: Yeah, that’s a great little summary of what you teach, Bret. And obviously, each stage you teach in much more detail in your 7 Hour Sales Letter workshop.

But when people come to you and then you see them trying to attempt to write sales letters, I know a lot of them don’t want to become copywriters but to have that skill is certainly going to be beneficial for their business, what kind of mistakes do you see people making—the biggest mistakes—when they try and follow your system and try to write sales letters on their own?

Bret: Well number one, weak headlines. Ted Nicholas—who’s run probably more direct mail ads than anyone else in the world—he’s tested exactly the same full page ads in the same magazines just a month or two apart and all he did was change the headline. And he got twenty more responses by changing the headline. So that’s twenty two more orders and anything else just by changing the headlines. So again, a lot of people can have a fantastic copy and body but if you don’t catch their attention and draw them in and get them to want more then all your good work and the body is just lost. So that’s one big mistake.

West: I can see why you spend so much time writing headlines.

Bret: Yeah. It’s critical, absolutely critical. With a good headline, you can pretty much have them nearly sold just from that.

Another thing is not having identified who their target market is; they’re just writing to everyone.

West: Yes. Like a general blanket.

Bret: Yeah. And by doing that they’re not communicating to their ideal client and it’s just a wishy-washy message. And they’ll only get very small response. They’re just boring people.

West: And this is absolutely critical in any business, would you say, Bret, any market? That when people try and market their products, services or whatever it is…no one has that one product that can fit everybody. And so you need to really decide who it is that is your market and really pull on their heartstrings.

Bret: Yeah, exactly. Again, that all comes down to the research part. That’s what separates an average copywriter to a pro copywriter. The guys who are considered as pro copywriters, we know how important it is to research. I could research for—like before—up to two weeks, of just studying and I’ll interview people, I’ll go to forums, get surveys done and just get inside the mind of the clients.

West: It’s almost as if you are… You know, I’m a big movie fan. And when you see exceptional roles in movies, you look back at how they prepared and you see the kind of things that they’ve done—the actor or the actress has done—in order to prepare for that role. And many times I’ve actually gone and hung out with experts, hung out with people who are doing what they want to do in order to best represent that. And this sounds very parallel to what they do.

Bret: Yeah, that’s a good analogy. That’s just spot on. I mean basically, our job is to become sales detectives. And that’s coined from John Carlton. He’s one of the greatest copywriters alive. And that’s pretty much what we do: we’re detectives and we find out what the hot buttons are and what the objections are, then we get busy and…

West: And start pushing them.

Bret: Yeah. So that’s one key thing.

And again, another big mistake is the layout. I guess—I wouldn’t say I’m lucky but—I naturally have a good flair for graphics and layout because I wanted to be a graphic artist when I was in school but that didn’t happen. Some people, they can look at something, and it can look like a dog’s breakfast—they don’t see it; they can’t see it’s ugly.

West: It’s a bit like there’s a stray in American Idol, people who sing and think that they’re awesome and they just can’t sing at all.

Bret: That is so true.

West: And delusional, I call it.

Bret: And here’s a tip for everyone. If your graphics and layout is presentably nice and looks well, you can actually get away with writing sub-average copy because you’ll get more people reading. But again, if you’re a fantastic writer but the layout looks crap, then…

West: Yeah, it’s going to put people off.

Bret: Yeah. So that’s another big mistake. So that’s why now, when I give people critiques—anyone who’s part of my monthly membership program—I’ll give them critiques and it only takes about ten minutes and I can just punch holes quickly than anything else and I’ll tell them to go to a graphic artist and say, “Can you make my sales letter to look like this?” And you’d want to try to find a graphic artist who has had some experience in direct response marketing.

West: That’s a really good tip, definitely a good tip for the listeners out there. And myself, when I blog a page and it’s kind of not presented very well, it’s really a hard, arduous task to read on even if you like the writing and even if you want the product. And on the other hand, if it’s peppered with lots of multimedia—for me anyway—and the colors are nice and neutral and not too loud, then I’ll stick around and see what they’ve got to offer.

Bret: Yeah, exactly. But again, a lot of people—you said writing, doing print ads—they’ll spend heaps of money with a graphic artist to make their ad look pretty and nice with logos and pictures, but that’s a different story. That doesn’t work. I mean basically, if you’ve got a message to get across, you need to put the word in there to compel them to take action. You don’t want to waste space.

West: Especially in such a short—you know, people who are looking at advertising, in publications where they’ve only got little space, you want the words to do the damage. You don’t want to be branding yourself, putting your big logo there and stuff like that. I can never understand why people do that.

Bret: Well they do it because that’s what everyone else does. It’s called ‘Me Too’ marketing. What people don’t realize—and if they thought about it for a half a second, it makes sense but—when people open up newspapers, it’s estimated that people stay on a page about 3 seconds and then flip over. So what do you think they’re doing in those 3 seconds?

West: Scanning.

Bret: Yeah, they’re just looking at headlines.

West: Yup. For stuff that will catch their eye.

Bret: Yeah. And people don’t pick up a newspaper or buy the newspaper and say, “I’m going to try and look for some advertisements or I’ll just see what I can buy,” right? The mindset that people have when they read a newspaper or magazine is ‘what can I get out of this?’ They want to be informed and things like that. Whereas the people who advertise, they’ve got the same mindset. They put their ads in and say, “What can I get out of this?” So you’ve got a GET mindset facing another GET mindset and they just clash. But if the advertisers have, ‘What can I give,’ then you’ll make some connections.

West: It makes a difference. Absolutely. And that separates the top 1%-2% of results in any given publication. One or two percent will draw all the traffic and get all the responses. And the rest—the ‘Me Too’ marketing ones—just pay the publication and not get any results from it.

Bret: Yeah, exactly. And here’s another quick tip on the subject: most people skim over advertising because they’re not looking to go through newspapers or magazines looking for ads. It’s different if you go in the yellow pages because you’re specifically looking for something.

So if you really want to get effective with your offline marketing and you want to make your ads look like stories or articles, you want to disguise them so they don’t look any thing like an ad.

West: Like a report. Almost.

Bret: Exactly. So when I design advertorial, I’ll look at the publications and I’ll try and use the same font headline, same color, the same columns—everything—I’ll try and make it look like the newspaper has written it. And if you have a really compelling headline that pulls them in…

West: I actually can vouch for falling for one of those the other day. I was reading a golf magazine and I ended up reading this article about this golf club that was made from materials from a tank and had this crazy titanium blend. And I was reading it and then halfway through, I thought, ‘Shit. This is an ad.’ But I really wanted the product. It had already caught me.

Bret: That’s fantastic.

West: So this is direct response marketing in full flight.

Bret: Yeah. Here’s another similar story but to do with headlines and how powerful headlines can be with curiosity. I was at a hotel in Sydney and there was a magazine on the table. And one of the subheads on the front page—because all the front cover of the magazine is just a series of headlines—one of them was ‘What Ben Affleck thinks about rugby league.’ And I thought…I just wanted to know what does a Hollywood legend thought of rugby league. So I picked up the magazine, found the article and it was a 3-page article. And again, it was Ben Affleck, Russell Crowe and rugby league or something like that. So I started reading it. And I read all the way to the end. And the second to the last paragraph was only a couple of sentences, it said, “We heard Russell Crowe brought you to a rugby league game. What did you think of it?” And he said, “Oh, it looked fun but I didn’t quite get it.”

West: That was it.

Bret: That was it. And I went, “You little ripper.” It was fantastic. I said I love getting suckered in, you know. They got me to read the whole thing and that’s all it was.

West: So it’s achieved its outcome—it got you to pick it up and read it. So curiosity is obviously one of the elements that you use in drawing people in to write.

Bret: Yeah, that’s right. And some of my best headlines have been curiosity-based. But there is a risk for the people who are very skilled in this area because a lot of people try and be cute and fancy for the sake of being cute and fancy but they don’t work.

West: So there’s a lot of testing with you guys, too, isn’t it?

Bret: Yeah.

West: So Bret, tell me, with people who are looking to, say, outsource a copywriter—because I know you teach people a lot of the main skills; and I think it’s actually essential to know at least the fundamentals of how a copywriting sells and how it works—but what do you tell people when they say, “Look Bret, I think copywriting’s great but I just want to pay someone to do it for me and focus on other stuff.”

Bret: That’s fine. I still occasionally take on personal clients so I can recommend them to other clients. But I think you made a good point, mate. It’s a great skill to have even if you’re not going to write copy, just so you can actually identify good or bad copy straightaway. That skill, it can really alter your income so dramatically. It’s unbelievable. So it’s a skill which can pay you for a lifetime. And it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. It doesn’t matter who your market is. It’s just that powerful.

West: Definitely. So for those people who don’t want to actually write themselves, they need to be able to know when they see a good one, know when they see a bad one so that when they’re working with a copywriter, they can kind of point them in the right direction and really support them.

Bret: That’s right. Because there are a lot of copywriters out there but none of them are emotional direct response trained.

West: Yes. And there’s a big difference isn’t there, Bret?

Bret: Oh, poles apart. It’s just two different worlds. And so I learned the art of emotional direct response marketing. You really want to have that skill because a lot of people, they might try and find a copywriter on Elance, oDesk…

West: Who were probably in academics their whole life.

Bret: That’s right. And so you only get what you pay for. And Mal has a saying which I’ve carried through, which is, “To invest in a great emotional direct response copywriter, you should have the attitude of ‘pay once and cry once and get on with it.’” Because to get someone at a high level, you’re going to have to put your hand in the pocket and pay the big bucks. And you can never cry about it but—Pay once. Cry once. Get on with it.

West: And it’ll pay you back many times over if you decided wisely and your product is reflective of a good product.

Bret: Absolutely. And the good thing is it can pay you forever and a day. And that’s what Mal jokes to everyone, saying how it pays him truckloads of money for writing copy. And compared to what everyone else makes in copy out there, he really does pay me truckloads of money when I write copy. But he tells people openly that, “Bret doesn’t cost me money. He makes me money.”

West: Yup. That’s such a shift in mindset, isn’t it? From what most people are thinking? And that’s why he’s on top of the food chain.

Bret: Exactly. Yup. Not by accident.

West: Different mindset. Wow, that’s awesome.

Alright Bret, people are probably really interested in learning how to—if they want to learn the basic fundamentals of copywriting or even just to learn how to deal with a copywriter—I know you have a program that assists people on how to do that. So why don’t you tell us a bit about how it came about and where do people need to go if they want to become a part of it.

Bret: Basically, how it came about is over the two years—when I was in the trenches—I would have spent close to a hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) on my education.

West: I know for a fact that’s not an exaggeration.

Bret: And here’s the big distinction about it. It wasn’t all on copywriting. There’s marketing too…because to be a great copywriter, you must first be a great marketer. You can be a great marketer and you can be a crap copywriter. A lot of people depend on you to come up with the hook, the angle, the twist and the big idea.

I know the average person can’t really commit to put themselves on a warp speed education track that I put myself on. So what I’ve done, I’ve broken everything up that I’ve learned and still learning into little bite-sized chunks, into a $49/month membership site.

West: Awesome. Now compared to what you pay for a copywriter, that’s really almost nothing. Why don’t we give an estimation for people who don’t know how much a good copywriter costs to write a long-form sales letter? What kind of ballpark are we talking, Bret? Ten grand? Twenty?

Bret: I’ve never actually written just a sales letter. I generally do autoresponder emails, pre launch emails, offline/online combination, lead generation ads, Google ads, the whole lot. It’s hard to answer but I wouldn’t look at anything unless it was $15,000 or above right now. And then you can go and be put on a retainer as well.

West: To get a percentage of. So people are getting pretty much the information that you use to do it for $49 a month.

Bret: Yeah, that’s so low. It’s just ridiculous. But I actually quite like it. Because here’s the funny thing—you’ll laugh at this—but I not only give them every single week an email, an eclass, and they’re strategically laid out in order of what you need to get good at in specific sequence, but I also give them templates, a couple of 300 or 400 headlines which they can be inspired from, they’ve got hundreds of examples of openings, guarantees, offers, bullet points—all these things that’s a part of the membership which they can use if they have to write them.

West: So they basically get an entire toolbox to pull from that has caused you tons of money and a lot of time to put together…at their fingertips.

Bret: Yeah. And get this—I have to stop this soon; I just don’t know when because I’m going to get busy but—I offer everyone ten minute critiques on the phone with me. People are jumping at this. Basically, they’ve got me for ten minutes, they’ll show me their sales letter or ad or whatever and I’ll just go through it and blow holes faster than a machine gun.

West: Faster than Clint Eastwood.

Bret: Yeah. And that alone—I mean—what I say to people, if I’m ever talking to someone, “If you don’t think I can make you $49 in a month, Man, we shouldn’t even be talking.” Like seriously. Some of the advice I’ve given people are just going to make them so much money. So I don’t know how long I can keep on doing these critiques for. I might have to space them out but I really have a lot of fun doing it. And I get a real buzz from making a difference in people’s lives. It just drives me. I’ll be honest with you, I thought, maybe I’ll put these free critiques on just at the start to get people in. But the feedback I’ve been getting, it just keeps me going and I just love it. So I schedule it into my week all the time. And yeah, I’m creating quite a big following from this membership site. It’s very good.

West: That’s sensational, Grant. And you know what? I think you also have quite a lot of free information if they actually go to your membership site page just to take a look, is that correct?

Bret: Yeah, that’s right.

West: You shower people with value just on your free page.

Bret: A lot of people approach me and say, “Bret, how did you get so good so fast?” And for awhile I didn’t know because all I did was what I was taught and I didn’t know how to answer that. But when I really boiled it down, I identified five key things that made all the difference for me. And I’ve shared all those five things on my free content page.

West: Cool. So mate, what’s the URL, because I’m actually going to go there right now and have another look?

Bret: It’s www.thecopywritingsystem.com.

West: Great. Alright. That’s been an awesome call, Bret. I’ve learned tons talking to you today—and I do every time I speak with you. But it’s been a pleasure having you. And thanks for sharing with us so many great tips about copywriting and writing. And if there’s anything that I think people need to learn from the call today, apart from all the great copywriting tips, is the importance of words in their business’ profitability. And many people just kind of do a lot of what Bret called the ‘Me Too’ marketing and don’t really excel from the crowd. And therefore, they get average results.

So I want to thank Bret for his time and for really, really pointing that out for me. So Bret, thanks for your time!

Bret: Yeah, West. I appreciate it, mate. I love talking to you. So thanks again.

West: Cheers!

West Interviews Tracy Repchuk

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Tracy: Tracy Repchuk

West: Folks, I want to welcome you to the call this morning—or evening—depending on where you are in the world. Today we’ve got Tracy Repchuk. Firstly, welcome Tracy!

Tracy: Thank you very much, West.

West: Now Tracy comes with a whole heap of accolades and I’ll let her run through some of them but just briefly, she’s spoken at the World Internet Mega Summit, she’s hung out with the best in the business. She’s recently a best-selling author, I believe, of a really good ebook or book—I’m not sure whether it’s published yet—but I’ll let her tell you about it later as well. She’s running four different companies at the moment and she’s played on the internet for over a decade.

So I’m hoping that she’s going to share a ton of wisdom with us on the call today. And welcome formally, Tracy Repchuk.

Tracy: Thank you very much.

West: So tell us a bit about how you sort of came to be where you are at the moment, Tracy. I’m sure you weren’t always a guru. And you worked your way up through steady, hard work in a journey. So would you give us a brief rundown on where you come from?

Tracy: Yeah, sure. Thanks. So I started off as an entrepreneur in 1985 when I graduated at the age of 19. So I started right away. I’ve never been employed. So I guess that means I’m completely unemployable. So the bottom line is, whatever I do has to feed me and my family. So that’s where it started. So it has been a very long journey. And during that time, I was very successful. I was kind of Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year nominee, Chamber of Commerce Businesswoman of the Year nominee, my products had won awards for development. I was one of the youngest Provincial Board of Governor elects for Certified Management Accountants which is a designation that I hold. And I’ve appeared on TV shows such as Report on Business Television, CTV News, radios, newspapers and magazines.

So that took me all the way to about—I guess it was September of 2006—and then I went to a very remarkable show called the World Internet Summit. Because what had started happening is I’ve gone through almost twenty four years as a successful entrepreneur and the workload never decreased. I couldn’t figure out a way to break away from the service to time exchange. And when internet marketing came across my desk, I thought, ‘Wow, what’s this? They’re talking about forms of automating their income. I’m interested.’ So I went to my first show in Las Vegas, flew down there…

West: As a participant?

Tracy: As a total participant. A newbie, as we call it.

West: Did you get to meet like the gurus who were gurus back then at the time just as a participant or did you sort of sit back and observe?

Tracy: I did. I actually introduced myself to Brett McFall. I introduced myself to Tom Hua. Mark Widawer was there. Sterling Valentine, Michael Cheney, Matt Bacak, and I believe Don Childers. And so there was a few that were…

West: That’s like the who’s who of internet marketing, isn’t it?

Tracy: Yeah! So it’s very cool. And of course, I didn’t know any of these guys. But I could tell, based on their presentations that they knew what they were talking about. And so from that moment I knew I wanted to get into internet marketing. And I bought myself mentors right off the bat. I invested in a couple while I was there, came home, and of course, to anybody who’s been to one of those how to explain what they have just done, made a very heavy investment and I said, “I swear that I am going to pay this money back. I will recoup this money that I’ve spent,” because I could also recognize from spending four days entrenched in internet marketing education, that this was an enormously vast field that would instantly overwhelm me if I attempted to take it upon myself. And given the fact that my schedule was already full with my own companies and three kids, I knew I had to take a route that was going to fast track me. And that, of course, was the mentor route.

So I invested in mentors, went back home. At that moment, actually, I didn’t start because I said we’re moving. We lived in Canada at that time. I said, “We’re moving down the US.” So if we’re going to make a fly of this, and I wanted to make a very big impression in internet marketing very fast, I said, “I need to be in the US,” because the amount of traveling I foresaw that was going to be involved, given the schedules, everyone else seemed to be talking about what they were doing. So we did; we moved. And I spent the next five months packing, moving, shifting countries, going from Canada to US. And despite the proximity of that…

West: That’s commitment, Tracy.

Tracy: It was not an easy task, actually. It isn’t just kind of ‘Hi, welcome, come on in, you’re Canadian.’ It was actually a very arduous task. It took many, many months to be able to feel comfortable staying here until we got some sort of legal claim to be able to stay longer than, you know, kind of a visitor allotment. And so finally, after five months—it was about January 1st, it was technically December 26, but January 1st—I said, “I’m staring. And I’m starting now.”

And so January 1st, 2007 was the very first moment that I said I was an internet marketer and I was about to stake my claim in this industry.

West: Now that’s just over a year ago, isn’t it? That’s not that long ago at all.

Tracy: It is technically—exactly—just over a year ago. And it’s funny, I was interviewed the other day by Brett McFall and he said, “Give me a one year snapshot.” And when I gave him a one year snapshot, I almost overwhelmed myself. I said, “Good Lord. Is that really what I’ve done?” Because I sometimes sit here and think, ‘Faster. You need to go faster.’ Of course when I explained to Brett how much I’d done in a year, he was impressed and so that lets me relax a little bit once in a while, that says, “You know what? You’re doing okay. You’re just fine.”

West: Definitely. But it’s that mindset of constant urgency and always wanting things faster, I guess, that has got you there in the first place.

Tracy: That’s exactly it. So that’s kind of the birthday when I set foot into internet marketing.

And then, of course, my internet marketing snapshot in a very fast time, as you say. I have spoken with almost every master and internet marketing guru. And I’m now starting to be termed with them and called that and it’s been a hilarious journey from that perspective, in that the people I admired a very short time ago, they’re phoning me and interviewing me and talking to me as if I’m a peer. And I’m like ‘this is just surreal.’

West: That’s awesome.

Tracy: And within that same period of time, I did become an international platform speaker, a coach, mentor, motivator, best-selling author of the book 31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles, opened up multiple coaching programs. I’ve had tons of students go through all of those. Five of my own products are out there. I do free blog talk radio shows. I have four continuity programs, 1 MLM and 97 operating websites. And then I’d won the World Internet Mega Summit last year. And so that is really what catapulted me fast, was appearing on stage in Singapore—all expenses paid—and they profiled me as a success story. And that was really the moment of definition.

West: Wow. And I can’t wait to really get into details of how you do all that stuff later on, Tracy. But if you’re stuck in an elevator with someone for like twenty seconds and they say, “So what do you do?” What do you actually say?

