Put a Shark in Your Tank Put a Shark in Your Tank Copyright © 2017 All Rights Reserved. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond the copying permitted by US Copyright Law, Section 107, “fair use” in teaching or research, Section 108, certain library copying, or in published media by reviewers in limited excerpts), without written permission from the author. Disclaimer This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment and education only. While best efforts have been used, the authors and the publisher are not offering legal, accounting, medical, or any other professional services advice and make no representations or warranties of any kind and assume no liabilities of any kind with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness of use for a particular purpose, nor shall they be held liable or responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or incidental or consequential damages caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information or programs contained herein.
ii Contents
Chapter 1 Kevin Harrington: Becoming a KPI...... 5 Chapter 2 Kevin Harrington: Obtaining Customers...... 9 Chapter 3 Kevin Harrington: Raising Capital...... 13 Chapter 4 Kevin Harrington: The Perfect Pitch...... 19 Chapter 5 Brian Harrington: Taking Action to Build Your Product into a Business...... 25 Chapter 6 Brian Harrington: Partnerships...... 31 Chapter 7 Rob Kosberg & Kevin Hutto: 4 Simple Steps to the Perfect Funnel...... 35 Chapter 8 Daniel Patton: CarbonKlean...... 41 Chapter 9 Meghan Alonso: From Perfect Pitch to Product Development: You Have the Funding, Now Get Ready for the Work!...... 51 Chapter 10 Brandon T. Adams: Keys to the Crowd Unlocking the Power of Crowdfunding...... 59 Chapter 11 Maxwell Finn: The Startup Drugz Blueprint...... 71 Chapter 12 Michael Silvestri: The Silvestri Family’s Quest to Sell Private Label Products on Amazon...... 81 Chapter 13 Jeremy Adams: Nothing to Lose...... 87 Chapter 14 Ian Smith: The Entrepreneur Mindset...... 95 Chapter 15 Cory Bergeron: Instant Benefits...... 101 Chapter 16 Caleb Maddix: How I Made $100,000 by 14 Years Old...... 107 Chapter 17 Matt Maddix: The Power of a Book...... 115 Chapter 18 Anthony Amos: How to Catch a Shark...... 123 Chapter 19 Kevin Harrington: Shark Bite...... 129 Chapter 20 Greg Rollett: The Future Belongs to the Young . . . and Ambitious...... 133 Chapter 21 John Max Bolling: Relational Selling: How to Engage Customers and Avoid becoming a Commodity...... 143 Chapter 22 Trevor Lowry: A Perfect Day...... 151 Chapter 23 Bruce Reed: Here’s the Scoop: Five Flavors of Business...... 155 CHAPTER 1 Kevin Harrington Becoming a KPI
he key person of influence (KPI) is the leader in any given Tindustry. The KPI is the leader of the business world, the leader of automobile dealerships, or the leader of selling hats—you name it. In other words, being the KPI is the go-to person. The crazy thing? Anyone can be a KPI. Any entrepreneur can be a KPI; any doctor can be a KPI; any salesperson can be a KPI; anyone can be a KPI. People just have to follow five steps, and then they will be well on their way. What comes with being a key person of influence is value, ideally a massive amount of money, and being the leader in a field. A KPI is the person who comes up in conversations when it comes to a certain product, business, company, industry, or field. This is the person who others seek out, the go-to person. Being a KPI is how I got on Shark Tank. I tell the story of how I got on this ABC television (TV) show, because I had become a KPI but didn’t even know how I did it. A lot of people asked me—and continue to ask me—how I got on Shark Tank. Here’s the story: I got a phone call from Mark Burnett’s company. Burnett is a television producer. He produced shows such
5 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK as Survivor and The Voice. His office called to set up an appointment. Burnett was starting up a new show and wanted me to go to Los Angeles to talk business. I was curious as to how Burnett’s company found me, and why they reached out for my services. They told me it was because I was a key person of influence. Because I was all over the Internet, as a result of everything I was doing. It was 2008, and I had been in the business at that point for 25 years. I started in 1984. I had created huge brands. I helped build fitness experts Tony Little and Jack LaLanne. I helped build FoodSaver and the NuWave Oven. I worked with people such as professional boxer George Foreman and his cooking products. The problem for me was that everybody knew the brands, which was good for business, but didn’t know my actual personal brand. Consumers knew about the FoodSaver, they knew about Tony Little, and they knew about Jack LaLanne, but not everyone knew I was the guy who was behind all these people. Nobody knew me. I made a conscious effort at that point to build my brand, and that’s what I had to do. I wanted to become the go-to person in the industry to get the hot products along with the phone calls. I helped build Tony Little’s business, but everyone was calling Tony Little. They weren’t calling me. What’s wrong with that picture? Well, I invested millions and millions of dollars of my own capital into Tony Little, and then he gets the phone calls. Shame on me for doing that, right? I decided to build my brand, and that’s when I came out with my book, Key Person of Influence. I published. That’s one of the five steps—publish. The other four are focusing on pitch, products, profile, and partnerships. I go into greater detail about each step in my book, Key Person of Influence. I promoted myself by doing radio talk shows, TV shows, trade journals, speeches, etc. This is how I got on Shark Tank.
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In 2008, Burnett was looking for “sharks,” and that’s when the phone rang from his company. It all plays perfectly into the story about how I got the phone call and how I consciously said— and this is before I used the term key person of influence—“I’m going to build my brand. I need to be the go-to guy.” This book, if I hadn’t met my co-author Daniel Priestley, could have become How to Become the Go-To Guy, because that’s what I was looking to do. Daniel eloquently created a five-step system called the “Key Person of Influence.” That’s when we co-authored the book, and I launched Key Person of Influence in the United States.
Synopsis: “Becoming a KPI” explains how Kevin Harrington became a key person of influence, yet he didn’t even know how he did it at the time. Becoming a KPI is how Kevin got on the hit show Shark Tank. Kevin talks about how he became the go-to guy, a KPI, in an untouched market at the time. Anyone can become a KPI, and it doesn’t matter what industry a person is in. There is a KPI in every industry.
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CHAPTER 2 Kevin Harrington Obtaining Customers
n 1984, I started the business of obtaining customers on TV. I Iwas watching television, the Discovery Channel, and then the channel went dark for about six hours. I called the cable company, just in case there was a problem. They told me there wasn’t, that the Discovery Channel was an 18-hour network. That’s when the light bulb went off. This is downtime. They put no value on it. Instead of showing something during this time, bars were just put up on the TV screen. At that time, I was thinking about what I could put in place of that downtime so I could sell something, make money, to obtain some customers. I created and invented the whole concept of going to TV stations and buying huge blocks of time to utilize the remnant downtime. In all these years of me doing this, no one has challenged the idea that I was the person who did it, created it, and invented the infomercial in 30-minute blocks. I was buying big blocks of time. Why? Because I wanted to get customers. I wanted to obtain customers. How do you obtain customers? A lot of ways, but you ultimately have to get some form of media. How does it start? There are two metrics that you have
9 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK to be looking at when you’re obtaining customers. First, what does it cost? That is called the cost per order (CPO). Second, what is your average lifetime revenue value (ALRV) or average order value (AOV)? Thess are the two metrics you need to be looking at when you are trying to obtain customers. The cost to obtain the customer obviously has to be less than the cost you are going to receive in income from the customer. The bottom line in obtaining customers: You have to set up the system. You have to set up testing. You have to set up as many sources of obtaining customers as possible. I was in the TV business, but I didn’t just get customers through TV. My company got customers through TV; we got customers through radio; we got customers through the Internet; we got customers through retail stores; we got customers through international distribution; we got customers through home shopping channels, etc. The first thing to do when you are going to obtain customers is make a laundry list of every possible area where you can get these customers. That’s how I go about getting customers. Today, some people who are into the digital space are basically just getting customers on the Internet. You can focus in certain areas, and today some of these other areas that I mentioned have become really expensive. It’s tougher to make money on TV. While we used to start on TV, the cost to get customers has become too high, so we now have made a switch to digital. When you talk about the Internet, there are many different ways to obtain customers, from Google AdWords to Facebook to social media, etc. You can even do a whole dropdown on the entire digital space. The bottom line is that a lot of people do not realize they have to be sophisticated from a business analysis standpoint to set up a business. You need a marketing plan to obtain customers. You can also obtain customers with public relations and influencers.
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With all the ways you can get customers, you need to focus on two numbers: your customer acquisition cost (CAT) and AOV. Those numbers have to work. Now, you can use TV, you can use radio, you can use the Internet—all these different media. Of course, referral is also a big source. Customer service is also crucial in the business world. A business can’t have bad customer service and also get customers, after all, and that is especially true in this electronic day and age.
Synopsis: “Obtaining Customers” maps how Kevin Harrington went about obtaining customers in 1984. The chapter explains how Kevin saw a hole in the television industry, how this industry had a need, and how he filled that hole. In the process, Kevin found out how to obtain customers in a market that was not yet there, and one that he eventually created and mastered. There are many ways to obtain customers, and this chapter discusses certain metrics that people need to be monitoring every step of the way.
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CHAPTER 3 Kevin Harrington Raising Capital
ere I was, I had a $50-million-a-year business, making $5 Hmillion a year in profit, and I walked in and met with seven banks to get some financing. I thought it was going to be easy because I had this nice business, this extremely profitable business. Unfortunately, bank after bank after bank turned me down. I had great credit and all that. The only asset I had was the business. Part of the problem was I didn’t know how to approach these banks. I was a young entrepreneur in my twenties, I had no real credibility in the banking world, and I was walking in and just showing my numbers from the year before. So what did I do to get the capital? Well, I ran into a mentor who was a former bank president, and he said, “Kevin, you went about it all wrong. I come from the banking business, and if you walked into my office and said you needed $5 million, I would have told you to turn around and get the hell out of my office. What you have to do, well, it isn’t what you did last year. You have to sell them on the future. What you did last year is well and good, but they are giving you money, and you have to understand that you are still going to be in business three years from now repaying their loans. You need projections, you need your forward business plan, you need your
13 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK five-year master plan. You need to talk the talk and walk the walk, otherwise they aren’t even interested.” I hired him, my mentor, as a consultant to the company, and then brought him in on the ground floor. He then joined my company as part of my dream team. To make a long story short, we went back to some of the same banks, and while we didn’t get $5 million, we did get a $3-million line of credit. It was all in how we talked to the banks. We had the same business, but it was all in the presentation. It’s all in how you talk. To answer one question the wrong way when you’re dealing with these banks, you could be shot down. Raising capital is mental. It’s in the pitch; it’s in the relationships, etc. One of the biggest challenges with any business is having enough capital to do the things you want to do. You have to have a successful business plan. For reference, here are the elements of a successful business plan. 1. You need an executive summary (one page, and it summarizes the whole thing). You need an industry overview, which is the problem and the overview of the market. 2. You need a description of the product or the service, which is the solution. 3. You need a competitive analysis. 4. You need a sales and marketing plan. 5. You need to talk about your target customer and your proof of concept. 6. You need to detail your operations. 7. You need to define your management team, your board of advisers, your dream team. 8. You need financial projections. 9. You need a risk analysis and appendix.
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Those are the elements of a successful business plan. I call it your sales and marketing plan. If you are going to raise capital, you don’t just talk to an investor. I get all these people who come to me and say they have this idea, and boom—it’s on a napkin. They tell me that they just need 100 grand for 10 percent. And I ask them if they can send me their business plan. And they ask me what I mean when I say a business plan. Oh, you don’t have one? That means I am going to give you the 100 grand and never see it again. I think it’s important that people understand that part of this whole business plan and marketing and sales plan is also how much money you need. You know, what’s the ask. One of the most important parts of raising capital is coming up with a reasonable ask, and then what’s going to be the use of proceeds. These are things that people don’t understand. For example, a guy came on Shark Tank. He said he needed 150 grand for 10 percent of his company. I asked him what he was going to use 150 grand for. His response was essentially this, “Well, I am going to use that on a down payment for a piece of real estate where we are going to build a building and then launch the business.” I turned around and asked if the $150,000 was expected for the down payment on the real estate. He responded by saying, “Yes, I need that.” I responded, “Okay, so you are going to build the building and then equip the building with furniture. Where is that money going to come from?” He said once he got the real estate, then we would deal with that money, that we would figure out that batch of money at that time. I’m thinking to myself that $150,000 doesn’t get you in business. I then tell him that $150,000 gets you a piece of land. I asked, “How are you going to build the business, generate revenue, and pay me back?”
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This guy told me that he thought I would have more money for him after that. Well, no. “You are not going to get the first batch of money, based on the answers you are giving me about what you are going to do with the use of proceeds.” Instead of someone saying they are going to lease a small office somewhere, why not start generating massive amounts of revenue with the money I give them? Then, pay me back all my money, punt a huge return in my investment, and then build this into a global business. That’s what I want to hear. I want to know that people have a successful business plan, they have a successful marketing plan, and then I talk about how to go about raising the capital, how to call on investors, and what are the sweet spots of investors. The bottom line about raising capital is that you can’t just go build yourself a huge global business without thinking about how you’re going to get some money to finance it all. In the old days, I thought if I built a successful business, money was going to be easy. It’s not, unless you know how to do it. There’s an art to raising capital. Part of it involves making sure you know how to pitch properly. A lot of people do not know how to pitch properly.
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Synopsis: The key to raising capital is not showing off how well your business did last year or the previous years, but showing that your business is going to continue making money for years to come, so you can pay off the investors who are giving you funds. That is all mapped out in greater detail in the chapter, “Raising Capital.” Raising capital is an art. Part of it involves showing off your killer business plans, and part of it involves incorporating the perfect pitch. If you don’t look toward the future by showing off how much money your business still has to make, then you are not going to get funding. Kevin Harrington explains that in his own experiences, when he tried to pitch bank managers for money. He also tells a story when someone tried to pitch him on Shark Tank.
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CHAPTER 4 Kevin Harrington The Perfect Pitch
hile the actual product or service you are trying to sell is W a critical part of the process, it is just as important to sell the customer on yourself, your services, and your business. Even though I have made thousands upon thousands of pitches, have spoken to thousands of people, and have seen a great amount of success, I still pitch myself and my businesses. No matter who you are, or what you do, you have to be ready to drop the perfect pitch, and it doesn’t matter if you are going to make this perfect pitch in front of a crowd of thousands or a crowd of one. To help with the concept of a perfect pitch, I have created a 10-step system to develop your perfect pitch. Before you can start perfecting the perfect pitch, you first have to ask yourself a couple of questions. What are you pitching? In other words, what product, business, or service are you trying to sell? Next, what do you want to get out of this pitch? More customers? More sales? Nonetheless, these questions are for you to answer, and you need to answer them before devising your perfect pitch.
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The perfect pitch can be broken down into 10 steps. 1. Tease 2. Please 3. Demonstration/Multifunctionality 4. But Wait, There’s More! 5. Testimonials 6. Research and Competitive Analysis 7. Your Team 8. Why? 9. Marketing Plan 10. Seize
With these 10 steps, you can create the perfect pitch. Tease is the hook and the period of time when you plant the seed. This is when you reveal a problem. Remember, this is the hook, so you have to explain to your customers why you are giving the pitch, and you also have to use showmanship, which sets up the pace for the rest of the pitch. If your showmanship skills are shown off in the tease portion of your pitch, then you will have your audience (in this case, your customer) hooked from the beginning. Next up is please. In this part of the perfect pitch, you are telling your customer how your product or service can solve the problem that you mapped out in the first step. Ideally, your product or service will solve this stated problem in the most efficient, elegant, and cost-effective way. You have to relay to your customers that your solution is the best solution, and it will solve the problem better than anything (or anyone) else. It is important to also show off your features and benefits and to display your magical transformation that will take place.
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The third step to the perfect pitch is demonstration/ multifunctionality. First, you have to ask yourself if you can demonstrate your product, your service, and your value. This is the key to any successful pitch, and it brings multifunctionality to the forefront—it shows it off. Think of this step as an added value. Ideally, your service or product is multifunctional, so it does this or that, but it can also do this. In every sense of the word, it is multifunctional. If you can show this to your customer, then you just brought bonus points to the table. But wait, there’s more! is the fourth step, and it’s not just for infomercials. This is the step where you give more value to your product or service by showing and adding to the pitch, and this is how a successful pitch can push the customer over the edge. At this point, your customer is already biting, but now is the time when you really win them over. So, show them what else you have to offer. Testimonials is the fifth step to creating the perfect pitch. The best part is that it is not just you pitching, because you are using someone else to do the pitching now. This is the proof behind your business, product, or service. Testimonials can include consumers, the actual users of the product or service. They can include professionals, the leading professions in your industry. They can be editorial, which can include articles, experts, press, journals, trade publications, magazines, newspapers, etc. Testimonials can also feature celebrities, and these testimonials can be powerful, for the simple fact that people love celebrities. Then there are documented testimonials, which can include clinical studies, labs, and science. Once again, this is one of the most important areas of creating the perfect pitch, because someone else is doing the pitch for you. Another important step to creating the perfect pitch—because all the steps are important—is the sixth step, which is research and competitive analysis. For this step, you should be asking yourself
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if you have done your research. If so, then this is the portion of the perfect pitch when you show off all that information. This can include information about the industry, market, and competitors. It can also be facts, figures, and statistics. This research should show off the fact that you, your company, and your product/service is unique. The seventh step is your team. In this step, you are bringing the credibility of your team and putting it right there on the metaphorical table. Who makes up your team? It could be advisers, managers, directors, and strategic partners. Your team will help scale, open connections, add on the knowledge factor, and so much more. Why? is the eighth step. In this step, you have to ask yourself some questions. Why are you pitching? How will the person in front of you help? This step will change based on who you are actually pitching to. For example, if you are looking for funds, then this is a big section, and you need to incorporate many talking points. The ninth step is marketing plan. You have completed your pitch and given all your information. Now, how will you make everything happen? For instance, you need to know your marketing and distribution plan. As is the case throughout your entire pitch, it is essential that you show confidence. Sell not only your product or service, but also yourself. People invest in people all the time. The tenth and final step isseize . You laid everything out, now ask! What are you trying to accomplish? Ask it! Being the final step, this is the time to present the final call to action. These are the 10 steps to the perfect pitch. Remember, each pitch will be different. Some pitches last for more than an hour, and others last only for a few seconds. It just depends on how much time you are given to pitch someone. That is why you need to craft your pitches accordingly. Practice, practice, and more practice after that is how you perfect the perfect pitch.
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Synopsis: This chapter breaks down how to create the perfect pitch. The perfect pitch is a 10-step process that has to be tailored around each individual pitch. Creating the perfect pitch is so important because you might have the perfect business or product in place, but now you have to show why. You have to show that your product works; you have to show that your product is solving some sort of problem; and you have to sell people on your product. Without the perfect pitch, you won’t get funding. You might have a thriving company, one that makes millions and millions of dollars a year in profits, but you still need this 10-step process. If you don’t sell someone on all this, you won’t achieve whatever goal you are trying to achieve during the pitch process.
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CHAPTER 5 Brian Harrington Taking Action to Build Your Product into a Business
am not an inventor. Although I am a visionary and come up with Iideas all the time, I have never actually invented a product and brought it to market. Why? This just is not my business model. My business model is not to see what is needed in the marketplace and come up with a product to fulfill that need. My business model is to take a product and find out how to either build the marketplace or take a piece of it. I am a marketer and know how to turn a product into a multimillion-brand success. No matter the stage of your product or idea, you need to follow specific steps in order to make your dream into a real business, because a product is a business. I work with product owners and entrepreneurs at all different stages—having a napkin idea, prototype, product in inventory, or already doing millions of dollars in sales. There are so many different ways to make money with your products, especially because of the Internet and all the distribution outlets that this offers. I have seen many entrepreneurs go broke, simply because they took the wrong actions in incorrect orders.
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Had they spoken to me six months prior, they could have saved their money. On the other hand, I have seen entrepreneurs make millions of dollars, following these three simple steps to launch their product. The first step, as simple as it sounds, do your research. I have asked so many product owners about their competition, and they don’t know the answer. While sitting in front of them, I do a quick online search, and BAM—1, 2, 3, plus competitors already taking market share. Now this doesn’t mean that there can’t be a 4, 5, or 6, but it will tell you what you should do or what you should avoid. What does doing your research mean? Look at the market. What is the size of the market? Who is your demographic? How much money do they make? Where do they live? How do you attack that market? What is the potential of the business? And so on. You also want to learn about your competition, if any. Learn how they market, how they are finding success, what they are doing correctly or not doing correctly, and how you can be better than them. You need to learn all about your competition and the market in order to know everything about your product and how to make it a success. There are really two types of products to buy, a unique item and a commodity item, both having their pros and cons. A unique item is just that, unique or one of a kind. There is nothing else out there like it, which is great, because when you hit the market, you can take it. But the problem with this is that you have to educate the market. How are you going to do this? What is the marketing message and plan? On a commodity item, this is great because this is an item that consumers purchase on a regular basis and already know about. The problem is that you need to be able to stand out from the competition. How will you make sure people buy your product instead of the competition? Doing your research will help answer these questions.