Tracy: Actually, I say that I’m an international platform speaker and motivator, a best-selling author and I coach and mentor other people so that they can achieve their financial freedom.

West: Very nice. So you’ve got it down to a nice little spiel.

Tracy: I didn’t know I did.

West: Okay. All right. There it is. And I’m sure your card reflects that as well because people, I’m sure, when they speak to you they like to know more.

But okay, we’ll definitely get into the nitty-gritty of that later on in the call but before we do, I always like to—at the start of my calls—talk about mindset and talk about how people think or how their thinking has changed over the course of their journey. And I know that when you dive into a new project now, it’s obviously as daunting as when you first dived into it—say, January last year when you sort of dove into it—so most people, when they come to a new project or looking at starting something new there’s a whole heap of blockages or self-talk that goes through their own mind. First, I wanted to ask you if you get those. And second, I want to ask you how you deal with them or how you eliminate it.

Daryl and Andrew Grant liked to talk about removing the blockages altogether through a lot of their techniques. So let’s start with do you get self-doubt when something new comes up, you want to dive into it, all these things come into your head?

Tracy: Right. Okay, well there’s kind of two pieces to that. So first off, now I don’t get self-doubt before I go into projects. And that’s one skill that I hold very dear to me and it gives me the ability to trust my intuition. And it has become a cornerstone, actually, in my quantum leap thinking approach to life. However, it was not always that way. So luckily, when I hit internet marketing that was the point that I was at. Because in my past, I definitely have now spent many years building that skill, learning to trust myself, clearing myself of garbage thoughts, negative self-talk and any other barriers that I encountered. And if I immediately found and immediately took responsibility for the fact that somehow I put it there, it would eliminate excuses. And then I’d go straight to solutions.

So currently, I don’t experience that. However, I’m very well aware of it. And I did spend probably close to twelve years working that specific mindset. And it is not something that I currently still don’t work at. I actually probably spend 8-12 hours every single week on that one skill set alone. And that’s not me sitting there kind of going, “Ooh, how’s my intuition today?” It is actually really more actively clearing the garbage from my own mindset so that I don’t encounter barriers that I’ve put in my way that I don’t longer even see.

West: Do you help some of your coaching clients do that as well? Because I know that when Andrew works with people, he likes to make sure that they sort of got a clean slate before they come in and work with him on a joint venture basis.

Tracy: Yeah. Historically, I was actually going straight into…I mean I would touch on it. We would do one of the classes—it wouldn’t be mindset, per se. Let’s say I had a ten week coaching class or something. We would touch on mindset. However, this year—particularly as I go on the circuit—I have a brand new program that’s going to be four formulas. And two of them of the four now involve mindset: Quantum Leap Millionaire Mindset; and Successful and Shatter Barriers. So that is because I’ve just found over the last year, of course working with clients, that their mindset is not ready to take in the information that you need in order to move forward and make money just because of the history that they’re bringing with them. And of course, at that point, if I ignore or continue to ignore other people’s barriers and mindset, what happens there is they will fail. And then I’m attached to that failure because they can only push so hard and only work so hard. In the physical world when you’re fighting your mindset eighty percent of the time and you’re fighting matter, energy, space and time of the physical universe (the other twenty percent), you’re pretty well going to get bowled over.

West: I couldn’t agree more. And especially people who, like say, computer literate or internet literate and they’re wanting to jump online and they have all these conditioning from their schooling and parents. And that’s really tough to undo. I mean we certainly share some of them in our Money Mindset program, but I was wondering if you could or if you’re able to share maybe one or two of your favorite strategies that you use with people to help them identify and maybe eliminate.

Tracy: First I go through a little bit of self-talk identification.

West: So just get them to write down what’s coming into their head?

Tracy: Yup. That’s right. And for them to also have a little discussion with me, depending on the coaching program they’re on, of course. But if it’s one where they get to discuss things with me, I’ll actually listen to what they’re saying or I read their emails and go back and forth. And I can detect, of course, negative self-talk instantly and I will highlight and return it and say, “Remove this. Remove this line from your thing. I do not want to see it in another email that comes to me,” and that type of thing.

And so once you make somebody aware, in general, of something that they’re saying because it’s completely automatic to them—it’s under their third level of consciousness—and so as soon as you make them aware of it, at that point they start to…when they say it, they go, “Oh my god, there’s that stupid sentence again. Why do I keep saying that?”

And so step one is showing them that they have it and identifying some of the triggers that they’re initiating within themselves. You know, it’s up to them how far they take their own clearing. And then I use quantum leap thinking which is really just a series of techniques, really, to recognize and to apply kind of some straightforward—kind of like a straight-wire thinking—instead of going A to J to K to get to B. Or I try to undercut some stuff and just get them from A to B and have them ignore a lot of the self-talk until they can go through some sort of program that completely eliminates all of that.

For me, my own personal experience has been with a book called Dianetics. That’s how I’ve done all of my cleaning up—if you’ll call it that. But they’re free to choose whatever route. I just keep them as straight as I can and try to get some undercutting strategies in there to get them through the program.

West: So you quantum leap, that basically is like a toolbox of strategies and various techniques that they can use to help them through that process? Or is it a set program?

Tracy: Well actually, in a way, it is a set program in that I have twelve strategies that we work through. However, it’s not a science. It’s simply commonsense strategies that I use with people. And as I have used them, they have caused me to get results far faster than not using them. And so that is kind of why I teach them.

West: And I think it’s super important as well that—I’m sure you do this with you coaching clients, but you actually sell this is a standalone product, correct? Or…?

Tracy: It’s going to be. Yeah, actually that’s true. I’ve spent the last year actually revising, testing, and training on it. And so it is about to roll out as part of a full program this year. And then at some point, I will pull it out separately just so people can have what I’ll call quick strategies to clear their mind and to move forward faster.

West: For sure. And I’m sure you’ll put together some sort of support group, Tracy, like an online forum because I think…one of the things that I really, really am an advocate of is a lot of people, when they read new strategies or hear about new techniques, they sort of read it and brush over it but they don’t actually hold themselves accountable to it or actually commit and do it and stay disciplined to do it. I know some of the techniques that we teach our clients. It takes a period of days or it might take a week of doing something small every day. And if you skip a day or skip two days or you miss or decided to brush over an exercise, it loses its effect.

Tracy: That’s exactly right. And again, you know what? It’s that way for everything you learn. If you try to skip steps, you’re going to encounter barriers right away. And you’ll say, “Where did that come from?” Well because you were trying to skip steps. It’s just in life, generally, there’s a sequence of learning…

West: There’s a formula.

Tracy: There is a formula. And it’s funny because my presentation this year is called “Formula Based Success.” And because if you follow a formula, that’s how you’re going to get there. And then you can add your creative thinking and your quantum leaping and all of your other unique selling propositions on top of that because the success is already built in. You’re just adding a whole other dimension to a successful strategy as opposed to constantly creating or trying to come up with solutions all from scratch, which of course is draining you mentally, physically, and you’re not getting the results you wanted because it’s too big of a ramp to run by yourself.

West: That’s great. Very true. Couldn’t agree more. I really enjoyed talking to you Tracy, about the mindset, and I believe we could probably talk hours about it as well and it’s been awesome to get some of your insights on that. But I want to shift now slightly to your internet business because I know a lot of the people listening to this call are interested in internet marketing. And one of the things that has impressed me about yourself is how you managed to be so well-known, like, so fast. I mean, usually you think of it as a linear-type process. But in your case, I believe, it’s kind of exponential.

So there are a couple of questions I have about that. And the first one is: in terms of like managing your time—because I do a lot of work on the internet as well and you sit down and you go through the list of things you have to do and usually it’s never ending and there’s hundreds and thousands of things that you have to do—how do you decide what’s important and what’s not? And do you have a team that you use? Talk us through that process, Tracy. How do you decide and what’s going to get you the best results in the shortest time.

Tracy: So I’ll address many things in this answer then and I’ll break it up in little bits. So kind of backtracking to if we talk about how did I get success so quickly online…because one of the points I want to make sure everybody understand, is that was planned. So I researched my niche thoroughly because if you don’t know what people need and there aren’t keyword strategies you can wrap around a product or guessing, that can be very costly. So I teach this heavily again in my programs. So that’s a couple of steps there.

Then I find a formula. I search for the formula. I search for the most successful person I can in that field and then I test it. And then I rework it, make it better, add creativity and unique selling propositions. And then I kind of retrain others on it.

And the other piece for how I got where I am so quickly is the relationship building. This industry and the world is really about giving, helping, and sharing. And when you do those things you’ll end up with what you need back.

And so taking to that point then where you start to say, “Okay, what’s important and what’s not important?” At that point, what I did for myself was I created a tagline—and again, this is a marketing term that I took—I noticed all the best companies out there of course had what they were calling a ‘tagline.’ And for example, like Southwest Airline, it was: low cost flying.

West: Like a USP right?

Tracy: Exactly. Your USP. What’s your USP?

West: For you as a person, is that what you mean or…?

Tracy: Yeah. So I did that. I analyzed taglines out there and then I started to realize what people were doing with these and how it created such focus. And so something that is like one sentence for where you are going and what you want or your core focus can really keep you determining whether it’s important or not. Again, back to the Southwest, it was flitting that I read it that sticks with me because it’s such a simple analogy. And they had a staff meeting and somebody said, “You know, we should serve chicken salad as an option and people can buy it on the flights.” And so the question on the president was does this match our USP, which is low cost flying? And it didn’t because, you know, if you add this or you stock or you have spoilage or waste or flight stewards are spending time doling and collecting ad mucking…it just created an absolute nightmare logistically for them.

West: It made their decisions very easy then, didn’t it?

Tracy: Exactly. So if mine, for example, is like I want to be one of the most powerful and financially successful female speakers for internet marketing motivation, and then for me this includes the fact that I must affect positive change in other people’s lives so that they too can achieve what they have. And so if I’m about to analyze anything, if it does not fit into this, then I’m not going to do it. So that’s how I determine what’s important. And no matter how lucrative that opportunity—because I’ve had multimillion dollar opportunities come across my desk and I’ve had to walk away from them because they didn’t fit into this. And so you’ve just got to go with that. And so you have to skip it because that’s an opportunity for somebody else.

And then if we go back to the ‘how do I get done so much in so little time,’ again for me, this has been what I’ve been working on a little bit this year and it’s the Quantum Leap Thinking, Quantum Leap Goals, Quantum Leap Connections…and it’s a system that I haven’t perfected yet but I’ve been teaching and testing it in pieces. But in general, if I keep applying the things that I learned, I will keep moving forward.

West: That’s very powerful. And just getting back to what you were saying before about like Mike Filsaime, I was watching one of his seminars recently and he spoke about the hedgehog concept which was in a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins. And that just really embodies what you were talking about, developing a very, very specialized USP and not wavering from that. And that’s powerful.

Tracy: It was the hedgehog concept that I had actually learned as well from Mike Filsaime in his 7 Figure cd series.

West: 7 Figure Code?

Tracy: Yeah, 7 Figure Code. That was the very first time I’ve been exposed to that concept. I realized that…

West: It’s powerful, isn’t it?

Tracy: …absolute, um, what do they call it? The fox?

West: Fox.

Tracy: And yeah, I was sniffing and checking and I’ll bind it, bind not, bind this, bind that, not finish it, you know. So there was thousands of unopen cycles. And so when I realized that I needed to be the hedgehog, that’s where I got tight with my tagline and started to really pull things into a tighter core focus. And that, of course, accelerated me at that point as well. As I said, if I continue to learn I will definitely keep moving forward because other people know far more than I do. And of course by taking that knowledge in and applying it to my current situation or current status, I am definitely can move forward.

West: And that also helps with you in terms of running your team. Like I’m assuming you’re not like a one person show. I mean most people have at least some form of support. I’m not sure you do your own tech stuff unless you never sleep, Tracy. But it helps in terms of getting your team on track too, correct?

Tracy: Yeah. Well my team, actually, consists of me and my husband. He’s worked side by side with me for the last sixteen years. He joined my company in 1992. And it has been a joy and a pleasure to spend 24/7 with him. And so he is the cornerstone of the second I need something, I will say, “Can you take a look at this? Do this,” you know. And so, yeah, he’s definitely a huge support system for me.

West: Because I know Mike, for example, he has twenty coders in Romania that do a whole bunch of stuff for him and he’s got a team on site, I think he’s got 15 20 people in his actual office. So you’re just working with your husband?

Tracy: Yeah. Actually, we used to be that way when I had my software company. We were up to fifteen programmers at one point as well. And I realized at that moment that I didn’t want to be a manager and I didn’t want to be tied to that big an animal, that big of a corporate beast—if you want to call it that. So really, that’s where I again started to shift everything to the point of…

West: Cutting back?

Tracy: Exactly. Because, you know, three kids and lots and bigger things to do in life. So it really became a need for more automation. And this is what internet marketing provided for me from that perspective, is also don’t take on projects that I can’t figure out a way to automate. And so that’s really how we’re able to do what we do with two people.

West: Yeah. That makes what you’ve done all the more admirable, Tracy. I mean, you look at all the guys who you mentioned before and I’m almost certain that most of them have a bunch of people helping them out, working for them. But for you to actually have done what you done with just you and your husband, that’s even more impressive. And I’m with you in the way that you look at automated opportunities. And I think the internet can have that for you if you’re not smart about how you approach your opportunities, like you can be putting out fire after fire after fire or you can be smart about what you choose before you get into the project, know that every part of the process can be automated and that’s something that you jump on.

Tracy: Absolutely. Yes. I can’t figure out the formula and if I can’t figure out a way to automate it, it’s not in my current scope.

West: Hmmm, powerful. So I guess you get to now spend your time doing things you love, which is speaking, producing products, coaching people and everything. All the tech stuff is all pretty much done by software and your husband. But is that how you spend your time mostly these days—just doing stuff like people stuff, stuff that requires your valuable input from you?

Tracy: Yup. That’s exactly it. The majority of my time is spent, like as you say, if I’m not on the road at a speaking engagement or if I’m not teaching clients what I’m doing—I keep them current as far as that’s concerned—I keep them current on what I do. I am always tightening the process of everything we have, figuring out how to improve statistics through logistics of everything that we have. And then if I’m not doing that, I’m writing. I can literally sit around and write probably ten, fifteen books a year if I didn’t have to market them. But marketing is the biggest part…

West: But you love both, that’s the good thing, right?

Tracy: I do love both. Yes, I do love both for sure. So it’s one of those relationships. You know, some days I would love to just sit and crank out a book in 14 days. And then of course, but I have to spilt my time between getting that book out and marketing it at the same time or else it’ll release to a very quiet audience. Those are definitely where I spend the majority of my time: is anything that is improving what I’m working on, anything that is advancing what I’m working on or anything that will help to ensure that my client base and people that are connected with me and subscribers—anybody that kind of latches themselves on to me for whatever purpose—that I am feeding them the information that is current, the thing you need to get forward towards where they want to be as well.

West: Definitely. And that, again, is really confirming your hedgehog concept. So you’re only focusing on things that get you closer to that goal, which is awesome. And it also sounds to me like you’re really, really big on testing, measuring, tweaking and fine-tuning the current processes that you’re good at so that you become even better and better at it. And I think that would be definitely a key to one of your successes.

Tracy: It is, actually. And that’s kind of one of the quantum leap strategies that you can’t ignore. You can’t ignore matrix, you can’t ignore statistics. My desire for that probably comes from the fact that my background is in accounting and my background is in computer programming.

West: So you love numbers.

Tracy: Yeah. Well, my favorite numbers are the ones going to the bank account. But you have to work the other numbers before you can just sit back and depend on that one.

West: Absolutely. Wow. You were talking about your clients before, Tracy, and I know you do a bit of coaching. I wanted to ask you really quickly: what are some of the characteristics that you have noticed that have made your most successful clients? And I think, if we can sort of identify some similarities there, it’d be really helpful for the listeners, just to see if they’ve got what it takes and maybe if they need to work on some areas.

Tracy: Absolutely. I can tell quite quickly what a client’s going to be like as far as their success factor is concerned. They come to me with their own skills, obviously. They come with their own desires. And I can teach somebody quickly how to do something as far as the practical is concerned, but if we’re constantly fighting their own mindset, that is the hardest part. So the first thing, if they’re open to new data and they do not think that they know it all and they follow the path and the formula, you can teach them without questioning it—because what I do to someone I have paid for as well because they wouldn’t be teaching stuff that didn’t work, they’re kind of the brand, you know, their personal branding of their product. And again, it goes kind of the key to selecting a mentor—do they do what they teach and if they teach public speaking, are they still doing that, things of that nature—that will tell you where they make their money ‘cause I make my money doing my teach, you know, like I’ve been doing it. The teaching is actually just another income stream. So they have to be open to new data and they have to be willing to trust me enough that what I’m about to tell them is going to work.

So the second thing: the need to remain focused on that task and not introduce a confusion or other data from different sources when they’re trying to accomplish a single goal. Because, you know, they come in and they say this, “Well, such and such said this.”
“I understand that. Did you pay him right now to tell you that? No? Okay. So let’s just do this.” Because they’ll get overwhelmed, they’ll completely get overwhelmed if you’re listening to forty people all at once…

West: And it slows down the process massively, doesn’t it?

Tracy: Oh it massively slows down the process because instead of sending emails or corresponding about how to advance the process, we’re Q & A’ing each other. It’s really a waste of time and it’s slowing down their own personal progress. So I definitely try to keep them focused on that.

The need to take responsibility for the delivery and accountability to me that their—I call it ‘homework’—is done. Because in my program, if it’s a weekly coaching, you better have what needs to be delivered next. Because it doesn’t affect me; it only affects them. It affects me in the sense that I’m now going to have to train the next lesson and you’re not done with the prior one. That’s the only way it affects me. It affects them though hugely, in the fact that…

West: It does. It’s making a big difference in their life. They’re slowing down their progress.

Tracy: Exactly. You have to take responsibility for your dream. I can’t do that for you. they need to take pride in what they’ve done and don’t accept excuses for underdelivery to themselves or anything that they deliver to me for a review. If they’re not sitting there going, “My god, this is the best thing ever! And I feel so great,” even if it’s not the best thing and it doesn’t fly, even if it comes to me and it says, okay, we can completely rework this, if they believed at that moment that it was the best thing that they can produce, that’s all I’m looking for. Because then, once you point out to somebody, you say, “Okay, this head lines this because of this,” or “This is weak because of that,” or “You need to rework this,” or “This doesn’t flow,” then they’ll see that. And they’ll go, “Oh, now I can see how to make it better.” And so then they’re often running and excited about that. And that’s because they take pride in what they do and they can recognize ways to improve it once something’s been pointed out because they can only deliver as high as their own current ability. And so you just have to constantly be helping them to increase their current ability.

And then in general, you’ve got to want it as much as breath in some cases. This is your mission. This is your dream. You have a message, obviously, that you need to get out, that needs to be heard, they need to accomplish this goal because it is a part of whatever they have established for themselves.

West: Do you help them cultivate that hunger, Tracy? Do you help them increase that drive if they just sort of want to do it? because the difference between someone who’s just wanting to make some extra money—and like you mentioned before, that you actually had to put food on the table—there’s a huge difference in drive and motivation and how you approach things. So is it part of your role to actually help cultivate their hunger as well?

Tracy: Well, yeah, it’s a bigger scope. That’s really more in the quantum leap end of things. In the current program that I was going through, as I said, it was very practical-based. Definitely, though, I cultivated as much as I can as we’re corresponding. But the best way that I think I cultivate that is I don’t let them proceed unless they’re passionate about what they’re about to do. If they’re coming in with an idea and I ask them, “Why are you doing it?” and they say, “Money!” they better readdress that. We’ve got to say, “Okay, money’s the end product. Money’s the thing. What do you want from that money and why are you really doing this?” Because as you talk to somebody and you rework what they’re really trying to verbalize, it will come out and they’ll say, “Well, the reason I’m doing this is because, you know, I have a daughter and she has this. And I need to get the message out about that because it’s an illness and it affects many people ad blah blah blah…” All of a sudden, it will pour out. And then we don’t even proceed. I don’t even take people past the niche selection until we have tapped into what they’re going to be able to be self-motivated on through the sheer fact and magnitude that they are dedicated to themselves as a person and they’ll know that moment when they speak it. And I can hear the change in their voice, I can hear the change in their purpose. So they will, though, ultimately be the one driving them through this process. But if I get them as close as I can to the niche that’s going to make a difference in their own life, then they’ll be able to carry that forward.