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The second step is to surround yourself with the right team to launch your product. I talk about partnerships in another chapter in this book, and I wholeheartedly mean it. I rarely see an individual find huge success in the product world. It is just tough. It is time- consuming, emotionally draining, physically draining, and just not enough resources are available from one person. So find the right team. I will talk about testing and expanding, but your team can come in all different shapes and sizes. Whether this is a true partner you have who is running alongside you, a team that you can fortunately hire to help grow the business, or outside service providers that you can rely on to help, finding the right team is important in any stage along the way. Stage 1: Product Design and Development Stage 2: Sourcing and Manufacturing Stage 3: Testing and Marketing Stage 4: Distribution and Expansion
Regardless of what stage you are in, the right team or partners will help you attack the market and reach your goals. Look around at your situation right now as you read this. Think about who you have in your corner. Who is helping you to build your dreams into a reality? Who is handling your logistics, marketing, distribution accounting, legal, and general strategy? Do you have the right team around you to make it happen? If not, go get them. Research service providers, see if your friends share the same passion as you, look for experts in the industry, come to people like us who know how to market and distribute, find the DREAM TEAM! The third step to achieve product success is to TEST. We often say, “test before you invest.” If you do it the other way around, you
27 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK can lose a lot of money. Too many times I see people order massive amounts of inventory, warehouse them, then come to us looking for marketing help. Now this can be a disaster, either because they spent all their money and don’t have any left to market, or they spent a lot of money and no one wants to buy the product. Testing doesn’t just have to be on new products, as testing can occur on already successful products. First, on a new product, you don’t know what the correct marketing message is yet. You don’t necessarily know what the best offer is yet. So do some testing in order to understand this. Why will anyone want to buy the product, for what price, and what messaging makes them buy? How do you test? Easy—the Internet! It used to be tough to test without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. First, DO NOT survey your friends and family. They will only tell you what you want to hear. The easiest, cheapest way to get some data is to do surveys, like a SurveyMonkey service. You can easily get 100 answers about what price point is better, or what color people like more. Testing can also occur through digital marketing. The barrier to entry through digital marketing is a lot cheaper than it is through traditional marketing and media outlets. Build a website, run Facebook ads, drive consumers to your website, and set up a retargeting campaign. By doing these things, you will learn most of the metrics that you need. How much it costs to get a customer, what the customer is worth, what the conversion rate is, how they respond to different marketing messages, what the exact demographic is, and insights into how you scale. More or less in today’s product climate, this is always how we start our marketing campaigns. Depending on the product, category, and industry, you can also test by attending a trade show. Get a booth at your industry trade show, and see what kind of response you get. Do the retailers like the product, are you getting buzz? This can provide you some info about the viability of the product in the marketplace.
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Test your product before you move on to step four, which is the expansion process. Once you get through these three steps, you should know so much about your product that it should be (relatively) easy to expand. You know your market, the competition, you have the right team, you have tested the product, so you have your metrics and the test worked out and made you want to expand. Now what? First things first, keep doing what you’re doing, but do it bigger. Scale your digital campaign. Don’t do it too quickly or metrics might change, but scale appropriately. Look for more digital opportunities. If you are only marketing on Facebook, do some search engine marketing, add roll type ads, banner ads, influencer marketing, and more. Going back to step two, make sure you have the right team(s) to help you with this, but expand your digital presence. Not all products are right for direct response TV marketing, so think this through carefully and make sure you have the allocated budget. If you do, then hit the airwaves. Keep building your brand, getting exposure, building revenue, and opening opportunities. At this time, if you have not done so already, you need to hit the trade show circuits. Trade shows are great ways to expand and get distribution. Start attending trade shows and expand into other forms of distribution, such stores as brick and mortar big box, specialty, drug, live shopping, other Internet commerce, and eventually international distribution. All this comes with hard work, but it is the last step to turn your product into a successful business. Now, one last bonus step four—the expansion process. Having success with your product is great, but how do you make it even better? Keep innovating. This can be simple, as you can come out with line extensions, new colors, new versions, ancillary products, brand extensions, licensed goods, or cross-branded goods. Keep the success rolling by coming out with new and innovative items within your brand. You want to build the brand where it has value, regardless
29 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK of the product within. So many companies fail at this. Each product really has a bell shaped curve for its lifetime. It is difficult and rare to sell the same product to the same market forever. You need to build the brand, innovate, and build value within the brand. To let you know who I am, I am entrepreneur who has extensive experience in the electronic retailing marketing industry and have been involved in dozens of product launches reaching sales of nearly $100 million. I served as the VP of merchandising at As Seen on TV, where I was responsible for identifying, sourcing, and developing new products for commercial marketing success. I managed more than a thousand vendors, thousands of products, millions of customers, marketing strategies, content production, and team management. I then served as president of StarShop, which I founded with my father, Kevin Harrington. StarShop is a mobile shopping platform utilizing celebrities to sell products via unique selling videos in conjunction with Sprint Corporation and Pinsight Media+. I managed employees, celebrities, vendors, marketing, internal budgets, forecasting, and more. I also founded TeleStar Products International, Inc., a full- service electronic retailing marketing company, specializing in product development and identifying products’ strengths/abilities and their suitability for direct response, live shopping, and digital marketing. TeleStar markets dozens of brands through television and the Internet. TeleStar is at the forefront of social media marketing and sales conversion, working on sales and marketing programs in many categories and sectors. I am also a partner in a digital marketing agency, selling on Amazon business. I am involved with a retail distribution company, a reality show production company, an eSports destination platform, an entrepreneur training business, a corporate training business, and I own dozens of successful selling products in multiple categories.
30 CHAPTER 6 Brian Harrington Partnerships
ou never wake up with all the resources you need. Partnerships Yare a great way to get the necessary resources that you need to prosper. There are different forms of partnerships, and they are all crucial for you to get where you need to be. Partnerships allow you to maximize and increase your time in order to achieve your goals at a rapid pace. One thing my dad, Kevin Harrington, has always taught me with business, and what we are practicing right now, is building a dream team. There are a lot of reasons why we do that. First and foremost, one person can’t do everything alone. One person doesn’t have all the resources that are essential for business practices. Once again, you never wake up with all the resources you need. Rarely do you see that ever happen. For instance, I’m partners with my dad, and we partner with people and companies internationally, because it helps us be more efficient for the business world. It helps us and our businesses to become quicker, better, faster, and easier. I’d rather have a small piece of a big pie than a big piece of a small pie. That’s just my mentality on the matter. There are a couple of reasons why I like to partner, why we like to partner. One of which
31 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK is because it helps save a lot of money. As other business owners and entrepreneurs likely already know, saving money in business is everything. A person could go to a service provider, to an executive, or to a salesperson. Having partners doesn’t necessarily mean I have to give you a piece of my business, but it saves you a lot of money. When people say equity over compensation, over equity over payment, they might take different deal structures if you partner smart. Saving money is a big deal. Providing resources that you don’t have is also a big deal. We’re looking to get distribution. We want to find and reel in contacts that we might not have at our fingertips. That’s another big thing about partners. With them, we could go to different distribution outlets, and we could go to different galaxies that we wouldn’t be able to get to on our own. Relationships are also key in business. We try to keep a great relationship with everyone. We never close a door. Partnerships provide relationships. On multiple occasions, we have gained incredible, lifelong relationships because we brought other folks into our businesses. Gaining credibility is another major factor. This goes into building your dream team. When you have a business, are starting a business, or whatever it might be, bringing on other partners also builds credibility through your business. This is the case whether it’s a company or individuals. These people have credibility and have accomplished things along their paths that you haven’t done yet. So now it’s not just me. For instance, I’m not launching this beauty product by myself. I’m launching this beauty product with an expert who sold $10 billion worth of beauty items in his/her career. Gaining credibility is key. Why partner? Well, it helps to gain knowledge. Like I said, you never wake up with all the resources you need. I don’t know everything in the world. No one knows everything in the world.
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We go to other people for knowledge and execution. These are the main reasons to partner. To save money, to find resources you don’t have, increase distribution, be in relationships, gain credibility, and gain knowledge. In terms of tips and tricks for finding people you can partner with, your partners can be service providers or people in your industry. You can also partner with people outside your industry. These partnerships can come from other entrepreneurs on different distribution outlets. For example, we have partnered with production companies to shoot videos, to shoot infomercials, and we give them a piece of the pie. They will either do it for costs, or they will pay for it and then own a piece of the business. That is key for us. A lot of people come to us asking for money. We need to pay this person to do this, we need to pay this person to do that. We ask them if they will do it for free. They don’t get the money, but they do get a piece of the pie, which can turn out to be much more valuable than an initial payday. We value that a lot. Would you rather get paid a small amount up front, or have the possibility of making a large amount later? The key ingredient for finding great partners is networking. We don’t ever shy away from anyone. We like to meet everyone. In a sense, we like to turn over every stone. You know, explore every relationship because we never know who is going to be our next best partner. Networking is extremely important for our dream team. There are different kinds of partnerships that my dream team works with. There’s equity partnerships, distribution partnerships, referral partnerships, and service partnerships. For instance, one person handles distribution, and we handle production. We partner together. This person couldn’t do what we do, and we couldn’t do what this person does, making us essential to this person and this person essential to us.
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Referral situations are the best. We have referral partners all over. The reason why is because referral partners bring us business. It doesn’t matter what you do. You could own a laundromat. You could own a digital agency. You could sell products online. You could have a local pizzeria. All partners will drive awareness, they’ll drive business, they’ll drive sales, and they’ll drive opportunities to you outside what you were already going to do. Service partners are the production companies of the world. They are Web developers, the content people, the public relations people, etc. Having successful partnerships will position a company in the right place for capital raising and expansion. They will also help you earn more money in a short period of time and with fewer struggles along the way. In general, partnerships help to attract more opportunities. We value partners because we never wake up in the morning with everything we need. That’s just the truth. No one does. We look for other people to help us build businesses. No matter what kind of business you have, partnerships really are key to success, and they help a business expand domestically and internationally.
34 CHAPTER 7 Rob Kosberg & Kevin Hutto 4 Simple Steps to the Perfect Funnel
usiness people hear a lot about funnels these days. Sales funnels, Blead funnels, marketing funnels, oh my! Would you like to know the four simple steps to create your own life-giving business funnel? OK, well, let’s do just that by first letting us tell you a little about the funnels that we run in our businesses, so you can gain some insight into what is possible. Let’s take the mystery out of the mysterious funnel. In the early 2000s, I (Rob) was ingrained in the real estate business. Having originally gotten my real estate license in 1983 (don’t do the math), I had been in real estate WAY too long, but that was about to change. At that time, I was spending $20,000 a month on print advertising, specifically newspaper ads. Yes, this was a funnel. Now, $20,000 per month might seem really expensive, but it’s not so bad when you consider that I was making about $200,000 to $250,000 every month or about 10:1 return on investment (ROI). This went on for an extended period of time . . . until it didn’t. Of
35 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK course, that was during the financial crisis of 2007–2009. That business went from $100 million a year in transactions to zero, because I had a single funnel and therefore a single point of failure. My print advertising funnel was no longer working for me, and it forever changed how I view my business. At that point, I made a decision that I would never again be in a position like that where I didn’t have multiple ways, or funnels in today’s vernacular, for people to find me, buy my stuff, or engage in a conversation, at the very least, with me. At that time, I wrote my bestselling book and used it to build multiple funnels, both online and offline, into a brand new financial services business. Those online and offline funnels would produce hundreds of leads per week and bring in more than a million dollars of income the first year. And, by the way, that was in a terrible economy. My offline funnel was a simple radio ad (and later radio show) that transitioned people from radio to a sales call to my office. But, I didn’t stop there. I then created online pay-per-click ads that marketed various products, such as CDs, a free copy of my bestselling book, and even live events. This was primarily done to give my sales guys and gals opportunities to close sales. I sold that company a couple of years ago, while it was still doing more than seven figures a year. Same funnels, same strategies. Today, I have points of entry—funnels—into my businesses that are from webinars, video sales letters, free offers, and books. They all lead to either the sale of a product or a one-on-one call with someone in my business that leads to a sale between $12,000 and $25,000. It’s having these multiple points, multiple funnels, especially in this beautiful age of Facebook and pay-per-click advertising on Google, that leads to massive success. Kevin’s business has also gone through many different phases. Let’s let him tell it.
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For the past eleven years, I’ve run an underground ecommerce and ebook business. I currently have more than forty websites that sell primarily ebooks and manuals on the Internet in many different verticals. And, to be clear, it is not any sort of make-money-online stuff. These are all outside the traditional Internet marketing space, because I didn’t want to be in the limelight. I wanted a series of funnels that created a lifestyle business for me. I’ve sold approximately 500,000 products during the past eleven years, anywhere from $19.95 to $49.95, all on autopilot with my funnels. These funnels have allowed me to earn more than seven figures per year with one part-time employee and ZERO customer interaction. A true lifestyle business! Several years ago, I got a call from a good friend who was having a difficult time with his pay-per-click marketing. He owns a business in a niche where a client is worth approximately $50,000, on average, and with repeat clients, the lifetime value is even higher. He asked me to come in, audit what his business was doing, and see if I thought I could help him. He’d gone through three “experts” in three years and nobody had delivered any meaningful results. I went in and we broke down the funnel from scratch. It was a great learning experience, and I actually figured out a far better funnel for his business. Now, Rob and I run all the traffic and have set up his complete funnel and sales process. Last year the new funnel did more than $35 million in direct sales. He spent about $4,000,000 with Google AdWords to get more than 50,000 direct phone calls— yes, ad to phone calls is a funnel. With repeat customers, he expects to add more than $50 million of value to the company in top-line sales.
Whether high-ticket or low-ticket sales, whether all online or ad to phone call, a funnel is what every business needs. So, what are the
37 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK four steps for you to successfully design you own funnel or funnels for your business? We have broken down every business funnel to four basic, necessary steps. 1. Ad 2. Landing page 3. Presentation 4. Conversion event
The first step in your successful conversion funnel is the ad. If you’re a coach, consultant, or entrepreneur, there’s never been a better time for you for sales and marketing. You can run amazing, targeted ads on Facebook better than ever before. You have specific targeting, based on demographic and psychographic buyer behavior. For instance, if you are looking to reach a mother of an eighteen to twenty-six year old who is interested in or has liked any pages having to do with addiction and is located in Newport Beach, then you can reach that person. If you are a coach or consultant, education-based selling is important, because you will need to warm the person to you and your product before you’re going to make a sale, so having the ability to reach those people and target them with Facebook is key. For local businesses, there are many options, including Google Ads, that will also bring people in a local geography to your business. The second step in your successful conversion funnel is the landing page. Your landing page does several important things for you, once the person has clicked on your ad. It calls out the people that you want and excludes the people that you don’t want. In other words, if you’re a coach or consultant, you want people who can afford your program, so the landing page will help you exclude the people who are just the tire kickers from those ready to buy. It explains
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the results that you can create for them and then gets your ideal prospect to raise his or her hand by opting into your list or signing up for your webinar or whatever the landing page is calling them to do. All the while, you are building your list with those who opt in. The third step in your successful conversion funnel is the presentation or indoctrination sequence. If you’re selling coaching, consulting, or some kind of high-ticket service, then in this step, you can use a live webinar, automated webinar, or even some type of video to indoctrinate the prospective client on the benefits of using your services. This is done by specifically targeting the prospect’s problems, as related to your service or expertise. You must understand the fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations of your ideal client, while using social proof, examples, and testimonials to teach from. In fact, case study presentations, teaching from a specific case study of success, whether from your business or from a client’s business, is the best way to combine those things. Combining social proof and teaching about whatever challenges your ideal client has is a powerful recipe for success. Oftentimes, step three and step four can be combined. We have companies and clients doing hundreds of thousands a month with an automated presentation and no need for step four in this process. The fourth step in your successful conversion funnel is the conversion event itself. As I said, in some cases, as described above, these can be combined. However, if you’re selling a high-ticket service, such as coaching or consulting, then you’re going to lead people from step three to a one-on-one strategy session or phone conversation in step four. This phone conversation is the final step in a consultative selling process or conversion funnel. This is an orchestrated conversation that takes people from the challenges they’re facing and the difficulties in their business or personal
39 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK life to the aspirational results that you can give them. Again, it is completely orchestrated. It is not a haphazard conversation. However, when arranged properly, it’s the final step and will convert as many as 70–80 percent of people on this phone call to your high- ticket service. These four simple steps are the necessary ingredients to produce the life-giving business funnel that can produce an unlimited number of leads and sales. Neglecting to follow these steps has led to the demise of many businesses. When done correctly, these four steps are the key to your business freedom.
40 CHAPTER 8 Daniel Patton CarbonKlean
hen I look back over my life, I often wonder how exactly I got W to the point where I am now. I am the son of a single, disabled mom who had my two brothers and me to take care of. My father was a highly decorated war hero during Vietnam, Navy SEAL, and direct descendant of one of the strongest military families in the world. He served our country for 35 years, and was by all accounts a great man, though he wasn’t ever a part of my life. I like to think that the Patton blood is one of my defining characteristics that has helped me to overcome so much in my life. My favorite quote is from a family member, General George S. Patton, “Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.” I’ve always felt that this is a good way to describe me and my life. I’ve often said that you’re not truly poor until you get a food stamp under your pillow from the tooth fairy. Yes, that really happened! Things weren’t always bad, but when they were it was rough. I can recall digging through the dumpsters at grocery stores as a child for food, living in a storage unit and in my mom’s station wagon for more than 18 months. We didn’t even have the money to buy an extra change of clothes from a thrift store. Those times I believe helped
41 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK mold me into what and who I am today, and I can honestly say I am now grateful for the strength that came from those experiences. My evolution in business started with my older brother barging into my bedroom early one morning when I was 15 years old. He woke me by throwing a wadded-up shirt at me, telling me that he had decided to move to Montana versus going to work as a shift manager at a new Taco Bell opening in our small town. I didn’t quite grasp exactly what he was saying, either because of my age, inexperience, or that I was simply still half asleep. The only question that I managed to get out was one that would inadvertently change my life, “What am I supposed to do with this shirt?” There might have been more to the conversation, but all I remember is him telling me to either put on the damn shirt and go to work in his place or go back to sleep. As I was 15, looking for a job and no prospects to speak of, I went ahead and did just that. I can remember a long ride to the restaurant on my bike, walking into that restaurant with my head held high, shoulders back, and looking as confident as possible. Of course, the thing that is most etched in my mind is the look on the face of that general manager with me in my brother’s shirt and his name tag. He walked straight up to me, asked me as politely as possible who the hell I was, and what I was doing in someone else’s uniform? I told him my story and the look on his face was priceless. After obviously thinking about the situation he was in and how busy he knew the restaurant was going to be, he reluctantly said, “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of or seen, but I am going to let you work out the day. Do a good job, and the job is yours. If you don’t, no harm, no foul—you’re gone”. Needless to say, I killed it. Not only did I start off as a shift manager, I quickly became the assistant manager. Then, in a stroke of luck, I had my the general manager job six months to the day I officially started working at the restaurant.
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That led me to more and more restaurants, owning them, managing them, and learning the business as best I could. As I’ve always believed in educating and bettering myself, I worked and went to school, literally until this past year. Restaurants led to hotels, and hotels to biotechnology, information technology (IT), healthcare, retail, products, business development, consulting, and a combination of many of those. In my career to date, I have managed, developed, and launched some of the most successful businesses and products worldwide. Through my consulting/product business, I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with some really exciting things. I am the unofficial developer of the urgent care clinic concept that you now see in Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, and many other places nationwide. I’m also pleased to be the developer and inventor of the noninsurance, preventative healthcare plans, which are now seen throughout the world in massage therapy, veterinary clinics, and dental and vision groups throughout the nation. Due to nondisclosure agreements, I cannot mention many of the clients and products I’ve worked with, but let’s say that the majority of the world has been associated in some way with something I have done. That, on its own, gives me great pleasure, though knowing that the results of my work continue to generate billions in annual revenue is really cool. Beyond the development and growth of products, and what many consider to be the “typical” work of a consultant, I’ve been fortunate enough to do some not-so-typical work in my capacity. Some of that has been to work in an interim executive capacity for some of the largest companies around the world in operations, sales, and business development. These roles have assisted me greatly in not only developing as an expert within industries, but within specific areas of focus. Some of these roles I wasn’t necessarily excited about, but I can tell you that I’ve learned invaluable skills
43 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK from roles and industries that would have never crossed my mind as being something I would be open to. If you’re pushed into something, always look for the silver lining. Because if you look hard enough, there is always a positive outcome. After leaving my last gig as the CEO of a preventive healthcare company, I decided to spend some time submersed in the optical industry again. It was during that time that I was presented with what I believe is one of the best product opportunities I’ve ever had the chance to be involved with. With a little luck and a great deal of elbow grease, I’ve taken this opportunity and turned it into something that will change the industries we work in. My new company is called CarbonKlean, and we manufacturer, distribute, and develop the world’s best cleaning products in the optical, mobile/wireless, and life sciences industries. I’ve never been one who seeks opportunities with products to create a new widget or make something a little better. I’m the person who likes to change an industry, to develop and introduce something to the world that will make people’s lives better. That is the entire reason that I developed CarbonKlean. Back in the late 1990s, a molecular cleaning formula was developed for cleaning camera lenses, utilizing the carbon molecule. This cleaning technology was soon adopted by NASA as the ONLY cleaning technology used on the International Space Station and has been there ever since. Not long after, the technology became the leading lens cleaner in the photography industry, becoming the recommended cleaners for such industry icons as Nikon, Canon, Kodak, Ricoh, Olympus, and even the US military. To date, this cleaning technology for cameras and optical scopes in the sporting industry has remained the world leader and is currently sold in more than 80 countries. With such an amazingly well-tested and endorsed cleaning technology, making the transition to a sister industry made sense.
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However, as is typical with many small businesses, the “how to” transition into an industry you don’t know can be daunting. This was where my experience and expertise really made sense. It presented the opportunity to really change other industries, as has been done in the photography world. The optical industry is one of the most forward-thinking, fashion-focused, and consistently changing industries I’ve ever been involved in. As is, of course, the mobile industry, where consumers wait in lines for days to get new phones when their current ones are perfectly good. Both industries share important similarities, such as being fashion-forward and embracing technology. Of course, life sciences are even more focused on having the best technology at their fingertips, and it is imperative they do. In each of the industries we work in, we believe we’re set to control the market. In 2015 alone, we were able to expand our products into six countries, while thus far in 2016, we’re already at more than thirty countries and look to add a few more before the year is up. If that wasn’t good enough, I’m pleased to officially announce that Kevin Harrington and I have entered into a partnership with CarbonKlean. We will now be using the full force of our combined knowledge and expertise to grow and develop our products into world leaders of our categories in every industry we’re in. With millions of dollars in annual revenue, which just keeps doubling, further expansion worldwide and market domination are on the horizon in the near future.
It’s an interesting world we live in, where so many people are actively focused on the entrepreneurial life. People outside looking in have this expectation that they are going to create a product or a company, put in a little time and rake in the dough. There isn’t
45 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK anything that can be any further from the truth. However, those crazy deals, such as Facebook and the countless apps that have been created, developed, and sold, seem to show just the opposite to those looking to become an entrepreneur. While I love the life, it sure isn’t one for the timid, and they had better know what they’re in for from the beginning. I’ve said many times that while the lifestyle is hard for the entrepreneurs, it’s often their families and friends who take the brunt of the pressure, as they are no longer the person they used to be. They spend incredible amounts of time working and being stressed beyond belief. They will lose friends, relationships, and might have family stop believing in them entirely. Why? Because they decided to pursue the opportunity to do something great. Now, don’t think I’m trying to discourage you, far from it! I just believe that it is important that you understand what you’re getting yourself into, so that you can thoroughly prepare yourself to weather the storm that lies ahead. As hard, scary—frankly, sometimes the life is downright terrifying—as it can be, I’ve never done anything more fun or that I love more in my entire life. It is worth it every single day, no matter how many challenges you have to walk through before you see the blue skies emerge. One of the things that I have noticed about me, and I believe is a key similarity that most entrepreneurs share, is that we learn extremely well from hearing and reading about others’ experiences. With that in mind, I have decided to share some of the things I have learned from my own career. If you are serious, these tidbits can really help you to make yourself a better entrepreneur and a better person. Enjoy.
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Education First, your education is exceedingly important. Do not skimp on educating yourself about entrepreneurship and business in general. Not only have I invested in my education (college, trades, etc.), I also read and try to go to meetings and courses as much as I can. I was homeschooled, and, with my crazy drive, I completed all my high school curriculum by the time I was 13. I’ve been a perpetual student throughout my career with multiple degrees (business, public health, entrepreneurship, veterinary science), trade school education (blacksmithing and plumbing), along with hundreds of courses and classes under my belt. I’m also proud to say that I have some amazing mentors, both past and present who have helped guide me along the way. I consider mentors as much or even more of a powerful component to my education than anything else in my past. My mentors have included successful businessmen from multiple different industries, governors, CEOs of some of the biggest companies, and even a presidential candidate. If you are one of those people who believes you know it all, trust me, you do not! As much as I believe in education, I believe in the mentorship side of education more than anything. So here are the three keys I believe are needed for a successful mentorship. 1. Find the right mentor—This is of the utmost importance. While I believe you can learn from anyone, even if it’s “what not to do,” you need to make sure that those you seek knowledge from have something to provide of substantial use. 2. Make it worthwhile to your mentor—Whether your potential mentor is a business executive, a marketing expert, an IT guru, or one of the top entrepreneurs on the planet, they are all busy people. Keep in mind that they do not need to help
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you. If you can convince someone to do so, you must always be mindful of their time and willing to help them in any way you can. Most of all, when you move on with your career, always look to help those who helped you. 3. Listen to your mentor—While not every piece of information that comes out of their mouth is going to be gold, if you put the time in and really listen to what they say, likely you will find the gold. When you think you’ve plateaued with your mentor relationship, move on. There isn’t any benefit to holding on to something that isn’t growing you.
Now, you might be thinking, How do I get someone to be my mentor? Well, that is a great question. I hear that question quite a bit actually, and I always have the same answer: Ask them! Whether it be that sale you want or that investment deal, you have to be willing to put yourself out there and ask or you won’t get anything. Nearly every single mentor I’ve had over the years came as the result of me pursuing them and not giving up until they agreed to work with me. Now, that doesn’t mean that I stalked them or harassed them. It means that I was persistent and dedicated, because I knew what I needed. If you approach your potential mentors in the right way, they will come around.
Relationships You might be wondering what I’m trying to say in regard to relationships, but this is the key to your success in nearly everything you’ll do in business and in life. We have relationships within every part of our lives, and those relationships steer our future on so many levels. I’m not trying to get too deep here, but you need to understand how important relationships are as an entrepreneur. Throughout my career, I have worked with many, many people,
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some good, some terrible. But that is business, that’s what I’ve always heard anyway. I’ll tell you this. There are many, many good people out there, and way too many for sure to have to deal with the jerks. What I’m saying is that you do not have to limit yourself to working with terrible people. You do have a choice! For instance, with CarbonKlean, as I have with many of my companies, I have many, many distributors throughout the world that I can work with. But I do have some options available to me, and I do not have to work with someone just because everyone else does. I believe that finding distributors who believe in your products, have the hunger, drive, and connections, and most of all believe in you, are often the better fit. Many will disagree with me, and say to follow the money. But from what I’ve found, you can get to the same place with someone you like, versus going with someone who might not care about you; who just considers your product another addition to their stable. Remember, you will be working with many of these individuals and companies often, and likely for a long time. Life is simply too short to work with people you do not like. When you find the right people to work with, often those are the hardest to convince that your business or products are the right ones. Why is that? It is usually because these are the people who don’t just take any product or business to work with. They are selective, and the selectivity will work to your advantage. These are the people who once they believe in your business or product will be your greatest supporters and will dig in and work side by side with you. If you sense that a retailer, wholesaler, or distributor is hesitant, then dig into their questions and answer them thoroughly. Don’t just display your passion, but truly answer their questions. Be prepared! Your passion will show through, and if they believe in your business or products, then they will also believe in you. When you are building your relationships in business, try not to intentionally burn bridges and always do your best to remember
49 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK those who have helped you and looked out for you. We all have many people who will go out of their way to help us. If you do not have the opportunity, in turn, to help those who have helped you, look for the budding entrepreneurs you might be able to help. Remember, always stay focused. Keep your head down and don’t give up on yourself. Things might not go as you thought, often they won’t. What’s important is how you handle the challenges life throws at you, and that you keep pushing forward and fighting on.
50 CHAPTER 9 Meghan Alonso From Perfect Pitch to Product Development: You Have the Funding, Now Get Ready for the Work!
ongratulations! You perfected your pitch, you have funding, Cand now it’s time to get to work developing your product. I’m Meghan M. Alonso, CEO of Imua Services, and I’ve helped several entrepreneurs and startups through medical product development. I teach thousands more about the process through my course, “Invention Idea to Profitable Product: How to Move Your Medical Invention to Market.” This chapter is applicable to any product, not just those in the medical industry and assumes that since you’re funded, you’ve already conducted preliminary market research and done a feasibility study on whether your product or technology will work.
Key Steps in the Product Development Process Market Research The preliminary research conducted before funding usually isn’t substantial enough for the true positioning and placement of your
51 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK product in the marketplace. Even if you know you’ve identified a market that wants and needs your product, you want to invest in some competitive analysis, branding, and positioning. I’ve seen several companies fail because they assumed they knew the market well, only to find after launching that they fell flat because they didn’t align their products with the proper markets. You want to choose a market research company that specializes in your product’s particular landscape, so it can leverage its established contacts, sites, and users. Don’t ever underestimate the value of these established relationships. Research can start today if the researchers are ready to go, but if sites need to be set up, it can take months. Because they have knowledge and expertise in this area, things will move faster and speed to market is important.
Prototype Development Once you’ve identified where to position your brand and who to market it to, you want to start developing prototypes. These should be more robust than the ones you make in your garage (unless you have quite the machine shop in your garage, that is). You want these prototypes to look and feel as close to the manufactured part as they can, so your target users can really get a feel for how they’ll look, function, and be used. You want to start with the end in mind. Ideally, how will your product be manufactured? What is your cost of goods sold (COGS) target? What materials will you make your product out of that can meet your customer needs? The prototypes being produced need to be in line with these end goals and work toward them. It’s ok to start with 3D printed parts, prove functionality and materials, then work toward injection molding. Just know that on a per unit basis, the 3D printed parts will cost much more. Prototyping is expensive, but with these refinements you’re getting closer to your COGS target
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every day. Get these prototypes to a certain point that you’re happy with and then move on to some user studies.
User Studies Your customer is always most important in your business, especially when you don’t have a product for sale yet. Your product isn’t going to sell unless the market demands it, and the only way to ensure this is to get your product in the hands of potential customers early and often for interaction and testing. Is the product intuitive to use? Is it functionally doing what it’s supposed to do? What are the things about it that people like? What are the things about it that people don’t like? Like market research, there are companies that specialize in this. Many times, they can conduct both the market research and the user studies, so if you can select one of these companies, that’s ideal. Again, whatever company you choose should have familiarity with your product’s market. The results of the studies will give you all kinds of insight to pour back into the design and development of your product, especially engineering design. Human factor engineers take this information and work with mechanical, software, firmware, electronics, or any other engineers you need working on your product to ensure the customer’s concerns outlined in the user study data are met.
Scale Up for Manufacturing It’s one thing to have a working prototype with design changes that are user focused. It’s another thing to be able to scale up to 10, then 100, then 1,000, then a million or billion. When you get into high- volume manufacturing, the processes and assembly is as automated as it can be. Your product needs to be built and designed for that automation. This requires some forethought and more investment
53 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK up front, but makes growth in the future seamless, inexpensive, and quick. When you’re a young company and your annual units sold volume is low but growing, you might not need this automation, but you want to be able to grow into it. There’s everything from manufacturing and assembly robots you can program and have inside your facility to outsourcing it entirely to building your own operation for your product. What’s best for your product, and how can you incorporate that into your design now?
How to Select a Product Development Firm
Scalability in Design We touched on this a bit before, but it’s imperative that your design scales. Oftentimes companies will use a consultant to help them develop prototypes and they get the design to a point where it’s a great design, but then when it’s transferred to manufacturing, there’s a lot of backtracking and tweaking it for the contract manufacturer’s specific processes or machines. Product development firms you’re evaluating should have established relationships with contract manufacturers and will usually work with them early on in your design to ensure that what they’re designing is compatible with the manufacturer’s setup. The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of your investors’ money on development, then have to go back and ask for more because you don’t have enough for manufacturing.
Expertise in Your Product Area There are plenty of choices for product development firms and each one has its own unique strengths, positions in the market, and specialties. There are those that specialize in plastics, electronics,
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systems, consumer goods, medical devices (and all different kinds from orthopedics to large equipment to diagnostics), aerospace, and beyond. Again, their relationships with others in your industry are important not only from a development and manufacturing standpoint, but also from a funding, strategic, and partnership standpoint with what they can bring to the table and who they can introduce you to. I’ve run into this several times when working with clients; I know their technology inside and out. When a prospect approaches me with an idea that I think is really similar to that of another prospect, customer, or former customer, I introduce the two. For instance, someone was looking to develop a blood-separation technology that separated plasma from whole blood that needed to happen before running a diagnostic test. Just two years earlier, we had worked on a project that did just that, and I knew that former customer was actively trying to license that technology. I saved our prospective customer a few million bucks for that introduction and was able to get them to market faster, since they incorporated the other technology into their platform.
What You Should Know about Manufacturing
Contract Manufacturing vs. In-House Production The dilemma you’ll most likely face in the first few years is fluctuating annual volumes of units sold. This makes it tricky for manufacturing. You can have the best estimations, but they still seem to almost always be wrong. For this, you need a flexible system that allows your company to be nimble and lean. You’ll probably run into several manufacturing companies that require a minimum annual volume, because that’s how they make money. They simply can’t rely on small companies that promise
55 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK volumes, because they’ve seen products fail or not sell well in the past. You have a few options here. A. Pay for the minimum annual volume and hope that sales are as projected and, if not, have a place to store your inventory. 1. This is risky but if volumes are as anticipated, it’s the lowest cost option. 2. It allows for easy growth later on, when volumes increase.
B. Look for a smaller contract manufacturing company that will work with you on volumes. 1. This is difficult but will save money, if volumes are projected to be low or are lower than expected. 2. This is harder when volumes start to increase, as the smaller company might not be able to handle your large orders.
C. Set up a small-scale manufacturing/assembly in-house until volumes become what you can’t handle. 1. This works well if volumes are low and you expect changes for the next generation of your product based on real-time market feedback
Offshore or Onshore Manufacturing and Assembly? If you’re outsourcing your manufacturing and assembly, which country should you choose?
Offshore Pros: Often less expensive COGS on a per unit basis, if you’re selling to an overseas market, logistics can be easier this way (if you sell in Asia and your manufacturing is located there).
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Cons: Lack of control—material might not be what the company says it is, tooling quality might diminish fast (Chinese steel is different), validation process can be flawed. Huge risk for intellectual property (IP) theft—whether it’s someone creating knockoffs of your product or even running private label parts on YOUR mold. Logistics can be a nightmare, if you’re offshoring to where your main market isn’t located—time delays, product tied up in customs, problems with freight ships.
Onshore Pros: Quality control is almost always better—you know what material you’re getting, tooling steel is verified, and because you’re in the same country, you can keep an eye on validation. Logistics are easier if you’re producing and assembling in the country that your primary market is located. IP is heavily regulated. Cons: Often more expensive on a COGS-per-unit basis. If your primary market or a large market is overseas, logistics can get even more expensive.
Mix In southern California, there are plenty of companies that have operations in the United States but that operate in a manufacturing and assembly capacity in Mexico just over the border. This allows for a good mix of the pros of both onshoring and offshoring.
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CHAPTER 10 Brandon T. Adams Keys to the Crowd Unlocking the Power of Crowdfunding
hroughout the years, I have gained a wide variety of experience Traising money for various endeavors in business, or fundraisers, and for my own invention, Arctic Stick. Raising money can be a lot of work, but I’ve learned a lot making mistakes and seeing what works. I’ve personally raised money from family and friends, and even some strangers through a payback loan. I’ve obtained bank loans and won money from competitions. I’ve worked extra jobs to raise money for my invention. I’ve raised money for nonprofits and charity events. I’ve also learned how to get sponsorship money for my own annual event called Young Entrepreneur Convention. I’ve even had $750,000 of venture capital (VC) money raised for my own company once, but at the last minute I decided not to take it. Mainly because I didn’t want someone to have control over me and the say of my company. I don’t like to give up a piece of my company, unless there is massive value added. Money alone does not seal the deal for me.
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The best way I’ve found to raise money so far has been through crowdfunding on websites such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Crowdfunding has many benefits, which are raising the evaluation of your company, not having to give up equity of your company, building up brand awareness, building up your email list, getting media attention, attracting strategic partners that can help you, getting a licensing deal for your product, reaching a new audience, and the list goes on and on. If you do crowdfunding right, there are many benefits. The problem is that many people have no idea where to begin when it comes to creating and launching a successful crowdfunding campaign. Most people make the following common mistakes. • Not preparing ahead of time. Most people just throw up a campaign and expect millions of dollars to flock in and they expect to get overnight success. That doesn’t happen. You have to put long hours in to have success on day one. • Lack of promotion. You need to promote your campaign to the max. It’s more than just a Facebook share, a tweet to your audience, and doing an email blast to your contacts list. You have to promote daily and apply special techniques to reach a bigger audience and get them to give you money. • Not giving enough value. Many people think that their idea is the coolest thing and people will line up to just give them tons of money. It doesn’t work that way. You need to show people value in order for them to give you money for your company or invention.
I’ve seen what works and doesn’t work. I’ve had success and failures. I’ve even raised $100,000 in 33 hours on Kickstarter and close to half a million dollars in just 33 days for a book called The
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Freedom Journal. I’ve raised money for my own companies, for others’ companies, inventions, nonprofits, and even recently for my own reality TV show, Ambitious Adventures. This book, Put a Shark in Your Tank, was crowdfunded, crowd- marketed, and crowd-sourced. We live in a new era and to have success in business in the coming years, we better learn how to raise money, especially through crowdfunding. Luckily, I’ve been through it all, so I can share my secrets with you. My company, Keys to the Crowd, helps others raise money for just about anything. I’m going to share with you my secret FUND formula we use with all our clients to have crowdfunding success. The acronym FUND is F for forethought, U for utilize marketing plan, N for narrative, and D for deliver value. If you follow this, you are bound to have success.
F—Forethought The forethought process is vital for your campaign’s success. It’s everything you do to get a lot of attraction to your campaign on day one, so you can start off with a big splash. You need to get 30– 40 percent of your total funding goal raised in the first 48 hours, otherwise your chances of success are slim. The more success you have at the beginning will decide the remainder of your campaign. If potential backers of the campaign see you have success right at the start, they are more likely to pledge money to your campaign. The less attraction they see on your campaign page, the less likely they will pledge, because in their minds they are thinking you probably won’t reach your funding goal. In order to reach at least 40 percent of your total funding goal in the first 48 hours, you need to start building your potential backers prior to the campaign, so once you launch, you already have people lined up to give you money. Through Facebook ads and other
61 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK marketing efforts, you can direct people to a landing page that gives them more information about your project. They can sign up for exclusive updates and offers that they only get notified about for subscribing to your email newsletter. If you have larger pledge levels that you custom create for your campaign that are for $1,000–10,000, then you should attempt to find people interested in those packages before your campaign launches, so you can try to get them committed to pledging on day one of launch so you can get more attraction right away. If you get a lot of attraction to your campaign page on day one, you will reach more people and get organic traffic. There is an algorithm that Kickstarter and Indiegogo use to decide which projects get better placement on their websites, get more viewers that come to the page, and also get the chance of getting featured or sent out to their massive email lists. The algorithm that decides your placement is based on the amount of money pledged, number of pledgers, and number of visits to your crowdfunding page in a short period of time. So basically, the more traffic you can drive to your campaign page right from the start, the better chance you will get the momentum you need to be trending on the website, get front-page exposure, be featured and sent out to their email lists, or go viral, like the Pebble Smartwatch, the Coolest Cooler blender, and the Exploding Kittens card game have done in the past. During the forethought process, you must create a crowdfunding page that has great visuals and plenty of copy to tell your story and explain what it is you are raising money for. You must have a great quality video, which we will talk about in more depth later. You will need to figure in pledge levels that people will want and show the audience their values. You will also need to recruit an ambassador program, which we will talk about in the utilize marketing plan process of the campaign.
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There is a lot of work that goes into the preparation for your campaign. I highly suggest you have a team that can help you with different aspects of your campaign. If you have a team that is willing to wear multiple hats, put in the work, and leverage their own audiences and friends’ audiences, you will have a much better chance of success with your crowdfunding campaign. The larger the audience, the more success you will have with your marketing efforts.
U—Utilize Marketing Plan If you want to have people give money to your campaign, you first need to make them aware of your campaign and what you are doing. If they don’t know about you, how do you expect them to give you money? Marketing is being consistent with your message and sending out a lot of content to a large number of people. It’s a numbers game. The more people you get your message in front of, the more people you will get to pledge money to your campaign. It’s like playing darts. You throw enough darts, you’re eventually going to hit a bull’s-eye. Utilizing your marketing plan is more than just doing a couple of Facebook posts, doing some tweets, and doing a couple of email blasts to yours lists. You have to promote every single day of your campaign to your audience and others’ audiences. You need to find ambassadors who are willing to spread the word and help you reach a lot of people. An ambassador is someone who is ideally an influencer and has a large email list or following on social media, who is willing to help you spread the word by promoting your campaign to his or her audience. The more ambassadors you have onboard, the more people you will reach, which means the better chance you will have for success with your campaign. Ryan Grepper, the inventor of the Coolest Cooler, which raised $13.2 million on Kickstarter in 2012, had Brendon Burchard as an
63 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK ambassador for his campaign. Brendon is an influencer who has a large following. Brendon and Ryan were roommates in college, so Ryan had a friend who could really help spread the word of his campaign. You need to think about who in your network can help you spread the word for your campaign and reach a bigger audience. During your campaign, you will want to be active daily on social media. The more social media outlets you promote on, the better, but be sure to be consistent with your message. Facebook is one platform that you must be promoting on for your campaign. I’ve seen the best return on investment (ROI) on Facebook out of all the social media outlets for marketing your campaign. I highly suggest you spend money on ads and also do regular live Facebook to interact with your audience and inform them about your campaign. Besides Facebook, I would suggest being active on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. All platforms are good to be on, but these have been the most effective in my marketing efforts for campaigns. Other ways to market your campaign are by getting on podcast shows, creating podcasts shows of your own, blogging, getting bloggers to do a story about you, getting in the newspaper, on TV, on radio, and posting in Facebook groups. These are all great outlets to spread the word. If you want to get blogger or journalists to do a story about you, make sure to give them a great story that their audience will like, and make sure you provide them with all the necessary content to make their job easier. These include a news release, pictures, links to websites, etc. Don’t pitch them, asking to do a story about you and your campaign, but instead offer them a story idea that is based around your idea that you are crowdfunding. Show them why it would benefit their audience. The more emails you individually send to the press, the better chance you will get a story about your project. Marketing your campaign consistently to a large audience will increase your chances of having success with crowdfunding.
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If you leverage your audience and others’ audiences with the right message, you will get many backers to your campaign, which will end up allowing you to reach the huge audience that Kickstarter or Indiegogo has. Remember, it’s a numbers game. The more people you reach out to, the more conversions you will get on your campaign. Throw enough darts and you will eventually hit a bull’s-eye.
N—Narrative Storytelling is the most powerful thing there is when it comes to selling or influencing others. The most powerful and influential people are great storytellers. People remember stories and buy into them. If you can tell a great story with your crowdfunding campaign, which relates to others, inspires, motivates, emotionally connects, and gets people engaged, you will be able to have success. The best way to tell a great story is through video. A great video that is captivating and keeps your attention is something that you need for your crowdfunding campaign. The crowdfunding video is probably the single most important component of the campaign. It’s the first thing people look at when they go to your page. We live in a noisy world that has constant marketing and advertising thrown in front of us. Just scroll down your Facebook page and look at all the videos that are posted on your feed. How often do you stop to watch the video? And, if you do, how often do you watch the entire video? You have fewer than seven seconds to grab someone’s attention with your video and keep them watching until the end. Most people have a limited attention span, so videos need to be short and to the point. Your crowdfunding campaign video that you place on your campaign page should be high quality and two-and-a-half to three minutes long. It’s hard to keep someone’s attention longer than that.
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I highly suggest you hire a professional videographer to create your campaign video. It’s worth the investment. In the first seven seconds, you need to get the viewers’ attention, so they keep watching until the end. You can do this by asking a question or showing a scene that keeps people thinking, What’s going to happen next? In the first 30 to 60 seconds of the video, you should say what your campaign is for and why the audience should care. What do they get in return? Remember the viewer wants to know why they should care. What’s in it for them? Throughout the video, tell your story of what you are doing and highlight the three to four main features of the project. If you are crowdfunding a product, showcase the main features of the product that are cool. If it’s a book, talk about the three or four main takeaways the readers will get from the book and what they will learn. For a nonprofit, do an emotional approach that will get the viewers attached and share with them exactly where the money is going and whom it will directly help. If you are crowdfunding a movie, show the audience what they will learn from the movie and highlight the great experience they can be a part of if they back the project. At the end of the video, you need to have a strong call to action asking the audience to pledge to your campaign and spread the word on social media. In words and text, say pledge to our campaign today and share on social media. It’s important to give a strong call to action. Beyond the video, you should tell your story on the campaign page with visuals and text. The video is to give the viewers a good idea what you are doing and why, and it’s the initial part that gets them to do more research about your project. The campaign page is for people to do their due diligence to see how much work you put into your campaign and also to see all the features of your product or plans you have in place to ensure your project comes to life. Show the audience where their money is going and what they will get in
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return, which will lead to our last part of the FUND formula, which is delivering value with great reward levels. I’ve personally made many buying decisions based on someone’s story alone. Sell your story and vision to the audience, and they will help you fund your campaign. Create a video that they will never forget and leave an impression on them that makes it hard for them not to back your campaign.