Definitely, though, this year I’m going to be talking far more on keeping your drive and motivation. And, of course, the way to do that is to have the dream that is your purpose.

West: I think that really hits a nail on the head for me as well. And if you can identify what really works for you and use that to motivate you, everything becomes much more meaningful and has a purpose rather than money, which is just not going to cut it.

Tracy: And we all need a pile of money, we can’t take that with us. We need to give pleasure. We need to donate to charity. We need to add more value to the planet. We need to preserve whatever. There’s such a far bigger purpose. And then when you start to have people really understand what that is, then they have restored their own purpose and of course their own internal drive.

West: I’m really curious…why don’t you tell us about your Quantum Leap program, Tracy, or some of the programs that you’ll be offering this year or that people can get through your website as we sort of journey into this call? And I know you’ve shared some awesome, awesome information but I can’t imagine the depth and the awesome complexity of what you’ll be able to share with people through your programs.

Tracy: Yeah, I’m really excited about this year’s program which isn’t even available yet on the open market. The first presentation of it is going to be on the World Internet Summit Australia. That’s going to be the first set of people that are going to be exposed to it. It’s four formulas that I’m working on:
Quantum Leap Millionaire Mindset
Successful and Shattered Excuses
Million Dollar Design Formula
Market Your Vision Formula

I’m starting with the strong foundation, we’re going to take a look at the quantum leap secrets that I created to get where I did so fast. Once we have kind of the mind ready for millionaire mobility, we’re going to take a look at Excuses because we’re going to step in front of everything you do and how to shatter them. And then we’re going to tae a look at your own personal million dollar design, what you want to get out of life. And then we’re going to take a look at…

West: Is this going to be like a caching program or is it going to be like a product?

Tracy: Its’ a combination. It’s both. It is actually a really big program. And as soon as I have completed the launch of it in Australia, then it will be available to everybody. It is extensive—I’m saving the content of it for my bog announcement—but it’s extensive as far as products, it’s extensive as far as training. And then it’s extensive as far as the exposure and the time we’ll spend focusing on key core areas of coaching and things of that nature. So it’s going to be incredibly exciting.

West: Absolutely. I’m pumped and I don’t even know anything about it.

Tracy: I have a website for it. I haven’t even launched it. I’m waiting until I’ve hit back, but of course…

West: Well, let me know when you get the URL so I can post it along with this interview so people who are listening to this call and want a piece of the action can actually find you.

Tracy: That’s right.

I would always recommend the InternetMarketingNewbieClub.com, a great place to start. Because what I did there was a literal brain dump. I took the logic of what I had experienced from a practical standpoint and I laid it out into lessons. And then on tope of that, I added affirmations. And then on top of that, I added life lessons. And then every single week will also get a new ebook, a new product on top of all of that. So every single week, there are five elements that you receive. And it will come to you every single week at a pace that you can enjoy. So that’s a great way for everybody to get started.

West: It sounds like it’s jam-packed with good content there, Tracy. But what was the site again? You said it pretty fast—just for the listeners who aren’t speed writers.

Tracy: It’s InternetMarketingNewbieClub.com.

West: That’s all one word?

Tracy: Yeah, all one word. That thing was like giving birth because it was the biggest brain dump I have ever done. And then I got to sequentially organize it. And might I say, I didn’t just do my brain dump. I made sure I brought in affirmations from other people and I made sure I brought in life lessons to go on top of the other lessons because you need to be organized, you need to goal set, you need to clear your mind of clutter and so all of these other, kind of, periphery lesson regarding …

West: So you really got some good head stuff, mindset stuff on there as well that people can access?

Tracy: Yes. There are two elements of mind addressed on every lesson.

West: Wow. Sensational. Well, you’ll be pretty silly not to go over there as soon as you hear this interview wouldn’t you, Tracy?

Tracy: Absolutely. I think it will be the easiest and most valuable $47 you can probably spend because it just keeps delivering. It’s not something that goes away. You keep saying those affirmations.

West: And it’s like having you like a personal coach, which if they were to get you one one one, you’d probably charge $4700.

Tracy: That’s exactly it. And that’s why I introduced that program because the number one question I got all year last year was…okay, I have two levels of coaching: one is JV Coaching Club.com and the other is Entrepreneur in Overdrive.com. And some people still could not afford those despite the value exchange. They just couldn’t do it. and so I really needed to open up a channel for people that could not afford one on one mentoring.

West: We’ll finish the call. I want to ask you one question and I’m sure you get his all the time. That is, how do you deal with the information overload? Because the internet is massively, massively huge in its delivery and access of information, what’s your solution to that?

Tracy: That is a really great question that I love to answer, actually, because too many times that’s answered far too quickly or tried to deal with it organizationally-wise or just push it away or just stop reading your emails. And those aren’t really great solutions to getting ahead faster or quantum leaping, as I like to do. Because what you’ve got to remember is when you get into internet marketing, you are now a student. You are a student of internet marketing and you better have some fantastic study techniques in order to get you forward at the rate that you’re going to want to move.

So I have a great study background because I’m a student of life, I’m constantly reading, constantly attending seminars, teleseminars—you name it, I’m learning it. And so, when you have information overload one of three things has occurred. Depending on what happens, this is how I deal with it:

So the first thing that can happen to somebody is called Lack of Mass. So what happens there is you’re sitting at you’re computer and you’re reading, and you’re reading and you’re reading. And of course, you don’t have anything to relate it to. Let’s say you’re studying about tractors or something. If you don’t have a picture of a tractor or you don’t know what a tractor looks like or you’ve never touched one…all of a sudden, you’re going to get a certain feeling. And that is, you’re going to get a headache, maybe stomach pains. You actually start to bend forward, you start to muck with your face, you’re squishing at your eyes…if you’ve ever encountered something like that, that means that you’ve experienced something called the ‘lack of mass.’ And that means that now you need to balance. You need to go get a picture. You need to go look at a website. You need to go look at whatever they’re talking about. You need to get some what’s called ‘mass’ on it.

So if you’re reading about sales pages and you don’t have one in front of you, you need to now go look at a sales page and that type of thing. So those are some things that will actually physically manifest in you if you experience that one.

The second one you’re going to hit in this industry all the time, and that’s called “Too steep a gradient.” And this happens actually when you’re doing something. So let’s say, for example, you want to build a website. And you get in there and you’re doing great and you’ve got your little HTML going then all of a sudden—again—you’re confused: you have no idea, you figure, “I can’t do this. There’s no way I can build a website!” What happens at that moment, especially if you were doing good, just a little bit prior to that is you hit too steep a gradient. You hit a point where you have not entirely understood almost a fundamental step right before you moved on. So it’s kind of like building on a foundation that isn’t stable. And as you go too high or as you move forward further and further from that point that you didn’t understand, you’re going to just get more and more confused. And again, you’re going to feel that. That’s a physical feeling you get.

West: It’ll catch up with you.

Tracy: It will catch up.

And then the third and final one which people don’t even think about—it’s funny—and this is the misunderstood word. You’re sitting on it and it’s rampant in internet marketing. We have our own language in this industry. We have our own nomenclature, you know, we actually have developed and we all discuss these wonderful things with our acronyms…

West: I can relate to that.

Tracy: Yeah. They’re reading something and it might be a word like ‘niche,’ it might be the word AR and they might be thinking accounts receivable and in our industry its not that at all. And then even when they know it says autoresponder—or they may have no idea what an autoresponder is—yet they keep on reading and they figure…”I’ll clear that up later.” If you continue to go and do that, everything else after that will go blank. You’ve just completely wasted your time and it’s not going to stick in. And so when you encounter words—especially in this industry—you really need to go look them up. Just go to bigchair.com or just go to whatever sources around and take a look at what that means before you move on because you will be unraveling yourself from a nightmare if you proceed and don’t know what that word means.

And so how you deal with it is you just recognize which one it is, correct it, go back, slow down, get a definition or learn what you missed. And that’s how you’ll be able to cerate a really solid foundation so fast. This is what I practice, how I approach internet marketing. And again, it is one of the principles to how I went forward so fast.

West: Thank you for sharing that, Tracy, because I know that it’s very, very easy to feel completely overwhelmed when you’re diving into anything, especially the internet. And by setting those very strong foundations, you know—what you were talking about before—it’s a formula. You don’t want to mess with a formula.

So based on that… I want to thank you, Tracy, for joining us on the call. It’s been an awesome call. I can’t believe how much information you’ve jam packed in. And if it’s any indication of your seminars or your products, I think people should definitely find out more about you.

So on behalf of everyone on the call, Tracy, I want to thank you for joining us.

Tracy: Thank you very much, West.

West Interviews Chen Tay

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Chen: Chen Tay

West: Okay, folks! Welcome to the call this morning. I’m here with Chen Tay now. Literally, I’ve been trying to get an interview with Chen for the last twelve months. And it’s been very tough to get him because he’s an amazing guy but he does a lot of travel, does a lot of mentoring and coaching. I’d like to call him—kind of like—a secret mentor because he’s really behind the success of a lot of the speakers and gurus you see out there in today’s world. But you probably never heard of the guy because he doesn’t like to actually publicize who he is and what he does. So we’re very lucky to have him today.

Welcome to the call, Chen!

Chen: Thanks for having me, West. I look forward to sharing some good stuff with you.

West: Absolutely. Why don’t you give us your version of what you do and how you add value to people’s lives?

Chen: Okay, West. Well firstly, I’ll just go tell you a little bit about myself and how I got into this game and do what I do because, I think, the story to someone is actually more interesting than the actual facts. Because sometimes, you know, when I’m in a seminar or when I’m learning from someone, I find their story very intriguing. And also, sometimes it just tips something off in your brain and it gives you the inspiration and motivation to pursue your dreams.

So for me, I was born relatively young. I was born actually in the killing fields of Cambodia in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. And what I learned from that experience alone that in Australia we’re very lucky. We don’t have too many major disasters. And if I can do this, I know that a lot of people can do it too. Because the reality is, is that your situation doesn’t determine who you are. It actually accumulates and gives you the experience to go where you need to be.

So when I came to Australia, I went through the school system, didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I concluded about the time I got to Grade Six that if I could just get a factory job and then 500 bucks a week, like that, I would have made it. I would have been very happy.

West: So…very humble beginnings.

Chen: Very, very humble beginnings. Now one of the things that really hit home with me as I got older was that, you know, I started to develop interests and crushes and stuff like that. And one of the things was, you know, having a drug-free lifestyle. So that’s why I never drank or smoke. And I found in Korea that really suited me; and that was chiropractic.

So after about six weeks of work experience as a dentist, I realized that I was actually living Mommy’s dream and not mine. So I stopped there and I went and did work experience with—

West: So you realized that after six weeks? That’s impressive.

Chen: I made so many dental trays and seen so many dental procedures now that I knew pretty conclusively that I didn’t want to be a dentist. But the thing is that—as you know—opportunity: as one door closes, another door opens.

West: Yes. So chiropractics.

Chen: So I went to Chiropractics. And I was one of the very fortunate people that actually got into chiropractic straight out of school because the year that we entered chiropractic college, they were taking a lot more mature-aged students because it was determined that chiropractic was one of those courses that where actually life skill was more important than academic skill.

So being one of the few that got in, I was pretty happy with that. But the thing is that, after 2nd year, I wanted to get out. The reason why is that in the 1st year, they teach you all this good philosophy, all this good stuff; but in the 2nd year they pretty much tell you all the medical stuff which is not congruent or aligned with all the stuff that we learnt in the first year. So I was fortunate enough to—at that time—to have someone who looked up to me and supported and actually got me through the course because without that person, I can tell you now, I wouldn’t be here. And one of the things that I learned in that whole process was that—I went and started interviewing chiropractors. I probably interviewed about a hundred and twenty chiropractors over the next twelve to eighteen months—and what I learned was that a lot of these chiropractors were very successful but they were also, a high majority of them, were living week by week. Some of them were actually just working to pay their bills. I didn’t understand how you can be twenty, thirty years in practice and still be living week by week. So I started thinking differently.

And when I got through this process, West, I found that a lot of people in that situation, where life just gets ahead of you. And I started going to seminars. And one of the things that I learned at seminars was that, geez, I was always one of the youngest people there. I mean, I’ve invested a lot in seminars and it was only early in one of the seminars that I realized that the money was in the marketing and building the business. And that’s when I started changing my whole mindset.

And I think mindset is a very important aspect of all this because I’ve watched my journey from when I left school and to who I am now, and I can honestly say to you that the mindset journey for me has been the most transformational and pivotal change that I’ve made that has actually helped me get ahead in life. I know a lot of people invest a lot in strategies and programs and…

West: And how-to’s, yeah.

Chen: Yeah. But the reality is, that it’s the real estate between your ears, that’s the one that gives you the most infinite returns. So I’ve always been a student. I’ve just been one of those people that really got the seminar game in terms of it was about: not only implementation but it was about networking and finding a lot of people to mastermind and be mentored by.

And in the meantime, while I graduated with that chiropractic side, I also had done a property course and was basically able to secure about $1.1 million of property as well. So I learned very quickly the power of implementation. But then, what I learned later on is the importance of having a strategy in place and being clear on what you want. Because one of the things that I got clear on is that, look, I went into this game thinking like I was just a chiropractor. But then as I developed and evolved in the game, I realized that, hang on, my business and marketing skills were being acknowledged by a lot more people…

West: It’s applicable. Yeah, it’s applicable in so many other areas.

Chen: Yeah. So that’s why, when people come to me and they don’t know what they want to do, I often tell them, “Look, what are you good at? What are your skills? What are your passions?” Because if you align your business with your skill or your passion, something you enjoy doing everyday, I honestly believe you actually got it right. I mean, at this point in time I do three hours of chiropractic a week, which a lot of people find it hard to believe. But I also do consulting with other clients. And then most of the time I’m with my two young boys.

So you can really engineer the life you want as long as you get clear on what it is that you want. And if you don’t know what you want, start with something. Start with a skill, go look in the marketplace and look at the people that are successful. And what I do is I write their traits down or what they do and I try to work out, okay, well, how do I follow that trait? For example, when I was young I had a really big fear of rejection. I was so shy, I felt like I was always getting rejected.

So I started thinking opposites, you know, you go from one extreme to the other. So I thought, ‘where can I get totally rejected all the time?’ So I took up door-to-door sales. And it was an interesting experience, mate. I don’t know if you’ve ever done door-to-door sales but…

West: Mate, I don’t have the guts to do that.

Chen: Well, door-to-door sales and telemarketing, I think, are the two jobs that mold your character, let’s just say that. I remember when they dropped us off in a suburb in Melbourne. And it took me about half an hour to build up the courage to knock on my first door. And it was funny because I was starting to judging houses and thinking like, okay, you know, trying to work out whether these people will be able to afford the telephone system that I was at that time selling, you know. And it was embarrassing because it took me half an hour to knock on the first door. But I can honestly say to you, West, after about the tenth rejection…I was over it. I don’t mind about rejection stuff anymore.

One of the things is that when you confront your fears and your challenges, I mean, that’s where the massive growth comes along. I remember one of my earliest mentors. I would ask him, I said, “Look, I’m new to this. I’m going to try a lot of things. If I’m out of line, pull me up,” you know. And it’s actually great to have someone in your life that pulls you up out of your bad behavior, your bad habits or just when you behave poorly.

West: I mean that’s one of the things I really notice about my interactions with you, Chen—not only with yourself and your mentors, but also with the people you speak to—you’re very real and you don’t sugarcoat things. And I think that a lot of the people listening to this call—they would be your clients—but also, new people listening could really appreciate that.

Chen: Well, West, you know what I concluded, you know. Life is short. And you’re right…too many people are just getting by; they’re just surviving. And having been in survival mode during my student years, I mean, understandably I’ve seen a lot. When I was a student on Austudy—I think they call it Youth Allowance these days. I mean, I was earning a hundred and forty (140) a fortnight. And I thought that was a lot of money, you know. And my only goal at that time was if I can make 250 a week, I’ll be safe. I mean, just 250 a week. Then when I got there, I said, “Oh, if only I can make 500 a week,” you know. 500 a week—that’s the number. And then when I got there, it was like a thousand dollars (1,000). I thought, ‘Geez, who would spend more than a thousand dollars a week?’ And it’s interesting to see the mindset journey with that. It made me realize that, hang on, it actually didn’t matter how much money I made. It’s actually what I did with it and how much I invested in myself, my education, but also how much I put away in savings. I mean,DeMartini has a great line “you increase your quality of life when you increase your amount in savings.” And I love it. Because that’s what happened in this whole global financial crisis: was that a lot of people led the good life, they sit and didn’t save, and then when the rainy day came along they found, hang on, geez, there’s not enough to live. And this is where it causes a lot of problems if you don’t have some structure behind finances.

That’s why I’ve always made to study personally and professionally about money. But early on I’ve decided that I wanted to learn and study money because these chiropractors were working all day long and they still have no money. So I made it a quest to learn about money.

And a book that actually started me off was Rich Dad, Poor Dad. When I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, it really gave me an insight into the world of money because prior to that, I had no clue about money. And what I realized is that Rich Dad wasn’t actually just one person, but that Rich dad was actually a series of mentors that Kiyosaki had. So I decided to build my Rich Dad family. And I added mentors that helped me in all areas of my life: like I had Rich Dads in business, in investing, in property, in shares, on the internet. So when you build this panel of experts or mentors, what you can do is access all their accumulated knowledge. And one of the things that one of my earliest mentors told me was if you just spend half an hour with someone who’s done it and they share their experience, by the time your half an hour comes up, they want to keep going. And by the time you get to an hour you’ve actually accumulated so much of the information at that time and allows you to accelerate to where you want to go.

West: Absolutely.

Chen: I’ve been one of those people in the seminar game that actually have applied what I learned and got results and have just kept doing it, to the point where one of my mentors asked me to come work for him. And we ended up putting some of the biggest events in Australia and also probably one of the most successful business coaching mastermind programs as well. And that basically set me up on this journey.

So these days, what I do is I advise speakers, coaches and seminar promoters and basically work behind the scenes. Because what I learned is that in this game, you have a choice—and I made a decision a long time ago—that you’re either the Porsche body or you’re the Porsche engine. And when I decided that I don’t want to be the shining star on stage with names on lights. I want to be that engine that drives that Porsche because I found that if I had…

West: Wow. Great analogy.

Chen: Well, if I had the skills and I could build the team and drive the Porsche, it didn’t matter who the star was. I could just plug in that system to anyone. And what I found is that if you build the engine, you build the team and you build the driver…you know what? You really get to know where your strengths are.

West: Absolutely.

Chen: Or you can actually leverage and get the results faster. And that’s why, you know, you noticed in me, West, I try very hard to be authentic all the time because in this game where there’s a lot of ego—and actually, one of the quotes that I live by, which was given by one of my earliest mentors, was that: “The truth is the result; all else is ego”—because I’ve learned that in this game, ego is a two-edged sword. You know, you can rise on it or you’ll fall on it. That’s why I chose to be an unreasonable friend to a lot of speakers and coaches and seminar promoters.

West: Absolutely. I think they really, really appreciate it and it’s one of the very unique things… we were talking, just chatting on the phone the other day and we both highly agreed—and many people agree—that you are irreplaceable in that there is actually no one who does what you do. It’s a very, very unique position. And I don’t know if there’s a name for what you do but…

Chen: Well, what happened, West, was that…see, I had lunch with a lady that ran a very successful seminar company and pretty much offered a position to run one of the biggest seminar companies in Australia. Now one of the things she said to me that really stuck was, “You know, Chen, we’ve looked at the marketplace and there’s no one like you.” Now, in my head I’m thinking, of course there’s not, because ten years ago I looked at the marketplace and I worked out which space I wanted to dominate. And basically, it was a culmination of three mentors. And I took the traits of these three mentors and trying to combine them. And at the age of thirty now, I’m pretty much getting very, very close to the traits of these three mentors to the point where most seminar promoters in Australia and also some really well-known speakers overseas now know me or know of me. I mean, at least when I went I went to America, some of the big-name speakers would actually come up and approach me by first name. I mean, one of the greatest things in this game is the fact that it’s all about relationships.

West: Yes, because in the past you would have to approach them, right? No one would have any idea who you were.

Chen: Mate, in the past, they wouldn’t even take your call and won’t answer your emails. You’re no one. But the thing is, what really happened, what really changed this game is I’ve learned that the power of relationships if you really get focused on building strong relationships. And you know, it’s so easy to chase the money, West. I mean, when you’re in survival mode, all you care about is the money. But when you build these long-term relationships, what you’ll find is that people will do things for you and not ask you for money. They reward you for your commitment, your energy.