D—Deliver Value In business, you need to add value to others, so you can get paid for your value added to the customer. As theoretical physicist Albert Einstein said, “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” The more value you add to others, the more success you will have in life, which also goes for crowdfunding. The more value you add to the backers with your reward levels, the more backers you will get, which means the more money you will raise with your campaign. The success will follow. Many people fail to add value in their reward levels for their campaign. They think people will just give them money without thinking twice. Campaign creators are in love with their ideas, and think they are the best things since sliced bread. It might be a good idea, but sometimes they overexaggerate the value their idea gives. That is why it is necessary to get feedback from outside people who have never seen your idea and will give you honest feedback about your campaign reward levels. Have them give you honest feedback about what you are offering and the price you are charging. Potential backers need to see the value you are offering, so it is a no-brainer decision when they take out their credit cards and pledge their hard-earned money to your campaign. Every campaign is different and will add different kinds of value. There are four kinds of reward levels you can give which are a copy of
67 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK something, a creative collaboration, creative experience, or creative mementos. A copy of something is a physical product, such as a game, a gadget, an invention, or a DVD. This should be priced at a discount of what you intend this product to sell for on the market after it is created. If your product will retail for $20, then have it on your campaign for a $15 reward level. Remember the crowd is helping you fund your project, so reward them in return with a great deal. Also, offer a discounted pledge level for a bulk quantity of your item. The more they buy, the more discount you give them. Creative collaborations would be imaginative ways to make money based on skills you have or people you have access to that have unique skills. If you are a painter, you could have a pledge level that gets a backer painted into a mural. If you are raising money for a comic book, you could have a higher pledge level that gives the backer a chance to be a hero in the comic book. When I crowdfunded The Freedom Journal for John Lee Dumas on Kickstarter, we had a reward level for $2,495 that allowed the backer to participate on John’s podcast show, Entrepreneur on Fire. This show has 1.2 million listeners, which really intrigues people to pledge to this level. This was something John could offer from his already existing show, so it was an easy pledge level to fulfill. This could also go into the next kind of reward level, which is a creative experience. People love experiences, because it is something they will never forget. More and more people are buying into experiences alone, that’s why it’s good to offer a creative experience in your reward levels. Some examples would be allowing the backer to visit you on set while filming a movie, or the back can have dinner with the cast. For the Ambitious Adventures reality TV show I’m a cohost of, we gave backers of our Kickstarter a chance to be a featured segment in our film for $10,000. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that most wouldn’t have the chance to have, which made people
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more likely to pledge to it. If you are raising money for an album, you could offer a reward level where you and your band perform a private concert in the backyard of the backer. The more creative you get, the more you can charge for it. Another reward level you can provide is creative mementos, which could be photos from a set or specific location, a thank you in the movie credits, or maybe a sponsor for an event you are crowdfunding. One of my companies, Young Entrepreneur Convention, had crowdfunded the initial costs for the event to pay for the venue and the speakers. Some of the pledge levels we offered were sponsorship for the event that gave the company exposure on our website, tickets to the event, and promotion on social media. This gave us multiple $1,000 backers and even a $5,000 backer. This was a creative memento that we provided, and it was successful. It allowed us to raise even more funds and resulted in the largest entrepreneurial event in Iowa for 2016 with almost 500 attendees. If you provide enough value in your various reward levels, you will be sure to get people to pledge money to your campaign. Make sure the audience sees the value and it looks like a no-brainer deal to them. The most successful crowdfunds in history are from products that are really cool with great deals and experiences that are once- in-a-lifetime. Combine all the various rewards levels in the right way and you will have success.
Unlocking the Power of Crowdfunding Now that you know my secret FUND formula, you too can have great success with crowdfunding. If you have the right team, put in the hard work, and apply the FUND formula, you are bound to find success and raise the money you need for whatever it is you desire. Money is just one benefit from crowdfunding that you can capitalize from. Crowdfunding is changing the way we create new products and bringing companies to life. It’s a way to build your
69 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK own audience from scratch and create a community of likeminded individuals who create awesome stuff together. The success you have with your campaign is just the beginning of the success you will have in the future. Launching a crowdfunding campaign is a way to supercharge your idea and let the world help you in the process. In the coming years, you will see crowdfunding on a whole new level. I’ve interviewed Slava Rubin, the founder of Indiegogo, on my podcast show, University of Young Entrepreneurs. He predicts by 2020 we will see one singular crowdfunding project that will raise $1 billion. With our exponential growth of technology and 20 billion devices being connected to the Internet by 2020, I see this being possible. Now is the easiest time in history to turn your idea into reality, and crowdfunding is the easiest way to do it. Follow the FUND formula and you might have the next million-dollar or even billion- dollar campaign. Take the keys to the crowd and unlock the power of crowdfunding for yourself.
70 CHAPTER 11 Maxwell Finn The Startup Drugz Blueprint
n early 2015, I launched a fun little side project with my business Ipartner, Nick Haase, called Startup Drugz. The concept was incredibly simple, but nobody was doing it. We decided to put funny startup and entrepreneurial sayings, such as “I’m a Millionaire on Paper” on T-shirts. Basically, we wanted to create an apparel brand for entrepreneurs, like we are. After coming up with the idea, I spent a few days building a basic Shopify store and designing a handful of T-shirts. Once the store and initial products were ready, we went live and submitted the store to Product Hunt. Within 24 hours of launch, we knew we were on to something big. During our first 48 hours in business, we generated more than $2,000 in sales with 15,000+ unique shoppers visiting our store. Amazing, right? What’s even more amazing is that our sales could have been three to four times higher, but we made a ton of amateur mistakes. For example, Shopify automatically sets shipping at a $10 flat rate for all new stores, so we were charging $10 shipping on $20 T-shirts. We lost a ton of sales because of this.
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All entrepreneurs (even the best in the world) frequently make mistakes. However, successful entrepreneurs learn from each and every mistake. After our first week in business, I put together a list of every mistake we made and then spent the following week fixing them all. Flash forward to today and Startup Drugz is now a six-figure business, which generated $200,000 in just 12 months. We’ve expanded our product line beyond T-shirts to include hoodies, posters, mugs, and phone cases. We have more than 20,000 followers on social media and a 10,000-person email list. What’s even more exciting is that we are on pace to do more than $750,000 in sales during the next 12 months. Throughout the past few months, I’ve been asked repeatedly to share the Startup Drugz story and, more important, how we got to where we are today in such a short period of time. What follows is our blueprint for success, which helped us go from zero to $60,000 and more per month in sales in less than 12 months.
Combine Passion and Opportunity Entrepreneurs look at the world differently. Where most people see a problem, entrepreneurs see an opportunity. The problem is that there are a lot of opportunities, which makes it hard to stay focused on one thing long enough to turn it into a profitable business. On top of this, you can find an opportunity in a market that you are not passionate about. Why is this a problem? Building a business from the ground up requires an incredible amount of work. Put simply, working five days a week from nine to five simply won’t cut it. You need to live and breathe your business. Weekends and vacations don’t exist when building a new business.
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The only way you can put this much work in without getting burnt out is to love what you do. When you love what you do, then work is no longer work. I’m excited when I wake up every morning, because I know I get to spend another day growing a business I absolutely love. The dream for entrepreneurs is to make money doing something they are truly passionate about, which is what I have with Startup Drugz. Seriously, I get paid to design and sell sarcastic entrepreneur- themed T-shirts to other incredible entrepreneurs. I’ve found an opportunity I’m passionate about. Have you?
Create an MVP No, I am not talking about creating a most valuable player. That wouldn’t make any sense! In the startup world, MVP means minimum viable product. Essentially an MVP is the most basic version of your product or service that you can use to validate a concept and learn about your potential customers. Thanks to today’s technology, you can create a prototype with a small investment in regard to both capital and time. For Startup Drugz, we spent less than $100 and six hours creating an MVP. Our MVP was a basic Shopify store with eight different T-shirt designs. We decided to dropship our shirts, which meant that we didn’t need to put up any capital for inventory. Instead we used direct- to-garment (DTG) printing and only printed a shirt when it was ordered. If you are thinking about launching a T-shirt business (or really any business in the printing space), then I highly recommend starting out with DTG and drop shipping. Buying a ton of inventory before you’ve even validated the concept or generated any buyer data is crazy and completely unnecessary nowadays. Once you’ve validated the concept, you can take bigger risks and hold inventory.
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Test the Concept After creating an MVP, you need to see if your concept has any strength. This is where a lot of entrepreneurs make a big mistake. They can’t contain their excitement once they have their MVP and want to tell the entire world about their new business. Don’t make this mistake of going too big too early. Before launching Startup Drugz, we pitched the idea in the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) Facebook group, along with a few other exclusive entrepreneur groups that we are members of. This instantly got our idea in front of several thousand incredibly successful entrepreneurs, who were more than happy to provide feedback. We received way more feedback than expected and nearly all of it was overwhelmingly positive. After a few days of testing our concept, we knew we were on to something, so we decided to launch the store to the general public.
Find a Great Launch Platform So, you’ve launched a new business, a new ecommerce store for us, and you’re ready to make your first sale. There’s only one problem; nobody, other than some friends and family, knows about it. You need to find a way to get your business in front of a large audience without breaking the bank. For Startup Drugz, we didn’t have the capital to do any paid advertising when we launched. Because of this, we had to get creative, and this creativity helped us have an absolutely incredible launch. Meet Product Hunt. Product Hunt is the brainchild of entrepreneur Ryan Hoover. Every day “hunters” share awesome new products and the community upvotes their favorites. If you are fortunate enough to be one of the most upvoted products of the day, then you benefit from a massive amount of exposure and traffic.
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We decided to launch Startup Drugz on Product Hunt, and by the time I woke up at 8:00 am EST on launch day, we had already sold $300 worth of shirts and had 400 users live on the site (thank you, Google Analytics Real-Time). We were in the coveted top spot on Product Hunt by a landslide with more than 100 upvotes, and this was just the beginning. By the end of the second day, I couldn’t believe the numbers I was seeing in either Google Analytics or Shopify. Here’s a list of the most notable and impressive stats. • 15,222 unique users visited the store. • These users viewed 42,100 pages. • We sold $2,200 worth of shirts and posters.
I always share our experience with a disclaimer. Product Hunt is incredibly competitive and more than 90 percent of businesses that get hunted quickly become lost in the crowd. The point of this story is that you need to think outside the box when launching your business if you want anyone to know about it.
Collect and Analyze Data A shockingly large percentage of entrepreneurs don’t know anything about their customers. Let’s do a quick quiz. Can you answer any of the below questions? • What’s your conversion rate? • What’s the lifetime value of your customers? • What’s the age, gender, and location of your average customer? • How many customers are repeat customers? • What’s your average order value? • On average, how long do people spend on your site and how many pages do they visit? • What’s your best-selling product?
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The most successful entrepreneurs know their customers, products, and business inside and out. If you can’t answer all these questions, then put everything on hold until you can. You don’t need fancy and expensive software to gather the data necessary to answer the above questions. You can collect a massive amount of data with Google Analytics, which is 100 percent free and relatively simple to install. Thanks to Google Analytics, Shopify, and several other third- party apps, we knew which products were selling best, who our perfect customer was, and which traffic sources were leading to the most conversion. Thanks to this data, we were able to optimize the Startup Drugz store to increase average order values and repeat customer rates and conversion rates. After a year in business, we increased our customer lifetime value by 60 percent and our conversion rate by 250 percent. This is all thanks to our ability to collect and analyze critical visitor and buyer data.
Build an Email List Don’t let anyone tell you that email is dead! I am a digital marketing consultant who is constantly testing the latest and greatest marketing software, but I still use email on a daily basis for marketing purposes. You need to be collecting emails as early as possible and building a relationship with your subscribers. For Startup Drugz, we use a tool called SumoMe to collect emails from first-time visitors to our store. We offer new visitors a special discount as an incentive for joining our email list, which is a necessity. Few people are going to give you their email address just because they like your brand and want emails from you. The incentive doesn’t have to be a discount. It can be free shipping, an exclusive piece of content, or anything that provides value.
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It’s fairly obvious that collecting emails is pointless, unless you have a solid email marketing strategy in place. I could fill an entire book with email marketing strategies, but I will focus on just a few key points. It’s tempting to instantly start selling your product or service to new email subscribers, which is what a lot of businesses do. DON’T DO THIS! This is the quickest way to get unsubscribes or flagged as spam. Before you do any selling, you need to build a relationship with each new subscriber. These prospects need to go through something called an indoctrination sequence. An indoctrination sequence consists of a series of emails where you tell the prospect more about your brand, what they can expect in future emails, why they should care, and you provide value by sharing great content and resources. Once you’ve indoctrinated a prospect, you can then begin the process of selling, as they are no longer a cold lead.
Find Customers on Facebook Imagine a machine that you put $1 in and $2–4 comes out. For Startup Drugz, this machine exists and it’s called Facebook. During our first few months in business, we tested numerous advertising channels including Google pay-per-click (PPC), Twitter, and Pinterest, but Facebook was the only one that really offered exciting returns. Mark Zuckerberg and his team have spent the past 10 years building the most advanced marketing platform in the world. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), most businesses don’t take full advantage of the Facebook ad platform and end up losing money. Here’s a step-by-step Facebook advertising guide based on what we did and continue to do at Startup Drugz. Install your Facebook pixel. Before you run a single ad, you need to create and install your Facebook pixel. Don’t worry if you
77 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK have no idea what a pixel is, because it’s actually fairly easy to install. The Facebook pixel is a small piece of code that tracks important website actions, such as purchases, add to carts, leads, registrations, and key page views. Once the pixel is installed, you will be able to see how many conversions a Facebook ad is responsible for. Create custom audiences. The Facebook pixel allows you to create audiences of people who’ve visited your site based on the actions they completed. For example, you can create an audience of people who’ve added a product to their cart without completing a purchase in the last 10 days or people who’ve visited your site in the last 30 days. You can then create ads targeting just people who are in a respective custom audience. This allows you to create highly targeting and personalized ads that perform significantly better than general ads. Research your audience. Ignoring this step is usually the primary reason why people lose money with Facebook ads. Most business owners assume they know exactly who their ideal customer is and more times than not this assumption is incorrect. By using tools, such as audience insights and graph search inside of Facebook, you can tap into a massive database of data. Having access to this demographic and behavioral data is critical when you actually start creating ads and deciding who and what to target. Perform an A/B test. Whenever we create a new campaign on Facebook, we test between 8 and 15 different audiences and 2 to 6 different ad variations, which means we test between 16 and 90 different ads! We do this because most ads fail. Even if you are the greatest digital marketer in the world, the chances of you finding the perfect combination of target audience and ad copy/creative in one shot are slim to none. With A/B testing, you are taking a buckshot approach. Most of the ads will fail, but a few will be real winners. You can then turn off all the losers and scale the winners.
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Retarget. Here’s a quick fact for you—98 percent of visitors don’t make a purchase on their first visit. Let that sink in for a second. Even if you have the most amazing product and website in the world, less than 2 percent of your new visitors will convert on their first visit. Most businesses that lose money with Facebook ads focus all their time and capital on getting new visitors to their site. They allocate virtually zero resources to getting those visitors back to their site after the first visit. If you want to be successful with Facebook ads, then you need to run retargeting campaigns. Retargeting is a form of advertising where businesses serve ads to people who have previously visited their website, while completing specific actions. An incredibly effective retargeting campaign that we run at Startup Drugz is an abandoned cart campaign. When someone adds a product to the shopping cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, we serve them an ad offering free shipping if they return and complete the order. This campaign helps us recover a significant percentage of abandoned carts, which is a huge problem for ecommerce businesses. Analyze results and optimize. You need to be constantly analyzing data you are collecting from Facebook and other tools, such as Google Analytics (GA). I check my GA account daily to understand which demographics are responding best to my ads. Is more traffic coming from mobile or desktop? Which has higher conversion rates? What time of day are visitor more likely to buy something? Based on these answers, I am able to tweak my various Facebook ad sets and creatives, which ultimately helps improve ROI. If you think you know exactly who your best customer is without looking at analytics, you are wrong. I assumed my best customers would be 20–25-year-old males living in San Francisco or New York City, accessing our store via their iPhones. It turns out that my best customers (the ones with the highest conversion rate)
79 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK are 35–44-year-old males living in cities such as Tampa, Atlanta, Austin, and Boulder using their laptops. Without looking at the data, I would be burning money trying to target a demographic that doesn’t represent my best customer.
Build a Loyal Tribe Creating a business for all intents and purposes is easy. Anyone can come up with a basic idea, incorporate a business on LegalZoom, and put up a basic website. On the other hand, creating a brand with a loyal customer base is incredibly difficult. Businesses such as Snapchat, Uber, Facebook, and Apple became incredibly successful because they invested in building a brand from day one. They created an ecosystem that turned customers into passionate brand ambassadors. At Startup Drugz, we created a brand that really resonated with entrepreneurs and members of the startup community. Everything from our branding to our marketing language was carefully crafted with the goal of generating a personal connection with any entrepreneur who visited our site. Because of this, we now have an incredibly loyal fan base with more than 95 percent of our customers joining our affiliate/ambassador program once they complete their first purchase. This blueprint is not a guaranteed formula for success, as every business is different, but if you follow the steps above, you will dramatically increase your chances of success. At the end of the day, if you are passionate about your business and work harder than everyone else, you will be successful!
80 CHAPTER 12 Michael Silvestri The Silvestri Family’s Quest to Sell Private Label Products on Amazon
he idea of passive income has increased in popularity during the Tpast 15 years. Running ecommerce and online businesses has emerged as the preferred option for everyday people to create and scale a company with limited initial capital investment. Tim Ferris talks about these concepts in his book, The Four-Hour Work Week. Since his book hit stands, the movement has really taken off. We are in the midst of a global shift in buyer behavior, where consumers are opting for online purchases instead of buying products from physical stores. As an entrepreneurial family, we three siblings wanted to capitalize on this new migration. We attended seminars and workshops, listened to hundreds of podcasts, and watched YouTube videos explaining how to get involved. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that the best way to jump into this opportunity was to start a business that had an initial focus of selling private label
81 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK products on Amazon.com. Fast-forward five months, and we had multiple products selling on Amazon, with the intention to add several more within the next five to six months. Looking back, the process was more challenging than we expected, but, with the learning curve behind us, we now believe we are poised for growth. At this point, we are more encouraged than discouraged. There are specific steps to starting and running a successful online company. We will focus specifically on selling products on Amazon. This business is an attractive option for entrepreneurs, because launching the business does not require quitting your day job. There is an ever-increasing traffic flow of sales opportunities on Amazon, and if you are diligent in your efforts to bring your product to market, you have a significant chance of being successful. Generally, the following two options exist for selling products on Amazon. 1. Fulfilled by merchant (FBM) and 2. Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA). After listing the product on Amazon, the options differ in terms of shipment. With the first option, FBM, the seller is responsible for shipping the product to the consumer after a sale has been made. With the second option, FBA, the seller keeps the items in Amazon’s warehouses. For a higher price, Amazon staff packs and ships the products and handles customer service. This option might be for you, if your time is limited or if you prefer convenience. We chose this route and have been happy with our decision so far. The Amazon fee in FBA ranges from 25-40 percent of your item’s selling price and is much lower for FBM. Before you worry about any of this, you need to find a product that fits certain criteria.
Product Criteria The first and most important step when beginning to sell products on Amazon is to identify the right product. Podcasts, support groups, and classes are available that can help you choose a product
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and prepare you to sell your product on Amazon, all of which you can easily find by searching “Amazon FBA” online. Some important steps include identifying products that have the following characteristics. 1. High demand—A common rule of thumb is to seek products that have a demand of at least 2,500–3,000 units per month and aim to obtain a market share of 10 percent. This translates into sales of approximately 10 units per day. If you are selling a product that provides a reasonable margin, the profits could initially provide you with substantial second income and ultimately grow into your primary source of income, if you are able to continually add new products to your portfolio. 2. Low competition—You want to identify products where no one seller has in excess of 1,000 reviews. Additionally, you want the fourth to seventh-ranked sellers to have less than 100 reviews. These approximate numbers generally indicate that additional sellers can enter the market for your specific product category. 3. Low risk—You want to choose a product that has minimal working parts to decrease the chances of damage or malfunction. You also might want to stay away from products that can cause bodily harm, such as products with sharp edges. Finally, to the extent possible, it might be good to focus your first search for small and lightweight products to minimize freight and Amazon handling costs. 4. Less sophisticated competitors—Because you might initially be working with a limited budget, you will likely be selling a generic product. Therefore, you don’t want to be in a category where you are competing with well-capitalized companies that have strong international brands.
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5. Impulsive characteristics—Choose an item that could attract impulsive buyers. To keep the item in the impulse- buy zone, your product’s price should be priced between $20 and $50. The higher the price point above $20, the greater the risk that the consumer will leave the impulse- buy zone to perform additional research before making a purchase decision.
Sourcing Your Product There are multiple ways to source products to sell on Amazon. We took the private label route. The private label route entails sourcing a product from a manufacturer that will allow you to customize the product, including placing your own logo on it. Many sellers choose to source their products from China. One of the most popular ways to source competitively priced products is through Alibaba.com, which acts as a liaison between you and the Chinese manufacturers. Once you find a product that you would like to pursue, you search for it on Alibaba.com, and then contact various manufacturers to begin the vetting process, which includes obtaining quotes and having samples sent to you to compare quality. Once contracted, the products usually take around one month to manufacture, and most suppliers require 30 percent prepayment with the remaining 70 percent at shipment.