Like when I went to work on my first seminar company, I filed the whole employment process. So for me, I don’t like taking ‘no’ as an answer because one of my philosophies is just to fail forweard fast because a lot of people that start out, they wait for their ducks to line up, they want to know the best CRM program, the best autoresponder, the best business plan, the best sales letter, the best offer—they’ve got everything the best. But you know, the reality is, is just get started.

And for me, when I introduced this one rule in my life, my life changed. And that rule was: any time I fail is when I give up. And you know what, West? It’s been over ten years now and I’ve never given up. Now there have been a few times that I’ve been tempted to give up but I’ve never given up. So in my world, it’s really hard to fail, West.

And when you talk about the seminar industry, you have to realize that success isn’t overnight. There are a lot of people that come into the game and then like over night, stop. But if you do the research and you dig, I mean, you know, just remember, for two years I was entrusted with over half a million dollars to research the seminar industry and to study it and to find speakers and promoters and to really find background information on a lot of people in the game. And what I discovered is that reality is that a lot of them are not as well off as you think. A lot of them are living week by week. But the thing is they just get paid bigger incomes and because they’ve learned how to leverage themselves. But you know some of the best speakers—I can tell you now—have some of the most poorest businesses. Like I know one speaker that is lucky to get probably ten cents in a dollar of everything they earn because they never spent the time to run the business side.

And I can tell you now, when you’re a star or if you want to be a star, it doesn’t matter who you are, any star—if they’re getting 50-50—over time, they’ll get jaded. They get very, very jaded because at the end of the day, they did all the work and they’re not getting the rewards. And you know what that’s like: when you’re doing a lot of work and you don’t get the rewards. That’s why I often talk to my clients about the three to seven year cycles. Most of us stick with something for three to seven years and we give up. And it’s like when people come into the seminar game, they get excited, they go to their first event. Then they upgrade to a cause. Then they chase these moneymaking opportunities. And then they get burned or they lose money or it doesn’t work for them because they were trying to integrate a moneymaking system for someone else and they were trying to copy it. Because the reality is, is that the person that created the system created it for them. And one of the things that I learned is that the key is to find out which system or which vehicle is most aligned with your values and beliefs.

West: And that’s one area that you really specialize in, getting to—what I’d like to call—the ‘core’ of a person’s desires and skills and then helping them to fast track their way to a result.

Chen: Well… the thing is, West, when we get to the core of someone—actually, it’s interesting—when you really get to the core of someone and you get all the delusions and their illusions away, they actually achieve things a lot faster. Like, I mean, we have a friend called Bret Thomson and…

West: Yes. Great guy.

Chen: Bret has a great story.

West: Actually, I’ll be able to include…I interviewed Bret recently and I’ll include that as a bonus to this call.

Chen: But Bret is someone I really respect and admire because he’s a solid guy that just shuts up and does it. Now I remember in 2007, I met Bret and he basically stayed on the floor of our hotel room we had a big event on. And he basically struggled to even get there. And within a year of implementing and just putting it out there, he ended up with a seven-figure copywriting job with probably one of Australia’s best marketers.

West: That’s a pretty awesome story.

Chen: And so one of the things that I learned from that is that Bret just applied himself. I mean, one of the times, you know, he had to get to Perth for a meeting and I said to Bret, “You’ve got to be there. If you have to, look, I’ll pay for a one-way fare for you to get there.” Because the thing is, at the end of the day, the first step of success, West—I think—having gone through the process is I actually found that the most successful people, someone believed in them more than they believed in themselves. That’s why you always see people that are couples, you know, whether the wife will believe and support them so much—the husband or the guy so much—because the self-doubt and the self-sabotage gets you, you know, because we all have value issues. I mean, that’s probably the biggest obstacle in our way starting out in business: is that we don’t value ourselves. We ask questions like, “Why me?” “Why people pay me all this money?” I mean, I get that. My mom still, to this day, doesn’t understand why people pay a lot of money to spend a day with me and then just talk. It doesn’t make sense to her, you know, because what I can do in a day, that’s about two months earning for her.

And also, when you’re starting out, there’s always a lack of money. But the great thing is education’s free, mate. And people forget that. When I was growing up—and I hope they’re still around, but—there’s a thing called a library. And you know what? It’s free to join. And it’s an amazing concept. You can go there and you can actually borrow books. And some of these books can really change your life. And I spent a lot of my time in the library because I wanted to find out that if the best minds are in here, what are their commonalities? What have they done? I don’t just read or study business marketing, you know. I try and read a wide variety of material because the inputs that you put in, in fact give you the raw data to synthesizing your ideas.

West: And the thing with you is if there’s an event that is very specific and will help you and help you help people, you go to it wherever in the world it is.

Chen: Perfect example, West. I’ve gone to America pretty much three or four times a year the last few years. I mean, I remember one event, I flew over to Perth for the day and that night flew back into Brisbane. I think I was on the ground for like less than twelve hours.

But the thing is, West, a lot of people think, “Yeah, that’s all good. That’s all good because you’ve got the money.” But you know what, West? I was doing that when I had no money. I mean, I remember having to eat at home more times—actually, when I say home, I had to eat at my parents’ place—because I spent three months’ wages on the next seminar, all three months study allowance on the next seminar. I was always voraciously getting books, buying books. Because I understood that in investing in yourself, yes, the money leaves your hand but it never leaves your life. And what I find is that the whole concept is that a lot of people are too afraid to give money away, that they’re too afraid to invest because your hierarchy or base will determine where you spend your money. But for me, it’s books and education. I’ve always been ingrained that way. That’s why if you dropped me at a sopping center and you lose me, I can tell you where you’ll find me: in a bookshop.

Because the thing is, once you start getting some results—‘coz I think that, you know, when you’re starting out it’s hard to get the confidence—but when you get little results and you have the support of someone significant, you start to attract opportunities and things. That’s why I love the seminar game, you know. Like I think people need to realize there are too many people complaining about the seminar game, about the pitch fest environment, about what’s going on, but I mean…any of those people that talk to me, I would show them the other game behind the game, I call it. And the game behind the game is that the seminar environment is a great way to network and build new top contacts. But also, not so much to get new content but get new context on what’s possible, okay? Because we write so many notes down and we take so many notes but most of us never get back to it. These days I never write any notes. I like taking big ideas because for me, I know that these big ideas—sometimes it’s just one idea or a twist on a different idea—and you know, it can seriously add a lot of money to your bank account.

The number of clients I’ve had this year that have taken their businesses from scratch and gone to six figures, I think it’s been nearly about eighty percent. And one of the reasons why I think that is, is that there are models and marketing that are established out there that are working. You don’t need to reinvent it. You know, when I do a deal with someone, I’m always thinking, “Okay, where’s the revenue model? And where’s the marketing?” And the last few years spending over half a million dollars of research, I found that there’s like a 5-step process, West, that… Actually, why don’t we do that now?

West: Okay. Why don’t you share that with us real quick? I’m just writing down…I’m taking notes here, by the way, folks. There are some good lessons out to learn. But take us with the five steps, Chen.

Chen: Okay. So I’m going to give you the five steps then I’ll talk a little bit more about it, okay?

So the first step is mindset.
The second step is marketing.
The third step is mastermind.
The fourth step is mainstream.
And the fifth step is a maven.

So let me explain that in a little bit more detail for you. Now obviously the first one, mindset: nothing changes unless you change your mindset. Most people are stuck because they’re trying to be this new person but they’ve got the old priority programming. It’s like all these people that want all the features and all the benefits of Windows 7, but they’re still running Windows 95 or they’re running DOS. I don’t know if you remember DOS, West. I don’t know if you even remember DOS.

West: I do remember.

Chen: But yes, so they’re trying to…

West: CD/games was the…

Chen: Yeah, that’s the one. That’s the one. So you know, they’ve got their mind set. So what I’ve learned is that you always, always train and behave at the level you want to be.

Now let’s take a moment here and think about this. I’m not telling you to go buy a boat. I’m not telling you to buy a new car. But you know what? You can experience it. Go test drive a BMW or a Merc. It costs nothing. Wear a nice suit. Wear a nice outfit. Go test drive it.

West: Absolutely. You’ve told me to do that as well and I’ve done it. And it’s powerful.

Chen: It’s powerful. It’s the experience. Something just happens, mate. The shift in your head—it’s subconscious, I believe—but just something that triggers other opportunities and other people to come into your life.

Now the other thing I used to do when I was a student was to actually stay in the lobby of 5-star hotels and pretend like I’m waiting for a meeting. And I used to just sit there and I used to watch all these wealth roll by, all these successful businessmen.

West: That’s really cool.

Chen: Because if you think about it, West, some people in this hotel are paying a thousand to two and a half thousand dollars ($1000-$2500) a night.

West: It’s very true.

Chen: And you know, the funniest thing is—and this will give you an idea of my mindset and where it was—the thing I love about sitting at these hotels was actually using the toilet. It was actually nice to go use a nice toilet as opposed to being trapped at Maccas all the time, you know. I mean, you know what it’s like, you know? You’ve got to hold the door because the lock’s broken on it. And it’s very uncomfortable, mate.

Now the next step is marketing. And now, early on I thought marketing was everything. But as I’ve learned in the process, marketing is a very important element of the business. And you have to treat is as such. It’s a fundamental. You know, nothing happens until the sale’s made. And one of the things that I’ve learned is that the marketing system and your marketing message will determine the top people that come into your business. And that’s why it’s so important to get your message right, you know. Who are you going for out there? Because you know, research has shown us that the more scattered, the more broad you are, you’re going to suffer in 2010 and 2011 in moving forward. Because now—I think Chris Anderson wrote The Long Tail—the people that are finding niches within a niche are doing so much more better than—

West: People trying to cast the wide net.

Chen: That’s right. Yeah. The people that are focusing on niches and niches within niches are doing really well. Like, look at Apple. Despite Windows controlling over probably ninety percent of the market, Apple’s created a great niche. And now they’ve gone into niches within the niche. I mean, now they’ve got—within the whole Apple range—they’ve got iPods, they’ve got…

West: Absolutely. iPhones, laptops…

Chen: The next shift will probably bring a tablet Mac as well. So they’re always looking to find different segments of the market. Now one of the things I love about Apple is that they’re always focused on quality because that’s the brand. They want to just make great products. And that’s why Apple never touched the net PC. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever got one of those netbook PCs—I mean I’ve bought one—and they’re pretty much useless. So I ended up having to give mine away. I got caught in the buzz. I got caught on the hype and I got one. And, you know, that’s one of the things I’ve learned, is that one of the things in marketing is building your brand. Because what happens when you build a great brand? People trust you. Like people know that when they come to Chen, they get it as it is. They don’t get it half; they get the truth. And sometimes, the truth hurts.

West: And sometimes it’s scary too.

Chen: It’s very confronting. The truth is very confronting. You’ve probably experienced it a few times, you know. But sometimes, I think, if you don’t take people to the other extreme, they’ll never, ever see the greatness of what potential…

West: Yes. And you were telling me before that when you push people to a certain level, you’re like—we were saying before—you push hot buttons. It actually shocks people into a faster result. And they may not like it at the time, but when they look back, you know, it’s the kick up the butt they really needed.

Chen: What I call, West, I call that process: ‘you plant seeds and you watch behavior.’ So if you plant the seedlings, then you watch the behavior. If it changes, you teach them more. If they don’t change, you stop the lessons there. Because there’s nothing worse than trying to help someone that doesn’t want to be helped or doesn’t think that there’s anything wrong.

West: Or he’s wasting your time.

Chen: Or he’s wasting your time, that’s right. So for me, marketing is about trying out that message. It’s like the matrix that Dan Kennedy uses, you know. It’s the message. And then it’s from the market and using the right media.

Now media is so fragmented at the moment that you actually need to just keep two or three medias to start off with and just focus on those. We can always test and measure later on. But the problem is, is that when you try and do every media, it’s impossible to implement and monitor.

West: Yes. Yes, it is. There are always unlimited things you can do.

Chen: That’s right. And whenever you’re looking at the marketplace, just think about who is your ideal customer. That’s the thing that I spend a lot of time on these days with every new business I look into and every new venture we start. We look at, okay, who’s the ideal customer? For example, we’re studying a new business called optimization, which is taking hard-cover books and digitizing them for the iPhone app—turning books into apps.

West: That’s cool.

Chen: And basically, we rebranded the digital publishing platform. Now…it’s not new. All we did was resource people who used to do a VHS tapes to DVD, you know. And now they’re digitizing DVDs onto the hard disk. It’s the same thing. So it’s the same concept but we used it for the Apple iPhones. We know that Apple iPhone are only going to increase in numbers. They’re amazing tools. And there’s amazing opportunities to actually expand that network, because it is a media.

West: Wow. And I have to point out here also that these may seem like really basic questions, but I’m sure when you talk to your clients, Chen, a lot of them have overlooked it.

Chen: Mate, everyone’s trying to make that hundred thousand or million dollar day. And the reality is if you just make a couple of thousand but made it consistently and regularly…

West: You’ll get there.

Chen: You’ll not only get there but you actually keep your family, keep your faith and you’ll have a lot of fun in the process.

West: Yeah, exactly. We were talking about relationships before the call and that’s a whole other call that I think you talk about that’s um…

Chen: Well, put it this way…relationships is everything. Like one of the questions I ask my clients, West, is when you’re successful, who are you going to celebrate with? And most of them will say no one. Because, see, in their pursuit of financial freedom or success or whatever they’re chasing, they realize that, hang on, they actually haven’t got anyone in their life they can share this with. Now I’m sure family—like immediate family like mom and dad, husband or spouse—is great. But you know what? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about building a network and having your support team support you in each stage of the process. Because you know, like one of the things that when you play this game you realize that, you know, marketing can get you out there but the thing is, if you haven’t got the goods, more and more people will just know how bad you are, you know? Like, I mean…

West: That’s a great point. You don’t have the infrastructure to fulfill them.

Chen: No, you don’t. I mean, that’s one of the biggest problems at the moment with these internet marketers. They had one shot at success and now they’re teaching every one their system and they’re a one-man show so they go to all these seminars and they tell you what they’re going to give you, but when it comes to delivering them…not many of them are honoring it. And that’s one of the hardest things—is that we’re in this internet culture. I mean, the internet marketing industry feels a lot like the network marketing, MLM industry all those years ago. You know, you get all these people that come in in the gold rush, but the pros hang around. And that’s what I’ve discovered in this game: is that the pros will hang around. I mean, it’s easy for anyone these days to start a Clickbank check or Google check, you know. And a lot of people I talk to don’t trust a lot of these things anymore because they’ve been let down so much, people paying like thousands and thousands of dollars for a website that is literally free to set-up.

So in every industry, West, there’s always going to be sharks. There’s always going to be shark bait. But the key is to actually find the right people, the right mentors, the right resources or the right coaches that can actually help guide you along this path. I mean, for a lot of my clients, they would tell you, West, I actually—in some cases—saved them lot more money than I actually make them. But because of what I say, then they realize it’s not just the time and money but it’s also the energy that you lose to going through a great deal.

West: Yeah. Yeah. And the emotion and all that sort of stuff.

Chen: Yeah. So once you get the marketing sorted out, the third step is masterminding it. And that’s when you go to events. That’s when you start networking. That’s when you start building some relationship equity. Okay, now I learned very quickly that at seminars that the real content, the real value wasn’t at the front of the room. It was actually at the back of the room during breaks. And I’ve met so many of my best friends, and actually, also clients in the back of the room. And one of the things that made it very clear to me is that you’ve got to mastermind.

I think Napoleon Hill came up with the concept of masterminding. And the reason why masterminding works so well is that we generally want to help others. And we all have information and knowledge. And we’re all going on this sort of journey the same way but we’re just taking different paths. And masterminding allows us to walk on a common path. And what that means is that you know what? When you get like-minded people together and progressive people together… magic happens. I’ve seen it so many times.

I remember one of the first mastermind think tank groups we set up. I mean, just within the first half hour all the information was unbelievable. And I don’t think it’s ever been taught because at the end of the day, you know, the caliber of the people determine the environment. And it’s actually the environment that builds the people, not the personalities. Because one of the biggest problems in a mastermind environment is that a personality or an ego can get in the way and because people think they’re bigger than they really are. And that’s one of the things that masterminding—you know—you’ve got to put that ego aside and go there…it’s also actually networking: go there as a member and contribute.

West: Definitely. And I think one of the other things that you do, Chen, other than being a great masterminder and networker is you connect people. You see synergies in other people and in organizations that people own that they potentially don’t see themselves.

Chen: And that’s the beauty of having someone like outside to look at your situation. I call it ‘fresh eyes.’ I’ve heard this concept before, Dan Kennedy, when he talks about how a consultant brings fresh eyes. And one of the most important things about those…I’ve seen it many times where a client will tell you all their problems and then you go through the solution, they thought, ‘How come we didn’t think of that?’ Yeah, and that’s one of the beauties of a consultant: is they can actually see all these opportunities that you can’t see. Because when you’re so busy in it, in some cases you’re always putting fires out all the time that you actually don’t have time to build opportunities and to make opportunities happen. You can’t. And one of the things that I learnt over time and time, sometimes, just taking someone out of that environment and taking them and just for the day work on their business, is actually enough value on a time.

I think more and more people need to realize that you need to disconnect from your business. You need to disconnect from people. Because we just get consumed with all the clutter and all the scatter that we just don’t find the one or two things that if we just did and we did really, really well, we would actually achieve whatever we want to achieve. I call it ‘filtering system.’ You go to these seminars and stuff and you get all these JV opportunities and everyone wants to be your best friend as long as you’ve got a list. And you know, one of the things that I learned is that when I started getting more successful, I started getting more opportunities. And the more successful I got, I got more and more opportunities. I’m thinking like, ‘Where were all these opportunities when I had no money and no time?’

So one of the things that I do is that I set out a criteria. If someone presents me a business opportunity or gives me an idea, I go through this list, you know:
How much will I make with this opportunity?
How long is it going to take?
Who’s driving or who is responsible for this business?
What are we selling? What are we doing?
What budget have we allocated for it?
What are the risks involved.
But the most important question is what I call the ‘Opportunity Ratio’ test. Because remember, whenever you decide to do something, it means you’re not doing something else.

West: Yes. Opportunity cost.

Chen: Opportunity cost. So you’ve got to know your opportunity cost. And what you do is when you find out where your opportunity cost is, you might think, okay— it puts some reality into that—okay, that’s a part-time business.

And one of the things that I’ve learned lately is that it’s okay to be what’s called a ‘chicken’ entrepreneur. A chicken entrepreneur is someone who has their job and keeps their job, but on the side they do a little venture, a little business opportunity. And I actually, honestly West, I think in the emerging new economy, that’s actually one of the best models going out there because your job gives you your income security but you business opportunity allows you to learn, grow, network, socialize. But also, it will fuel and develop your mindset to be an entrepreneur.

And that’s one of the things, is that—you know—some people can do it straightaway and cut all ties or jump. But with other people, it needs to be gradual. It’s like when we came to buy a practice. And everyone told us, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. You can’t buy a practice with no money down. You shouldn’t do it. It’ll be too stressful,” and they said it was out of gradient. Now, I didn’t understand what that meant back then but now that I’ve gone through it, I understand totally what they meant. It was literally like we jumped into the deep end. Now for some people, you know what, you thrash about you can survive; but for others they’ll just drown. And sometimes it’s better just to dip your foot in the pool, you know? You invest in one moneymaking system and you save for the worst, because at the end of the day, one of that works or not. It’s actually not on the system; it’s based on you, on what you do to the system.

West: And I’m assuming obviously, when people approach, when your clients talk to you, you take them to a similar process. I know it might be an elaborate process that you really take the time and the care to make sure that they make the right decisions as well when they’re talking with you.

Chen: Well, one of the things is that—and you might want to use this on your business, if you have a business out there—is that when someone approaches you it’s about positioning. It’s not about selling. Too many people are too keen to make the sale. My friend, Ari, says “it’s about building trust first. And never ever pitch the sales until you get permission.” And I love Ari’s game process because it makes so much sense.

And one of the things I find these days is that because there’s such a massive amount of marketing and messages out there, it’s so important that you build the relationship and trust. And that’s why the fourth step—I often talk about it—is mentoring: having someone in there in your life, in your ear as a platform of support but also a board where you can bounce ideas off, to actually guide you. See, that’s what mentors do…they guide you. I took up mentoring very early. Actually, my first mentor is in chiropractic. And I found that the experience gave me the confidence and security of knowing that you can venture as far as you want and they’ll be like your GPS; they’ll always put you back on track even if you took the wrong turn.