Listing Your Product on Amazon In order to list a product on Amazon, you have to first set up a professional seller’s account at the price of $40 per month. For each product you sell, you have to set up a specific listing, which is the page the customers will see when they click on your product within Amazon. This page includes pictures, bullets, descriptions,
84 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK and other product information. The three most important items on any listing are the title, the pictures, and the bullets, as these are the three things that people first see when clicking on your listing. It is important to spend the extra money to get professional photos taken to differentiate your product from the competitors who tend to use generic pictures.
Marketing on Amazon and Optimizing Your Listing Now that most of the groundwork has been established and your product is officially live on Amazon, the focus shifts to sales. For a fee, Amazon provides you with various options to assist you in your sales efforts.
Getting Paid Every two weeks, Amazon makes a payment to your designated seller bank account. The payment amount consists of the total sales generated, less Amazon’s FBA fee/referral fee/selling fee of 25–40 percent, any advertising costs, any returns, and the $40 a month fee to sell on Amazon.
Takeaway As you can see, selling on Amazon is a realistic option for side income or even full-time income if you perform the procedures correctly, build your business with multiple listings, and have the motivation to keep pushing through when you hit the inevitable obstacles, such as dealing with a manufacturer directly, customs clearance, and little extra fees here and there. This type of business requires an initial investment of a few thousand dollars, depending on the cost of the product in bulk and quantity that you order through Alibaba. Through our experience, we would recommend
85 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK people try a business like this if you are interested in ecommerce. Through each step, you naturally learn useful information about sourcing physical products, online marketing, sales copy creation, negotiation, market research, and much more. You can use these skills in almost any type of business that you decide to pursue afterwards, whether you continue selling on Amazon or not. We are grateful for the knowledge that we have gained so far, and making some money while learning valuable skills makes the experience that much better.
86 CHAPTER 13 Jeremy Adams Nothing to Lose
s a result of growing up with divorced parents who were far Afrom wealthy, I always knew I wanted a different lifestyle when I got older. Therefore, I have always been driven to succeed. I remember not having money at a young age, yet my parents’ lives revolved around money. In fact, money controlled everything we did, including time with the family, because my mom and dad were always working, which resulted in few family outings. Because we didn’t have a lot of money, my parents were constantly stressed— money literally controlled my parents’ lives. I always told them, along with my grandparents, that I was not going to be like that. I constantly saw the hardships my mother and father were facing, so it was only natural, even at such a young age, that I always said I would be different. My parents have always been interesting characters, in the sense that they are good people, although one would never describe them as affectionate. Family gatherings were few and far between, of course, some of this could be attributed to the fact that my parents divorced in the early stages of my life. They really weren’t that close emotionally, but they shouldn’t be mistaken as bad parents, because that is far from the case.
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My mom and stepdad were always minimum-wage workers. I remember growing up wearing old clothes and shoes. My dad made more money—but not much more—as a result of managing my grandpa’s small business. Since he was the sole provider in the household while also raising a child, his salary wasn’t much greater than my mom and stepdad’s combined income. Therefore, I would say both households made an equal amount of money. With that being said, we weren’t extremely poor, but we definitely did not have an ample supply of cash. This can be credited to their consistent efforts and hard work. Since a young age, I always took on my own interests. I spent a lot of time at friends’ houses, played my fair share of video games, and also spent countless hours alone reading. At ten or eleven, I helped out at my dad’s store in the summer by running the register and talking to customers. Looking back, it was great experience at a young age, experience that would be valuable later in life. My mom would go grocery shopping once every week or two, and right across the street from Walmart was the local Bob Evans restaurant, where I found my first job. A couple of months after my sixteenth birthday, I put on my nicest button-up shirt and khakis, went into Bob Evans in search of a job, and they hired me right on the spot. I started out as a host and worked that position for the first six months. Eventually, I was moved up to a server. Between sixteen and seventeen, I started making really good money, especially for a kid in high school. Just to get a sense of how my schedule looked back then, and to better understand my hunger for success toward living a better life, here’s what a normal day would look like for me: I would arrive at my job around four in the afternoon and worked until ten or eleven at night. This usually was on school nights, so you have to remember I was in school all day before this shift. Everything I wasn’t able to do growing up, I made it happen then. For instance, I put a lot of money into a Honda Civic
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that initially only cost around $4,000. I also started going to nice restaurants and taking more trips. At the age of nineteen, I stopped working at Bob Evans and was introduced to the excitement of consistently making good money. After I graduated from high school, I started taking college classes part-time, but they were boring to me. (How many entrepreneurs can relate to that one?) At that point, I kind of just gave up on school and decided to go on a different path in life. I brainstormed for hours about what I thought was best for me. At Bob Evans, I was mostly capped out, so I started looking for employment at an upscale restaurant. Harry’s Seafood Bar and Grille was one of those restaurants that fit in the upscale category, so I decided to apply and, fortunately, I was hired. Harry’s is a place that I would say, to this day, is the best restaurant in Ocala, Florida, to work at. Needless to say, I was putting a lot of money in the bank, and my expenses were really low. I started doing day trading and stock trading. With diving into this side venture, my financial situation kept rising. But in every entrepreneur’s journey there is risk, and I eventually lost about $15,000–20,000 in one day trading penny stocks. This experience taught me a lot and showed me how much money I was making between the ages of nineteen and twenty in the restaurant business. At twenty, my then-girlfriend, Charlotte, was pregnant. Our instant reaction was nothing but terrifying, but fortunately we both had good incomes. We talked about our options and inevitably decided we were going to have the baby. Sadly, three months into the pregnancy, Charlotte found out she had a miscarriage. This was stressful on us, causing things to go south. Shortly after, I decided I wanted a change of scenery and with that came a new change in job positions. With about $30,000 in the bank, I had more than enough to move and start a new life. One day I woke up and put in my two
89 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK weeks’ notice at Harry’s. I had my eyes set on a bigger city south of Ocala, That city was Orlando, Florida. During the first few weeks in Orlando, I landed a new position at an investment firm working during the day. I was doing day trading, so I was already interested in the investment space. I told them I was interested, young, and willing to learn. The receptionist told me one of the financial advisors was looking for someone to help him out, so I interviewed for the position. He hired me the following week. I was only being paid a small amount, but the reason I took the job was to get the experience, something money can’t typically buy. As a result of being paid so little, I was forced to get a night job serving at a high-end Japanese steakhouse. The important thing was that I was getting real-life experience at the investment firm. However, I was making really good money at this Japanese restaurant, which allowed me to solely focus on learning—money wasn’t really a problem anymore. I had already eliminated one of my family’s biggest issues growing up. At the Japanese restaurant, there was a regular customer who I would serve. He was wealthy, you know, a Shark Tank type. We really hit it off, and eventually I found out that he was looking for an assistant to help him with some projects. We met about this position and I was hired part-time. I started helping him with many different projects, and we ended up opening a few businesses together. This led to me getting a lot of experience with different business owners. Not to mention, I learned what it took to open a business. I learned how to fill out the paperwork with the state, how to hire a team, how to launch a website, how to figure out costs, how to find vendors, how to generate revenue for the business—you name it. When I was twenty-two, we stumbled on an opportunity in the food truck industry. He was part owner of a high-end construction company. We used some of the project managers to actually build a
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food truck, so we could operate it and make money from the truck. We drew interest immediately, and someone who saw the truck asked who built it for us. We explained that we built it ourselves. What happened next? Well, this person asked if we could build a food truck for him. We agreed. My first proposal was really bad, and that might be putting it lightly. I didn’t understand how he felt comfortable paying us money, given the shape of this proposal, but we were still paid about $60,000–70,000. I was helping operate a food truck while building another client’s truck at the same time. I started to realize that I had to pick one or the other, because it didn’t make sense for us to do both—it was rather time-consuming, and we were stretching ourselves thin. After a few months of operating this food truck, we shut down operations and focused our efforts completely on the manufacturing side of the industry. All along, I was still working for this investor. I told him I wanted to keep helping him with these projects, but I wasn’t interested in being an employee. Instead, I wanted to be a partner. We agreed that I would take 50 percent of the company. We were basically only two builds in and relatively new. Because of this, he didn’t care about giving me 50 percent of basically nothing. Then, the company grew. We started getting repairs, and I started doing online marketing. We were doing about one build every other month, and then it became one per month. Eventually, it turned into three a month. Eight or nine months later, at the end of 2013, I realized we had more than $100,000 in the business bank account. I was pumped. Not many people can look at a bank account and see $100,000 in it. You have to remember, I grew up with little money around me, so this was all extremely exciting. When we first started, we had a really small manufacturing facility that could only handle about two trucks. After that, we moved to a facility that could handle four
91 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK trucks, and then to another that could handle about ten trucks. For a couple of years, we averaged a few million dollars in revenue. As I continue to grow and learn, thus becoming a better businessperson, I have started to realize you have to do the things you are good at and the things you enjoy. Passion really is everything, and it doesn’t hurt to be passionate about what you are good at. Don’t do things you are bad at and the things you don’t enjoy. As a perfectionist, I decided I needed to relieve some of the stress that comes with the manufacturing side of the business by sticking to what I was good at. I would do the sales and marketing and find someone else to do the manufacturing. We partnered with one of our competitors, Custom Concessions, to handle manufacturing. What I learned from this was to always find a way to bring people to your team who are experts in their fields. After all, I had no business trying to figure out manufacturing. I didn’t have the skill set or the experience—at least when I first started. That’s when I realized there are companies that are much more skilled and talented at their craft than I could even imagine. There will always be somebody better than you at any particular skill. If you can have people on your team who are smarter and more effective than you, then you will have a really awesome team. However, before partnering with our competitor, we won best new business in central Florida on a regional business award, which was actually how I met Kevin Harrington. He was the honorary Shark Tank style judge. Not only did I get to meet Kevin, but we won more than $100,000 in cash and prizes. I was also fortunate enough to appear on the first season of the hit TV show,West Texas Investors Club, CNBC’s version of Shark Tank. Going back to the partnership with Custom Concessions, I was actually able to save more time. The interesting thing with partnerships like this is that even though marketing and manufacturing are equally important for a company, because I
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wasn’t good at manufacturing, I was spending 90 percent of my time on that. However, I needed to be focused on sales and marketing. Even with my time starting to free up, we were still more effective. Thanks to this partnership, my sales and quality of life became that much better. All I had to do was the thing I liked to do, the thing I did best. This comes back to partnering with people who know what they are doing. This, of course, isn’t just in the food truck industry. Partnerships are huge in any industry. Believe it or not, my meeting with Kevin turned into much more than just a couple of handshakes, recognition, and some cash/prizes. I started working with him. I helped manage his social media, helped him out with some of his businesses on the online marketing side, and was consulting from a young person’s point of view. Some of my other business associates and I then partnered a business called Capture My Clients with Kevin’s company. This led to the creation of Quantum Media, a marketing agency. At this point in my life, I have a thriving food truck manufacturing business and the innovative digital marketing agency with Kevin. I have also started a commercial lending business with a longtime friend, and I am a mentor of philanthropy for a nonprofit organization called Hope Now. In addition, I have started a drug-screening business with a great business partner and friend in central Florida. In terms of future plans, I want to start more businesses and get involved in more projects. As I get older, I would love to spend more time in philanthropy. As I grow my businesses, I want to be able to give back with my knowledge, money, and time. People need to understand that there are risks when it comes to owning and operating their own businesses. However, when you are twenty, the risks are so small. You almost have nothing to lose. Yes, there are some risks, but young entrepreneurs shouldn’t be afraid
93 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK of them. You likely will fail, but you can’t be afraid of this factor. It only takes one or two successes to make a huge company or an innovative product. There are so many entrepreneurs who have about twenty failures and just one success, and this one success—at least in some cases—ends up being a $20-billion company. At twenty, people have nothing to lose, so they should just go for it by following their dreams. Young people need to be learning anything and everything about their fields and professions. Luckily, things such as mentors, books, and the Internet exist. Young entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs in general, literally need to consume as much knowledge as humanly possible. Poor minds seek entertainment, rich minds seek education.
94 CHAPTER 14 Ian Smith The Entrepreneur Mindset
hen many people plan on achieving success, they consider W the actions that need to be taken. They think about what steps need to happen in order to get to the place where they want to be. What many people fail to realize is that something essential needs to change before taking action. They need to change their own thoughts. What I want you to realize is that in order for specific actions to have a chance of making a difference in your success, you’ll first need to think positive thoughts and have a healthy mindset. In order to achieve great success, you must consciously believe and think successful thoughts. Now, when I say successful thoughts, I’m talking about having the same thought patterns that successful people have. The mindset that an employee has is different from the mindset of a business owner. It has to be. There is no way that one will be able to grow a business with the same thinking patterns of an employee. The two are different. Employees seek comfort, stability, low risk, guaranteed pay, and minor long-term benefits. Being an employee is what I believe
95 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK to be a short-term strategy. Employees will be taken care of with pay and health benefits only while they are putting in the time and effort to work. But what happens when employees can no longer work because they’ve reached a certain age? All benefits run out, pay no longer comes in, and all previous work that’s been done during the past 30–40 years no longer supports that employee. The instant gratification of doing the work and getting paid immediately is gone. The successful business owner’s mindset is about taking big risks and working more than 40 hours per week with no guarantee of pay. However, the business owner will receive benefits from work done throughout the long-term. When starting and operating a business, one cannot be focused on instant gratification. Growing a business is a long process and can take many years before seeing any kind of return on your investment. In exchange for giving up instant gratification, such owners are getting long-term benefits. The types of benefits that a business owner will see are financial stability, residual income, and increasing income, even when not working. A lot of the work a business owner puts in during the startup phase can be looked at as an investment that will later be paid back with interest. They are building an asset they own and can collect dividends while owning the business whether they work or not. One day, he or she can also sell the business and hopefully collect a big check. A majority of employees are only collecting dividends when they work and don’t collect a big check at the end.
Business-Owner Mindset In order succeed as a business owner, you must possess the following traits: ambitious, determined, persistent, consistent, motivated, self-starter, risk-taker, fiscally responsible, disciplined, optimistic, goal oriented, focused on solutions, patient, fearless, courageous, influential, and self-aware.
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The road to being a successful, wealthy business owner is full of potholes, treacherous objects, deception, defeat, blood, sweat, and tears. As long as you have the courage to consistently get back up and keep pushing forward after every battle the market defeated you in, then you will eventually win the war. You have to be patient and know that you are playing a long-term game. You have to be able to work those long hours, even though there might be no one holding you accountable and cracking the whip. This is where self- discipline needs to be at an all-time high. You’ll need to be self- aware when it comes to your thoughts, levels of optimism, and how you’re communicating with others. On the road to wealth creation, you will need to be goal oriented and optimistic. You’ll need to set your sights on what goal you aim to accomplish, and then create milestones that you’ll need to reach in order to track your progress toward accomplishing that goal. I like to reverse engineer my goals and create a stepping-stone path to reach my goals. I create steps to achieve milestones, and my goals are made up from those completed milestones. You will have obstacles along the way. It’s vital that you stay optimistic, as you push through these obstacles. The more optimistic you remain, the smaller the obstacles seem. The more pessimistic you become, the larger those obstacles are to overcome. When goal setting, you need to be ambitious with how large the goal is that you set. Set it 10 times bigger than what you think is possible, and be ready to do 10 times the amount of work that you think is needed in order to have a chance at achieving it. Go big or go home, right? The popular saying by Les Brown is, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” This is true. The chances of actually achieving what you set out for in the timeframe you set out to do it are slim to none. Most people fall short of their goals unless they focus on the goal that’s 10 times
97 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK greater than what they define as successful. If you actually do that, you’re guaranteed to reach it. As you start to see results from your hours of work, you will start to notice your bank account increase. The rookie move would be to go and make a large, noninvestment purchase and burn all your newly earned cash. This is a huge mistake. What you should do is work on growing this ball of cash from your first income source into an amount that covers your living expenses for a year and gives you enough money to start making new investments. Once you have enough cash saved to support your annual living expenses and another sizable investment, then you know you’re making progress. This sizable investment must be one that creates another flow of income for you without significantly shrinking your ball of cash. A mistake many people make while trying to grow their savings is greatly increasing their cost of living simultaneously. One might go out and buy a new, expensive car, eat out at fancier restaurants, travel more, and increase their rent or mortgage cost. Doing these things will not only slow the progress of reaching financial freedom, but could also do serious damage if the economy were to contract or if your income were to dry up. It is important to keep your expenses as low as possible while growing your money ball. Save every extra penny you earn, and know that it will soon be invested on another new income flow. Something crucial to keep in mind during this pursuit of happiness is patience. Good things really do come to those who wait. Keep working hard, smart, and put in the hours. Be patient and trust that everything will work out in the end. When you are driving across the country at night, you might only be able to see 50 feet in front of you with your headlights on, but you trust 100 percent that you will make it to your destination safely. This is how you need to approach your pursuit of happiness. Consciously believe that you
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will make it there. Assume that there will be obstacles to overcome, but that you will make it one day if you just keep grinding away at it. Motivation is going to be the gasoline that fuels your tank to keep driving. I would strongly recommend using whatever it is that motivates you and create a collage that you can look at every day. Many people call this a vision board. Whether it’s creating a vision board, taking trips to the nicer parts of town and imagining that you live in one of those houses, or going on a vacation getaway, be sure that you keep that carrot dangled in front of you. What does the trick for me is getting a small taste of what it is that I desire. It keeps me motivated and having the right mindset. Whenever I’m able to taste the life that I’m working toward, it works like jet fuel so I can continue putting in the hours of work and making the investments that I need to make in order to make that taste a new reality. The most important idea I want to share is that it’s so important to be aware of your thoughts and the things you’re focusing on. Many people get in their own way because they are focused more on problems rather than finding solutions. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in how large obstacles might seem, that fear takes control and paralyzes us from taking any action. Don’t turn molehills into mountains. Accept that obstacles will always be there in life, and most of the time you will benefit the most from overcoming those obstacles. So many of us give up because it seems too difficult. The greater the obstacle and risk, the greater the reward. Focus on solutions. When you face these obstacles and problems in your life, focus on finding different ways for solving these problems. The more solutions you find, the more you will realize that the problem really isn’t so big. Of all the solutions you come up with, choose the most effective and profitable one for solving your problems. I invite you to find me on social media and on the Internet. My company is Slice Of Wisdom, and we provide motivation and
99 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK guidance for many entrepreneurs and goal-driven individuals. Consuming one slice of wisdom on a daily basis might just be the motivation that keeps you on the right track toward living your dream. I wish you the best of luck on your journey to success. Don’t forget—we create our own luck. The harder you work, the luckier you’ll get.
100 CHAPTER 15 Cory Bergeron Instant Benefits
s of April 2016, the Internet was roughly five million terabytes Ain size. Google, most people’s go-to search engine of choice, has indexed about two hundred terabytes of it or .002 percent. The Internet is unbelievably huge and according to IBM, the digital knowledge contained within it will be doubling every 11 hours by 2016. Ready to be staggered? The human brain has been estimated to contain several billion petabytes of information. I know, what the heck is a petabyte? Sounds like a Greek appetizer. A petabyte is one trillion bytes or the contents of all knowledge contained in every US academic library. Now, grasp that I just told you that your brain contains several billion of those . . . billions and billions of academic libraries. Do you feel powerful? You should! When I was in first grade, I had to learn to spell my last name and not fall off the stool using the water fountain. At the same age, my kids were doing algebra. The demand on our mental facilities is growing as fast as the demand for faster processors and larger hard drives. Computers require massive upgrades just to be able to run the latest software. Our brains are being conditioned to do
101 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK the same. When I am at home and have a trivial question, I could get out my phone and search online, but most of the time, I just ask my kids. It’s faster. Here’s where the leap forward happens: those first-grade algebra kids, or Millennials, are just now starting to enter the workforce. Combine the potential of the human brain with our exploding online digital database, giving us the entire knowledge of the universe beamed to a lightning-fast delivery system in our front pocket, and you can say hello to the far future in short order. Therefore, let me formally welcome you to the future and the rapid changes coming our way! It seems the government (the gatekeeper) and its lightyears of red tape decide just how fast these changes will be allowed to proliferate our society, but Amazon is throwing itself against the system and seems to be succeeding! The online marketplace monster has petitioned the courts to authorize the use of drones for 30-minute package deliveries to your front door! Electronic retailing is about to change forever! Imagine localized fulfillment centers in metropolitan areas with an army of quad-copters zipping to and fro, clutching anything less than five pounds (86 percent of all Amazon products) and gently dropping them right on your front porch! They are already doing it in test markets. Let’s wrap your brain around this for a moment. You’re out of your favorite hair product. You whip out the Amazon app, hit “Buy” and by the time you’re out of the shower and dry, a new bottle is on your threshold . . . along with new brown socks, because you just found out your last pair has a hole. For some reason, I can hear Doc Brown in Back to the Future standing among his clocks and the auto dog feeder, yelling at Marty McFly that this will change everything! It feels fantastical, but guess what? It is here. It is now, and it is a just a snapshot of how shopping is going to change like wildfire within the next decade.