Now the problem is, is that some of the mentors and coaches, their whole business is based on your income. I’ve heard clients where they’re outgrowing their mentor but they have to stay in the group because the problem is the mentor didn’t want them to out grow them. Now the best coaches and mentors—I can tell you right now, West—they allow their students to outgrow them. There are too many coaches out there that live in scarcity. And they feel that “if my client goes to that seminar or that coaching program, they’ll drop me.”

In America, I found a lady that was in three coaching programs. One was 5,000; one was 10,000; and one was 30,000. Now she said that she’s in each of those different groups for different reasons. The 30,000 one, would you believe that she only is in that group for socializing, you know. The 10,000 dollar group is a business mastermind. And the 5,000 dollar group is an internet mastermind.

A lot of people have different types of coaches. And I think it’s important to know what type of coach do you want because there are just so many coaches out there. Like I predicted the coaching boom for Australia many years ago because I could see it in America. In America, coaching is a standard thing everyone got. But in Australia at that time, no one really got coached. I mean, yes, sure, there were a lot of life coaches but they were more like glorified counselors, you know. No one really had strategies in place. It was more an outlet to talk to. Whereas these days, the coaching industry has really matured and really evolved and…

West: Systemized as well. A lot more firm and structured.

Chen: Yeah. And it’s great people like Sharon Pearson out there—from the Coaching Institute—that have actually created structures for coaches. Because in the past, the coaches were like the Wild, Wild West—everyone just did what they wanted. There’s no accreditation. There’s no set agendas, set curriculum. And that’s why it’s important that people can put it together so that you get a bit of a gold standard. You know, some of the people use me for just ideas; others, it’s just having access to me but they’ll pay me to have access. Some of them pay for me to sit on their advisory board. For others, it’s actually coming up and implementing a full marketing program. I know in other mastermind groups they just want me to sit there during meetings with their members to give access to the feedback. But also, at high level masterminding sometimes it’s only a contact that they want. For example, in a speaker mastermind, a lot of people just want me to actually put their name in front of a promoter.

You know, you’ve got to find out what coach you have and why they’re in life. And I really believe that if you really apply yourself and you’re progressive, within one or two years you’ll outgrow your coach. So don’t get too attached to it. A coach is there for a reason. And it is a relationship. But also, if you get clear on what you want, you’ll work out very clearly how long a coach will be there. I mean, I remember a lot of my friends in chiropractic. She signed a two-year apprenticeship or an internship with this lady. And I said to her that she will be over it in six months because she’ll learn everything she needs to know from this lady in six months. And sure enough, when it was six months later she called me up and said, “Look, Chen, I think I have outgrown this lady.” And the only reason why I knew that was because she was doing a lot of personal development and this lady wasn’t. This lady did the typical one-year experience for twenty years.

West: Wow.

Chen: Whereas my friend was making twenty mistakes, having twenty different experiences in a year.

West: Wow, that’s such a huge, huge distinction there. And I think a lot of the listeners can do that. Why don’t you tell us about the last step, Chen, which is the maven. I’m really interested to hear about it.

Chen: The last one is a maven. And a maven is pretty much about being the expert. And at the highest levels, it’s about being a personal brand. It’s like Oprah Winfrey, you know. Look, a lot of people at the moment feel sorry for Oprah because she’s stopping her show. But make no mistake, she is actually stopping her show is because she’s got her own network. Now I don’t know about you, West, but I’ll give up my TV show for my own network. And one thing that needs to be understood is that by becoming a maven, it’s not so much about being a guru anymore. I think the age of gurus is very overrated now because anyone these days can be a guru. It’s not hard. I mean, there are so many publishing opportunities out there at the moment where you can actually buy a chapter. You don’t even have to write your book these days. There are so many people who will offer you a service where you can be an instant bestselling author because of what other ten, fifteen, twenty other authors that contribute to the book.

Now the reality is, that’s great within a marketing point of view. And it’s great from a positioning point of view because it gives you credibility. But from a strategic point of view, a lot of times these books don’t give you enough room to tell your story. Like one of the best books around is Think and Grow Rich. And if you read Think and Grow Rich again, and read it from a sales point of view, you realize how brilliant it is because it takes you through all the emotion, it sets up a story. It’s not just a manual for life. It’s actually a great long piece sales copy. But not many people are aware of that.

West: Interesting.

Chen: So for me, a maven is about your ability to sell your self, it’s ability to speak, it’s ability to communicate, it’s ability to build a team, it’s leadership. There’s a whole lot of stuff.

West: Yeah. I’m just commenting and thinking that when you say personal branding, you know, you were telling me in a private chat the other day that you actually need to put together a strategy. But in order to achieve that, you can’t just hope it happens and sort of doodle around.

Chen: That’s right, West. And you know what the tracking or branding at the moment is? Social media has allowed a lot more people to be instant celebrities. I mean, Perez Hilton will be a no one with out the internet. Natalie Tran will be no one without YouTube. There are always people that made themselves big in the industry—and it’s like I said, it’s such a small niche but they’re being significant in it.

What I’ve learned in this game is that you can be a real big fish in a small pond. The key is to actually find that small group of people that you can be the trusted adviser. That’s why I think in the future years we’re all looking for our trusted advisers. No more gurus. No more experts. We want trusted advisers because there’s a lack of trust these days, because the internet marketing messages are very manipulative these days. I think that’s one of the reasons why the seminar industry is struggling at the moment, West, is because a lot of these people make these outrageous promises in the sales. And you read it and you attend it and you find, geez, none of that was covered. And because they built it up and they thought it was an opportunity for them to change their life, the reality hits them and thinks, hang on, ‘I actually didn’t come out with anything new. I didn’t come out with anything worth…’

West: But also in line with what you’re saying there, I noticed when I do go to a seminar—because like yourself, I like to network and I follow actually a lot of what you’re talking about—when a speaker makes the most sales, for example, they are the ones that build the most trust and have the most human side to their presentations.

Chen: In my advance speaking, consulting and coaching, I tell them that what every speaker sell from stage—it doesn’t matter what vehicle they sell or what product they sell—the essence of what they’re really selling is trust. So they’re selling trust wrapped around property. They’re selling trust wrapped around trading or trust around internet. Now what you’re selling is actually trust. And that’s why the best speakers are the ones that keep the audience engaged.

West: Yes.

Chen: They’re the ones that make the most sales. That’s why you can go to an event and think it’s the best event because you’re totally engaged in the process whereas if you go to another event and there’s another guy, and out of his hour’s talk he’s spending forty minuets pitching his product and services and you’re thinking, ‘Hang on, that was just one big giant infomercial and I didn’t learn a thing.’

Now this is one of the biggest problems: is that there’s a structure to crafting your presentation. I mean I’ve been responsible for many million dollar pitches. I’ve been able to craft offers and also show some of these speakers how to set up their presentation.

I can tell you now, West, I’m not a speaker. And you know that; I’m not a speaker. But the thing is that once you work with these guys a long time, you can actually see commonalities for success. And when you take these elements out and you apply them to someone new and they get results, you’re thinking now, ‘Hang on. This is becoming more of a science.’ And I think that’s one of the things with why a lot of speakers get drawn to me and my work and what I do is because they see that, ‘hang on, he’s actually teaching us the business and marketing side of our business, which we’ve never looked at. We’ve been going to all those speaking courses that tell us how to hold our hands and tell us how to make our facial expressions, tell us what to wear,’ you know. ‘Whereas this guy is telling us, hang on, “No. This is how you leverage your product and service.”’

I remember one lady, for example, she went from just selling her book, a $20 book at the back of the room, to selling a $500 package, to selling a $2,000 license and opportunity at the back of the room. I remember a fitness guy who wanted to get on the big stage and I told him, “Mate, if you want to get on the big stage you need to do at least fifty grand.” Now at this point in his life, he was selling out a $147 product. And he was averaging $10,000-$14,000 of sales every time he spoke, which is still good; but not good enough for the high levels. So I said to him, “Mate, if you want to get to those high levels you’ve got to sell the opportunity to make money.” So he turned his package, his $147 package, into a license and opportunity where a health professional could buy his kit, duplicate it as many times as they want, and actually keep all the profits. Now to make it even more sexy: ‘You can buy the rights, we’ll give you a license to print it and we’ll also fulfill and ship the first fourteen packs. So therefore, you’re not literally paying any money for your license.’

West: Wow. That’s so cool.

Chen: Now you can tell a pitch is going well, West, when people start walking to the back of the room and they don’t know the price. That’s one of the things that I boast. I watch three people walk to the back of the room and they were signing up. And the people at the back of the room said, “Uh, can you just hold on? We don’t know the price yet.” And that’s one of the things that’s really interesting, West.

Now long story short: I think he did about $64,000 during that presentation.

West: That’s awesome.

Chen: Now he got noticed. Other promoters started noticing him as well. Other opportunities came up. And this is the thing West, is that a lot of us, with the right advise or right strategy, it can actually take us to a whole new level. See, I know that about being a maven. I’ve sort of become one by default, I think. It’s sort of a process that’s happened. Like I’ve never actually seen myself as an expert but by just being in the seminar environment and having people ask you questions. I mean, I remember a guy approach me in a seminar—I do one of those off-the-cuff comments that didn’t mean anything—but I said to him, “Look, mate. If you want extra income why don’t you try your copywriting services on Rentacoder?” You know, six months later, I get this email from this same guy and he said, “Chen, thank you so much. Thanks for your advice. I’m making $2,000 a month on Rentacoder now with my copywriting.” He even had the opportunity to fly over to America and be mentored by a really well-known copywriter as well from the funds that he was able to generate from Rentacoder.

West: Awesome. I know you could just pump out story after story after story of how you’ve helped people. And I think in future calls—which I’d like to do with you—we’ll definitely cover a lot of those topics.

So in closing, I want to now give you the opportunity to tell people how you can add value to them. And one thing I want to mention here is your Conversations with Chen on Facebook. And I know that’s available for people to read. So that’s the first thing I’d recommend people do—with your permission of course—is to join that group.

And secondly, if they’re looking at learning more about you, Chen, and figuring out how they could benefit from your wisdom and guidance, what would you say?

Chen: Well West, you know, you’re just spot on. I’m putting my time and energy and heart into that Conversations with Chen because I’m very committed at giving away my best stuff. But one of the things that I’ve learned in this whole process is that by giving away your best stuff, you attract the people you want in your life. Facebook is a digital community. And basically, you get some of the best people in that environment. And it blows me away. I’ve actually started collecting the feedback. I used to—when anyone sent me feedback—I used to just delete it. But now I’ve started collecting them up because I was getting so many at one stage that it’s hard to keep up with that. But the reality is, is that I found that people want authenticity. People don’t want to be shocked. People don’t want to make mistakes again. They want an environment where they know it’s safe.

West: And they don’t want to be sold to.

Chen: And they don’t want to be sold to. And this is the thing that I’ve learned, West. Because I’ve looked at, you know, having spent all that money in this self-help, personal development game, a lot of people ask me to be speaking and offer coaching and stuff and I’ve never done that because in the past I’ve always had six-figure opportunities with speakers, coaches and consultants. I’ve never needed to work with people starting out.

But times have changed, West. This whole economy has really dented a lot of people’s dreams and aspirations. Like what I’m doing with you today, West, I mean this whole thing started because I mean, you know, if we tell them a little bit about our relationship, I always kick you up the bum. And I’ve always believed in you and it’s been over a year now that we’ve kept in touch. And I’ve also given you opportunities to go to seminars. I introduced you to some very high profile people as well.

West: Absolutely.

Chen: And part of the reason why I’m doing that this year is to allow you to monetize all that information you have. Remember how we spoke about your strength as an interviewer? Now imagine if you’re a speaker or someone who wants to get your brain down on paper, if someone like you can draw it out, it will fast-track what you’re trying to achieve. And I think that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve learned that I’m at a stage in my career, in my life now where—I mean for examp le, I’ve taken on a new project that I know will not derive any income for three years. Now it’s great to be in a position to do that but I also am aware of the fact that there’s a lot of other people out there that just actually want access to me. And so I’m working on some programs and some opportunities. So if you’re not on Facebook, I highly recommend you get a Facebook and sign up to the Conversations with Chen. If you’re not on there, the messages will actually be reposted on my blog, which is www.chentay.com.

Now one of the things that I’ve learned in that whole process is that I want to be different. I’ve looked at the coaching game. I’ve looked at the marketing game. I’ve stayed away from it this year because I wanted to keep it simple but also to keep it clear on what I’m offering. And basically, I want to be a difference. I want to make a difference. And I don’t want to be just another coach out there. the thing that I discovered, where I’m different from a lot of the other coaches and a lot of the other businesses out there is the fact that I provide that platform for support, I can help clients engineer their environment for them to succeed. And also, I can introduce you to my network of successful people for opportunities.

And what I found in the past, when I was beta testing this in the last year, is that any client that paid upfront and was honoring their commitments got results. Whereas two clients who agreed to go on the program and was always out of financial exchange and never paid their bills, they got no results. So West, it’s the universal law of fair exchange. So what I’m trying to do now is create this program where there’s a great opportunity for people that want to accelerate what they’re doing. And to be honest with you, this program’s pretty much suited to speakers, coaches, and seminar promoters or people that want to get into the seminar game, whether you want to have that as a separate business to your business—I often call that a business within the business—because at this day and age, more and more people are learning how to take the information from their head and digitizing it.

Now a lot of people had said to me, “Yeah, but Chen, aren’t you then selling time for dollars? And my answer to that is that, “You know what? If you’re getting paid enough for what you want, there’s nothing wrong with earning a high amount per hour.”

West: Absolutely.

Chen: I think people are bought over the fact that they’re told about this passive income and passive revenue and stuff like that. But they forget that it doesn’t matter what you do in life, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth working for.

You know mate, I love it when I see clients like yourself and Bret and Pete Godfrey and a lot of these guys, make big breakthroughs. No amount of money will hide my joy at seeing those results. One of the things is also…I guess the most valuable part of what I do is being an unreasonable friend that kicks you up the butt when you need it. Because you know, West, I can trumpet and support you but the thing is I’m sure you’ve got other friends in your life that will comfort you when you’re down full in your face. I don’t want to be one of those people. I want to be the unreasonable friend that keeps pushing you because my job, my goal is to unlock that greatness from with you. Because I think that there’s nothing worse than having all the skills and all the talents and being over-educated underachiever.

West: Absolutely. I have to second everything there that Chen said, not only about his clients but also in his interactions with my self. So you can consider this a kind of a mini testimonial in the interactions that we’ve had. You’ve pushed me and helped me have massive breakthroughs and definitely kicked my ass on a regular basis, which I don’t enjoy at the time but look back and thank you for.

Chen: Well, one of the reasons why I do that, mate, is that I see in this game time and time again—and it’s probably good to finish up on this—is that too many people keep chasing these bright, shiny objects, these magic pills and stuff like that because it distracts them from building a real business. And the reality is business is very simple. People complicate it because we always have to believe that’s somewhere out there someone’s doing it easier, better, faster. Because the reality is, it doesn’t matter what they’re doing—it’s actually what this whole process is about, it’s who we’re becoming. I mean, the late Jim Rohn always had this one quote that I live by: “Don’t wish things be easier, wish it were better.” And I live by that, you know. And I’m very grateful for learning that lesson from him because I’ve never ever wished things were easier. I’ve always tried to be better because when you get better, when you reach the top of your game, new opportunities will present.

I remember when I was in America, Ali Brown said a line that just resonated with me. And she said, “What if you grew and your business didn’t? Or what if your business grew and you didn’t?” I mean, I’ve seen so many speakers and promoters and coaches that their businesses are outgrowing them and they don’t know how to put a team in place, they don’t know how to let go, they’re still running that one-man shop when in fact they could be a multi-million dollar company. But you know…if they choose not to, that’s fine. But it’s like trying to accelerate by having the foot on the brake at the same time. There’s a lot happening but you’re not getting anywhere. That’s one of the things that I think is important to let the members know: that if you have that support—and you know this, West. I mean, I’ve been a real big fan, a real big advocate of yours in all things…

West: Thank you.

Chen: Because the thing is, at this day and age, in this economy, in this emerging new economy, talent is getting harder and harder to find because most people aren’t prepared to do the work. Most people aren’t prepared to do that. They fall for these illusions of the 4-Hour Work Week and all this other stuff that promotes push-button wealth. And the reality is, is that you actually have to do stuff. The thing is, if you do stuff—I’m telling you now—it accumulates and it sets you up for the next opportunity. You don’t need to spend a lot of money. But if you can harness your money into one direction… or one of the rules that I put in place that changed my life is that ‘one guru a year.’

I’m in the process now actually of finding out who that guru is because each year that I’ve gotten this rule, I found that it’s so much easier to study one person and study them well and follow them and do everything they say than it is trying to do ten programs all at once.

West: Very insightful.

Chen: I mean, I’m sure you know this too because I’m sure you’re in a lot of opt-in list and you get a lot of offers and opportunities. And one of the things is that, what I’ve done is that I’ve learned that my programs are going to be more experiential. Now I want to take you to an event and show you behind-the-scenes.

West: Yes. And I think you’ve done one recently. Tell us about that group.

Chen: Well, yeah. I took a group over to America and we had a road trip. So we went there and not only do they get good information but the day afterwards we sat down and debriefed. And also, seven people wanted to make certain contacts and I was able to align people up with different contacts. But just the opportunities to find new marketing, new models over there: is priceless. Now I know that next year—you know, I had a lot of people ask me what events are next—and what I learned is that people want more experiences…because that’s what it’s about. No one ever, on their death bed complains that they didn’t work enough or they wish they did over time. I mean, we all talk about our experiences. And I think that’s where this shift that’s happening in the marketplace is that, you know, from what I’m seeing from my point of view is that women are evolving—we’re in trouble, mate—because they’re finding their voice, they’re finding their power. They’ve got choices now. And it’s not going to be long before they realize they’re actually going to need us but the reality is that if you provide a support mechanism, let the women grow. I spoke to a guy the other day, I said, “Mate, let your wife grow. Because if she grows and keeps supporting your family, you can just stay home, look after the kids and play golf. What more do you want?”

West: Well, on that note Chen… you’ve just got so much wisdom and wealth so you could probably talk—literally—for weeks on end and lift up on the amount of value that you’re adding. But we’re going to have to capture those in future calls.

So for those listening, you can find about Chen by visiting ChenTay.com or going on Facebook and looking up Conversations with Chen as a group. It’s one of the best things you’ll ever do, better than any list that I’ve ever been on. And he doesn’t sell you any stuff. It’s just pure authentic observations of life, business, education and experiences.

And on that note, I think we’ve been very sport today to have Chen for over an hour to chat with us and share with us. So Chen, thank you for your time.

Chen: Thank you, West!

West Interviews Nhan

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Nhan: Nhan

West: Welcome folks! My name’s West. I want to thank you for joining us on this call. Today, I’ve got a very special guest, a good friend of mine actually. We’ve gone back through many years and I’ve seen him grow exponentially in the last five or six years. And it’s an absolute pleasure to have him on the call today. His name’s Mr. Nhan Nguyen and he’s currently controlling, I believe, around $20 million worth of property, including house and land packages, land subdivisions, units and townhouses. But I’ll let Nhan himself give us a bit of a spiel on his background. So first let me welcome you, Nhan. Welcome to the call.

Nhan: Thanks West.

West: I appreciate you being here. Why don’t you give us a little bit of a background about maybe how you started your journey into property?

Nhan: Yes, sure. Firstly, West, thanks for having me on this call. I enjoy the privilege of sharing he knowledge that I’ve had. Mind you, there’ll be several experiences about positive and negative and a lot of people supporting me along the way. I’m twenty seven, turning twenty eight. And I’ve been with property game for about six years and haven’t been able to get where I am today without help from a lot of people. I started when I was twenty one. And one of the reasons, you know, I nearly dropped out of Uni is I was out looking for deals learning how to do it. One day before an exam and I had a Chemistry test. But it was funny, I think I got a 2.

West: For the listeners out there, it’s a scale of 1 to 7.

Nhan: Yeah. And 3 is passing. And 4 is passing. And 2 is a fail. I was lucky that I got the grade earlier in my degree to pass my Bachelor degree of Science. I did have a Bachelor in Science but I didn’t use it. Once I finished my uni degree, I went straight into the workforce and worked for a couple of property investment companies. And Robert Kiyosaki, whose name you may recognize said, “Don’t work for money; make money for you.” So the first three years of my career, I worked for property investment companies and learned how to do the deals. And after three years of working on the job and learning how to do it, I left there and did my own thing. But in December 2003, I was doing joint ventures, about $2 million in joint ventures with a partner who put up all the money and all the debt. Yeah, so that’s when I decided to leave work. But as a start, my first properties were about $50,000-$55,000 in a suburb called Goodna, which is about 25 k out from Brisbane towards the West. And the second deal I did, I bought a house $45,000. And the third deal was about $57,000.

West: Wow. So you started small and just grew from there.

Nhan: Yeah, that’s right. And after a few years of practicing, I sold those properties. And instead of making $100,000 per property, I was able to make $10,000-$20,000 all up, because I was filled with experiences and mistakes and, yeah, a little bit of money. But I think the learnings were much more valuable than the money.

West: For sure. I’d like to touch on all those little things that you brought up as we go throughout the chat today. But why don’t you tell us what got you interested in property in the first place, Nhan? And what sort of gave you that push in that direction? Because I understand that you also looked at shares and you looked at a few other different investment opportunities. Property caught your eye. Why is that?

Nhan: I think it wasn’t so much that property caught my eye. I was reading the Kiyosaki books—as everybody does when they start out. And I tried everything. I tried network marketing. I tried all these schemes in terms of put money on that lot; lost money on that. I put $5,000 to $10,000 into offshore investments; lost money on that. I tried share trading and I found it a bit boring. I listened to a Dolf De Roos tape. I think he was in one of Robert Kiyosaki’s game’s tapesets in Cashflow 101. If you guys get the chance to play that game, it talks about properties and trading shares. And in terms of property, how you’ve got leverage, you can add value and also you can buy undervalue. I listened to some tapes, John Burley, and he talks about how to buy property with no money down. And it’s good because I didn’t have enough money.

West: Now how did you…you said before that you got your first couple of deals down with none of your own money. That’s amazing—first thing—congratulations. But how did you approach that? I mean most people think that they first need to save and save and save until they get enough before they get their hands wet. How did you find someone?

Nhan: First thing, I did a lot of ‘no-money down’ deals. On the first few, I had actually did put about $4,000-up to a $55,000 house. I had $4,000 in the bank and I used $7,000 of my own money spent available at that time. I borrowed as much as I can, including the $4,000 of my own money.

The second deal, the $45,000 deal, my parents lent me $9,000 for the 20% deposit.

And the third one, that’s when I started to ramp up because I literally have run out of money and my parents have run out of money to lend me. And John Burley talks about doing JVs, joint ventures where the other partner puts up all the cash…

West: Right. So how did you go find people?

Nhan: So literally I put together a business plan. What we buy the property for, what we ‘d onsell the property for, how much we’d rent it out at. And I presented. I just went around and talked to investors. Basically, we did make a list and ring the list and see if they’re interested in buying property and doing deals. And after a while there was a guy his name was Simon. And he said, “Yup. I’ll do it. I’ve got a good income.” I think he ended up putting maybe $3,000-$5,000 cash down, borrowed the rest of the money from ANZ, and off we went. It was more of the confidence and the willingness to try something else,and be willing to be rejected. I think that was a big deal rather than finding investors. Right now there are too many investors but not enough deals. But it never seems to be an issue anymore.

West: For sure. And the amazing thing is all this information that you’re referring to is available freely to everyone, isn’t it? But only very few people knuckle down and actually follow the advice.

Nhan: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. What you’re saying is in the book shops. It’s on the internet, on CDs. You can go to seminars, they talk about it all the time. But actually, not many people do the work.

West: So what’s the difference with you, Nhan? And I noticed it not only in your property investing, I’ve noticed it in almost everything that you do. I mean we play golf together. We’ve played Cashflow together. We’ve played a whole arrangement of things. We’ve done lots of stuff together. And one thing I noticed is that when you hear something or you learn and you distinction, you immediately put it into place. You don’t really care what happens. Additionally, it’s all about learning for you and getting that feedback immediately so you can get over those initial humps. How did you develop such a—sort of an—action-focused attitude?

Nhan: I it’s just a lot of impatience.

West: So the key to success is impatience.

Nhan: I know what I want and I just chase it. I always believe that I can get it; I might not get it now. And I’ve always looked at desire, thinking about Think Rich book, with desire being one of the keys that you need. I think that’s very much what I’ve got built in with me and it’s just going and believing that I can do it, I can have it. If other people can do it, so can I.

West: Was there a time when you had self-doubts or you just weren’t sure what was going to happen with an event or deal you were doing or you just sort of…there were things that started popping up in your head that you question them? Most people would give into but you’ve managed to overcome. Have you ever been through a stage where you’ve just had serious doubt and serious self-limitations?

Nhan: Yeah, definitely. Definitely staring on your teenage years or especially when you’ve gone through adolescence and growing up and trying to concern and reassure yourself of who you are. At one stage, my identity was that I was going to be a doctor and that was going to please my parents. And then the identity shifted from being a doctor into being a property developer or property entrepreneur. There was a lot going through my mind at the time. And especially now that I run my own business. We’ve got a lot of projects on the go and sometimes when things aren’t going right, doubt does go through your head but you’ve got to stick to your guns.

I think they always talk about never, never give up. And that there is only one option: to never give up. There is an option to fail but there’s no other option to give up because you’ve got to keep playing even if you’re losing.

Awhile back I was doing network marketing and I was part of the Amway corporation. And I was doing that for eighteen months. And I know a lot of people have made lots of money on it—network marketing. As for me, I wasn’t making money at the time and I just go and make those phone calls when I didn’t want to make those phone calls because I had a vision in my mind. I’ve always got a goal. When you’re chasing something, you keep chasing it and that’s what gives you that willpower. You’ve got to develop your own willpower. And after a while become so strong that you can’t help but chase your goal. It becomes a habit.

West: For sure. So for you it’s all about seeing the vision and seeing the end result. And that vision is enough to inspire and motivate you on a day to day basis even when you feel like not doing it.

Nhan: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And sometimes I feel like doing it, other days I don’t. And that’s the thing…you’ve got to overcome how you feel because all of these are emotions. I’ve got investors I’m accountable to. I’ve got banks I’m accountable to. There is no option to not fulfill those obligations. I draw my own lines and those are the paths I have to follow,when I write down a to-do list, all there is is to do my list. Stop procrastinating because that’s what makes it hard.

West: For sure. Let’s take a step back, Nhan. I want to talk about your jump from—you know how you said before you were working in property investment companies, that the step there to actually becoming a full-time investor and taking on the risk and all that stuff that comes with becoming an investor, you put a lot of things on the line to do that. There are some emotional blockages. A lot of people listening on this call may be thinking of doing something like that but they just can’t overcome that self-fear and doubt. So it’s kind of a different limitation that I was talking about before. How have you gone about breaking through your own self-doubt about taking that leap in order to exponentially increase your income and put yourself on the line?

Nhan: I think one of the key of me exponentially growing with the support that you mentioned before which is Landmark, that causes the Landmark forums and they have a lot of programs which deal…they don’t deal with gradual and slow improvement but they talk about instant results over a short period of time. And their technology is so advanced and so brilliant that sometimes you just can’t see it. And that’s what they do—they look at your blind spots. I’ve applied their technology for about two or three years now and I encourage anyone to go LandmarkEducation.com to have a look at their courses.

But my point is that starting with that course, I used that course to, first, to inspire me with confidence. And then secondly, I didn’t leave my job until I had a firm foundation in place. Robert Allan, who has a book called Property with No Money Down (Nothing Down), and he says, “Make sure that you have at least six to twelve months of funds behind you after you leave your job so that you can securely start your business and acquisitions and yadda yadda yadda.” I didn’t look at leaving my job until I secured a handful of properties and also have some cash behind me. And once I had a couple of properties that were in the pipeline with joint ventures, then I quit my job. And in that time frame, opportunities came up, and yeah, I had to learn how to sustain myself and learn how to swim so I didn’t drown.

West: For sure. Because you’re pretty much burning your bridges—your safety bridges—aren’t you? Once you jump into it.

Nhan: That’s right. And the worst case scenario was I’m going to go back and get a job earning $20-$30 an hour. So that would be my worst case scenario. And that’s the thing too. I’ve known people who left their job to do the property thing and done it for six to twelve months but they just don’t have the discipline to go look for deals. I’ve known a mate who worked at a bank or something, didn’t have the discipline to look at deals and six months later they’re back at the bank again working. But there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s being willing to take a leap of faith, trust in yourself and having the discipline to ongoingly on a day to day basis look for deals.

West: For sure. I’ve spent some time with you, Nhan, and discipline is something that definitely I was very impressed with. Do you have a secret formula when it comes to discipline, Nhan? Is there a secret thought or a routine or some sort of anchor or is it just comes as a resulp of all the things you’ve talked about before?

Nhan: [15:43] I think that one of the key patterns I use is, one, I look at the paper or CD in the morning on the way to work. And it doesn’t have to be a complete CD, it could be just fifteen minutes of time to the office. Secondly I have a goal card which is a reminder for me, of how much income I want to make per annum and by when. Previously, I wrote number down. But now, these days, all that I use is a blank piece of cardboard and a rubber band through my sun visor, something that’s weird that’s in my face. It triggers me to say that I’m out of money, right? I had a goal card, I write the number and I lost it. So all it is is just a trigger or a reminder.

So one is tapes.
Two is triggers for my goals—have my goals in front of me.
Three is I go to seminars.
And four, I read books.

Those are the ways that I condition myself. And the other thing is I use my diary to write down the six areas that I need to work on for the day. So it might be this project, that project or this property or that property. And all I need to do is to keep taking actions on a particular project. Then that project will move forward whether I like it or not.

West: Yeah. One of the other things that I’d like to point out is that you got yourself an office. I know for a lot of you work from home; you have a home office. And I’ve heard from other people as well that it is a powerful shift when you actually go to work to work, so to speak, rather than having when you’re at home—and let’s say for people listening you’ve got a home-based office; and I know I’m guilty of this as well ‘coz I do right now—but sometimes you’re not sure when you’re working and when you’re playing. And you’re not sure when you’re actually on task and you’re doing something for personal gain. Has that made a difference in getting you more effective?

Nhan: I don’t think at the beginning I needed it. But I’ve been at the point where I’m waging money from investors $50,000, $100,000 at a time and doing $5 million dollar projects. And it’s wonderful from a credibility point of view of people looking at you, but also for yourself, you know, this is real: it’s not a game anymore in a way that you deal with other people’s money.

I’ve always resisted having an office because it means spending money. But yeah, I’m at the point where I can’t scrimp and save anymore. It’s for real. I don’t mind having a home office at all. If I could I would. I’ve just got staff and my wife doesn’t have any liking to staff prancing around our kitchen or the bedroom; it just doesn’t work.

But the other key thing is that I leave work at home; I’ve got work at work and home at home.

West: Yes. That’s powerful.

Nhan: That’s another thing that I can switch off. I find that’s very important for me. Otherwise as you probably know when we’re working at the home office, you wake up at 7, start checking the emails, go to bed at 11. That’s when you shut your computer down then you come home and leave the office.

West: So it sounds like you’re actually getting some time to relax these days, Nhan.

Nhan: Oh mate! I play golf. I went to the driving range yesterday. I went to the driving range on Saturday. Yeah, mate, it’s good. I’m proud of it. I really enjoy it. I do a bit of yoga, acupuncture as well. I’m just grabbing the bull.

West: Fantastic! You were telling me before you were also getting some squash each week which I’m very impressed to hear.

Nhan: Once or twice a week. It’s just good to keep up my fitness

West: It is. It is. I mean, investing in any discipline can be stressful, especially in property with the deadlines and being accountable. It can get your blood pressure up, can’t it Nhan?

Nhan: Yeah. Absolutely, mate. I always believe that for us its the long run. In the world of business, they’re competitive. And people, you know, and I like to be able to keep my endurance up, my fitness up that much because it’s not a short term game, it’s my life so then it become a part of your lifestyle.

West: Absolutely. Absolutely. Now I wanted to ask you really quickly because I know you spent some time with people—going back to Landmark, you’ve been a coach on some of Landmark’s programs—what are some of the major stumbling blocks that you see in other people have in terms of money or finances, if we could narrow it down to there? And are there any strategies that you are able to share with us that have really worked for them?

Nhan: Yup. I think one of the biggest stumbling blocks in people, probably more so on the later generations—the Y generation, they call it—is they want instant results. People want results now. They want to be able to read a book and go out and make a million bucks. Or they’ll listen to a tape and they want to be able to go out and they want to build their block of units after having one conversation. And I think it’s the false expectations that they can have everything now. They can have everything; it’s just delayed gratification, delayed results and time lag. So I think patience is a big issue that I’ve had to learn and it’s taken me years of banging my head against the brick wall chasing opportunities when there really aren’t opportunities there.

And all I mean by that is my skill level has a certain level. And as it grows the field gets better. But people at a skill level, at zero or negative 5, want to go out and do a $10miliion dollar deal and expect people to believe it.

West: Sure. And the risk is really high if you haven’t got any experience, is it?

Nhan: It is. It is. And also, people that don’t have the right people around them because people around them might not be trustworthy or they might not be competent. So I think—like you said before—was that one of the common errors that people make or that their blockage is impatience.

West: But you’re at a stage now where you can tap yourself on the back and say, “Hey listen, Nhan. You’re aware of it.” You’re aware of it happening when it’s happening.

Nhan: It is. And I use a lot of tools to keep myself aware of that. And one of the tools I use is golf. It’s an indicator. And I always believe that games or books or boardgames are a reflection of who you are.

West: Yeah, I truly do as well.

Nhan: I use golf a lot to measure how I’m doing in life. If I’m impatient, if I’m angry, if I’m resentful, if I’m throwing my golf clubs…maybe that’s how I feel in my life at the moment. But that’s why I like to use it. And also, it shows how other people are as well, like if they cheat or lie or whatever on the golf course, maybe they’ll be doing that for real as well.

West: I read once i a Japanese-related publication that the Japanese, in big business deals, they never ever go into business with someone without having first have a round of golf with them because it is such a high accuracy in terms of how they would act in a deal and in the professional instance. So you’re dead right there. And I actually have noticed it personally as well.

So as I was saying before, when I noticed you play golf for the first time I believe I was there with you. And you just sort of dove in head first even though you had no idea what was going on. No offense to you, Nhan.

Nhan: No, no. But that’s me in life.

West: That’s exactly right. And it just reflects in how you approach your fitness as well when I see you training in mornings and how you’ve approached you property investing as well.

Nhan: And I must say I’m not perfect and I don’t think anybody is. But let’s give it a go. Let’s have fun. Life’s too short to sit around waiting, watching other people make money.

West: It is. So let’s move on to your property now. Are you able to tell us the kind of strategies you’re into these days…for the people who are interested?

Nhan: There are a couple of kind of strategies I’m working on at the moment. Previously, we’re doing renovations, minor renovations, touch-ups, things like that. At the moment, we’re doing unit and townhouse developments where we might buy a block of land which has a zoning to it, we get the materials and a change of use, and that would give us approval to build townhouses or units or land subdivisions.

At the moment,we’re buying a block of land in a suburb called Hawthorne, which is about 4km from the Brisbane CBD. And we’ve got approval now to build 4 townhouses. That block was a little bit under 700,000 to build it, to roughly 800,000-900,000 which is about 1.6 with holding costs. And the market value is at 2.4. It is a two year process where it takes a bit of time, bit of skill and knowing the market and knowing what you can build and what you can’t build.

West: So you’ve got some investors ready to put in or they’ve already put in and you’ve presented them with the plan and it’s on the process right now?

Nhan: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s right. We found the opportunity roughly April 2006—right now we’re October 2007—and back then, we started a contract for roughly six to eight months. And that was one of the keys: we bought it for under 700,000 and the evaluation came in over 800,000. The banks lent us all of the money to buy the block of land.

West: So you really do make money when you buy.

Nhan: Yeah. So you make your money when you buy in that…

West: Was that a case of you negotiating hard or was it a case of the seller not knowing the value of their property?

Nhan: I think a bit of both. I think at that point in time—in 2006, early on—the market was quite flat. And the developer, he was doing a subdivision deal, he cut off his 800 square meter block off 1600 square meters and he wanted to pre-sell. All developers, just like myself, we do want some surety that we will get paid once the project is cut off. So all we did was we sold a block off just to get some cash in down the track. I think he knew the value and that’s what he thought it was. But we could see a bigger opportunity.

West: Yeah. You could see more potential than he could.

Nhan: That’s right. Yeah. We saw potential. And that’s really what it is: it’s about being seeing the potential when somebody can’t.

West: Absolutely. I mean, even this guy, he’s in the market, he’s dealing with developers everyday almost as well and yet you could still see what he couldn’t.

Nhan: That’s right. That’s right.
The other opportunities we’re working on at the moment is land Subdivision or using the instrument called the put and call option.

West: On property? Wow.

Nhan: Yeah, that’s right.

West: I’ve heard about it in the shares but you can do it on property as well?

Nhan: Absolutely. And I’m not going to go into details but other than to say that’s it’s like an unconditional contract where we basically say, yup, we agree to buy property at this price and if we find someone else to buy it at a higher price, we keep the difference. So roughly, we bought 20 blocks of land at roughly $250,000 each. And when we sell those blocks of land, like say, we go $270,000 then the $20,000 in between, that’s the settlement we keep.

So it’s a very sophisticated instrument that I wouldn’t recommend people use because it’s kind of like an unconditional contract.

West: Unless you know what you’re doing.

Nhan: That’s right. That’s right. And I’ve known about it for three or four years in a previous company that I worked at and they’ve used it and they taught me how to use it. But it’s not as straightforward as a put and call in shares. I probably suggest for people who are looking at options is to do what we call straight call options, where they put a deposit down and have a right to buy property at a certain price.

At the moment, we’ve got 20 blocks that we have under the put and call option. And we’re only selling them for considerably more than what we paid for them. So the bonus there is, one, all we do is to pay a 5% deposit. We don’t have to come up with the finance to settle on the property to own it, to control it. We can just onsell it as a paper transaction to someone else and that’s when they own the property, they get the finance, and we keep the difference at the sale point.

West: Very nice.

Nhan: So those are the two main projects we’re working on. I do have blocks of units that I bought previously in Mackay that we’re strata-titling and possibly onselling those, and also Tarm street. Do you remember those blocks selling over at Wavell Heights?

West: Yes, I do.

Nhan: For a while you and I were driving around Wavell Heights looking for property?

West: Yes, yes.

Nhan: Yeah, we sold that at auction.

West: Oh, fantastic. Did you get a good price?

Nhan: Yeah, we did. We got mid 5’s. Yeah. And we were happy with the unconditional contract that you get at an auction. And the guy hadn’t seen it before, he just rocked up and bought it. We need more of those guys!

Yeah. That gives you an indication of the way the burgeoning market is at the moment. Lots of people are paying premium prices.

West: So you were saying before that, it’s a pretty hot market. So how does an investor like your self deal with a period like this? Because, I mean, property goes in cycles. It goes up and down, doesn’t it? What do you do when it’s in the stage as it is now?

Nhan: Well previously, we usually, let’s say, take advantage of it whenever I can. And what I mean by that is previously we built some blocks of land and I had a sign on the block. And people would call incessantly on this phone number. And I’d have a call everyday off this sign. And it was in a cul de sac,tucked away estate. And you have to look and drive around to look at the sign to get the phone number. And I got calls everyday and it was an indicator for me that the land market is hot. Because the land market was hot, and land opportunities that came up, I snapped up as fast as I could and that’s how we came up with this 20-lot subdivisions of land being in demand and people wanting it. That’s why I supplied them with it.

Having said that, at the moment the market is quite tough to find deals. We just got a deal with our egos not being frustrated or impatient. And we are looking inter state at opportunities, and also opportunities that do not involve construction because construction does take time to build and that’s where you’re holding costs rise. So we’re looking at interstate options whether it’s land subdivisions or buying blocks of units, either up north, Townsville, Mackay or Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney. So we just have to spread our wings. Otherwise, we just get tired sitting and waiting for the tide to turn.

West: It’ll be a great turn when it does that, won’t it?

Nhan: Yeah, that would be good. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re cashing up and getting rid of any of the stuff that we don’t really want, any of our ‘dogs’—they call it—and any of that properties that are negatively geared that we can’t hold anymore. So we’re just selling them, cashing up and sitting on our money for awhile.