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I have made my living in television retail for the past 15 years. I’ve sold more than 300 products on national television. I have been on camera for some of the largest direct response television (DRTV) networks on Earth, and this I know for certain, they all see the writing on the wall. These networks have huge campuses with thousands of employees and monstrous expenses. Heck, just the annual electric bill for one of their campuses is probably more than I’ll make in my lifetime! Here’s a stat to make your head spin: Facebook is now worth more than Toyota, Disney, AT&T, Coca- Cola, or Bank of America. Think about the expenses of Disney. Now consider that you could run Facebook out of my garage. Whatever you know, or think you know, hold on tight. This is just the beginning. There will be an upsweep of changes that will trend with dizzying speed. You will probably have to rethink your position every few hours—11 hours to be precise! What an amazing time it is in our world! Let’s take a moment to discuss how to be most effective in this shifting world where people are watching three product ads before the gas station car wash spits them back out into the fast lane. I recently spoke in a theater full of entrepreneurs, all present to learn the secrets of business success. I took the stage with several other experts who spoke about getting published, how to scale product offers, the best social networking techniques, etc. I was the first speaker on stage because my topic was “Pitching Your Business for Success,” and without a strong pitch, those entrepreneurs had nothing to publish, nothing to social network, and nothing to build a business on. Following my keynote was 15 minutes of questions and answers. I heard from insurance agents, personal trainers, attorneys, investment bankers—people from many different fields and backgrounds. Many of them were making one simple mistake in their pitches. They were pitching the end game rather than
103 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK the immediate benefits. The personal trainer was talking about looking great in six months. The insurance agent was talking about the benefits of coverage should the worst happen someday. The investment banker spoke about the return that would give a happy retirement! Big mistake! People buy what they can visualize themselves using right away. They want the package to arrive, rip the paper off, and have their product immediately transform their lives. If you are not pitching the immediate benefits of your product, you are missing out on big sales! That personal trainer needed to focus more on how great that person would feel knowing that she was on the path to self-renewal! The explosion of energy when she jumped out of bed in the morning because of her body’s gratitude for the exercise! The satisfaction of going home and immediately shopping for smaller clothes, knowing that she would be wearing them soon! Instant emotional benefits. Instant transformation of lifestyle. Instant. On demand. This is the reason for the compelling nature of the before/after photo. In the before, we see ourselves. In the after, we see who we dream of being. All the work, time invested, sweat, and salads are reduced to a thin line down the center of the screen. Five minutes in Photoshop and your customer can leap through time until all the waiting and discomfort diminishes to almost nothing in light of the results. It is like magic. It seems instant. It seems on demand. We live in an instant gratification society. At this time in history, it is more obvious than ever before. Millennials can’t imagine what it feels like to wonder about something for more than a few moments before their smartphone feeds them the answer. Research suggests that even our educated 55+ shoppers are more savvy than we give them credit for, daily utilizing Internet marketplaces and mobile shopping apps. We exist in an on-demand culture. Our society says, “Give me infinite
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options for movies, shopping, communication, travel, navigation . . . and give it to me the moment I demand it!” My daughter gets upset when the little hourglass on her phone spins more than twice before she has the information she wants. If there was ever a time in history when a product needs to engage people’s emotions by helping them to visualize the instant benefits, the time is now! Ask yourself, When customers experience my product for the first time, what are the immediate benefits they will feel? What will the first 30 minutes be like with my product? How will their lives be instantly transformed in a way that excites them? It is the lifeblood of any solid pitch. This one small twist in perspective can change a floundering pitch into a home run!
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CHAPTER 16 Caleb Maddix How I Made $100,000 by 14 Years Old
’m 14 years old, and I suppose I should be focused on the newest Itechnology, video games, or hanging out with friends. However, my life’s focus is actually quite unique and far from what is expected of a “normal” 14 year old. In fact, I am asked all the time, “Caleb, what makes you so different? How have you become so successful?” The answer to these questions is actually quite simple, because I try to live by solid principles followed by applications that actually work. With that being stated, I’m going to share with you the five actions that I took, which allowed me to earn $100,000 at the age of 14.
1. I Became Anti-Gun Now, I know that you might be thinking that I’m crazy for making this statement, but let me change your perception, because I’m not talking about the guns that we use to take someone’s physical life. I’m talking about the gun that kills an individual’s dreams, purpose, and potential. The gun I’m referring to is called the “gonna.” We
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all have either heard this gun or used it ourselves. The “I’m gonna lose weight,” “I’m gonna get a better job,” “I’m gonna go back to school,” or “I’m gonna be a better parent.” The list could actually go on. Most people spend their whole lives saying they are “gonna” do something that they never do. I had my own “gonna” experience when I was 12 years old. Since I was about six, my dad asked me to write out my goals every day. One of the goals I wrote down was that I wanted to write my first book by the age of 20. Each day, I would look at this goal until one day it dawned on me. Why did I have to wait until I was 20 to accomplish this? Why couldn’t I write a book now? What was stopping me? So, at the age of 12, I asked my dad how to write a book, and you know what he said? “Just do it.” With that, I went in my room and with insane focus, I wrote my first book. I typed it out on my phone and published it a month later. The book is titled Keys to Success for Kids. The most amazing part of this story is that shortly after publishing my book, I started receiving massive attention. I was featured in Forbes and Huffington Post. My videos on social media started going viral. I was interviewed on national TV with more than eight million viewers, and I was voted one of the top 30 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 who are creating life on their own terms. All this occurred after I decided that I was going to stop saying that I was “gonna” do something and just started making it happen. I decided that “gonna” was no longer going to be connected to my life because it was holding me back. My action replaced my “gonna.” I know that I am not the only one who has battled with “gonna.” I believe that some of the greatest books, songs, and speeches have never been written because they are simply ideas within a body that refuses to execute. I’ll even take it a step further. I believe there are million-dollar ideas that are suffocating in an environment of minimum-wage execution.
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You have to ask yourself a question. What is an idea that I have, but I have yet to take action on it? Until you take the risk of action, you will be paralyzed within the cycle of “gonna.” Stop killing your dreams with this gun called the “gonna.” Dream big, take action now, work hard, and you will see massive results.
2. I Refused to Be Average During the past few years, I have had the privilege of meeting and networking with some of the most successful people in the world. One such individual is Russell Brunson who, among other achievements, is the founder of ClickFunnels, which is a million-dollar business. There is a story that Russell shares that is powerful. During his high school years, he was a wrestler. Because it was one of his passions, he set a goal to make it to the state championship. He was so focused on his goal that by his senior year, he was able to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, his celebration was cut short when he realized that one of his teammates won the national championship. Russell began to think about what allowed his teammate to win the nationals while he only won state. It was then that he realized that his goal put him in the state championships. His mindset didn’t even invite the nationals into focus, because it was so centered on state. Russell learned that you never set a goal for the state championship when there is a national championship. This story taught me to dream beyond average, even if sounds crazy. Even if it doesn’t make sense. I mean, I’m a 14-year-old kid declaring on social media that I’m going to earn a million dollars by the time I’m 15. That sounds crazy, but I refuse to be ordinary. In fact, a million dollars isn’t even my stopping point. Once I achieve that, my next goal will be a billion. Why? Because I refuse to be average. I refuse to settle for average when phenomenal is achievable.
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Think about it. There has never been a ground-ball derby. Why? Because we don’t celebrate ground balls, we celebrate home runs. Stop settling with ok. Stop being ok with just being ok. Always be challenging yourself. You are your biggest competition, so be determined to never let yourself win.
3. I Become Obsessed One of my biggest struggles right now is spending time studying general academics. The reason for this is that I am obsessed with success, so I get more energy from studying the lives of successful people. I wanted to know the secrets to what made them get to where they are. You know what I discovered? It’s not hard work, how much they give, or the law of attraction. While all those are important elements, what makes successful people a success is their obsession to get the most results. Beyoncé, the singer, songwriter, and actress, once told a story about the time she went two days without eating or sleeping. She said that she didn’t do it on purpose. It was simply because she was so focused that all the other details of life, including eating and sleeping, faded into the background. Similarly, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the creators of Apple, went four to five days without sleep and got a sleeping disease while they were working on the first Mac computer. I’m sure every successful person could share a similar story of when their obsession with their business caused them to maintain an almost superhuman focus. I recently went on vacation for a week, and it was so difficult for me to separate myself from my business. Even when I was supposed to be relaxing and enjoying the sights, I couldn’t stop brainstorming and thinking of ways to make my business better. It’s interesting because I have been like this for as long as I can remember. When I was eight, I decided that I wanted to be a star shortstop player on
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the New York Yankees. Even though I was the shortest and smallest kid on my baseball team, I became obsessed with becoming the best baseball player. I woke up at 4:00 am to do early morning workouts. I read books, watched videos, practiced until my body ached, and thought about improving my technique daily. After a year of intense focus and unstoppable work ethic, I became a Florida All-Star. A few years later, I wanted to be a magician. I approached this dream in a similar way. I stayed up late practicing my tricks, studied other magicians, and read books about magic. When you become obsessed, no one has to push you to work on your dreams. No one has to wake you up at 4:00 am or tell you to study your craft. In my obsession, I have determined that no one has to push me because my passion pulls me. You have to pursue your dream obsessively, so that your forward motion is fueled solely by your passion.
4. I Started Providing Value to People We live in a world that measures success by how much money you have in the bank or the stuff you own. While those can show a level of success, the true measure of success is found in the value that you have given to others that cannot be seen through physical money or things. I learned this lesson when I began to really share ideas and information through social media. When Periscope was first introduced, I quickly began using the app as a way of communicating tips and lessons with others that I thought would be useful. I would post content almost every day, and I was super proud of what I shared. However, I became discouraged when I noticed that I only had about 30 followers with five to six views per video. I started getting a little upset about it, but I kept posting. One day, I received a message from a lady who told me that she was Grant Cardone’s sister. Grant Cardone is one of the most well-
111 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK known and hugely successful motivational speakers and authors. Cardone’s sister wrote that she was impressed by my content and that it had added value to her life. After writing that message, she connected me with Grant, who in turn promoted me, featured me on his world-renowned podcast, and gave me exposure to a whole new audience. If my whole motivation for posting content or connecting with my audience were for more followers or making money, I would have missed this life-changing opportunity. In business, earning money is important, but when that becomes the only goal, you begin to lose the heart of what makes a business last, and that is impact. Everything you do in business must be connected with positively impacting the life of somebody else. This not only changes the lives of other people, but it will also change your life at the same time. Don’t just seek an income, seek to impact.
5. I Gave My Face Off When I was 12 years old, my dad founded a nonprofit organization called Mission 25 that gave me an opportunity to go on more than 53 mission trips in the United States. I know that there is a lot of attention placed on the needs in undeveloped countries, but after traveling all over the United States, I can say that there is great need right here. These trips showed me just how much brokenness there is right around the corner from where we live. I have seen orphaned children sleeping without pillows on concrete floors in homeless shelters. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to veterans who have lost everything and are sleeping on the streets. Being able to experience these trips and meet these types of people has taught me the importance of giving back. I believe that giving should become a habit for all successful people, but I also believe that it should especially be done during a time in which you feel like you have hit a wall.
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I remember when I was having an extremely unsuccessful week, and I felt like nothing was going well. I wasn’t making any sales, hitting my goals, or connecting with people like I normally do. In that moment, I knew that I couldn’t just work through it or give more effort. I realized that my life had become too consumed with me. My dad always tells me, “When nothing is going good, do something good for someone else.” So, I decided that it was time to take a break from me and place my focus on the needs of someone else. After making a trip to the bank, I went to see a single mother of five who I knew. I gave her $100 and told her that I wanted her to have it. Once I placed the bill in her hand, she started weeping. She told me that she didn’t have any money to buy food for her children, but now she would be able to feed them that night. I continued my mission to give by purchasing five sleeping bags and giving them to the homeless. Also, I gave away free coaching sessions to an eight- year-old boy being raised by a single mother who couldn’t afford the cost of the sessions. Days following this experience, I received a Facebook message from Glenn Twiddle inviting me to speak at a conference in Australia. The most amazing part of this invite is that I was going to be sharing the stage with Gary Vaynerchuk, a leading entrepreneur and investor. I couldn’t believe it, because speaking with Gary had been one of my goals. After speaking in Australia, my life completely changed because of the connections made available through the event. I don’t think any of this happened by chance, but I believe that it was because giving back became a priority over getting back. I don’t share these stories to gain applause, but I share them to encourage others to give back. It doesn’t matter what I have achieved or will achieve, these moments of giving back will always be my greatest moments of success and fulfillment. Build your business on the foundation of abundant giving and you will receive abundant returns that go beyond a simple paycheck.
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I want to share one other story. One day, as I was scrolling through my Facebook messages, I came across a message from someone who told me that the world would be a better place if I just committed suicide. The heaviness of the world immediately set upon my shoulders and, for a moment, I began to question my own worth and place in this world. On a whim, I continued to scroll through my messages until I stumbled on something that began to change my perspective. The message was from a mother who told me that her son was facing many difficulties. He was depressed, constantly in trouble, and suicidal. She said that after watching my videos, her son began to drastically change. He started his own business, improved in school, and decided to not die, but to finally live. This left such an impact on my life, not only as an entrepreneur but as an individual. Changing lives and helping people has been and will continue to be the driving force of my life and my business.
114 CHAPTER 17 Matt Maddix The Power of a Book
or as long as I can remember, I have been an avid reader. I Fam always looking for ways to challenge my current thinking pattern and also find opportunities for personal growth. In fact, some of the most pivotal moments of my life occurred as a direct result of information I received from a book that I later applied to my life. That is the power of a book. Books are one of the most effective channels of information that can literally transform lives. Similarly, within each person is life-changing content that needs to be written in a book. That content might be an inspirational story, practical information, business strategies, or a fictional tale. It doesn’t matter what it is, all that matters is that it is inside you until you write it out. Not only do I believe that everyone should write a book, I also believe that it is one of the most essential tools that many entrepreneurs neglect. There are a number of reasons for this, but I have found that most people are overwhelmed by the thought of writing a book because of their own misconceptions about the writing and publishing process. My friends, the process is actually so easy and presents so many lucrative opportunities that it would be foolish
115 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK for you to spend another day disregarding the book that is inside you. And let me be clear, writing a book is not just for a certain group of people. If you are a real estate agent, financial advisor, speaker, coach, lawyer, or even if you are a salon owner, you should write a book. In fact, my business partner and Amazon bestselling author, Joe Giglietti, and I put together a training course for this purpose called “How to Write a Book in 30 Days of Less.” Our goal is to help people write their book and use it to further their career, attract more customers, and gain financial success. We are especially passionate about helping entrepreneurs use their books as an asset that will grow their business and overall income. The process is so simple and does not require the hours that many believe are needed in order to write a book. In fact, I want to share three secrets to writing a book that will allow you to finish your book in 30 days or less.
1. You don’t even need to sell a single copy of your book (or have it completed yet) to massively increase sales. Maybe this sounds too good to be true, so I’m going to give you an example to prove it. Tony Robbins, one of the greatest motivational speakers and world-renowned influencers, endorses this secret. How do I know? Because he gave away his book for free. I was shocked when I found out about this, because I thought it was crazy. I didn’t understand why someone would spend the time to write a book and then give it away. However, this strategy actually opens the door for massive sales and business-growth opportunities if executed correctly. Giving away a book is simply a hook that connects potential clients to a course or program that you plan on upselling. For instance, if you give your book away for free plus shipping, the buyer
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will have their credit card available for not only the shipping cost but also the upsell product that you will offer. If your free book is connected to a discounted training course, membership to a site, or a breakthrough coaching call, the buyers will be more apt to purchase because of the value you have already added to their lives through your book. If you use this strategy, you should expect 5–20 percent of your buyers to take the extra step and purchase your upsells. The returns on this are greater than the small profit you would earn from selling your book at full price. In addition to financial gains, you will also have the opportunity of receiving contact information, such as email addresses, of new and potential clients. The beauty of this is that you don’t even need to have a book published yet in order to increase sales. If you have a proposed date for when your book will be released, you can create a countdown on a landing page featuring the book cover, a blurb about the book’s content, and a video so that you can create some anticipation. On that same page, you can use the strategy of the upsells attached to your book, even if it isn’t published yet. It is too easy not to take advantage of this information.
2. A book is a ticket to the most powerful rooms on the planet. I know that I keep mentioning how easy this process is, but what if I told you that it was so easy that a 10 and 12 year old could do it? Interestingly enough, the 10 year old is Emily Shai Giglietti, and the 12 year old is my son, Caleb Maddix. I don’t just believe in the power of a book because it sounds good; I believe in it because I have seen it work for my son, who is now an incredibly successful 14 year old. When my son was 12 years old, he told me that he wanted to write a book. My advice was short and simple. The only guidance I gave him was, “Just do it.” With those three words, my son wrote his
117 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK first book in less than two weeks, and it was published on Amazon a month later. I want to pause and talk to parents for a moment, because it doesn’t matter what other role I fulfill in life, my job as a dad is and always will be my number one priority. Because I believe that books can change lives, I instilled this same mindset in my son. When Caleb was eight years old, I gave him $20 for every success book he read. My message to him was that the information you receive through reading turns into a profit if you correctly use the knowledge you gain. I emphasized to my son that those who learn the most, earn the most. Through the habit of reading, my son’s passion for learning and success began to grow. From that passion, came his desire to write a book, because he saw the value he received through reading. This type of passion doesn’t just happen, parents. Not only should you embrace the value of a book and take action, you should encourage your children to do the same. The results will make your hard work and efforts worth it. After Caleb wrote his book, amazing doors opened in his life that brought unbelievable success. In less than two years, my son has been on stage speaking with some of the most influential entrepreneurs and speakers of our time, such as Kevin Harrington, Russell Brunson, Tony Robbins, Darren Hardy, Ken Shamrock, John Lee Dumas, Jay Walker, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Also, he has been featured on TV shows, including Good Morning Australia, Power Players, Fox News, and CNN, and in the Huffington Post, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Also I watched his Facebook fan page go from 56 followers to 114,000 followers. The secret to his success is directly connected to the secrets I’m sharing with you now. His book became the ticket that gave him access to people and arenas that would have been closed if he did not have the credibility that
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his book gave him. Also, in those two years, my son has traveled all over the world and made more than $100,000 at the age of 14. Emily Shai, who is Caleb’s business partner, wrote her first book at the age of 10. She decided that she wanted to put together a book with information about how to throw a slumber party. She spent less than 10 hours writing her book and less than $7 publishing it. Months after releasing it, she made more than $20,000. Both Emily and Caleb are founders and owners of a business called Kids for Success, where they service kids who desire mentorship, training, and overall success in their lives. In just a brief amount of time, the business has found great success and attracted partnerships with ClickFunnels founder Russell Brunson and the original shark from Shark Tank, Kevin Harrington. More information about this life-changing opportunity for kids is available at kids4success.tv. Friends, I know this is blowing your mind, but it is 100 percent true and 100 percent achievable. I am so confident of this because I experienced the success connected with publishing a book. For years, I was passionate about health and educating others about the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle. I decided to write a book titled Just Juice It! It includes 50 healthy juice recipes and other health tips. Once I released that book, I began to use it as a connecting point for potential clients for a health coaching business called My Health 90. During that time, I helped nine people lose more than 100 pounds, more than 400 people lose 40 pounds, and thousands more have experienced weight loss and overall health benefits as a result of going through this process without starving themselves or unhealthy dieting practices. My health business became one of the fastest-growing businesses in the world that was to be sold for a potential $8.2 million. My business is currently active and my landing site still
119 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK attracts potential clients to my book and my coaching services. All this stemmed from a simple book with quality content. I firmly believe that many of these opportunities would not have been possible without a book. I personally know a powerful speaker who is better than most who lost out on a $10,000 speaking engagement because she didn’t have a book. The committee decided to go with another speaker because he had a book and she didn’t. A book can determine whether you receive paid business opportunities. Furthermore, your book also gives you a ticket into sales arenas that will bring greater exposure to your business. There are so many social media outlets and creative communications tools that allow you to launch your book and create a following. One tool that is so user friendly and has the potential to quickly reach a wide audience is a podcast. You can either start your own podcast for the purposes of launching your book and interviewing other influencers with a common message, or you can seek out current podcasts to request an interview to advertise your book.
3. Becoming a published author of a physical book is easier and less time-consuming than it’s ever been. During the past 10 years, the self-publishing industry has made some drastic changes to the publishing industry. Publishing your book through a professional requires a huge investment of time and money. However, the self-publishing route creates a cost-effective way for you to produce a quality book without ridiculous fees. Sites such as CreateSpace, Blurb, Lulu, and BookBaby have created a market for those seeking to publish their books without giving control and a huge amount of money to a publisher. When you do the math, the decision is simple. Would you rather go through a publisher and receive 20 percent of the profits or self-
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publish and keep 70 percent of your profits? The answer is a no- brainer. Authors who know how to market don’t need a publisher, because as an entrepreneur your goal is not to sell one million copies of your book, it is to sell your business. The writing process also becomes simplified because the content you are going to use is already in your head. Honestly, you are the expert of your story. You don’t have to research or ask anyone else for advice. Use what you know and what you have learned and turn it into your source of income. Like I said, the content is already in your head. You just have to get it out. The secrets I have just shared represent only a small portion of the training I offer concerning this topic. My partner and I have a whole process, along with one-on-one coaching opportunities, to assist those who are passionate about using their book to grow their business. I cannot stress enough the power of a book. And the most powerful aspect of this is that the impact of your book doesn’t just stop when the reader reads the last page. Your impact continues with the clients you will gain for your business, which then will give you the opportunity to further change lives and make a huge difference. And isn’t that what entrepreneurship is all about? Changing lives and giving back. Don’t wait another day or even another minute. Open your laptop or notebook, get in a comfortable spot, and start writing. The world is waiting on you, and your book is the key that unlocks the door of ultimate personal and financial success. Your book is the most powerful and proven way to get your message and service to the world on a larger and more effective scale. My partner and I have helped more than 20 people get their books written from start to finish in just under 30 days. We offer a four-week course that breaks down the writing and marketing process into an easy, step-by-step training that allows you to polish your content so you can use your book to get more customers
121 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK and grow your business. At the end of the 30 days, you will have a complete book on Amazon that is ready to be sold. We will coach you along your journey toward achieving one of the greatest accomplishments of your life. Get us in your corner and we will guarantee your success.
122 CHAPTER 18 Anthony Amos How to Catch a Shark
stablishing a brand in a new country is a difficult task, regardless Eof whether it was well-known in its home country. When I was in the process of putting together my team for my current franchise, I decided I needed a “hammerhead shark” to promote my brand to the masses. I had already put together a great team of strategic partners, but the one thing missing was the person who could get me in front of the movers and shakers of the industry.
A Personal Story: Where Do You Swim? You never want to be the most intelligent or wealthiest person in the room! I think I really began to understand this concept and the importance of social circle at the age of 17. I was raised in small country town called Tamworth in New South Wales, Australia. I started playing rugby at the tender, young age of five, and my biggest goal was to one day play professional football for Australia. During my early high school years in Tamworth, I was recognized as a footballer with promise and made the local A-grade football team. I was in my element playing a game I loved, at an elite level for a 16 year old, in the town I was raised in, surrounded by my family and friends.