West: I know Jim Rohn talks about the seasons of life, and the summers and the winters. And you’re basically, obviously, planning for the bountiful summer whilst it’s winter, so we call it. But moving on to the next five to ten years for you, Nhan, are you looking at changing your deals in terms of strategies or looking at structuring your deals any differently or is it just going to be pretty much similar stuff that but with a couple more zeroes on the end of them?

Nhan: One of the things I’ve always wanted was to own a high-rise building, a 10-storey commercial building.

West: Donald Trump style.

Nhan: Yeah, that’s it mate, Donald Trump style. We are looking at expanding into different types of property, commercial property and industrial property…but definitely something that I have an interest in. But at the moment, that market is hot as well. So we’re just cashing up and getting ready for those opportunities. Yeah, we’re definitely moving into land acquisition soon, the subdivisions and the unit townhouses. I think it’s not so much changing our portfolio. It’s more diversifying our portfolio and spreading our wings a bit more…

West: Are they also more involved in more complex strategies as well?

Nhan: What’s that?

West: When you’re moving into getting 10-storey buildings. Or is it the same skills, just big in numbers?

Nhan: Yeah. It seems to be the same skills, bigger numbers.

What I’ve got in mind is basically bigger land subdivisions up to 100 blocks, townhouses and units but not doing the high-rise construction. You know, the high-rise construction tends to be quite risky but we propose the 2 to 3-storey at a max.

West: Wow. Very nice. I understand also, Nhan, that since you’ve taken these leaves a lot of people have been asking you how you’ve done it and how you’ve changed your thinking, how you’ve grown as a person. And I understand you also conduct some seminars on teaching people. How has it affected you to be able to give back to people in terms of—I also know you used to run Cashflow games days and you put on property days where you come along with people and you show them how you buy property. And I noticed that as a trait of all the successful people that I’ve interviewed so far, in being able just to give back and not expecting a lot in return, but just giving back in itself seems a very intrinsic and satisfying event.

My question is how have you been able to give some time of your self selflessly and what do you get out of helping people without expecting anything in return?

Nhan: I think with the time thing, I know that a big issue—even if morning I’m working on a seminar, I’ve got a two-day workshop this coming weekend and people paying 300 bucks to attend…I don’t know, I feel intrinsic in the way that I do stuff a lot of information from a lot of people. And I do absorb that information and it becomes like a funnel. You can’t just keep taking it in because it’s got to come out somewhere.

West: So you need an outlet to basically spray all this information?

Nhan: I think that it is an outlet. And education, given back, is an outlet as well. And I always find that when I share my information, it always comes back ten-fold. People are wanting to learn and I just know that I wanted to learn from people and here’s an opportunity to give back. I think that after a while I’ve been used to chasing the buck and chasing the money and after a while it doesn’t just become about the money anymore, it becomes about who your friends and who hang you around, what kind of deals you get to do. And the people who want to learn, I’m willing to teach them if they’re willing to do the work because the last thing I want to do is for people to go and make the same mistakes I have. I’ve got the money and convenience and I’ve made money on deals, but it doesn’t mean that they have to go through that same thing. I suppose it’s a generosity thing. I enjoy spending time with people and watching them grow.

West: Absolutely. I mean because time is very valuable especially for guys doing big deals. And to give of their time is very much a generous gesture. And I’m assuming when you do help someone, the last thing you want to see is you invest all this time on someone and they don’t do anything with it. They just keep doing what they’re doing.

Nhan: Yeah, that’s true. And I think it’s important that I’m happy to spend time with people who adhere to that—doing something. Invest in soil that wants to grow rather than people who just want to criticize and analyze what you have to say. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in people who want to give it a go, who want to spend some time and take a risk and put their lives in their own hands probably, rather than just criticize and look at the negative of things.

West: How do you define success, Nhan?

Nhan: Definitely a great question. I would say: is a person who has the willpower to chase their dream, chase their dreams on an ongoing regular basis. Some people don’t have the opportunities to pursue their goals on a daily basis because they might be in a job and they can’t pursue their career as a painter or…

West: Absolutely. Or maybe they’re in a country that just doesn’t have the infrastructure or even the opportunities.

Nhan: Or they might have a disease or they might be in a hospital or whatever. I think it’s having the willingness or the willpower to regularly chase their dreams and be able to share your dreams with people in your life rather than just chase that Porsche and then drive it around and think you’re better than everybody else. I want a Porsche but it’s just how you reflect your attitude towards people and towards life. Some people I know driving Porsches think they’re better than everybody else and I don’t think that’s success at all.

West: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.

Nhan: I think success is getting up when you get hit for a six as well, chasing your dreams in any circumstance whether things are going your way or not, or whether the market’s up or down, or you’ve had a biff with ASIC or the ATO or investors. And there are lots of circumstances out there…

West: Because as you grow, that’s kind of bound to happen, isn’t it? It’s inevitable that these guys are going to be coming knocking on your door one day.

Nhan: Yeah, that’s it. But then the people are going to take you to court, they’re going to sue you. It’s inevitable when you’re out there exposed, people want to have a shot at you. They want part of your money, they want to see what kind of person you are.

West: For sure. Now if someone—we’ve got some listeners on the call today, Nhan, who’ve been inspired by your call and they want to thank you and they want to learn more about you and they want to learn more about what you’re doing, the strategies that you’re using—is there anyway that they can contact you or find out more about you?

Nhan: At www.greenmint.com.au.

West: But you’re not selling chocolates Nhan, are you?

Nhan: No, of course not mate. Maybe I should. People ask me about where the word ‘Greenmint’ comes from. Everything has a double meaning behind: Green as in the greenback; and the ‘mint’ is also the mint leaf which is fresh and the mint as in the mint place where the money is made. So that’s where Greenmint comes from. And yeah, we’re on the net.

I’m not really looking for investors at the moment. But there are always opportunities for people who want to have conversations about doing deals and maybe JVs or putting opportunities on the table, they can definitely look into…

West: Cool. So they can contact you through that site?

Nhan: Yup, through that website. It’s got phone numbers and emails and everything like that.

West: Fantastic. And is there like information on your seminars or anything or is that like a product thing?

Nhan: Well, on that website, if you want to contact us then we can inform you of what’s coming up in the future. I haven’t really put up regular programs or seminars. It’s more about investing for this year and probably have maybe one or two next year depending on how it goes.

West: Well Nhan, I want to thank you for your time. It’s been a true honor to catch up and touch base with you again. I’m always impressed every time I speak to you with what you have to offer and what you have to share. So in behalf of everyone listening on the call today and myself, Andrew Grant, thank you so much for your time, Nhan.

Nhan: Thank you West!

West Interviews Gideon Shalwick

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Gideon: Gideon Shalwick

West: Folks, welcome to the call today. I’ve got Gideon Shalwick on the line. It’s been a pleasure chatting with him before the call and we’re going to cover some awesome, awesome topics today. Gideon’s made some serious waves in the social networking arena and has a membership site called Become a Blogger, where he’s teamed up with Yaro Starak and they’re making some serious waves online. So I thought it would definitely be beneficial for you guys here on the call today for me to pick Gideon’s brains on some of the mindset stuff that he’s worked on for with himself but also some of the techniques that he recommends and some of the mistakes that he sees in people trying to use social networking and blogging in particular in order to improve their business or traffic.

So Gideon, welcome to the call. Thanks for being with us.

Gideon: Hey, thanks West. I’m really honored to be on the call with you. I’m looking forward to it.

West: Cool. Why don’t you give us like an elevator pitch on kind of who you are, from your perspective, you’re stuck in an elevator and someone says, “Hey, tell us what you do?” What do you tell people?

Gideon: Okay. Well, I guess my backstory is that I was born in South Africa but we immigrated to New Zealand when I was about sixteen and did my education there. And I started working there for a few years as well. So I was working in New Zealand for five years. And throughout that period, I kept on thinking, ‘I want to do my own thing,’ you know. And I never really enjoyed having a job because I just felt so restricted and I didn’t feel that I was using my talents.

So one day we decided to make a move. We made a decision, my wife and I, and I told her, “Look, let’s go to Australia and start a new business.” And crazy thinking, in retrospect, that we did that because we came over here Tina got a job, I didn’t have a job and I didn’t know what on earth I was going to do. So we come over and first thing I did was started researching opportunities. To cut the long story short, I stumbled across internet marketing and that’s how I got into it.

West: Great. So you’d never actually been into the internet at all before you came to Australia?

Gideon: No. Not like other than surfing the net. My background’s in technology commercialization and engineering management. So I guess I had that sort of base, the technology background. And so, doing stuff on the internet was not too big a jump from a technical point of view, but certainly from a marketing point of view, there was a lot to learn. That’s how I got into it.

And some of the first projects I did, I got some success there. One of the projects I had was to interview some of the world’s top internet marketers and that was really something that opened the doors for me in a big way and essentially, I guess, got me to where I am today. Yeah, that’s— I’m not sure how many minutes I’ve got left in the elevator.

West: It’s a big building. [Laughs] Cool.

So in the last twelve months, you’ve had a focus on the social media. Would that be fair to say, Gideon? Like videos and audios and teaching people how to utilize very dynamic sites like blogs on how to increase traffic and generate profit. Would that be fair to say?

Gideon: Yeah. So what I’d been focusing on lately is to basically use blogging as the main tool for getting attention online and then using other social media sites—only a handful of them—to help increase…

West: The 80 20 Rule: the sites that are going to get you the biggest paying for your buck.

Gideon: Yes, that’s right. So the most recent project that I completed was the Become a Blogger project with Yaro Starak who’s my business partner. And that’s basically where we teach people using online video everything about blogging: how to set up your blog, how to add content, how to get traffic and how to monetize it as well right at the end.

But then, I guess the twist that we had with Become a Blogger was that instead of just blogging with text and images and stuff like that, we injected this—what we call the X factor strategies—which is really the social media type of things that you could do to leverage the activities on your blog. And they’re things like YouTube and video and audio and a whole bunch of other things. And that was a really fun project. It was hard work getting it all done. But I learnt a lot in the process.

So that project, it’s kind of complete now in terms of content generation but now we just need to manage the process…

West: And I was just—for the listeners out there—I was just telling Gideon before we started recording here is that I’ve just completed the course and it’s exceptional in its quality and in its presentation. And Gideon’s really nutted out the very simple details and showed you step by step by step as if he was actually on your computer. So it’s never boring and it’s very entertaining and it’s very professionally done. So we’ll get Gideon to tell us more about that at the end of the call if you’re interested in looking at that.

So I wanted to ask, Gideon, what was the difference for you in being able to focus in on a project and really get some serious results? And I know one of the biggest mistakes of internet marketers is to kind of fluff around and try lots of different projects at the same time. So you obviously had a plate of opportunities that you could go to. So how did you: 1) decide which path to go down; 2) how did you set up your life in order to go and chase that?

Gideon: I think that’s one of the most difficult things for people to do online because, really, the internet—especially if you want to do business on it or even not—is really a place for distraction. There are so many things that demand your attention. You’ve got Twitter these days. You’ve got your email. You’ve got YouTube and other projects with other people through Skype or whatever. Everything and everybody wants to have your attention. And so trying to focus in an environment like that is a challenge, it’s a real challenge. And I guess what I did, something that really helped me was to really nut down on the different opportunities that I had available and to make an assessment of which ones had the biggest ability to be a success, you know, the… I just can’t remember that word that I want to use…

West: Potential.

Gideon: Potential, yeah—which one had the most potential. And then it was simply just a matter of essentially focusing my attention 100 percent on that project, working on it like a madman until it was finished, making it a success and in moving on. And that’s essentially what we did with Become a Blogger. I pretty much had a very focused approach just like that for eight months to a year. We started the project and that’s pretty much all I worked on.

West: That’s pretty powerful stuff. And I just want to reiterate to anyone who might be looking at doing some projects online, in that Gideon has chosen just one thing—just one thing—and not even two.

And I was actually chatting with him before the call and he was telling me that there was an opportunity for work on another site which is what he’s currently focusing on now, but that opportunity came up before his tenure for the content production for Become a Blogger had finished. And he actually put it aside completely, told JJ—he’s the magician—that he needs to focus. And that’s a huge lesson for people…even myself included.

Gideon: Yeah, that was very difficult to do, you know. Part of the challenge is that when you commit yourself to one project, you have to say ‘no’ to all these other amazing opportunities.

West: Anything else, yeah.

Gideon: Yeah. And that’s difficult. It’s really difficult especially if you’ve got this sort of entrepreneurial spirit and you want to try out new things all the time.

West: And especially on the internet where you get pretty much, you know, many opportunities every day and knowing so many people in the industry and having many great contacts, people approaching you all the time to do stuff.

Gideon: Yes. That’s definitely a lesson. Just to expand a little bit on what happened… when I started looking at another project, so I was running two projects at the same time—with Become a Blogger and Free Magic Live—what happened was that I had a bit of a gap, a bit of a breathing space in my schedule with Become a Blogger and I said, “Okay, let’s use this gap and get the ball running for Free Magic Live.”

Me and JJ did some stuff together for… we initially thought just for a week. But then with the results we got—because we had that week of real focus—were quite astounding. So we kind of kept on going for another four weeks or so. And while at the same time I was trying to do Become a Blogger. And it was working. It was working. We were getting results.

I was getting stuff done for both but I was getting stressed. And it started affecting my ability to perform. And what happened was it slowed me down and it affected the quality of my content. And I had to make the decision. I had to decide. What do I want out of this? Do I want to have a world class product and website and membership site or not? And so that was part of the decision. And for me to be able to do that I really had to apply that focus and say no to one of the opportunities, which, at that time was Free Magic Live. And I think the important thing was that I said ‘no’ at that time. I didn’t say ‘no’ forever. It was just a—this is an awesome project but if I want to have Become a Blogger as successful as I can make it, I need to say no to that for now, finish what I’m working on at the moment and then—

West: Absolutely. For sure. That’s a huge, huge lesson for people.

I also wanted to ask you, how did you… did you like stop accepting applications or did you like unsubscribe from email lists? And did you stop going to networking events and all these things that opened up opportunities for you? Or did you continue to keep going but just put them all in sort of a little hat for later?

Gideon: Well, I think it’s important to keep on getting opportunities into your business. I mean that’s really the lifeblood. Ideas are part of the lifeblood of your business. And if you’re a solopreneur like I’ve been for a while, it’s important to keep those opportunities coming in. But at the same time, because you’re kind of working alone and maybe sourcing out—but you’re the main man—it’s important to not get distracted.

And so I did have a measure of culling, you know. For example, all the emails that I subscribed to—I use Gmail as my only email program. And what was cool there was that I could set up a really nice filter. They would just put all my subscriptions into one folder so it wouldn’t even go to my inbox—and so that had given me flexibility to go back to it if I wanted to, just check things out once a week. But it didn’t distract me. It didn’t distract my normal inbox. So that’s one of the things I did.

West: Tell me some other things you did to minimize distractions.

Gideon: The other thing I did was just pure focus and just applying discipline to say no to stuff and to just get real on the content and the information and the work that I had to do to make this project a success and essentially not do anything else.

I’m a great believer in setting an overall goal or an overall intention on what you’re trying to achieve. So for Become a Blogger, for example, was to have a successful membership site with members going through it and amazing content that people would want to tell all their friends about. So that was the over arching goal for that. But then for my day to day activities, I always had a to do list. And what I would do is I just have a handful of things that I told myself that I wanted to have finished by the end of that day. So I write it down—I just use paper at the moment.

West: Primitive.

Gideon: I’ve used different approaches. And I’ve actually decided to go back to paper. I have two little notebooks. One I use for collecting all my ideas for things I need to do. I call that my Master To Do List. Then I have a separate little notebook where I only use that for the daily tasks. So everyday, I create a new one for that one. And that’s for the daily one.

West: And that’s been working for you?

Gideon: It works for me. And I’m not saying it’s going to work for anybody else but it’s something that I’ve been playing around with the stuff for ages. And it works for me. And I know that it also depends on your personality type. You may be more flexible with mind maps or just doing it all on your mind. But whatever works for you, you’ve got to have some kind of a system to help you stay focused.

And there are three things I believe you need to spend your time on if you want to be successful with stuff. If I remember it right, this is from Rich Schefren. I heard about this ages but I’ve just been applying it to the letter. And the three things are:
Product Creation. This is for solopreneurs like the stuff I’m doing and what you’re doing as well.
Marketing.
Scaling.

Anything else is a distraction. And that’s all related to, well, I guess, to have even a more focused approach, just to relate that to just one project. So for Become a Blogger, focus was there:
1) To get the product out.
2) To market it and getting distribution.
3) Which is more what we’re doing now, is to start scaling what we already have; just to leverage what we already have created there.

So that’s really what’s worked for me. And certainly, it took effort. I enjoyed the process but it still took effort that required me to have that focus and to say no to other opportunities.

West: I want to ask you quickly here, Gideon, when you wake up and you don’t feel like doing the work that you’ve assigned for that day, how do you get yourself back on track?

Gideon: You know, I don’t get many of those days.

West: Wow. And the secret of that is choosing to do something you really love and be passionate about it.

Gideon: I think that’s definitely part of it. So if you can… I mean, before all of this, I think a huge requirement is to make sure that what ever you’re going to be doing, that you’re actually enjoying the process of doing…

There are two levels of enjoyment here. There’s the enjoying the process or actually doing the thing that you’re doing. And then there’s also enjoying the outcome of the thing that you’re doing.

Now what’s great about the enjoying the outcome is that it’s something that you can look forward to. But the problem with outcomes is that they don’t last very long, you know. Once you’ve bought a car, a new toy, for example, it’s only cool for about a month or whatever. I mean, I kind of 9look forward to the next new car or whatever or the next new toy. And it’s kind of the same with the projects I found—for me, in any case—is that I look forward to the end result but once it’s there, it kind of wears off and I now want to jump on to the next opportunity, the next project.

So that’s why it’s really important, I believe, to also enjoy the process of the work that you need to do and that’ll help you really look forward to it. I mean, I probably work— I don’t count how many hours I work every week but I normally get up…well, in the winter it’s been a little more slack but getting up at 7 or when the sun comes up. But in the summer I’ve been getting up at 6 o’clock and I get straight into it.

West: So you actually don’t even have time to sit around and procrastinate. By ten past six, you’re already pumping.

Gideon: Look, you can ask my wife. I kind if jump out of bed in the morning and can’t wait to get into it because I enjoy it so much. I enjoy the process.

West: Yeah, it’s awesome. And I can actually tell that when I’m going through—as a member of your program—when I’m going through it I can tell that you love this stuff. When you’re telling us about, you know, the latest plugin or the latest how to do stuff, you’re telling us about your set up, your technical gear…it’s awesome. And they can definitely feel that as a member of your program.

Gideon: Yeah, it’s certainly important. Now I also like to say that there are times and there are activities that I’ve had to do and I’ve had to go through that weren’t necessarily enjoyable at the time. And that’s where the outcome would be a motivation for me to just push through. So that’s what I’m saying—you need both. You need to be able to enjoy both process plus the outcome.

West: For sure. But for the most part, you love what you’re doing. That’s a really good thing.

So you were telling us about the three areas—product creation, marketing and scaling. Now the beautiful thing about what you’ve set up, Gideon, is that you’re exceptional in—I know for a fact—product creation. But you’ve surrounded yourself with a team or people at least in your network, who are exceptional at the other areas or can help you in the other areas. So tell me about how you see the three areas working—using Become a Blogger as an example—from the team that you surrounded yourself with and the people that you’re working alongside.

Gideon: Definitely. You know, I think that’s one of the key things that I found so far—and also from all the books that I’ve read about other successful people—I mean, Bill Gates is probably the prime example of this. He surrounds himself with people that are more intelligent than himself and that’s really what makes the business grow and what makes the business successful.

And in the case of Become a Blogger, what was really amazing there is that I partnered up with Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. And what’s amazing about the project is that we both brought to the table something that were valuable in itself but when put together, had this amazing synergy to be even more valuable than it could have been separately.

West: On it’s own, yeah.

Gideon: Yes. So what I brought to the table was my ability to create products, my ability to explain concepts simple and easy using online video and also the whole social media knowledge that I’ve been building up over the last few years. And what Yaro brought to the table was his strategy brain and the distribution that he already had access to through the contacts that he built up in the industry over the last few years.

So with that kind of marriage of those kind of skills, it was just amazing to be able to put them together and to have an amazing synergy that came out of it. I believe that’s definitely a key.

It comes with its own challenges you know. I think, with any kind of partnership, because you have more than one brain involved, there’s a measure of coordination. And I can’t stress enough the importance of communicating regularly and honestly with your business partner because I have had partnerships before or relationships before where the communication perhaps wasn’t as great. And it would break down.