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As great as this was, my burning desire at that age was to play for Australia. I knew that in order to do so I needed to surround myself with the cream of the crop in schoolboy rugby league players. I had heard about an elite rugby league, a high school on the Gold Coast of Queensland, that were winning the schoolboy’s national competition—the next level. I knew this was the school I needed to be in to take my game to the next level. Surrounding myself with high-caliber players would push me to improve. So, I transferred. And it worked. During the first year at the school, I made the Queensland side and shadowed for Australia! That year, it was the first and only time in history that a student had changed states and made the Queensland side! I experienced the benefits of jumping out of my comfort zone and surrounding myself with people who would challenge me. As I look back, I recognize this was the year I also caught my first shark! This shark was presented in the form of a lovely 60-year- old headmistress named Mrs. Ginenen. Although she looked sweet and harmless, Mrs. Ginenen was a formidable taskmaster, renowned for her discipline and no-nonsense approach. Nothing got past this woman! While I was “ON FIRE” with football, there were certain teachers and subjects that could not hold my short attention span . . . and if I was going to continue to play, I also needed to keep my grades up. One particular teacher I was struggling with happened to be close friends with the headmistress, Mrs. Ginenen. My strategy was to appeal to Mrs. Ginenen to help me find the sweet spots and give me some guidance to be more in alignment with this difficult teacher. Little did I know that I was hitting Mrs. Ginenen’s sweet spot. We struck up an amazing friendship in the process. Instead of sitting through a double period of a subject that I couldn’t stand, I
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ended up sitting in Mrs. Ginenen’s office, drinking tea and talking about life. She is still dear to me today and was there to welcome my wife and all three of my children into my life. The lesson here is simple— if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room!
Meeting Kevin Harrington Meeting the right people is all about pursuing specific environments. You’ve got to get creative, especially if you’re on a tight budget or no budget at all. Make sure you’re in a position of adding value . . . whether it’s your personality, your contacts, or something unique that people want more of. When I wanted to meet high-profile people, I knew being part of a prestigious mastermind group would place me in their environment. One particular group I wanted to join had an annual fee of $25,000. I wasn’t in a position to pay that amount of money, so I approached the person organizing it and said, “If you give me the opportunity to become an annual member, I’ll bring two paying customers to the table to become part of your mastermind group by being a raving fan.” He agreed and that was the door opener for me. I had evened the playing field in order to meet the high-level business contacts I needed. It’s all about finding the right situations to meet the right kind of people. In this instance, the strategic partner was the person who owned the mastermind group. He was doing something with a lot of other successful and wealthy people, and I wanted to be a part of it. I had to work with him rather than paying the money and creating a transaction. I was resourceful. I brought in two people as promised and created a high-level relationship and amazing friendship with the founder of the organization.
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I was introduced to Kevin Harrington, believe it or not, through this high-end mastermind group I creatively worked my way into. Through this group, I met an amazing bloke who provided the most important thing I needed to have when catching a shark like Kevin Harrington . . . a great introduction. Unbeknown to me at the time, he happened to be a good friend and business partner of Kevin and arranged an introduction. Before I even met Kevin, he painted me as this crazy Australian guy who was successful and had founded a franchise system that was just amazing. Because Kevin heard about me from a trusted source, he wanted to get to know my products and me. Now, at the time, I didn’t know the connection my new friend had to Kevin. I authentically befriended this bloke, as he was someone I felt instantly congruent with and has since become one of my greatest friends. He is someone who always provides great advice from spiritual to business for my family and me. It’s all about forming alliances and friendships, adding as much value as you can. Even the playing field, so that when you get an introduction to your shark, you are instantly differentiated from the hordes of people who pitch to him or her on a consistent basis. You come recommended. I teach my kids all the time to never follow the crowd, or they will always end up at the exit. You’ve got to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. In every situation, I always think, “What is everyone else doing, and what is it that I can do differently to stand out?” That happens to me every day. When you follow the crowd, you will achieve the same results as the crowd. Everyone doing the same things are getting the same results. Choose the path less traveled. At times it can be the more difficult choice, but most times it pays off. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. Remember, you want to stand out, not blend in. Do the things other people aren’t.
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Live outside the box . . . don’t just think outside the box. That’s the key. When someone asks if my glass is half full or half empty, I want to know who’s pouring the drink.
How to Stand Out from the Rest Steve Jobs said, “Every new business pitch should do three things: inform, educate and, above all, entertain.” I would like to add another and that is to transform—to solve a problem. I am a firm believer in the idea that people invest in people, not only products or services. I knew that for a hammerhead to be remotely interested in my business and me, I had to stand out from the rest. I had to have my pitch down pat and be able to reel it off at a moment’s notice. Not only did I need to know my pitch, I needed to know it in a way that could be easily converted, depending on the environment. The way I would deliver my pitch to a group of business associates in a conference room is different from the way I would deliver it at the bar to a bunch of blokes. However, the message and enthusiasm are always the same . . . just the language of the story varies. Your pitch should be a story you can easily tell. Just as you can easily talk about the great qualities of your spouse or children, your pitch should be just as organic and not sound manufactured.
A Personal Story: Know Your Pitch’s Audience In Australia, business lunches are accompanied with at least one or two cold beers—especially Friday late lunch. So, when I offered to buy the first round of drinks in the United States, and came back with Patrón shots and beer chasers for the table, I expected a completely different response than the one I received! To make a long story short, I ended up drinking all the shots myself and having quite an afternoon at the office!
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The point of the story is: It’s important to understand the personalities you are around and the driving forces of your audience in order to have a real impact (and protect your liver). As I’ve mentioned previously, be your authentic self. But, always be mindful of others. In the above example, I should have asked if everybody wanted a drink instead of assuming it. Again, it was a cultural thing, but I should have thought of them first.
Creating the Perfect Bait In order to catch your shark, start by creating the perfect bait. In 2016, there were approximately 50,000 entrepreneurs auditioning for Shark Tank. It is quite a process to whittle that number down to about 300 aspiring entrepreneurs actually chosen to appear on air, with an opportunity to pitch their products. The process is long and involves the following: a casting call, then submission of a more formal application (disclosed information), a video describing the business (marketing pieces, etc.), and, finally, an even more in- depth application providing the numbers for the business. Of the 300 businesses progressing to the live show, approximately 30 entrepreneurs got their shark and landed a deal. How did the first batch of people get through? It all boiled down to one thing: creating the perfect bait. The following 10 steps are written by one of the original sharks, so pay attention!
128 CHAPTER 19 Kevin Harrington Shark Bite
10 Steps to Creating the Perfect Bait 1. Attention-getting statement. Open with something dramatic to make sure they’re listening. 2. Show how your business or product is a mass market proposition. How scalable is the business? 3. Solve a problem. How does your business provide solutions to customers? What are the benefits of your business or service? 4. Uniqueness. Show how and why you’re different. Is there any intellectual property within your business? 5. Magical transformation. How does your product or service do something magical? The Biggest Loser TV show is a great example. Contestants can go from 400 to 160 pounds. 6. Visual demos. Show something demonstrable or multifunctional? Visuals can be powerful. 7. Testimonials. Do you have powerful testimonials? There are four kinds. a. Consumer/User b. Professional—doctors, lawyers
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c. Editorial—newspapers, TV news d. Documentation—clinical trials, testing 8. Celebrity endorsement. Can you tie in some kind of brand seal of approval? Or an action plan on how you are going to get “Google Famous”? 9. Your track record. Your experience is key, but also the management team you’ve assembled. Do you have a powerful board of directors? Who’s on your team? 10. Financial projections. What’s the capital needed? Mention the competitive landscape, risk analysis, and bottom line. Talk about how successful and how much money the business is going to make!
Practice, Practice, Practice! Practice your bait and always be prepared. Know the outline of the bait, just in case you get the chance to use it. You don’t need to have it completely memorized, but you have to know the outline. Practice in front of a mirror. Practice in front of your spouse or whoever is willing to listen. Practice as if you were going on TV. Another brilliant shark, Richard Branson, has these tips for a great pitch: 1. Avoid wishy-washy language, like “We hope that—” or “With some luck we will—” 2. Your pitch needs to be clear, concise, and something that investors can easily understand and repeat. 3. Give a clear explanation of why your business model will be sustainable and be able to pull through technological changes and markets shifts.
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Tailor Your Bait to the Type of Shark You Are Seeking Start by doing your research. Discover the hot buttons of your particular shark. What are their sweet spots? What are the interests of the shark you want to catch? The “I’m going to donate the money to charity” pitch doesn’t always work. Some people assume the shark will donate the money to charity. No. They have enough charities in many cases. That might work for people, but most sharks are about making money. The bottom line is . . . the sharks wants the money in their pocket. People come to Kevin Harrington all the time requesting little favors. One example is Bill. He met Kevin’s wife, and over dinner she mentioned how much she loves the Bahamas and the Atlantis hotel. Bill wanted Kevin to be a speaker for him but didn’t ask him directly to speak. Instead, he bought Kevin and his wife an all-expense paid, roundtrip vacation to Atlantis for three days and three nights. It included everything: the hotel, food, hotel transfers, limos, and airfare. All he wanted from Kevin was 30 minutes of his time to speak in front of a crowd. And if Kevin sold anything, he got 50 percent of the profit. Bill knew one of Kevin’s sweet spots was his wife. He used this knowledge he gained from Kevin’s wife to seal the deal. Bill sent an email to Kevin, and, of course, Kevin forwarded it to his wife. Her response? “Oh, my God. You’re going to do it . . . I hope!” How did he get the shark? He appealed to what Kevin loves . . . his wife. The point is to know what the shark wants/likes. As I said earlier, do the research. Find out what they do in their spare time. If you’ve got a golf angle for a shark, you’ve just tapped into the sweet spot and hot buttons. You should know what gets them excited. What motivates them? It’s not always just about the money.
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Shark Hunter Tidbits 1. Put yourself in the right environment to meet the shark you need. Be creative to get your foot in the door of high-end exclusive places and maintain a mindset consistent with the shark you want to attract. 2. Be considerate of your shark’s time. It’s extremely valuable. 3. Understand the type of shark you need in your business by assessing your current team and determining one shark type that could benefit your business and growth strategy. 4. Know your pitch and be able to adapt it to your audience— always deliver with passion and enthusiasm, remembering people invest in people. 5. Do everything possible to stand out from the rest—be the person who people want to be around and invest in.
Anthony Amos is a multi-founding franchisor, serial entrepreneur, author, professional speaker, and partnership expert. Anthony and his team revolutionized the dog-grooming industry through Hydrodog, the largest franchise of its kind in the world. Today, Anthony is overseeing two founding franchise systems and three partnerships in the United States. Tara Richter is the president of Richter Publishing. She has been featured on BBC, ABC, Daytime TV, and FOX. She has streamlined the writing and publishing process so anyone can become an author in only a few weeks! Take note of these entrepreneurs and start hunting for your shark.
132 CHAPTER 20 Greg Rollett The Future Belongs to the Young . . . and Ambitious
’m optimistic about young people. I’m optimistic about what Iyoung people are doing today, and what they will continue to do in the future. However, with all the advancement and good being done around the world, I see young people heading in two different directions—two clear, distinct directions. In one direction, there are young people glued to their phones. They are literally watching the world pass them by. They’re looking at other people’s Facebook and Instagram feeds and saying, “That looks fun. That looks like a great dinner. That’s a great vacation.” They’re living through the lives of others and having none of the adventures themselves. In the opposite direction, there are people who are creating their present and their future. They are taking a hands-on approach to their life; they’re living! These individuals are the ones traveling, exploring. They’re creating families, businesses, and jobs. They are leveraging and using technology to change their world, and ultimately the world everyone else will live in. They are taking an active approach in shaping the future they want to live in.
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These are two distinct groups that young people are merging into. It is this second group that we need to pay extra special attention to. We need to foster, coach, mentor, market to, and watch this group carefully. How do I know? I’m part of this group. One of the earliest memories I have of myself with grand and ambitious dreams was sitting in my bedroom at eight or nine years old. I remember the bed was to one side of the room and my makeshift posters, which I ripped out of Sports Illustrated, lined the walls. I also had a huge, full-length mirror in my room. Every single day I would grab my mini baseball bat, which I got at a Florida Marlin’s game, and stand in front of my mirror poised and ready to swing. I would hold my bat and I’d pretend it was the bottom of the ninth, World Series, game seven, two outs. Every day I visualized hitting home runs. Every day I saw myself playing baseball in the majors. I was going to stand in that diamond and hit home runs alongside the greats, there was no doubt about it. In high school, though, I decided to be a rapper. It was obviously a great career choice for a little, skinny, white kid. But, you know, I had big dreams and ambitions. This might sound strange, but, at the time, I was modeling my rapping career after and trying to emulate the business model of New Orleans rapper and record label head, Master P. Master P, whose real name is Percy Miller, was a guy living in an innercity, troubled area in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the time, it was the murder capital of the world. It was in this environment that Master P started his record label, No Limit Records. He took everyone from his neighborhood and essentially said to them, “You are going to put out an album, and so is everyone on our block. We’re all going to come out of this bad situation and get ourselves out of the hood. We’re going to create lives for ourselves.”
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I thought that was incredibly ambitious. Using this formula, No Limit Records released 23 albums in 2008, collectively selling millions of copies in the process. Taking this model, I used a loophole in the senior program at my high school to start my own record label. During my senior year, I was released from school at noon every day to start a senior project. It was during this time that I signed my first artist, me, along with my best friend at the time. Late in our senior year, we released a self-funded, self-produced, and self-published album, Ballin’ On 82, under the moniker of The Burglazz. The title paid homage to the street we were both born and raised on in south Florida. (The real ironic part of the story is my old friend is now a SWAT team member of a south Florida police unit.) With my newfound ambitions to be a world-famous rapper, I set the bar high for what I wanted to accomplish, much like playing in game seven of the World Series. Dreaming should never get smaller, only larger as you continue in life. In the early 2000s, the pinnacle of the music industry was being featured on Total Request Live (TRL), in Times Square, or getting interviewed by Carson Daly. That was the big dream and the big ambition. It gave me something to strive for, something to continually work toward. Having a big dream also helped me make decisions. I had to consciously decide whether the choices I was making were moving me closer or further away from my goal. Now, sad to say, I wasn’t able to be on TRL. However, I was able to perform at Madison Square Garden at the New York Music Festival back in 2003. Performing inside that iconic arena—walking down the same hallway where the Knicks walk in, where all the great players look to shine, and all the great musicians hope to get their names in the bright lights—was incredible. I got to walk onto that stage and perform a couple songs in front of fans, industry professionals, and other artists as part of the
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festival. It was amazing. It was as cool as you would imagine and then some. I always had ambitions to do something grander. I never wanted to just work at McDonald’s. I wanted to own 30 McDonald’s. I wanted to skip the lines and the red tape and get there as fast as I possibly could. If you listen to mainstream media, you frequently hear stories about companies speaking about their Millennial employees and their ambitions like it’s a bad thing. You hear things like, “He’s worked here for two weeks, and he thinks he owns this place.” Why is this a bad thing? Why can’t we look at this as a positive character trait versus a negative trait? Why don’t you want employees who want to take ownership in your company working for you? Why not encourage Millennials who want to help your company grow? Why not give them the tools, guidance, and nurturing required to help them grow and get into a position where they can run the company someday? Not every young person has these ambitions. In fact, I see a big gap between the ambitious and the unambitious. I believe those with drive, motivation, and ambition should be celebrated, and I’m not the only one. Every year, there are magazine covers that tout the “30 under 30,” or the “40 under 40,” lists. From Inc. to Forbes to Fortune, these young and ambitious leaders are being recognized, and they help to sell a lot of magazines. You see the young people, such as Mark Zuckerberg, gracing magazine covers and mainstream media, who have rapidly amassed billions of dollars. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you have student loan debts that outnumber credit card debts in the United States. The student loan debt has grown to more than $1.2 trillion. How can you inspire a generation to be ambitious, when they can’t even afford the cost of living on their own? They can’t afford food or gas. These young adults are sitting in their parent’s homes with the most expensive pieces of paper
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they’ve ever owned and receiving none of the benefits their college education promised them. Since the age of 12, they’ve been hearing from parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and anyone else willing to offer them opinions, that the key to a good life is working hard and getting a college degree. Yet, there they sit, disheartened that all the doors are still apparently locked before them. No job; no budding, prosperous career. So, I ask again, How are these people inspired to become ambitious? The short answer is technology. Someone with whom I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with recently, New York Times bestselling author Peter Diamandis says that technology will be the X-factor in many aspects of the future. Technology is the force that will continue to give us abundance, because it allows us to do so many incredible things. Technology allows the Millennial generation to have multiple passions. Millennials will not be defined by one thing. My good friend, bestselling author and international speaker, Pa Joof, talks a lot about the concept of identity. Gen X and Baby Boomers typically self-identify by what they do, not who they are. You commonly hear them say, “I’m a dentist. I’m a real estate agent. I’m a financial advisor. I’m a teacher.” For Millennials, that is not who we are. That is what we do. This young group doesn’t identify themselves as being one thing. They have multiple interests and multiple things that define them. When I look at myself I do not just see a writer, marketer, or a business owner. I’m also a dad. I’m into fitness and being healthy, I’m a CrossFitter. I live in the music world, in the marketing world, in the nonprofit world, in the media world, and in the fashion world. I do adventure races. I like food. I like cooking. My job does not define who I am. This young group doesn’t define themselves solely by the actions they partake in at the office between the hours of nine to five, or any other hours or situations for that matter. These young
137 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK kids are doing some really, really cool things. They’re starting companies. They are creating unicorn companies—a term venture capitalists use to describe startups that are valued at more than $1 billion. For example, Evan Spiegel, the 25-year-old founder of Snapchat, has one of these unicorn companies. Snapchat is now worth billions. All Evan did was simply take advantage of the technology and communications trends of the young and ambitious. Then you have an entire group that creates what I call the side hustle. You have an individual working nine to five as an insurance adjuster. However, when he goes home, he’s creating statues and comic book figures that he sells on Etsy. He’s potentially making just as much money selling these little statues and figurines on Etsy as he is at his nine to five. He doesn’t define himself by his nine to five. He has passions. He has outside interests. He’s willing to pursue multiple options for income and not afraid to think outside the standard box. There’s an entire industry emerging where young, stay-at-home moms have created second incomes for their families by blogging about the products they use and getting paid by the companies to do so. They write about what they do with their kids and the different products they use to help with the laundry, among other things. This ambitious group has gone from single-income families to double- income families with only one parent leaving the house while utilizing thin air and technology. It’s incredible the opportunities they have created for themselves. Then, you have funding platforms like Kickstarter. Literally all you need is an idea, and you can have the world fund its creation before you ever have to manufacture a product. Now, young people can be encouraged to dream big, and then sell that dream and vision to others. They can test their ideas in the real world by having real people pony up the money with less personal risk to make it a reality.
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This can equate to raising millions of dollars without pitching investors or giving up large sums of their company in equity shares. There are young people climbing the corporate ladders faster than ever. Young people are not just in a desk at a newsroom, they are either becoming the newsroom or taking over the anchor positions. These are people like Nicole Lapin, who was the youngest anchor ever at CNN and CNBC before leaving big media to publish her New York Times bestselling book, Rich Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan for Getting Your Financial Life Together . . . Finally. These are all really great examples of this generation making money and, as discussed, this group values so much more. You have young people who are taking care of their bodies more than ever. There’s a sport called CrossFit, and more than 209,000 people competed in the CrossFit Invitational to compete at the CrossFit Games. There are also wildly popular races and adventures that speak to Millennials. For example, the Spartan Race, an obstacle course race where you pay upwards of $100 to jump over and climb through barbed wire and hop over fences and cars. The Spartan Race alone had more than 650,000 participants in 2016. The sponsors expect more than one million people to participate in the Spartan Race in 2017, most of them under the age of 30. You can’t go from a nine to five with a side hustle and multiple CrossFit classes each week, if you’re not taking care of yourself. That extends to more than physical health too. These kids are trying to live healthy lives that feed who they are at their core. They want a full life, not just a full checking account. Millennials are doing things differently on their vacations. They are going to see the world now! They are not waiting until their “golden years” to explore the vast cultures the world has to offer. They’re not waiting until retirement to go take the two-week trip to Bali; they’re going now while they still want to jump off cliffs or surf the world over. They’re walking 10 miles a day, seeing the
139 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK sites, sleeping in hostels, and taking planes, trains, and automobiles all over the continent. They are running with the bulls in Spain and shark diving in Scotland while it’s still exciting and cool. They’re not waiting until these things become reckless and foolhardy in their minds. These young adults are forming groups like the Summit Series, a private mastermind group made up of some of the most impressive entrepreneurs in the world. The founders were in their mid-20s when they started the series that would allow them to connect and network with people like Bill Clinton, Steve Forbes, Tim Ferriss, and Arianna Huffington. This whole movement started by inviting these types of people on ski trips. They said, “Hey, Bill Clinton, can I just take you on a ski trip?” He agreed. Five years later they bought a mountain right outside of Park City, Utah, to hold these gatherings. In the process, they have raised millions of dollars for charity. Instead of going on vacation, they own the vacation destination and have the best party guests you could imagine. This is a generation of people who are looking for more out of life. They’re looking for better. They want a career—they just might not want to define it in the same terms as their parents. They are taking care of themselves, physically and mentally. They are doing things that their grandparents never dreamed of as a possibility. They want to have families and to see the world. They want it all. Quite frankly, the ambitious ones, the kids who believe in the power of their dreams and continue to create goals that get bigger and bigger, are going to have it. So, what does that mean to the Baby Boomers and the Gen Xs? Well, my challenge is to look at these young people in a different light. Do not write this group off. They need your mentoring, and they need your guidance. Whether you like it or not, they’re going to be the leaders of this world quicker than you can imagine. They’re going to be the leaders someday, whether you like it or not.
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We, the Millennials, are the ones who are going to take over and control this world. Knowing this, during the past few months, my team and I have decided to give a new voice to this generation. We’ve created a brand-new media network called Ambitious. We’re going to give young people a place where they can see other young people doing these things. We are going to give them the path, the blueprint, and the resources they need to actually live these lives. When they want to go take that vacation, they’ll know where to go, how to book it, and what there is to discover. They’re going to know how to invest. They’ll know how to get their first mortgage. They’ll know how to find the ambitious careers that are available to them. We’re really trying to create a young generation that lives a life full of ambitions, not regrets. There are a lot of people who lie on their deathbed with regrets. But, the thing is, it’s always the things they didn’t do that they regret way more than the things they actually did. What I want to do is help that person who is sitting at home on a Friday-night binge watching movies on TV. I want to help that person get off the couch and start living life. Ambitious will inspire that person to want to be Kevin Spacey, not just want to watch Kevin Spacey. That is what we’re trying to do, and it’s what I think will shrink the gap between the ambitious and the unambitious. It’s my contribution toward a better future for my generation, a future filled with potential, dreams, and a life that’s completely and utterly full.
Note: This article has been adapted from Greg Rollett’s speech at the Global Economic Initiative at the United Nations.
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CHAPTER 21 John Max Bolling Relational Selling: How to Engage Customers and Avoid becoming a Commodity
ales affects everything: every person, every company, every Sindustry, and entire economies. As a business owner, you must understand the importance of sales, if you ever hope to move from simply surviving to thriving in the marketplace. The problem lies in the fact that the traditional sales model is slowing giving way to a new age of sales, and most business owners are unwilling to admit that the game has changed. In this chapter, I will make one bold claim, and whether you chose to believe it or not will have massive implications to the future of your business. That claim is this: As a business owner you have the choice to do one of the following. 1. Understand that innovation has put the power in the hands of the end consumer, 2. Go out of business.
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That’s it, there is no alternative. The days of transactional marketing are over, and you can either learn to adapt, or you can hold on to what you have as it slowly slips away. Now I know what you’re thinking, who is this kid to make such a bold claim, and your thoughts are justified. Instead of vetting myself, I’ll let recent events do the talking. For the past several years the general population has been marveled by the disruption that is occurring across many industries. From the rise of ecommerce to advances in technology, it seems that every month we are hearing of the next Uber-like company. Yet, many business owners still have a massive disrespect for the speed of innovation. Take Blockbuster video for example. In 2000, a man by the name of Reed Hastings traveled to Dallas, Texas, to speak with the CEO of Blockbuster. At the time, Reed Hastings owned a small startup by the name of Netflix. Reed had traveled to speak to John Antioco, the CEO of Blockbuster, to propose a partnership whereby Netflix would help move Blockbuster online. Reed left that meeting with a resounding no. Yet, 10 years later Blockbuster closed its doors, while Netflix boasted a $28 billion evaluation. Was this due to Netflix being such an amazing idea? Maybe. But I believe it is something much more simple. Blockbuster stopped evolving and thought innovation would stop right along with them. Just like you, John Antioco faced the options to innovate or die, so which will you choose?
Relational Sales over Transactional Sales I hope that you want to learn how to win in business and what I’m about to teach you will do just that. This concept isn’t something new, in fact, it is the most tried and true method of sales ever invented. It is called relational selling. Relational selling is a simple process by which you create customer engagement, and through
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that engagement you learn exactly how to deliver what your consumer wants. This method is broken down into clear steps, and, if followed correctly, you should be able to deliver on the four key components all consumers want from a brand. 1. ______has a clear understanding of the issues I face. 2. ______has a positive impact on the key performance indicator I find most important. 3. ______is devoted to customer satisfaction. 4. I consider ______to be an expert.
If you can respond yes to these four components, you have created an engaged customer. The remainder of this chapter will be spent working on how to ensure a “yes” to each of these components.
Understanding the Needs of the Consumer Businesses are built to solve problems, and the bigger the problem you solve, the greater your business will be in the eye of the consumer. But how do you know what the consumer needs? This question used to be difficult and costly to answer, but thank goodness, we live in a digital environment where people will tell you exactly what their needs are. The problem is, most businesses forget to listen to their consumers, and instead they assume they know what the consumer wants or needs. To understand the needs of the consumers, you must have a deep knowledge of their pain points. You must spend time studying your consumers, and you must have experience in the specific niche you are targeting, so that you can relate to the issues your consumers face. You must understand that you are paid to help solve the issues your consumers face, and you are failing them if you assume instead
145 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK of asking deep, and sometimes uncomfortable, questions. You have to be of the mindset that you are a professional, and it would be a disservice to your consumers not to dig to find the true pain points.
Having a Positive Impact on the Most Important Metric In the Eyes of the Consumer Once you understand the needs of your consumers, you must be able to deliver on these needs in the format most desired by themr. To make the sale, you have to be speaking in the language that most resonates with the decision maker. You must connect to the decision maker on an emotional basis. When you are making a sale, you are asking someone to part with their hard-earned money, so you must tie the dollars you are asking for to the solutions the consumers desire.
Devotion to Customer Satisfaction This should be a no-brainer, but far too often you can see brands disrespecting their consumers. In a digital environment, word spreads quickly, and one negative review could mean a loss of multiple customers. Customer satisfaction is what creates evangelists for your brand. If you make sure every single customer leaves with a positive emotional connection from your brand, you will win through word of mouth. People love to tell about the great customer service they received, and a recent Bain & Company study found that “evangelists” for your brand generate 437 percent more profit during the lifetime than a disgruntled consumer.
Becoming an Expert in Your Industry This is the component that most businesses struggle with. Mainly because this is the only element that you do not have direct
146 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK control over. The market gets to decide if you are an expert or not. But, therein lies the beauty of the first three components. If your consumers believe you truly understand their needs, that you can positively deliver on their desired key performance indicators, and you perform your services with customer satisfaction in mind, don’t you think the market will consider you an expert by default? This component is completely controllable, as long as you put in the work to win the first three components.
Avoiding Commoditization Now, I can hear what some people are saying, “Ok, great, but what does all this mean?” This question is answered perfectly by a quote from marketer Seth Godin and that is, “In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” Now, I’m sure we can all agree that the marketplace is crowded, and the most detrimental thing that can happen to your business is commoditization, the process in which your business is not distinguishable from others. This happens when businesses fight to be the “low-cost leader,” which is a race to the bottom that no one wants to win. If you can respond yes to these four components, you will be able to avoid becoming a commodity, which is the only way your business will succeed long term.
Putting This into Action I want to leave you with an actionable step to increasing sales. We have been focusing on the “high-level” thinking a business owner should engage in. Now I will briefly explain how to put these steps into action, by introducing you to the “golden circle theory” of business made famous by management consultant Simon Sinek. This theory concludes that all businesses have three layers, the
147 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK what, how, and why. Sinek postulates that only the businesses that can clearly articulate the “why” will be able to create a lasting legacy. I am going a different route than Sinek. I believe that a company creates sales by marketing the “what” (the problem the consumer faces) and the “why” (why the business was created to solve the problem), then selling the “how” (the service or product). I will explain how this is done through a case study of how one company overcame commoditization through following this exact formula. In the world of home improvement stores, Grainger is close to the top of the list for construction professionals. Yet, in 1994, it faced the options you are faced with today. You see, in 1994, a man by the name of Jeff Bezos founded one of the first ecommerce platforms, named Amazon. As Amazon grew, Grainger (as a brand) realized that it could not deliver products as fast, or as cheap as Amazon could. Instead of racing to the lowest cost, Grainger decided to get a little creative. As a brand, the employees listened to the needs of their customer base. Of those needs, the greatest was not getting nuts and bolts delivered quickly and cheaply to their homes. The greatest need of the consumer was instructions and guidance about how to use and organize the products once they were purchased. Grainger delivered on that need in two amazing ways. In the business to business (B2B) space, Grainger invested heavily into a turn-key inventory system that it provided to its clients at no charge. This allowed Grainger to continue selling the same products as Amazon, for a higher margin, because they were able to deliver what Amazon wasn’t. In the business to consumer (B2C) market, Grainger began hosting clinics and do it yourself (DIY) days. Grainger staff created customer engagement by going beyond a transactional sale; they created an experience that left an emotional attachment to the brand.
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Now, if you are clever you can pick up on what the “what” is in this example. But have you picked up on the “why”? Grainger’s “why” was not to be a distributor of products, its “why” was to be the “go-to” for their customers. With knowledge of the “what” and “why,” the staff members were able to craft a message that created an emotional connection to the brand, through that connection they effectively sold the “how.” Although this will look different from industry to industry, the simplicity of this tactic is consistent throughout all businesses. That is because it is more than a tactic, It is the guiding force to success in business. You created your business to solve a problem (your why). You figured out a solution to that problem (your what). Now it is up to you to figure out how to sell your “how” by creating an engaged customer relationship. The choice is yours.
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CHAPTER 22 Trevor Lowry A Perfect Day
f you could create your perfect day, what would it consist of? ITraveling throughout Europe? Reading in a park? Writing a novel? Working at an office that allows you to be your creative self? Perhaps your perfect day involves you not lifting a single finger and especially not doing any work. Unfortunately, some people are stuck in an office all day, and they would rather be doing their work in the park or at a coffee shop. Some folks are taking phone calls from the time the sun rises to the time it sets. We can picture the perfect day all we want, but things get in the way from turning a perfect day into a perfect life. Things such as work, school, obligations, responsibilities, and commitments. So, let me pose this question once more: What does your perfect day consist of? I have been trying to answer this question ever since my junior year of college while attending Colorado State University. At the time, I wanted nothing more than to be a sportswriter during the day and work on my novel at night, and I believed majoring in journalism was the path I needed to take to get there. After graduating, at age 23, I took the first job offer I received. I didn’t waste time because
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(1) I wanted to live in California, and (2) being a sportswriter was part of the plan. In less than a month at my cozy sportswriting job, a job that was located in a fancy office in Irvine, California, I knew spending my days in said office, any office, was not my idea of a perfect day. A lot of it had to deal with the hours. After all, I was working for a startup, a type of company that demands much more than the typical nine- to-five warrior is used to. There were two big issues that I faced— well, three if you count the fact that I missed my friends, family, and the only life I knew back in Colorado. One of the issues was I was working on salary, and I was always working more than 40 hours a week. More times than not, the job called for 50–60 hours a week. After 40 hours, I was essentially working for free. The more I worked, the more my hourly rate decreased. The other issue was that I went to school to be a writer so I could travel the world, work when I wanted, and live the writer’s life (at the time, I had no clue what that meant). To make a long story short, I eventually lost passion for this gig, so I decided to take on a part-time role, one that allowed me to work from home. I also decided to further my learning by getting my master of fine arts degree in creative writing shortly before my 25th birthday. I also knew I could be making a lot more money in the freelance writing world. On top of that, I was still in search of the perfect day. Not long after my big decision, Ian Smith, a friend, an entrepreneur, and a mentor, reached out to me about writing for a company that he was doing sales and marketing for. Without hesitation, and without knowing much about the field of food trucks, I didn’t hesitate—I said yes. When Ian first reached out to me, I might have said yes without hesitation, but it wasn’t the job that sold me. I never dreamed I would
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be writing about food trucks, about music, about entrepreneurs, about business owners, about success, about motivation, about glasses, and about tea. I was sold on Ian. Here he was, before the age of 25, already achieving greatness. This was a real opportunity, and I knew said opportunity was going to lead me down the correct path of success. This opportunity involved me working from home, for far fewer than 60 hours a week. This opportunity was going to lead to my perfect day, my perfect life. Along this ride, a ride that hasn’t even been going for a full year yet, I have created my unofficial writing business, a business that consists of 10 clients, and I have even been introduced to a few successful entrepreneurs along the way, such as Kevin Harrington, Brian Harrington, and Jeremy Adams. You see, for the longest time, a perfect day to me was having a lot of money and being able to do whatever I wanted. If I wanted to take a two-hour lunch break, if I wanted to fly to Indiana, Barcelona, Colorado, Florida, or wherever it might be, I simply wanted that option to be available. Although it’s still a fresh topic to me, I have gotten a sense of how differently entrepreneurs and business owners live, how they think, and how they do things. I can’t blame people who decide to work for a company that offers a desk, a chair, 40–60 hours of work a week, and a salary. However, I can say these types of people and entrepreneurs are like vegan and paleo, PC and Mac, or night and day. While you still won’t find me traveling to Europe on a random Tuesday, I at least have that option now. I have the option to live out my perfect day, which is having the freedom to make my work schedule however I would like. I have the freedom to take my work to a coffee shop, to do it at night, to do it during the day, or to do it in the morning. I have the freedom to find more work, to find more success. While I wouldn’t consider myself an entrepreneur
153 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK or business owner, per se, I would consider myself a writer who practices what so many entrepreneurs and business owners alike preach, which is incorporating a strong work-life balance, not believing any goal or dream is unreachable, and not being afraid to fail over and over again along the journey that is achieving success.
154 CHAPTER 23 Bruce Reed Here’s the Scoop: Five Flavors of Business
“ re the fries crispy, the cheese real, the burgers fresh?” my father Awould ask. Although I didn’t realize at the time that these fundamental questions would instill value into my businesses, they did. Growing up in Chippewa, Pennsylvania, my father, who was formerly in the Navy, owned a fast-food burger stand, while at the time, my mother was a waitress. You see, I was brought up in the restaurant business, where I thought more of quality than profit. That being said, I was never the best at school, and, in fact, repeated the third grade. It was then that I knew I’d be twice as good as anyone else, especially if it meant having to do it a second time. Education is not a destiny, it is a continued journey. I had many entrepreneur mentors along the way who taught me that most entrepreneurs repeat success and repeat failure. I just happened to learn early! To me, there are ingredients to life, and sometimes you have to keep churning to produce the consistency and outcome you want. I had never made it past the 11th grade, and I never stopped there either. Being the class clown was an expertise, because I had
155 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK never learned the foundation of principles in school. I used my personality to entertain the idea of being educated, which along the way created my story. Flavors of my life became the flavors instilled into my business, and, from there, in 1989, I created Bruster’s Real Ice Cream.
Starting a Company Is a Flavor-Filled Rocky Road! Since the beginning of business, we have been the leaders of success. With 160 flavors, we have more than 200 stores (5 in Korea, 2 in Guyana), but there is one thing that is most important to me, and it is not numbers or money, it is passion. With passion comes determination, and you need determination to succeed. Bruster’s was not the first business I started, and it has not been the last. When you want something in life, you must find the way to go out and get it. When I was 17, I was working at an Exxon gas station, 42 hours a week, and saved $2,700. My father’s friend, a real wheeler-dealer car salesman, who later became one of my first mentors, was taking me to buy the Corvette I had always wanted. What I didn’t know at the time was that he was taking me down the wrong way of the road to buy the car, but the right way of the road to success. He drove me in the opposite direction to a three-story house. Pittsburg is a steel town with large houses in the downtown area that were great property investments for multifamily housing. I had heard him preach about real estate to me from a young age and I trusted him. He convinced me that if I were to purchase the property at $10,900, which I did, and convert it into three apartments, that with the cash flow I’d be earning, I would soon be in the Corvette of my dreams. To put this in perspective, this was back in 1973 when teachers were making around $7,500 annual income. Although I was becoming a real-estate mogul at the time, I was still interested
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in food. My father was leasing his hamburger stand, Jerry’s, which was built in 1947, year to year. I left Exxon, continued investing, and begin working for my father for $125 a week. Minimum wage back then was $1.35, so for me, this was a great time investment. I took the business over and the fast-food market took a while to become successful. During that year, I was making $250 a month profit on the first property I had purchased, my parents had cosigned for my Corvette, and I turned around and bought three more properties. A year and a half later, my father’s friend brought me a buyer and I sold the home for $27,900. I continued driving down the “Rocky Road” of business, churning and churning with all the right ingredients.
The Pecan Pie of Life Although Rick Bango never ended up taking me to the car dealership that first day, we ended up at an important piece of the pie that would change my life forever. Real estate! Rick taught me a valued lesson, “put no money down on real estate,” he said. He would find me the properties, and I would buy them. The banks would loan $20,000 on a six-month note, with no proof of income at the time. I would buy a house for $12,000, put $5,000–6,000 into the house refurnishing, get a mortgage for $25,000, pay off $20,000 to the bank, and profit $5,000 cash which was tax free because it was borrowed money. I would then turn around and continue purchasing more. At 22, I owned 88 apartments, several commercial real estate properties, a used car lot, and two bars. I never bought a piece of property because I thought I’d make a lot of money; I bought it because I thought I was getting a great deal, a great piece of the real estate pie! Another friend of my father and former mentor, Howard Brubeck, was obsessed with not paying federal income tax. He taught me that, “You never get rich making money, you get rich from
157 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK equity in real estate and tax breaks.” I learned that with owning, you were able to have tax advantages. I made money three ways: cash through the business, tax through depreciation, and with building equity in the real estate. A perfect pie, split three ways!
Butterscotch Ripple At the age of 28, I retired. Life was great. I bought a ranch, got married, and had two children. Farming had become my hobby. After seven years of retirement, a friend of mine asked me to become involved in the local YMCA. It was in trouble and went bankrupt. I was asked to be on the board of directors and had never had a position like that before. I showed up to a meeting where, to my surprise, all the men were dressed in suits with ties, while I walked in wearing a polo shirt and khakis. I later became enthralled with the progress of the YMCA. My mentor, Skip Homeman, chairman of the board, taught me so much about business; budgeting and public speaking being two most important concepts. Many of us worked diligently to get the business back on its feet, and throughout the years we ended up raising $8 million. This brought back my fire. Being around so many business people in the community made me realize that I wanted to be back at the forefront of entrepreneurship. Later, my sister got a divorce. I had been doing consulting jobs on the side making about $15,000 for acquisitions. Although, I didn’t have a college degree, I was great at finance and people paid me as a consultant. I used this money to help support my sister. This was the beginning of Bruster’s Real Ice Cream. My sister didn’t want her brother supporting her, and a friend of mine had introduced me to the ice cream business. I wanted to make enough money with a store to pay my sister $300 a week for her mortgage payment. To my surprise, becoming involved with the YMCA was more than just a ripple in the calm of running a farm in retirement, and
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ice cream became more than just a mortgage payment. This was a sweet butterscotch ripple that flavored my life with a beautiful company known as Bruster’s Real Ice Cream. Yogurt was a booming business at the time, but I was not satisfied with the quality of that product. My sister and I found a quality ice cream maker, we paid them to teach us how to make the product supreme, and we made it great. My father never spoke about profit, food cost, or labor cost when it came to his business. He spoke only about a call to the product. “Are the fries crispy, the cheese real, the burgers fresh?” He would look in the trash to see if anyone had thrown a product out, and, if so, how could he make that better quality for the customer. This was instilled in me. Quality was and is everything. On opening day, Bruster’s had made $700. On the second day, $1200. By the second Sunday, I had a traffic cop directing the line of customers to their cones. The store became a huge hit, and we ended up earning $600,000 the first year, making a quarter of million dollars profit. With a lot of persistence, I bought my father’s hamburger stand, Jerry’s. In 1989, I tore down the original 560-square-foot building, and rebuilt a 1,400-square-foot space. I was faced with the landlords raising the rent year after year, and this taught me that you must never rent anything, you must own! Bruster’s Real Ice Cream became so busy that tearing down Jerry’s allowed me to have a larger parking lot, seeing as they are next door to each other.
Banana Split Franchising was not my first option. I opened three additional Bruster’s myself but was having a difficult time finding good management. I couldn’t figure out how to incentivize others to care about the business as much as I did. I began profit sharing
159 PUT A SHARK IN YOUR TANK for motivation, and later turned to franchising. The first year, four people purchased, the second year four more people purchased. Twenty to thirty stores came next. In 2004, I sold 91 franchises without advertising. People were attracted to the quality of the product. It was a superior product that created success. People come to Bruster’s happy, not hungry, and it is a unique, friendly atmosphere that you don’t find in many businesses. After opening 100 stores, I had attended a course that would change my life forever. I had friends who attended a course called Owner/President Management (OPM) at Harvard Business School, and they convinced me to go. I had 168 classmates from 32 different countries. Our classroom consisted of all walks of life, and it was an experience of a lifetime. When I came out of Harvard, I knew I wasn’t the person to run my company. I knew I wasn’t strategic and needed to hire someone with the skill set that I didn’t have. I can motivate people and I can create hope. I needed someone who could show up at the office every day and run the company. I had to let the company be run by someone else who could get the job done. As luck would have it, Jim Sahene, our current CEO, formerly president of a frozen yogurt company (TCBY), was the right man for the job. He split with TCBY and began with Bruster’s in 2002. Most people thought I could never hand over control of my business, Jim included, but 12 days after Jim started, I left the office and have not been back.
Moose Tracks, Leaving Your Tracks in Business Bruster’s wasn’t my first business and won’t be my last. If you are lucky enough to be extremely passionate about what you want to do in life, that is the best investment you can make for yourself. Just like the quality of hamburger buns is to the quality of ice cream, the quality of manufacturers is to the quality of the food
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truck business. I found a builder who built trailers and food trucks and manufactured them to companies. In 2011, I bought half the company. In 2015, Custom Concessions in Indiana merged to become Prestige Concession. I have four partners who all love the business, and I think it’s brilliant. When I first found the concept of food trucks, I knew I had to find a way to become a part of the business, and I did just that. The passion of business was fired up again! When you purchase a $100,000 food truck, it is in reality as if you are purchasing a $60,000 food truck, because you are saving $40,000 on income tax. Here is the lesson I hope my reader can get from what my mentors taught me, “Every time you buy a piece of equipment, the government is your partner because you will pick up 40 percent in tax.” Being in business is being tax deductible. I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of motivational tapes. Growing up I paid attention to mentors like Sherm Hostetter, an auctioneer and barber, who would cut hair during the day and have lawnmowers on his front lawn trying to sell them in the evenings. He taught me how to tell a person why their product wasn’t worth it and how to buy it cheaper. Then turning it around to sell it to someone else, telling them then why it’s worth their purchase. He taught me the flavor of strategy. My father taught me the flavor of quality. Rick Bango, the wheeler-dealer car salesman, taught me the flavor of finance. When I was 16, Angelo Pertapoleo who was 40 at the time, taught me the flavor of personality. We would walk into a restaurant, and he would announce that it was his birthday and how every year we would celebrate together. With my failing of the third grade and depending on my character, I looked up to his larger-than-life personality. Don Dillon was also a character of a person. He taught me so much about having fun while doing business while I learned the names of important people. Skip Homeman, chairman of the
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YMCA, taught me the flavor of professionalism and leadership. He taught me not to speak with a mouth full of ice cream, but a hand full of sweets. These people have all left large impressions in my life, and I can only hope I too leave my tracks in the business world. Bruster’s is a lot more than just ice cream. It is a business; it is a quality product; and it is a tax shelter. Opportunities never come to those who wait; they are captured by those who dare to attack. I never give up. I always keep things fresh, and I encourage you to be the best flavor of your life.
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