And it was exactly like what Napoleon Hill talks about in his Law of Success. In one of the chapters he talks about the mastermind principle. And one of the key things for a mastermind to work successfully is to have these masterminds working together in a spirit of harmony. He probably uses those words, I don’t know, about a hundred times in that same chapter. And he goes, “I’m saying this again and again and again…

West: It must be important.

Gideon: If you don’t have harmony within this relationship, whatever you want to do, it’s not going to work. So that’s absolutely key. And for that, you need to be talking to each other constantly and you need to be open with each other. And as soon as something comes up, you need to bring it out in the air and talk it through.

West: Definitely.

Gideon: I have found another way of doing it.

And you know, that’s tough, because you have two or more people that have their own agendas and have their one own directions and their own desires and their own goals that they want to achieve. And what you’re trying to do with working together like this is to try and merge those so that both parties can benefit from it. And so it’s important to keep that balance and keep those communication channels open. But if you can pull it off, I mean you can have amazing results.

West: Yeah, definitely.

Gideon: The results that Yaro and I got with Become a Blogger is, you know, it’s been both of our most successful products online.

West: Yeah. It’s been incredible. Even the marketing process itself has been really fine combed, detailed and very methodically approached. And I’ve seen a lot of other marketers present it to their audiences. And of course, Yaro’s done up sales from his programs and really utilized his traffic…so he’s contributing from other aspects. And you guys are obviously ready when people are wanting to come to you in order to be able to take advantage of it. So that’s certainly a really good lesson for everybody looking to partner up with somebody.

And I’m sure you also did a big, kind of analysis in working with Yaro. You weighed up the pros and cons of your business partner potentially and you guys get along really good just a friends. I know that because I play golf with you guys and you guys can chat for hours about stuff. Time just flies away when you guys are hanging out with each other. So you enjoy each other’s company, you like each other as well. I think that’s important as well.

Gideon: You’ve got to be able to get along with the person that you’re working with because for something like this, it can get quite intense and you’re going to be in each other’s faces for…

West: There’s pressure. And there’s time pressure. Yeah. Cool.

So Gideon, can I ask you—taking a bit of a gear change now—looking at social networking as a marketing tool. In probably the last one or two years it’s really, really taken off especially with Facebook and a lot of the other sites. But what are your views on how it’s grown? And then what are your views on how people need to start utilizing it in order to build those websites or their online or even their offline businesses?

Gideon: You know, I think the whole social media movement is an amazing movement. It’s an amazing thing that we’re seeing.

West: It’s not just another fad, is it? It’s here to stay.

Gideon: Well… you know, two years ago I had a chat with someone and I said, “Look, this looks like something that’s quite amazing. And he told me, “Well, it’s only just a fad,” and I said, “Well, I’m not sure.” It’s been going for awhile now. And I don’t see the end of it in sight just yet and we may still be at the beginning of the curve, of the bell curve. That’s my view of it at the moment.

And the reason I say this is because the whole social media movement, it’s only been possible really if you are online. And so as we are seeing more people getting online around the world and as we’re seeing the whole broadband thing and the internet connections getting better and better around the world as well, that’s only going to…

West: There are still millions of people who aren’t even online.

Gideon: Exactly. And so I think we’re still scratching the surface. I mean, look at YouTube. Look at how far it’s come in just the last three years. It’s just amazing. I don’t want to make any predictions but I can only imagine where we would be in ten years time—given that everything will still exist in ten years time, you’ll never know what’s going to happen in the future, right—but the way and the direction that YouTube is going, for example, right now, to me this is the future, this is the present and the future. And television is still valid. But certainly, things like YouTube and the whole way that the internet is developing is a huge thing. So if you’re not in it already, I encourage you to definitely get involved and become part of the conversation.

West: Definitely. And so in terms of marketing for, say, online and offline businesses, do you see it as a huge advantage if, say, two people were looking to achieve the same outcome and one was utilizing social networking and the other one was just trying non social networking techniques?

Gideon: It probably depends on your business. I mean, if you’ve got a bricks and mortar business, the type of audience… and currently hangs out on social media sites, your business might not appeal to them. So in that case, social media may not be the way to go for you and you may need to stick to other methods, just normal internet marketing methods or offline marketing. But I think there still is a place for that as well. For example, say if you’re a plumber here in Brisbane or an accountant here in Brisbane. If you set up a blog and you start submitting valuable content to your blog…

West: Yeah, people are going to come flocking to you.

Gideon: Well, if you optimize it for—just for example—the keywords in ‘plumber in Brisbane’ or ‘Brisbane plumber’—I haven’t done the research on that—but my guess is that if no one else is in that space, you’re going to kill it; you’re going to kill it in terms of…

West: Whenever anyone types that in, right?

Gideon: Yeah. You come at number one if no one else is…

West: Yeah, on the free searches; not the paid ones.

Gideon: That’s right. So that’s free traffic for you that’s coming to your blog. You may not get millions of views. But hey, I mean if you’re in Brisbane…

West: It’s very targeted.

Gideon: Yeah, it’s very targeted. So if you get the whole of the Brisbane audience and you’ve got a way to turn that traffic into paying customers for your offline business, then that’s one of the best things you can do. It does require effort.

The way I look at social media and the whole social media movement is that it’s this living organism. It’s not just the internet. It’s not just technology and this dead computer sitting in front of you.

There’s this amazing video on YouTube if you type in, I think, ‘Web 2.0,’ it will probably come as one of the top results but it’s about—if you type in ‘web 2.0’—The Machine or something like that. And it shows you the development of social media and what it means. And it talks about how this whole web 2.0, social media thing is really…it’s a machine but the machine is us; we are the machine.

And so when you think about getting into social media, it’s not just about setting up a website and thinking that’s it. It’s about getting involved and becoming a living member of this organism that’s developed over the last few years. So it’s not enough just to set up a website and thinking that’s it, that’ll get traffic. You’ve got to get involved. You’ve got to get involved in the community and start letting people hear your voice and having a conversation with people.

West: And that’s where the internet’s evolving to, isn’t it? Users are getting active. They like posting comments. They like posting on different forums. That’s how things work online these days and that’s the way it is now. There’s no such thing as a static website anymore.

Gideon: Yes. And you know, I really love Seth Godin’s a little book on Tribes. I’m not sure if you’ve read that, West, but it’s an amazing book. And he talks about developing your own tribe online or anywhere. But online, currently, it’s just so easy because we’ve got all the tools out there and all the people out there. So all you’ve got to do is go and lead. You’ve just got to make the decision to lead and get people to start following you as a tribe. And at the moment, I can’t think of any other better way than setting up a blog and starting to use social media sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to start building your own little tribe. Once you have a tribe you can do amazing things.

West: Definitely. And that kind of forms the foundation for whatever you want to do: if you want to brand yourself, if you want to profit, if you want to launch a product or whatever. Once you’ve got that tribe, a lot of things become possible.

Gideon: Absolutely.

West: For sure. Now I just want to ask a really quick question, Gideon. For the people who are listening on this call who may have neglected or don’t know what the term ‘social media’ is, Gideon, could you give us your kind of casual, simple, basic term of what social media and social networking actually means?

Gideon: Okay. I think there’s probably a million different definitions of it but essentially, to me, social media is a bunch of internet technologies that’s been created, that allows us as human beings to interact with each other.

West: Yes. So user generated.

Gideon: And user generated content. So for example, YouTube is probably the best example of this. You can submit your own video. In response to that, people can write comments about your video and you can have that live interaction with people from all over the world. So YouTube is 100 percent user generated content. So that’s a great example of that.

With blogging is another one. You can submit your own posts. You can comment on it and you can have that conversation.

To me it’s all about conversation and making your voice known in the social media world.

West: Definitely. And regardless of whatever niche or market you’re in, that concept still applies. For example, you were taking that conversation now into the magic arena and people keep coming back because they’re getting to know the magician and they’re getting to like what they’re learning. And it’s an ongoing thing. It’s an ongoing relationship. It’s not just a one quick YouTube video ‘that’s great, I’ll go and impress my friends now’ and never come back.

Gideon: Yes. Now look, I was telling JJ the other day that um, you know, what we’re doing with FreeMagicLive.com at the moment, right now, is actually historical. I mean, we are—not just the website itself—but also from a wider context. We are making history here, West, with the kind of stuff that we’re doing. And three years ago, we couldn’t do what we’re doing right now. We couldn’t get 2,500 people looking at our video in one day from all over the world.

West: Yeah. Wow, that’s powerful.

Gideon: It actually boggles the mind. I mean think about putting 2,500 people in one room watching your video, all come together to watch your video in one day. If you try and visualize…

West: Every single day.

Gideon: Yeah. Well, at the moment we’re getting between 2,000-4,000 views on our videos on YouTube.

West: That’s awesome.

Gideon: That’s awesome, you know. We’re loving it.

West: And this is a new project for you guys, right?

Gideon: It is a new project. Four months.

West: Yeah, okay, four months. So that’s pretty impressive.

And the other beautiful thing is that these techniques are usually free and they’re available to everybody, is that correct?

Gideon: Oh absolutely. I mean look, I’m still blown away by things like YouTube. Naturally, I’m more a visual person. So something like YouTube and videos, naturally, I’m more attracted to that sort of stuff.

So maybe YouTube’s not for everybody but what’s great about YouTube in particular is that it already has an audience. It gives traffic. There’s heap of traffic there. So all you’re doing on YouTube essentially is you’re leveraging the traffic that already exists there. You don’t have to build it up yourself, it’s already there. So all you’ve got to do is make sure that you provide amazing content.

West: Yup.

So I’m curious Gideon, how are you—and I’m going to try and get some free information for the listeners and myself here—and that is there are millions of people who upload videos on the YouTube. But in your case, there’s a purpose to it. And I think there’s a plan, if not already completed, very much in works on how to monetize that traffic. So how do you guys get more hits? What kind of activities do you do on YouTube to attract more viewers and to make it more viral?

Gideon: Okay, before I tell you what that is, before I give you some of those tips, let me just give you the overall strategy here that you want to achieve.

Essentially, when JJ and I got together—JJ approached me first—he said he was keen to do something aligned with magic and he was wondering if I could help him out. And after we talked for awhile, I said, “Okay, well, let’s do this together. And I’ll do the internet marketing stuff and you do the magic.”

So the strategy we decided on was, essentially, a lot of this I learned from Yaro Strak. But what I’ve been doing is something combining what I’ve learned from Yaro in the blogging world and combining with what I know in the social media world. And also then added to that, I’ve combined what I already know and what I’ve learned from it, just a pure internet marketing world. So there are three things that come together with this.

So the strategy here is that we set up this blog, FreeMagicLive.com, and the emphasis there is simply to provide and overdeliver on free amazing content. So about twice a week, we send two videos to YouTube and we embed those two videos on our blog. And then basically we drive traffic that we’re getting from YouTube back to our blog. And so we’re building a list through our blogs. If you go to our blog, you’ll see we’ve got a list building mechanism in there where we collect people’s contact details.

So the whole point of this whole exercise, of course, is to provide value and, of course, is to get exposure. But the side effect from this, which is really what we’re driving towards, is to start building a list, to start building our tribe and to get people to follow us. So it’s almost five months we’ve been doing this. And then remember there were a month and a half where we just left it, we didn’t do anything with it because I was busy with become a Blogger? We’ve been able to build a following of close to 2,000 people on our subscriber list. And we’re getting between 300-600 hits a day on our blog and we’re getting—like I said before—between 2,000-4,000 hits on our videos on YouTube a day.

West: That’s insane.

Gideon: And I think it’s all just coming together and using all these things together in unison that is helping us to have this sort of overall effect.

But just to give you some more, I guess, down to earth strategies for things you can do to help you get more views on YouTube in particular, I mean the underlying emphasis here is to provide amazing value upfront for free. If you look at our videos and comments that we’re getting on our videos…

West: People are blown away by what you’re giving.

Gideon: They love it and they interact with it. A lot of people can’t believe that we’re giving it away for free. It’s all part of the strategy, you know. We give it away for free—of course to build the relationship—but also to make them part of our tribe. So that’s the underlying thing: just to provide amazing content upfront.

In terms of getting more views, there are a lot of things you can do in terms of keyword research to help optimize your videos. So if you can find popular keywords and add those keywords as the terms inside your video title, also add them inside your description when you write your description and also in your tags for your videos. That’s very important.

And there’s this one great thing that I picked up from Julie Perry and the podcasting guy—I just forgot his name; it’ll come back to me—Julie Perry, basically what she said was that when you write your description for your YouTube videos in your description area, you can go nuts there. Create that content as if you’re creating like a blog post where you’re writing in a natural voice, you’re creating natural content. You’re not trying to fool the search engines there; you’re just creating natural content. As a result, your keywords will pop up in there in any case. And in the end, that’ll help you get picked up by searches inside YouTube and later on, searches inside Google as well. So that’s one thing.

Title, description and tags are just essential for that.

West: It’s amazing how many people neglect those, isn’t it?

Gideon: It is crazy. I’m still amazed. Looking at some videos, I see that…

West: It sounds fundamental but not many people do it.

Gideon: [Laughs] You know, it’s just one small thing that you can do to help drive traffic to your sites. Just add your URL. Remember to add http://…

West: In the description?

Gideon: In the description area, right at the beginning, the first thing.

I’m still amazed at how many people are not using that. And it’s just free traffic, people click on it and they come back to your site.

So there are some simple things you can do. That’s what I said before, I think we’re really just still scratching the surface with this stuff. There are some amazing potential here that…

West: That’s powerful. Tell me your thought on Facebook real quick, Gideon. Do you use it much in your marketing activities or is it just more of a personal thing for you?

Gideon: At the moment, it’s just more a personal thing. I haven’t focused on Facebook too much. I know that some people have had some good results there. But once again, I’ve made the decision to focus on one thing, whether it’s hitting me on some other fronts—I’m not sure because I haven’t tested it—but the focus that I have at the moment is just on YouTube and building the audience there and getting active inside the YouTube community.

Instead of spreading yourself thin over all these social media networks and video sharing sites, why don’t I just focus just on YouTube and get really involved there?

I’m not sure if you’ve read a book by Geoffrey Moore called Crossing the Chasm.

West: No.

Gideon: Now I’ve read this book because I was in the technology world before I got into internet marketing. But what he talks about there is when new technology companies start up, normally the first people that are their customers are the innovators and the early adopters. If you know the penetration model, those are the first two people. And what happens then, after you run out of those customers—innovators and early adopters—the early majority which is the big part of your market, they don’t want your product just yet because there’s no social proof yet, you know. And so that’s where a lot of hi tech companies fail, they fall into this chasm in between the early adopters and innovators and the early majority.

And so the strategy that you need to apply there is what he calls the Beachhead Strategy, where you’re essentially tied at one big player: the early majority. And you do everything you can just to get the attention of that one player, get them to start using your product. And once you’ve got them on board, then you can start telling everyone else in the early majority saying, ‘hey look, this big dude, this big company is using my stuff.’ And that is like a domino effect. And so that’s the thinking behind this.

So with the YouTube strategy, I’m looking at YouTube as our beachhead strategy. And so we’re using YouTube as a beachhead strategy there to just focus all our attention on there. Once we have a mass of following on there, then we can start moving out to everything else and spending more time with other things. That’s basically what we’ve been doing and it’s working for us really well.

West: Wow. Sounds like a very exciting journey, Gideon, because you’ve also meshed your love of video and multimedia with your love of magic. You’re a big fan, aren’t you?

Gideon: I love magic, yeah. As a kid I was really into it. Then I got distracted, unfortunately. But it looks like I’m getting back into it.

West: So you’re a bit of a magician yourself, are you?

Gideon: Well, by heart I am. And the difference between the great magicians out there and the ones that are not…it’s practice. So if I really want to do this, I really need to get…

West: It’s focus, mate. You’ve been talking about it all throughout the call.

Gideon: Exactly.

West: Awesome. So I’ll finish up by asking some of the biggest mistakes that you see people making, Gideon, from all the students that you’ve had and all the people that have come through your program. I’m sure there’s been recurring barriers that people continually hit. What kind of advice do you give to these people when they come to you for those?

Gideon: I think we flash the focus thing. So that is the number one thing: get focused. Get rid of all other distractions and just work on one thing and get it done. Get it done and then you can move on to the other things. Make something successful first.

The other thing, especially if you’re doing stuff online, there is always a technical component there. And if you’re not a technical person and it frustrates the hell out of you, source it out. Get someone else to do that for you. And that will give you tremendous leverage. That’s going to cost you a bit of money but if you don’t want to hire someone locally which may be expensive, you hop on to a site like Elance.com or Guru.com and get someone else to take care of the technical stuff. There are people hungry to do that work for you. And so that can help you speed up your process.

West: Definitely. Now just out of curiosity, do you actually outsource any of your really technical stuff to other people or you actually handle…?

Gideon: Absolutely. And at the beginning I did it all myself. Even with Become a Blogger, at the beginning I did a lot of the graphics myself and I set up the blog and all the technical stuff at the website. And while I could do it and it was kind of fun in a way because I could see the results of my work, it really slowed me down. And that’s probably why it took eight months instead of three months to get everything done.

At the beginning, that slowed me down. But as we progressed and as we started making some more money from it, we started sourcing more things out. And it is a bit of a challenge finding the right person to help you with that but I think the point is you’ve got to go look for them. And if you can find someone that’s really good, make sure you…

West: Hang on to them.

Gideon: Hang on to them, yeah.

West: Couldn’t agree more. Definitely. You know, I have fallen in the same track myself. And things definitely opened up when I started letting people do things that I wasn’t good at. And I really found that it wasn’t that expensive, really, because in some of the developing countries, people work for not a lot of money and work hard for you.

Gideon: I know you’ve done a lot of outsourcing before so you’re a bit of a master that maybe I should interview you.

West: I’d be happy to shed some light on that for you, Gideon. Any time.

So Gideon, we talked so much about what you’ve done and people are looking to find out more about your membership programs or check out some of the techniques that you shared, where can they or how can they find out about you?

Gideon: Well I think, probably the first site that I would recommend you go to right now is GideonShalwick.com.

West: What’s GideonShalwick.com?

Gideon: Well at the moment, it’s about three days old. It’s my latest one but I think I’m going to be using it as a hub for everything else. The subheadline that I have on there is just ‘the behind the scenes of a serial online entrepreneur.’

West: So Free Magic Live is going to have a bit of a competitor or a bit of a second, you know…?

Gideon: Well, this is the thing with this website, which is really cool, is that it doesn’t require much of my time. I discovered this magazine technology called Screener.com—I’m not sure if you’ve seen it.

West: No, I haven’t.

Gideon: But what I’m doing there is I’m creating 5-min. videos in response to questions that I’m getting on Twitter. And all I’m doing is I’m creating these videos. It seriously takes me 5 minutes to create. There’s no preparation for it. And it takes me another minute to get it processed, everything uploaded—because it all gets done automatically—and then embed it into the blog. So it’s just amazing.

I don’t view this as a distraction. I view this as just an ongoing thing as my personal voice so that people can see what I’m getting up to behind the scenes.

So what I’m planning to do there is to answer people’s questions. If they’ve got a question about online marketing or online video marketing or social media or blogging in general, I’m going to be answering questions there using these little 5 min videos. So that’s just kind of a fun thing that I’m doing on the side. And if it’s 5 minutes or 10 minutes a day, it’s not a big issue; I don’t see it as a distraction.

West: Definitely. So are you going to be putting any recent video footage of your golfing game on there, Gideon? I need some tips on being able to beat you.

Gideon: [Laughs] Look, I think I need some tips from you, West.

So that’s GideonShalwick.com. Become a Blogger, we talked about that as well: BecomeABlogger.com. You can see what we’re doing there. There are a lot of free information that teaches you how to blog. And if you’re interested in magic, FreeMagicLive.com. So those are the three main ones to check out.

West: Awesome. So that’s really, really interesting and powerful stuff. You know, I talk to a lot of successful people and many of them have their hands in a lot of pies. But I think what we can learn from Gideon is that focus, really, is king—in his case, at least. And I think and honestly believe, truly, that that is one of the keys to successes in online, offline or any venture that you take on.

So on that note, I’m going to thank Gideon for providing us with some awesome content today. Thanks Gideon!

Gideon: Hey, thanks West! And thank everyone else for listening this far and I hope the information has been useful to you and that it will help you to become successful online, because if you can have a successful online business, it just gives you huge benefits and huge leverage. So I’ll be really happy if the content that I provided you today can help you achieve that as well.

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